Welcome to this webinar hosted by Investor Relations. My name is Line Dovärn, and I am Director of Investor Relations here at Munters. Today, we will be focusing on battery and how Munters plays an important role in the battery production. Throughout the webinar, you can ask questions by using the chat function below, and we will address all questions at the end. Our first speaker today, President and CEO of Munters, Klas Forsström.
Once again, very, very much welcome to this seminar and webinar with our experts and leaders covering the battery segment area. Before we start then into the detail, we are so well-positioned for growth. We started to develop this two years ago, now we start to see the development and the success. In a nutshell, it's a clear strategy for value-creating growth within the battery segment. It is a transformative segment that is growing year after year. Why are we so well-positioned here? It is about our offer. It is about our application knowledge. It is about our service personnel out there. All this jointly makes us very well-positioned for growth.
As you know, all of you, we received quite a few of large orders during 2022, and I will come in a little bit more in details in a few seconds about that. Last but not least, I mean, there is a transformation taking place when it comes to electrical vehicles. It's about carbon dioxide footprint, and here we are really there to support our customer reach their sustainability targets. Before I hand over to Henrik, let me just repeat a little bit about our larger orders last year. We took one, SEK 65 million in Q2. It will be delivered during the Q2 this year until Q3 2024.
Then we took two larger orders also during quarter four, and those will be delivered then from quarter three this year and then moving in all the way to quarter four, 2024. With that, I would like to hand over to Henrik Teiwik for taking the next chapter of this seminar.
Thank you, Klas. We will welcome President of Business Area AirTech, Henrik. Welcome, Henrik.
Thank you, Line. First, let me start off by explaining to you why we are so excited about the battery segment. Our latest forecast show that we believe the battery demand will grow by 20%-25% per year by 2030. This is, of course, a large extent driven by the underlying electrification trend in electric vehicles. We also gradually see this migrating to other applications as well. In addition to this, we also see the supply landscape shifting from Asia to accelerated growth in both EMEA and Americas. If we combine all this, there is a significant requirement for additional CapEx in battery production. This is why we're so excited because in lithium battery production, you need a dry room, and this is where our equipment come into play.
I believe that we are well-positioned for growth, but we also need to continue to invest in our organization, both in our capabilities, in our product offering, and also in our production capacity, which we have done and are doing. We opened our new production facility in Hodonin, Czech Republic last year, and we have announced a number of also investments in Americas and Asia going forward. As Klas was saying, we have, in the past years, announced a number of large orders, so we're going into 2023 with a very healthy backlog. In that backlog, we also have a healthy mix, I would say, of large giga projects as we have announced, but also a number of smaller battery labs that is being sort of icing on the cake.
On the right-hand side, what is also very pleasing to see is that order intake have now also started to translate into our net sales. On the right-hand side, we illustrate our industrial segment of net sales in AirTech, where you see in the past two years that we have significantly expanded our net sales in battery. The battery business in Munters is supported by what we call the Center of Excellence team. The Center of Excellence team is actually a team of dedicated experts and affiliates across our organization, across all regions. These experts are or have a role to both facilitate best practice sharing, but also cover the full suite of our battery business. Everything from application and system design to project management to service and support.
Let us with, video now illustrate a little bit more on how we're approaching battery in Munters.
Large-scale battery manufacturing will help us achieve a more sustainable world. Controlled low dew point moisture levels and stable year-round performance are essential to secure lithium-ion battery manufacturing quality. How can Munters help?
Munters has great experience and applications know-how, which can help clients to develop cost-effective and efficient solutions with a view to saving energy and minimizing emissions.
In essence, we're trying to create a better product for the applications that need our product, which it happens to be lithium batteries is one of them, a lot of pharmaceutical powders. We contribute to that by reducing the amount of non-renewable energy that is used to power our units, 'cause we need electricity or natural gas or steam to make our unit work properly.
