Good morning, and welcome to SSAB's Capital Markets Day 2025. V ery big welcome to all of you joining us here this morning in Oxelösund, and a big welcome to those joining us over webcast. We're sorry about the small delay in getting started. A combination of buses, traffic, and rain created a small delay. But now we're here and we're ready to start. My name is Helena Norrman. I'm Head of Communications for SSAB, and I'm very happy to be here today together with my colleagues to talk you through the coming five years and beyond of SSAB's strategy and execution. It's also fantastic to be here in Oxelösund today.
It's been an important part of Swedish steelmaking history for more than a century, and now we're ready to take the next step with the moving from old technology to new technology that will happen soon, and more about that during the day. Before we go into today's program, I would like to welcome Karin Palmqvist on stage. Karin is Site Manager and Head of Production here in Oxelösund, and she will talk to us a little bit more about where we are and, very importantly, safety instructions for the day.
Yes, thank you, Helena. So my name is Karin Palmqvist. I am the Site Manager of Oxelösund, and I would like to welcome you all again to Oxelösund and SSAB. I will briefly instruct you on the safety, but first, just some words on where we are. You entered the area, and we're now in the northern part of the site, and this is the part where we are making the finishing of our plate products in Oxelösund. In this building, we are storing semi-finished plates before quenching and finalizing, but the recent and newest equipment that we have is just nearby us here. It's a new production line where we are joining plates together by welding and then having them quenched to get the same properties as a non-welded plate.
This is a known patent production process that we're very proud of, and it's really new, and we're happy to have you in this building then. The safety is really important to us at SSAB, and I would like you to pay attention now because I will point out the emergency exits and the assembly point. If there will be an emergency and you'll have to leave the building, you enter the doors or the gates where you came from. There are gates in the back of this building. The assembly point is just by the blue containers. You saw the nice containers framing this area, so that's the assembly point. There will be first aid and defibrillator in the back of this room by the technicians, and if there is an alarm, we have our own fire brigade.
So, SSAB staff will call our own fire brigade to make sure that we get assistance as necessary. So, again, very welcome to you all to Oxelösund.
Thank you, Karin. A few more practical details for those of you, especially in the room, before we continue into the program. First of all, toilets are located out from the entrance you came in through on the left. It's a white mobile container. On the note of safety, when you exit, it's a rather steep step down, so be careful so you don't trip and fall. Smoking is only allowed on the left-hand side of the blue containers outside. Photography is allowed in this building, in the building where we will have dinner. There are two selfie spots on the tour this afternoon. Apart from that, except for photographers with special permits that will get special instructions, photography is not permitted. We'll come to how we do the Q&As later. We have an agenda for the day, and maybe I can actually show it here.
So we have an agenda that will start from an overview of strategy and market by our CEO. Then we will go through the different divisions and subsidiaries as a deep dive. We will have a coffee break. There will be a few Q&As. We will have lunch a little bit later than 12:00 P.M. because this was assuming that the buses would have arrived a little bit earlier, so around 12:20 P.M. maybe. And then we will come together again after lunch, CTO, CFO, final Q&A, and final remarks by Johnny Sjöström, and that will take us up to around 2:00 P.M. Stockholm time or Swedish time. And then there will be a continued program for those of you that are here on site, but we'll come back to that later.
So let's continue into the program and introduce today's first speaker, Johnny Sjöström, long experience in the industry, Associate Professor in Materials Science. He joined SSAB in 2019 and has been running our Special Steels division until taking up the role as President and CEO almost exactly a year ago. Johnny, welcome. The stage is yours.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to SSAB's Capital Markets Day, and also welcome to Oxelösund. Before I get started with my presentation, I just want to just emphasize what Karin was saying, that the investment we have here to the right is one of its kind, and it's a patent technology that we have. It's also, I think it's a breakthrough when it comes to joining plates together and then doing the quenching. We're the only one in the world that does it, and in the exhibition center, you will be able to see the result, and you're going to be amazed that you cannot see the weld at all, not even in the cross-section, but not on the top either. So it's a very unique solution. All right. So my name is Johnny Sjöström. I'm the President and CEO of SSAB.
What you see on this picture here is the world's largest optical telescope. Scientists say that it takes around eight minutes for the light to go from the sun to the planet Earth. With this telescope, we can detect light that's been traveling for 13 billion years, and they say that the Big Bang theory or the Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, so with this telescope, you can see stars being born. You can also see black holes. You can also detect new stars and galaxies far away. This telescope is in Chile, but it's owned by the European Southern Observatory, and it's rather big. You see the size of these cars. It gives you an idea of how big this is.
The total weight of the tower is 3,700 tons, and you can actually turn it in order to follow the stars that you want to have a look at. When they were designing this telescope, they had a problem finding the gear tracks or the gear racks to move the whole telescope because of the forces that you put on the gear tracks. The only material that they could approve for this application was an SSAB material called Toolox. This is a very typical example of applications that we sell to that no one knows about. We are quite often the solution when no one else has the solution. When they need material for really extreme applications, we are the ones that come up with the solution because we have a unique production method of combining hardness and toughness. This, of course, has taken a lot of years.
It didn't happen overnight, so our journey started, I guess, already in the 1970s when there was a crisis here in Europe. There was a shipyard called Kockums that went bankrupt. That was the number one customer for the Oxelösund site at that time, and Oxelösund had to do something different, so they decided to invest in a quenching line. That was the first quenching line within SSAB. Of course, it took a lot of years until they grew that market, but that indicated, and it was a milestone for this technology. And then after that, in the year 2000 and further on, the internationalization started, gave us additional diversification. IPSCO was acquired around 2008, and then later there was a merger with Rautaruukki, and also a lot of downstream activities started, 2015 and beyond, we started a specialization, and one example of this is the Docol 1700.
