Welcome to Bulten's Capital Markets Day 2022. My name is Ulrika Hultgren, and I'm in charge of corporate communications and investor relations here at Bulten. When we planned for our Capital Markets Day this year, we didn't know that the restrictions would be lifted by now, so we decided to stick with a virtual event this year. Anyway, we hope that you will find today's session and presentation interesting. Next time we have a Capital Markets Day, we hope that we will be able to meet you in person. The agenda for the following is like this. We will start with a presentation given by Anders Nyström, Bulten's President and CEO, and he will give an overview of how Bulten will continue to reach a sustainable growth over the coming years.
Thereafter, we will hear from Markus Baum, Bulten's Chief Commercial Officer, and he will talk about how he and his team are working, what they will focus on in order to meet the Bulten strategy and the set targets. Emmy Pavlovic, SVP Technology and Innovation, will explain how she and her team is working to develop tomorrow's fasteners in order to stay a leader in our business. Our Chief Operating Officer, Fredrik Bäckström, will then go into how manufacturing will support the overall Bulten strategy. Also, we'll hear from Claes Lindroth, SVP Purchasing and Quality, and he will explain how Bulten is working in order to keep having a strong supply chain, even in a more challenging environment. At the end, we will also get a financial overview presented by our CFO, Anna Åkerblad.
Then we will end with a short summary given by our President and CEO, and then we will open up for a Q&A session. We will soon begin, but before doing so, I just would like to encourage you to send in your questions. Even if we don't have you here in the studio today, we really would like to take the opportunity to answer as many questions as possible. You find a form on your screen, if you scroll down to the end of your screen, where you can type in your questions and submit them, and then we will see them here in the studio. We will answer questions throughout the entire session as well as in the end. Having said this, I now would like to hand over to Bulten's President and CEO, Anders Nyström.
Thank you, Ulrika. My name's Anders Nyström. I'm the President and CEO of Bulten. I have the honor and pleasure to lead this great company, which is turning 149 years this year, and to pave its way into the future. A future which is guided by the vision that we create and supply the most innovative and sustainable fastening solutions. Today, we will lay out to you the strategy for fulfilling that vision and delivering ever-improving returns to our shareholders. As most of you know, Bulten is uniquely positioned as a global manufacturer of fasteners. We manufacture locally in all our major markets. Typically, fastener suppliers in the world are either small local manufacturers or regional to global distributors with little or no in-house manufacturing. In Bulten, we actually cover all of that.
Last year, we grew by almost 17%, while our main markets were basically flat. We delivered an operating margin of 6.2%, which we weren't happy with. However, we need to recognize that the rapid and unprecedented cost increases for raw materials and other cost elements were extreme in the year of 2021. So under the surface of this, there are some really heroic efforts made by the global team around the world. In the financial targets that we set and presented in our last Capital Markets Day, almost to the day 2 years ago now, we aimed for a CAGR of more than 10%. We made that announcement a few weeks away from COVID shutting down the whole civilized world, basically. Quite honestly, we didn't know that at that time.
Over these two years, we've actually delivered on that despite that headwind. I think that if you look at the last two years, you can clearly see that we've consistently outperformed the market in terms of sales. We also said that we'll reach a steady 8% EBIT by 2024. Since then, the vehicle industry has had basically two quarters of normality, with no restriction from either COVID or semiconductor shortages or ships stuck in the Suez Canal for that matter, or any of those factors. In those two quarters, we actually reached that level of profitability.
It is very much within reach in the strategy period. 2021 was a year of records for Bulten, and we also did set a record for new contract wins of SEK 775 million per annum at full pace, gradually being rolled out over the next two years, and a fantastic achievement by our enhanced sales organization under the management of Markus Baum, who you will listen to in a few minutes. What's even more important with that is that when Markus started and took over as head of sales, he wasn't just given a number, but also challenged with some strategic flavor to the business win target as well. We said that we should win a new FSP customer, somebody that didn't subscribe to the idea of FSP before.
We should also win a major electric vehicle program because we want to secure our share in that growing portion of the market, and we should get significant wins outside of the vehicle industry. All those three priorities were achieved. On this slide, you can see an example of the wins that we recorded last year and those that we actually published. As I said, our growth trajectory has been, and still is, in line with our last published financial targets, despite the depressed car market. We've decided not to revise our financial targets, but to stay determined to deliver on what we already communicated. But of course, we also see continued growth even after 2024. That goes without saying. The primary customer group for Bulten is, and will continue to be, light vehicle OEMs.
There are numerous good reasons, however, for us to diversify that customer portfolio, and recently we have done that successfully. From zero, we have grown our non-automotive customers to just under 10% as we speak, and this is a fast-growing sector for us, the fastest-growing. Markus will explain a bit more about how and who, but this is one of our top priorities. Also, we still have our center of gravity very much in Europe. Europe will continue to be our biggest market for a long time, but with the acquisition of PSM being a real door opener for us, we are now also growing organically and rapidly in Southeast Asia.
Now, we also have to fix North America. We're too small in the North American market, and climbing up that ladder and gain critical mass only through organic growth is going to be too slow. That's why we've decided that we need to acquire scale to give ourselves the boost to become relevant and competitive in that market. We're actively looking for target companies for acquisition in North America. Being determined to be the most innovative also means working hard on innovation. The last time we held our Capital Markets Day, we were just starting to accelerate these efforts.
