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Welcome everyone, to Alfa Laval's Capital Markets Day 2023. My name is Johan Lundin, Head of IR at Alfa Laval. This year, we are hosting, as you know, a fully virtual CMD, and with me here in the studio in Lund, I have Tom Erixon and Fredrik Ekström. This is going to be a two-hour session, and we will start with presentations from our speakers, which will be followed by a Q&A session, with ample time to answer all of your questions. And with that, I think we are ready to kick it off. I leave it over to Tom Erixon, our President and CEO.
Thank you, Johan, and welcome to everybody. We're going to reflect a bit on where we are and where we're heading as a company, of course. As you know, those of you who've been with us for a period of time, about 2 years ago, we did reset our strategy quite a lot based on the changes in the global energy systems and the big transition way. Then we decided early on to take a leadership position in this aspect, based on our technologies and platforms. Last year at the physical Capital Markets Day in Søborg, we had a rather extensive update on what we were doing from a technical point of view and where we were going as a business.
So, this year it's a bit more of an update, some color, and some context as to the path that we started on, last year, and, I will give some, some reflections on the strategy, where we're going, but also some reflections on how we got to where we are. And then Fredrik will follow on with some further reflections on the financial development, within the group. So, that's what we're going to be doing. Now, in looking at, Alfa Laval's group strategy, if you like, you may remember that, we launched already 2016, a strategy that was based on customer orientation, technology leadership, and service. And, those were areas where we felt we had some weaknesses to address.
And the main perspective on the strategy and objective at the time was to regain our organic growth. We had been flat in that aspect for a period of time. We felt we were not leading the technology development the way we should. We needed to renew our product platforms, we needed to drive a broader and better service agenda, and more than anything, we needed to get the customer back in the center. We were a bit too slow and too centralized in order to follow the customer demands, the market demands, and to resolve the challenges we had with our customers. So that was the journey we started in 2016, and it took us maybe 4-5 years to get those platforms in order.
By 2020, 2021, we felt we had accomplished most of what we set out to do, in that strategy period. The organic growth you've seen then and since then, and hopefully will continue through a number of years, is, is the fruit of that strategic period, returning to organic growth. Now, a couple of years ago, it was clear to us that that strategy remained an important pillar for us going forward. But with the changes in the environment, the new technology needs, the decarbonization challenges for many of our businesses, both in terms of, new opportunities, but also new ways of addressing old problems, needed us to work in a different way and with a different ambition level. And so the strategy, group strategic direction, from now is somewhat different.
It is, I would remind you, not a top-down view on how we should run the company. It is a bottom-up process that, at the end of the day, shares some important themes for the group, and those important themes are almost like family rules for us. They are relevant themes in order to be successful long-term, in the business. And instead of three pillars that we used to have, we now have a fourth, it's people. And while people, of course, have always been important, the challenge is more strategic at this point in time.
In the pace that we are growing, and with the huge challenges and changes that we have in technology development, in digitalization, and a number of other areas, and link that to the fact that attrition rate today is a bit higher than they used to be before COVID, and the fact that mobility in the workforce is not as good as it used to be, especially in Western Europe, we feel that safeguarding the competence development in terms of reskilling and onboarding, and building the institution strong for the next 10 years, the people dimension will be strategically more important going forward than before, and consequently, it's on the list of our top 4 priorities.
The customer focus remains, so does technology and service, but the content today is different than it was five, six years ago. On the customer side, the rapid development and deployment of new technology and solutions to meet climate goals and other challenges means that we would need to work very differently with customers, and today it's more about partnership than in the past. Today, it's more about understanding their challenges and need as we develop the product offering for the future. So customer in focus, but in a different way than before. The technology goes without saying, and the most visible for you is perhaps when we develop wind propulsion in Oceanbird, or we develop beer concentrate solutions in the Food & Water division.
But also for traditional technologies, temperatures, chemical environment, pressures, all of those things are more demanding, and consequently, traditional metallurgical solution doesn't work anymore, and we need to invest heavily on the R&D side to keep pace with the rapid development, both in the old portfolio and in the new applications. Finally, service integration, which was maybe 6-7 years ago, to a large degree, about covering the installed base and making sure we had our, our service presence at the existing equipment out with customers. Today, it's much more about the digital infrastructure, and it's much more about expanding our service offering compared to the past. So again, there is a commonality in customers, in technology, and service, but the content of it is today very different than it was in the past.
Now, with that as sort of overall themes for the group, we have significant variations between the divisions, and indeed also in the various 14 business units, in terms of what's important for them to succeed. I will cover the divisions a little bit schematically here to give you a feel for where we are. Let's start with the Energy division. What was not very present some years ago, but is core at the strategy today, is the clean technologies. Clean technologies, meaning technologies that have 0 carbon emissions, and we work intensively in that. Obviously, the announcement of the new business unit, and I come back to that, is part of developing the hydrogen applications. But in many other areas, we're deeply involved in the clean technologies for the future.
It's a completely new business for us compared to in the old days. The technology leadership, for that reason and for other reasons, is more important than ever. And one way to express it is that we are increasing R&D spend, you know, numerically from 2%- 2.5%. That may not sound as too much, but if we go back to 2016 with the growth, we have already doubled R&D expenditures, and we will double it again up towards 2030. So there's a really significant investment into the technology leadership that we think is crucial for our future. The service is accelerating, and I think there are two reasons. We have always been selling, in a sense, products that are related to energy efficiency, and without servicing our equipment, that efficiency deteriorates over time.
So while for customers and for us, historically, service has been about paybacks and having good utilization and the financial benefits of the products, today, it's also about reaching the climate goals and energy efficiency targets that we have put up when we sold the equipment originally. That's what our customers need to achieve, that's what we need to achieve with our products, and consequently, a service offering is more strategically important today than ever before. The customer interaction continues. For a long time, we have developed the digital customer journey. It remains the priority for the Energy division in terms of continuing to improve the efficiency and the availability of our service and our people towards our customers. So that is a little bit how the strategic overview for the Energy division looks.
Now, we have for some time discussed the fact that the Energy division has delivered a higher margin than typically historically. We've been over the 20% hurdle for a couple of quarters now, and the discussion has been how sustainable is that? Where it's gonna be in the future? I'm not gonna give you a projection for the future, but I want you to see perhaps one of the aspects for why we are where we are. And this is a chart. It will come back a couple of times, so I'll take a minute to describe what it shows. The dark graph is order intake rolling 12 months in billion SEK, and the light graph is EBITDA margin.
We have, for confidentiality reasons, not included the exact numerals on the EBITDA margin, so it is indexed, you can say, but the shape of the curve is accurate compared to the historic levels. Now, one of our business units in the Energy division is Energy Separation. As we created the Energy division, 2016, this was a problem child. We were not really making any money. We had large claims, expenses, and we needed to find a way to develop this in a good way. What has happened since then is that on the period from 2016 to 2021, we essentially had no growth or even negative growth, for the reason that we decided to reposition the unit. It has been a transition away from oil-based applications into green chemicals and sustainable applications.
So we had to exit a lot of application areas, and we had to rebuild from scratch a number of new ones. That period was a transition period, was sort of concluded in 2021, and since then we have taken back the growth initiative in this unit, and we see a healthy order intake growth for what we believe is the future in this entity. Now, in terms of the EBITDA margin, it was hovering on low single digit for the number of years as we cleaned up and got rid of our legacies. We were even in negative numbers occasionally. At this point in time, we are well into double-digit EBITDA profitability, and that is where this type of product business we would like to see. So for us, the turnaround has been hard work during six, seven years.