The Docol is a unique grade. It offers a lot of safety to the market, and I will give you examples later on in this presentation of what it's used for, and of course, the commercialization of the SSAB Zero product also started. So what do we have ahead of us? I think that we have a good platform to stand on when it comes to diversification, but in a world of overcapacity, the only way to be successful is by being unique and creating unique customer value, so our idea is that we're going to continue to accelerate our premium leadership that we already have on the market, and we have a very, very good platform to stand on, so this is showing sort of the market position for some of our divisions, and we start with SSAB Special Steels, who's only working with premium steel grades.
100% of what they produced is advanced high-strength steel or premium grades. There is a technique called quenching and tempering, and that's what Q&T stands for. In this case, it shows that we have roughly a global market share of 30%. If you take a closer look, I would say that we have roughly a 50% market share in North America. We have a 50% market share in South America, almost about a 50% market share in Europe. It's when we look at the whole world and include China into this, where our number goes down to 30%, but we have a very unique market position, and we are the preferred supplier when it comes to special steel grades and Quenched and Tempered.
If you look at SSAB Americas, we have been ranked as a number one supplier for many, many years, and we have surveys that show us this: number one when it comes to quality, number one when it comes to delivery performance, and reliable partner. And if you look at SSAB Europe, who quite often is linked to standard products, which is wrong. For the last 10 years, they have been working really hard to position themselves as also a unique supplier of advanced high-strength steel. And Tony will show that in his presentation, and I will also show that further on in my slides. And to support SSAB Europe with their sales, they also have Ruukki Construction in Tibnor to sell as an outlet of their products.
And then when I visited the Global Steel Forum in New York a couple of months ago, all companies there and POSCO was there, all global companies were there, and they were all saying, "We're going to go downstream because they are struggling to make money." And so what is your strategy now? It's, "We're going to go downstream. We're going to do a lot more value added." We have already done that journey. We acquired Tibnor, and we have Ruukki Construction. We had that for a long period of time, and on top of this, we have Abraservice and other outlets. But with this, it gives us diversification both geographically. So 58% of what we produce and sell is in Europe, but we also have a significant footprint in the United States. And then we also have 12% of our material being exported.
We sell roughly 55% as premium products, and I will define later on in this presentation what we mean by premium. We have a very strong financial position. We have a net cash position of roughly SEK 11 billion. If you look at our historical financial performance, we can see that we have on average been earning 14% EBITDA over a business cycle. If we compare that to our European peers, we have been outperforming them. Now, we have to remember that the market situation for many years in Europe has been a little bit odd, a little bit strange, because the market has been able to buy extremely cheap material coming from Asia, coming from China, material that has been subsidized, not even covering the cost of the variable cost, the raw material. That is not sustainable.
It's not realistic to think that this will continue, and we already see movements in this direction, but even during the time period where we have been struggling with cheap imports, we have been able to make 14% on average. If you compare that to our American competitors who have been benefiting from the Section 232 that was implemented in 2018, we are pretty much on the same level. Under these circumstances, I would say it hasn't been a bad performance. What do we do with the earnings? We are committed to our financial targets, and that is to have a 40% dividend of our net profit. That is something we have been doing, and the majority of our capital has been allocated to the shareholders in the shape of dividends. Of course, we always do maintenance CapEx.
But historically, and Leena will show that in her presentation, we haven't done that much strategic investments, but that needs to be changed now. We see an opportunity for us to reposition on the market, to grab a stronger position on the market, and hence we have a more aggressive strategic investment program ahead of us, and look at the total return the last five years. It's roughly 200%, and that's including also the share price increase, so what I said in the beginning, that we're going to strive for more premium, and that's because we want to have less volatility. We want to be able to price leaders, and we want to be able to have good earnings. Special Steels is one good example of that it actually works.
Special Steels has only advanced high-strength steel in its portfolio, and hence they're not sensitive to market conditions and market variations, and they continue to supply unique customer value to the market, and their earnings have been continuously going up. If you compare that to SSAB Americas, you see a higher volatility. SSAB Americas has a very unique position when it comes to cost leadership, and they are also a quality leader, but the portion of advanced high-strength steel is quite limited. Hence, they are still sensitive to market changes. However, they have a very unique position on the U.S.A. plate market. Now, with the tariffs and looking at the competition, and Chuck will present that in his presentation, we have a very unique position.
If you look at SSAB Europe, even though they have been performing better than their peers and they have increased their amount of advanced high-strength steel, they are still a little bit sensitive to the spot market prices for a high share of their portfolio. The idea is that we're going to walk away from that and be less dependent on the spot prices. A lot of the investments that we're planning to do is going to be within SSAB Europe, which makes sense. We're going to be able to reposition SSAB Europe to more of a premium supplier. Of course, we have the two outlets.
Fredrik and Sami will tell more about that in their presentations, but this is important for us, and a lot of our competitors are yellows that we already have these outlets, and they supply a lot of added value to the market, and they have a very good market position. We believe that the construction segment is going to come back, and when it does, we have a very good footprint, and we're going to be able to increase our earnings in these areas. Roughly 400,000 tons of SSAB Europe's material is going through Tibnor, and 130,000 tons-150,000 tons of SSAB Europe's material is going through Ruukki Construction. We also have a very, very good operational platform to stand on. For years, we've been working on production stability. We have been working on continuous improvements. We have a very good program on this.
