Welcome to this presentation on Nolato Capital Markets Day, and I'm intrigued to see you people here. Today we're going to try to walk through the different aspects of Nolato, Nolato in brief, the journey up to date, overview of new financial targets, and also some market drivers and trends for us. First of all, I would like to present the team that I have with me. We're starting with Per-Ola Holmström, CFO. Then we have Johan Iverberg, Head of the Medical Business, Anders Björklund, Heading Up Engineered Solutions, Anders Eriksson, President of Materials, Glenn Svedberg, Heading Up our TDC, and Christian Sandberg, Sustainability Manager. I will have the opening remark, and my name is Dan Christer Wahlquist. I've been the CEO of Nolato for the last nine years, and previous to that, I was running the medical business within Nolato for 20 years.
I have a longevity with the company. If we start very briefly and give Nolato a picture. We are working as a flexible and efficient development and production manager of polymer product systems across the globe. The history is that we were established back in Trelleborg in 1938 and have been on the stock exchange since the mid-1980s. Today we have two business areas, which are medical solutions, a little bit more than half of the company, and then engineered solutions, a little bit less than half the company. The key ratios for 2024 were close to SEK 10 billion in sales, with an operating profit of close to SEK 1 billion, and approximately 6,000 people spread around the globe.
Our vision is to be the customer's first choice of innovative partners in sustainable design and production, which means that we support large global customers with the design of the next generation products and the production coming afterwards. The company has two separate business flows that link together. We are charging the customer for the development work, and then afterwards we charge them for the production of the same products. If we look on a little bit of a history of the company, this is the development of the last 20 years of the company, the sales development. Here we can see the two different business areas, how they've been growing. We have delivered strong, good organic growth over the years, with over the years an increasing sales of medical as a portion of the total.
In the blue color, we are separating out something we call the DHP business. You can see that growing very dramatically and then declining. This was a business that we entered into in 2015-2016 when we are sort of reshaping the group a little bit, and this business was a good business by itself, but it outgrows all our intentions and both the customer and ourselves, what we intended. It became too large a portion of the total growth. We then had long discussions with the customer in order to decrease this dependency since we were in a one-to-one relationship. We were the only production partner they had, and we had only one customer. We felt this was getting too big.
We had a long discussion with the customer over the years in order to decrease this share of our spend or of our sales. That is what we have been doing over the last two years, decreasing that. Based on that, we feel that we are in a good position to start growing from a more baseline across different sectors. Previous to that DHP business, we were largely into the mobile phone industry and manufacturing. We were doing a lot of mobile phones. We started doing the same maneuvers around that, getting less and less interested in the volatility of the mobile phones and then reshaping the business going forward. When we had our last Capital Markets Days, this was what we presented as our next step.
At that time, that was approximately close to three years ago, that we should be a global innovative end-to-end provider of sustainable solutions to leading business and more global presence. We felt, and we are going to show today, that we have been delivering on that and now ready for the next step in our journey. During that last period of time, we have also changed our group structure. We had former two business areas called integrated solution and industrial solution. We have been merging those two in order to create a stronger total, getting the global footprint from the total of them and also a stronger total offering to the market because we see more and more electronics coming into all kinds of products that we are producing.
That skill set was part of the integrated solutions, and we had a lot of good customers with potentials for that sort of solution. That is why we merged the two businesses and created our new strong engineered solutions. During the same time, we also took what we call our technical design center, which we will come back to later on during the day, and made that a group-wide resource. It used to be only for the medical, and it was built within the medical, but we made it group-wide and also added the specific knowledge around integrating electronics into the products. By combining the TDC for the group and combining the two business areas, we feel that we have now two very strong business areas supported by a powerhouse of technical design center and global footprint in both parts of the business.
I will try to explain our business model to some extent. Our business model is very simple. We are supporting global customers with development work, industrialization, and production on a global scale. In order to do that, we have some resources that we have built up. We have very long-term ownership and management within the company with strong financials. We have good resources that we have built in order to support those customers on their growth journey. We have design for manufacturing, and we in this part of the business can get a lot of knowledge by sharing different markets and giving that to the customer in order to create better solutions than the customer can do by themselves. Always focusing on a win-win situation. We have, over the last years, built up global production resources.
We have now a very strong footprint across the globe, which we will come back to, in order to produce on the right spot close to the end market so that we are saving the environment, saving cost, a lot of customer insight and expertise over the years. These are the resources that we have been building. On the other hand, we are then, by our business model, creating values. We are creating value for our customers by giving them solutions that they cannot handle by themselves. We are a good employee. We are helping and supporting our employees. A good example of that is that we have a very stable workforce. People tend to stay very long with the company, and we are believing that people are our most valuable asset.
Of course, the shareholders, we have created good returns for our shareholders over the years, and we intend to continue to do that. On the society, we are giving back. We are treating the environment in a good place. We are giving back to society and being a good role model for society as such. Today, of course, it is about the development, the industrialization, and the manufacturing on a global scale for large global customers. This is our global footprint as it looks as of today. We have, as I mentioned, over the last years, created this global footprint in order to handle different supply chain situations and being close to the customer and the end market. The facilities that are marked in red are the medical ones, and the black ones are the engineered ones.
It has been very focused for us to be strong on the three important continents. If we look on the business environment surrounding us, we see some trends. If we start on the macro trends, we see globalization, but with a lot of geopolitical tensions in the world. We see an aging population across. We see digitalization. We see a tendency to shorter product life cycles. We also see an increased focus on corporate responsibility. Our customers are reacting on those trends. We feel that our customers are more and more focusing on their core activities. They are regionalizing with simplified supply chains. This has been increasingly important during COVID, after COVID, and now with discussions related to different kinds of trade barriers. We see also customers focusing more and more on outsourcing and, of course, time to market with shorter life cycles.
Differentiation and also feel that a lot of our customers are having an increased focus on the corporate responsibility. How does this affect us then? We feel that those business and mega trends are benefits for us. We feel with our early participation, our partnership with our customers, we are gaining ground around the world and also helping our customers simplify their supply chains. We are offering multi-site offering to customers, which means that we can produce for them the same thing on different parts of the continents. We, of course, have been working very hard on simulations and pre-engineering in the development phase. We will come back to that later during the day. Of course, a lot of focus on design, productivity, quality, and, of course, our strong corporate responsibility.
As a summary, we feel that we are very well positioned for the mega trends that we see. Today, the board has decided to introduce new financial targets, which we feel are good. We will come back to those later on and describe the journey in more details. Organic growth should be organically above 8% over a business cycle, of course. The EBITA margin target has been increased from 10% to above 12%. We have a return on capital target of higher than 15%. These are the different steps that we are taking with the two parts of the business and also the Nolato Group. We are constantly moving. We are on a constant journey. On the group level, it's all about creating a global solutions provider with added extended capabilities.
What that means is that we are adding technologies, services surrounding the existing products that we have today and existing offering to do more for the customer. We will come back to that later on during the day as well. If we then look on the medical solutions, that means that we are a global solution provider, but adding electronics and drug handling to our offering. On the engineered solutions, it's about being a global solution provider and also adding electronics to the offering. If we look on the sustainability, this is something that's been core for Nolato Group and for me personally for many years. We have done a very solid job of making sure that our facilities are sustainable journey, and that is suggesting improvements to our customers. That was the first step.
Our engineers in the development phase should and are introducing greener solutions to the customer. In the early stage of this development, we did not get so much positive feedback from the customer. They said, "Well, not interested. Let's do it as we normally do." I am very pleased to tell you that over the last three years, that has changed. Now the customer is coming back to us and asking about those suggestions that we have put in place. As a summary, that has put us in the forefront of our customer as the green solution provider. Very pleased to see that. We have also received a lot of good external recognition for our strong work within the sustainable party. We will come back also to more details about this.
Approximately a year ago, we announced also that we had signed a new long-term agreement with a major customer, existing customer, for a large program. This is a heavy investment for Nolato, so we are investing approximately SEK 600 million ongoing to build up capacity of an additional 9,000 sq m and approximately 16 molding machines, three assembly lines. The estimated annual sales when it is fully ramped is approximately SEK 700 million, creating approximately 200 new positions in this process. This will be done in our Hungarian facility. If we then look, of course, our journey is continuing. We are expanding our value chain, adding new materials, new services to existing and new customers. We have a continued acquisition strategy focusing on adding new services and offering to our portfolio. We see increasing profitability, continuing the measures already initiated.
We have built a global organization set for growth across all parts of our business. I will now hand over to Per-Ola going more into details regarding the financials. After his presentation, we will welcome questions on both the two first parts of today's presentation.
Good afternoon. My name is Per-Ola Holmström, CFO of Nolato Group. I've been with the company since 1995. Today, I will give a review of the finances of the group, starting with some historical performance. We will dig deeper into the new financial targets we announced today and then some. Starting with a historical perspective. On this page, you can see sales in the bars, and the line is showing our EBITA margin the last 20 years. In blue, we have separated the VHP sales, vaporizing heating products. As you can see, the last eight years has been affected by the VHP.