We unveiled then our new sustainable product family called BUFOe. Since then, BUFOe has been further developed, and that new sustainable product offer is winning us new business. We've filled the innovation pipeline with many more exciting products which we will present in due time, and I'm really excited about the opportunities we see in bringing unique new products to market. The acceleration comes much thanks to building a very dedicated team under the leadership of Emmy Pavlovic, who will tell you more about that shortly as well.
In summary, the strategic building blocks to reach our targets are still very much valid. We have added a few elements to that which are somewhat new to you. The first one being that we're actively pursuing acquisitions in North America, and that we are actively pursuing growth outside of the vehicle industry, and also stepping up our efforts when it comes to innovating and to offer even more premium sustainable solutions to our customers. With that, I will hand over to Markus.
Thank you very much, Anders. My name is Markus Baum, and I'm proud to be the Chief Commercial Officer of the Bulten Group. I'm 43 years old and based in Germany, and for nearly one and a half years now within the company. Today, I would like to give you an overview about a strong sustainable offer we offer to the market, and I have prepared this presentation into two major sections. First of all, I want to dive into the market trends we see from a global perspective, but also automotive trends in particular. In the second part of my presentation, I would like to give an answer to the question, how we as a company act in this competitive market field and what our customer strategy is going forward.
Let's start with the market section of the presentation. There's global trends in the market which most of us are aware, and we picked out three examples here to dive a little bit deeper in. First of all, digitalization. The world gets connected, and we see that in our business lives but also in our private lives. New business models are rising, especially when artificial intelligence comes into play. Secondly, sustainability is really key for a lot of companies and organizations. The understanding is really a key driver for the success of the future. We see that, for instance, in stricter regulations when we talk about emissions going forward. Another trend I would briefly dive into is urbanization. We see more and more people living in mega cities and a growing number of those all around the world.
This obviously has a big impact on mobility. New ways of transportation are entering the market. Things like car sharing, autonomous driving or total new types of vehicles will enter the market. What you see here already is that it's difficult to have a look into these trends isolated. They are really connected. If you are having new customers for urban transportation vehicles, those vehicles will obviously be very sustainable and of course, they will be very much connected and maybe also drive autonomous with artificial intelligence. You need to see those trends really connected and not isolated. From these more global mega trends, going one step deeper into the automotive industry, we picked out a couple of trends here on the automotive side, which we would like to talk about now. First of all, CO₂ neutral mobility.
We see currently various different technologies all striving for the target to be CO₂ neutral when it comes to mobility. This can be battery-powered electric vehicles, this can be hydrogen fuel cells or biofuels or e-fuels. Key is that new investments and technologies are rising, and we really see the automotive industry developing rapidly. We think, and that's not only us, that the development in the next 20 years will be faster than for sure the development that has been in the industry in the last 20 years and maybe even within the last 50 years. For us to stay ahead in the game, this means we need to have new applications, new products, new materials, new processes and new customers and partnerships are rising going forward. We need to offer special products for this CO₂ neutral mobility.
Now, another thing we would like to elaborate a little bit further is platforms. The platform itself is not really new in the automotive industry. However, what we see right now, and that's a bit the challenge, the OEMs can't take just the platform from the past and translate it into the future. That means new skateboard type of platforms are rising and are in development phases everywhere around the world. Due to the fact that volumes of new cars might be low, there is also a trend of sharing those platforms among OEMs.
It's not only among OEMs, we also see an increasing amount of suppliers, Tier 1 suppliers, that are developing those platforms as well and sharing them. These are suppliers within the automotive industries, but also players from outside the automotive industries are developing these platforms currently. For us, that's great news because at the end of the day, it's a fantastic extended market potential and customer base and new players within that ecosystem of the automotive world. Now, again, going a little bit deeper in this, we believe that there is a growing number of new players in the automotive industry, and that's OEMs and suppliers.
On the right side of the chart, you see a few of the names which were maybe 5 or 10 years ago really new for most of us. New things like car sharing, autonomous driving, generate really new customer needs, which we have to reflect in our business. We also see an increasing number of collaborations amongst the players. With that, the decision-making power from the OEM is also shifting to suppliers or also to networks. As the collaborations between OEMs and Tier 1s are basically generating networks and collaboration networks, you will see more networks competing in the future rather than only single companies.
Again, for us, this is a fantastic opportunity because a lot of new opportunities arise right now and on the horizon, and all of these need fasteners. Now, I would like to move to the second part of the presentation and give an answer to the question, if we want to further outperform the market like we have done in the last years, which customer strategy do we adapt going forward? I have structured this answer to this complex question into four categories. First of all, I would like to dive a little bit into the customer section. Which customers are we focusing on going forward, and what are the players we look for?
Secondly, products and services. Number 3 is operations and regions. Last but not least, an answer to the question if there's also a different way of working within this changing landscape. Let's start with the customer first. Here you see an overview of our targeted customer approach right now and going forward. First of all, as Anders said, the automotive industry is where our home base is and where we are focusing on, of course. When you see within the automotive industry and starting with the OEMs, we are very strong in a couple of OEMs, but we still have potential to grow at OEMs where we are underrepresented today. Secondly, there's new OEMs coming up on the market, which is offering an opportunity for us to grow as well.
