Welcome to the Munters Capital Markets Update today. I am Ann-Sofie Jönsson, and I'm responsible for investor relations. I want to welcome you that are on the webcast, and I want to welcome those of you who have dialed in on the conference call. If you are on the webcast, please put your questions through to us throughout all of the four presentations that we will go through, and then we will take them during the Q&A session that we will have after the presentations. About five minutes before we will start the Q&A session, we will also open up for questions for those of you who are on the conference call.
From then on, you can please or make sure that you are standing in line for putting through your questions on the conference call. With that, I want to hand over to our first presenter, who is Klas Forsström, our President and CEO.
Welcome again. During the presentation of the one and a half hour, you will hear what Munters is all about and what we do for our customers. We will present our progression on the set strategy. We will also drill into our two business areas, talk about how they are doing today and what they plan for the future. AirTech already now delivering on a set strategy, and FoodTech with an exciting new strategy set for the future, a two-legged approach, equipment and digital, helping an industry to change. We work from a very simplistic agenda. We analyze the situation, we decide, we set plans, and we deliver on it. I'm very proud and happy how we have continued to develop in the midst of the pandemic, and I'm so proud of our people that has done more than expected on them.
Today, it is close to two years ago since I decided to join Munters, and I can say I'm even more convinced today that Munters has a great future ahead. What is the agenda? It's Munters, a global leader in climate solutions. Me talk about what we are. I continue with strategy execution and drill into certain areas, and I will hand over to our CFO, Annette Kumlien, and she will talk about driving value. Peter Gisel-Ekdahl will come in jointly with me and talk about AirTech, our business area, and after that, Pia, the Head of and President of Business Area FoodTech, will talk about the exciting future. We will summarize, and we will come in to Q&As.
We are a purpose-driven company for customer success and a healthier planet, and our climate solutions are mission-critical for customer success and contribute to a sustainable planet. We make a difference in the world. It's a bold statement, but each and every day, I see evidence of that is what we're doing. As an example, when it comes to supporting the automotive industry in the change from combustion engine cars to electrified cars, we are there to support that battery production. When it comes to reducing sulfur oxides from coal-fired power plants, we take away up to 99% of the sulfur. When it comes to feeding the world, one out of seven meals have we and our equipment been supporting in production. What is Munters then? We're a global leader in climate solutions. We have around 3,500 employees.
We have two business areas, AirTech and FoodTech, 17 plants, four assembly hubs across the world. We have also software hubs. The last few years, we have grown roughly 6% in CAGR. Our net sales was divided into Americas, representing roughly 40%, EMEA, about a third, and APAC, about 20% plus in 2020. As said, we are on a journey. Munters is on a journey. Going back to 2019, we took jointly together AirTech and FoodTech from many different business areas. Myself and Annette were recruited. We started and carried through a review of data centers and mist elimination. We decided to close the European operations in data center. 2020, a new strategic priority was launched. We reorganized and had a new design organization with giving the business area the full ownership of the value chain. We kicked off efficiency improvement initiatives, especially focusing on working capital.
We expanded the management team, bringing in new competence and supporting our journey ahead. We started to reduce our product portfolio, and we initiated that program. AirTech carried through a strategic review and started to deliver on that. This year, the efficiency improvements have continued. Many different projects continue to have focus on working capital with strong progress. We have increased our efforts and focus on R&D, employed a lot of people, and inaugurated a new lab. AirTech has continued to deliver on their strategy. Now we are ready to launch the FoodTech strategy and carry through the delivery of that. As said, we have two business areas, AirTech representing some 70% our sales, very much towards the industrial part, FoodTech, very much to ag, hort, and food production, and the animal protein industry. Technologies and core technologies.
Across Munters, we are using evaporative cooling pads, and we're also working with controller concepts, slightly different in between the two business areas. In AirTech, it is everything from large system installments to retrofits and upgrades and aftermarket sales. In FoodTech, it is to surround the farm with equipment and then more and more working with sensor software supported by controllers when it comes to changing the industry that we serve. That was a very brief presentation of Munters and what we stand for and what we deliver to our customers. Let me bring you into strategy execution. Munters' unique application knowledge is a true asset. We are very much linked to global mega market trends, climate change, increased regulations, and digitalization. The customer needs that we can support is increased energy efficiency and higher yields, less waste, improve animal and human health.
What we offer here is, of course, once again, the unique application knowledge, our strong global market position with local presence, the proven energy-efficient products and solutions. When it comes to the leading position in digitalization, in really supporting how the food production chain can move on. Our strategy has a clear purpose: for customer success and a healthier planet. That is indicating that sustainability is engraved in everything we do in our strategy. As you can see on this globe, and all the different buildings and equipment, Munters is inside. We make it possible for windmills, for factories, for farms. It is all about being close to customers and deliver on customer value, constantly innovate, and work with the product assortment. Be in markets where we see profitable growth, where we can become number one or on the two or three on the medal podium.
It's about continuous improvement, excellence in everything we do. It's the grit. It is the everyday improvement, and then adding to that, the courage to take decisions, what to focus on and what to not focus on. The people in this strategy, that is the fuel that fuel the engine of excellence in everything we do. Now we'll go through sector- by- sector, what we focus on and give you a few examples on the mantra. We have decided what to do, and we deliver on that. When it comes to customers, our ambition is to be the customer's trusted advisor for energy-efficient production, close in critical areas. The focus areas are customer value, pricing strategies, and go-to-market models. What is very pleasing, that is, the way forward is set both for AirTech and FoodTech.
We have hired and brought in new competence when it comes to commercial excellence, and I'm also very pleased to see that we are progressing well when it comes to how to work with price. Engraved in all this, we have sustainability. It's about helping the customer to become more sustainable. Here is one example. Lithium battery production. It is us helping the industry to change. In this example, we have the top five Chinese manufacturers that placed orders for more than SEK 200 million during quarter one. We also collaborate with the university in Birmingham and with other academia when it comes to what is the next generation of battery production. The essence here, that is stable mission critical climate control for battery production. That is what we deliver, and it's very pleasing to see that that is very much appreciated. Innovation.
I think you all have heard me say innovation is the essence of a forward-looking company. It is about creating the solutions of tomorrow today. It's focused R&D investments. It is about aligning the product portfolio and adjust when needed. It is driving innovation process not only in products but also in way of working, in manufacturing and technology alignment. I'm really happy to see that the bold target is set ahead, 40% reduction of stocked standard SKUs. We are moving towards that target, and we are now about 35%. We are also making strong progress in other areas, and I'm extremely happy for the increase of headcounts in R&D and when we now have inaugurated a new research lab in Sweden. Markets. This is about prioritizing our efforts in markets where we can be on the medal podium and where we can grow. It's markets and segments.
Both AirTech and FoodTech have set a clear agenda, where should they allocate the resources? It's also about how do we optimize our footprint, both in production, but then also in sales efforts. Of course, it's about service. How can we drive service? The last couple of years, we have increased roughly 1% unit per year, and this we will continue and accelerate. Service is also about connectivity and software as a service. How can we use data to drive service even further? Excellent in everything we do. As soon as I say that, I start to move. This is really what a great company is doing. Always improve everything day- by- day, week- by- week, quarter- by- quarter. It's also about putting in a blueprint, setting best practices, working with lean and quality focus through the whole value chain.
