Welcome everyone to our Puente Alto Mill. This is where everything started a hundred and four years ago. La Papelera, the way CMPC is known, started here. Actually, at that time, CMPC was not a forestry company. The paper we produced here, as you could see in the videos on the entrance, were produced with straw. It was a completely different business in that sense. Today we see the plant you saw in the middle of the city. That brings a lot of complexity and challenges for the operation. But in the past, was not that way. This was in the middle of the countryside, and the only way to get here was by train.
We actually had to build a villa, a sort of town, where we can lodge the workers, the same way you see today in the mining industry, for instance, in the north of Chile, so there's a lot of history here, a lot of historic buildings. This is a very important site for CMPC, and we are very happy that you can be here joining us today. As we have done it in the last couple of years, today, the stars are not gonna be the finance team. You meet us all the time. The idea is you can meet today other executives of the company that can share with you what we have been doing during the year and where we are going forward.
So with that, I would like to start thanking the people from the Puente Alto Mill, Alfredo Gule, the manager of the business, Javier Busch that is around there, the plant manager, and all his team that has helped us to put this together. And now, I will hand over to Francisco Ruiz-Tagle, our CEO, who will start the presentation. Thank you very much.
Well, good morning, everybody, for being this morning here today. It's a pleasure for us to have you, all of you here. I just want to start saying first that we have organized this Investor Day in a different way compared with the last year. We will present the business of Softys in a separate way. As you know, we have been working since, I would say, six years ago, in making Softys more autonomous. Because of its nature, it's a different business. It's a consumer product business. It's a B2C business, so we have been, you know, in a way, in some way, separating some things of the Softys business from CMPC.
We have an special presentation for Softys because we want you to understand or to know in much more detail the Softys business compared with the other years. It's important for you to know more about Softys, and so its CEO Gonzalo Darraidou is with us today, and he will present in much more detail compared with other years. I will present, in the first part, the other business of CMPC, basically biopackaging, pulp and other initiatives that we have. Also will be here Constanza Arjona. She's the P&O VP of the company, so she will present especially the chapter of talent. Also will be here Viviana Rubini and Bernardita Araya. They will present the growth and innovation chapter.
Finally, our Project Natureza will be presented by José Antonio Correa. I also I mean, I will mention about all of this in my presentation, but in more detail with, with them, okay? Well, first of all, I will start speaking a bit about the year 2024. Last time we met was in October 2023, and of course, several things has happened in the company during these years, during the year. An important issue for us this year was the initiation. Actually, it was at the end of the last year, but after our Investor Day, of Bio CMPC. Bio CMPC is a real, I would say, important point for CMPC, not only because we are, you know, increasing our capacity in 350,000 tons, but because if a...
This is a project that is adjusting, you know, our, especially our sustainable goals. I would say also, it was an impeccable execution in time and budget, so it's a very well, I would say, a... I would say, it's a good sample or about, you know, the way we are working in our project. We feel really comfortable with our project team. As you know, we have important challenges looking to the future in terms of project. I want to, you know, remark the resilience of CMPC.
As you know, we had a big important situation with the climate in Rio Grande do Sul this year, and it was a really complex situation for, first of all, for our people. The floods were extremely high. Sometimes we are far from that place, and you don't imagine the situation, how it was there. We never stopped basically the mill. We had to reduce for a couple, I would say two, three, four days, basically our operations. But at the end, we did not lose, you know, basically production. So this is a special, you know, a very important situation for us, and it's a special recognition for our people there.
So I wanted to transmit you that because, you know, today, because of the climate change, we are facing many, many times, unexpected situation connected with the climate, and so you have to solve that. Some important decisions. We decided this year to initiate an important, I would say, project. We are at the very beginning of this project, with the first studies of the project, and, you know, in this moment, we are, we have presented a starting the presentation of our environmental, you know, studies in Rio Grande do Sul.
We will go in more detail with this project, but the idea with this project is to have this approved, hopefully, the year 2026. It will take probably some more months in having the licença, the iniciação do projeto. And then, so but we are very concentrated and working with our team and with the local authorities in having, you know, a good connection for all these studies looking to the future. I will start also speaking a little bit about the strategy, the 2030 strategy. We have continued with our strategy.
As you know, our purpose is to make natural fiber for a better future, which is very important for us because we have aligned our initiatives around this main sentence. And going through the pillars, sorry, again, we have shown you this before to you, but the idea is to remember this. This is our strategy, and I would say it is a strong strategy. We go over five different pillars, which are sustainability, talent, customer competitiveness, and growth and innovation. And everything that we study, every project that we start the discussion, the way we organize the company, the way we organize our offices, the way we organize our people, is really well connected with the strategy.
I will go a little bit over some of these pillars, and with my team, we will show you what is happening here. The first pillar I want to just talk about is sustainability. And in this pillar, every time many things are happening. This has been a very strong pillar for us. We put a lot of attention on this because we understand this industry as an industry that has a core business very much connected with what the world is needing today. So we believe that our products, based on natural fibers, renewable, recyclable, are very much connected with what the world need to get, you know, these big goals about net zero or solving the climate change problem.
And also, it is a very important pillar for us because of the social aspects. This industry is located in many different places because of the forest. We are in different countries. So again, in this aspect, we are also, you know, studying and defining important, you know, decisions. Just to mention some of them, this year, or after the last investor day, we have inaugurated some parks. This initiative is called Bosque Vivo, and we have opened parks in different parts of the regions where we have our operations.
The last one is the integration of Pumalal Park in Temuco is an important place for the family, you know, for sports, for visiting this place, you know, for everybody. We hope, but we also inaugurated recently a different park in Loncoche, in a different area, and so we're very. This initiative has a lot to do with opening the forest for the site. We also launched our strategy of nature conservation and biodiversity, and this is very important because, you know, again, as I mentioned before, our industry, our activity is very much connected with the nature.
When I speak about an strategy, it has a lot to do with taking care of the nature, but not only taking care of our nature, but you know also with initiatives about influencing other places connected with us. An example of this, for instance, is we are working in something that are called green corridors, where we are connecting different places of the forests. You know, you do have an idea, different places with corridors. And these corridors, we plant basically a native forest. And when you connect these corridors, biodiversity, the biodiversity of those places start being much richer.
It is important for me, you to—for you to understand that the this is an initiative that is improving the nature in this country, in Brazil, where we are. Improving, I say, because there were places that were disconnected, and not that, and this is not because of the forest activity. They were disconnected because of the erosion of the past, because of many, you know, different things. This is very well appreciated today for the, for the, you know, climate change, you know, people. We are putting a lot of attention on that, and we have a lot to do on that.
Those corridors, when I mention corridors, are long corridors, you know, hundreds of kilometers of corridors where you can, you know, it created a place for the, for the flora and fauna to, to move, you know, between one place and another place. Another aspect of our sustainability, I mentioned social, is the educational project we inaugurated in Nacimiento. Now it's operating normally, and we actually agreed an association between Universidad Católica de Chile and CMPC for building a, an institute in Nacimiento. Nacimiento is a very important place for us, where we have our main operations in Chile. And so those places are rural places where the people has not too many opportunities for, you know, for their education.
And in order to avoid separating families and you know and moving people from those places to big cities in Chile, we you know agreed on this initiative for having this institute as we... and very well connected with activities of the of that those places for that of that region, and this is what we believe is very important in Chile, because you know you need experts. In the past, we used to have you know or bring expert from other countries for several activities in the forest industry, and we don't, hopefully, we don't want to do this, I wouldn't say anymore, because we you need some expert, but to reduce these needs, looking to the future, so working a lot on that.
Today, the institute has more close to four hundred students, which is a lot for these kind of places, and we'll continue, we will continue with this initiative. CMPC was also, in terms of sustainability, was recognized as a, as a company, very sustainable in the world. For us, it's a, it's a really we feel, we feel really proud, actually, about being top number one in sustainable, in sustainability in the paper and forest sector. This recognition was made by Dow Jones Sustainability Index. You know, we have been working very hard, I would say, not only doing as best as we can, the our operation, the things we do, but also being transparent.
As we really are, you know, informing about many different or all of our basically details in our operations, in our commercial operation, in our international operations, and what the company is investing, you know, in. As transparent as we can. And so, this has also been very welcome for this kind of institutions. This year, we improve our. It's not still, I would say, the formal information about the Dow Jones Sustainability of the year is not still informed, but what we know is we increase in our, you know, the we did better this year compared with the last year. Our score is better. We don't know our position, so we are not gonna talk about that. We don't know that.
I believe we continue working hard on this aspect, and so this is important recognition from a third party, very well recognized around the world. Working on the nature agenda, I mentioned before. Well, as I mentioned before, the agenda of sustainability continue very strong, and I will give you some examples that we are doing today. I mentioned the Vital already, I mentioned Bosque Vivo. And also, I didn't mention something that's very important, you know, the forest industry is also one of the, I would say, good opportunity that they will have for capturing carbon.
We defined a place in the very south of Chile, in Aysén, for about 26,000 hectares, where we used to have some plantations there of different species, but we decided to keep this place just for, you know, a carbon sink. So this is a, we say, a nature-based solution. So continue working, you know, all the. So taking care of the nature in carbon sink, so all this is a part of our strategy. In terms of our progress in sustainability, we know, you know, we have some goals, some of them for the year 2025, others for the year 2030. For 2025, we have basically two goals.