We will keep on focusing our existing customers, but also develop new OEMs. When you look, and we have put it here on the screen, this automotive pyramid. When you look into this, you see that only 30% of the whole value chain of the automotive industry is basically with an OEM. The vast majority of the value comes from Tier 2s, Tier 1s, Tier 3s, so from the supplier side of the business. Maybe in the last years, we haven't focused on these potential customers so strong, but we are definitely going to do that right now, and we do. Automotive supplier is a strategic growth area for us within our business going forward. This is the automotive section. Now, if you talk about adjacent industries to automotive and new industries, we will focus on that as well.
Those are industries like consumer electronics, agricultural, recreational vehicles, wind power, household applications, and many more. As some of you have maybe followed our press releases, we were already very successful in 2021 and already 2022 with business wins in these businesses outside the automotive industry. From a regional perspective, we will of course increase our market share further in Asia-Pacific and as Anders said, especially in the North American region. Now, with that, we strive for a more balanced customer portfolio.
I think it's important for every company in the world to have a balanced customer portfolio. When you look here on this chart in the blue section of the pie, it is the automotive section. Within the automotive section, we will keep on our existing customers, develop new OEMs, but especially also outperform with growth on the supplier side. We will really maximize that growth.
On the adjacent industries, business outside the automotive, we will increase our share of wallet from 5% in 2020 to about 20% in 2025. That means that there's an exponential growth happening in these areas, which we do with customers like electronics, agriculture, and adjacent to automotive. Now, leaving the customer side a little bit and asking the questions, which products and services are we offering to our customers? Starting with the products. We have really a fantastic product portfolio within Bulten. We are a large manufacturer of those products and have a strong sourcing know-how as well. We will further broaden this strong product portfolio with new sustainable products and services going forward. I don't wanna steal the thunder from Emmy.
She will elaborate on these products as well, but I can say we will further leverage, of course, our BUFOe offer. When you think a little bit back at the beginning of the presentation, new customers arise with different needs in the markets. For us, it's hence very important to stay very close to the customer, listen to their needs, and offer the right technical service and value proposition to those customers. That's why we will strengthen our technical sales teams going further and have an increased focus on development phases and being with the customers at an early phase when they develop new applications and new platforms. The whole EV ecosystem is very important for us with tailored products and services, as I said earlier before.
As the next 20 years will be very fast and new players are very fast, they challenge us, and we need to take that challenge and be a response leader and be very agile in all what we do across the company. Now, leaving the product side a little bit and talking about services. Most of you may know our FSP, but for those who don't know, it's full service provision, and it's basically a one-stop partner for all the fasteners in the value chain. What we do is we add value addressing every step of a fastener's life, whether that is from the early engineering or until line feeding and logistics. I'm proud to say that we are the number one in FSP in Europe, and we offer tremendous value add to our customers.
Of course, we are also happy that we see that success with new business wins with major FSPs in 2021 and 2022 as well. On engineering, for instance, we optimize the usage of fasteners, we standardize them across applications, and thanks to our nearly 150 years, we can also produce what we say, and that's a big difference in the competitive environment. Sourcing, our colleagues and Claes will tell about that more later on. We can offer with our sourcing competence a wide range of fasteners and more. Of course, we offer seamless logistics to our customers with that as well. Being the number one in FSP in Europe is basically nice, but we don't wanna stop here. We wanna make the next step. We wanna stay ahead in competition.
That's why I'm happy to say that today we open the next milestone in FSP, and from now on, we will offer a new service to the market and add superior sustainability to the FSP concept, and we call this FSPS. What does FSPS mean and what's the difference to the existing FSP concept we have? What we do, and we do that very close together with our customer, we address every element of the value chain again, but this time from a sustainability point of view. Together with the customer, we commit and agree to joint objectives in terms of sustainability for specific programs of a customer. We align activities together and align objectives together, and we commit to this. This is really a game changer in the industry.
An example is maybe the reduction of plastics in the usage and of course, the implementation of our BUFOe products. I'm very proud to say that in one example, we were able, from an existing base with our FSP initiative, we believe that we can reduce the carbon footprint by more than 50 percentage points. From my experience with the customer side, I can tell you that this is a very impressive number and the customers are very interested in that. Now, leaving FSP a little bit and talking about the regional balance. It's not only important for us to balance our customer footprint within the customers, but also from a regional perspective. We will, of course, keep our momentum in Europe and also in Asia-Pacific.
Within Asia-Pacific, as you can see here on the chart, we have made a good step, and we increased our share of wallet within Asia-Pacific. In Europe, we will further act and also enhance our sales activities, and especially in Germany, where we are still underrepresented at this point in time. The key milestone, as Anders said, is to break ground in North America with our own activities and our own operation, but also with merger acquisitions going forward. Now, last but not least, the fourth section of my deep dive here is the way of working.