The chemical makeup of a battery requires what we consider mission critical environments, which require ultra-low dew point. The Munters technology excels in this area, and that's why Munters is needed to produce lithium batteries.
Making batteries is a very energy intensive process because of all the dry air you need to supply into the production space. It's important that Munters equipment becomes more and more energy efficient as time goes on, so that we can reduce the costs for making the batteries. It will eventually make the batteries cheaper for the consumer, more electric vehicles will be sold, the transformation will happen a lot quicker.
Munters are continuously looking at ways to innovate new products and solutions to help clients improve efficiency, reduce energy consumption and emissions.
Why Munters is Munters today? Because this kind of energy, this kind of talent, this kind of collective knowledge is an absolute asset for any organizations, and I am glad I am part of this organization. This promises us that we are in a right group, and we are working together in this kind of environment. That is reassuring for us, and that is precisely the best time we had with our colleagues who holds a very high industrial knowledge, reciprocates their intention to take this company to the next level, and what else what we want for. Then we will be working together in future makes us more happy.
Customers come to us because we know their applications better than them. When I look back, you know, what was key back then and what is key now, we are always pioneers in the market. We are the leaders, we're the ones that are driving this market. In fact, I think Rob, you said the. We started this lithium battery business 50-plus years ago?
Yeah. Late seventies were the first lithium batteries were made for the military and pacemakers.
We've been doing this. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Yeah.
We started, they needed our equipment back then.
Yeah.
Obviously now the whole market's changed, and it's growing rapidly, and they need our equipment now. We are the technical experts and our customers lean on us. I look at it, you know, what we did back then and what we do today is much the same thing, leading, being leaders and pioneers in our market and assisting our customers to help with their solutions.
Thank you, Henrik. Now joining us from London, we have Federico, who is Director of Battery for our Centre of Excellence in the EMEA region. Welcome, Federico.
Hi, Line. Thank you. First of all, thank you for the invitation for this important webinar. I will do my best to explain why Munters is the leader when it comes to battery application environmental control. It's a journey started almost 30 years ago. I put here in my slide a project we did in Oxford, U.K., 1996. It's still running. We have a long experience, that is one of the most important factor when it comes to this application. I will explain you why. The first question is why Munters in the battery application? It's because the chemistry, the minerals forming the battery is made by lithium-ion, it's highly sensitive to water, to, you know, risk of fire, thermal runaway.
It's not only a safety risk, it's also a quality and durability concern where which the battery manufacturer they have to address. In early 2000, Munters helped the universities, the first labs, to establish the right environment. How much humidity and moisture was allowed to have a proper battery manufacturing. You see in this slide, the journey started back, you know, many years ago. In say around 2015, with the arrival of a new investor entrepreneurs, Elon Musk in Tesla, they invented the terminology of gigafactory scale. Meaning the dimension of battery manufacturing became a large-scale mass production. Also our unit to control such huge environment, such big production whole had to evolve together with these applications. We invented new product, new options, and new features.
Nowadays we are the market leader in this. We control each step of production from, again, the very beginning to the final assembly, even to, you know, the testing and the formation and aging of a battery. We are really providing the full production solution for the battery assembly. Now, this answer the why, but what Munters can offer to our customer? We call it dry room solutions, and it's basically a product technology around to deliver the perfect environment inside the room, the battery production room. Of course, we start with the unit, ultra-high efficiency Munters dehumidifier with a large range of options and features to adapt and be able to manage, handle specific requirements. You have to realize each of these installation might have some differences, different chemicals, different minerals.
This is where we start, but it's not the only things we offer. We offer also a knowledge because, of course, we can produce dry room with a unit, but we need to make sure the dry air, I mean, the dry air is then delivered inside the room, this is key. The distribution, air distribution, as you can see in these graphics, is important. We need a precise and capillary distribution to avoid inefficiency, leakage. At the end of the day, what matters is what condition you have in the room. We call it dew point, which is basically equivalent to humidity content inside the room. It's extremely critical.