One is water, reduction of 25% of the water we use in our processes. And to go to zero waste to final disposal. And I would say we are going basically really well basically in the final disposal of waste. We still have some challenges in water, because for reducing water, you need to improve your processes and also invest. And we are doing both. My impression is that we will get our goal, but still have some space there for improving. And the other important goals we have, one is emissions. You know, in general, the industry around the world is very you know concentrated in reducing and mitigating emissions, and we do the same. And we have...
Our promise is to for the year 2030 reduce in 50% the scope one and two of our emissions. We are running, I would say, really well on that, and with important accomplishments of our goals. In conservation biodiversity we announced that we will increase in 100,000 hectares in native forests and nature forests. We already have 90,000 now, so we are very well on this, and probably we will have to see, you know, again this goal, because we probably can do more on that. Ninety thousand hectares that we have today, for you to have an idea, is like the size of Chicago, twice the size of Philadelphia, two times the size of Santiago.
I mean, it's an important area for you to have that idea. We also are advancing in our value chain in terms of sustainability from the sourcing. We are taking care of our human rights, labor practices. We have. We produce. Everything we produce is with a certified forest, FSC and PEFC. Those certifications have to be with a sustainable management of the forest. We also have a decarbonization roadmap. This company is already committed for being net zero by 2040, ten years in advance compared with the, in general, with the call that United Nations made. So this is our target, and we feel comfortable with that.
Of course, client engagement, it means in terms of sustainability. I have to say you that we are very sensitive about what is happening with our customers, and so we want to be really a solution for them. And so this is not obvious. Sometimes you don't understand very well what is happening with your customers, and we have been working really hard in connecting, you know, with them and understanding their sustainability goals, because most of the companies we have in Europe or in Asia or even in Latin America, they have important goals, and so we have to be, with our product, a solution for them. So a lot of connection on that aspects. Now we call Constanza. He'll take a look of the talent pillar, and then I will be back here with you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Francisco. In this case, and as we were talking a little bit about our strategy, you can imagine that one of our key enablers of having a successful strategy and really achieving the goals that we have is talent. So we have been actively working in terms of investing in talent management capability and also working to have a culture that supports empowerment and impact. Of course, this is a journey. This is something that will not happen from one day to another, but we need to pursue on that, you know? In this case, of course, having the talent management capability and having the supporting culture that help us, of course, to accelerate leadership, foster development mindset, and of course, connect the organization for growth and improvement.
So we are prepared for the growth and the competitiveness that we need for our 2030 strategy. In this case, I want to tell you a little bit about how we measure and how we are working with our talent pool. The first part, of course, is mapping. So it's understanding who is who, where they are, in which position of our value chain are the critical roles, and of course, also identifying those people that are the high posts that we call, that it's the high potential people that we have in the organization. And as you see, we have been growing this amount of people, especially in the high posts or the high potential people that we have. The reason behind that is not just developing our internal talent, it's also attracting new talent.
So, this is part, of course, of managing our talent to have and support our 2030 goals. In the other hand, also, it's important to really have a sustainable organization in terms of succession planning. So we need to take care of the organization of our business today and also take care of what is coming in the future. So, the first part, of course, is working in terms of improving our succession planning, but also giving the opportunity to our high potentials, to the people that are leading in terms of development, in terms of performance, our high potential. So we need to ensure that those people have the opportunities to really grow in the organization.
But of course, this is just measuring, and one of the key things that we have been working for almost three years is how we really build a culture that supports this engagement, that supports the kind of organization that we need to have in terms of achieving the goals for our twenty thirty strategy, and we have been working in the engagement as a very important enabler to have engaged people, engaged teams to really be successful on the goals, so you will see here that we have the average that it's three point eight, but the most important thing is the engagement ratio. This is that we have three point one engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee.
And this is very important because the last survey that we have in 2023, this ratio was 2.1. So it's important to have engaged people. It's necessary but not sufficient. You need to have people that it's engaged, that it's committed with the goals that the company has, but also you need to have a management system, an organization that works and it's very well connected with business results. So Gallup, for us, and in the last graphic, you will see that when we go to teams, we have been also growing in the top quartile, and that is very important because the amount of people that it's engaged in some of the team, it's growing and growing really fast.
So that motivates, that is engagement, and needs to be, as I mentioned, really well connected with business results. People engage, but without business results, it's not an achievement. So for this, also that is something I think it's important to mention, is that to work on engagement, we really need to focus also on leadership. In a company that has such as the goals that we have and the growth that CMPC has for 2030, we need to really work on leaders. And leaders, in this case, play a pivotal role for the cultural evolution, of course, are the shadows, are the one leading, but also are the ones shaping the behaviors that we need to really have a sustainable organization in the future.
So in this field, the leadership capabilities that we have been focusing on is, of course, based on our strategy, the kind of leaders that we need to, of course, with the strategy goals, connected and very well connected with the business results, and also, of course, to have a management system that support this. As I mentioned at the beginning, it's not just about having engaged people, it's also engaged people that are well connected with a management system that makes sense and is, and gives us a sustainable organization for the growth. In this field, I wanted to mention that we have been really working very hard in one leadership program that is focusing on these five strategic pillars in our competency model.
This is what we look for in a leader. In the different levels of the organization, it's not just the executive level, in our mills, in our support areas, and so on. We want to build capabilities that are really looking for a company that has big goals as the one that Francisco mentioned at the beginning. Of course, the capabilities need to be very well focused with systemic view, with accountability, with the learning agility. Nowadays, it's critical to have and to learn and change and adapt in a really fast way. The idea is, of course, trying to, through our leaders in the different levels of the organization, shape the behaviors that we need for the growth that we are aiming for.
I will pass it back to Francisco, to tell you a little bit more about customers. Thank you.
Gracias. Well, now I will go over the customer pillar. In connection with the customer pillar, I will mention that it, this is of course a very strategic part, central part of CMPC. Customer centricity is a clear definition as one of the five pillars I mentioned before, and it means to work across all the value chains. I mean, from the mills, you know, connected with the customers in some way, to our customer even to the final customers. This is our interest here, and what is to improve the customer experience? Because we are looking to improve the customer experience here, and it's a, this is something that is not easy to copy. I would say that it's a coordination.
A coordination from the beginning of the supply chain to the end. It's a process that takes years to be adjusted and also to have the organization's culture for supporting this customer centricity. It especially being, you know, an industrial company, and a more B2B company. We, as I mentioned before, one of the goals we have defined very strongly in the company is to connect the sustainability goals of the customers with our sustainability goals. So be really in one line, and really understand them very well, as I mentioned before.
And the other thing we have done, and this is probably is different when you compare this with other companies, we have been advancing in creating joint ventures with the companies that used to be distributors from CMPC in other continents, now are our partners. And for instance, this year - last year, and we started in January operating this, we created a joint venture between International Forest Products, which is a well-recognized distributor and operator in the paper, pulp and paper industry in the United States. Now they are our partners. And why is this? Because we want to be closer to our customers, to the final customer.
Same thing we created in Europe, based in Hamburg, in the year 2020, where we created a joint venture with the Gruppe Schuerfeld, which used to be an agent for us. So this means that CMPC, day by day, and in different places, is going closer and closer to our customer experiences. And this is not the same way for every this way, not every company operate in this way. The other thing we have been also working with our clients is in developing innovation. I mean, a variety of different kind of pulps, because, you know, in this industry, you want to be, in some way, differentiated.
And so different kind of pulp, in the case of wood or rocks, where, for instance, again, the same thing, different kind of wood, innovations are very important. And speaking about some trends that are happening, for instance, in packaging, there are some macro trends. Most of you know about them, but digital immediacy, sustainability is a critical, you know, a requirement from our customers today. So well-being as a priorities. Adaptable boxes because of the e-commerce, you know, dissolving packaging, among other innovations. So basically, we're every day, day by day, adjusting, you know, our production, our programs for, you know, for our customers.
It means today, for a company like this, a big, heavy industrial company, be able really to adjust the way we operate to the real needs of the world we have today, especially looking to the future. We always say that our company is looking the next hundred years, and also we are. This is the reason why we are, you know, in general, thinking really in the future. In wood products, for instance, it's also a great opportunity for us. We understand that. We understand that we have an important demand for our wood product because of the replacement of the fossil fuels.
So you see what is happening with the construction industry in general, in the world, is very much interested and concentrated in including more, you know, materials based on wood. And we see an opportunity on that. We have plans on that in our strategy. This industry plays a core role. I would say in the case of Chile, for instance, in general, Latin America, no more than 20-25% at the most of the construction is based on wood, compared with the Northern Hemisphere, where you see, you know, the United States, Canada, or Scandinavia, even, I mean, places with really extreme climate situations using wood in a very important, you know, percentage, probably more than 60-70%.
There is a lot of room for that, you know, for responding to this trend, to that trend. As you see the long term in the case of pulp, what we are seeing is that the use of pulp for tissue products in general is increasing importantly. In our case, we estimate that probably 47% of our volume, it means an important percentage of the pulp volume, will go probably, is going to the tissue industry and probably going increasing. This is an important. Again, and also specialty and packaging. Specialty paper that are used basically for construction, I mean, many different uses in car construction and different industries, and also packaging is also increasing.
I mean, those are the three main drivers for pulp producers, today. Printing and writing is also a driver, and some are still a driver, but, declining, you know? So you don't see the future of this industry in printing and writing. When you see, speak about the long term, not really long term, but looking to the year 2028, or three or four more years, probably we're expecting an increasing demand of about five million tons in this period. And the production basically is short fiber. It's around 11% of increase in short fiber.