We have done a very good job on the integration of PSM, and I'm happy to say that we got a lot of business wins in the last year and already also this year, which we would not have done without this partnership. Both companies joining together had these leverage effects. We have in the meantime one sales team and people are representing Bulten products and PSM parts in one person, and that's really fantastic. We will keep on using that leverage and that integrated sales team and having more synergies thanks to that acquisition, opening doors at customers that we would not have done before.
Now, secondly, when you look back into the trends of the beginning of my presentation, there is a lot of activity going on with new platforms and applications and different customer needs with new customers and potential customers. That's why it's important for me and us to stay very close to the customer and listen to their needs, because their needs are very different, maybe from classical customers. That means we have to strengthen our technical sales and application engineering activities to explore those opportunities and be there with a technical consultancy to differentiate in competition.
All of that needs to be very agile. The industry is changing rapidly and being fast, a response time leader and having an agile sales team, but an agile team in total, is really important for us going forward in the way of working. Now, with these activities, we commit to further outgrow the market, and we will achieve net sales of SEK 5 billion in 2024, which means nothing else than we will have an average annual growth rate with more than 10 percentage points every year, despite the challenging market conditions.
Now, I'm already at my summary. The automotive industry is in a radical change and undergoing an enormous transformation. We as Bulten are well-positioned, and we will outperform the general market growth as we have done in the past, also despite the challenging market conditions. Our existing customer portfolio will be really balanced going forward. We will develop new OEMs, we will develop new Tier 1s and business outside the automotive industry as well. From a regional perspective, we will focus on Asia-Pacific, of course, keep the momentum in Europe and have a very strong special focus on North America.
With the FSP, where we are the market leader today, I hope that we make a new chapter with FSP and the initial feedback we have from the customers is very promising, and with that, we will generate more needs on FSP. I'm happy to say that we already have the first collaboration with a customer on FSP S, and that is Ford. Focusing on the green line product BUFOe, I don't wanna steal the thunder of later presentations. You will learn about that more, and we believe we are very well-positioned for these exciting market challenges.
Thank you very much, Markus and Anders, who we'll have on stage here as well. We have a couple of questions for you. Anders, and both Anders and Markus, you mentioned that you want to grow into new businesses. Could you be a little bit more specific about which ones you want to enter into? Anders, could you answer that maybe?
Yeah, Markus, mentioned a few of those, and we already successfully growing in consumer electronics, which in itself is a very growing market, so it's very interesting for us. The other group we think we're very well-positioned in is the types of customers that have very similar types of requirements to the automotive industry, and that could be, you know, construction equipment, it can be agricultural machines, recreational vehicles for instance. There's a multitude of other sectors where we can grow successfully.
Anders, you or Markus said that you want to grow from 5% to 20% in industries outside automotive, in only a couple of years, but do you think that Bulten has the capacity to do so?
Absolutely. You know, manufacturing capacity is not an issue for us. That's not gonna be a limiting factor.
Markus, do you see a decline in sales of fasteners within automotive long term due to the new drivelines and platforms and so on? I mean, are there less fasteners in an electric vehicle?
Yeah.
Probably not the first time you get that question.
Yeah, thank you very much for that question. I would say we have a lot of opportunities because you don't need to just look into the car itself. Of course, the engine goes away, but there's another engine entering the vehicle, and batteries and EDUs with fasteners needs. If you consider then the whole ecosystem of the automotive industry, then I believe that there's more opportunities going forward than we see today.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
The last question for you, Markus, before we continue, what do you do to hold and increase your margins?
Yeah, first of all, I don't want to steal the thunder from the next presentation.
Mm-hmm
on technology and innovation. Of course, launching innovation is a natural opportunity to increase the margin position, whereas also winning new business in general is an opportunity because it's always important to refresh the product portfolio you have. Sometimes our products have very long lifetime.
Mm-hmm.
It's good to bring in fresh business with fresh margin, and with the record we had last year, I think we are in a good way. There's many more opportunities and things we can do. I think with FSPs, there's another one which will give some more opportunities. In case there's cost needs, like on raw material, we also have to address that to the customer, of course.
Thank you very much, both Markus and Anders. You will come back in later on and answer more questions, so please send in your questions if you have any. We will soon hand over to Emmy Pavlovic, but before doing so, we will watch a short movie.
At Bulten, we do bolts. At a glance, one might think that this industry has an insignificant impact on climate change. In the bigger picture, that may stand true, but to stay ahead of the curve, everyone and even the tiniest thing can make a difference. Even a bolt. A single bolt may not have a big carbon footprint, but considering that there are thousands of them in an average car, it adds up. If we could help the vehicle industry to lower their annual emissions by as little as 0.5%, we would reduce CO2 equivalent to what a forest twice the size of Shanghai can process in one year. To achieve this, one has to look at the whole production process, starting with the design. With over a century's worth of knowledge, our design team can ensure strength, resilience, and reliability for any application.
The process is complex, but here's a quick rundown. We always strive to increase the amount of recycled scrap used in our bolts. The beauty of steel is that it can be melted and repurposed indefinitely. In our factories, we cut up the steel. We cold forge it, heat treat it, coat it, pack it, deliver it, leaving you with a quality product every single time. When breaking down the process to its different stages, we can clearly see the climate culprits. The heat treatment accounts for a third of the production's carbon footprint, and looking at energy consumption alone, the difference is staggering. We've worked hard to optimize our products for eco-efficiency, and as a result, we're proud to introduce our latest product line, the BUFOe.