It's not only about the cost-cutting exercise, it's been investing in future applications, building the future customer base that we need, and making sure that we get quality and execution on the right level. After seven years, I'm really happy to see that we are there, and this is, I believe, a sustainable performance level for the future. It is one of many reasons for why we see an elevated Energy division margin at the moment. Normally, we talk about margin development in terms of mix, in terms of PPV, in terms of volume effects, but those are descriptive measures only. And what's happening behind the scenes is this type of work sometimes, the proactive executional improvements, to safeguard our business long term.
For the Energy Separation, that has been a very good program and a program that supports the Energy division going forward. Now, that was part of the past. Today we announced the formation of a new business unit. It is a very forward-looking investment decision. We are already engaged in the hydrogen value chain based on our old traditional product ranges, but we are also going inside the fuel cells and inside the electrolyzers with, you know, core technologies that we have in-house applied into a completely new era. And we are very excited about that, and the announcement has been made. We will start the unit in the order of magnitude of 40, 50 people full-time, some of them coming from existing units and some of them hired as new, and that investment's going to be really important for the future.
I will let Thomas Møller, the Head of the Energy division, to give some further light to that business unit.
There is no silver bullet that will bring us to net zero by 2050. There are many things that has to happen in parallel. If we take the International Energy Agency, they claim that 40% of the emission reduction has to come from energy efficiency of the current landscapes, and that is things that we can do here and now. Going forward, until 2050, there will be an increase of 50% for the energy demand. A lot of this can be electrified. Half of the increase has to be covered by replacing fossil-produced energy. Every year, Alfa Laval is supporting our customers to reduce their energy demands, and if we look at heat exchangers that is coming online every year, that is equal to 100 GW of energy savings.
100 GW is equal to, and actually more than, all the windmills deployed during last year. We talk a lot about the windmills, and we need them, but heat exchangers are also doing a lot of great contribution to the CO2 emission. And 100 GW is equal to 50 million tons CO2 emission, and that is equal to the emission of Sweden. So it's really a big impact. And this is where hydrogen comes in so nicely, because when you produce green hydrogen from electricity, wind, or nuclear, so it's a clean energy, you create a clean molecule that can be transported, can be stored, and is very versatile in the usage. So to cover that energy demand going forward, hydrogen plays a vital role.
Then, we have the new energy landscape, where we also need to make these new processes, energy efficient from day one, not later on, but really from day one. And if we then take hydrogen, the way that is produced is that you have electricity from wind, solar, and nuclear, and you use that to break the water molecule. When you break that molecule, you have an exothermic reaction, so a lot of heat is created, and that heat can either go to waste or we can use it. And the way we can use it is that we can, for example, desalinate seawater, and then that water is clean enough to enter the electrolyzer, where the hydrogen is being produced. And then suddenly, we have an energy-efficient system instead of a lot of heat going to waste. That's pretty amazing.
Hydrogen is a very good energy carrier, and it's very versatile in this use phase. The first area where hydrogen is very valuable is in e-fuels. That is, e-ammonia, it's e-methanol, and when you have those fuels, that can actually decarbonize the entire marine sector. Another example is fertilizers. E-ammonia, produced from green hydrogen, can replace fossil-based ammonia in the fertilizer industry. We have also the heavy transportation on land, with trucks and so on, where hydrogen can be the fuel through hydrogen refueling gas stations. Then, we have the whole hard-to-abate sector, which for sure cannot be electrified. Here, we have steel production, where you traditionally have a lot of fossil-based heat production for the steel mill. That can be replaced by hydrogen.
How can we accelerate the hydrogen production and the usage? We see that we have a lot of experience with materials, designs, plates, et cetera, and we have a lot of experience in industrializing and scaling production. And that's why we have decided to create a new business unit, which we are launching today, which is a business unit for electrolyzers and fuel cells. And together with our customers and OEMs, we strongly believe that we will be able to accelerate their solutions and make the journey to the net zero in 2050 really happen.
All right, so, that was a brief summary of the Energy division. Let's move on to Food & Water. And similar to the Energy division, we have a strategic framework for the, division. It's, it's a variation on the theme, as I indicated.
Clearly, sustainability applications are a more important part of the portfolio going forward than in the past, but in a slightly different way than in the Energy division. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of sustainability in our product offering is working with water usage and water efficiency for our customers. This is a huge concern for all our customers in the food and beverage sector, and in general, processed water is something that is taking a lot more attention from all kinds of industries at this point in time. So sustainability plays a sharply more important role now than in the past, and of course, part of our new product offerings related to single-use applications or for that matter, beer concentrate, is also a way to deal with efficiencies and decarbonization of the Food & Water industry.
So a big role on the sustainability. The service and digital transformation really goes hand-in-hand in the Food & Water division, and the reason for that is that a large share of the product sales in the division is rotating equipment. And rotating equipment needs to be monitored, needs to be monitored from a remote condition monitoring program, needs to be monitored from an operating performance level, and consequently, the service side and share of service contract is elevated in this area specifically, and the digital transformation plays a huge role in terms of how we work with our customers long-term in the service offering, as well as in the general productivity discussions with them. And so, two important cornerstones going forward.
The technology leadership has played a large role in the growth of the business of the division over the last seven years. Technology leadership, up until recently, were mainly about an accelerated launch process for new products, improving the existing product platforms. We've done so across the board on a launching pace that has been more than twice the historic average, and we feel we've got a lot of value out of that across the board. Looking forward, we will continue in that direction, but in addition, as you, as you well know, in the Explore bucket that we introduced last year, a number of new initiatives are included. I mentioned already the single use as such.
They are also in the beer concentrate and in a number of areas, completely new technologies that we're looking at standalone initiatives that will broaden our platform and help the customer goals towards their net zero ambitions. So technology leadership remains a cornerstone for the Food & Water division. Now, again, the long-term performance development in the Food & Water division, moving margins from 13% to 17%, and maintaining an accelerated organic growth over a long period of time, is partly a general phenomenon, but it's also very specific. And I wanted to share specifically the history around Food Systems, the engineering businesses that we run within the Food & Water. And, again, the lines are the same as before. Orders is the dark line, and EBITDA margin is the lighter line.
As we started the division in 2016, the engineering business was not contributing much to profitability. We were continuously ending up with a post-calculation of projects lower than the original pre-calculations, and consequently, we lost our profitability based on not assessing risks correctly or not executing well enough. We took a strategy already in 2017, which was basically some sort of shrink to profit strategy. We figured, let's not grow out of this problem. Let's concentrate our efforts into application areas that we can control, into executional environments that are predictable, and let's be selective in the projects in terms of what we say yes and no to. And consequently, for 4 or 5 years, we did not grow at all. We were almost at a negative growth rate until we started to find stability.
Consequently, we've seen a good growth in orders from 2021 and onwards, a bit weaker the last year, but within oscillations of product business that are normal. The interesting line is the profit margin line. As I indicated to you in connection of the acquisition of Desmet, we are now on double digit for the first time, and that is a substantial improvement from years ago. We've been on a constant trajectory on the margin line for the last two, three years, so we have some comfort that we are establishing a new level, and it was that comfort that allowed us to do the Desmet acquisition. While the Food Systems business is around 2 billion-2.5 billion SEK, the Desmet business, as you know, is somewhere close to 4 billion SEK.