When you see the market pulp at the year 2028, most of this, about 63%, will be mainly short fiber, not softwood. So we see more, you know, projects, of course, in short fiber, basically in Brazil. So by the year, again, another figure, those are estimates by the year 2028, since the demand will increase in a less proportion compared with the supply of pulp, probably we'll see some extra capacity, you know, in the market by this year. In the short term, what is happening with the prices? Well, you know, during the last second at the end of the first semester, second quarter, prices basically declined importantly, mainly driving by China.
China stopped buying pulp for some months and weeks. Now we see, you know, that probably we don't see further decrease. So considering basically that the cost of pulp, you know, even for China, as more or less in the lower, is not probably possible for reducing prices compared what we have today, because the cost that we have today is a bit high. So we don't see China, you know. This is an expectation, but you never know. But basically price we don't see probably important price increases during this year because basically on influenced by for the demand side, more, I think, because we don't have extra capacity in the near next month.
That we have today, actually, we have. What we have, actually, we have an extra capacity, I say, because we have Suzano, and we have lately Liansheng, two projects, you know, going into the market during the next month that will, it will be affected in some way, prices, for probably for the next month. You see the ratio of production in short fiber by the year 2025, our calculation is probably the. This ratio, the demand, we will have an extra capacity during 2025. Probably the ratio is 88%, where probably the more healthy ratio is about 90 or 91. We have 88% of the total production capacity used, and this is because of the extra capacity that is entering the market, basically because of Suzano and Liansheng in the next year.
We don't see extra capacity for some years. In the case of softwood, what we see there is basically a more balanced demand supply, about 90% or 91%. We don't see important projects for now. The movement of the prices of hardwood would have a lot to do with the probably mill disclosures, mill closures or disruptions in general. This is what I have today in terms of customer. Now, let's speak a little bit about the competitive pillar. It has a lot to do with cost. This is cost.
We have been working. Our definition here, because we understand this future with an important competition, we understand that we have to be, you know, state-of-the-art in terms of cost. We have been working very close, focused on that. We define to be in the range of, on, in the first 10% of better cost in the industry globally. It means important flow, important efforts. It means alignment, and we have defined 10 different goals in terms of cost, of course, for getting these goals. We are working in three verticals. One is operational excellence, of course, leveraged by technology and innovation.
Optimization, our procurement processes, purchases, contracts, working, again, you know, with a, I would say, a lot of definition on this. And agility in all of our, administrative processes, throughout the value chain. So I would say those are the main definitions we have. What does to be, you know, truly mean? What does that mean? So as I said, we define concrete targets, 10 different challenges that we have to unlock in different areas that we have to unlock in the company. And we created a system that we call competitiveness contracts, and we have specific contracts for every goal, specific contracts.
The contract is between the competitive division we have and in a specific area, that could be in operation, in the commercial side, but basically looking for being better in cost. And we are, you know, in working on pulp, in production, energy, chemicals, maintenance, basically very concrete, different cost dimensions. Raw materials, for instance, the wood we use in the processes. So in every of these dimensions, we have very concrete goals, and this, a kind of a competitive contracts formally signed, you know, in different areas of the company. And at this moment, as of today, I wanted to transmit you what is happening with this, with this initiative, but this is very important, you know, for our company.
In the case of the pulp production cost, with all these contracts I mentioned, we have been, as you see the chart on my left at the end, we take as a year base, 2023 for this. What is happening this year, we are 93% of what we were in 2023. We understand, in accordance with our research, that we have to reach to 82%. That means taking the figures of 2023, we should reduce our cost in an 18%. What is happening today? We have reduced $87 million. When you see all our reduction in cost, but it's still 7% down, and we are looking for more.
What is happening with boxboard, for instance, which is another very important business for us? We started in 2023 at 100%, we are now in 95%. Still room for improving. $7 million in savings when you see the last year. But this is just an example, some example for you that we are measuring this with a lot of details. What is happening in, for instance, in forestry? You see the cost of forestry, which is our base, it's crucial for our operation. We are 12% down compared with the year 2023. It means $38 million. Still room for improving. We understand that this it was an important correction, but we see still, you know, spaces for improving in different areas, silviculture or operations or transport.
When you analyze all these aspects in detail, you find, you know, important spaces for improving. And now we're going, what we're doing today, we are... We have to close our gaps, as I mentioned before. And what is the way we close our gaps? Is with flawless operation. It means we created a Center of Organization Excellence, COE, and we have a management system called BEST, that are, you know, a working spaces for working on improving. And what we are doing there, you know, achieving, you know, I mean, efficiency, innovation, that's an important vertical. All of them align with our strategy, driving organizational performance, foster a culture for continuous improvements, achieve sustainable success. I mean, different, you know, initiatives that we are working on today.
On the production front, I would say that we have gotten very good results in our Guaíba facility, for instance. It was an important place where we have been advancing with all these initiatives. It's still place to improve in our Santa Fe mill. Santa Fe, we are putting a lot of attention, and we are, you know, working, for instance, for you to understand our business, working on a better connection between the forest and the mill. This is not obvious at all. We need to supply the right wood and at the right moment, without creating extra inventories. So the forest mill integration is fundamental here.
Again, forestry operation and the fixed cost, as I mentioned before, is crucial on this, and working with initiatives in all of this. Maintenance, working here in the Mill of the Future, we have a very concrete, you know, objectives here. Basically, including artificial intelligence, digital tools in general, and our, I would say, dream, you know, is to separate more the big maintenance period, one from the other, you know? You know, the especially the pulp mill stop for a long maintenance period once a year. And of course, if you are able to including these this kind of tools, you're able to extend this period between one maintenance and the other one, is good.
We are putting a lot of, you know, effort in and analyzing this with technical people, you know, and doing this in a very professional way. Well, finally, I really want to mention that, of course, we are also working on reducing the SG&A. And we'll, you know, very much concentrated in improving processes and continue doing that. I mean, making a company more agile and hopefully, you know, a company more efficient, especially in this kind of processes. This is what I had to. I prepared for you today. Now I will just pass the word to Viviana Rubini, Bernardita Araya, for the chapter of growth and innovation.
And after they, we'll have here a special presentation for the Natureza project. And finally, a special space, as I mentioned at the beginning, for Softys. Thank you very much.
Okay. Francisco made our job very easy, so because we've been hearing about innovation all along his presentation. That's why we wanted to start our innovation talk going back to the strategy, because we heard about innovation in sustainability goals, water, residues, emissions reductions. We heard about innovation, decarbonization, new products. What else? Customer centricity. In competitive, as we heard, innovation in the Mill of the Future, integrated operation center, online forest operations, right? Innovation is a pillar itself, but is one that integrates all of our goals, all of our operations, all of our strategy pillars. Innovation, inside this pillar, there are the initiatives that will help us grow closer to our customers, and find innovative new business opportunities, and most of all, help us grow beyond Latin America.
Innovation, for us, is to maintain and improve what we already do best, our business as usual, but it will also generate optionalities for the future, because it's very responsible not to do so. Right?
Absolutely. And the thing is, innovation can take many faces. Here, on one hand, we have General Electric with its iconic CEO, Jack Welch, that has been the driving force behind Six Sigma and is focused on process improvements. On the other side, we have Microsoft that is being focused on product functionality, innovate every single day and bringing new products out in the market every single year. How have their products evolved? There we have General Electric, where the products have evolved. They're probably more efficient, they do better what they do best, but they look and feel roughly the same and solve the same problems. On the other side, with Microsoft and in general, the technology companies, they have changed the world and the way we live. New processing capabilities, new storage solutions, connectivity, immediateness. So what has this to do with CMPC?
How do these companies buy what we do? These two companies were driven by innovation, one on the incremental approach and one on the disruptive innovation. The thing is, what's important CMPC, we need successful companies today need to find this balance between disruptive and incremental innovation. It's imperative to do so, and in our industry, that's been mostly focused on process improvements. Well, as Bibi said, we have to do better what we already do best, but we have this opportunity here. The thing is, it's not only about innovation. Our industry faces so many challenges that require this multisystemic approach. It's energy transition, it's communities, it's the forest, it's we're taking better care of the forest, it's the supply chains, it's talent. The thing is, when you work with the forest, you are part of the forest.
We are part of these challenges as well. It's land use, water consumption, energy transition, and new bio-based materials. Francisco mentioned something a little while ago. What is the world demanding? New solutions, new products that can help reduce the use of fossil-based materials for transport, construction, materials, packaging, and many uses. What does our industry produce? What does CMPC produce? Sustainable, certified biomass, sustainable fiber that already travels all over the world. This is not just only an opportunity for new products and new markets, it's just a responsibility because we are part of this forest, and we can bring more value out of this forest. There are tricky issues here. Can we wait while a tree grows? Certainly not. The trees we need, the fiber we need for these future applications are being planted today.
So we need to find this balance between incremental innovation and this disruptive approach.
This is called the ambidextrous innovation approach, exploration and exploitation. This is not new. With exploitation, we will focus on incremental improvements that will lead to efficiency and profitability. But on the other hand, with exploration, we will be venturing in uncovered territories, new business, experimenting ideas, experimenting technology, business models, new products. By embracing both exploration and exploitation, we actually have improvements on the offerings we have today, we maximize the value of our portfolio, and we plant the seeds to potential new business. Understanding the complexity of ambidextrous innovation actually lead us to improve our innovation program. We are now four groups, innovation at the core, R&D, digital, and ventures, working aligned in the same direction, delivering a lot, as you can see by these numbers.