It's also about optimizing the manufacturing footprint. Sometimes it could be to drive lean program, sometimes it could be to open up a new factory, as we've done the last quarters. The new data center factory that we have taken the decision to start to build in North America. When we install a new factory, we also think sustainability. That is part of the investment plan. It could be solar panel, it could be green energy, it could be a better use of our resources. For me, this picture tells the story about where Munters is heading and how we work. We started with a first step, setting a purpose, setting the organization, driving a strong focus on sustainability. The second step was drilling into AirTech, coming up with a way forward for AirTech, and start to deliver on that.
Now we are just on the brink to release the FoodTech strategy. That is very much about accelerate the digital journey, support the industry, the customer we serve to change, and continue to strengthen the footprint and offering the equipment side, the normal industrial game. It's about delivering on our strategic journey. People. We are doing a lot in the people area. For me, this is very much about developing great value through people. It's about fostering a culture that let people to grow. By growing as people, they make the company to grow as well. We have clear values, sustainable value creation, passion for result. There is always a better way. I'll come back to this, Continuous Improvement. Of course, Team Spirit, celebrate success when it comes. For me, Munters culture is on a journey from good to great.
We have many different examples here, what we are driving, but we need to continue to invest in our people. We have put a bold ambition ahead. We are aiming towards zero impact on the planet. It's clearly stated, net zero emissions from our operations by 2030. That is an ambition, and that is really what we strive for. Already now we can see we are increasing the use of electricity from renewable sources up to 50%, and we are also moving into areas how we conduct business with code of conduct from material suppliers. We lower the rate of accidents. That tells me the story that we are now becoming more and more stable. Above all, it is about integrating sustainability in our strategy. It is part of our way forward.
Yes, we are part of the solutions to a better world, and we contribute through our offerings towards our customers to make them more successful by how we operate, by using less, generating more, by our employees and culture, creating a culture where we conduct business in the best possible way, following regulations, but also create the culture of "Yes, we can." Above all, it's also our commitment and society involvement. Our people act and work in the society, and we interact with that society. With that, I would like to invite Annette Kumlien, our Group Vice President and CFO, to present value creation.
Thank you very much, Klas. What is our take on driving value, and how are we doing that? Well, I will let that question hang a bit in the air and actually put a bit of a backdrop of where we are today. As Klas said, we have been working on this since 2019, and at the end of the day, it's about delivering a profitable cash-generating growth. As you can see, the performance we have had so far in relation to our midterm targets is basically that we have ticked off when it comes to the leverage. We're actually inside of the targets that were set out in early 2019. We are delivering on the EBITDA margin.
As we have said earlier on and all along, it is that we are on a journey, and we are building Munters from good to great in a sustainable manner. Obviously, when it comes to growth, depends a little bit on the trajectory in the market, depends a bit on how we also handle COVID-19. At the end of the day, as Klas also talked about, we are riding on the key mega trends like digitalization and sustainability. What is really then the framework of driving a profitable cash generating growth? Again, when you want to drive that, you have to put a framework in place that everybody can adhere to, and it's circling around growth, profit, and cash, obviously, digitally enhanced.
Out of the activities that you're doing, you will hear all of us speak about these ones in one way or another, but with a different focus, obviously, depending on what we are doing. If we go into the growth and profit side, if you look from an operational leverage point of view, we are working a lot with commercial excellence, looking into value-based selling and also pulling in active pricing strategies. As you know also, we changed organizations. We have Stefan joined us in February, who's really focusing on that and supporting Pia and Peter on it. Again, digitalization is something intrinsically that we need to make sure that we deliver on towards our customers in their journey to deliver a more value efficient chain to their customers, and that also goes for the connected offering side.
When you build a company, you need to make sure then that the CapEx actually supports them delivering on the strategy, meaning that they have to create value and be key in order to deliver the activities we're doing. At the bottom of that, really make sure that the continuous performance reviews and evaluations are continually ongoing, so that whatever gaps occur, we can actually mitigate that and fill those with new activities. From an efficiency improvement perspective, lean is very important, and that's where Munters Production System comes in place, which is under development and excelling also. Footprint optimization is something that we have talked about a long time now, and also you have seen some of the activities that we have done, for instance, investing in factories in the U.S., which Peter will talk about later.
Also looking into how we can connect our own value chain throughout the whole organization to be sure that we can deliver in a smart way towards our customers. At the bottom of it, obviously making sure then that digitalization is also used internally from a process automation, and also from AI and robotics point of view. It is a journey, as we said, and we started delivering on it. One of the key things that we started early on was actually driving cash, because at the end of the day, if you don't have cash or you not have a financial stability, it's hard actually to put money into where you need them. That was key for us to drive. In early 2019 or mid-2019, we did a pre-study which highlighted the key areas that could actually jumpstart our activities.
Most of them are really applying best practices on converting profit to cash, both when it comes to the customer side, the supplier side, but also when you look at driving sales to order. Maybe not all of them a systemic change, but actually just setting the base in a correct manner. You have seen the leverage, how it has come down, and you can also see how operating working capital has moved down from around 18% of sales to around 12% of sales. With that, I would actually like to go over to the U.S. and speak to Don and hear about what he's saying and what they have done in the U.S. to drive this aspect of our business.
Hi, I'm Don Driscoll, Financial Controller of Munters AirTech. I'm speaking to you today from the data center factory in beautiful Buena Vista, Virginia. I want to take a few minutes to talk about one of our favorite topics in finance, operating working capital. We've made a lot of improvements in that area over the last 18 months. I'd like to reflect back on our journey and highlight some of the key aspects of the project that I think made it such a great success. Follow me to the training room. Like many change initiatives, whether at work or at home, our process began with an acknowledgment that our current state was insufficient, and that there was room for improvement.
There's an old saying in finance that goes something like, "While the P&L is opinion, cash is fact." The facts were telling us that we could do better. Our next step was to engage some experienced advisors who could share best practices and help gather and analyze data that would point us in the right direction in terms of where the greatest opportunities lie. From that analysis, we generated a list of focus areas that were prioritized by their potential impact upon cash. Those projects or those potential projects were separated into two categories. The first category was administrative process changes, which could deliver quick wins. The second category was systemic operational improvements that require more time, focus, and collaboration, but were going to have a big enough, or could have a big enough impact to really move the needle on our operating working capital.
In a way similar to that which our factories run their Kaizen activities, we engaged a wide variety of team members from throughout the organization and asked them to give us their honest, unfiltered feedback about the different processes that affect working capital. From those groups, cross-functional teams were formed. Each team created its own project charter with clear quantitative goals and deadlines, and a steering committee was formed to support the project managers and provide accountability. In the end, what was the result? From a quantitative standpoint, DSO, days sales outstanding, was reduced from 52 days to 40 days. Days payable outstanding increased from 45 days to 60 days. Our customer deposits virtually doubled, or customer deposit balance rather, and we put new inventory controls in different facilities where they were lacking in the past.