Still, if we exclude those, we have had continuously increased sales during these years as well. Much coming from, of course, the medical business area continues to develop within a growth sector. Of course, we have been affected during this time period with the VHP business. During 2021, it was about one-third of the group sales. After the ramp down of the VHP business, we have, of course, had to adjust our Chinese operations. We have moved almost all production from the Beijing area to South China and Malaysia. It has been a big operation to do that. Many people have been involved. A lot of work to handle that. We have done it according to plan in a very good way. Of course, during 2022 and 2023, our numbers have been affected by that, less profitability, and affecting the margins.
The situation today is that we have adjusted for this. We have chosen to have a setup to be able to take on new businesses in China. Here we have some historical numbers for Medical Solutions. The latest eight quarters in the graphs show sales, EBITDA result, and EBITDA margin. We have had a situation during this time period still affected by some COVID-related inventory adjustments in some of the market areas, IVD and surgery. We have been able to improve our margins quarter by quarter from end of 2023. We ended the last quarter with 11.2% in margin. Moving into Engineered Solutions, of course, the sales, the growth has been impacted by ramping down VHP business. On the other hand, as I said, we have been able to improve our margin. It's a big jump for the margins.
We have been almost on 10.2%. That is the situation for our historical present situation when it comes to financials. Christer has earlier today given the base, the strategies, where we are right now. Hence, we have been able to announce new financial targets and moving forward towards those. Repeating, organic growth exceeding 8%, EBITA margin exceeding 12%, return on capital employed exceeding 15%. That is our long-term goals, and it is the targets over a business cycle for all three of these. How should we then achieve reaching these targets? Starting with organic growth exceeding 8%. We do think that we can do that in both business areas supporting the new target. In medical, we do expect the market to grow 4%-5%. In addition to that, we have the new announced drug delivery project that will support from 2026.
As we always have done during all the history of this business area, we intend to continue to take market share and expand that part. These two, we expect to add another 4%. For engineered solutions, market growth 2-3%, less than medical. We have one market area of almost 20% of the business area, materials, formerly EMC. We can see a higher growth rate in that area. We have been successful moving from the telecom business, expanding into automotive during the last five, six years. We do see additional possibilities to new businesses within automotive. We do see possibilities into some new market areas for that part. Anders will come back to examples of what we mean with these new market areas and additional technologies in that part. A faster growth rate for that part.
In addition, for the other market areas, we expect to introduce new technologies, growing in new market areas, and another 5% for the rest of the business area. The other Anders, he will come back with more examples of what we mean with the value chain and some new technologies. EBITA margin exceeding 12%. We think that midterm we can reach 12%. Percentage units for the medical solution business area and almost 2% each units for engineered solutions. In medical, we will continue with cost-out initiatives. That is something we are used to do. It is a way of supporting our partnership with these kind of customers. We do come up with proposals to take out costs from the value chain. Of course, the customer is gaining from that. In that process, we can increase our margins.
In addition to that, the usual efficiency work, we have something we call medical excellence that is driving that part. We do also think that additional volumes, utilization can support increasing the margins. The product mix margin in that part. The two first, the cost-out initiatives and further efficiency, we do think that will come in a higher level from the North America organization. Engineered Solutions, we have adjusted the cost base in China, but we have still a larger cost base that we will continue to fill up with more sales that will support margin going forward. Growth, utilization, again in this area as well, combined with a mathematical increased share of the market area Materials, that will grow faster, as I showed on the previous page. Supporting higher margins, we have premium margins in that area.
That is positive when we have a higher share of materials. Return on capital employed, you can see on the graph that we have been increasing the returns from a low level during the full 2024, gradually every quarter. We ended at 12.3%. We will continue to increase that by the margin improvements, by organic growth, and continue with our efficient cash management work. The main contributor to the return number will be the margin improvement. Moving over to some other KPIs within finance, we do have a strong financial position, very important, of course, to have as a base for keep on growing and doing and continuing with the strategies we have decided on. In this graph, you can see our net financial liability in the bars, and the line is showing the relation to EBITDA. At the end of this period, the relation was 0.4x
It is a low level, and that will support the growth going forward. We can invest in CapEx to our new selected customer projects. We can do further acquisitions. If we do some calculations on this, we will be prepared to go up to 2.0 in this relation lines, where 1.3 is utilized. You can see we have the possibility to go up with the level of EBITDA we have today, about SEK 1.5 billion yearly, to this 2.0 level by using the additional existing credit lines. Moving into CapEx, in the graphs, you can see the last five years, they are having sales in the bars and CapEx along the lines. For Medical, we have invested between SEK 250 million-SEK 550 million during this five-year period. Medical is more CapEx intense, and that is based on most of the facilities we have in this part is our own.
We do most of the production in clean rooms. That is expensive. We do have a need for further infrastructure, some further automation equipment, which does that. It is more CapEx heavy. Engineered Solutions has invested between SEK 100 million and SEK 300 million during the same period yearly. Together, that gives a relation to our sales in average of 5%. Engineered Solutions, the value expansion we are going to do going forward, we think is not that CapEx heavy. Combined for the group, 2025, we see that our CapEx will be between SEK 800 million-SEK 850 million this year. Long-term, around 5% of our sales. This year is then, of course, more. The reason for that is that we are project. Working capital at the end of 2024, it was almost 14% tied up in relation to our sales.
We have normalized after the favorable situation we had for the VHP business. We think that is a normalized level going forward as well. We are prepared for questions.
Yes, hello. It's Adrian Glanney here at ABG. Two questions from my end. First of all, on engineered solutions, it sounds like materials is quite important both to achieve the growth target and for the margin target as well. Can you give us some indication on what the situation is currently on materials? Is 2025 a year where it can actually reach the projected growth targets, or is that more, as you say, over a cycle?
Let's start with this. Materials is important, and it's a good business for us, both on the financial profile, but also as an integrator of other parts of the businesses. So it's very important, yes. The second part of the question was then, of course, can it be reached in the shorter period of time? We had very good growth within materials last year, and it has some volatility to the growth numbers because of the telecom part of the business. Now we are more and more going into additional areas with new markets and easing that volatility a little bit going forward. But of course, it's still a portion of that sales, a large portion of that sales is still in the telecom. We'll come back to that details a little bit later. But of course, it can be achieved. We achieved it last year.
Okay, understood. Also regarding the long-term agreement with this unnamed diabetes customer, you haven't really given a concrete profitability number on that before. Considering the return on capital target you announced this morning, can we assume it's at least in line with that or perhaps clearly above, given that you've announced the investment? We can sort of back out what the returns have to be for it to meet that target.
The returns are similar to other businesses we have, which means that the EBITA is a little bit premium.
Yeah. You had the 15% in mind when setting that?
Yes.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. That's all from me.
Yes, Colin from SEB. I have a question regarding the medical growth. I mean, of course, you will have a quite good growth ramp up when you ramp up the new projects. I'm just wondering, is the 8% also target after you have fully ramped up so that you can continue to sustain that growth rate?
Regular numbers over the last 20 years. We will continue to aim for that. We see this project, yeah, it is a milestone for us, definitely. We have other good businesses as well.
Sounds good. Thank you.
Okay, here's a question from the online. It is regarding if the profitability level is similar in the new materials areas for the business, for the heritage business in materials.
Yes, we do think the new businesses have similar margins as the other parts of materials. Yes.
Hi, it's Mikael Asian, Carnegie here. Just wondering if you can repeat what you said about the margins per segment in your new financial targets. Was it 14% for 14, 15% for medical and 12 for industrial? Is that correct?
I was coming from the levels we have right now and saying that the midterm target reaching 12% would be an improvement of plus 2% for Medical and slightly below 2% for Engineered Solutions.
Okay, got it. Can you also talk to us about China, where you are there in that improvement journey after the reset in second half 2023?
Yes, of course. We have moved the production. The new facilities are up running. We are, according to plan, and we are now addressing new business opportunities to sort of utilize the excess capacity that we have been building.
Hey, Markus at DNB. Just a quick follow-up on the networking capital. You said 14% was normalized. Could you give some more flavor going out a few years? What level could this be at?
I think we are at the level that we will have going forward as well. There might be ups and downs around that level. Of course, we will try to improve in different areas. We are a company in between very large customers, very large suppliers. We cannot divide from industry standards when it comes to agreed terms in different ways. For our inventory situation, we do production based on orders. That is really what we have in our inventories.
Okay, thank you.
Any more questions? Okay, coming up.
Just one more on M&A here. I mean, you have a very strong balance sheet. What do you have in the pipeline?
Yes. Our acquisition strategy has always been buying good companies that have a good position on the market and a good reputation, well-built companies, because we are linking them together with our brand name. That has always been part of it. Up till now, we have been focusing on building geographical footprint, making sure that we have the right customers and the right geographical spread. We feel that we have accomplished that. Going forward, we are more looking at new technologies. Could be electronic manufacturing, could be metals, could be drug handling, those kinds of things that sort of add on to the overall delivery to the customer. More sell to or value creation in that pipeline.
More value for the customer, I guess, more under one house. Could you acquire like an EMS, like an electronic manufacturing services company or?
That could be one possibility and then add it on together with our delivery. Integrating that into our deliveries.