First, and most impressive to me, we have more than 250 people dedicated to innovation at CMPC. We have launched our venture client program this year, already with 11 challenges and one adoption, moving this year. We have restructured our R&D, transversal, working the same group all the way from the forest to new products, new businesses. We have collected more than 2000 insights in this company with our beyond project programming here. And the most impressive number probably is our innovation fund of $100 million, out of which $20 million already invested in six startups. Tell us about that.
So here's our company's portfolio. We have Nordic Bioproducts Group in Finland, that has developed a new technology to produce microcrystalline cellulose. We have Pulpex in the U.K. They produce water bottles based on pulp, that can be used for several applications, and they develop this alongside leading brands from Europe. Woamy, from Finland, a very young, talented company that has developed a substitute for polystyrene that can be used for packaging applications. This is edible, this is recyclable, this is repulpable. Boxia is actually a company building initiative that is operating in Mexico as a marketplace. Strong by Form, a Chilean company that has developed this additive manufacturing approach for wood, that can produce lightweight solutions for construction. And Modvion, which is in Sweden, that produces wind towers, for... Sorry, towers for wind turbines made out of wood. So are we stopping here?
Absolutely not. We have a clear and very structured view of where we wanna go. This is our innovation roadmap. In this innovation roadmap, you can see that we continue investing in our Horizon One, which is business as usual, and even going a little bit further in Horizon Two, in adjacent territories. This guarantees that we increase, improve, and make always better our current business. That's not all.
Of course, and we are gonna keep exploring these new markets, new solutions for smart forestry, packaging, construction, and working together with R&D, with digital, with innovation, driving and pushing CMPC to go even further. Thank you.
Thank you.
It's our pleasure to introduce José Antonio.
Good morning to everyone, and thank you to be here. I'm gonna talk a little bit about our Natureza project. In Natureza, as it says here, we are seeking to have an integral approach that combines industrial productivity, sustainable and associative forestry, conservation, and cultural promotion. So for us, Natureza, it is not only a new palm mill, it is a more comprehensive project. So looking at some numbers, the gross investment of this project is around $4.5 billion. We will talk a little bit more about what includes. We are thinking to produce up to top 2.5 million tons of BHKP, or short fiber cellulose. We are looking for, present this project to the board of directors by mid-2026.
CMPC has a very strict process in order to approve a project, so we have to have all the engineering done at a class ten. So a lot of engineering, a lot of work to be done before presenting this type of project to the board. And hopefully, to have the startup of the project by 2029. So what are we looking for this investment of $4.5 billion? When we talk about the Natureza project, we not only talk about the industrial investment inside and outside the fence, but we are also talking about land and port infrastructure, forestry development, value in terms of consider gross taxes, electric lines, roads, access. So we are talking about all the infrastructure that you need to produce these 2.5 million tons.
Sometimes you see different numbers at different projects, and at the end of the day, the difference is what you consider in order to not only have the industrial investment, but also all the other investment necessary to produce this amount of pulp. So what are we looking for, this project? We are looking to be a benchmark in cost and sustainability. In order to do that, in terms of cost, we want to have a state-of-the-art mill at a very efficient scale, located at the best location. We are going to talk a little bit about the location. We will have, or we have high forest productivity and very, very efficient logistics, synergies with our Guaíba mill.
We are gonna be located around 25 minutes from Guaíba mill, so you can combine and you can have synergies in terms of chemical production, maintenance, spare parts, and so on. Process automation, integrated operations. We are thinking about having a central operation center to operate both Guaíba and Natureza mills at the same location. But as I mentioned, we are not only thinking about producing pulp. We want to be a global benchmark in terms of water use. We are thinking that this project will use less than 20 cubic meters of water per ton. That is gonna be a world benchmark. We also want to decoupling our production with fossil fuels. So we are thinking, for example, in having a biomass gasifier in order to avoid burning fossil fuels for our operation.
But we also want to support local communities. We have a special interest in working closely with communities such as Barra do Ribeiro, which is where our mill will be located, Guaíba, the Rio Grande do Sul community, Rio Grande port, Pelotas, and so on. In terms of jobs creation, this project should employ around 12,000 people during the construction phase, and around 1,500 people direct jobs during the operation phase. So in terms of location, we choose a place that is called Barba Negra. Barba Negra is a farm owned by CMPC. It's a big farm. It's a 10,000 hectares farm that is called 25 minutes south of Guaíba. And why we decide to locate the mill in this site?
For many reasons, but I will try to explain a little bit more the main reasons. First of all, low uncertainty in construction. The quality of the soil is very good, which allow you to invest less amount, of money during the construction phase, but also have more certainty during, also the construction. The mill will also be located in a kind of a hill, a small hill, which allow you to, avoid any type of risk of floods. As you may know, during May, we had a very complicated situation in Rio Grande do Sul, that affected many communities, so we took a deep look about how possible floods could affect the project in the future, and we locate the mill in area where will not be affected. We also looked at environmental permit possibility, feasibility.
We are working on that, and we think that we will obtain all the permits without major problems. Low impact in neighbor communities. The mill is gonna be located in the middle of a big farm of CMPC. It is gonna be surrounded by forest of CMPC, which are a kind of green wall to avoid any type of problems with local communities, like odor, noise, typical problems that you can face during not only during the construction, but also during the operation phase. Water availability. We are near the Laguna dos Patos with a big amount of water, so that problem is solved. Favorable CapEx and OpEx. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that. Talent accessibility. We are very near Guaíba.
Guaíba is a mid-sized city with over 100,000 people, and we are also in front of Porto Alegre, which is one of the largest cities in Brazil. And we will have water transportation from Porto Alegre to Barra do Ribeiro in order to be very near our possible employees. And also, as I mentioned, opportunities with synergy with Guaíba Mill. Again, maintenance, spare parts, chemical production, headcount, which allows you to have a very efficient operation. So this project is based in four pillars: sustainability silviculture at competitive cost, logistic infrastructure to be very competitive, environmental and cultural conservation, and also advanced industrial operation. So in terms of silvicultural operation at competitive cost, as you may know, Rio Grande do Sul is an agricultural state, and we want to work together in partnership with local farmers.
CMPC already have a forestry base there. We have been increasing our forestry base during the last four or five years, but we want to work very close, so we developed a program around two years ago to work very close with local farmers. We want to be an alternative for them, to diversify their incomes, you know, so they can continue raising cattle or planting soy, but also having the opportunity to have eucalyptus plantations. This not only wants to strengthen the local gaucho culture, but also in terms of a return on investment, assets, makes sense because you have to invest less amount of money in lands. So I think it's a win-win for CMPC, but also for local communities. But one advantage that also have Rio Grande do Sul state is its forest productivity.
Rio Grande do Sul is one of the most productive states in terms of forest. We have a MAI of around 42 cubic meters per hectare per year, which is very productive when you compare with other states, for example, Mato Grosso do Sul, that has, like, 32. So that allows you to produce wood at very competitive cost compared with other states. In terms of logistics infrastructure, we want to take advantage of all the infrastructure that we already developed for Guaíba. As you may know, we move all the pulp from Guaíba mill to Rio Grande port in barge, which is very efficient. So even though you are around 300 kilometers from the port, transportation cost is very low.
And this also gives us a competitive advantage when you compare with other sites or other projects that they have to move their pulp around a hundred or around a thousand kilometers by truck or by train. We use the barge, which is very cost efficient, and after the barge leaves the pulp at the port, the same barge moves to Pelotas, which is a port very near, and we load that same barge with wood, and we transport all the wood from the south to the mill at very competitive cost. This is not only competitive in terms of cost, but it's also very friendly with the environment, because one barge replaces over a hundred trucks. So this is not only efficient, but also reduces the amount of CO2 that you produce during the whole process.
But as I mentioned, we want also to contribute to our local communities. The idea is to create a, in Barba Negra, an ecological park. We already have over 3,000 hectares of native forest, so we want to give access to the local communities to the whole site. We have a, an historic house that is historic heritage of the region, so we will open this house to the local community. We will open our nursery. We will also have an eco-trail in order the people to know better the native forest.
So at the end of the day, we want to be very open to the local communities, so they can visit our operations, look at what we do there, and not only visit the industrial production, but also visit the native forest, this historic house, and so on. And in terms of industrial production, we want to be, as I mentioned, a state-of-the-art mill with the most advanced technology. We want to be a benchmark in terms of use of water and decoupling our production from fossil fuels. So at the end of the day, we want to be one of the most modern and best mills in terms of technology.
I'm gonna show you a small video right now in order to have a better idea of what this project is gonna be. So this is the map of Brazil. We are located in the south, in Rio Grande do Sul. As I told you, this is gonna be located in Barba Negra, which is 25 minutes south of Guaíba. This is gonna be located in the middle of the forest of CMPC, so we will have a kind of a green wall, you know, to isolate a little bit the mill and avoid any possible problem with local communities. Here you can see a render of the mill, with its fiber line, the cooking, and all the different areas of the mill... There we have the wood yards.
All of this design has been thinking to be very productive, but also, as I was telling you, to be very friendly with the environment. We will have inbound wood inbound by trucks, all where we have in the northern part of the state. We will have to invest in improving a little bit the roads and the access to this specific site. We are working together with the state in order to improve the Port of Pelotas. Around 25% of our wood will be coming from Pelotas in barge, which allow us to be very efficient, as I mentioned, because one barge replaces over 100 trucks.