This all combined to reduce our levels of working capital consumed by between one half and two thirds from where we started. Beyond that, we've seen improvements in our on-time shipments and quality, and it's just an all-around better place to work. The focus on working capital has spread beyond just the finance department to basically all departments within the company. We're celebrating our successes, and we're still looking into the future to find where we can improve further. Thanks a lot for your attention and have a great day.
You have heard Don talk about what he has done in the U.S. so far, but it ain't over yet, as they say. What are we going to do more? Well, it's again, continue to drive the best practice, work a lot with the cash profiles on our project business, look also into our warehouse and inventory management, look into lead time reductions in our own production and also with our suppliers, and then also have a look at supply chain financing to see if we can enhance our leverage even further. All of those activities we are doing cannot be done without actually getting into the next step, and that's really value chain optimization.
That is a key enabler for us to deliver our strategy and make sure that we are scalable and deliver better profit, and also at the end of the day, obviously converting it to cash. What we are talking about is actually redrawing the landscape within the company on how our value chain is going to be connected all the way from R&D, actually when we then create the product, obviously till we get paid, and also when we look at our HR process. It's something that involves people across the company in all areas and in all functions and all geographies, basically.
Again, it's about driving increased efficiency, but also making sure that when we drive our digital agenda, we actually can move into a digital agenda, because that's what's needed when we want to make sure that we drive our offering towards our customer in a much better way, because it has to be a circular economy around that one. If you look at M&A, as I said, another thing that we started very early on was to look into how can we drive our growth, not only from an organic perspective, but also looking into jumping the curve in a way. What we have done over the past one and a half years is to look at where can we enhance our business and where would we like to do it. You have heard us earlier talk about that.
Obviously, when we look into the mergers and acquisitions and alliances side, it's about looking into where do we have the core, where we are looking more into the consolidation side of it, looking more into add-ons when it comes to technology and obviously digital, and then services, as we have talked about for a long time, that we want to increase. That becomes more of a string of a purse, which is a geographical entrance into certain markets or enhancing where we are today. As we go along, obviously also making sure that when we come across new growth paths, actually make sure that we drive them into our business also.
Again, it's not only about mergers and acquisitions, it's also the alliance side of it, and greenfield also that could be created out of the ideas that we have when we look into the non-organic growth. Again, it has to be business value driven. Obviously, if there is a strategic fit, then we will do it. Business case has to be sound, and also risk has to be managed in a good manner. Once we do this, also make sure that we do the integration in the right way, because at the end of the day, the synergies that we're expecting, they have to be realized, either through ourself changing the way we are working or with acquired business or the business that we add on, actually enhancing into the Munters way of doing things.
With that also, obviously, we need to make sure that we drive a digitalization in a smart manner that actually can take care of both the short-term activities that enhance and drive us even further out, where we today are leading in the FoodTech area from a digital perspective. At the same time as we manage then our internal landscape, which needs to be jumpstarted in certain areas. The digital ambition that we have founded over the past year is related to obviously making sure that we drive products and services that are growing, also looking into what could a digital twin do to us, both from a customer perspective, but also actually driving internal optimization. That's something that needs to be combined, and that's what also make the digital landscape much stronger.
Again, if we want to do that, the organization really has to go DNA digital, and this is something that we also started over the past one year to make sure that we're moving into it. Adding up with the backbone of making sure that we have a security that can match a more connected landscape and with the right technology as well. Those are the things that are being run both from a short-term perspective and a long-term perspective. Now, as Klas said also, that when we joined then almost two years ago, we needed to look into what can we do to drive Munters from good to great, and started our strategic journey and implemented a strategy. The consequences of the strategy is obviously that we need to actually correct things and add investments where we see fit.
Last year, we took a decision after we had reviewed the AirTech strategy to look into where can we enhance it, how can we do the sharpening measures, and as you remember also, we stepped out of the non-core part of the commercial business in the U.S. After having reviewed FoodTech, which was clear then a week ago, we have also taken the consequences of that, where we see that we need to accelerate the digital journey, which is really talking about going shift from the first generation of our IoT offering and moving into a second generation. At the same time, also looking into how can we scale the software operations so we can drive it even faster than what we have done before. That's one part of the program that we're doing today.
The second part of the program is also looking into how can we sharpen our own way of working, that is strengthen our footprint. For instance, what we're doing in the Americas and Europe when it comes to production excellence, but also looking at the streamlined product offering that we're talking about today that needs to be enhanced in Europe. In total, the second part of the implementation of the strategy today is a cost of about SEK 140 million, as you saw in our announcement last week. Once fully implemented, we expect a positive year result impact of SEK 70 million in 2023. As said again, implementation starts now.
All in all, when you look at the framework, it's about making sure that we all have a collective way of working to drive profit, growth, and cash hand in hand so that we deliver on the expectations that is on Munters. Today, the midterm targets are, as we talked about, 5% organic growth. We have 14% EBITDA margin, adjusted so, a leverage of 1.5-2.5. As you can see, after the first quarter, we had quite a good quarter with strong growth in AirTech particularly. We had a strong profit delivery, particularly in AirTech, and we also had leverage that stayed actually on the same level as we ended 2020, in spite of having some supply and deliveries that needed to be backed up with more inventory. With that, I would like to hand over to Peter to talk about AirTech.
Thanks, Annette. I will present AirTech together with Klas. We will do this in two parts. First of all, when it comes to AirTech, we are 2,600 very proud and happy people within AirTech. We take pride in making sure that the customer becomes more successful. We also take pride in participating in making sure that this planet becomes a much healthier place than today. We're also striving to be flawless and seamless in all our operations in order to be more profitable. Who are we? AirTech. We are the true global leader when it comes to dehumidification and cooling solutions for demanding industrial applications. In the majority of the markets where we are present, we are the clear number one. Last year, we represented 70% of the group net sales.
I talked about us taking pride in making sure that our customers are more successful, and some examples you will see here. If you look in the pharma and the med tech companies, they need clean air in order to make sure that they have the right dry manufacturing conditions. We help them to accomplish that. When it comes to the wind farms, the ones that operate the wind farms, they need to maintain their equipment, and they need to make sure that they are in perfect condition, so they're up and running. We support them with that. When it comes to the battery manufacturers, they need extremely dry air in order to produce the batteries. We support them with that. When it comes to data center operators and the owners, they need to cool massive amounts of hot air. With our equipment, we support them with that.
Whenever our customers are having a problem in their mission-critical applications, we help them. I also mentioned us taking pride in making sure that we create a healthier planet, and we facilitate the transition to a more sustainable and healthy world. If we take the pharma industry as an example, when it comes to the test kit productions now against COVID-19 and all the relief efforts, we take a big part of that search. When it comes to the transformation to renewable energy and with windmills, we are part of that transition. When it comes to the automotive industry and the transition from combustion-driven cars to electrical cars powered by battery, we are part of that transition. In the whole thing about digitalization, we are very much part of that journey as we support, let's say, the data center owners and builders.