So we have more than doubled our project business, but Desmet has had the same evolution as Food Systems when it comes to margin and when it comes to order intake. And so we are quite pleased with the project portfolio of a turnover of somewhere close to SEK 7 billion, operating at a double-digit margin. I think it proves, because they work mainly with the core technologies of Alfa Laval, it proves the point that if you are in control of your product and your core technologies, you also need to understand your customers and customers' needs. And consequently, if we can't operate good projects in this area, it will put the question marks to what we are really doing here.
So I think we are in a very good position in the project business, and this has been one of the underlying reasons for why the stable profit improvement of Food & Water division has continued as well as this has over the last 5, 6 years. Now, with that, I think I'm gonna hand over for some comments then to Nish Patel, the Head of Food & Water division, to explore some of the changes they are facing.
World keeps on demanding higher production of sustainable biofuels. In July, IEA report confirms that for us to really reach net zero by 2050, we need to triple the capacity of our production of biofuels by 2030 to reach the net zero target. This is essential for the transport industry. Recently, at the G20 summit in Delhi, the Prime Minister of India recommended to start a Global Biofuels Alliance. 19 countries and 12 organizations, such as banks and oil companies, have already signed up for this. The objective is to make sure that we increase the production of biofuels and also the use of biofuels into the transport sector. One of the processes to produce sustainable biodiesel is hydrotreated vegetable oil, which is also known as HVO. Regulators are setting high demands for low carbon fuel.
At the same time, a lot of these governments are also putting incentives in place for this transition to happen. The chemical properties of HVO are very similar to diesel, which means that we can use HVO directly into the existing diesel engines without any limitation of blending. The activity for HVO started in Western Europe first, moved on to North America. Also now, the projects are coming up in Asia as well. Significant part of the production of HVO will be used in the aviation industry. Alfa Laval's engagement in the HVO process is to supply a pre-treatment unit. We need to reduce the contaminants in the feedstock that goes into the hydrocracker. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, we need to make sure that we protect the equipment, and at the same time, extend the catalyst life.
Secondly, we want to make sure that we get higher yields downstream processing. The pre-treatment process is very similar to what Alfa Laval has been supplying for 50 years into the edible oil industry. We are the world leader in supplying technology to the oils and fats industry globally. What we supply is number of unit operations consisting of our core technologies in separation, fluid handling, and heat transfer. The output from the pre-treatment unit has two main components. One is clean up fuel that goes for further treatment downstream into the hydrocracker, and secondly, we have a waste stream of water. Water can be treated in two ways. We can either treat it, and it gets used in the waste treatment plants, or secondly, we can also use zero liquid discharge, clean up and recycle the water into the processes.
Alfa Laval has been supplying pre-treatment plants to the HVO industry for a number of years now. We've got a number of projects that are already running, and we have a good pipeline of projects that we are designing and installing at the current time. The biggest challenge in the biofuel industry is really to triple the capacity that we have by 2030. This is essential, and Alfa Laval can play an important role in this transition.
So, and that was an update from Nish Patel and the Food & Water. And, let us now move on to the Marine division and the strategic direction for them. Now, one aspect that is crucial for the Marine division is that we are operating in a highly competitive Asian landscape. In fact, there are not that many European actors left in the marine industry. We are few, but rather successful. In order to stay that way, ensuring that we have a sound foundation is absolutely key. So it's a very competitive and cost-oriented program in terms of how we set up supply chains and our product groups.
And as you know, we've gone through some restructuring activity just recently, starting in 2022, and completed mid this year in order to ensure we stay that way. It has been dealing with the ballast water business, it has been related to the boiler business, and it has been related to the scrubber business to take just the most prominent examples. So footprint is now good in order. I think we are well set up for the coming years in terms of the foundation of the division. Now, the portfolio transformation is the second big topic for them, and as you know, we have, since some year, built perhaps one of the best decarbonization portfolios in the industry. It covers a range of projects, and Sameer will describe some of that later, too.
But of course, you're aware about the Oceanbird and the wind propulsion, and the air lubrication, called OceanGlide, and a number of other initiatives, that are set in order to help ship owners decarbonize, according to the new IMO rules. And that is a huge change from an organization that up until 10, 15 years ago, mainly were working with fuel conditioning of heavy fuel oil. And so a completely new way of addressing the market in the future. We are good way into that in many areas, and in some areas, we are barely starting in order to see the first sales and the first pilot projects.
The digital transformation has long been discussed in the marine industry, based on ships far away from coastlines and ship owners who want to monitor what goes on, compliance rules that are getting more complicated. For us, the acquisition of StormGeo was a rather big investment and step into the digital area of the marine industry. Now, we have, as an M&A strategy, taken the view that when you acquire an asset, the first obligation you have is to make sure that they continue to develop well on their own merits. We paid SEK 3.5 billion in that acquisition. The way to defend that value and to defend that expense is that StormGeo continues to grow and continue to improve their profits in their own business, and that objective has been achieved so far.
The second objective, and that's of course, the strategic agenda on this, is to use the StormGeo capabilities as an inspiration, but also as a competence center in some, closely related areas, to StormGeo. Of course, now we see a digital program within the Marine division that is different than before and accelerated based on the fact that we have StormGeo in the family. The strategic part of this acquisition, in terms of importance, will continue to grow, but we will never forget that StormGeo, as an independent unit, also needs to continue to develop on their own merits, and they will. The customer journey is important also, in the marine industry, especially since it's actually, at the end of the day, relatively few core customers.
There are a couple of hundred important ship owners around the world, which accounts for most of our business. And with the product portfolio we have today, the need for, and our ability to, have more strategic discussions on a ship owner level and to work more strategically with the fleet base of those ship owners, the way we interact with our customers and set up our sales and key account structure is different than before, and is going forward in a good pace. So that's a little bit about how we want to drive the division forward in the coming years. I also would like to reflect a little bit on the profitability development in the division, especially since we have been debating the Marine margin with you since late 2022 and into 2023.
I remind all of you, and I think you're well aware, that we had a deterioration of about 5 percentage points due to the fact that we lost steam in both the boiler business and in the cargo pumping business of Framo, pretty much at the same time. Now, I'll share a little bit of background on where we are on those programs with you. To the left, you have the boiler order intake and the EBITDA margin, and to the right, you have the Framo numbers for the same thing. Let me start with the boiler side. Now, if you look at the order intake, you see a big peak, 2018, 2019. We advised you then that this was largely driven by the retrofit of the scrubber business.
We booked, I think, at the peak, about SEK 3 billion in one year, in scrubber orders. We knew that would come to an end, and it did. Below the scrubber business, which was healthy, we had some challenges in the boiler business. It was a bit commoditized, there was tough competition in the Asian market, and we had gradually lost margin in that business. So when the scrubber sort of moved out of the invoicing, we were sitting with a boiler margin that was too low. On top of that, we have long order books on boilers, and consequently, we ended up with pricing in the old world, and then invoicing in the high inflation environment 2 years later. And so we had a negative effect on the backlog on top of that.