The idea is to use the same trucks, the same barge that comes with wood from the south to load the pulp and move the pulp back to Rio Grande port. Moving all the pulp at very competitive cost to the port of Rio Grande. We are working in a new port there, an area that is now without any use. Our idea is to have our own private port that will not only use to move the pulp of Natureza, but also Guaíba. It's gonna be a huge port to move around 4.5 million tons and cover all of our operations. What is the status of the project right now? We already finished all conceptual engineering or front-end loading FEL 2 phase.
We are moving into, right now, the front-end loading phase three or, detail engineering. Then we are also working with the local government in order to obtain the license to operate and build this new port in Rio Grande. We already obtained the terms of reference from the FEPAM, which is the local authority, environmental authority, to start working in the EIA or the, environmental permits. So that is a little bit the status of the process right now, but we are also working, as a whole company in terms of having a very robust financing plan. We are already preparing our balance sheet in order to be able to do this investment without affecting the credit ratings of the company. Yeah. Fernando can talk a little bit more about that, during the Q&A.
That was. I was gonna present about Natureza, and now Gonzalo Darraidou is gonna talk a little bit about our Softys business.
Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you today, and what we want to share with you is our Softys project. It is our Softys dreams. It is our Softys company. Our agenda for today, it's the first part is about the dream, what we think, what we believe, or what we want to do. December, around December, November twenty seventeen, our board said to us, "Gonzalo, Gonzalo, Gonzalo and all our team, what we want to do is to create a real consumer good company. What we want to create is a company that must lead in in Latin America.
We want to take the opportunities that we can see in Brazil and in Mexico, for example. And for that, at that moment, what we decided is we need to build our plan for the next year, our strategy for the five years, and that is what we are going to share today. Softys today, after all of that, we can say that we are a leading consumer goods company in Latin America. We hold the number one position in consumer tissue, at professional hygiene, as well as consumer tissue. But most important than that, that today we can say that we have a solid second position in the personal care across our markets. And this market leadership, combined with a discipline to develop our strategy, allow us to achieve a $500 million platform in terms of EBITDA. Our power is driven by some key pillars for us.
The first one, it's about we need to develop high preference brand. Second, a culture of excellence in a superior execution point of sale. In a consumer goods company, that is totally key when you want to be the number one. The battle is in the supermarket. The battle is in the little store close to your house. That is where we have to be the best in class in our, in our categories. A unique regional footprint, and I will share with you in some slide, how we have been building this regional footprint with our last five acquisitions in the different countries. A deep commitment to care all of our stakeholders, and we say all of our stakeholders, and we are going to share with you our projects like that we call Softys Contigo.
Finally, a deep commitment to understand every day our consumer needs, what our consumer are demanding to us every day. It's not working? To do that, we create and we define a clear purpose, and that's it, develop brands to deliver the best care that people need in their day-to-day life and each stage of their lives. That is because the type of product that we produce, we move from baby care to adult care. We serve our consumer in their whole life. Second, this commitment is reflected our diverse portfolio, like I said. Essential care, hygiene brands, which are present in everyday lives of consumer. We're a trusted partner from the earliest stage of life, offering comfort and confidence every step of the way.
This purpose must have a vision or support a vision to develop our project, and that is to be the best in delivering care and hygiene care and hygiene to people in Latin America. When we're talking about Latin America, we're talking about from Mexico to Chile. Winning daily preference for our brands. The key words is daily preference. Every day, we want to be present and have some relation with our consumer. Growing with superior profitability by taking care of the future today. To develop this business plan, to develop this strategy, to develop this purpose, at that moment, we decided that we need to build a very strong people. We need a lot of knowledge from the top and the top companies, consumer goods company.
At that moment, we were more, I would say, a manufacturing company, and we need to, we need to move from there to be a consumer goods company. For that, we invite people from the best companies in consumer goods category. I'm talking about from Unilever, I'm talking about Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola Company, Heineken, and we invite a lot of people from there, from those company, to come and develop the Softys dreams. More than that, we decided that we need people with talent from different countries. We want to take out that Chile-centric that we had at the moment. Today, we can say that at the top level, we have people from Mexico, from Brazil, from Argentina, from Colombia, and obviously, from Chile. So we create a very, very strong people to develop our strategy.
We have three categories. The first one is consumer tissue. What we're talking? We're talking about tissue, napkins, paper towels. Second is Softys Professional. This is our B2B segment, and it is about how we can serve hotels, how we can serve restaurants, airports, et cetera. And third, personal care. And today, we can say that in personal care, we hold the second position in this growing segment, in which Softys accounts for more than 38% of its sale. And I want to be focused on that because this is one of the most important changes that we have been developing in the last five years. We have been developing a proven track record on delivering sustainable growth and financial performance, and here we can see some numbers. Today, we move from the second position of consumer tissue to the number one.
We can say that we are the leader in Latin America. Softys Professional, we did exactly the same. We moved from the second position to the number one in Latin America. In personal care, we moved from the fifth position to the number two position today. In terms of sales, we are reaching around $3.7 million in the last twelve months. In terms of EBITDA, you can see that in the last twelve months, we achieved a platform of $600 million of EBITDA. How have we done all of this? We defined our business plan for the next five years, and at that moment, we define our five pillar strategies. The first one, strong brands. Every day, we wake up early morning to develop the strongest brand preference in our consumer. Second, go-to-market excellence.
Like I already said, the battle is in the point of sale, and we must be the best one in terms of executed our brand presence in our channels. The third one, operational transformation. We are building a profitable, simple, and efficient operating model to drive productivity and agility in our processes. Four, sustainability. We are committed with our environment and our social responsibility, and I want to show you some projects like Softys Contigo. Finally, like we always know, it's all about to have the right people at the right place, and that is why we say that in Softys, we have a people-centric culture. We believe in empower our employees. We believe to develop their leadership to take the right decision. In order to connect in a better way to our consumer, we have different type of brand.
We have some regional brands, like Elite, Elite Professional, Confort, and Nova, but also we have some local brands that are the leading in some markets. For example, we can say Higienol in Argentina, Sublime in Brazil, or Premier in Mexico. The mix of those regional brands and local brands reinforce our leadership in each country. The regional and local brands mix support us to take some strategic advantage in each country, in each channel, and in the relation with our big customers. Now, I want to invite you to see some video of our Elite brand commercial.
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In terms of personal care, as already said, Softys has achieved a strong number two position in Latin America. Again, we have very well-known brands. In this case, Babysec, Ladysoft, Cotidian, Biobaby, and Affective, among others. Here, our brand equity is driven by creating strong, recognizable proposition driven by brands. Second, continuous innovation. In this type of category, feminine care, for example, innovation is the key element. Third, ensuring go-to-market excellence, to try to be the best one in every supermarket, in every traditional store. I want to watch... and to invite you to watch a TV commercial for our Babysec brand.
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When you talk about go-to-market strategy, focuses on winning at the point of sale, you have to define three initiatives. The first one is trade in. What means? That you need to develop tailored solutions for each customer. The second one, initiative, is trade more and across. That is, how you increase your consumer base in a daily way, how you invite new consumer to your brand, to your new portfolio. And the third one is about trade up, how every time you try to increase the type of product so you achieve a better price average. Those strategy is what we have been developing to try to be the best one in execution. We have a unique footprint in Latin America in comparison to all of our competitors.
We are running business today in eight countries with more than 24 productivity sites, and we are serving more than 17 countries in the region. For example, in some countries, we don't have any paper mill production site, but we're serving. I'm talking about Paraguay, I'm talking about Bolivia, I'm talking about Central America, and if we go in terms of paper mills, today we have 177 tissue conversion line, and we have 66 diaper machines, and that allows us to optimize all our logistic across all those countries. In terms of transformation, what we have been doing in the last six, eight years? First, transforming our end-to-end value chain, what means channeling synergy across our supply chain, operation, logistic, and sales functions. Looking, what we're looking? Reducing our cost. Second, reducing our complexity.
We have been simplifying our SKU portfolio in terms of products, how we can reduce the number of SKUs that we can offer to our consumer, and we can optimize our revenues on that, on that process. And finally, designing to value, maximizing our design-to-value process, how we can produce the best product with the lowest cost that we can need. Sustainability. This is one of our main projects, and that's Francisco already mentioned, which we take exactly the same goals, and we're working for the CMPC goals. The first one is our 40% reduction in industrial water usage. We already achieved in May 2023, and because of that, we have now a new goal that is 50%. Second one, we are also on track to reach zero waste to landfill next year, ahead of our 2025 goal.
Today, we are 72% of the target already met. Additionally, we aim to reduce the Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emission by 50% by 2030, and we have already achieved a 38% of reduction. At the same time, we're working our sustainability strategy for 2024-2028, which includes a goal to cut virgin fossil-based plastic use by 50% by 2030. Probably this is one of our very favorite slide. This talk about Softys Contigo. Our commitment to care extend beyond our products and to the communities where we operate. Softys Contigo is our flagship social investment initiative, and we have three key pillars. The first one, water and sanitation, where, with a partnership with Techo, we are leading. That is a leading nonprofit organization.