Okay. Are you focusing more on the medical side or is it broad-based?
This new add-ons could be for both areas.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Okay. We will come back to a question session later on in the whole day. We would like to hand over to Christian going into sustainability.
Thank you. My name is Christian Sandberg, and I work as the Sustainability Manager for the group. Since 15 years back, I've been in various different positions, everything ranging from engineering to marketing to quality and environmental management. It's a pleasure being here today to share our sustainability development journey and how we leverage that as a competitive advantage for the Nolato Group. I'm going to talk about some trends and drivers. There is a science-based target and the impact the Nolato Group have on the climate, the adaptation to circular economy in the society as per today, and some key takeaways from that. Science-based targets, sorry, how we contribute to a more sustainable society is to make our customers more competitive and more sustainable. We have a three-pronged approach to do this. Our approach to production and doing this, creating the conditions that helps the customers becoming more sustainable.
Our approach to suppliers is to take full responsibility for our supply chain. Our approach to design is sharing the raw material expertise, the manufacturing knowledge we have from extensive and many years of experience. We know that the majority is formed. Science-based targets is becoming more and more of a normal requirement from our customers. Now more than 10,000 companies all over the world have committed to science-based targets. It is a voluntary framework for companies that want to show its impact in line with the Paris Agreement. This is becoming a door opener and a business enabler for Nolato to have this validated. We got our quite ambitious targets approved from the institution, from the science-based targets early last year. Going into more details about that later on in this presentation.
One of the most important aspects to reduce your climate impact of your own operations is to work with the energy mix and to try to optimize that. In the graph to the left on this slide is the development of our renewable electricity out of the total electricity use we have in the group. This is showing the last decade's development. As you can see, our intention and our development have been quite of a pace. We are now operating on all our facilities on 89% of the total electricity use as renewable electricity. In Europe and in Asia, we are 100% renewable. Taking all energy sources into consideration, not only electricity, we can see that on the pie chart to the right, that there is a very low percentage coming from fossil energy sources, such as petroleum products, 1%.
Natural gas contributes 2% of our total energy mix. We have investments ongoing to replace those heating systems with more energy-efficient geothermal heat pumps and other fossil energy sources. This makes us quite easy to reach 100% renewable energy mix in our production. One example of how we work with our energy mix is to add additional power purchase agreements. At the end of last year, we released the news that we signed a new one in Stutsvik, close to Stockholm. This is a new solar park that has been installed, a total production capacity of 25 gigawatt hours, and we have signed up for 14 gigawatt hours. In combination with the already existing PPA agreement we have with the solar park in Skåne, this now contributes for one third of our electricity consumption in Sweden.
The main takeaways from getting more PPA agreements are that we continue to contribute to renewable electricity production in Sweden, as well as we are mitigating the effects of volatile energy prices. The development of our scope 1 and 2 emissions coming from 13 years back, our current Nolato target, you can see in the upper right corner, the bars on the graph are the absolute emissions we have. The blue dotted line is the intensity, the emissions we have per net sales. The current Nolato target we have is to reduce the intensity by 80% going from the base year 2011-2012. As you can see from the green lines, we have achieved already more than 94% emission reduction. That is intensity. Looking at the absolute emissions, we can look at the bar for 2014, for example.
We can see that we had an absolute reduction of our emissions with 85%, being a company less than half of the size of where Nolato is today. This is creating value for our stakeholders and especially our customers who have set science-based targets as well, because this is reducing their emissions in their value chain, making Nolato an important partner for them. How have we achieved this? A little bit more detail about scope 1 and 2 emissions. This is the science-based target that we set up and approved last year. The ambitious target of 70% of reduction of absolute emissions going from the base year 2021 to 2030. This is the development of the last four years.
As you can see from the dark green colored parts of the bar, the emissions coming from fossil-based fuels, scope one emissions, have been significantly reduced in terms of percentage. The vast majority of the reduction is coming from the emissions from electricity use. By securing renewable electricity directly through the electricity providers or energy attribute certificates, we have shown a significant reduction in scope one and two emissions. We have some emissions coming from district heating as well. The majority of the emissions coming from district heating is in Asia, where the district heating is generated by over 90% fossil-based fuels or coal in combination, generating a lot of emissions. With the transfer from Beijing to south of China, where district heating is no longer needed, we will continue to decrease the emissions from district heating.
In summary, we are well on the way to achieve our science-based targets and well ahead of our peers. This creates a business advantage for Nolato, especially for our customers. Having said that, you can see that from the successful journey of reducing our scope one and two emissions, our total climate impact is coming from scope three. Categorized from the value chain, you can see that 87% of these emissions are coming from the upstream activities. That is an advantage for us because it is easier to actually work with your supply chain, but it needs to be done. Looking at the overall development of scope three emissions, the target we set and got validated from science-based target is to have a 25% reduction of the emissions in scope three coming from the upstream value chain. We have achieved already a 22% reduction.
The key factors to that are to have a resource-efficient material use. We have reduced the material use in the group, as well as we have increased the share of sustainable materials. I will show you the development of this because this is a key factor for us going forward as well. One of the major trends for a plastic company today is to transition the use of polymer raw materials from fossil-based alternatives to more sustainable alternatives. This bar represents the last three years' development of the use of sustainable polymer raw materials. The blue part of the bar is recycled raw materials. The use of recycled raw materials is increasing due to some of the market segments, such as the automotive, for example. It is happening now, and it is happening at quite a pace.
It has more than doubled over the last three years. Bio-based raw materials, you can see from this graph, are increasing, but the majority of the increase comes from something that is called mass balance material. Mass balance material is a mixture of bio-based and recycled feedstocks with fossil-based alternatives in the same production system at our raw material suppliers, allocating the sustainability benefits with certified tracking methods, such as ISCC Plus certification. Overall, you can say that this makes us more competitive. It is a door opener to new business for customers that want to go away from other materials to sustainable plastics in different forms. It is also decreasing our dependency on fossil-based alternatives.
A case study and a coastal initiative that we have been working with, and a perfect example of how Nolato contributes to make our customers more competitive and more sustainable at the same time. The customer is one of the leading companies in Europe supplying office furniture. The starting point of this product, this is a quite heavy product, half a kilo, and it's a product manufactured in a technically advanced polymer material, polyamide 6, with a really high climate impact. As a first step, together with the customer, we decided to change the material to virgin polypropylene, a much more simple plastic material, which has a lot lower carbon footprint. As a step two, we decided to make trials even with a recycled polypropylene. That turned out well.
The customer tested the product and approved it a couple of weeks ago, which means the end result of this case was that the carbon footprint of the product was reduced with 86% just with these simple changes. You got reduced material costs, which is a nice side effect, as well as 19% lower product weight due to the lower density of the polypropylene material. It's not only a win-win for our customers and for Nolato. It's also a success for the environment, a triple win effect. Our approach to our supply chain is to promote the sustainability, which is becoming increasingly important with the due diligence directive. We have to have a close collaboration with our supply chain and clear expectations. By clearly stipulating our requirements to our supply chain, we make them improve.
We started out an initiative last year, giving our suppliers three different badges for their performance. In one of the badges, Climate Committed, if they committed to science-based targets to follow the Paris Agreement, a green energy supplier, meaning that they have over 50% of the energy mix coming from renewable sources, and a responsible supplier badge showing that they've signed our supplier code of conduct and they have been assessed by EcoVadis. These three different badges are making it easy for us to select the suppliers who perform well in these areas, as well as it is a win-win situation for the suppliers because they know that if they perform well in these areas, they are gaining more business with Nolato. A trend and a future approach is to transition from a linear economy to a circular economy.
That means to reduce the use of virgin raw materials that is ending. This is creating new business opportunities for us in different phases of these strategies. Starting with the dark colored green part of the circle, we start with we reserve the right to refuse any business that does not go in line with our sustainability expectations. For example, business that is a product manufactured in hazardous material. The most important is to reduce the resources that are used for a product. That is the phase in the design phase where you can do as much as possible to reduce the environmental impact of a new product. The light green part of this circle is in the use phase of a product. That is about extending the product lifetime.
For example, the four repair, it could be a complex product consisting of hundreds, two hundreds of different components, which you could repair. Nolato can manufacture the components and assemble back. It could be a refurbishment to add new functionality in a product, sensors, for example, or to remanufacture a product, to disassemble a product, integrating the whole components again and manufacturing the discarded products. This is making us new business opportunities all over this circular economy approach. The intention of this is to avoid the outgoing red arrow where the products are ending at the wrong places or burned with energy recovery or, as the worst example, landfill or ending up in places where it shouldn't be. Some key takeaways from this presentation. Nolato is an innovative sustainable solutions partner for our customers.
We are making our customers more competitive and more sustainable at the same time. The resilience in our business model is we can continue to up tooling to be able to run the production with sustainable raw materials instead of using fossil-based alternatives. The transition to a circular economy creates new business opportunities for us, and we are adapting to that. We are a solid, reliable partner with responsibility for our full supply chain. Plastics are a sustainable material for the future. Thank you. I will leave over to Mr. Glenn Svedberg.