When a customer has a problem, when a customer needs to embark on the sustainability journey, we are there to support, and we support our customers. I talked about AirTech and who we are, and I mentioned that we are 2,600 very proud and happy people. We also, around the world, have 14 plants and two assembly hubs, and then when it comes to sales offices, we are present in more than 22 countries. With that footprint, we are able to really support our customers. Sustainability is super important for us, and when we're looking at our KPIs, we see that we have a bit to go to reach the target that Klas mentioned, but we are on the way. If we think about renewable energy, 41% of the energy we consume is renewable. If we talk about waste, we recycle today 36% of the waste.
In terms of incidents, safety comes first. Last year, we were able to reduce the number of incidents with almost 60%. In terms of women, we today have 20% as female leaders, and that's a growing number. If we then look at our footprint and where we're active around the world, U.S. is by far our most important market. Americas represent 51% of our business today. If we then take EMEA, almost 30%, 29% of our business, APAC represents 19% of our business. You also see on this slide the different segments and how big they are, and I will go back to these numbers when I talk about long-term trends and how these segments are actually developing. I also talked about us being flawless and seamless.
If you look at our financial performance the last year, you can see that we have a clear trend that we are improving. If you read the quarterly report, the first quarter, and as Annette stated as well, we are performing well, and we have a good activity level. We are very pleased when it comes to our performance. Klas and Annette mentioned that we launched our strategy last year, and I think the most important part with our strategy is that we redefined the way we look at the business area. We were focusing on our different technologies, and we mapped them. This work was important for us in order to make sure that we took the right decisions.
If it comes to building a new factory, if it comes to developing new products, if it comes to making acquisitions, we need to look at the technology we have and need to make sure that we become stronger in each of these pockets. First of all, we have our core technologies, high-performance dehumidification. Center, the majority part of our business. It's also important to see that we have this adjacent business where we have consequences of dehumidifying. We might have to humidify, we might have to cool, we might have to heat. These businesses are also important. We have other technologies, our data center business, where we have a lot of cooling technologies. We have also another part of humidification, which is that we're actually humidifying different industries.
Then we have our mist elimination business, our VOC business, and the part of commercial that we kept, which is primarily supermarkets. This is all about how we look on our different technologies and how we invest in going forward. Our offering is important. When it comes to our offering, we have our components, we have our products, we have our system, and we have our service offering. Our components, they represent roughly 20% of our business, and here we talk about media and cassettes. We talk about our FA6 units, and we talk about rotors. Then we have our products, which is standalone packaged dehumidifiers. Then we have our systems, and then we have all and everything linked to our service offering. That could be service contracts. That's different kind of level of service contracts.
Of course, a big part is also spare parts. When it comes to our unique selling points, first of all, quality and performance is extremely important. We need to make sure that we deliver in time. Of course, we need to use the resources in an efficient way, so energy efficiency, the way we consume water is extremely important. Perhaps the most important unique selling points for us, and the reason why we win so many businesses, is our high degree of application knowledge. Very often, we know the process of our customers better than they do by themselves. We take a pride in making sure that we stay in the forefront when it comes to application knowhow, and we are developing that even further.
By that, I would like to leave over to our colleagues in U.S., Keith and Michael, and they will present one of our latest product launches, the SyCool.
The SyCool data center system is based on the principles of a thermosiphon. The first product that we're offering, called SyCool Split, is rejecting 400 kW of IT load with a 20-degree delta T, and we're really excited to be bringing this product to market. It's best in class in terms of efficiency, with no water use whatsoever. More hours of passive economization. No pumps to move the refrigerant, so there's less maintenance. Lower overall electrical power consumption compared to other dry solutions.
Munters recently completed construction on a multimillion-dollar test lab facility. The purpose for this facility is really to test the performance of our equipment for customers, giving us the ability to test their equipment for their specific project, and to improve our product development processes. Ultimately, it'll benefit our customers as we develop new products. We pride ourselves in developing innovative cooling technologies for the data center industry. We developed the SyCool technology out of request and demand from the market and our customers. SyCool is an energy-efficient, thermosiphon-based cooling technology integrated with active DX through a heat exchanger that essentially eliminates the need for water while capturing free cooling.
Products that we're building around this new cooling technology are modular, and we believe that it has the potential to disrupt the industry, similar to what our Oasis Indirect Evaporative Cooling technology did nearly 10 years ago. We expect to develop other variations of products around the SyCool technology in the next few years.
You have seen how good our offering is, and Michael and Keith, they present this to show that we are in forefront. Of course, with a good offering, you need to be in the right markets. You need to be in the right industries. I'm so proud that we are in the right industries, and also that the underlying growth trends are great. If we look in industrial, by far our biggest segments represent almost 37% or 40% of our business. You can see here the trend line long term is positive, primarily driven by the battery segment. The battery segment represent almost 6% of the business, and you can see that it has grown rapidly as we posted in the first quarter, especially in APAC. We know long term, that growth will also come from Europe and from the U.S.
FoodTech, as we eat more and consume more, and we become a bigger global population, the FoodTech segment will always continue to grow. It's also good to see that a lot of our customers, they start to appreciate our offering, and they see that they can become more efficient if they use our equipment. We have other, being a quite big part of Industrial, and the DA, 23%, and here we have Pharma and preservation, among others. Data Center represent a little bit shy of 17%. Here you can see very strong underlying growth trends. I mentioned digitalization journey, and of course, Data Center is benefiting from that. Components, north of 10% of the business. Very strong underlying growth trends driven by both Data Center segment and as well the battery segment. Mist Elimination, south of 10%.
We see that it's flat. That's mainly driven by shift. We see the shift from coal, who's declining, and processes, who's actually improving. We have commercial supermarkets, flat as well. We have, however, a good replacement business. Services, 20% of the business, and we see good growth trends, and we are actually aiming to gain market share. With that, I would like to hand over the baton to Klas and to talk about the future. Over to you, Klas.
Thank you, Peter. For me, it feels very, very logical to talk about the future of AirTech because Peter's team, and myself have been working closely together when it comes to building the strategy. First, we are aiming to become the undisputed leader in humidity, climate, and pollution control for mission-critical applications. We aim to become easy to work with and delivering beyond customers' expectation. 100% of our equipment will be connected moving into the future. We also strive to move towards zero impact on the planet. Of course, coming back to the grit, set a continuous improvement culture with people that collaborates at heart. Moving over then to the focus. It's about strengthening our core: food, battery, and services. Create and have the base core business developed. Expand the core, moving into digitalization and to system sales.
Also important, building our new core, Data Center humidification and mist elimination. As I said earlier, we analyze, we decide, we set plans, and we follow through. I'm so impressed by AirTech, and I'm so happy to continue to follow the roadmap forward. We put together dedicated plans for each and every area we would like to move. As an example, exit the commercial non-core business. Expand Data Center production from Virginia to Texas. Launching a Data Center service team in North America. Building up a new marketing organization with a new team that is much closer connected to the sales team. Marketing and sales, they're overlapping in integrated processes now and into the future. Driving commercial excellence, customer value, and pricing standards. I have to mention once again, I see a change in how we approach the pricing in the company.