That was the problem about a year ago. Since then, a lot has happened. Number one, as you can see, the order intake is growing dramatically compared to 2 years ago, so the volume side looks more positive. The mix in that backlog is much more positive than before, partly because we adjusted the pricing accordingly, but also because we are getting into more advanced boilers, especially related to multi-fuels. So with higher technology, a better order book, and a better volume, we have seen the beginning of the recovery of the boiler profitability, and that's in fact part of what you saw in Q3, according to the guidance we've been giving for a long period of time. Now, on Framo, you see a little bit the same situation, but let me just highlight that when you look at the order line-...
What you see is a combination of cargo pumping and offshore. Offshore has been stable throughout, so overall, the order intake of running around 4 billion SEK per year has been reasonably stable. However, from 2021 onwards, we saw a fairly big mix shift towards the offshore at the expense of the cargo side. When we lost the cargo volume, eventually, we ended low in utilization in the factory, and eventually, the mix turned sharply negative on us. So it was both mix and volume effects that drove the EBITDA margin erosion. You can see the margin erosion starting already a little bit in 2022, and then heading down as we moved into the first half of 2023.
The uptick that you see look a little bit modest, but I remind you, it's a rolling twelve-month number, so for the quarterly basis, it was a meaningful step forward. And what you can see on the order intake line over the last, let's say, four quarters, five quarters, is dramatically better. We, in fact, we've never been on that order intake level, and you shouldn't expect that we remain on sort of a rolling twelve months towards SEK 8 billion-SEK 9 billion. That is probably a little bit ahead of what it should be over the longer period of time. But for sure, what has happened is that we rebuilt the order book for this year, for next year, and partly into 2025 in a healthy level.
We are back to normal, and we will see the recovery going through, just as we've guided you over the last year. And, that, that is, I think a bit of color and context to the fact, how did it happen that we lost our margin in end 2022, and, why do we believe that we have a reasonably healthy situation going forward in line with guidance into Q4 and also into 2024? So with that, I'd like to hand over for some comments to Sameer, based on the transition and, and decarbonization projects that we're involved in in the marine industry.
In July this year, the International Maritime Organization revised its greenhouse gas strategy and now aim for the industry to be net zero around 2050, a step change to its previously stated ambition. Shipping's pathway to get there will be very much around implementing energy efficiency measures and deploying cleaner energy, may it be green fuel, blue fuel, or even onboard carbon capture. When it comes to clean energy, there is an industry consensus that this will not be available at scale for shipping in the short to medium term, which means we believe that the energy transition in shipping is going to be a multi-fuel and a multi-decade one. In the Marine division, we will enable shipping's energy transition in three distinct dimensions.
First and foremost, it's our aim that our marine offer is carbon neutral by 2030 latest, which means our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions will be zero, and we will reduce our Scope 3 emissions by 50%. Now, most of you know that our Scope 1 and 2 emissions are equivalent to our customers' Scope 3 emissions upstream, which means this is not just about the planet. It's also about making sure our customers can navigate this energy transition in a smooth manner. We are far ahead of our peers and competitors in this area. We have a much higher ambition in this area, so we expect this will also be a differentiator on our offer, at least for those customers who are leading the sustainability transition as we are.
Secondly, we are working with our existing portfolio, i.e., what we have, to make sure it's multi-fuel capable, seen from our customer standpoint, future-proof. Already today, even as I speak, our fuel supply systems are capable of running on biofuel, on methanol, on an ammonia, or a combination of any of these with existing fossil fuels. As you are all aware, a multi-fuel system is more complex, has more value addition in relation to a mono-fuel system, which effectively translates into a higher opportunity for Alfa Laval per ship set, not just for capital sales, but also for services down the road. Last but not the least, we have added a number of energy-saving technologies into our portfolio in order to reduce the energy intensity of ships.
Oceanbird, our wind propulsion initiative, OceanGlide, our air lubrication initiative, and StormGeo, our digital solutions initiative, each of them individually can contribute with at least 5% savings on a sailing vessel, and effectively even more when they are put in combination with each other. We see a tremendous traction for these energy-saving devices at this point in time. The reason for this is rather simple: Every ship owner recognizes, no matter what future fuel you put on board, the fact is, it's going to be more expensive than the fuel we have today. So these adding energy efficiency just makes good sense.
These three initiatives that I have talked about around the energy transition, coupled with the fact that shipping is once again reverting back to its long-term average of 2,000 ships, means that not only will we have a larger role to play in the industry in the future, but also a more meaningful one.
So, and with that, let me round off with a few brief comments. You've seen a little bit around the strategic direction on the three divisions. We feel we are in a good shape on those. We are in the Energy division with a forward-looking energy efficiency agenda and clean technologies. We are in a stable development in the Food & Water division, a little bit hit by the cyclicality downturn in the transactional part, but well compensated in the service business and in the project business. And in the Marine division, we are over the hump in terms of regaining the right trend curves on the profitability. We have implemented the program as described earlier, and we are excited about the decarbonization portfolio going forward.
So all in all, a good foundation for the future, and Fredrik will soon get back to some of the financial reflections on, on this. Now, let me round off a little bit by saying that we are, as you clearly know, in the business of working with energy efficiency and solutions related to the climate, and in providing those solutions and those products, we have to start in our own house. So we've taken our own internal sustainability platform for Scope 1 and 2 very seriously for some time. You see on this slide some of the more important initiatives that this has been covering, but it's no small undertaking. We need new competency in the company. We need new reporting systems.
We need new KPIs and dashboards, and whatnot. So it's been a broad implementation in order to get ready. And in terms of visible implemented actions, at the end of the day, perhaps some of the most important are the internal carbon pricing that we have been preparing and will move into, and our acceptances to the Science Based Targets initiative that is also starting now. That perhaps the most important, though, is the fact that we now have climate roadmaps for all our operating units. They are linked together with all our other business targets, so the reporting of that, the responsibility for implementation of that, so that we get to a zero carbon emission status by 2030 for our Scope 1 and Scope 2. Those plans are now in place. We have five years, six years of hard work ahead of us.
We pretty much know what to do, so we're looking forward to keep you updated on that as years go by. In terms of status at the moment, the trend curve for energy, in terms of direct work hours, which is the light curve, is clearly going down in terms of our energy consumption. Despite the fact that we are growing significantly over the years, we still see a decreased use of energy. And in what you don't see on this slide is the fact that we're also turning more and more of energy into green energy. So with all of those actions being implemented and others, we feel we're on the right track with a lot of work to do, but excited about the future on that. So with those words, then, let me hand over to Fredrik.
Thank you, Tom, and I will take you through some of the financial performance, KPIs that we have, and I will take you through the balance sheet towards the end of the presentation. Let us get started. If we look at the order intake, we are now approaching a level of SEK 70 billion, and this, as Tom framed it, comes as mainly as organic growth, and it already started back in 2017. It started by creating an organization that was responsible for the product. It started with creating accountability in the organization for how we go to market. I think we see clearly the fruits of that labor.
Now, we shouldn't forget that service, in the same period of time since 2017, has more than doubled, and that represents a growth of about 12% per year for the last five years. If we look then at profitability, we have a target of 15%, and that target is, we have been exceeding that target, and we're consistently above that target. And the reason we are above that target is because we need the freedom to operate, and we need the freedom to operate above that target, or to that target, so that we can restructure businesses when it's needed, as we did with Welded and Marine. We need freedom to invest, we need freedom to take on acquisitions, and we need freedom to increase operating expenses, as we do, for example, in the Explore bucket.