Hello to all of you in the room and to you who watch us online. I'm Glenn Svedberg. I'm responsible for our global technical design centers, and I hope you will find it interesting to learn more about that today.
I've been with the company 18 years in different roles, and I've been in executive group management since 2021. The idea today is that I will guide you through the purpose of having a technical design center, some of the general technology trends, our capabilities in this area, and finish off with a couple of examples to highlight this. Let's first start with what really TDC is about for Nolato. We are a business enabler, and it's also really a differentiator when you look at some of our peers in the industry. How is this happening? It drives new business opportunities where we work hand in hand with sales in order to get access to new areas within the existing accounts or attracting new business to us when we market our engineering service capabilities.
It also creates a stronger relationship with our customer because we get a much wider contact surface with the customer. It's not only purchasers speaking to salespersons. We open up and have engineering team collaboration. This is making the relationship, walking away from a transactional business into more of a partnership approach, which is really strengthening the bonds between us and our customers. Finally, it also increases the value add in our manufacturing services, which is the bread and butter of what we do. I have one example of that later on in this presentation. These are the values for Nolato and why we do think that having a global technical design center covering all the market areas we operate in is a great idea. There are also customer advantages.
Instead of going to a traditional consultancy firm and having to potentially redesign things, actually they get the same package with us. We can be both their competent engineering consultant as well as the manufacturing services partner. With this, they get fewer contact points. It makes their communication easier, and they have only one responsible partner to deal with. Hopefully, we can bring the manufacturability aspects to the table at an earlier point in time to avoid some of the reiterations and the redesign loops. The ultimate purpose of TDC is really to help the customer innovate with fast time to market. When we ask the customers, what is the most important and top three factors to remain competitive when it comes to product development? They highlight product innovation for sustainable solutions, reducing time to market, and to have an efficient product development and manufacturing.
At Nolato, it's really how do we support the customers to get from idea to reality. We don't just innovate. We actually reimagine. We can combine safe medical devices with fast-moving consumer products. What the technical design center really does is to seamlessly infuse a design concept with our manufacturing expertise. In simple words, transform an idea into reality. Moving over to some of the general trends, they are not unique for us, but they have a big impact on our business. Products get smarter. The devices get more powerful. The connectivity of our products is also increasing, as you read about daily. That drives the need for antennas and shielding. It has also been proven that electrification is the fastest route for society to reduce the CO2 footprint.
All of those three points are also strengthening and increasing the electronics integration in products across different market areas. Adding to that is the miniaturization of products that makes our design for manufacturing more complex and also the ability to have a larger amount of products because you miniaturize them. The last couple of years, also sustainability has got a seat at the table. The eco design principles are something that is taken into account from an early stage in a product development project. That is also a very strong trend, as we heard Christer also mention earlier. At Nolato, we have a global footprint, and we are actually mirroring that also when it comes to the technical design center. We have four offices, two in the US, one in Europe, and one in Asia. That is ready to support customers in any project globally.
As we are a decentralized company where we interact a lot between that can support our customers. The business model of Nolato is really to have an end-to-end customer offering. Even though we prefer to enter as early as possible in the project because then we can add more value to the customer, the core competence of TDC lies really in the definition phase where we can help customers make the proof of concept, and we can take this very often subjective user requirements and translate those into more concrete and tangible product requirements in support of the development project. When we move into the development phase, we can really use our core expertise in terms of design for excellence, design for manufacturing, design for assembly, design for test, design for environmental, etc. Robust design is the output that we request from those activities.
I will come back a bit to that later on. We later on can help the customer to qualify both the design through verification, but also the whole manufacturing process through validation. We tend to cooperate close between the technical design center and the target site that will receive this business in a joint collaboration where we prepare for high-volume production and do the industrialization together. For some customers, we can also support that have an interest in that post-market activities. It can be regulatory quality work. It can be supply chain efforts and related services. In parallel to this, over the last couple of years, we have heard the eco design principles also gaining ground.
We can help and support customers in the choice of material, in selecting the right grades with the right feedstock, and use our digital tools for the design for manufacturing, not only to improve the design, but also to reuse the footprint of the product. Also, the assembly method, looking at the product lifecycle of a product, will have an impact to this. If we look at the combined capabilities we have in this area between TDC and our sites and the new project that is coming in from the left-hand side here, we can create value. We do that primarily by clustering our services in five different buckets. The first is about tooling, where we can bring our experienced mold engineers and make sure that they are setting the right tool concepts together with the mold manufacturers and have the right mold design.
We also project manage that whole process, which is crucial in order to meet the time-to-market requirements. Regardless of whether we source the tool externally or if we make it in-house in one of our three tool-making facilities, we can still have an overall responsibility to drive that project management. The next is the design phase, where we already mentioned the robust design and design for excellence features. We can do things like virtual prototyping and simulation. I will elaborate a bit about that later on. We can also help develop test methods for final test procedures. Some of the early-day experience we had from the mobile phone business, where we have quite substantial testing, is also something we can do for other market areas and replicate that knowledge. I already mentioned eco design, supply chain.
We have a commodity management on that. Of course, being in the forefront means that we will need to look out for new technologies, for new processes, and for new materials. Using scientific molding is one such feature where we can also train our process engineers in individual sites in our training centers to use this methodology. Of course, we want to add new technologies to our already extensive process library, as well as look at new technology introduction and, importantly, also search for and scout for new sustainable material options. Last but not least, automation is a key to remove labor operations where it really is beneficial to have that, and also to increase quality and output. Automation is gaining ground.
We can help both design to write the user requirement specification to procure and verify a whole cell for automation before we put it in our factories. It is really about blending the manufacturing expertise with our design expertise to make sure the customer gets access to the total combined powerhouse of all the engineers in order to be successful in our later industrialization and launch. Our virtual factory, it is something that I will try to give you a general description of what that means. It is not just about having a digital twin or making an individual simulation of a component. It is about pulling together a number of digital tools in the right sequence in a clever way to make use of technology in the best possible way to support our customers. The first step is really to look into the design and the specifications.
We look at the 3D CAD drawings together with the customer. We can make a full-dimensional analysis of those parts in the computer, and we can optimize specifications. It's not one size fits all when it comes to tolerance settings. We will modify it depending on whether it's a crucial area or not. By this, we can not just have a deeper understanding of how the product and functionality really works in this case. It also allows for easing up some of the tolerances to have a lower cost of manufacturing. We really focus only on the hot topics where it is a potential issue for the functionality. The next step is to really take a data-driven mold design approach. Our experienced mold technicians and mold engineers, they look at the tool concepts.
They use the computers to make an iterative process to check at what is the right gating position, how should we have the cooling, and they make the finite element analysis to really make the optimization of the component to have the right tool strategy and the right concept from start before we start to cut steel and make the product and make the tools. The next step is really to use these mold flow simulations and put them together and optimize the part design and refine it further because you can do a full-dimensional evaluation still on the virtual product before you have it physically in your hand. That can also, in a dialogue with the customer, help to improve the design further. For example, when you assemble a simulated distorted component with another, you need to iterate the design further.
Finally, we start to get ready for reality. It's about preparing a measurement program for the finished product. You can actually also perform a design of experiment where we can elaborate and try different parameters of our manufacturing process in order to check where it's the most safe harbor and define the process settings that are needed in order to get a robust product in the end. With all these things, we have had a quite structured approach, and we worked very collaboratively close with the customer in order to reduce later potential mistakes and get things right the first time. You can read more on our website about this, but I wanted to demonstrate the value by showing a customer case. In this case, it is a drug delivery device. We worked together with a customer, and it involved 14 different plastic components.
We used this methodology throughout the process, and it was 440 individual dimensions that we measured on these 14 parts. It is pleasing to see that 100% of them were right the first time out of two, which is very impressive compared to how we have worked historically a long time ago. It is less than 1%, only four dimensions that we had to make a fine-tune of to get into the well-centered nominal value. It really also strengthens, again, the partnership with the customer because we work very close together with them. In the end, you get a time and cost-efficient development and also meeting the strict quality requirements. On the right-hand side, you see a customer testimonial.
I will not go through that, but it kind of reflects that the customer felt very comfortable with having us as more or less an integrated partner, embedded engineer in their site throughout this project, and that we have the needed know-how to support them in this project. To also get to an accurate result in the first time is really good and pleasing. This is a good example of how we can do. Another way of summarizing the drivers and the benefits of using this method I'll try to do here. The most important is to get yourself into the right values. You do the work upfront to make sure you have a safe and robust design the first time when it comes out of the tool, after having done it virtually.
You also get the early assessment of the manufacturing requirements, so the site can be prepared on how to run these products. Quite importantly, you would think that the customer has a genuine understanding of their products. Of course, the devil is always in the details. When you look under the hood and really go into the nitty-gritty details, you learn new things by using this method, and that's really useful. With all of the above, that makes it possible for us to achieve a shorter time to market. Also, the environmentally friendly designs, because most of these simulations that I talked about, we not just support that we get things right and that we optimize the design from functionality, it also allows us to optimize the actual resource usage for the product, primarily by reducing weight and eliminating materials.