Innovation and R&D, that is putting seeds in the soil for the future. We have invested in more FTEs and more resources. That is up 70% than the last 15 months. At the end, coming back to continuous improvement on what we have set forward is really what AirTech will continue to do. If you talk about the future, we aim to have 100% of our equipment connected. That will drive predictive and prescriptive maintenance solutions with our customers. Already now you can see that what we launched last year, the remote assistant development and being able to service customer from distance, is leaning together here and makes a lot of logic. Manufacturing optimization.
You heard Peter talk about how we invest in North America, but here it's also about continue to drive investment, upgrade factories, drive lean, optimization, and sustainability in U.S., China, and the Czech Republic. Above all, it is about continue to develop our efforts when it comes to production and manufacturing our core components. Coming back to continued innovation and investment. In the coming years, we will set up new innovation hubs in U.S. and China, close to our customers by interacting with them, leading them into the future. Then, of course, center of excellence. Already now started with center of excellence when it comes to battery and EMEA, and this will carry on into other segments as well moving forward.
I'm super excited on what will happen in AirTech, and I'm so impressed of what has been done so far. With that, I would like to hand over to Pia Brantgärde Linder, our President of FoodTech. Please, Pia.
Thanks a lot, Klas. Let's look into FoodTech. FoodTech is in both climate solution as well as in digital solution. We are working with livestock farming and greenhouses, and we are also doing software for controlling the entire food production value chain. We have a leading position within our climate solution side, but also in the digital side. We stand for 30% of group net sales. There are really four strong trends in the food industry. We talk a lot about food safety and the need for increased traceability. We talk a lot about improving animal welfare and reducing the carbon footprint. There is also a need of increasing productivity through digitalization. All of these four trends are we helping our customers, and we are contributing to them.
That makes me proud. That was also one of the reason that I decided to join Munters and FoodTech. I will give you a few examples. We really reduce the energy consumption by better design ventilation systems and more energy-efficient equipment. We are also there to help our customers to improve animal welfare, both by an indoor climate that is very optimized, but also tracking the health and the status of the animals with our sensors. We are there also to reduce the usage of antibiotic by providing a better indoor climate for the animals. We are there also to help our customers to increase traceability all throughout the supply chain in the food industry by collecting more data. We are also helping our customers to reduce the usage of feed by offering better climate and thereby lower the feed needed to produce food.
Let me tell you a little bit about FoodTech. We are really a global organization. We have 900 employees all around the world. We have 160 of our employees are in the software business, and we have four production sites worldwide. Our sales offices are in 14 countries all around the world. We have also three software development centers. If you look at the geographical split, we are really very well-balanced between the three regions. More than 30% of our net sales are coming from each region in 2020. If we look at the segments, our strongest segments are broiler, swine, and layer, but we are also present in greenhouse. Over the last years, we have done a solid growth and a solid profitability. In another area where we are investing a lot of our efforts in is into the sustainability KPIs.
Today, we are doing 88% of renewable energy share. We have 90% of waste recycled. We have reduced the incident rates in 2019 with 47%. We have 26% of the female leaders in our organization. FoodTech has a dual offering to our customers. We are strong both in the climate side of the business, but also in the digital side. The climate side is our core and our heritage. There we use our strong position in ventilation, in the ventilation equipment, we connect it to our controllers and sensors, and we create an optimized indoor climate. On the digital side, we are strong in the software area with our software company, MTech. We connect our software with our controllers and sensors. We access data all through the value chain, and we give software solutions to our customers. Two important pillars today and in the future.
Let me now explain a little bit about how the FoodTech world function and works. This is an example from the broiler side. If we start with a farm in the middle of the picture, there we have all our traditional ventilation equipment. We have our fans, our air inlets, and our cooling pads, together with our controllers installed in the farms. They are providing a very perfect indoor climate and animal welfare. We have another important customer, a large integrator, so the large food producers. They are present in the whole value chain. They own the feed mills, and they own the feed for the animals. They own the breeder farms, and they own the hatcheries. They contract the growers and the farmers to grow the animals to the precise weight, but also with high focus on animal welfare. They own the processing plants.
We are present with our software solution all through the value chain. The integrators want to optimize the whole supply chain, and the farmers really are looking into being able to grow the animals in a precise way, but also focusing a lot on animal welfare. Let me now show you an example of a film on how we are really connecting this value chain and how we are connecting the farms with our IoT and software solution. Let's watch Sonar solution.
You love technology and the control it brings, especially when it can increase your profit. It makes sense you would equip your poultry houses with all available smart controllers, gauges, and IoT sensors. Reality hits. All those components from different manufacturers are communicating through different platforms and different mobile apps. You're stuck in the middle of overwhelming alerts and incompatible reports. Let's fix that. Sonar by MTech Systems, the IoT platform that brings it all together in one central system. Connect your existing farm data feed to the Sonar cloud. You can choose to deploy a fully compatible set of IoT gauges from Munters. Sonar allows you to go from just simply monitoring your house environment with intelligent mobile app alerts, to tracking feed consumption, inventory, and automatically scheduling deliveries, as well as predicting bird weights, uniformity, and condemnation.
Correlate every house environmental data point with flock performance indicators, like mortality, weight gain, health status, and many others. MTech's AI platform will accurately predict your outcomes before they happen and even suggest actions to maximize performance and allow you to increase profit. Eliminate the noise with Sonar. Get the precision farming capabilities you need right at your fingertips, and get only notifications that matter for your business and for you. Schedule a demo today and get focused on profit with precision farming.
The film you just saw I think is an excellent example on how the importance to connect farms. It's also a good example on the ambition that we are going for. It's really to create unique vertical position where we really would like to connect our equipment with the controllers and sensors all the way up to the cloud with our software solution. We are strong today both in the climate side as well as in the digital side. That's the reason why we can go for this vertical position. Doing that, we will also connect the integrators with the farmers, which is very important to drive productivity and reduce carbon footprint in the whole food industry. By connecting this vertical position, we are also going to connect the whole supply chain, going from the feed mills into the hatcheries, all the way down to the farm.
By doing this, we will help our customers and drive unique customer value. We'll improve animal welfare through facts-based climate solutions. We will help them to improve feed conversion rate, and we will help them to reduce carbon footprint through optimized logistics and reduced waste, and we will help them to improve food safety through end-to-end traceability. A lot of important customer values that are needed. To realize this potential, we want to drive the strategy and we want to address four areas in our strategy, two areas in each of our offering. Let me start with climate solution. This market is today growing through population growth, but it's also growing due to that there is a trend moving more and more into advanced indoor farming. Here we are strong today, but we want to strengthen it even further.
We want to strengthen our equipment position, and we want to grow through climate solution. If we look at the digital side, this market is under build-up today. What is driving the market is really what I talked about earlier today. It's about the trend towards traceability and food safety. It's about the trend towards reducing carbon footprint, the trend towards increasing productivity through digitalization, but also the health for animal and people. This area, we are part of that market and we are building that market today. We are a clear market leader in the software side. This market has a potential is what we are estimating it to be a several billion SEK market in the future, and we want to take a leading position also in the future in this market. That's why we have decided to accelerate our growth in this area.