We have a very high capacity utilization, and Chuck is going to give you one example of that in his presentation. And we have also increased our delivery performance. But one example that I want to show you, which is a proof of our operational excellence, is the improvement we've done in safety, and this is indicating the lost time injury frequency that continues to go down. It improves the safety of our workers, but it also indicates that we have good control of our production. So the market conditions are changing. We see that there's a bigger demand for advanced high-strength steels, and that is coming from a lot of different segments. And this is an area where we already now have a very good footprint.
We are one of the largest advanced high-strength steel suppliers in the world, and we have the competence and the knowledge how to do it. The global steel industry is suffering from an overcapacity, mainly coming from Asia and specifically China, an industry that has been subsidized for years. This is, of course, changing the landscape and the competitive landscape, and we've already seen that tariffs being implemented in the United States, and now we already see that the European Commission is suggesting safeguards to save the European steel industry. And in my opinion, it's likely that we will see those safeguards being implemented sometime in the beginning of next year or sometime in the spring next year, and that will completely change the landscape in Europe. But it's also necessary to save the European steel industry from cheap imports.
A lot of steel companies in Europe are struggling now financially, and we need to do something in order to save them. I think one of the things that we should remind ourselves is that we are still focusing on Fit for 55 in the European Union. We still have the ETS system. Sometimes I think we tend to forget about that. In the condition where most of our competitors are putting their investments on hold, we continue. The demand for low-emission steel is still there. I think that we will have a perfect opportunity when our investment is up and running, and we can supply low-emission steel to the market because we're going to be one of the few that can actually do it, and we also have around the corner, we have the CBAM starting in 2026.
We already see now that we have European customers securing supply from Europe because a lot of the companies exporting into Europe have a hard time to do the administration to file the permit to export into Europe now with the CBAM. Also, CBAM is going to come at a cost, of course. We monitor this, of course, and it's clear indications that the demand for advanced high-strength steel is increasing. And like I said in the beginning, we are in a perfect position for this. This market is quite limited as it is, but we have a very unique position in it. The automotive industry is moving towards more lighter vehicles, especially electric vehicles, and here we can offer extremely good solutions, not only offering safety but also more lighter cars. But we can also see that's happening in other transports, heavy transport.
We can see that in buildings, skyscrapers that become taller, they need advanced high-strength steel when the skyscrapers are bending in the wind and also a lot of mechanical equipment. So this is something we have identified, and this is going to happen. I touched upon this before, but we already know that Section 232 was implemented in 2018, and that helped the American market. And since then, we have seen new investments in the United States. We also saw that Chinese material found new ways of entering the United States through Vietnam and other countries. And then now in 2025, they said, "Let's. We're going to put a blanket of 50% of all imported material." That has helped our position in the United States, and it's going to continue to support us in our position in the United States.
Now we see that a similar thing is going to happen in the European Union. It's likely that this is going to be approved by the European Union. That means that we're going to have a quotation system, and this is also okay according to the World Trade Organization. So there's almost 18 million tons of flat products that will be subjected to a 50% tariff, and it's more likely that this supply is going to come from European companies than outside Europe. This is going to change the landscape in Europe. So 2026 is going to be a very interesting year for many, many reasons. So what do we mean by premium? We believe that anything that we can be paid an extra money for is a premium, but we have categorized this into three categories.
One category is the advanced steel grades that we can offer to the market. And here we have a unique position. This is also including the color-coated, the metal-coated, but also the Laser Plus material as well as the advanced high-strength steel grades. But we also believe that we can provide premium to the market and unique customer value by doing value-added operations. And in the exhibition booth, you will be able to see a lot of the value-added we already do to the market today. And I think that the first stage you will get to, you will see a 3D-printed hood. It's a miniature of what we actually do. Today, we actually weld together. You will cover this in your presentation, Per. But we already do pre-assembly for the military industry, helping them out when they have a lack of capacity, and this is mainly for welding.
And we're also able to supply decarbonized steel to the market, which is also very important for us, but this is a part of our premium. I just want to highlight because I am sort of a material scientist nerd. I really like microstructure and things like that that no one else likes, and I also like to be a part of the development of new grades. I think that this Hardox HiAce is a very unique combination of wear-resistant as well as corrosion-resistant. Hardox is known for the wear-resistant, but with the HiAce, we're also able to offer some corrosion resistance. And this is extremely important when we have extremely aggressive environments like in the pulp and paper industry, where we can combine.
In the pulp and paper industry, there's a lot of sulfuric acid, and if you have only a wear-resistant material, the corrosion will wear it down anyway. But if you combine wear-resistant with corrosion-resistant, you will increase the service life considerably. And now for the Docol grade that I spoke about before, this is a 1,700 megapascal. It offers protection in cars in the side collision beams. It's really attractive, and we still export a lot of this into the United States because they can't find any local supply. It also makes the car lighter. We're actually able to offer a better solution than aluminum, but it's 50% of the cost. When it comes to protective steel, we have seen now from the war in Ukraine that you can't have heavy tanks.
You have to have much lighter tanks, and in order to have lighter tanks, you need to have more advanced steel. We have a very advanced steel for protection. It's called Armox, and if you use our steel grade Armox, you can actually reduce the weight in production by 50%. And this is a market, of course, which is growing, and I think that we have a perfect position to capitalize on that. When it comes to value-added, we try to look at what is it the customer needs and how can we help the customer and how can we complement the market. So LaserTool is a company that we acquired that does laser hardening, and the telescope you saw in the beginning, that surface has actually been laser hardened. We also acquired a company called Piristeel.