With all, you get a very cost-efficient execution. I wanted also to come back to the point of increasing value, how TDC can do that. We'll demonstrate that by using this example. If you look at the left side of this diagram, you can see original RFQ. It's the first time we got the referral quotation from this client. We went through the products, and we quoted a kit price of roughly $10. By having TDC involved, looking at what are our array of technologies and services that can be relevant for this product together with the customer, we worked through that in a number of iterations to see what could be made by Nolato, what could be sourced externally, and what could potentially be assembled as a sub-module in order to give greater value to the customer.
When we were ready to start off this project, actually, we were already at the kit price of a little bit more than $24. So more than 140% increase of the value that we can at the same time as it allows Nolato to increase our margin in absolute numbers. It is a great story, an example of how we can do it. I have talked a lot about virtual reality or, sorry, virtual prototypes. I talked about simulation, but in the end, it is really about having experience also in reality. How do things work when you really start to do it in your factory? We have the great position at Nolato to deal with different market segments, market areas, and we can make a cross-fertilization between these.
We can use the knowledge we get when pioneering medical safety, high-volume precision manufacturing with what we do in engineer solutions, complex resin-based products crafted for resilience and scalable cost efficiency. Topping that up with what we can offer within materials to have EMI and EMC and thermal management options will only add value to the party. Very often, you also tend to forget the soft factors, but to really drive the project management of this and have highly skilled engineers that have the in-depth knowledge about how to scale this up from a concept base to high-volume production is one of the key factors for us. To project manage this is really crucial, and it's something we can carry all the way from the concept to the high volume.
In total, we think this demonstrates that Nolato is a company that can develop and manufacture advanced components, subsystems, and ready-packaged products, including integrated products, to get the complete product in the hands of the customer. I will actually finish off with just putting the first slide back because these are the kind of key takeaways that I would like you to remember, how our technical design centers can build value, open up possibilities for new business, and create a stronger relationship with our customers. Thank you. I think we now have a coffee break, 15-20 minutes, and we will start later on. Thank you.
All right, welcome back, everyone. I hope you got some coffee and some snacks to that as well. Now we enter into the next part where we actually generate the business and make things work.
Myself, Johan Iverberg, I'm the President of Medical Solutions since 2016. I joined the company six years earlier as a Managing Director for one of the Swedish medical customers. All in all, almost 15 years in the company. The agenda for this session is I will have a quick update on where we are with Medical Solutions in brief. Then into our offering and some deep dives in some offering and products that we are producing in some of the product areas. Some trends and drivers on the market and then more into the future and the overall strategy and how that links into the overall strategy for the group. Some priority areas for this year and then some important key takeaways from this session. All right, Medical Solutions, we have, as you can see, have a very, very strong growth over the years.
Mainly organic growth, but on top of that as well, seven successful acquisitions that have also contributed to the overall growth. The last years have been a little bit different in the medical or healthcare area. There have been some volatility in some of the product areas, such as the surgery and a lot of elective surgery that had to be postponed. That made not a full stop, but a stop in the surgical device area for us. After the vaccine entered the market, that took off again. There was a huge backlog and the demand was very, very high. When that got normalized again, inventory levels were at a very high level in the supply chain. We have been suffering from that for a year or two.
We still see that inventory levels are on the high end in the supply chain. Hopefully, that will normalize during this year. IVD or diagnostics had exactly the same, but opposite. When COVID hit, there was a huge demand on consumables, mainly for PCR tests. All countries tried to buy whatever they could buy. The industry boomed. We produced max capacity in all our sites producing consumables. We sold everything, even if it was not COVID-related. That has also been, and that actually was a higher impact than the loss in the surgery. That has also been impacting us over the last years with low volumes in IVD that it is catching up again. Last ended up at 10.8%. That is still below, well below what you heard earlier today from Christer and Per-Ola, meaning that we will increase that profit margin over time.
Medical Solutions in brief, growth with increased profitability. That is what we are going to do. That was clear as well when we presented the new targets today. We have a very strong position with most of the leading big pharma and med tech companies globally. In fact, we are very, very proud and happy to have that customer base. We more or less have the customers already that we need. We just need to dig deeper into the pockets and increase the share of wallet with these clients' customers. We offer new product development through TDC and through our sites and as well world-class manufacturing from our 20 sites globally. Competitors, there are several. With the growth of Medical Solutions, we are now one of the bigger players in the market.
Looking at our footprint, you have heard that earlier today, we are very well positioned in the US, in Europe, and in Asia. More than that, in Asia, we are in China and we are outside China. In Europe, we have several manufacturing sites, both in the western part of Europe, but also in East Europe, adding low-cost capabilities. We are right now expanding both those sites in Poland and in Hungary. US, a very good footprint since the latest acquisition of GW Plastics, but as well, we can offer low-cost manufacturing from Mexico. All in all, very good footprint, enabling growth with global pharma and med tech customers. It has been quite some journey. Twenty years ago, there were more or less just one dot in Sweden. We have been growing the business to SEK 5.5 billion in twenty years.
Summarizing the business area, we have actually more than 70 years of medical experience, but it's the latest 20-25 years when we actually have been focusing and growing the business. Twenty production sites worldwide. As an engineer, you like to talk about machines. We have more than 1,000 injection molding machines globally in our manufacturing sites. One hundred assembly lines, and that is a growing share of the business when we add more value into our deliveries with sub-assemblies and final assemblies and full box build products. Four TDCs supporting new business, existing business that you heard Glenn expand. That team is actually some of the world's best engineers that we have in-house, as well as we have great relationships with all the high, I would say, high-tech mold shops in the world.
2,500 employees last year, SEK 5.5 billion sales, and a growing footprint now exceeding 150,000 square meters in these sites. To our Medical Solutions offer, the first part is end-to-end offering, where we offer help from early design stage through the chain, all the way to qualification, industrialization, and full-scale manufacturing. We engage with TDC and the local sites and help the customers to perform during this process. This could be a new drug delivery product, for example, a new auto-injector or similar. Normally, longer lead times. It is not unusual with at least five years of lead time, but actually it could also be up to 10 years in the long project phase before the product reaches the market. The next one, manufacturing service, is more linked to the outsourcing, transfer capacity extension with existing and new customers.
For example, what we are doing now in Hungary, we extend capacity to an existing customer and are investing in new equipment and new capacity. We do everything from components all the way to sub-assemblies, full assemblies, and complete finished device, box build, and ready to ship to distribution. The last part of our offer is platform products, our own products. It is a small area. It is less than 10% of our sales. It is in pharma packaging, in breathing balloons, and some other small lab assortments. This is an important part supporting the rest of the business, but always without competing with our customer, which is extremely important. Looking into our focus market, and you can see there is an increase from the year before in the share. We have been growing based business, but we have also been successful in gaining new business in this area.
It is a fast-growing area for us. Excuse me. Cardiology, it is a stable area with high profit. Pharma packaging now is just above 10%. We have changed the product mix. We have phased out commodity packaging and now focusing more on high-end pharma packaging. The drug delivery segment or market area is another very important area for us, growing and will grow even more going forward. 16% of our sales last year increased from 14%. There we have all kinds of different auto-injectors, pen injectors, drug delivery systems. I will come back later today on that as well. The surgical part, it is the largest area for us, but you can also see it was 22% last year, which was a decrease from 2023, linked to what I said earlier about the supply chain challenges and high inventory levels in the supply chain.
Continental care, important segment, the legacy segment, Formula Auto, very stable growth and important for us. The other segment covers more or less everything else we do, and that is 15% of our business. Some more deep dive into what we actually do in some of these important product areas. The first one is drug delivery. We offer solutions with our TDC from in the development, from early stage to full-scale manufacturing. There are some growth drivers in this area. One of them is new drugs being developed, bio-based, large molecule products or drugs that need another form of administration. You need to inject these drugs. You cannot take them as solids. Therefore, we have developed a lot of new injectors for these kinds of drugs that are changing the market. Extreme growth for these drugs related to weight loss.
There are two big companies in the world now fighting for the market. We are in this program as well with expansion in Hungary that is for weight loss products. Some of our customer examples, you can see here Roche, Novo, Pfizer, and so on. We are working with the big pharma globally. Diagnostics, another important area for us where we supply as well the big diagnostics company globally. You can see a movie up in the right that is actually showing one of our manufacturing lines here in Sweden, or actually there are two lines. Shows the complexity of these products, consumables for diagnostics, very, very high volume. This is a growing area, and we are mainly focusing on the consumable side of this, pipette tips, reaction vessels, and everything else that is needed in high volumes. Medical device in general.
I mean, we supply numbers of different medical devices all the way from components to finished box build devices. A lot of focus on surgery, of course. You can see in the middle here that is a robot that is doing minimal invasive surgery. That is a growing area in the market. It's an important area for Nolato where we are engaged and once again on the consumable side for these kinds of systems. We are engaged in a lot of different products. You can see as well on the far right another product that is revolution for the diabetes patient. It's a continuous glucose monitoring, and that is also a blockbuster on the market that's really changing the life for people with diabetes and as well parents with kids that have diabetes. We estimate that the total spend in the healthcare system globally is $1,700 billion.