It's a critical application because losing even for few minutes dew point inside the room may require a failure of the batch in production, losing potentially millions for the battery manufacturer. How then we can do this? This answer the question of what we can offer, but how we do it. Henrik mentioned the center of excellence, we have a team of expert helping to find the best solution, we focus on what is the need of the customer each time. Could be focused on the capital investment, we have products to make them save money even up to 35% of the initial investment. Maybe focus on the energy and the running, what we call OpEx, or mix of them.
The team, the Center of Excellence, as they provide what we call the value engineering to help to make the right choice for this customer. The product. I want to focus a bit more going inside the technology because I believe all of you know, I hope all of you know Carl Munters was the inventor of the desiccant wheel. The desiccant wheel is the engine, is the heart of the desiccant dehumidifier. We have, along all these last years, many years, developed new innovative solution, new ideas, new patented technology. You see here in the screen, Green PowerPurge, to improve performance and reduce the energy. The energy exchange inside the wheel is quite important, any solution to reduce this energy is critical. It's not only the wheel, it's also what is around the wheel.
Our dehumidifier, the full unit, which can be quite a big equipment up to, you know, 5, 6, 10 meters long, they are quite a large unit. We had to develop in the last 10 years, 15 years with the comings of the giga scale, the modular concept. Literally some plug-and-play boxes to get together to give the best possible option and features to the customer. We never compromise on performance and quality. This is Munters' blood if we like. We want to give optimization. We have to adapt for large scale assembly, several hundreds of units to be produced in a certain period of time. We did that with this invention, with our research.
To avoid, again, as you see in the graphic in the movie, inefficiency and to increase the quality and to make it stronger cases, the case of the unit that will again, where the desiccant wheel goes inside. It is a mission critical, again, it's a very important production. We cannot compromise on that. The R&D and the project management develop a lot of solution and innovative ideas inside the unit. You see in these graphics, what it comes inside of our typical dehumidifier. A stronger enclosure to maintain and avoid leakage and maintaining what we call thermal break. Dampers, and again, you saw on the in the movie the small footprint.
We are one of the smallest equipment supplier in term of footprint, producer, and we are proud of this, and it comes from the modularity. I spoke about the desiccant wheel, how it's important inside with all the energy solution and energy savings solution. It's not only that, there is a continuous research for all the other components, heat exchangers, fans, filters. All in all, it's tremendously important for this application to provide the best quality, of course, at the best reasonable price, but to make sure we give the right performance inside the room, what we call the dry room. Now, the journey. The journey today, we know where we are. There is a tremendous race to go all electrical cars. We can see everybody.
We know the battery technology, where we are now. I explained to you the lithium-ion requires a humidity control, so that's why Munters is there. What's gonna happen in the short future? The market is booming. It's everywhere. It will be focused on recycling. It will be power technology, power agricultural, drones, and even potentially planes, airplanes. I mean, the limit nowadays is in the weight of the battery. In few. 10 years, maybe that couldn't be a limit. We monitor carefully where the battery technology goes. We are working in close connection with university and labs. We are very ahead of the curve on this respect. We know there is the next generation of battery will be solid-state battery. What's the difference? The difference is the electrolyte. Instead of being liquid, it's solid, as the name.
The good news is it's still based on lithium-ion, so again, it will require a tight control of the environment, of the humidity. There are more chemistry under study. There is again a race to find the perfect mix. We are at the early stage of the sodium-ion. What's the difference of sodium-ion? It, at the moment is not at all by energy density good to compare to lithium-ion. Introduce the safety because it doesn't catch fire. However, it is very reactive with water. As we know, sodium is very reactive with water. Therefore, still, if this technology will be introduced in the market, Munters will be still required.
All in all, we believe we'll be very much active for the next short period, and Munters will be leading and continuously leading this application. Thank you, Line. Back to you.