Sami will tell more about that in his presentation, but we also offer a lot of safety solutions for roofing. Tibnor has a clear strategy to go for more processing. There used to be a clear distribution center, but now it's more of a processing center to add more value to the market and the customer. Last but not least, we believe that we have a perfect position to add 3D printing into the market. Our objective is to sell the powder for 3D printing, but also bring the technology into the market. It's developing slowly, but we understand that. That's usually the case with new technology, but we're very certain that this is going to grow. We have a perfect position for this. I think we're the only company in the world that offers advanced high-strength steel powder to the market.
Then we shouldn't forget about this. We still have a lot of customers, and this summer I went to see a lot of our automotive industry customers, and they still confirm that they need this and they're willing to pay a premium for it. I don't think that everything that we can produce using the electric arc furnace can be sold as a premium, but I do believe that there is a part of that that we can sell as a premium. So when we sell advanced high-strength steel, we're able to get much higher profits. It's a clear indication, and it's very, very clear from our sales experience. So the idea is that we continue to grow the value of the more advanced high-strength steels to the market. That gives us more earnings, and that's a clear part of our strategy.
Same thing when it comes to the value-added. We can also see that when we sell it as a value-added, we earn a lot more from it. This is also why POSCO and other companies are going in this direction. And I touched upon that before, but according to our business forecast, we only think that it's around 15% of what we're going to sell that we might get a sort of a zero premium on it or a low-emission steel premium on it. And what we see now is the indication is EUR 200-EUR 300 per ton, but like I said, we estimate it's going to be 15% now, but we have the ability to grow this business if we need to and if the market wants to. Yeah, so this is also showing what we're going to do.
Even in special steels, they were going to continue to go more for the niche products they have on the top of this pyramid, and we're going to go for more of solutions when it comes to value-added, and then, of course, we have the option to sell more of this fossil-free steel to the market if the customer wants it, but they have the option to choose what they want, so the target we have is to reach 55% premium in 2024. We already have done that, and then to reach 65% in 2030. We have to remember now that the large investment we're doing, especially the one in Luleå, is going to add more capacity when it comes to premium production. That will not be online until the end of 2029, and it's going to take some ramp-up time.
So it's not realistic to believe that this is going to be higher than 65%, but then we have higher ambitions going from 2030 to reach 75%. To support our strategy, to support our premium strategy, we have an aggressive investment program. You all know about this Luleå investment program, and in this case, the Luleå case has been split into three parts. This is the Luleå Cold Mill Complex. This is actually where we're going to get more capacity for the metal coating. We're going to be able to provide a metal coating that only one other competitor can do on the market, but we're also going to be able to do the Docol in higher volumes than we can today. It's going to be an additional capacity for it, and this is a key for our success going forward.
We're also going to replace the sort of outdated and old hot strip mill in Borlänge with one in Luleå, and that's going to lead to higher efficiency and lower fixed cost. And then, of course, we're going to move away from the blast furnace then using electric arc furnace, and this transformation is being done both in Oxelösund as well as in Luleå. And then we're also planning, and some of this hasn't been approved. Some has, but we're planning to grow the quench and temper market, the area that Per is responsible for, because that's where we see the biggest earnings and also where we see the biggest potential. Our Nordic transformation is continuing according to our plan, and we still believe that the frame of SEK 4.5 billion for the mini mill in Luleå is still valid. Carl will cover more about that in his presentation.
We are in line when it comes to the electric arc furnace investment in Oxelösund, and you will be able to see parts of it today, and you get more information on that. Then when it comes to Raahe, I think that initially it was communicated that we were going to build a mini mill. We have decided that it's not going to be a mini mill in Raahe. It doesn't make any sense. Raahe is going to be a site where we're going to have more flexibility. I think it's extremely important we have a large production site that doesn't have continuous production. We need to be able to cool down the slabs and then reheat them when you have peritectic grades or when you have grades who are sensitive to hydrogen, etc. That flexibility will be built up in Raahe, and I think that's extremely important.
So the plan is it's going to be an electric arc furnace, but it's going to be a similar type as we have here in Oxelösund. That means we're going to add it into the existing production. It's going to be a much more cost-efficient solution, but most important for me, it's going to give us a more flexible solution and a good complement to the Luleå mini mill. Yeah, I think for me, this slide is quite important. This is an illustration of what we want to do, and on the Y-axis, you have the EBITDA per ton, and then on the X-axis, you have the premium share. And you can see that we're all planning to move in a direction to increase our premium share.
I think the biggest movement is going to be in SSAB Europe because that's where we are a little bit more sensitive when it comes to market prices and spot prices. But the idea is that SSAB Europe is going to reposition themselves to become more of a premium supplier. We also have the idea that we're going to continue to upgrade the portfolio we have within special steel, and Per will talk more about that. But we have, for natural reasons, seen how defense industry is growing, but we've also seen that the grades at Hardox 500 Tuf is growing in demand, and we're going to capitalize on that. And then we, of course, have the United States.
We're going to try to capitalize on, first of all, our unique market position when it comes to cost leader, but the limited competition in the United States, as well as working more with value-added going forward. And Chuck will explain more about that in his presentation. Then to summarize, I think that a lot of analysts, a lot of customers already today see us as a world-leading steel company. We already today have the most advanced steel grades in the world. We offer unique solutions when there are no other options on the market. This is something we're going to capitalize on. We see also that the market trends are moving in our direction, in our favor. Not only is there a bigger demand for advanced high-strength steel, but we also see that when others are pausing their green initiatives, we continue with this. That gives us an opportunity.
We're not dependent on it, but we have the opportunity to capitalize on it when we get to that point. And it's very, very clear that in a world of overcapacity, to go for premium and unique customer value proposition is really the right way to go, and that's really what we're going to target. And we have the investment program to support. I think with that, I think that was my last slide, Helena.