It's huge. The medical device side of that is roughly $500 billion. We believe that our addressable market is around $6 billion-$7 billion, giving us a market share of 1%, meaning that it's very fragmented. We are a big player in the market with a market share of 1%. On top of that, we are growing, and the market will grow with 4%-5% every year going forward. Some of the important trends on the market are that it's driven by consolidation. It's driven by demands to lower healthcare costs in general. There is a drive for global supplies. The global pharma, the global med tech, they want suppliers like Nolato that can supply globally. Long product life cycles. We heard earlier today that they are getting shorter, but in the medical field, life cycles are often 20 years or actually even more.
It is a stable demand, and there are high barriers. If you get the business, you have it for a very, very long time. We see growth potentials in diabetes, weight loss combined with the GLP-1s, and in general, drug delivery devices, as well with IVD and cardiology. Those are great fits with the footprint we have today and the technology we have. There is also a small but growing interest in connected medical devices. It is still a very low portion on the market that is connected. In the middle, you can see the market, the different segments, and you can see the size of them. In vitro diagnostics is the largest, and it is also the fastest growing segment. Some growth drivers, globalization, we mentioned that earlier. More people get access to medicine. More people get access to healthcare globally. Chronic diseases.
New drugs are coming out on the market to treat chronic diseases. The aging population, talked about that earlier, and combination with the lifestyle that adds on to the spend in the healthcare sector. New therapies entering the market, and a good example of that is the GLP-1s. That's really changing the market with huge, huge volumes. Home care, pandemics, hopefully that will not happen again, but for sure, it most likely will. Some negative drivers pushing it down is, of course, generic drugs, making the healthcare system to reduce the cost. To be honest, for Nolato, it doesn't really carry if it's a generic. The public cost awareness of high healthcare costs is pushing it down.
Some other recent trends, localization, clearly pushed by the COVID when we realized that we could not supply or our customers could not get supply or the healthcare system could not get supply from the different regions. There is a slow drive into this, not the pace as everyone talked about in the beginning, but it is happening, especially across the US to Europe. The reshoring from China was also a lot of discussions of that. We have not seen a lot of examples of that actually happening. Again, going forward and our focus into our attractive areas where we think Nolato has an excellent fit. One of them is, again, diagnostics and IVD. It is a high-volume market. It is a profitable market. We supply everything from components to full box build products ready to ship to distribution. It is also a growing business or a high growth in that segment.
Drug delivery devices, also medium to high volume with high profitability, depending where you are in the value chain. The closer you come to the drug, the higher profitability. That's why we are trying to move up the value chain and reduce just not only producing components and supplying components. The rest of the medical device, it's a mix. In the low end, there is a lot of commodity products. We are trying to get away from that and climb the value chain as well into more value-add, finished products, box build. There is, of course, as well, which we call the niche technologies, and that's low volume, but high profitability. A good example of that is, for example, long-term implants for pacemakers, where we have a very good position.
Auto-injectors, pen injectors are together with IVD, expected to be the fastest growing areas until 2030. On the device, once again, the CGMs, that is really driving growth with this kind of products. Where are we? First of all, we are a global solution. We can offer these on all three regions. On the medical device, we are climbing the ladder and adding more and more value, such as cleaner manufacturing, different kinds of post-processes. It could be decoration and adding metal or whatever into the product, full and sub-assemblies, all the way up to full box assemblies, including electronics or including other services as, for example, sterilization. On the drug delivery side, we are transferring as well from component supply up to more value-added. We are supplying sub-assemblies and full assemblies.
However, climbing the next step into drug handling, it's a huge step, and it's also something that the big pharma companies want to be in control of. They want to own the drug. They need to be in control of what's happening with it when it goes out to distribution. I think that will change, maybe not on the big pharma in the next years, but on the smaller pharma companies, we get some enquiries to support in this. We are climbing there as well. On the diagnostic side, I would say we are one of the largest players in the market. We have climbed all the way to the top, starting with the acquisition of Nolato Treft in Switzerland some eight, nine years ago.
We have spread that technology to different sites in Europe and as well to the US and most likely over to Asia as well at some point. It's a very good segment, high volumes, and good profitability. All right, looking forward and on the trajectory, our directions. I said earlier, we have the customer base we need. Of course, we like to add more as well, but most we need to increase the share of wallet with the existing to get more of the business that they have and as well be part of the growth of these successful companies. We will expand our offering into embedded electronics, full contract manufacturing, and possible drug handling.
Medical excellence, and Parula mentioned that earlier today, is vital for us, and that's our production system to make sure that we are combining lean principles with high standards in the medical field, making sure that we deliver the right quality in time at the right cost. Our areas for the future is, again, drug delivery devices, diagnostics, and complex medical devices and full contract manufacturing. The last point here, value chain expansion. Christer mentioned earlier on possible acquisitions, and we see potential in that both in North America, Europe, and Asia. Priority areas for this year, expand current and win new business. We saw the new growth targets as well this morning, and we will need to dig deeper again into our customers' share of wallet, focus on business development and cross-selling between our sites. Profitability will increase. We work on strategic pricing.
We also work on the product mix to try to phase out commodity products and instead add more value-add and high-valued products into the system. Again, cost efficiency. Value chain expansion, try to get more of the value outside what we do today with the existing customer. With the new structure of Nolato, we have excellent opportunities to work with engineered solutions to sell our complete positions. It could be a quick way to get into this as well. Lastly, again, medical excellence. Medical quality culture is crucial for us. Everything we produce will end up in a patient, delivering drugs into a patient or needed at the surgery for some reason. Everything that leaves our facilities has to be 100% correct quality. In that environment, we are working with lean improvements, driving productivity year after year after year. Finally, key takeaways from this presentation.
We are a leading full solution provider with a unique global offer with local service in a growing market. We have a global footprint with presence in all strategic medical regions with strong customer relations. We will grow the business with profit with targeted global pharma and med tech customers. Thank you. By that, I leave the word to Anders Björklund.
Okay. Let's see here. My name is Anders Björklund. I'm heading up the business area Engineered Solutions. I am the new kid on the block compared to the previous speakers today. I have only been with Nolato since January last year. I have experience from several different multinational companies and some private equity companies. My last experience was 10 plus years with the Sandvik Group, and I was involved in the IPO of the company called Alema as the MD for the Kanthal division.
I will talk about the engineering solutions in brief today and what is our offering and how does our strategy or our way forward and what is the priorities for 2025. Engineered solutions has a little bit more bumpy development compared to medical solutions. Since I joined, we have done the ramp down of the VHP business. A lot of work has been circling around stability and working with profitability for the business area. We have now created a solid platform for accelerating growth going forward. With the stability and the stable platform that we have created, we have a solid foundation for also improving the profitability going forward. 2024 ended up. An increased share wallet and a better return on capital employed. Looking more into the short-term actions, what are we doing 2025?
Of course, we need to expand our current business and go for new business. We'll do that through selling the complete assortment that we have within Nolato. We will utilize both twin sales, what we call, which is actually areas where we have been for many years with maybe only one or two specific customers. Okay, what more customers can we actually address with the gained knowledge that we have got over the years? We need to develop key capabilities to realize the long-term strategy to climb the value chain. Knowledges. We need to expand our footprint in these hotspots that we talked about earlier, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America. Of course, we need to work with the basis for Nolato, which is the operational excellence, which is improving our productivity every day. What are the key takeaways for Nolato engineered solutions?
We are a leading full-service provider, and we have a unique global offering with a local presence in our entities around the globe. We have a very strong market already today. We have these five market niches, and the sub-niches below have strong market growth. We will focus on value chain expansion, which means going for more assembly business. Thank you. Now it is Anders Eriksson, our Head of Materials. Hello, everybody. Good afternoon.
My name is Anders Eriksson, and I'm responsible for the material area within Nolato Group. I joined Nolato in 1999, and I've been MD since 2006. I would like to go through our material today. We have been growing the business over a number of years and started out with business around the telecom business in Sweden, in the Nordic countries.
We developed the business, expanded into other areas like moving over to Asia, to the China side with the Huawei CT business within the material areas. First, maybe I should explain what the materials is. It's a my material and thermal material. We are developing material, our own material, which are based on silicone, and it can withstand very high temperature. Of course, it will conduct and achieve a shielding solution and transfer thermal material, thermal heat away from the components. We are developing the material in Sweden, in Hallsberg, and we have a very strong engineering team in Sweden where we have all the development, and we make all the material in Sweden. We are applying the material into applications later on, of course.
The sales last year was SEK 752 million, and we are roughly about 8% of the sales of the group. Especially in the three continents, we are sorry. We have been able to grow the business through the expansion, as I mentioned before. As I said, we started off with the telecom and moved into Asia to the telecom business like Huawei CT, and then we moved on to Samsung in South Korea and finally down to the US with Motorola. We were covering all the network business, and I think that we achieved a very, very high share of the content within our segment.