We really want to utilize our first-mover advantage. We are today within the top 20 largest integrators in U.S. We want to roll out more software solution, and we want to build an install base of connected farms. So within the climate solution side, we will strengthen it and we will develop it and continue to grow, and on the digital solution side, we want to accelerate our digital journey and roll out connected farms. Let me now go into three examples on how we are driving our strategy forward, and let me start with climate solution. This is an example from a farm in Asia. This is how we are growing through climate solution. This is an example of one of Asia's largest producer of chicken products, and they have a headquarter in China.
The customer had a high need with high standards for a good climate control inside the buildings for the breeder farms. They also had unique size of houses and a request for high airflow. With our deep application knowledge and with our long experience within this field, we were able to customize the climate control solution for the customer, and we have been able to serve them with a complete Munters solution, including both fans, inlets, cooling, and also connected controllers. The benefit that we are helping our customers with is that they are getting an optimized indoor climate, and they are able to run that the same performance all through the year, also in summertime. Now the customer has actually decided to build more farms with the same solution. Now it's time for a new film, and you saw the Sonar film earlier.
That was really a film that was showing the importance of connecting farms. Now we are going to present you a film where we are going to talk about what kind of software solution we are providing and what kind of benefit that gives to our customers. We will hear Marcel Cohen, our president of our tech company, MTech, our software company within FoodTech, talk about bringing AI to the chicken farms.
One of the most exciting projects we have been working on for two years is weighing live animals. The hardware has not changed in decades. It's still a rod hooked up to a platform, hooked up to a load cell, but the catch is to know how many birds are getting into that platform. Is it one bird, two birds, three birds? In the past, you had to give them a standard growth curve for the system to know what's a valid weight. Now, with water consumption, feed consumption, and leveraging machine learning, we can create our own growth curve, and we can use that to filter the weights. This innovation has helped us improve the accuracy of the weights by 85%. With the current technologies available, both on the hardware and the software, IoT, and machine learning, we can accurately predict animal performance.
This helps our customers balance supply and demand, as well as improve animal welfare and reducing the carbon footprint. We're a software company. We develop a product for live animal production. We help our customers improve their supply chain. We have been in business for 30 years, and it feels like we're just getting started.
Really good. Now you could see in the film with Marcel how we are bringing AI to the chicken farms, and in this example, how we are leading the software market going forward. We are showing how we are bringing AI to the whole supply chain and how we are improving the operation together with our customers. You will now get to know JBS. JBS is the largest animal protein producer in the world. They have been a partner to us in Munters and MTech for over 10 years. They have our production management system already implemented all around the globe. I will give you an example from the hatcheries. JBS is hatching 40 million eggs per week, and it could vary quite a lot between the weeks how many eggs are hatching. Between one and four million could be the variance.
It requires a massive planning procedure to get the hatchability KPI right. If they get too many, they will need to sell it to a very low price, which will impact the profitability of the company. If they get too few, they will not be able to meet customer demand and consumer demand. That massive planning procedure that is done today is completely manual. They are using a lot of Excel spreadsheets, and a lot of people are involved in the process. They are also very reliant on and dependent on key persons with a lot of experience from the industry. With MTech's new AI platform, we are able to, with a lot of data from genetics, from the nutrition, and from the environment, gather all that data and automatically predict and forecast how many eggs will hatch per week.
The precision of that forecast are down to levels that we have never seen before in this industry. This is also helping the customer to overlap the competence shift that is going on in the industry. Within the coming 10 years, a lot of people are moving into retirement. There is a generation shift. With our user-friendly AI platform, it will be much easier for the customer to also let that competence shift work with people with less experience. All that data that they are taking in are now predicting hatchabilities and also improving productivity through the value chain and reducing carbon footprint through less transportation and also precise transportation and reduced waste. This platform will go live as a prototype in Q3. Let me now summarize, finally, where we are heading in the coming years. We will strengthen our footprint and offering in our equipment side.
We want to get the better coverage in a fast-growing region, Southeast Asia, and we are going to open up a new distribution hub there. We are also going to launch more products based on our modular fan platform. We are going to streamline our product offering and increase efficiency. On the digital side, we are going to invest in innovation to build up more connected farms, launch the next generation of IoT offering for connected farms, and we are going to strengthen our organization within this year for connected farms. We are also going to accelerate our software business, recruit more software developers, speed up the digital journey, launch the next generation software for large customers. The new software will be called Amino, and that will happen also during this year.
All these three focus areas are supported by investments to really go after and realize the full market potential. It will generate increased margins in the equipment business, increased number of connected farms, and accelerate growth in the software sales. Now it's time for me to leave over to Klas.
Thank you, Pia. Super exciting to know about the future in FoodTech. Before I summarize, I would like to remind you all that we are now opening up the calls, and we have the call numbers presented on the players and on our homepage. Please dial in if you have any questions to place. I also would like to remind you can also put questions in on the webcast. Munters is on a journey for customer success and a healthier planet. What is it all about? It is to continue to deliver on set strategies. It is about sustainability being fully integrated in everything we do. Innovation and growth, both organic and, in the future, non-organic. Continue footprint optimization and process improvements. Capital efficiency and cash generation is the end result of all this.
We need to continue to keep a strong, high alert in mitigating current supply chain challenges that is not only affecting us, but the total globe in all different industries. For AirTech, it is about continue on the growth journey they have set ahead, grow in the prioritized markets. For FoodTech, it is about acceleration and market creation in the digital arena, creating and supporting a change of industry that will represent several billion SEK in the years to come as a market. I have full confidence, I truly believe that we are on the right way forward. With that, let's open up for Q&As. I step down and stand on the side here, we even out the heights.
Great. Thank you. I would like to open up for questions on the conference call, if we have any there.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. That is zero one to register for a question. There will be a brief pause while questions are being registered.
Questions on the call? Because otherwise, I'll take a few questions from the webcast. I'll go ahead, and I start with a question from Kenneth Toll Johansson at Carnegie. The question is that you talked about establishing an excellence center, or center of excellence, for battery technology in EMEA at the end of this year, and what are the plans, and what will you do different this time than what happened last time you entered the European market for the data center cooling? I hand that over to you, Klas.
Thank you, Kenneth, for the question. I think it's a very good question. We will do it in the sound way this time. We have already established and have a lot of competence gathered in Europe. This is not to build up a physical center of competence. This is about aligning all the people and all the already existing competence that we have in this arena. It's very much about working together with customers, working together with academia, and setting the stage moving forward. Please, Peter, if you would like to add any more to this, because I could say everything is different compared to how data center in Europe was established the last time. Now we have concrete plans and a way forward.