Going forward, we're going to see that our margin is going to remain more or less on these same levels. We should say also that it's a testament to the robustness of the group. This graph clearly shows that over a business cycle, we are robust, and it's on a end market diversification, and it is on a geographic breadth. A few words then about the Energy division. The Energy division is now on a level just below SEK 20 billion, or just above SEK 20 billion, excuse me. And that is an impressive turnover, and most of it is organically driven. There are some macro trends that are really supporting this growth, and that's energy efficiency, renewable and sustainable energy, and not only energy, but water, and of course, decarbonization.
What all of these trends have in common is that they are intensive on heat exchangers or thermally dependent. Not only thermally dependent, but they are also fairly aggressive, aggressive in temperature, aggressive in pressures, aggressive in efficiency. That means new designs, designs that are IP-protected, and of course, the use of novel materials in order to handle corrosive media. So we could say, all in all, that we're moving towards continued growth based on these fundamentals, and that from the level of SEK 20 billion. From a profitability point of view, the Energy division has always been on and around 15%, just above, in fact. What we saw happening in towards 2022 is a break from that level.
And so the big question has been, and you have asked us many times, what is driving the change in the profitability level in the Energy division? Well, it's not one thing, it's several things. We have a mix that has changed in favor of Brazed and Fusion Bonded Heat Exchangers and Gasketed Plate Heat Exchangers. We also have a larger proportion of service. And finally, of course, we do have some revaluations in there, both in the form of how we look at materials, but also in the form of pricing. And that despite the fact that we have an aggressive investment program and an aggressive OpEx, both in SG&A to expand our presence, and of course, in R&D to develop our products. Food & Water is also a division that has had some remarkable growth from 2020.
But before I go into the remarkable growth, let us also talk a little bit about before 2017, the reorganization. This was a collection of business that was rather underinvested and had lost a lot of market share. So in the period between 2017 and the pronounced growth that we see in 2020, we concentrated on product, we concentrated on market, and we concentrated on adding capacity. That we see then happening in 2020, when we regain quite a bit of market share and start having a product portfolio that was better suited to our customers' demands. It is very much driven by alternative proteins, biotech and pharma, brewery and dairy, and of course, in the last 12 months, by the addition of the Desmet HVO volumes.
We're right now at a level just shy of SEK 25 billion, in fact, SEK 24.7 to be exact, and about SEK 5.3 billion of that is Desmet. Here we are looking, we're looking forward. We believe that we will grow with the market. We believe that this pronounced growth that we have seen is not repeatable, at least not in the current structure. Instead, we will grow with the market. So here we are intent on finding an acquisition target that either is a bolt-on or an acquisition target that widens our scope of supply to our end markets or a new end market, as it may be. The profitability for the Food & Water division, as Tom alluded to, has improved and it has remained stable.
There is a lot that is happening here, and there's a lot of moving components here. But suffice it to say that right now we are operating at a level of 16.1%, and that is despite the dilutive nature of the Desmet acquisition. I would just say that the project business is, though, accretive to the profitability. We have a heavier service mix, and of course, we have a bit of a drop in the transactional business, which is what causes this netting effect of turning the curve rather flat instead of continuing to grow. We expect here, again, with the development and continued growth of all segments within the Food & Water division to have a margin in or about the same level. Marine and Diesel, despite the low level of contracting and the end of legislation-driven retrofits, we grow.
We grow on the FPSO side, gas and oil. We grow on a higher content per ship with multi-fuel capabilities, we grow with energy fuel efficiency, and we grow with decreased fuel consumption solutions. For example, optimized routing systems, services, sorry, through our StormGeo acquisition. And in the near future, OceanGlide, which is the air lubrication system, and in the longer term, Oceanbird, which is sails. We also have a higher degree of service here, and in fact, service has driven together with capital sales now, turnover to a level of SEK 24.7 billion. Given the years of low contracting and the aging of the fleet, the replacement need indicates a promising future development. The low contracting levels and the low delivery levels that Tom referred to earlier, of course, have had a negative impact on the EBITDA for the division.
However, from quarter three this year, we see that we are returning back to profitability, 15.1% adjusted EBITDA in the quarter. And that is, of course, supported by a restructure boiler, scrubber, and PureB allast business, increased manufacturing utilization in pumping systems, and the end of a batch of negative FX hedges. And finally, we have delivered a backlog, which was not adjusted to inflation or priced, end priced to a legacy material level. In the last CMD, we introduced the three buckets of growth: evolve, expand, and explore. And they have all grown. Evolve has grown with 5 billion SEK, Expand has grown with 5 billion SEK, and then Explore has almost doubled to 1.6 billion SEK from 1 billion SEK. Evolve continues to part, to, to grow, and it's particularly the service part that is growing, and that reflects a high utilization of our equipment.
Having said that, until just a few months earlier, as we said, transactional business was also a strong contributor. On the Expand side, we are primarily fueled by the HVO processes, the investments that are being made there, heat pumps, data centers, and multi-fuels. While Power-to-X and carbon capture are still in the starting mode. Explore has grown substantially in size and successfully rolled out, and we have successfully rolled out more services in our digital solutions from StormGeo. However, we are starting to book some orders for fuel cells and air lubrication, Power Pack and aquaculture. So we could say, in summary, that five out of the 10 initiatives that we have under the Explore bucket are starting to grow, but it's still early days. Let us talk a little bit about the capital allocation, which is driven by these three buckets of growth.
We have Evolve, which is mainly a maintenance bucket, where we are investing about thirty percent of our investments are going to the Evolve part of it. We see when continuing on CapEx, we see that Expand is some sixty-five percent of our investments, and the Explore bucket is 5% and growing. When we look at R&D from an OpEx allocation, then we're looking at a continuous development of our existing products and services in the Evolve bucket, with 25% of it, of the total. New development of technologies in Expand with 45% in total, and Explore, there, where we're making a good push today with the creation of the new business unit, with some 30% increase in R&D.
Similarly, for SG&A, we are strengthening our core, and about 55% of our spend is in Evolve. Sorry, 38% is in supporting growth in Expand, and 7% is in the new organization that we announced today. M&A, from an Evolve point of view, we're looking very much at a bolt-on. From Expand, we're looking at strengthening our position in growth areas, and of course, finally, for Explore, it's about acquiring new technologies, for example, StormGeo. A little bit more about our CapEx program, and then looking at it from a historical period of 2021 to 2026.
If we look first at the investments that we have done in 2021 to 2023, to summarize them, in Energy, we have invested some SEK 2.5 billion, and that's mainly on BFB capacity expansion and GPHE capacity expansion. Food & Water, SEK 1.2 billion, where capacity and automation have been the main consumers of that investment, and Distribution certainly has also received its fair share. Marine, SEK 0.7 billion, restructuring and automation. When we look at the expected investments going forward, more interestingly, then, of course, Energy in line with everything we've been talking about, energy transition, and the new business unit takes the biggest part of the investment, SEK 6 billion, in fact, we're expecting to invest. BFB and GPHE, continued capacity expansion, clean energy manufacturing, and distribution.