After a number of years, like five years ago, we also entered into the automotive business, and there we had a chance to apply our material into the new generation of automotive applications, which have been a very strong growth, and it will continue because they all need our type of solution within the cars. We acquired two companies, one in the US to be able to meet the market in the US, and we also acquired one company in the U.K. to be able to reach the European market. From a competition point of view, of course, we have some strong US guys and some Chinese who want to copy us. I think from the US side, I think in China we have a very good position because we are a European company and we are well established and quite neutral.
I think it's a good, safe position for us. Now I just would like to give a short video about our application. We are making compounds. We are making materials, and the materials will be applied either like wet material or like solid rubber parts. The wet material can be done by our partners. We have roughly about 80 partners around the world, and the rest of the materials is done in our factories around the world. Okay, let's look at some of our applications. Automotive. In the automotive, you have different types of units, like an ECU. You have a box, and you have different compartments, and it needs to be shielded. There you can use like a Tri-Shield. You also need to protect it from outside. You need a gasket, which can withstand environmental sealing like water.
You also need to make sure that no radiation is coming into the box or out. Finally, you apply a PC board, and on the PC board, you have a lot of components, and the components need to have a grounding to make sure that you have less shielding issues. You also need to apply thermal material. The new generation of components is generating a lot of heat, and you need to transfer away the heat to be able to prolong the lifetime of a component. The materials can be supplied in different ways, either like pads or like fillers. This is what we're doing, and my team in Sweden are developing, and it's our products which we control, and we are developing them the whole time. I would say we are very good at it, and we have achieved a number of patents within this field.
As you can see, we are today supplying to quite many leading companies around the world. What I would like to highlight is that we have a number of companies, as you can see, in Asia and also some in Europe and some in the U.S. I would say we are quite well established within the three different continents, and we can supply locally. Let's take one example: cars, which you can see on the European market and Swedish market today, are expanding a lot. From my point of view, we are shipping to them in China. If they are going to grab a quite big share, fine, we are going to have a good supply to them.
If you see the rest, you have a lot of players in Europe like Bosch, or they are also a big customer within this field for the electronics. Once again, infotainment system where you touch in the car, you have a radar system. That's where we apply our material. We have some small value, I would say, in general in the components. We are supplying in different types of shapes. Of course, you have a dispensable material, which you could see earlier on the robots, and then you have molded. We use the molding machines. We apply the material, and then we injection mold them, as you can do with the plastics. We have small grounding pads because on all the PC boards, you need to shield, and you need to ground. Otherwise, you're going to break the electronics.
Usually, you have small rubber pads or maybe some metal springs. Again, the thermal side, you need to add some thermal material on the components to make sure that you can transfer away the heat. Extruding and molding, you always need to protect them from water to make sure that the electronic does not break down. We are going to see in the cars in a number of years, it is going to be some electrical issues with some of these ECUs. Where are we selling today? The automotive segment has become the biggest market today for us. The telecom is the backbone of our business because they have been driving us for the development. Today, we have the 5G. We have been on the journey from 2, 3, 4, 5G.
Now, the investments in general, starting out like Nokia, Ericsson and the network guys, are preparing for 6G. I think they're quite well prepared. We have done a number of test beds to be able to test and verify the next generation and the 6G. What they predict, it will start 2028, 2029, depending on the demand. I think it needs to be more demand. Quite many of the subscribers are happy today with the performance. I mean, we can read our email, we can read and watch TV and Netflix or whatever. It is working. It is no problem. The capacity is there. For the self-driving cars, etc., we need more. Also for Internet of Things, when you need faster speed in the factories, you need the next generation. The new markets are markets where we are chasing what is coming up.
For example, data centers is an example. Nvidia is an example of a customer which needs our material to shield and once again to protect the components and generate a better lifetime for the components. ACDC, as soon as you switch from the car, if you charge in the house into the car, you are going for ACDC. You need shielding. We are going to apply a small gasket there. The markets, we are facing great possibilities also within the aerospace defense business because it's growing. We have operations in the U.S, and we are focusing on the U.S. market, of course. We have the team here in Europe who are chasing the European side. The shift, some people might ask, is it the same demand in the automotive business for a combustion car or an electric car? They need all of this advanced system.
Of course, the electric car needs a little bit extra of shielding and thermal. It will play in our hands for the future. If you look a little bit into the network side, you have the big players. You have Nokia, you have Ericsson, and Huawei. CT is, of course, blocked from some part of the world. Now, at the present time, you can see some new players are coming in India. We're talking about something called ORAN, Open Radio Access Network. That's a segment where some players want the next generation to be open so they can play and plug, so they can buy an antenna or a radio unit from someone, and they can combine it with different suppliers. It's happening. We have been established an operation in Bangalore to make sure that we can meet the new customers down there.
Example is Tejas Networks and NGEO, two players which are quite new in this field. Of course, we can catch the next journey. Of course, the defense business, as the situation is today, we are going to see more spend in this market, and that will grow. Negative drivers, what can happen for us? A lot of the devices are getting smaller, which makes them contain less of our material, but at the same time, there are more and more devices. That will level it out. As I said before, I think we are in a very good position because we have global supply possibilities in different continents. A little bit into the telecom, as I said before, long experience. We are also making the tests for 6G. Another interesting area is, of course, the satellites.
Maybe you guys have heard and reflected about Starlink, which has some power now. Maybe it will change in the future about the network business, but the satellite, the Starlink, is coming into the play a lot. We are shipping a lot of material to the Starlink guys, and we have done a lot of development together with them. The difference from myself or our team compared with the big competitors we have, they are not so flexible. We are more flexible. We can adjust our product and fit to the needs they have. This is an example where we have gained a nice business. Radio units, of course, ORAN is an example, and then wireless in general. Automotive. Now, of course, it's growing. We can see that we are well established in the different continents.
We are at many tier one levels, and you can see on some of the applications at the table over there, we have some new devices, what we call central computers. You know, ECUs, of course, electric control units. Nowadays, moving into these central computers, which is going to be a very powerful device, and I think a lot of this new generation of cars will have this central unit shielding. They need thermal material, which are quite nice. Onboard charging, as I said before, cameras are also generating issues regarding shielding because there's a lot of data which will be transferred. This is examples where we are. We are also trying now to move our technology into the commercial vehicles. We have product life cycles within the passenger cars, and we want to prolong it into the commercial trucks.
We also have an example for thermal material on the bench there, where you can see thermal material, very big ones for the next generation of Volvo trucks. Aerospace defense is, of course, radar and instruments, and you need very good shielding also on the ships because they are far out on the sea, and they need connection to the satellites long distance. Application for us, we have a whole range of products which you need in the defense business, and they are specified according to the U.S. standard, MIL standard. We are a number of players in the U.S. which can ship into the defense business in the U.S. Recently, we have signed an agreement with one of the largest OEMs in the U.S. That opened up the doors.
We have a chance to become closer to OEMs and make sure that we can set the standard. We have our products, and we have our technical data sheets, and we can be able to build modes around our products. New markets, early involvement. We want to be there and to be able that we can be involved to identify these types of markets. That gives us a good, hopefully good organic growth within these segments. Okay. What are we doing 2025? Of course, we're chasing new business. We are looking for new business, and of course, we can look for twins. We can copy our skill and knowledge from one market to another market. We can reuse the technology from one customer to another customer. That's a way to make it quite fast and also quite simple. New markets.
Of course, we are working with account-based marketing on the internet and mailings and so on. SpaceX Starlink is an example which they found us on the net. They were asking for RFQs and that's how it got started. Technology. We need to make sure that we can keep up with good technology, and we need to be top of the line to make sure that we will be able to stay there for the future. Operation, we need to, of course, make sure that we produce it in a cost-effective way. The development of material and production of material is done in Sweden, in Hallsberg, and it's very sealed. We want to keep the technology in our house in Sweden, in Hallsberg. Finally, once again, we are on three continents. We have a very good sales team.
We are very strong in these different areas we have talked about. I think we're going to see a continuous growth of Internet of Things, and it's going to be connected. Also about the green tech area, which fits us pretty good with our products. Okay. Thank you very much. Now I will hand over to Christian. Yes. Looking forward.
Hope you're not too tired. Okay. A lot of insights to Nolato, so that was valuable time. Some closing remarks. I will do a summary of all the sections and an overall message, and just rephrase our road to the new financial targets and some operational focus on the near term. No. Yes. Why Nolato? We are, of course, with our vision to be the customer's first choice of innovative partner in sustainable design and production. We feel that we have the base to deliver that.
We feel that the customers are giving us feedback that we are an excellent partner for them. We have possibilities to grow across all customers and all different sectors of our current operations. We are also a very well-balanced group with profitable growth opportunities across. We see global opportunities with already established customers, and we see growth potential with our new expanded offering. We feel that we are in a good place with huge opportunities going forward. If we then look on the two plus one different parts, the two business areas, medical solutions, the engineering solutions, and then materials. What we have in common across all of them is that we are working closely with customers, solving their next generation product issues, and delivering their development better than they can do by themselves, and then afterwards the production of it.
What brings us all together is, of course, the corporate responsibility, the different materials technology that we have across, and basically across the different markets, we do the same thing. Of course, there are some different dynamics in the different parts, but by the end of the day, it's the same, and we can help the customer to gain insights to better development by sharing between different segments and so on and so forth. This is where I started to talk about, and we see in all the different areas, and I hope we have been able to explain that to you and give some more flavor to that, how we can do this and how we can move ourselves up the value chain and also continue the good growth of the company.