First of all, for me, it was two different questions. When it comes to Center of Excellence teams for the different segments, and we mentioned the battery team, this is, as Klas mentioned, we are gathering the know-how and making sure that we have a combination of physical and virtual team, and that is in order for us to really excel, as I mentioned, when it comes to application know-how. The Center of Excellence teams we have for battery, and we will have for all the other focus segments. When it comes to data center, the day when we decide to re-enter Europe, if we do so, we will make sure, as Klas mentioned, we will do it in a much better than previously, and we will learn from the success we're now having in U.S.
Thank you. I'll take another question from the webcast. This is a question to Peter from Lucas Ferhani at Jefferies. You talked about the windmill business. Can you quantify or can you say what the size of this windmill business currently is for AirTech and how it's growing?
It's actually a fairly small part of AirTech, so it's way below 10%, but it's a very important business for us, and we have some key OEM customers that are super important for us, both from a product perspective, but also when we talk about our digitalization journey, where we make sure that these windmills are connected.
Okay. Thank you. We have a question from Fredrik Svanholm. It's a question related to FoodTech. On the equipment side, what is the Munters market share on equipment in your largest markets? Who are the biggest competitors and their share relative to Munters? What is your strategy to increase the attach rate on services when selling new equipment? Three questions actually in one.
I can start with the first one, and then Pia, please. It's difficult to say exactly what the market share is, but we estimate the overall market in FoodTech, the equipment side of the market, to being around SEK 10 billion, and our total sales in FoodTech at current is roughly SEK 2 billion. Give or take then, slightly below 20%.
Yes. The next question was related to the software as a business, or Software as a Service. Of course, in the accelerating the digital side of our business and our software solution, that is of course going into that area more and more, and drive a SaaS business model.
Also the strategy to increase the attach rate when you sell new equipment. Maybe more traditional services considered in that question as well.
We are today working a lot with our dealers and distributors, and they are serving the customers on the service side. We are, of course, helping them to do that in an excellent way.
Okay, great. Thank you. Do we have any questions on the conference call? Very good.
I-
Sorry?
I remind you that if you want to ask a question, you will have to press zero one on your telephone keypad now. We do have a question from the line of Lucas Ferhani from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask whether you thought about potentially moving the medium-term targets for this event, and why haven't you done so? Like you said, Q1 was very strong. If you look at the margin development, it feels really reachable potentially this year. I just wonder what was the thought process on the margin. Thank you.
Lucas, a very good question. It's a question that pops up on and off in various meetings. We have a view that when we set those medium-term targets, we talked about the three to four years journey. Now we're in the midst of a pandemic, we are delivering better and better. At a certain time when we feel ready to set new targets, of course, we will put that forward. At current, we will continue to do our utmost to reach those targets. I can say like this, I'm very confident that we will reach those during the times table set.
Okay, thank you. A follow-up that I also asked on the webcast. What is preventing farm owners today to go digital? Why is the penetration rate of those software solutions so low? Obviously, that makes it for a greater opportunity, but I was wondering if that development is necessarily going to accelerate now. What has changed, really? Thank you.
I can start to answer the questions, and then I know Pia knows much more about this. If I refer back to the industry that I used to work in, the pure manufacturing industry. That industry has also, over a decade, talked about IoT and connecting different setups, and it was not that easy to implement. If I go back to farmers, et cetera, what it's all about here, it is about creating a market that has not been there. I think we have good ways forward. Please, Pia.
I think it's like in all type of industries. It takes time for people and for companies to move into the digitalization side, and it goes faster and faster into that. We see that the integrators are getting more and more interested. That's why we are selling our software solution. We have done so for many years now. The farmers understand the importance also to remotely monitor and connect the farms. I'm confident that this move will come. It's coming more and more step by time.
I heard a great story by Pia in regards to, let me call it, the new generation of farmers. The old generation of farmers may not have been so used to being connected, using software, et cetera, but they cared a lot about their animals. What did that mean? They had to go up, and they had to guard, they had to watch, they had to control that the livestock was really feeling well. Pia told me a story about, let's say, a younger farmer, a modern farmer, in the future-outlooking farmer, and he said, "Having this on an app, that gives me a good night's sleep. I know that my animals are feeling well.
I think that it goes for all of us. Having the access to digital ways of using both iPads, mobile phones, we are doing that in a daily business. That trend is also moving into the next generation of farmers.
Okay, thank you.
We have another question from the line of Anders Roslund from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. I would go back to the AirTech chart you have about the various market trends. You see there that lithium batteries had 6% of sales in 2020, and in others you had also the pharma business. I don't know how big that is of the 23%, but let's assume 10% or something. While in the first quarter you had a very strong growth in this lithium batteries and also the pharma business. It's a very bumpy business. How do you see those progressing? Should lithium batteries over time be 10% of the business, or could you give any sort of color to the market potential for those areas, the pharma and the lithium batteries?
Let me start, and then I hand it over to you, Peter, to give more color on the question, so to speak. What is clear, lithium batteries and battery business is here to stay. The first wave now is very much in Asia, it is a tremendous growth on that side. They are leading the way when it comes to electrifying the automotive industry. Now it's moving towards Europe, and it's also coming in North America. North America, you have Tesla, but as a society, it has not really moved in that way. Besides that, lithium batteries is also about energy storage, so it's not only combustion engine. What we see that is, let me phrase it like this, a double-digit growth of this industry for many years to come. That is the industry.
When it comes to the pharma, what we predict that it will continue to grow. It is quite substantial growth right now in regards to the COVID-19. We predict that testing and vaccination and pharma as such will continue to be, if not double-digit, close to double-digit moving forward in the coming years. Peter, you can give a little bit more in-depth color on the two industries.
First of all, when you look in the battery part that we've posted at 6%, you also need to know that's part of the battery business is also in the component business, so it's bigger than the 6%. On the slide, we said had a deep green arrow pointing almost straight upwards, so we see a very positive trend in the battery segment. Just if you look on number of projects that are now happening in Europe, you see that the underlying growth trend is very strong. As Klas said, the battery segment will continue to grow and will continue to grow for long. In the pharma segment, we have seen the surge now due to the COVID-19 test kits production.
There also might be other things happening in the pharma industry that there might be reading the most of when it comes to pharma production, and that might benefit us long term. The trend line for pharma is not as strong for battery, but it is strong.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We have a question from the line of Mats Liss from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thank you. An easy question at first about service, I guess. You have a target to grow service and appreciate that. Is the main driver a change in sales mix, or is it an increased contract penetration in the existing fleet of Munters equipment? Could you say something about that?
The service growth is simply put, divided into three different buckets, I will also hand this over to Peter in a few seconds here. Really, it is about penetrating the already existing installations. It is about connecting service agreements to all new installations whenever possible. As an example, you saw that we are building up a service organization over in North America now when it comes to data centers. Of course, it is also about can we then start to build a string of pearls in regards to more feet on the street, more service capabilities? Sorry. Easy way to describe it, that is, we know now that if we hire a strong service and application technician, in less than a year, that is being paid back on service growth. Peter, you have more details on this.
No. Klas, you covered all the three buckets. The service organization within AirTech is now a good machinery, so we just need to continue to grow that. Of course, we need to add some support functions, but we are on a good way, and we are really accelerating in terms of bringing on new people on board and as well trying to acquire, as Klas mentioned, a number of small companies. You will see activities when it comes to that going forward.