Food & Water, a more modest development in the investment, SEK 1.2 billion, and it's mainly maintenance and new product introductions. Marine as well at SEK 1 billion, and it's mainly capacity and automation. In this summary, estimated total investments of SEK 8.5 billion in Energy over a period of five years, Food & Water, SEK 2.4 billion, and Marine, SEK 1.5 billion. This, on a yearly basis, is around 4%-5% of our turnover. We've had a strong cash flow in the period as well, and the cash flow is driven mainly by improved EBITDA level or funds from operations.
We see an operating working capital that is stabilizing and an operating working capital that's coming back in balance with our turnover and our invoicing, in other words, how we're building up for deliveries from our backlog. We have also set ourselves a target of having all our investments financed with our operating cash flow. In other words, any debt position that we would take would be then to expand beyond the current investment program. Moving on then to finally our maturity profile and liquidity buffer, looking at our net debt. Our net debt position right now is around SEK 15.1 billion in debt, and then we have a weighted low maturity of about 2.8 years, which is in line with 33% of the outstanding debt matures in 12 months.
We have a relatively good cost level on that debt, a level of 1.92%. What I would like to draw your attention to instead is the liquidity buffer that we have, where our cash position today covers any loans maturing in the near term by far, and the ability to use an RCF for short-term financing should we need to do so. From a debt ratio point of view, our net debt in relation to EBITDA, excluding leases, is about 0.95, and including leases, 1.2. Our intention is to continue to strengthen our balance sheet, to prepare ourselves for an acquisition, further investments, and of course, to minimize the cost of high interest rates. We are also keen on keeping our Standard & Poor's rating of BBB+.
Finally, I will end by summarizing our financial targets. We have a financial target of growth of 5% organically. Over the last 5 years, we have grown with 14.4%. We have a target of 15% minimum EBITDA, and we have held a level of 16.6 over the last 5 years. And finally, a return on capital employed of 20%, where we've had an average over the last 5 years of 19.4%. Now, it is important for us to state that these targets, and particularly then the EBIT target, is a minimum, and we keep it as a minimum because it gives us a freedom to operate. With that, I hand over back to Johan for taking us through the Q&A.
All right. That nice intro marks the end of the presentation part. We hope you enjoyed it, and we're now ready for the Q&A. Now, I know this is not your first rodeo, but a few reminders. If you want to ask a question, please raise your virtual hand in Teams. And when it's your turn, please make sure to unmute your mic so we can hear you. And, you know, I have given up on the dream of one question per person, but, nobody likes to show off, so be reasonable. Now, let's get started. And I think our first question comes from Daniela Costa. Daniela, can you hear us?
I can hear you. Can you hear me?
We can.
Perfect. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my, my questions. One question and then sort of a clarification, a quick one. But main question really regarding trying to understand sort of like the separation of the hydrogen into a new division and sort of what the process that goes behind that and, and exactly the motivation. Is it because it's you see it has relatively separate from the rest of your business? Is it because of size? Just thinking why, for example, hydrogen and not geothermal, StormGeo , has a separate division, for example, and also trying to understand, is this kind of a model that you see going forward for as you move things along your expand and explore scale?
Just understanding a bit sort of the process and the motivation behind that specific separating that specifically versus other things. My second thing is just a clarification. It might have been something that got sort of got lost in translation, but now in the presentation, just in the end, you said you wanted to strengthen further the balance sheet for an acquisition. Sort of what was that, you know, something specific in mind? Because before you talked about bolt-ons. Do you see things more transformational and probably expanding into sort of more broadening the areas of the group has potential, or it just got lost in translation, really, and you meant for acquisitions in general? Thank you.
All right. Well, the organization is not the solution to everything, but when it comes to the hydrogen applications that we are looking at, they are different from, let's say, carbon capture or part of the clean fuel side, in the sense that we need specific new technology development in order to put the products and solutions together for our customers in both electrolyzers and fuel cells. And so it becomes a major undertaking for us as a group. We felt it wasn't correct to mix it long term with the business of brazed and fusion bonded heat exchanger, which is a big ongoing business with a lot of demands in the heat pump industry and so forth. So we thought the time had come.
It is not because of size, because at the moment it's zero in terms of invoicing. I think it will remain zero for at least a year or two. But it is a major undertaking in the way that it's probably around 50 people or so who will be engaged in developing this. And we think just to have the right focus, and sending the right signal to the people we are recruiting and to the customers we are working with, that we are in this for the long haul. This is not a side project somewhere. It is a strategic priority for us, and we think missing out on the hydrogen opportunity would be the wrong thing for us to do. So we prefer to be explicit.
You, as investors, will be able to follow this, and we, as a management team, will have a clearer traceability in what goes on on the hydrogen development project. So that, that is the reason we did it. We will see a couple of years from now whether that was the right call or not, but I think it is. In terms of M&A, you know, it's always difficult to speculate. We have said two things. Number one, in the very dynamic situation we are, business development has become more than just adding on large acquisitions. We do technology joint ventures, we do partnerships, we do small technology acquisitions, and we do a lot of organic development.
So, the hurdle to allocate large capitals with big goodwill consequences, the hurdle is quite high. And we've abstained for a number of times. We've done two important acquisitions, StormGeo and Desmet, in recent times, that played out well for us. So we are cautious, disciplined. We found the sellers market not always taking a cautious and disciplined approach. And so, for that reason, I'm not convinced that we're gonna see major transactions in the short period of time, but I hope that in the wake of higher interest rates and a more disciplined capital market, we will see that sellers and buyers can come closer to each other when it comes to valuations and expectations.
Thank you.
Thank you, Daniela. Our next question comes from John Kim. John, welcome. The line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity. If we could stay with hydrogen, can you give us a sense of ambitions and timelines here? It's a very broad market, but how would you think about your potential share of it in terms of quantums and development? And where could we look, call it the next two or three years, in terms of goalposts or signs that you're getting the progress that you're targeting? Thank you.
Yeah, obviously, when you're starting from scratch, there is a bit more uncertainty in terms of where the market is going, and I can tell you that we've redone our business plans in this area every six months, quite dramatically. I think our view of the hydrogen market short, medium term, is that the electrolysis side and the production side will be more important than the fuel cell side for quite some time. The infrastructures are simply not available for broad-based fuel cell implementation the way we thought a couple of years ago. So, I'm cautious in my predictions about the future. What I think is a given is we will not really see any meaningful invoicing within the next two years.
But I think the milestones you should be looking for is that we will be able to sign a number of agreements within the two-year period that will pave the road for the invoicing growth going forward. This is on the order of magnitude that obviously we wouldn't, we wouldn't do this unless we thought it was a multi-billion opportunity in terms of SEK. And so looking toward 2030, we think we will have a meaningful business unit structure in place. And if you look at our business units, they tend to go from a couple of billions to maybe 5 billion-6 billion SEK. That's a typical BU size. So if we are somewhere in the lower range of that within 2030, I think we've continued well.
But of course, exactly how fast this will scale and how we will follow that path is a little bit early to say. I think at the end of the day, on the electrolysis side, we feel rather comfortable in terms of where we are. So we will go with that. I think on the fuel cell side, it's more an uncertainty on when is the market gonna take off. That's gonna determine our opportunity in that in terms of the timeframe up to 2030.
Very helpful. Just a quick follow-up on kind of quantums of investment. This would fall into the Explore bucket.