We're investing more than $6 million over five years to provide water and sanitation solutions. Today, we can say that we all have already built more than 750 solutions, impacting close to 20,000 people, which are... On all of this project, we have been working with our partners with our collaborators, and that is more than 2,600 Softys volunteers. The second pillar is hygiene education, and today, we have reached more than 1,800 people through 31 workshops across eight countries. Finally, always we're we receive some phone calls for timely assistance, and we have been funding more than $1.5 million to help people on those issues. Let me show you a video that, for us, reflect our Softys culture.
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Sí, bueno, vivir en un campamento es complicado. Ahorita tenemos luz, pero todavía no hay nada de agua, nada de esas cosas. Entonces, al menos que la persona que alguien se pueda hacer un pozo. No empieza sin nadie más viviendo acá en el campamento, porque uno quiere una mejor calidad de vida cada día, no lujos, pero sí calidad de vida. Conocí en ese momento a los de Softys, junto con los de Techo, para el proyecto. Estaba embarazada, me faltaba un mes para dar a luz a Samanti, y no tenía todavía baño, y nos llegó el baño, gracias a Dios. Bueno, obviamente nos mejoró a 1000%, todo. Más privacidad, más higiene, más comodidad.
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How fantastic it is to help people to have a better life! That is part of our Softys dream. In terms of employees, today we're more than 14,000 employees, and we have been working to increase female representation from 18% to 25% leadership roles. Women have rising from 27 to 33. Employees with disability has grown from 0.8% to 2.1%. Our team also reflects Latin America diversity. Today, we have more than 16 nationalities collaborating with us, and that gives us a multicultural environment and help to understand countries like Mexico, like Colombia, like Ecuador. Softys culture drives our success, and we strongly believe in that. Our shared values guide our actions in order to build pride in our company. The Softys program promotes belonging through three focus areas.
The first one, more human, which means to emphasize a supported work environment. The second one is more agile, that encourage flexibility and innovation. And the third one, and more impact, which aims for extraordinary results that positively affect the world. This is our cup. You're saying: "What you're talking about?" Yes, this is our cup. In Softys, we believe that our people make the difference, and in order to retribute that, we established Softys Cup in 2018, looking to reward the country that most inspire a culture of excellence. In highlights, a country that, through innovation, creative solution, take cares of its consumers, customers, employees, and environment, generate a really positive impact. It is awarded to a country that demonstrate outstanding results, improvements in productivity, profitability, and sales growth, becoming a reference for other Softys market. I want to invite you a video about the Softys Cup.
Now that you understand a little bit about our culture, our project, our dream, I want to share it to you the opportunities that we have and we see in the market. But finally, in terms of culture or dream, if you want to maintain one word, we want to be the best one in everything that we do. Let's go and talk about our opportunities. Softys operate in a very dynamic market, and we're talking about $18 billion market, if you add the three categories. And over the past five years, this market experienced a compound annual growth rate around 2.2% in consumer tissue, 4.2% in professional hygiene, and 5.1% in personal care. Rates, that this is the key, that are higher than the region overall GDP growth.
If you want to understand our countries, we always say that we have three thirds. That is Mexico, one third, Brazil, one third, and all the other countries together, another third. In terms of category, tissue accounts for 67%. I'm talking about tissue and professional, and personal care represent 43%. Why we strongly believe that we have a huge opportunity in this business in Latin America? And that is because if you analyze the tissue consumption, if you analyze per capita, for example, in Latin America, the average is 5.5 kilos per capita per year. And if you compare those 5.5 to Spain or to the States, you're talking about 5.5 in comparison with 11 or in comparison of 16. So a huge opportunity in terms of per capita.
In terms of personal care, that is about baby care penetration, is only 70% in Latin America, in comparison to 92% with all the other countries. If we go deeply in the case of Mexico and Brazil, those numbers are more, give more opportunity to us. In terms of penetration and in consumer per capita, tremendous opportunity that we can capture. But in this type of business, the key element is to understand consumer needs, what the consumer are requiring, what consumer are looking for, and that is what we call in Softys consumer-centric company. For that, we make a lot of research, and here we can, I can share you some of the results of those. What are the trends that the consumer are telling to us that it will come in the next five years?
The first one, the pragmatist of results. The second, value opening. The third, searching for better well-being. Fourth, digital transformation, and finally, active sustainability. And this element we every day considering when we're developing our strategy. Here we have our strategy, and we define like a pyramid, and in the base, you can see consumer tissue, where you can see that the big opportunity is per capita consumption growth. Second is Softys Professional. That is a very profitable growth in tissue. And these first two part of the pyramid give the scale of the business, because a huge volume. Then you go to baby and child care, and that is the margin expansion, and that's what have been focused in the last five years.
Then you have two very profitable business, adult care, that is right beginning to growth, and we believe that it will be the huge business in the next five, ten, fifteen years. And the last one, but not least, feminine care. These are very high profitable categories. These are our strategy. These are our five categories with more details, so you can understand better our strategy. Now, if you go and we open our market share per countries and per categories, you can see that in almost all of the countries, we are the number one in the tissue business. Like I said, with regional brands or local brands that we have been buying in the last five years. Then, in personal care, we achieve the second position in Latin America. Why we always talk about to be the first one and the second one?
Because that reinforces the one-stop shopping when you have a relation with your customer. It's totally different if you arrive at a supermarket chain like Cencosud or Supermercados Peruanos or Atacadão in Brazil. When you have a relation with those customers, they want to run business with the leader, with the, the, the company who knows and who innovate every time. That is what we're. Every time we're talking about to be the number first and the number second, and our dream is to achieve the number one in the baby- in the personal care, too. That is to reinforce our one-stop shopping relation with our customers. Let's go with more detail in the first category, consumer tissue. Our proposal, we call it, we, we name it from clear to care, and we have four concepts to develop that.
First, we have leading brands, like we said, Elite, the number one brand in Latin America. Second, it's about superior brands. That means that you have to develop brands for different segment according to consumer needs, such as softness. Some consumers are looking for softness, like the first priority. Other one are looking absorption or obviously convenience. It's about price. The third one is superior value proposition, and what it means that we measure and we compare our product with our competitor products to try to understand if our products, in real terms, give a superior value proposition to our consumer. Today, we can say to you that 70% of our product or our SKU, they're giving superior value proposition in comparison to our competitors. And finally, innovate, innovation, agility.
We need to present new products every year and with more frequency to our consumer. Today, 30% of our consumer tissue sales are coming from products that we already launched and developed in the last 12 months. Softys professional. Remember, that is, this is our B2B business. And again, our purpose is to make away from home care an engine of success and well-being for companies and society. Fourth, come back to our four concepts. Leading solutions that every day, over 100 million moments of care across Latin America. That is what we are serving daily. We have superior brands, and our brands here are Elite Professional, Maxw ipe, and Rendipel. Rendipel is a brand, a more affordable brand. Thanks to our superior value proposition, we are the preferred partner over 154,000 businesses in Latin America.
Finally, in terms of agility and innovation, represent 50% of our sale, new products developing in the last 12 months. Personal care, and here the number are totally relevant for us. We see a business growing up to 5% in the next 5 years. Feminine and adult care, care still have a room for penetration increase. Obviously, in baby care, you can think, you must be thinking that has been decreasing in birth rates. But penetration and premiumization is the key element to add value in this category. Our market share in Latam reached 24%. Like I said, being the number two, and we're dreaming to be the number one. Our brands, here we have brands like Babysec, Ladysoft, leading in countries like Chile, Uruguay, Peru.
We have another brands that we have been adding with our last transaction, and we are going to begin to develop those type of brands. For example, brands like Biobaby from Mexico, Affective from Mexico, and among others, that we are going to develop in the next years. Digital transformation is key in this type of business, and we're investing more than $20 million to migrate all of our system to SAP S/4HANA in the next three-four years. In terms of our digital sales, we're achieving more than 20% of the total sales of the company, and that is a benchmark in terms if you compare in the consumer goods businesses. We are also investing heavily in automation, improving efficiency, and optimizing asset utilization by three percentage points.
Last, but not least, we have been investing more than $12 million in automation, in processes in our facilities. Let's talk about our journey that have been supporting us to say we have established as a $500 million EBITDA platform. Our journey start with ambition, and like I said, to be the number one. First, we build a multinational platform by consolidating individual tissue company in a fully integrated multinational organization. And when we combine and we create only one company, we take a lot of advantage in different processes, like procurement, like to pass experience between different operations, like how we can decide which product we have produced, we need to produce in different facility. So all of those elements support us to improve our EBITDA.
Another aspect in this, it is that with including more market, like Brazil, Mexico, Central America, and Caribbean, we have increased our volume so much that we are now taking advantage in all the procurement process. In light of that, we're excited to announce that we have reached an agreement to acquire Ontex Brazil for about $123 million. And again, this is a company that give and reinforce our position in the personal care. You can see at the right that we are adding today 21 market share points in baby care with Cremer, Turma da Mônica, Sapeca, and Pom Pom, Brazilian brands, very strong local brands. And the most important is Bigfral. That is the number one brand in the Brazilian market in adult category. This transaction includes a robo...
like I said, a very robust portfolio brands, but again, reinforce our position with our customers. This company is about 1,400 employees. This company has site located in Senador Canedo, Goiás, with 16 conversion lines, the personal care lines to produce. We believe that we are going to take control in the first half of the next year, according all the authorization the local government have to give to us. In summary, our investment thesis has prioritized Brazil, Mexico, and personal care business to capture the high profitability of this segment and accelerate our leadership in the region. Our growth plan was complemented by the integration of Sepac and Softys Rio to strengthen our first position in the Brazilian tissue market.
