This image shows two happy, lively, strong individuals. That's the theme for today's meeting as well, as the main point here is about the two strong operations that SCA has, forestry products and the part that deals with hygiene and health. We're going to make a decision. We're going to make a decision later about dividing the company up into these two items. Before we do that, I thought I'd briefly go through what's happened in 2016. In terms of figures, turnover rose by 2% to just over SEK 117 million. This was in markets that were characterized by declining growth and also financial problems during the year. The adjusted return on capital was almost SEK 14 billion, an improvement of 7%.
This improvement came from our long-term policy work on innovations and increasing efficiency in the whole group, also thanks to lower raw material costs during the year. The adjusted return on capital employed also improved by 0.5%- 12.5%. As you know, our long-term target is 13%, and we're getting very close to it now. It's very gratifying that we've moved closer to our long-term target when it comes to this important return target. As you know, finally, the board has recommended that the dividend this year should be a cash dividend of SEK 6 per share, which is a rise of SEK 0.25 from last year. These are figures, and these are a result of many activities and events during the year. Here's a selection of them.
Let me begin with a number of structural changes in the group. During January of last year, we completed the acquisition of Wausau Paper, which was a really important part of our jigsaw puzzle, as SCA is a world leader in Away-from-Home tissue and with a market share of over 20%. We've been a bit weaker in the largest market, which is North America. This acquisition means that we've got a 26% market share in the U.S., a really strong position in a really important market. A bit later during the spring, we finished the divestment of SCA's hygiene business in Southeast Asia to its Chinese subsidiary, Vinda. We did that to make sure we had a very strong Pan-Asiatic organization. It was very good that we made this merger, and it's now being operated by a strong local management in Hong Kong.
One of the reasons, in fact, why the board made a study visit to Vinda. Of course, in August, we announced that we're going to begin the work of proposing to the Annual General Meeting a split of the group, which we'll come back to later. When we began on that work, of course, we had to begin by working out what the vision and the strategies were going to be for these two different operations. We've created new visions and strategies, which you'll find in the information brochure that's been available. There we could see that in the hygiene area, hygiene is not an end in itself, it's one of the ways of obtaining health and well-being.
With this insight in our heads, at the end of the year, we were able to acquire BSN medical, a leading medical solutions company, yet another structural change in the group. Even more important, possibly, was the ongoing activities all the time to make sure that we're improving our everyday operations. There, too, we had implemented a number of different measures. We closed our baby operations in Mexico and India, we made a number of offensive investments as well. I'd like to mention, we opened a factory for incontinence products in Brazil, and we improved our earnings for our incontinence operations in North America. Then, of course, what we're working on and talking about all the time in the management, in the organization, continued work with innovation, efficiency, profitable growth, and digitalization. That affects all companies today.
I thought I'd show you a very amusing innovation, which I think is related to our strong ambitions when it comes to sustainability. It's this. Recycled paper is nothing new, most of the tissues are made of recycled paper. We've never recycled paper from paper handkerchiefs because they're difficult to collect, and it's very special requirements when it comes to cleaning this product. This is a new product that we're selling, which is made of 50% of recycled paper tissue. It's an innovation and an example of a very small step forward towards a more sustainable society. What did this result in for you as shareholders? Well, the general total return was 7%, which is considerably better than the branch index, the MSCI Household Products, other consumer and household products manufacturers, a few percent worse than the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
If you look at the red and blue lines there, you'll see that they both dropped in connection with the election of the president in the United States. There were two reasons for that. One was concern about increasing trade obstacles, which would hamper growth in these areas. Also investors chose to reduce their exposure to this sector and go into infrastructure and building companies, construction companies then. Since then, this has corrected itself during this year, you can see that the whole sector with SCA dropped there at the end of December. If we look at a somewhat longer perspective, this is over a three-year period, we could have looked at two or five or 10. You'll see there that over the years, SCA has a very good total shareholder return, 40% compared to the Stockholm Stock Exchange, which is only 27%.
That's what I thought I would say about the year that finished, instead I'd like to look ahead. A very important event was what happened on Monday when we completed the acquisition of BSN medical. In fact, it was only completed the day before yesterday. This is a medical products company. It has its head office in Hamburg, 6,000 employees. It develops and sells sore treatment and compression treatments and orthopedics. These are very important areas for us because they're very close to what we're doing with incontinence. It's the same sales channels, it's the same users in many cases. The sales channels are clinics, hospitals, chemists, where they are one use products where they're sold. If you look at the underlying market factors that affect growth, then these three factors, they're the same factors for these three things.