Thanks to its material properties and our eco forging process, our carbon footprint is 30% less compared to the production of a conventional bolt. Eco forging uses advanced steel that reacts to cold forming in such a way that heat treatment becomes redundant. By eliminating that step, we get an eco-efficient bolt designed to meet your requirements. As a full service provider, we can tailor the production to fit your every need and do so with true eco-efficiency. Are you ready to get a difference in every detail? Get in touch, and we'll help you make the change to our eco-efficient BUFOe product line.
Good afternoon. My name is Emmy Pavlovic, and I'm responsible for technology and innovation. I've been with the Bulten Group for just over one year, and today, I have the pleasure of telling you about our ongoing product and technology developments. During the previous capital market days, BUFOe was introduced to you as the main highlight from technology and innovation. This project is still one of our lead projects, but very much more have happened since then. In the past two years, Bulten have invested significantly into technology and innovation. We have opened a new innovation department in Poland, where we have a team of engineers focusing on design and rapid prototyping. In addition to this, we have ramped up innovation activities in our German plant, where we are developing simulation for the Bulten Group.
All in all, Bulten have increased the innovation capacity, and with this innovation capacity, we are of course ramping up our development activities. Let's dive into our product development. The diagram you recognize from Anders' presentation, it shows the focus of our product development. Any product we decide to develop needs to increase the sustainability offering to our customers or the functionality offering to our customers. Preferably, a combination of both, of course. I will now talk you through a couple of the larger projects we have running, and I will of course start with BUFOe. As the video showed, BUFOe is a method for how to produce a fastener without heat treatment.
By removing the heat treatment step, we are removing the most energy-intensive step in our own production, and this is the sustainability gain when you make a BUFOe product. At first glance, it is a conversion of existing fasteners, existing designs into a BUFOe version, and thereby reducing the carbon dioxide footprint of the fastener itself. This is indeed the first step that we are doing. This conversion is ongoing now together with our larger customers, and, well, much more is to happen. I want to highlight the fact that our intention with BUFOe is not to stop at a simple conversion from one product design into the very same bolt. We intend to place BUFOe in the middle of this diagram and offer our customers a more sustainable product, but also a far more functional product.
The BUFOe production concept will allow us to do this because when we produce a bolt like this, we steer where to put the properties in the bolt, and that also allows us to design the bolt in a new way. We are aiming to redefine how a fastener look even. BUFOe is a journey, and you will have highlights to come for a long time in the future. However, on the note of sustainability, we of course have more projects running, and for my team, it means a high focus on our raw materials. Steel is, as you know, a raw material with a high carbon dioxide footprint, and my team is looking into how we can reduce this.
We are, of course, following the fossil-free steel developments carefully and closely, but we are also fully aware that this production method of making steel will not be made available for the raw materials we use in our products, the bar and the rods. In the meantime, we need to do everything we can to reduce the carbon footprints of the steels that we do use. This we are addressing by looking into how to increase the scrap content in the steels we are using, as well as how to reduce the energy-intensive steps of making the wire itself. Making these process changes to a steel alters the way the steel behaves, so it is about building a knowledge for how to produce fasteners in a good way with such steels. This is not enough.
We are also looking into fully renewable raw materials suitable for cold forging for the future, so we have pre-studies and concept studies running on this topic. Now, before I will leave the product development, I want to also take the opportunity to introduce a project that focuses fully on functionality, and this is our TensionCam project. TensionCam is a small local startup in Gothenburg, where Bulten bought a stake in 2020. It is a small company that has developed a sensorized solution for how to measure clamp force, and clamp force can be described simply as how well a bolt is tightened when it's used in an application. The technology developed is fully wireless and remote, so it allows you to measure and follow the clamp force in an assembled bolt from any office in the world.
We are targeting large structures and applications such as windmills, bridges, where you are today sending out maintenance team to retighten bolts on a yearly or a bi-yearly basis, simply to make sure nothing is coming loose. TensionCam would instead offer these customers to remotely follow the clamp force in their structure and to measure the assembly health of their technology. By this, being able to plan when to do maintenance and only do it when needed. Also in case you would have significant clamp force loss at any point, you can also take the decision to shut down a construction before you have a catastrophic failure. That gives you a glance of our product development portfolio, and this portfolio is, of course, key for us to stay leading in our industry.
I dare to say that having a strong product offer is not enough for the future. As Markus points out, the automotive industry today is changing faster than ever before, and we also have new players coming into this market. Overall, it means that the expectation on us is to deliver our products faster than ever before. We need to also take into consideration the aspect of becoming rapid response time leader in order to stay ahead in the market. This is a challenge for the cold forging industry because historically it has been a long lead time industry due to the tooling we are using when we are producing fasteners.