In personal care, our mission is clear: we acquire, we acquire Ontex Mexico to increase our presence, provide a very strong one-stop shop for our clients, while expanding the synergy through the region that helped us to improve our marketing position in the second place. And with the recent acquisition of Ontex Brazil, we continue with our goal to become the number one player in Latin America in this category. Now, let me give you a quick summary on how we are in our integration plan of a company that we have been buying in the last years. In terms of Mexico, in Mexico, we are strongly benefit from the procurement and logistics synergy, enable us to secure better prices for the key supplier and lower shipping cost.
We're improving our personal care operation with innovation strategy to optimize our footprint and establish a strong presence in the high growth Central America market and Caribbean market. On the other hand, in the case of Brazil, we are ahead in the Carta Fabril integration. The Carta Fabril acquisition is a dominant player in Rio de Janeiro, the number one, and has allowed us to increase our capacity in the country with very low per capita consumption. Now, we're beginning to work with Ontex Brazil, and we expect that we are going to take a huge opportunity in terms of the relation with our customers. As I said before, Brazil and Mexico are our two priority markets growth and value creation. If we take all our numbers and we make...
We add all our sales; these countries will represent more than 50% of our results. So that is the key element. And now you can understand better, I believe, why when we invite people to work with us, we look for people from Mexico, we look for people from Brazil, we look for people from those countries, and people who have worked in consumer goods of those countries, to bring more local knowledge that can help us to capture all the advantages and the opportunities that we have in those countries. Our top priorities, key priorities, is a balanced growth implementing in the coming years, and the first one is implementing revenue growth management to capture prices selectively. Key element in the consumer business, executing cost-saving programs across our operations and taking advantage of integrating all the companies that we have been acquiring.
Transformation of our business by leveraging digital capabilities and rethink processes to reduce costs, logistics, for example. Four, strengthening our portfolio of brands. Every day, we have to work to develop very strong preference of our brands in our consumer minds. Capturing synergies to maximize value from M&A, and finally, rebalance our portfolio towards higher margins personal care products. With all of that, we strongly believe that we can be over our $500 million EBITDA platform. How we can create value? Here is our framework. Organic growth, in terms of how we can capture our consumer preference through our brands. Margin expansion, and here we have all the how we can integrate quickly all the new companies to take advantage of more volume, procurement, logistics.
And finally, capital efficiency, so how we can work with less debt and how we can take opportunity in terms of financial point of view. Now, let's see how this, all this strategy has gone so far across our business units. Here, you can see how much we have been increased our sales, more than 50% in the last 12 months, if you compare it to 2024. In terms of volume, 33%, that is in consumer tissue. If you go to Softys Professional, look the numbers, 26, and we reduce volume because we reduce the type of the fiber and the type we design to value, in terms to reduce our cost. And in terms of personal care, because the acquisition of-...
And we have been adding more production capacity, you can see the number, that we can say that in terms of sales, we multiply by two times. So very strong numbers in the last five years in terms of growth in sales and in volume. In terms of our numbers, you can see consolidated that we are achieving around $3.7 billion. And in the last twelve months, our compound aggregate growth around 11%. In EBITDA, a platform of $600 million coming from $153 million, is a dramatic change in the terms of the size of the business. And EBITDA margin, we were close around 8%, and today, 16%. And the recent performance, you can see all the numbers, that we maintain our performance, and we believe that we will continue on that track.
In summary, what we want is to be the number one in Latin America. We want to develop every day stronger brands in consumer preference. Our focus is sales growth with profitable and very high segment, sustainability at the core, and Softys Contigo is our main project, a strong financial position, and finally, probably the most important, to have the right people at the right place and giving huge opportunities so they can develop their career in Softys for many, many, many years. Before finish this presentation, I would like to highlight that Softys has a unique purpose that drive us to continually, continually innovate for your care, ensuring that we meet your needs at every stage of your life.
We are strongly committed to develop this exceptional value and quality, and together, we look forward to building a bright future and creating long-term impact for our consumer and stakeholder. Let me show you a final video. Thank you very much. And finally, I want to explain you our isotype. Here in our isotype, you can see all of our consumer in every time of their life, as well as you see all of our employees with their family, and that is our belief. Our family, our people, make the total difference to achieve our goals. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Gonzalo, and thank you all very much to all the speakers. Now we will have some time for Q&A, and after that, we'll have some food here, so you can grab food, and we will listen also to a small presentation about the plant and specifically about the site visit we will do after lunch. So if you give us one minute. For the Q&A, we will have again Gonzalo, if you can join us from Softys. Also, Felipe Arancibia, the CFO of Softys, will be here with us, and Francisco Ruiz-Tagle and Guilherme Biesi, he's the VP of sales for pulp. So thank you very much. There are a couple of mics on the back. If I don't know, who wanna makes the first question?
If you please can introduce yourself and where you work, and-
Yes, of course. So hi, I'm Eugenia from Morgan Stanley. Thank you for the presentation. Two questions first on the Natureza project. I wanted to ask what price you're seeing for pulp in the future that would sustain the CapEx that you're planning to make for that investment. And the second one would be more on general shareholder return. So with the Natureza project in the pipeline, what do you see as a dividend policy for the company until you finish the CapEx disbursement related to that?
... Okay, I have the microphone here. Thank you for the questions. First of all, in our project for Natureza, actually, we are considering the only thing I want to tell you is that we are considering a long-term price for pulp. But this is not a. I wouldn't say.
Sorry?
I would not reveal at that moment, you know? But it's a profitable point. But it. Just to mention to you that we are really conservative, and the price we're considering is a really long term, which is in the range of the six hundreds. And the second questions, yeah, this is not public yet, but of course, as part of our financing for Natureza, we are considering to also reducing some percentage the dividends we are, you know, the dividends policy for during the period of the project.
Mm-hmm.
I cannot mention to you now what is the exact percentage we are considering for that.
Today, the last shareholder meeting approved a 30% dividend policy-
Yeah.
which is the minimum required by law in Chile.
Yes.
Rodolfo, number three. Okay.
Hello, I think it's good afternoon already. Rodolfo here from JP Morgan. I'd like to start just saying a big thank you for the presentation. We really appreciate such a senior presence in the event. I have my two questions here. The first one also around Natureza. We've been always discussing with companies, and it seems that there's always a concern about you know, having access to land and forests. So I just wanted to ask, in the case of Natureza, how is that you know, the availability of forests, how is it in terms of... Is it already a non-issue, or do you still need to work on it? And then my second question is more of a structural question. I was recently in China, and I...
The one thing that I have concerns me when I look into the future is that we've seen a lot of capacity, not a lot, but some capacity on the pulp side in China appearing, which is something that we always considered to be unlikely high-cost. I visited companies that produce alternative fibers not using pine or eucalyptus. So I wanted to know your thoughts when you look into the pulp business in the future, how comfortable you are with you know the fact that China will continue to be a high-cost producer? Or are you concerned about the growth in fiber production out of China? And that's it. Thank you very much.
Okay. First, thank you for your question. The first question connected with the forests. Actually, I would say that we are 100% under our plan. So now we are a little over 100,000 hectares for this project. The way we are growing is, we're not, of course, controlling the land, because, you know, the local law in Brazil, the reinterpretation of the, of the, you know, the acquisition of land for foreigners. So in that way, what we're doing is, you know, to doing some, you know, agreements with some funds, you know. They control the land, and we, you know, plant over these lands.
Also, we are considering agreements with particulars, you know, the people that owns lands, and we, you know, we can, you know, also rent lands for some areas for growing. And so I don't see, honestly, a big issue. I mean, it is a problem not to have the possibility of buying lands by ourselves or, you know. But there is a way for growing. And we are under the plan. When I say we are under the plan we originally conceived for that, is because we are growing and the amount of hectares that we actually plant. So this is where more or less we're considering the forest.
We see totally, I mean, correct, the way we are growing for Natureza project.
Let me also complement that, Rodolfo. In Rio Grande do Sul, different than in other states in Brazil, we are the only forest company there. So our competition there is actually the local farmers. So that's why what José Antonio mentioned, that part of our strategy to get access to more wood is to reach an agreement with local farmers, so they can diversify their agricultural activity. And that's why we have a very comprehensive and very simple plan that is underway, as Francisco mentioned. Mm-hmm.
I'll address your second question, Rodolfo. Thank you. I will address it in three points. 15 years ago, the Chinese government, in their five-year long-term plan, has determined that China will reduce its dependency of strategic commodities, iron ore, aluminum. Pulp was within the range of those commodities, so they decided that they will plant, and they will also import wood chips and build their domestic capacity. They have done so. In the last 10 years, they have grown massively their domestic pulp capacity. Recently, in their new five-year strategy, they have taken out of this reduced capacity of strategic commodities, and they have focused on domestic consumption. So it's unlikely that China will put as many effort and resources in developing further pulp capacity in the next 10 years as they have done in the past 10 years.
That's the point number one. Point number two, the reliance on the wood chips of the Chinese pulp capacity has been obviously outside China, from Vietnam, Australia, Laos, and different countries in the Southeast Asia, obviously from South Africa, Chile, Brazil as well. That capacity is very limited at the moment. So they have consumed everything that was there to consume in terms of wood chips, but now they have to rely on domestic wood. And the yields in China, everybody knows, is not competitive compared to the rest of the world. So that, they have somewhat of a ceiling in terms of cost and availability there as well. And thirdly, I would say that China will continue growing its domestic paper capacity.