Then let me speculate a little bit moving forward, not about if we acquire or not, but let's say like this. Two, three years ahead, how do we look upon service? A typical good example is this, the remote service that we have started to install, digitally driven. Other type of services is also maintenance contract, software contracts, et cetera. If I add that, I am quite sure that our definition of service five years ahead in the industry is different today. We have many streams. At current, we are growing the service sector by roughly 1% unit a year. I said, in the future, it will, by our own force, at least be in between 1%-1.5% a year, and then we can add other on that.
Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
There are no further telephone questions registered.
Okay, thank you. We take a question from Philbert Vessiers. "I heard of chicken shortage in the U.S. How is the broiler market doing in the U.S.? Related to the labor shortage, do you have any issues to hire new people in this industry in the U.S.?
Pia, I think you have the ear today.
I think, as you could see in Q1, there was a weaker side of the broiler in the U.S. We also foresee that that will continue for a while more. On the broiler side, it is a lot related to COVID. It's related to the timber prices are going up in U.S., and how they are building a lot of the farms with timber and lumber. That is impacting the situation right now. Of course, in the long term, if we're looking a few years ahead, that will of course be a growing segment, that as well, for us. Recruiting people in U.S., I think. Today, we do not see that kind of challenge, of course. Going forward, we will recruit people in all areas in our global organization, and U.S. is an important market for us.
Thank you. We have another question related to FoodTech here. That is from Kenneth Toll Johansson at Carnegie. "Can you use any software that you now have developed for the U.S. market, in Europe or in Asia?
Yes, we are doing that already today. Our software solution are global, and then they are, of course, used in an application that is customized for the specific customer. It is already today a rollout for several customers around the world.
Just to add here. A lot of the customers that Pia talked about earlier, the top 20, they are truly global customers, and when they say yes to a software package, of course, they will also start to install it on a global level. We are leading the change in industry here. It's exciting.
The example I gave in my presentation on JBS, they have businesses both in U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and U.K., and we are following them with our solutions in all those places.
Thank you. We have another question that is also related to FoodTech, it is a question to you, Pia, from Bruno Ragheg. "You joined rather recently, and could you share with us what struck you the most at Munters since joining? And maybe mention a few example of areas that you think can be improved, and what the key challenges are in the markets FoodTech serves.
Okay. Yes, I did so. I did start nine months ago, and I'm really happy for joining Munters. I was really much attracted to Munters because of the position we have in the global market. We are really a true global organization, and we are present all over the world. We also have a very strong brand name, and we are laying a lot of effort in innovation. I think that is an important part for driving a profitable company into the future. I was very much impressed about the digitalization and the level that FoodTech were at when I started. I think really our software company, MTech, have really shown an example in the industry on how they are driving new solutions in the software side, and that is impressing me also today. We have much more to do in that area.
When it comes to the areas that we need to work on is what Annette and Klas already mentioned. We need to work on, as all industry company, the excellence in everything we do. We need to work on strengthening our position, both in innovation and in our production facilities. Also with our product offering and pricing and so on.
Great. Thank you. I would like to ask if we have any questions on the conference call?
Yes, we do have a follow-up question from the line of Lucas Ferhani from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hello, thanks for the follow-up. We are hearing right now of potentially a new wave of African swine fever in China. I just wanted to know if you heard anything so far, if that's a worry on your side. Thank you.
Yeah, we have heard and seen that there are a few outbreaks in some places inside China. Of course, not in the same situation they were several years back. That is, of course, something that we are monitoring and helping our customers with.
I have to add this, and this is a little bit on the borderline. It's always depressing to hear the news of diseases for animals or for people. At the same time, a lot of our offers moving into the chicken industry, to the swine industry, et cetera, is actually there to prevent outbreaks of that type of diseases. I just want to balance it. It's always sad to hear of outbreaks. At the same time, our offer is very much supporting avoidance of that.
Thank you.
We have another follow-up question from the line of Mats Liss from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thank you. Well, a FoodTech question, I guess. You mentioned you have the top 20 customers and so on, and then I guess you offer new things with digitalization and Software as a Service and so on. Does that mean that this customer group will change going forward? That you maybe will be able to approach new customer groups?
I have many times personally talked about that we have installed, I call it pilots among those top 20 customers. What I see there is we jointly, together with them, discover value creation, what they can do in order to improve yield, improve animal welfare, improve profitability. Pia, you are in more in direct contact with that type of customers, if you would like to add something.
We are on a journey together with our customers. As Klas already mentioned, and I also said earlier, we are there with the top 20 largest protein producers in U.S. and also in the world, and they need to change, and they need to work differently going forward as any other industry. We are there to help them and serve them doing that. That will also mean that we are going out after more and more customers that are coming into this new technology, going into the new area of digitalization.
Okay, great. You don't expect to see new competition in those areas? It's more of the same from your side.
Maybe you should start Klas, and then I can.
I always frame myself and say, we love competition. What I've learned when it comes to digitalization, and this is not only for Munters, it's one thing to drive digitalization and software, but if you combine that with a thorough domain knowledge about the industry as such, then you have a strong benefit. Here I have to say, I look upon Munters as being unique. If we can develop according to the plans, in the foreseeable future, let's say five years ahead, at least I have the ambition to see that we have a double-digit part of FoodTech being generated from this type of business, i.e. Software as a Service representing more than 10% of the total sales. It's a step-by-step improvement and a journey, it will not happen in a few quarters.
Okay. Thank you very much.
There are no further telephone questions registered.
Thank you. We have another question on the website or from the webcast, and it's from Bruno Ragheg, and he's asking if we could share any tangible signs of progress in our strategy for growing services.
Absolutely. I think we have alluded to some of it already. Please, both Peter and Pia, jump in at any time here. Already in the beginning of the COVID, we generated and accelerated remote control being servicing customer on distance digitally. We are launching dedicated service teams, as an example, in North America towards the data center. We are searching and scanning for suitable service companies to acquire, and we are hiring a lot of service people already now. Peter and Pia, please.
I think just during COVID times, a lot of our customers didn't actually allow us to come and visit them, still we were able to perform on these high levels when it comes to service revenues. That is a tangible proof. As Klas mentioned, remote assist is one of our new service products, we have a lot of other more service products that we're offering to our customers. New products, really good performance during COVID times. Of course, as Klas mentioned, we are really adding a lot of service people to the organization.
Okay, great. We have no further questions on the webcast. I also think there are no further questions on the conference call. Just double-check. There are no further questions on the call, right?
Yeah, no further questions on the telephone.
Okay, great. Thank you. Klas, do you want to say a few words to end the session?
Yes, I can end in the same way I started and summarized it. Munters is in a journey. We have now analyzed what is needed for the complete group. We have put together change and development programs in that area. We are delivering on those. We have made an analysis of AirTech. We are delivering strong progress on that strategy. Now it's the third leg, the third part. That is FoodTech. As I said in the beginning, I'm even more convinced now than two years ago that Munters' future is great. Thank you very much.
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