Yes, thank you, Johnny. So before we move forward, let's take a little pause and see if we have any questions from the audience. And then the instruction for asking questions is if you want to ask a question, raise your hand. The microphone will come your way. Introduce yourself. We also have the webcast, so we want to make sure everyone understands what's happening here. So let's see, do we have any initial questions?
Yes, let's start. Microphone coming here.
Yes, hi, it's Tristan Gresser from BNP Paribas Exane. And just maybe one question to start off with the Raahe investment you decided against to do a mini mill. Can you explain the rationale behind it? And in terms of CapEx, if it's closer to what you spent at Oxelösund, which was SEK 6 billion, is that a good reference point? And also lastly, you said that the CapEx will not overlay. So in the presentation today, you shared some insight, so that does mean that we shouldn't see CapEx from Raahe until 2031 at the earliest.
So the core of SSAB is the knowledge on how to produce really advanced high-strength steel. When you produce with continuous production, you don't go through phase transformations. You usually stay at the austenitic phase. That means you have limited abilities when it comes to controlling grain growth.
You have limitations when it comes to handling pyrotechnic steel grades, and you have also limitations when it comes to handling the hydrogen, which can be very embrittling to the material. That means that we need to find a new way to produce that, and that needs to be in Raahe. So the rationale behind it is that we're going to be standardizing and producing more volumes in Luleå, more batch production, volume production with efficiency, but the grades who need to produce in a more advanced way will be done in Raahe because we need to have a slab cool down and then reheat it again. And we might also be forced to do diffusion annealing before we start the production. So that's the rationale behind it. We need that flexibility. And so clearly, our strategy is to be more of a premium supplier.
The Luleå mini mill will do some of that, but for the advanced, really advanced steel grades, that will be in a sort of a coil format needs to be handled in Raahe through not a continuous production. So that's the sort of rationale. It's strictly related to the portfolio that we want to produce in the future. I hope that answers your question, and then your second question was related to the size of the
CapEx investment.
The CapEx investment, and it's clearly going to be much cheaper than the mini- mill. I can assure you of that, but it's going to be a larger investment than the one in Oxelösund because the Oxelösund furnace is slightly smaller than the one we're going to invest in in Raahe, so yeah, so we're going to have two electric arc furnaces as well. It gives us additional flexibility as well.
You're still going to plan to build electric arc furnaces at Raahe?
Sorry, come again?
You're still going to build new electric arc furnaces at Raahe?
In Raahe?
Yeah.
That's our plan. Yes, it is, but the timing is another question. We need to make sure that we feel comfortable with the raw material supply, so not until we have a raw material supply that we feel comfortable with, because we are in a situation now that in the beginning, we're going to have scrap production in Sweden, both in Oxelösund and also in Luleå, and then we're going to have iron ore production in Finland. That gives us a very unique flexibility. We can supply pig iron from the Raahe mill into Luleå if we want to. We can take virgin scrap from our mill in Raahe into Sweden.
That gives us a flexibility that we can control within SSAB. I think that's extremely important. Of course, in the long run, we have ideas. We plan to get PRI from LKAB. Of course, we plan for it, but in the beginning, it's only going to be 1.3 million tons. So that means that we need additional virgin material. And if we're going to convert Raahe, then we need to secure that we have a virgin material source to supply them. So for me right now, when you talk about risk, I feel very comfortable with having iron ore production in Finland and scrap production in Sweden, giving me a full flexibility on how I want to do the production.
More questions? Yes, let's go. Microphone in the middle here. Amalia?
Thank you. Tom Zhang from Barclays.
Maybe just following up on your point about pricing premia and your assumptions there. So you said maybe not all the product that you can produce from any EAF you can get a premium from, but then you still talk to EUR 200-EUR 300 EUR a tonne from the SSAB Zero product. Can you talk us a little bit about the gap between those two? Because I guess from a carbon footprint perspective, maybe not a massive difference between them. Do you really think EUR 200-EUR 300 is still possible, let's say in 2030, once a meaningful amount of production was also through EAF?
Yeah. So as of right now, the EUROFER is agreeing on a definition for the low-emission steel, and it's very likely that we're going to follow the less policy. So it's going to be graded, so based on the CO2 emissions, of course.
So if the customer wants to have 0% CO2 emissions, we're going to be able to offer that. But if they want it, it comes with a premium because our cost will be higher, hence they will need to pay more. To your questions, do we have a demand for this? And the answer is, yes. When we speak to a lot of automotive companies, they are more concerned that they're going to get the availability, and they want to secure their volumes with us already now, and they're willing to pay this. And these are quite often premium suppliers. They are the ones that are telling us that they are willing to pay EUR 200-EUR 300 per tonne. But in our business plan for the Luleå mini mill, we have used extremely conservative figures because this is a very high uncertainty.
We don't know what the future is going to be like. We don't know what the market drive is going to be around the corner. But what we can tell you is that today there is a demand, especially for the automotive industry. And today we know for certain that we can get EUR 200-EUR 300 per tonne for it. Then the question is, what's going to happen in 2033? It's really hard to say. It's hard to predict. And that's why we have been very conservative all along. That's also the reason why we only said 15% of what we produce, we believe they're going to get the premium from, even though there's going to be a lot of electric arc furnace production.
Let's do one more question, and then we'll move on in the program, and Johnny will be back for more questions later. Yes.
Thanks. Johnny,
this is Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley. Your strategy appears to be much more focused on the downstream, where you see the biggest opportunity for margin expansion. What about the upstream? You seem to be migrating away from the upstream, and this is a key competitive advantage in securing your green feedstock. Is there room in your strategy for the upstream investments, and do you not worry that there's going to be value leakage through the cycle to the upstream green pig iron, for example?