A traditional way of launching a new product would be to study your new product, design the tool based on experience from something similar that you do, to order new tools, wait for 8 weeks. Once the tool arrive, you go to the machine and you test. For complicated product, it can happen that the raw material doesn't behave the way you thought when you designed your tool, and you have to modify. Such modification, you go back to your desk, redesign your tools, and once again have to wait 8 weeks for a new tool to arrive. This is, of course, unacceptable today. We want to break this habit of trial and error design approach, as well as breaking the lead times of 8 weeks. For this purpose, we are developing two technologies. The first one is simulation.
We have, during the past year, done a deep dive into cold forging simulation and exploring how we can design tools where we are testing the tools virtually instead of trial and error at the machine. Simulation allows us to test different tool concepts as well as adjusting tools, and to do this in hours or days instead of sets of eight weeks, so it's a key enabler to speed. In addition to this, we don't want to wait eight weeks for a critical tool, so we have already invested and developed 3D printing of metals in our innovation center in Poland. Here the team is now developing our capacity and capabilities of 3D printing and preparing tools for cold forging in-house.
By combining both simulation and 3D-printed tool, this is really how we aim to disrupt the long lead times of our industry, and that will be key for us to stay leading. With that, I go into a short summary before I hand over. All in all, Bulten have increased innovation capacity in the last years. We are developing products with a focus on sustainability and functionality. I want to highlight again, BUFOe is not a product, it's a family, and we are redefining how fasteners look and how they behave. Last but not least, speed is the key differentiator that will set us apart from our competition. With that, I hand it over to Fredrik Bäckström. Thank you.
Thank you, Emmy. My name is Fredrik Bäckström. I am the Chief Operating Officer of Bulten. I've been with the company for two years now. Bulten has a truly global footprint manufacturing in all the major automotive regions. Our strategy to produce where we sell enable us to de-risk our supply chain as well as minimizing the logistic costs. In a regional disturbance like we are seeing now in the world, it also gives us the ability to contain this to the region. We produce in the region for the region. Our FSP contracts, then they enable us to maximize the utilization of our most expensive assets by flexing the mix from in-house production and outsourcing, and this is leading to effective CapEx usage and increased margins.
We can go cherry-picking in the outsourced segments and finding the sweet spots for our own production and delivering that to the customers. This gives lower cost for the customers as well as increased margins for Bulten. The pandemic and the following shortage of semiconductors have of course been a major operational concern for us since the last capital market day, just before the pandemic outbreak. We have handled these disruptions without adverse effect for our customers. Despite the turmoils, we have done significant improvements in this period. A new value chain management process has improved lead times by 20% and reduced our logistic cost, helping us in this disruptive environment.
Insourcing, as shown in previous slides, of SEK 300 million, has led to increased equipment utilization and increased margins. Our journey towards lower carbon footprint continues at all sites. I'm happy to say that the CO2 emissions intensity has been reduced by an impressive 54% since 2018. To further support our regional growth strategy, during 2020 and 2021, we have increased our manufacturing footprint in our targeted growth region, Asia and the U.S. In Taipei, we relocated to a modern facility, and with that, we have the possibility to in-source production with higher margin. The facility is also superior to the old plant from a sustainability perspective. In Wuxi, in China, we expanded the existing lease with an additional 30%, allowing us to expand our business outside the automotive sector.
The additional space is mainly used for the consumer electronics manufacturing. In the U.S., we have consolidated our two legacy sites into one brand-new facility, so combining both the legacy Bulten and the PSM going into a joint facility with sufficient space to support our growth ambitions in the U.S. market. I'd like to add that all the investments for that are already in the book, so taken care of. The project of building a new surface treatment plant in Poland was announced at the last Capital Market Days with fanfare and trumpets. However, the pandemic caused us to cancel the project, and it was put on hold. I'm happy to say that it's now restarted and well underway again. This will most likely be the world's most sustainable surface treatment plant.
It will contain all sub-processing after heat treatment, including all major types of coating supplied to customers, both electrolytic and flake. We will also co-locate our Polish logistic operation into the same building for further cost savings. The plot has also room for further expansions in the European market with other types of manufacturing capabilities, like for instance, cold forging. What will this give us then? It's a large undertaking and the largest project ever undertaken by Bulten. We see several business improvements to be gained from the project. Improved margins due to insourcing and state-of-the-art processes. This will be the most modern surface treatment factory in the world. We will have shorter lead times and lower inventory due to the proximity.
Lower CO2 emissions due to shorter transportation routes, and the fact that we will be using 100% renewable energy. In-house control of product quality, which is always a key factor in the automotive industry. Markus talked a lot about our sustainability efforts, our FSP S, and this comes, of course, with a effort from our side in order to support that business growth. To show a few examples of what we've done so far is that we have now renewable electricity in all our U.S. and EU plants. We have new state-of-the-art solvent-free cleaning processes in Taipei, and this eliminate solvent emissions.
Our new German warehouse, which is currently under construction, will have a roof with solar panels, and it will be then energy neutral, which is a very big step forward for us in our building constructions. Our new Polish plant is planned for solar panels, and we have an additional space in the plot for additional solar farm or wind turbines. Of course, what Emmy already showed, our industrialization of the BUFOe in our plants will give a significant saving of CO₂ emissions and cost savings due to energy expansion. With surging energy costs, this is a key enabler to retain margins in this challenging environment. When we are looking at manufacturing focus ahead, we will support the business growth plan and our overall strategy of course.