Thank you very much, Federico. Now joining us from Amesbury in the U.S., we have our Global Product Manager of Battery, Cheryl. Good morning, Cheryl.
Hi, Line. Thank you. I'm glad to be here today. I'm gonna talk a little bit about our markets and our customers. Okay, lithium-ion battery production has been growing rapidly in three key regions. For over a decade, we've seen battery production grow in China to where they have about 70% of the world's manufacturing and most of the raw material and mineral processing as well. Over the past few years, with increased focus on climate change and growing consumer demand for electric vehicles, concerns about supply chain and over-reliance on China, we've seen battery production increasing quickly as well in Europe and the United States. The auto companies are looking to locate their battery production, you know, locally near their vehicle plants so that they have safe and reliable, inexpensive transportation to their vehicle plants.
In Europe, where they're working towards being climate neutral by 2050, they're putting goals in place like cutting emissions by 55% and banning fossil fuel cars by 2035. With these moves, we're going to continue to see battery production increasing in Europe. Similarly in the U.S. with the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Law, we've seen the battery producers are accelerating their plans to locate their factories in the United States to take advantage of these incentives and tax breaks. With the IRA, the battery needs to be assembled in the United States, and most of the minerals need to be sourced from the United States or trade partners as well.
This is looking to be really tough to do, already in the past 12 months, manufacturers have announced investments of up to $60 billion in the United States. In China, where subsidies are starting to decrease, EV adoption keeps climbing. It doesn't matter. They had a record year last year with 7 million new energy vehicles sold, and that brings China up to about a 26% market share of all new cars sold. Munters is well-positioned for growth in these three key areas. Like you've heard before, we have manufacturing established for our systems in all areas with expansion and upgrade projects going on in all three as well. How big and how fast will the battery market grow to be? It seems like the growth is outweighing the predictions.
This graph on the left shows battery production capacity worldwide forecasted through the year 2030. The lower line there, the 2020 forecast, back in 2020, analysts were predicting that the whole industry would grow to be about 3,000 GWh by 2030. The forecasts keep going up every year. Now three years later in 2023, the forecast is up to 8,000 GWh . There's been over $300 billion of investments in the lithium-ion battery industry announced just in the past four years. That translates to about 30 new factories being built or to be built by 2030 in Europe, over 20 factories in the United States, and over 100 new factories in Asia.
The biggest countries in each of the regions for battery production look to be China with about 70% of the worldwide market share. United States will have 12%, and then Germany would come in third with about 5% of the production. Munters works with a variety of different types of customers. We work with top-tier electric vehicle battery producers, we work with large gigafactories that are working on a variety of different battery technologies, and then we work with small labs and universities as well. With over 30 years experience, we've started with this industry. We worked with the first lithium metal labs way back and now all the way through to these large gigafactories today.
We like continuing our work with the small labs because we learn from them, we learn about up-and-coming technologies like Federico just mentioned, then that gives us some insight into what the dry air requirements are gonna be in the future. Munters works with most of the key players here. Due to our contracts, we can't name many names, but I can mention a few. We've worked with University of Birmingham in the U.K., University of Münster in Germany, and the University of Michigan in the U.S. We've learned a lot from these customers that have fed into our innovative new designs, our purge designs, and our energy efficiency. Although you don't see the automakers' names here, they are fully involved. They're partnering with the battery makers, and we're working with them as well.
Our project involvement will vary depending on the type and size of the project and the scale of the project. For small R&D labs, they're working with new chemistries, they're working with new processes, so they may have very specialized requirements, even including super ultra-low dew points. These projects, for us it would mean maybe one or two dehumidification systems involved, but they may be very customized systems. We provide customers here may not be as experienced or have the resources to manage a full dry room project and integrate climate control, so we get more involved on these type of projects, helping with the dry room design, the integration, installation support, in addition to our normal commissioning.