It's the same as for our incontinence products. A growing aging population and chronic states which we see more and more of as a result very often of overweight, diabetes or cancer treatment, which means that these products are needed. That means that we're going to be able to sell products like this BSN's products together with our own incontinence products, and they can do the same, and it's going to make us stronger. Turnover in 2016 was just over SEK 8 million, the result after deductions, et cetera, was almost SEK 2 million, which shows that there's a very high margin, this also generates a strong cash flow, so it doesn't need such major investments. It's a new growth platform for SCA as these areas are not as consolidated as many of the consumer areas we're working in are, which are dominated by a small number of companies.
Here there are still a large number of smaller companies. We paid EUR 2.74 million. We paid it on Monday, this acquisition is meant to add to the profitability of the SCA share. You can see from strong brands here, which I'm sure you've seen at some occasion. I've got one example in my pocket here, Leukoplast, as it's called in German. I think most people, not only in Germany but also Sweden, many other countries all over the world have got this in their bathroom cupboard at home, and they use it quite frequently. It's really great that we haven't just bought a financially strong company, but also one with strong brands and with strong marketing possibilities. This then takes us on to today's theme, which is the proposed division of the company. To put this into some kind of perspective very briefly.
We can see that SCA has had a fantastic development since it was founded in 1929. This development has not been purely organic, a lot of acquisitions and divestments have taken place. On the left, you can see the brands that we bought. Two, Mölnlycke in 1975, which was the beginning of the whole hygienic factor, then Vinda, which has given this fantastic position in China and Asia. What you can also see there is that the SCA brand has also developed since 1929 to what it is today. For those of you who stay on after this meeting is over, immediately after, if we get a positive decision that is, then we're going to present the new brand logo type for the two different operations in the future. That's something that a positive decision will lead to.
These are brands that have been used by SCA during the years. If you look at the right, you'll see that the hygiene element has grown enormously, dramatically, now more than 96% of our total operations. This does not mean that the forestry operation is a small operation, which is what you hear sometimes. The forestry operation will in fact be the largest company. Let's put it in that kind of perspective.
Briefly about the two different businesses, what they would look like after potential split. The forest products business as basis has the huge land of forests with an efficiency in world-class, 2.6 million hectares. Also in the forests, efficiency very well taken care of and very efficient. It's well integrated value chain where all the wood product is used, which is good for environment, good economically. We look at the underlying market, we can see a long-term stable growth and demand for fiber product in the long term, even though it values varies between product segments naturally. In longer term, potential growth areas within the liquid biofuel, green chemicals, renewable materials, a good future for the forest products business. As you can see, this little fact diagram, the turnover was SEK 16.5 billion 2016.
It was one of the biggest companies and would then be on the big list of companies at the Stockholm Stock Exchange. If we then look at our activities within hygiene and health, and here we've added hygiene Monday, when we completed the acquisition of BSN, our vision is to improve well-being through leading hygiene and health solutions, particularly. I already mentioned one of our world-leading global market positions that's within this Away-from-Home tissue with Tork as brand, but another as leading position is that within the incontinence products with the brand TENA. Both these brands in themselves are bigger than SEK 15 billion of turnover in second, both have over 20% global market share. There are lots of other strong market brands as you recognize at the bottom of page, Libero and Libresse, naturally, very strong brands here in Sweden, for instance.
We've got number one and two positions in many countries of the world. The underlying driving forces for this type of part of SCA is, which I've partly touched upon, growing an aging population in the world, in combination with an increasing awareness of that hygiene is an important condition for health. All this increases demand for health product, hygiene products in many parts of the world. As you can see in this box, you can see the turnover was in excess of SEK 100 billion, and since Monday, we should then add SEK 8 billion yearly with BSN and 6,000 employees to the number of employees in this area. With this, I arrive at the last slide of this presentation, which is regarding why we propose to split the company in two parts.
SCA consists today of two very strong businesses, both when it comes to market position, but also financial strength and cash flow, and with lots of good prospects for the future. At the same time, these two business have grown apart over the years to a greater extent, and the truth is, very little is common ground between hygiene and forest. We notice that when we work in board and the management team, it's almost like you're working with two different businesses. To give some figures to support this, SCA Hygiene is one of the five largest customers of forest products, but not the biggest customer. About 3% of the sales of the forest go to the hygiene part, but not more than 3%.
If you look at it from the other way around, about 5% of the pulp that hygiene buys, and SCA Hygiene is their biggest buyer of pulp, comes from SCA Forest. That's the connection there is. That's commercial contracts that have been on arm's length for decades. The other reason, apart from that there is quite a few things that keep them together today, is that we naturally see a possibility to strengthen further the great development both companies have, so that they can focus on their strategies and different businesses with different and committed board and management and access to capital, which alternatively aims at increasing the value for you as shareholders. Since we haven't taken any decision yet, I'm not going to show any new brands here, but I choose to finalize this presentation with a picture describing our different businesses.
Thank you for listening.