So it's a relevant question. We have partnered up with LKAB, and the idea is that this hydrogen-reduced DRI is going to be produced by LKAB, and that is still valid.
I know that there's been a lot of articles in the papers, etc., but we have close communication with LKAB, and I can confirm that they are strict on their plans to produce this DRI facility. I think that's a good starting point. Of course, we already all the time evaluate what our position is going to be when it comes to iron production, pure iron production, and of course, that's an assessment we're doing all the time, and we're also assessing the risk. But it's not a part of our package that we are announcing now. I think what's important is our premium story, and like I said in the beginning, in a world of overcapacity, when you can buy steel at lower than variable cost, the only way to make money is by going for premium.
And we have the best platform in the world to actually do that, and the demand is there. And of course, we want to capitalize on it, and that's what we want to do. But we haven't left sort of this hybrid technology for sure. That's still part of our strategy, but we have nothing to announce on it at this point.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you so much for those questions. Thank you, Johnny, for the presentation. You will be back later on in the program, but it's time to move over and take a closer look at the divisions and subsidiaries. And our first speaker is Per Elfgren, Head of SSAB Special Steels.
Per has been with the company since 1996 in this role for about a year because you were previously responsible for market development and stepped up to this role when Johnny moved up to the CEO role. Welcome, Per. The stage is yours.
Thank you very much, Helena. So Special Steels, that's a truly global business. W e operate two sites, one in Mobile, Alabama, and one in Oxelösund, Sweden, where you are right now. Very much welcome here. We have a global presence with our sales, and we supply more than 15,000 customers, and they represent a wide variety of different segments. Whenever someone needs a strong light or durable solutions, we are there to support and also to deliver.
With this, we have built actually quite solid or very solid and resilient business model that is based on 100% premium high-strength steels, local presence, and our own distribution. Now, for the next 20 minutes, I will take you through how we got to the position that we have today and how we intend to work in order to stay in the lead. It all starts with high-quality products. Hardox, our wear steel, I would argue is the most well-known brand in the steel industry. It is hard, tough, and you use it when you want to increase payload or uptime. Strenx, our structural steel. We say it fights gravity because you use it when you want to build something light and strong, for instance, to extend the reach of a crane or make a trailer a lot lighter. Armox protects people and property.
We supply it both to civil and military equipment. It's bullet and blasting proof, and it's really good to have if you go and get stuff. Toolox, our pre-hardened tool steel, is used when failure is not an option in applications like plastic molding, dies, and machine components. And then we have the powder that Johnny touched on as well. It's intended for 3D printing, and it's going to be a product that we supply so you can actually 3D print parts in our excellent steel qualities. So then the question is, what kind of value does these products deliver to our customers and end users? And I have a couple of examples here. Up to the left, you see a trailer. It's a trailer that was originally produced in high-strength 700 material and a truck box in Hardox 450.
So already there, an upgraded application, a good solution, I would say. But there was more to do to this solution. So by increasing the strength in the trailer from 700 - 960 and going from a 450 wear material in the box to 500 Tuf, you can see that the customer saved another 300 kilos on this vehicle. By changing the solution, also, the service life was extended to the double. And over the lifetime, this vehicle will save around five cubic meters of fuel for the end user. So that's good value for money. Example number two is the Hardox HiAce. It's the wear-resistant steel combined with corrosion resistance. In this case, in this container, it was originally in a stainless steel material. Now, with Hardox HiAce, the payload increased with 1.1 tonne, which is a lot in equipment like this.
It was also cheaper to produce because we could remove a lot of welding putting this box together. And you can see that the service life was almost tripled. So that's really good value for money. That as well. These things we do together with our customers. So it's our experts together with their designers coming together, working around these solutions to come up with this and save money. And they know that they will save money, and we know that they will save money, and that's something that we can also get paid for when we do this. So talking about value and good values, another thing good value is to stay on the safe side. And that's actually what you do if you use our protection steel, Armox. It comes in a very, very wide variety of different grades and thicknesses.
No matter if there is a challenge within a civil or military application, we are there to support. You can see a few examples up here. You have the train. It's actually a train moving from Mozambique to South Africa that needs bullet protection to protect the engine and also the cabin where the driver is. You see buildings where they put bulletproof plates in the facades. You see vehicles that need to be both bulletproof, but also another value that Armox delivers is blasting proof, so it can withstand blasting, which is very important for these vehicles that move around in hostile environments. Talking about different solutions and how we contribute to make things lighter and stronger, I think this is a good example from real life. You probably see this on the road every day. It's a regular tipper.
And if you go back 25 years up to the very left, that's what a tipper looked like in the 1990s. Very rigid, stiff boxes, a lot of welding, and a weight of typically four and a half tons. In the end of the 1990s, we had a customer in Germany that came to us, and we sat together, and they said that they want to lighten up the tipper. And the solution is what we call a half pipe, completely different design without stiffeners, but still actually better lifetime and so on. And already at this point, you can see that we saved one and a half tons in this solution. Over the years, the design has been refined, materials have been developed, and the solution today, using the most modern technique, weighs about half of what it did 25 years ago.
This means that the end user can haul payload instead of dead weight on the road. And SSAB has been behind all of this development. It's our experts and salespeople going market by market, customer by customer, sitting together with the ones producing trailers, coming up with different solutions, and this is where we are today. So you can think about that when you're out driving now. Look at the truck box. This is most certainly the design you will see, and that's us behind that development. Now I will show you a movie, and it illustrates how we have been working in order to develop very concrete advice because you get questions when you sit down with a customer here. How do we design? What can we expect? So we have developed a very applied way of testing.