So it's obviously a concern for us, their pulp production domestically, but it's not to the point where it will change the world's dynamics in terms of pulp and paper consumption. They will grow their pulp, but they will also grow their paper consumption. So in relative terms, the world will consume more and more pulp over the years.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. This is Guilherme Rosito from Bank of America. So I have two questions. First one is on Natureza. I just wanted to understand, with the recent developments in technology and recent projects, are you guys reconsidering the design of the mill, maybe considering what's the ideal size in terms of economies of scale, as well as what other players are doing? Or is everything set, just pending board or approval? Then my second one is on Softys. What is the target margin you guys expect long term as you move more into the downstream, more into personal care products?
Naturaleza?
Mm-hmm. What is the target revision in more long term? That's it. Thank you.
Okay, well, thank you for the first question. Yeah, in terms of, I would say for Natureza technology and advances, we are considering, you know, and in line with our strategy to be, you know, I mean, in terms of water usage, as José Antonio mentioned, to be really a state-of-the-art, you know, operator. Even you consider what the uses of fossil fuels in the operation, we in the lime kiln, for instance, still we are using some fossil fuels, so this project considers to change this. So in terms of the impact and environment, I would say will be as modern as we can, and we are considering to include all this technology.
Same thing when you speak about digital, you know, incorporation in our operations, also consider absolutely be as modern as we can. In terms of a scale, what we have, I mean, presented, for us, represent a competitive scale. And in terms of layout, still in discussion. You saw a video there with what we have seen until now, but of course, this layout can suffer modifications. You know, it's not. We are now under the engineering studies, and so, it could change in some way. Not the place where we are, you know, establishing the mill, because, you know, this is already defined because of many different things that are important for the project.
This is—I mean, we built a line, as you know. Guaíba two was five years ago, and no more than that, actually. We started nine years ago there. I hope this mill will solve some problems we could see there and include, you know, more modern, you know, processes.
Regarding Softys, as you have seen in the first half of the year, we had a strong margin EBITDA in the range of 17%. But it was mainly driven by, we have been able to increase price, I would say, ahead of volumes in order to offset the cost inflation. This is number one. The number two is the strong volumes in baby diapers in Brazil.
... the pulp price also was lower than the previous year and also on the other raw materials. But on top of that, we, let's say, our recipe has been at a much lower cost than the previous year. Wood performance in Argentina, and I would say that the consolidation of Puebla, our recent acquisition of P.I. Mabe in Mexico. Partially offset the headwind on FX, particularly in Chile and in Brazil. We also invested more in marketing, quite significantly in our developing strong brands. And in some countries, such as Mexico and also in Colombia, we face more transportation costs. Having said that, we feel more comfortable in the range of 15%-16% on a long-term EBITDA margin.
Good afternoon. I am Rodrigo from Credicorp Capital. I have a couple of questions related to the Natureza project, and the first one is, have more color on what do you think about will be the financing plan of that project, considering that this is the CapEx is about 50% of the enterprise value of CMPC? So, do you think will be enough to reduce the, or to maintain the dividend payout at 30%? Or do you see room for some sales of assets that you don't need now or is not core for your business? This is the first one, and the other one is related to the forestry development that you mentioned during the presentation.
Regarding the CapEx of this project, you said that this considered the forestry development, and what does it mean? It means that the... You already or, I mean, how much do you have of hectares now secured through third parties or that you own already?
Mm-hmm.
And how much do you think will be the total hectares that you need to secure the wood supply for the project?
Thank you, Rodrigo, for the question. The first one, we are building a robust financing plan. We cannot disclose everything here, but as José Antonio mentioned, maintaining our ratings is a must. And therefore, we are gonna be very conservative, and that financial plan will have all the resilience a project like this need. So we are considering pulp prices rotation. That will, of course, make our EBIT, our cash flow generation in the coming years, fluctuate as well. And we are gonna be very conservative on that end, and we are analyzing different alternatives.
Regarding the forest plantations, as Francisco mentioned, we already have secured over 50% of our wood needs, and we have a plan to plant, so we are 100% self-sufficient in the next couple of years. If you consider that in Brazil, the cost of planting is about $2,000 per hectare, and we'll be needing about $200 million for establishing those plantations.
We have extra four, five years for finishing our plantation. You see, and so we're not under pressure.
Yeah, the average age of our current plantations is over what is needed. So therefore, we have more wood per hectare today available. So we have several years to reach that area, because we have even more wood than what we actually need today.
Around 80,000 hectares is the wood we need.
There's one question.
Hi, it's Edward from Bice Inversiones, and I had two questions here.
Mm-hmm.
Probably the first one is a follow-up to the previous question. Do you have any idea or have you decided yet the financing structure to Natureza project? And the second one is, considering the CapEx per ton, and when we made the comparison to Suzano or Paso de los Toros, Arauco, do you think that this level of $4.5 billion is a fair price of investment to the project?
Well, in terms of financing, as Fernando said, we haven't, we don't have the final decision yet, but we are, of course, we are considering our own cash flow. This is considering, because, you know, we have the time considering long-term pulp prices for creating part of this as our own cash, and also that we haven't decided about any other alternative yet. So those are, I would say, the main sources now, by now. And you compare our project with the other project-
... we see that the cost per ton, this is your question, no, from one? The cost per ton, we haven't, you know, we don't have a final negotiation, you know. We are at a step, we haven't closed any important equipment yet, so we are under study. So but we are seeing and considering all the different, you know, items that were presented here by Antonio, that the range of our cost will be for sure in a competitive range for our project. Compare with Suzano or with the Cerrado last project, or even with the project in last project of UPM in Uruguay. So we should be in the range of in a competitive range. Mm-hmm.
Next question?
Good afternoon. I'm Constanza González from Quest Capital, and I have two questions. The first one, in relation with Natureza. As you said before, you are not disclosing the numbers now, but could you clarify if you are considering that the prices of land have been increasing a lot since 2022? Are you considering these prices in the budget? I was asking before, because could we see an important increase in the CapEx, for example, for the next year, with the approval?
And second one, in relation with Softys, as you mentioned before, about the $500 million of EBITDA, this projection is about the basis, or are you expecting remaining this range for in the next period, considering that fluctuation in prices could damage the margin? Thank you.
Yeah.
Regarding your first questions, yeah, we have seen, of course, some inflation in the cost of land. That's a reality. But as I mentioned before, because there are no other pulp project or big industrial projects in the region where we operate, we haven't suffered what you see or you have seen in other states in Brazil, where there is a lot of competition for securing the sourcing of wood. The transactions that are public in other states in Paraná, in Mato Grosso do Sul, are at prices that are far beyond what we have seen in Rio Grande do Sul.
Of course, we have our numbers and with those, within those numbers, we are very confident, and we have the conviction that our project is gonna be very competitive, not only from a CapEx point of view, as Francisco mentioned, but especially from an OpEx point of view, from an operational point of view, which is very, very important. Mm-hmm.
Sorry, but even considering that, in our calculations, we have scenarios in our plan. So we have considered that as part of our analysis, that, I mean, prices of at the end of the wood put in the mill could change, you know, because of different reasons. And so we consider that in our calculations, in our scenarios of our evaluation.
Thank you for your question related to Softys. As you well know, we don't make any forward-looking statement or outlooks. Having said that, or let me put it this way: the $500 million in terms of EBITDA is our new reality. Now, it's like, well, why I would say I would like to say our platform. And from the coming years, as you well know, it's pretty much related to what happened with the local currency and the prices and raw materials. Having said that, we expect it to continue from this level.
Okay. Any other question? No more questions?
There's one there, Claudia. Rodolfo, yeah.
Hi, back again. Just one question on the Softys division as well. So, again, very clear presentation, clear focus where the opportunity is. And my question to you is, if we look at the execution, there are... You can grow through acquisitions like the one you discussed today, and also organically. And you have a number of different areas, such as tissues or personal care and different geographies. So, when you look at the asset base today and the footprint of the Softys division, is there a particular area, region, or product that you think are still behind, or that you need eventually an acquisition or a region-
... or, a product that will require a bit more attention so that you can get to the dream of being the, the number one, in the market in the region? Thank you.
Thank you very much. In terms of market or priority, it's all about Brazil and Mexico. In terms of looking, analyzing other countries, Argentina, as all of us we know, is Argentina, with all their changes every time. The last twelve months or eighteen months in Argentina, we are performing very well, but it's difficult to predict Argentina in the future, and I think that our market share in the other countries, like Uruguay, Chile, and Peru, give us a more stable business scenario for the next five years. Again, all of our focus is Brazil and Mexico, and we talk about Brazil. You are from Brazil. It's not a country, it's a continent, so there are five countries.
That when we go and talk more with more details, region by region, obviously, there are a different situation for us. Huge opportunity in the south. We strongly believe that in the south, we have an opportunity, and I believe that is our main market today in Brazil, to go to the south.
I don't see any further questions today. I think it's...
So no more question? Well, thank you very much. As I said,
Thank you very much for your time, your questions, and taking all this time for knowing more of our company.
Thank you very much. Some logistics. There is some food on the backs you can grab, and we will have Javier Busch, the plant manager, who will present later about the plant, about the visit we will do, and of course, some safety instruction we will have to follow. We don't wanna have any accident. Thank you very much.