Once a technology is proven out in the lab, it would move up to, like, a pilot line. We call this a medium-sized project. There are a lot of solid-state pilot lines going in right now, trying to prove out that technology before it's ready for mass production. Here, for us, that may require four to six dehumidification systems. These customers are gonna run in, like, batch production runs. Starts and stops. It's not gonna be probably 24/7. They will run continuously a lot longer than a lab. We work with the customer to set up the operation of our system to work as they need it with their schedule. For the large high-volume production, the customers and the designers work together.
They know exactly what they want in the dry room, but they may not know the best way to get there. Our application experts work with them to try to look at all their requirements and optimize the best solution. With mission critical operations like this that run 24/7, it is critical that we ensure precise moisture control in the dry room and high uptime and reliability, 24/7, summer and winter, no matter how humid it is outside and how much outside air is coming into the dry room. We need to control that to very precise requirements and precise dew points because, as you heard, it affects product quality, yield, safety, and energy efficiency.
We have value engineered standard designs geared towards the gigafactories, and the contractors really like this concept because it gets them their equipment drawings, it gets them specs, it gets them utility requirements very early on in the process, so they can continue on with their factory design while we're in production, and it just helps speed up the whole project. Okay, so you've heard earlier about our orders from the automotive companies, but we're really excited to tell you about this order we received from Morrow Batteries. They're building their first pilot line in Norway, and they've chosen Munters to provide the dehumidification systems for their lab. Federico and the Battery Centre of Excellence team helped provide the application support, the equipment design, and the project management for this project.
Like others, Morrow is looking to the future to build a large cell gigafactory in Norway as well. With that, I am gonna stop, and I am going to turn over to a short movie that Morrow produced actually that shows the move-in of our DSS system to the Morrow lab.
This is progress. Let's have a look at the lab. Hi, Paio.
Hey.
I see a dehumidifier coming in.
Yeah. Today is the day.
Right now, we're inside what will be the dry room in our battery research center. We are in Grimstad in the south of Norway. It's looking more and more ready every day. We expect it to be ready in April 2023, where we'll move in 50 people from our research department. We're really excited to be moving in. For some of the materials that we're working with, they're very sensitive to moisture. With the help of the dehumidifier arriving today, we can create an almost water-free atmosphere.
One out of three units that's gonna be lifted inside.
All right.
A nd mounted. Morrow has really had emphasis on that this should be a lab for the future. It's built for flexibility. We can expand and install new equipment if needed in the future.
Thank you, Cheryl. Before we open up our Q&A session, I will hand over to you, Henrik, for some closing words.
Thank you very much. I think everyone on this webinar have now understood that we are primarily focusing on the dry room, but also, as Federico explained earlier, there is a lot of dynamic in the market, so we are increasingly also looking outside the dry room, both in terms of new technologies, new raw material going into battery manufacturing, both in the changes in battery manufacturing, like CO2 capture, for example, which is a new application area where we're in active discussion with some customers on how to introduce this on a more large scale. Of course, if you look at the larger battery supply chain, we also believe eventually that battery recycling will also be a theme that is emerging more and more.
Short term, however, we are mostly focused on our growing installed base and how we can support our equipment in the field. Here, of course, we're leveraging our well-established service model that contains more than 400 service technicians locally deployed across our regions. We're also adapting the service offering specifically to the battery segment, and we're also in parallel investing in more technology to meet the future need or future demand for our customer base, for example, like connectivity. I think we have also talked about the prospects outside electric vehicles, because if you look at the forecasts and the changes in the increased forecasts in battery demand, it's also evident that when we stand now in 2023, there are more applications outside the conventional electric vehicle industry.