You will see how that relates to the everyday life of a tipper, and you will also see at the very end a proud customer in Turkey demonstrating in his workshop how Hardox can withstand really high impacts. So here we go. So this last clip here was actually filmed in Turkey a few months back, and he demonstrated for us how he takes his customers around in the workshop to prove the excellence of the truck boxes with Hardox 500 Tuf. So you can see it's a very harsh environment that these boxes are in, right? And we use this drop test to see what kind of dents and so forth you get. And based on this, we have also developed calculation models. So it's a lot quicker for us today to support customers on how to design.
It had also helped us to develop new material with unmatched properties. If you look at this graph here, on the X-axis, you have the hardness of a material. Actually, it's very simple to produce a hard steel. You only add carbon to the chemistry, you heat it up, and you cool it down, and you will get a very hard material. The trick is to also make it tough because toughness is needed to withstand the impact that you saw in the movie. If you don't have impact toughness, it will immediately crack as soon as the rock lands in the box. This is the core of what we do when we produce our Quenched and Tempered steels. We can make our steels hard and tough to really excel in applications like truck boxes or buckets.
And if we compare ourselves to competitors on the 450 level to start with, you can see that we were already ahead of the game. Same hardness, but a lot tougher, which means longer lifetime. Now, on the 500 level, we have launched the 500 Tuf, which is as tough as the 450 material, and that's unique. We are the only one who has this solution on the market. And this is something that we will really, really benefit from going forward now when we want to continue to stay in the lead on truck boxes and other equipment. So then you can think, this is enough then, I guess, to stay in the lead. Well, we don't think so. We need more than this. We have really good materials, but we also have a very solid business model. And it rests on a few different things.
I said in the beginning that we supply quite a few segments. We supply the yellow goods industry, aggregates, lifting, forestry, fishing, recycling, and so on. That's a very good thing because it creates stability. When one segment is down, another is up. We have a global presence, which is good, and we supply from local stocks right where the customer is when they need it. This also creates stability because if one market is down, another one is up. We have also deliberately chosen to go with small and mid-sized customers. This example is from Germany, just to illustrate what it looks like. A lot of small customers that we supply, so we are not dependent on a few large accounts, which also creates stability if one or two customers should leave us.
We have our own sales and distribution and technical support globally, and that is absolutely needed if you want to work close with customers, with upgrading, and develop the truck box market like we did. There is no distributor in the world who could take over that work from us. So we have to be there ourselves. And then we have our brands. We want everybody out there who uses equipment with our steel in it to be aware of which steel that creates the value for him or her in the everyday life that creates the payload, the lifetime, and so forth. So we have developed a couple of or few programs. Hardox Wearparts is a chain of mechanical workshops producing spare parts for the wear and tear industry in a very local environment, more than 500 of these around the world.
We have also the ingredient brand programs. So if you see a trailer or a truck box with a sticker, Hardox in my body, for instance, it means that it is an approved design by us, and we have allowed the customer to use that sticker so they can tell the end user that it's made out of Hardox. And the end user realizes this every day. So when they order a new tipper, if they are happy with this one, they will ask for another tipper produced out of Hardox. It creates a pull effect. And I think this business model over the years has proven itself. If we look at the financial figures, you can see something happened between 2021 and 2022. It was a hike in the steel market. Prices went up, and special steels rode on that wave.
But we also know that the steel market has been quite sluggish lately, but we have been able to stay on a very high level when it comes to prices. We have not fallen back. And of course, this has also generated good profits over the years. And the reason why we could do this is because we work with the mix. We make sure that we improve. We move over to Hardox 500 Tuf, go into protection areas where we are quite unique. And this, I think, leaves us in a very good position now if the steel market takes off. We are already on a fairly high level, actually. And if the steel market takes up now, I think for us, it's going to be a possibility to go even higher. So what do we think about the market? Will it grow?
If we look at four different segments that we supply to, raw material handling, heavy transport, lifting, and protection, there's an estimated growth. This is sort of the consensus from a lot of different sources between 3% and 10% in these segments. But you can see raw material handling, they are looking for lightweighting, more durable solutions. Heavy transport, also lightweighting. Every kilo saved in a trailer and a container like that is one kilo more payload, which means money for the end user at the end. Lifting, urbanization, and so forth. We're building higher and higher. We need longer reach to build. To get that, you need high-strength steels. And that's exactly what we do. That's the only way to extend the reach of these booms and make them lighter so they can deliver material on high heights. Then protection.
It is a very insecure world, both in civil and military environments. In a vehicle like this, for instance, you need bulletproof, blasting proof, but it also has to be light because it's moving in a very rough terrain. So the combination there is something that we can deliver with our Armox plates. And if we look a little bit deeper into the protection area, this is an estimated growth of plate and strip from 2025 up until 2030. So this is steel in general. The Quenched and Tempered part of this, where we have our Armox plate, is only a small fraction of it. But you can see that there is an estimated growth in this segment of more than 10%. And that's not strange.
I mean, there's been a lot of programs launched lately where pretty much every country says that we need to improve our capabilities within this area, within the defense sector. So for us, of course, if the market increases, we can ride on that wave. But we should also remember that a big part of that is ordinary steel, which means if we move in with Armox in this ordinary area, we can lighten up stuff as well. We call that upgrading. There is also a need for what we call tier one supply, welded components, bended components, and so on. And that's something that we do also, and we intend to increase that even further going forward. And when I say upgrading, I think that pretty much describes what we do in general. It's not only in Armox where we have this possibility.