I also hope that you have felt that we have given you some ideas on how we're going to achieve our new financial targets. We think they are exciting. We're going to do our utmost to outperform them, and we are really looking forward and think it's a good timing for us to have those new goals. If we look on our priority areas for this year, we have talked to you across the board. We expand current and win new business. Of course, we will increase our profitability in all aspects of the company. There are possibilities. I also hope that you have understood and gained knowledge to what we talk about when we say value chain expansion. What's the possibility in that going forward? Of course, across the things we are talking about, operational excellence.
It's our growth-wide lean things, but basically behind the scenes, it's the same program that runs across. Why should you invest in Nolato? We feel that we have the resources, the expertise, and the willingness to help our customers succeed. Of course, increase our ability to grow with increased profitability. At a time when customers' product rating, we are very well positioned with global leading customers. We see the trends, the digitalization, the electrification. We have an excellent global setup in a geopolitically uncertain world. We are driving change based on the trends that we see. Of course, in the basis, a strong financial position. I also hope that we have been able to explain that we are really in the forefront of sustainability. Our ambition now is to open up for questions.
I can hope that you have many questions that we will try to answer the best way we can. Thank you. Is this on?
On materials, which appears to be a key driver for you, how do you shield or protect your intellectual property versus competitors or copycats? Do you use patents, trade secrets, design rights? The second question is, what are some examples of these modes or barriers that you're trying to build here?
Very good. All of the above, but I will ask Anders to explain this.
Hello. What we are doing, we are also building brand names regarding my area. We are generating a number of brand names, and we are protecting them also with different patents. Trademarks, patents, and technical data sheets.
As I said, we do all the production close to the area in Hallsberg, and ship it around the world. All the patents we have are for 20 years.
I guess a follow-up question to the one before. How are the Chinese copycats doing quality-wise, and do you see a real risk of them catching up to you in a few years?
I think that they are making shortcuts, so the quality is not as stable as we have. All business we are focusing in China is international business, like BYD, Xpeng, Huawei. They do not want copycats.
Okay. Without giving away any company secrets, what specifically is better about the quality from your end?
That is how we control it through the quality systems.
Okay, sure. Also, another one on materials.
I was a bit surprised to see that aerospace and defense was as big as it was. Are you allowed to name any of your biggest customers in that space?
You are. Yeah, of course. We have signed some contracts with the big OEMs. Of course, the defense business, since we are on a component level, we are also shipping into a lot of tier ones or tier twos. The big ones we have signed now are Collins Aerospace, Raytheon, same group.
Okay, thanks. A few questions just digging into the growth in medical. First of all, the 4-5% market growth that you showed us, is that sort of a big growth figure for the overall medical market, or is that for your specific end markets?
Because just looking at your pie chart, it seems like a lot of your end markets might be growing quicker than the overall medical market.
Yes, there are differences, but this is sort of netted from a growth where you also have some cost out and so on and so forth. This is how we expect our market to grow.
Okay, that's fair. A final one. You said before that the 8% growth target or more than 8% for medical, that that's valid even after this big drug delivery contract ramps up. I mean, I know it's far off, but can you say already today what you see replacing that growth in a couple of years?
We have a solid pipeline of new projects in our design facilities. When we look through those, of course, we can get some guidance on what's going to happen.
Of course, we know that some of these development programs will be canceled before entering the market. That percentage of falloff because of different clinical studies or things that are not going according to plan, how that percentage will be, that will guide. We give if we go higher or lower, but based on our experience, we know approximately the falloff.
Okay. Can you name any of the exciting areas?
All of the areas that we have shown, we think that it's very good to have a good spread around different therapeutical areas. When we saw what happened during COVID, we saw some areas growing, some decreasing, and then we get a good stability across. We are not specifically working on one area. We are working across.
Okay, understood. That's all from me. Thanks all of you for your presentations. Thank you.
I have some questions for myself as well. If we start on materials, I'm just wondering a bit on the margin side there. Is it possible to say broadly what the margin is and also if it differs between the different segments within materials?
Maybe you, Per-Ola.
We have commented that we have a premium margin in this area, and we don't, for the time being anyway, disclose the margins in the different market areas material.
Okay, but it's relatively similar or is it big differences between the areas?
You mean between?
Between the aerospace, automotive, telecom, is there any big difference within the margin?
I don't see there is a big difference.
Okay. I have a question for Joe, and maybe on the medical side. I mean, some of your competitors have a bit more maybe biological exposure or exposure to biologic drugs, I guess.
I'm just wondering how you are working on increasing the, let's say, high growth segments within medical. I mean, of course, you're now on a large contract within the space, but yeah, your strategy there would be interesting to hear more on.
I mean, we are engaged, as I said, with most of the big pharma companies, and they are all expanding in the biologic drugs. And we have products ready for these customers. So I see we're well positioned, actually, to grow there. Actually, that is spot on our strategy to grow in the drug delivery segment, especially on the biologicals with large molecules.
Yeah, that's good. On the large project that you have announced in Hungary now, can you give us an update on the timeline when you expect revenues to start to kick in?
I think you mentioned late 2025, but when can we expect it to also be maybe fully ramped up, so to say?
We expect to start some deliveries late this year and then a gradual ramp up some years from now to full scale. Let's say in four years from now, it might be on a full utilization.
Okay, that's good. It is the last question. I mean, on the engineer side, you focus a lot on increasing the value chain. I mean, and you speak a lot about PCB production, etc. I mean, you have some spare capacity, I guess, in the factories in China now. Would it make sense to set up assembly lines of PCB assembly boards in China, or will you do that by acquisitions or organic, or yeah?
We are evaluating all the different routes at the moment and do the value chain expansion that we're talking about.
Yeah, interesting. Thank you.
In the meanwhile, I can take some questions here that came from the outside audience, not here. The first one is, you have been working on cost-downing initiatives, customer partnership strategies, and implemented strategic price increases in the US. How much of a positive financial impact have you realized so far, and what remains to be done to fully capture the expected benefit? Per-Ola.
Thank you. I think I can explain it in a couple of different ways. So far, we have seen the margins going up during 2024. This area has been one driver behind that increase of margins. It will continue to be one of the important drives for increasing the margin going forward, according to the target we have announced today.
It's a fairly big part of the historical improvement during 2024, and it is going forward to reach the target as well. Yeah, I think that answers a bit how we see on that part.
I have a question here for Johan Iverberg specifically.
Thank you.
How do you view the potential to increase the amount of owned products over the coming five years? Where are you today as a percentage of sales, and what could it be ahead?
Yeah, as I explained in my presentation, the amount in sales is less than 10% on our own products. It's not in our strategy to develop our own products due to competition with our existing customers.
Here's another one. You did not touch on pricing on your organic growth assumptions over time. Is that included in your numbers, or will it come on top?
That is included in the numbers. Pricing, inflation is in the target numbers, I have to say.
I also—sorry, let's do this. Yes, another question for Medical Solution here. Yeah. Can you please talk about the M&A development there, specifically about pricing? There was an article from one of your close peers being in discussions with private equity firms. How have multiples moved in the past year to now? Maybe you can answer that, Per-Ola.
You mean for targets? You look at targets, yes. Yeah. It's a complex question, and I wouldn't say that we have the full answer to that picture. I think I could say when we're looking into some of the targets we're looking at, I don't see any big differences lately. Areas they are exposed to. We are not a very good indicator, I would say, what we look upon.
Thanks. Okay. In the meantime, I can take one here. We got a question if the new product within medical is dependent on clinical trials or successful drug delivery or development. The product that we are scaling up is not dependent on specific clinical trials. It's existing drugs that goes into that.
Yeah. Hello again. I thought of one more question for you on medical. You mentioned that one thing you can do to sort of increase the value add is to go into the drug handling part, not just assembly. Do you have all the sort of qualifications in place to do that today if the customer would want you to? Or is that a long process for you to move into?
We have that partly, but again, it is a long process.
We believe it's a three to five-year horizon to take that step within the business area. For sure, we have the regulatory expertise in the group, but yet it will take some time to get into that.
Okay. Okay, understood. On the new project as well, I mean, you said it comes with a premium margin in the project in Hungary. When do you expect it to be margin accretive or profitable, so to say, given that volumes will gradually be ramped up?
We do expect that project to be fairly quickly profitable. Of course, it will take time until we reach a good utilization of the equipment. The real, let's say, endpoint or the real good margins will take some time to be there. I think it will be supportive fairly quickly when. For this customer? I mean, yeah, the value chain, etc.
Where in that are you, and where do you send the products to next, let's say?
No, I mean, our share of this is, of course, injection molding. We are installing 60 brand new machines down in Hungary. That is a part. Out of those parts that we will mold, most of them we will also assemble to a sub-assembly and ship that to our customer globally.
Okay. Thank you.
No more questions? I would like to thank you for participating and showing your interest in Nolato. I hope you thought it was worthwhile. Thank you.