Energy efficiency is one thing, or energy storage, I would say, where more and more of the transition to green energy also are in need of energy storage, and with that also, we believe that will drive more battery demand. Battery recycling, I've already talked about, and then we also see a number of technology trends where the solid-state batteries is the most prominent, and we're expected that to play into or come into play in the next coming years. With this, I hope that we have convinced you all, our audience on this webinar, that we, Munters, are well-positioned for growth, that the market is dynamic, and this is why we continue to invest in our organization, and that we believe we have ample opportunities beside or beyond the dry room. Now, over to you, Line.
Thank you. We are now ready for questions. I will remind you again that you can post questions in the chat, and we will address them. Our first question comes to you, Klas. How large do you believe the battery segment can be in Munters? Do you see any risks in battery manufacturers cutting down on production due to the current market situation?
Very good question, Line, and I think those of you that have followed us over the last couple of years may remember that order intake-wise, a couple of years ago, it was 10% of AirTech, and then it moved to 20% of AirTech, and last year, we ended up at 37% of the order intake then represented the batteries. In short, I think that you can say like this: We will continue to grab the market share that we have, i.e., around 50%. We will continue to grow with the market and expand into that. After that, we have the service business as well.
Thank you, Klas. I will take another question to you, Klas. Hello. Can you please describe the dynamics between battery manufacturing capacity growth outlook and the capacity investments outlook? When are the investments peaking, do you think? Have capacity investments already peaked in China, for example?
Also a very, very good question, and I think a fair answer on this would be that, yes, we have learned that investment each and every year seem to move their peak one or two years ahead, and I believe firmly that that will continue. You have heard me say many times that the capacity will start to slow down, first in Asia, and then gradually move into the two other markets. Still, there are plenty of more investments coming through for the coming years.
Thank you. Henrik, the lithium battery pro-projection has increased to 3 times in three years from 3,000 gigawatts in 2020 to 9,000 GW 2023. Do you see this trend continuing, meaning in 2024, the projection may get upped to 12,000 GW?
Yeah, I'm a big, you can say fan about, of trends. Of course there is a pattern here, and maybe a little bit related back to what Klas was saying. At one point, there will be some peak, but what is exciting is that now when this electrification trend has caught on, we see more and more applications, also that is migrating outside the electric vehicle segment. We are constantly positively surprised by this movement of the trend, and this is why I believe, and no one knows the future, of course, but I'm optimistic about the future when it comes to also the future growth trends.
Good. I think I will direct this question to Federico. If lithium is replaced by another material in a battery or, for example, solid-state batteries become more common, will dehumidification still be needed, more or less advanced?
Yes. It's a very good question. As I said during my presentation, we are collaborating with the labs and the research department to analyze, to follow and to understand the next generation. The solid-state battery is still based on lithium-ion, therefore is still very sensitive to humidity, to moisture. Still our technology will be required. There is, we're seeing a trend of more specific condition for certain type of chemicals and minerals. Yes, potentially we require more advanced technology. This is why we are developing every year, every season, more solution, better features and new option for our customer. To answer, yes, it will require more advanced technology, more research. We are doing that.
We, believe, we are proud to say we are ahead of, the game in many aspects. Even looking for the next chemistry, as I mentioned in my presentation, sodium-ion, which still will require, humidity control.
Thank you. Cheryl, sorry, I lost my question here. Give me a second. Can you give an update on our competitors, and can you say anything about your market share?
Sure. We do have smaller local competitors in each of the regions, but no one with a global presence and legacy like Munters. Munters is the largest system, desiccant system supplier. We have sales in 30 countries and 17 manufacturing sites. We are the leader in the industry. Our advantage that's kind of unique, and the other competitors don't have this, is that we have the rotor technology within Munters as well. We have, we invented the desiccant technology, and for 60 years, we have been investing in research and development in the areas of material science and mass transfer and absorption. We have those experts within Munters, and they work with our experts on the equipment side, the mechanical engineers and the electrical engineers, to really put the full package together.