Our Industry 4.0 efforts will continue with increased machine data capturing as well as factory automation, simulation, 3D printing. The new products we are introducing into the market will require new types of manufacturing capabilities, like nuts or special types of coatings for EV applications, for instance. We'll continue to develop our manufacturing footprint in our targeted growth regions in the U.S. and Asia. The integration of Bulten and PSM will continue to gain further synergies. The early stages of the integration yielded the low-hanging fruits of economies of scale of material sourcing, for instance.
Now we have some nice business wins where we are combining the technologies from PSM and Bulten into new product offerings, and we would like to strengthen that type of capabilities. As the backbone in every automotive industry, our continuous improvement work is really important. The operational excellence work will be strengthened and enhanced. That's what the future for Bulten's manufacturing look like. With that, I'd like to thank you for your attention and handing over to Claes Lindroth.
Thank you very much, Fredrik. Good afternoon. Next on the agenda is an introduction to Bulten supply chain. My name is Claes Lindroth, and I have been with Bulten now four and a half years. My team is responsible for make sure that we ensure supply of material and services in right time to the right cost in the right quality for our customers, but also for our production units. We operate on a global basis, and our total purchasing value is roughly SEK 2 billion per year. Last two years was a real pressure test on our ability to manage our task, and I'm sure that you will all recognize most of the disruptions that we had to deal with during this period. Starting with Brexit and with U.K., one of our biggest markets, that was a challenge.
There were also increased political and financial protectionism, and then came the COVID-19. That had also some consequential effects like border closure, sea freight turmoil. We had container shortage, and on top of that, we also had a blocked Suez Canal. Came a rapid restart after the first COVID wave that was also giving us a lot of challenges. I'm thinking about raw material shortage and price peaks. Also, the lack of components came with that, and most famous is probably the semiconductors that were hitting our industry quite hard. All this, plus the normal incidents like floodings and fires we had to deal with in this period.
I think we sailed through the storm, and I'm quite happy and proud to say that we managed quite well to keep our customers happy with a continuous supply during this period. There were some critical success factors that I want to mention. The first one was that we managed to be quite early in identifying the risks coming and act direct and, if possible, before our competitors. Secondly, also, the strong and long-lasting relations with our suppliers that really was crucial to give Bulten the priority needed when we had critical situations. It's not over yet, and we have learned a lot during this period about where we have opportunities for further improvements. Our priority and focus has now shifted as we enter the next chapter of our strategy.
This picture in the middle, the scale, is trying to illustrate the balance we have between risk and reward with remote sourcing. Historically, it has been a good business for Bulten to source from remote locations like Taiwan, mainly driven by a competitive cost structure. Even though we were aware of the risks with long lead time, lower flexibility, transport potential issues, increased inventory, it has been good in the past. After the last period here, we have seen and claimed that it's a shift on the scale on more to the negative side. That has led to that we now take a number of activities to change approach and reduce the risk in the supply chain further.
Overall, Bulten has a very strong position on a global scale, not being too dependent on interruptions related to long-distance transports. Looking at the world map, I would claim that we are better off than most of our competitors in this area. If you look on the slide here, the middle pie shows that of our total sales, we have roughly 60% in-house production and 40% traded goods. Out of the in-house production, it's only 5% that is originating from overseas production units. That's a very low number. Also, looking at the traded goods, there we have about 18% originating from overseas production.
This is now something that we attack and try to reduce further. Examples of these activities are insourcing to own production that also gives the advantage to better utilize our existing production capacity. We also expand, invest in, machining and equipment to broaden our in-house production capability to bring in more type of products. On the supplier side, we expand business with regional suppliers, including also entering new strategic partnerships with selected suppliers. Then we expand with more licenses to be able to produce more products, the protected kind of products. Okay. Another key focus area is to reduce the CO2 footprint from the supply chain. Referred to as our Scope 3, we have calculated the CO2 emission intensity out of the supply chain to 3.3 tons CO2 per ton delivered material.
This includes raw materials, subcontracting, transport, and some traded components. This we will reduce with 25% until 2030. Mainly this will be done by converting our wire rod steel material from iron ore based into scrap based steel. This is an effort that we will have to do in close cooperation between our engineering community and our wire rod steel supplier. We believe, and are convinced, that we can have a larger product range, including products with a more complicated forging geometries, also to be made by scrap based material that will significantly reduce the CO₂ footprint. We also reduce the CO₂ emission footprint by continuing the insourcing while we have, within Bulten, a lower CO₂ emission footprint for producing fasteners compared to our component suppliers. I come to the summary.
I think we have managed to serve our customers well during challenging times, and this we will continue to do. Regional supply is the key for de-risking the supply chain going forward. Our global footprint enables us to successfully balance the regional versus global supply. To reach our sustainability goals, focus on the supply chain is needed as purchased goods accounts for most of our CO2 emissions. Our target is to lower the CO2 emissions intensity by 25% until 2030, primarily by converting more material from iron-ore-based into scrap-based. I think that concludes my presentation. Thank you for listening.
Thank you, Claes, and we have a couple of questions here for you, Emmy, and Fredrik.
Mm.