Yes.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
If we think about OpEx or acquisition, is there any framework we could use there?
Well, I don't. I think it's hard. It's difficult to guide you any further on that. I think we tried to share what we felt was a reasonable assumption for us to share with you, but further than that, I think we'll abstain.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, John. Our next question comes from Gustaf at Handelsbanken. Gustaf, the line is yours.
Yes, hello. Thank you very much. Also on green hydrogen. Perhaps starting with the comments you just said about, let's say, 5 billion-6 billion scope by 2030. What kind of market share assumptions would you say that is based on? Because I assume you're a bit more optimistic here versus the Energy division itself. That's my first one.
I am not sure that's what I said. I think I said the typical business unit is in the span between 2 and 5, 6. I didn't necessarily indicate that we would be in the higher range of that number by 2030. Listen, I don't think it's meaningful to. You know, the big issue is not whether we are on 10 or 30% market share on this. The question is, you know, how will the market evolve? We follow the hydrogen market quite closely because we are selling other applications into essentially all the hydrogen production units that are either under contract or will be funded in the next 5 years. So we have a fairly good visibility as to the pipeline.
The pipeline is still relatively thin when it comes to committed decisions, but if you take any projection on the hydrogen, there will be enough volume there to secure that we can get a meaningful invoicing in the next, you know, after all, it's about the 6-7-year perspective.
Right, fair enough. Then secondly, I mean, on top of the announced orders for Neom City, how much more have you actually taken already? And I guess if you can't give us a number, maybe the number of projects you're already involved in, or if you can say if the unannounced sum of orders is more than the Neom order value. And sorry, just lastly on that point, is it only heat exchangers for the electrolyzer, or have you also taken orders on, say, separation equipment, et cetera? Thank you.
Oh, I think as it comes to Neom, in my recollection, I don't think we have any separation units there. It is a bit of a broad-based project also related, I believe, to sea cooling and a couple of other applications there. So, it is, it's not just intimately next door, you know, next to the electrolyzer application, if you like. So, that is by far the biggest order we booked so far. We booked a number of other ones. I, with respect to the customers, I don't wanna flag any particular projects.
But, I think for all of the ones that are in the pipeline for decisions, I think we are more or less involved in all of them. It's not the... And that's what I was saying before, it's not a huge number at this point in time. I think we booked another significant one in the time period and maybe a few smaller things. So, it is growing from a small base. It's still not huge, and it's not the revenue you will see in the new business unit. I remind you, it will be booked in the respective products units that already exist, whereas the applications within electrolysis and within fuel cells requires new technology and will be booked in that business unit down the road.
All right. Thank you, Gustaf. I think our next question comes from the line of Mattias Holmberg at DNB.
Hi, Mattias.
Hello, and thanks for the time. Can you please share some more details regarding the capacity expansion program for heat exchangers you announced earlier this year? And I'm really looking for any details in terms of what you expect from capacity additions to the division, payback time, ROI. I saw that, for instance, one of your peers said it aims to increase its global capacity in brazed heat exchangers by 50%. Is this sort of a ballpark figure that you're looking towards as well? Or, yeah, any details really would be helpful.
Yeah, and I think we have a couple of times tried to answer this question, and I'll give it another stab. Part of the capacity increase that we do today is to normalize a pretty stretched manufacturing apparatus that we have today. We have a demand that outstrips our supply, and we have been quick in our response to invest, and we have been investing already for the last 18 months. Now, it takes time for those investments, of course, to ramp up from delivery from our suppliers to our factories, and then, of course, ramping up those assets. We are ramping up our assets, and it's not from one day to the next that we have a doubling of our capacity or a 50% increase of our capacity. It's more linear than so.
To your question on are we investing 50%? Well, you know, we're investing to, one, resolve the stretched manufacturing balance that we have today. We have an expensive manufacturing setup right now with a lot of overtime and a lot of overusage of assets. That's one part of it. The other part is to actually increase our capacity, and that we're doing very much in line with our customers and in dialogue with our customers. The other part that you need to see to this is that the investments that we're making into heat exchangers, not only brazed heat exchangers, but gasketed heat exchangers, is to follow a broader market. It's not only one end market that we're working with.
We're working with a fairly large swath of end markets when it comes to heat exchangers, and the capacity is for all of them. It's all related, or most of it is related to energy transition. We expect a good payback time for this. These are prioritized capital allocations we're making, so we expect a quicker payback than we would for a normal investment. And so that's how I would phrase it. And exactly how that capacity translates, well, we're not a one single product company or one single industry company, so I couldn't say whether it's exactly 50% or whether it constitutes a doubling, but it is a substantial amount of unit manufacturing capacity we are adding. I don't know, Tom, if you want to add anything more.
No, I think so. I think that's good.
For that detailed answer, perhaps a quick follow-up on that. I struggle a little bit to understand why the margin shouldn't be able to stay at the rather high level in Energy, given that you are working at a very sort of squeezed level on the current footprint. And I would assume that it would be sort of positive from a profitability perspective to pick out some of that volume into the new footprint that once you ramp that up. So can you please just help elaborate a bit on the moving parts on why despite offloading this sort of pressured footprint would not be able to maintain or actually even improve the margin from here?
For anybody who has spent 20, 30 years in the industry, we have no problem whatsoever to realize a completely different earnings profile than we are in today. And I can give you 10 reasons for why, why, margins deteriorate and 10 reasons for why they improve. So, I think our job is to be a little bit alert, and to make sure that we operate to the best of our ability, to predicting, and no change in the future is not a healthy attitude in our business, and it's not something that we are trying to do. We are focused on optimizing the operational performance. Now, we will potentially see, as you've seen before, changes in our project business in, in Energy that potentially could go down. We see volatility in raw material costs and pricing and PPV.
As you've seen, recently, people who are very focused within either data centers or in heat pumps is indicating volatility in order intake in the short term and all of that. So I think we have to respect, have to respect that there's a lot of moving parts in this. What we've been saying is that right now we are on an elevated level, normally higher than before. And we also said that you should expect that our strategic investments into capacity and into R&D and technology will continue to be an additional cost compared to where we've been historically. So expect some impact on the margin on that thing.
So that is the guidance we've been giving, but the rest of the assumptions, they're just gonna have to be your own conclusion.
Fair enough. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mattias. The next question comes from the line of Anders Idborg. Hi, Anders.
Hello, Johan. Thank you for the opportunity. A question on Marine margins and how you scope the long-term opportunities there. I think when we met a year ago, you gave some reasons for why we might not get back to prior highs. On the other hand, you've now sort of fixed that unit to some extent. You have certainly a better backlog when it comes to Framo, and we've seen a few years historically where you had, you know, much higher margins, even without, you know, scrubbers being a big part of the business.
Are you a bit more optimistic about getting back to sort of closer to the 20%, you know, rather than sort of the 16%-17% that we talked about in the past?
I mean, it's the same situation. Optimism is not the basis for how we operate. We take it step by step. We are happy to see that we follow the trajectory that we indicated a couple of quarters ago. We think we have some more path to go. Let's see where we end up on that. But we know that things can turn. We don't see right now the clear negatives that may be obstacles in the future, but they may well come up at some point in time. For the moment, the turnaround plan is good and solid. But I just don't wanna. We don't typically guide on margins.