In that way, we have the capability to really understand how our whole system works together with the desiccant and the performance capabilities, and then how to regenerate the rotor properly and really get the energy efficiency top-notch. That's our advantage that we bring to the table. Munters is covered globally, and we are involved in the majority of battery projects. In terms of market share, Klas mentioned earlier that we're in about 50% of battery production worldwide.
Thank you, Cheryl. Henrik, of the total cost of building a gigawatt factory, how large a part is Munters of this cost?
Yeah, if you look at the total CapEx going into a gigafactory, roughly 15%-25% is the dry room. In the dry room, around 10%-20% is our dehumidification equipment. That roughly translates to 3%-5% of the total CapEx in a gigafactory.
Thank you. Klas, and can you talk a bit about the margin development within battery? Does it differ from other, Munters segments?
Margin is always important. I'm super pleased to see the stability and the solid margin development within AirTech. The battery is the largest sector water intake-wise within AirTech. We always aim to take the projects, even the system projects, to reach our then medium-term profitability target. At current, slightly below the medium target, moving forward, reaching the medium target.
Thank you. Henrik, are you able to comment on the service aftermarket opportunity in the longer term?
Yeah. As I also explained, now when the battery, our battery segment is growing, of course our installed base is growing and we are, you can say, carbon copying the service delivery model into this segment similar to what we've done to other segments. Of course, over the years, we have developed understanding on what the service need is for these systems. Of course, now in many cases like in China and to some part in Europe and U.S., these units are relatively new. Over time, within a three to five-year period, we also see more and more of the service needs emerging. That we can see more in China, where we have been a little bit longer, and we start to see those emerging trends also in Europe and in U.S.
Thank you. Klas, do you think the battery segment will be accretive for Munters' margin in the coming years? Have you seen accelerated discussions with OEM in the U.S. following the IRA adoption? As of today, can you tell us how you split battery production footprint between the different regions, U.S., Europe, and China.
Great questions then, let me try to work myself backwards here then. If I start with the last part of the question then, as you heard our experts and managers saying earlier, we have a well-distributed production capacity around the globe, in U.S., in Europe, and in Asia. You can say we produce in four, in all three regions done. When it comes to margins then, I mean, step by step, we are moving forward with our margin development, and I mean, we are always aiming to generate profitable growth. To be very specific on the battery margins per se, let the future prove, but you can see on my smiling face that I'm very confident for us moving forward. Then I think I missed the question in the middle there.
Okay. Give me a second here. Have you seen accelerated discussions with OEMs in the U.S. following the IRA .
Also a very, very good question. The battery projects that we've taken until now are not based really on that discussion. I think that the battery producers, of course, were understanding where the government, so to speak, were leaning towards. I'm very confident that with us having a full-fledged manufacturing capacity and capability in North America, we will also take benefit from this. I have to also remind everyone that even if we would lose a battery system sales, we have a very, very strong delivery system when it comes to desiccant wheels and spare parts, so we may take that business anyhow.
Thank you. Cheryl, what does your go-to-market process look like? Are you in contact with the end customer or the construction builder for a battery factory?
Sure. We have many channels to market, in this market, depending on the project size. For small labs, again, we would work with. We could be working with a lab director or facility manager or the owner of the company with very close contact on their requirements, and also, of course, the dry room contractor. For the larger factories, there are gonna be many players involved. Typically, there could be a partnership between a battery maker and an automotive company, or maybe it's just the, you know, a battery maker, manufacturer project. Then there would be a engineering designer involved or consultant that would come in and look at what the dew point requirement would be for that particular process, and they would do the moisture load calculations and look at exhaust air and heat loads.
They would do a first cut at what the airflow requirement would be for the dehumidification system. Our experts would come in and work with them to kind of iterate that and look at the most optimal solution. Of course, we're working with the contractors as well because they're involved in the procurement and the installation. At the end, we're kind of back in touch with the end user again when we show up to do our startup of our equipment. We're integrating with their systems. We're doing training, and then we're talking to them about ongoing service.