Emmy, you mentioned TensionCam. Is the plan that Bulten will sell TensionCam's products or services, or how does the business model look like?
Yeah. We are currently discussing several possible business model, but for now, our main focus will be on verifying and validating the technology and to running the field test and pilots we have out, outdoors at the moment to make sure that the technology is secured.
Fredrik, you have insourced some of your previous purchased products. Is the plan to continue this journey?
Yes, absolutely. Like I said, the FSP is giving us a unique opportunity to find exactly the right products where we have spare capacity, and can further increase the utilization of our existing CapEx. Yes, that will continue.
Claes, do you hedge any of your purchases, for example, steel?
No, currently we are not doing that directly. However, we are constantly looking over, let's call it the indirect hedging, by making sure that we have a good balance between currencies to purchase value and sales values in the same currencies as much as possible.
Thank you very much. I think we have a couple of more questions for you, but we'll take them later on.
Mm.
Next up will be Bulten's CFO, Anna Åkerblad.
My name is Anna Åkerblad. I joined Bulten as CFO in March last year, and we do have a strong financial platform and a position to support further growth. We showed a strong performance in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021, and have applied strict cost and cash flow control. Bulten has continued distribution of dividends and invested in growth and efficiency. We have secured additional financing with solid equity asset ratio. Bulten will become a SEK 5 billion company in 2024, as already stated at our last Capital Markets Day 2 years ago. We stick with this target even though we have been through the pandemic and other disruptions. With SEK 3.7 billion in net sales today, we will continue to grow sustainably both organically and through acquisitions, and we are becoming a truly global company.
We will continue the journey to exceed sustainable 8% in EBIT margin through technology and operational excellence, and strengthen position in Asia Pacific and North America, as well as benefit from acquisition synergies. Margin expansion will, of course, support return on capital employed and to reach our target of 15%. In addition, we will continue our focus on net working capital structure and distribution of dividends. Bulten has a dividend policy to distribute at least one-third of net earnings after tax, taking into consideration the company's financial position.
We have a historical high outcome, and 2021 dividend is proposed by the board in accordance with the policy at SEK 2.25 per share. Bulten recently secured additional financing with Handelsbanken in December. The financing was increased with SEK 550 million, and now amounts to SEK 1.3 billion. This enables further growth and expansion in accordance with our strategy. Now, I will hand over to Anders Nyström again.
Thank you, Anna. Just to round off and summarize, I hope that these 90 minutes or so have given you a good perception of where we're taking Bulten in the next few years. We reiterated that we stand by our targets that we've already communicated, but that we have a number of new tools in the box for us in order to deliver that. Those are, among other things, what you've seen today. You got a flavor of a lot of detail really from the various management of the company. But above all, the new elements that we're adding is we're pursuing inorganic growth by acquisition in North America, along with the organic growth that we're already embarked on.
that we are actively also seeking new customers outside of the vehicle industry, and that we're further stepping up our charge when it comes to innovation, technology, and to provide premium, sustainable products and services to our customers. That will help both ourselves as Bulten to reduce our emissions and our environmental impact, as well as helping our customers become successful in that respect. By that, I think that concludes our presentations, and we can go into Q&A.
Thank you, Anders, and Anna as well. We have a question here for Anna. How will you finance a possible acquisition in the U.S.?
We have already secured additional financing, and if potential extra financing is needed, I'm confident that it will be secured. We have a strong financial platform, and we have a good relationship with our bank.
Anders, is the sales target of reaching SEK 5 billion based on the assumption of a more normalized market condition without the current disruptions?
Well, I think we can see that the market is in a state of recovery. We're counting on that to continue. A normalization of the market is, of course, a prerequisite. You know, we have a lot of geopolitical tension right now in the world, and the impact of that, of course, we cannot model. The answer to that, the short answer is yes.
Thank you. I would like to ask the rest of the team to come up here on stage, and then we will continue a Q&A session, where we have the entire team with all the presenters. We have a question here from one of the analysts, Mats Liss. Maybe Anders, you can answer this. I will read the questions. You mentioned the U.S. expansion. Do you only consider acquisition, or do a greenfield operation be an opportunity as well? FSP contracts are not common in the U.S. Does that limit your opportunities in the U.S.?
Oh, two questions in one. Well, we actually do have a pretty fresh greenfield operation in North America. We're leveraging that in order to boost organic growth as we speak. I think the new element that we're adding to that is the inorganic. I'm expecting the primary growth pace in the next two years to come from an acquisition once we made a deal, since you know, organic alone is really not gonna be quick enough.
Okay, we continue. You have a strong market share in FSP contracts, but they still represent a more limited part of the total market. Will the trends of electrification and entrance of new car producers in the electrification increase the FSP part of total fastener consumption?
I would say yes, because many of the new players that we see in especially in the EV market, they are focusing on completely other parts of the vehicle. I mean, for them, it's battery range, it's you know, developing autonomous drive systems, and that's really where they're focusing their effort. They don't have sort of an inherent mass of engineering competence to spend on fastener-type products and the more simple products in the vehicle. They will be natural next steps for us and we see that tendency for sure. Yes, I'm pretty confident that it will.
Mm-hmm. We continue