We thought we should, due to the abrupt change in the marine industry, so we wanted to explain the reasons what happened and what we're doing and how we see that coming back. So, I think from that, you need to draw your own conclusions.
Fair enough. Just a quick follow-up, perhaps. So when we look at sort of the past, say, three years in Marine, orders have outpaced sales by about, well, it will be about SEK 10 billion. What do you see out there in terms of yard capacity, et cetera, and your ability to ramp up and customers' ability to take delivery, basically?
No, I think, I think that is under control. I think the lead times from the yards are pretty much set and given. And so what we've seen is a historic low, you know, short order backlog from the yards a couple of years ago to a more normalized and, and perhaps a little bit overburdened delivery backlog from the yard. So, that's why I'm saying that our order book now is, is generally booked for 2024 and way into 2025, just as the yards' backlog covers 2024 and 2025.
And so, the continuous contracting is just gonna have to keep pace approximately with the yard output, and we may see some extension of the timeline for a new ship, which is now 2-3 years. But we expect that it's gonna be somewhere around that. And so our capacity is well adjusted to the backlog and to the pace of deliveries in the coming years. We see some capacity coming back on stream, primarily in China, in order to increase the yard capacity somewhat, but it will have a rather marginal effect, and especially a marginal effect on more advanced ships, which are our sweet spot, as such as product tankers and containers and others.
It, it's, we don't believe there's gonna be much new capacity on that in the foreseeable future.
Thank you.
I now have our next question coming from Sven at UBS. Sven, are you with us?
Yes, I am. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the Marine division, and thanks for sharing the, the boiler data. I was just curious about your view on waste heat recovery in terms of, you know, demand for energy efficiency. I guess you also claim your boilers reduce as, or have energy efficiency of up to 14%. How do you, how do you see that driving demand for, for waste heat recovery and marine decarbonization? Shouldn't that also be a big top-line driver for the, for the boiler units in the coming years?
I think the waste heat recovery has been there for some time, and I'm not sure it's the major component when we look to the business plan over the next three years. I think it is just one out of very many, including you know, boilers such as multi-boiler solutions. But all in all, we're operating some 17, 18 important product groups today, of which a fair share are related to efficiency on board and decarbonization. So certainly the waste heat plays into that, but I wouldn't exaggerate it as a single feature for the next coming years.
Is that also because it's such a relatively sizable capital outlay, and the shipping companies focus on other measures, or?
No, I think there are measures. I think maybe the change that we are seeing is related to low temperature waste heat recovery, which is now becoming a bit more feasible. We see an increasing interest in it. We are participating in that market, but that's starting from a very low level. And so I... It remains to be seen a little bit. But in terms of low temperature waste heat recovery, that may be something that we will see some more importance of going forward. I don't think the capital expenditures are such that they are prohibitive in any way.
I think what the concern on the shipowner side is that the scope of technologies that are being brought on board, not only related to waste heat, but to fuels and environmental legislation, makes the operations of the ship getting gradually more complex. And that is a concern from a technology point of view among the shipowners. But for the waste heat specifically, I don't think it's a big problem.
The second question I had was on the food division, and particularly the impact that you see from GLP-1 drugs, maybe positively, maybe on your pharma clients, whether there's a lot of investments going on, and maybe more negatively on the food side. I don't know how big a share of your sales are customers like Nestlé, for example. Any thoughts you might have on that side?
I'm not sure I'm super updated on that specifically. Well, do you have a good re-
Uh, no.
Gut feel on this?
I do not.
Well, yeah, I think maybe, yeah, Johan, we'll get back on that question. What I would say on the biotech side is that we did see a fairly big investment boom related to the whole vaccine production ramp up that happened, and maybe a couple of other more important trends at the same time. While there are still some tendencies to regionalize on the assuring biotech supply on a regional basis, that investment boom, from our perspective, sort of flattened out and came gradually to a bit of a halt, maybe about a year ago or so.
So we see a little bit more depressed demand on the pharma side compared to where we were a year and two ago as an overall reflection.
Yeah, I was more referring to the weight reduction drugs, the diabetes, and then whether that potentially has an impact on you guys. Yeah.
I think not so big.
It's minor. Yeah. Thank you. Very clear.
Thank you, Sven. The next question comes from Carl Deijenberg at Carnegie. Hi, Carl.
Hi, Johan. Thank you very much for the opportunity. So, I just wanted to follow up a question on the Marine side and, and, maybe, zooming in a bit on Framo. I appreciate the chart you showed there and, and the explanation around the backlog on the boilers and the development in Framo. But I just wanted to sort of follow up on the development here since the acquisition. I think I, when I'm flipping through the acquisition slide deck in 2014, I believe sort of marine pumping system was roughly half, offshore, roughly 25%, and remaining oil service and service, or oil recovery, I should say.
So I just wanted to ask, so if there are any margin differences in between these segments within Framo that explains the contraction that you seen earlier in the year, or is it mainly on a result of the underutilization?
Historically, if you would go back to the time of acquisition, there was a rather large margin difference between the two. So any mix change from cargo pumping to offshore would be major when it came to mix effect on the margin. We've worked a lot with the offshore margin and the way we operate that business, and that is now starting for the first time to approach, let's say, group targets in terms of profitability, which is a significant improvement from 2014 and 2015. So that's on the positive side. On the negative side, what happened in the period of low order intake for cargo pumping, you could see in the chart that order intake overall remained pretty stable.
It was pretty much a complete swing from majority being cargo pumping to a majority being in offshore. And it's first when you see the graph going up significantly towards the trend line of SEK 8 billion-9 billion in 12 months running, that you see both of these units simultaneously with a very strong booking in quarterly orders. So, now we're back on a much better balance when we look forward. I think overall, the mix will, because of the strong offshore market, be a little bit more heavy tilted in that direction than it was in the past.
On the other hand, we have lifted the profitability in that business to a level that makes it a very viable and acceptable standalone business, which it wasn't at the time of acquisition.
Okay, very well, thank you. Then just maybe a quick follow-up on that. I just wanted to ask around the Marine opportunities on the Explore bucket. You specifically mentioned, I mean, StormGeo and Oceanbird here, and I just wanted to ask, are there any sort of such comparable alternatives that are ongoing inside Framo as well? Or is that mainly a business as you see it, that will be, you know, based on product iterations and sort of the base business that as it sits today in a sort of mid- to long-term perspective?
It's a very good question. And you have some companies that are successful just because of tremendous focus on customer and product, Framo is one of those. Even with that said, we see quite interesting technology development. They really are a bunch of skilled engineers in Framo. And we have since the acquisition established the aquaculture business, as Fredrik referred to before. It is currently in a startup basis. We are maybe at an invoicing of SEK 100 million or something like that. Definitely has potential to grow in multiple ways. A lot of technologies that goes in there for sustainable fish farming. We are looking at gas liquid pumps from organic development.
We also have done turbines to recover part of the energy that goes into the sea lift water pumps. So there are actually adjacencies based on pumping technology, all of them. That is, you know, probably not changing the structure of the business in five years, but important organic growth initiative over the long term.
Okay, very well. Thank you very much.
Now, that was actually the last question on the line. I would like to thank you all for participating today. We hope you appreciated it. We certainly did. Now, next year we aim to host a physical CMD, which we hope to see you all at. With that, we wish you a great rest of the day. Thank you very much.