Good. Thank you. Henrik, could you say something about the competitive situation in service? Do you meet the same competitors in service as you do in equipment? What are the key components that need to be serviced?
It's also a good question. Typically, I also say this in more general because the battery segment is yet a little bit to evolve in that sense. We see normally that we have a very good chance on servicing our equipment. We are the specialist, the experts, and typically we are then approached to also do the service on the equipment. Think competition-wise, it's not really our direct equipment competitors that we are facing in that sense. It's more that some of our customers have own service facility management companies in-house that also do service on our equipment or other general HVAC companies. And when it comes to the service, of course, the rotor is one of the main components there.
As also Federico was saying earlier, you saw the systems. It has a number of moving components like motors, fans, similar things that, filters that, from time to time need to be exchanged or optimized.
Yep. Good. Thank you. Another question for you. What is Munters doing to keep delivering systems in this growing segment? How are we meeting capacity demand?
Yeah. It's also a good question that is also on top of our management agenda as well. We are, or we have, I would say, an aggressive investment plan in place that we have started to execute on. We opened our production manufacturing in Hodonin in Czech Republic last year. We announced last year also that we're going to upgrade our production facility in Amesbury, and in the short term, we have also added extra capacity to that. The other component is also important to say that we also have, despite all of this, some spare capacity. We have not yet optimized or fully utilized our current manufacturing footprint.
Good. Thank you. I think, our last question I will direct to you, Federico. Considering the increased focus on energy around the world, how do Munters address this with our installations?
Thank you. That's indeed a very tremendous important topic. Very hot topic. As I said during my presentation, Munters has been the pioneer in this studying this application for the battery. I can say certainly in the last 10 years, the focus primarily was more on the capital investment for the end user, for the people building this facility. And also the other focus, the other target was the reliability, the uptime. As we understand during my presentation, losing for a few minutes the condition, we could lose a lot of millions of dollars in battery batch. That was the primary focus during last, say, 10 years. Nowadays, that's also one of the reason why Munters was so successful. Nowadays, we more mature market in term of battery manufacturing.
It's true that the focus is switching on energy, it's there that, you know, running such a large scale mass production facility, it costs, of course. In some region, globally, it's the energy, there is a sort of crisis of energy. Munters is addressing and following carefully this sector, and we give a response in two, say, dimension, in two ways. The first is the product technology. I hope you have understood during this presentation that we are ahead of the game. We offering the latest advanced technology with the rotor and all components inside the unit. Certainly we are the best. I mean, it's probably, I don't know, it's really common knowledge, we are actually selling the desiccant wheel to most of our competitors.
We know what we're doing better than anybody else. The second dimension is the knowledge. The knowledge, proudly, you know, people like in my team or in other teams globally that can have a lot of experience, can go to site and understand carefully the energy needs of the installation. There is, it's fair to say there is a great deal of energy going around in a building, and a lot of that is wasted. Our experience can help a customer to recover this energy, and we have a lot of solution to do that. We are implementing important features.
We are implementing advanced solution AI in controlling this system to make sure there is the best performance possible and to monitor the trends and, you know, making the customer saving a lot of money. We can do this because of the 30-plus years experience Munters had on this application.
Thank you. Klas, sorry, one last question for you as well. Who do you think poses the biggest competitive threat for Munters in the future? Asian players? Western players?
Great question. I love competition. Munters do love competition. We are always on our toes when we have great competition. The way I look upon it, that is the strategy for Munters moving forward, we may be challenged in Asia or in Europe or in U.S., but we have capacity, knowledge, and installation in all three regions. From a global perspective, I hate to say it, because it may sound a little bit arrogant, I don't fear any competition whatsoever.
Good. Thank you very much. I do see a few more questions here. I will reach out to you separately on these. If you do have any questions, please also email in questions. We are out of time now. I would like to thank Klas, Henrik, Cheryl, and Federico for joining today. Thank you everyone for listening in, and see you next time.