To the left, you see the plate market, 335 million tons. We operate in the Quenched and Tempered area in this small part here right now. It's about 1% of the total market. But for us, it's not about growing within the red area. It's about moving in this direction because everything that is not produced in Quenched and Tempered steel, I see that as a potential because that's a way for us to go in and make stuff lighter, stronger. So that's really where we want to be. So how do we do this to succeed going forward? I spoke about the mix earlier, and that's going to be very important going forward as well. Last year, we had a share of what we call products with the highest customer value of about 30%. 2030, of course, the total will be higher.
We will grow, but the share will also be a lot higher. So we're aiming at 50% of the total sales with these special products. And if we do this, we think that we will remain number one on the market, and I'm convinced we will be, actually. And we're looking at a 5% annual growth year over year here, and that will deliver an EBITDA of more than 20%. And our business model, staying close to the customer, also opens up other opportunities. Johnny touched on a few of these in his presentation, and I also mentioned the stocks that we run all over the world being very close to the need all the time. We will develop this further, and we're also right now developing an e-commerce channel, so it will be easier for everyone to access these plates.
Abraservice, a chain of companies that we acquired from a competitor several years ago. It was a distribution company. Now we have turned that into a Hardox Wearparts company producing spare parts for the aftermarket. Then we have our service centers. Maybe a strange name, but it's shared because we sell both full plate from these centers, but also parts for the OEM. So if an OEM wants to have full plate for their production, but they also need support with laser cutting or bending, we can deliver that from our own centers. A little bit more areas to build capacities in. Additive manufacturing is a big thing that will come. We have started to produce powder. We will increase this capacity going forward, but it means that you can actually 3D print parts in our excellent steel qualities.
That's super good for certain applications where you have complicated geometries and so on. Laser hardening was also mentioned by Johnny. We have acquired a company in Sweden that has a very interesting technique where you can make really, really high hardness on surfaces and parts of components. That goes very well along with 3D printed parts, but also our Toolox, machine parts, and so on. That's a technique that will be developed. To be able to develop this, some investments are needed, of course. We will increase the heat treatment capacities. There are a few things ongoing. We have a tempering line in Mobile, Alabama, that's being built as we speak. We will open up bottlenecks in production in order to increase capacity, but there will also be a need. There is also a need for completely new heat treatment lines down the line.
We have the conversion in Oxelösund. You will see it later on today, the electric arc furnaces that opens up good possibilities for us. We will produce for our own production here in Oxelösund, but the capacity will be higher, so we will be able to supply within the Nordic system for SSAB, also slabs. Then a little bit further down the line, the Luleå mini-mill, that will add more Q&T capacity, actually, in the strip format, but also supply different formats going wider, which is a good thing, especially if we look at truck boxes and these things. They need thin and wide plates. That opens up good possibilities for special steels. If we summarize, we have built a very resilient business model that stands strong even in volatile times. It is powered by high-strength steels, local presence, and our own distribution.
Our materials, they save money, they protect lives, and they enable stronger, lighter, and more sustainable solutions. So all the way from Hardox to the 3D powder here that we showed, we will continue to push the boundaries in order to create customer value, of course, and also to make sure that we stay in the lead going forward. We have been doing this for 50 years, and we are prepared for the 50 next years to come as well. Upgrade the market because the market calls for better solutions, and that is exactly our home turf. That's what we do. We're going to do it now, growing not only by taking market shares from others. We're going to do it by growing the cake. If you remember the graph, take from the ordinary steels, make it lighter and stronger.
This is the way we have been operating, and I think it has proven itself over the years that it is a profitable business. I'm 100% sure it will be profitable also for the years to come. Thank you.
We will do a bigger Q&A with all the divisions at the end, but I will ask one question now. The 5% growth that you're outlining, what makes you confident that you will be able to deliver that?
I think if you look at the need from the segments that we supply, they call for lighter, stronger solutions. That's a growth in itself. The numbers I showed here were a consensus from a lot of different external sources, so there is a demand for this. We will, on top of this, also be able to upgrade, right? Taking on the ordinary grade.
So the 5% I'm very confident with, we have historically grown more than that, to be honest. So I think it might be on the conservative side. That said, it is a volatile world right now. There are a lot of conflicts, tariffs, and so on, but the 5%, I'm confident.
Thank you, Per. Thank you. And with that, let's move forward to the next division in SSAB Europe, introducing Tony Harris, who has been in this role since earlier this year. Tony joined SSAB through the Rautaruukki merger in 2014 and has a broad international and operational experience from the industry. Tony, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Helena. Morning, everyone. Very kind, very hospitable people, the Swedes, that they brought some English weather here for us this morning for my benefit. Very nice of them to do that.
As Helena said, I've been working in this division for 16 years now. I've been part of the management team for the last 10 years since the merger with SSAB from Rautaruukki. I took on the role of head of the division in January of this year. A significant role change, but I'm really happy with the progress that we've made during this year, but really happy with the progress we made over the 10 years previous when I was working under Oliver Hutter as the division head. We were on the right step, because it's very easy sometimes for us to sit here and we're like, it's difficult to follow Per because I know he's the golden child and he's making 25% EBITDA margins and all of that, and I'm just the poor guy who's operating in the European steel industry.
Imitation is the best form of flattery, and I think that what we've done over the last 10 years, we've made our business more resilient by working on upgrading our sales mix and moving to a more premium-grade strategy. I think we've done a reasonably good job at it, and we're going to continue doing with it, and that's what I'll show you today. Brief introduction to SSAB Europe. Nearly SEK 42 billion turnover last year, nearly 7,000 employees. What I'm really happy about is the safety performance. Johnny touched upon it earlier from the corporate perspective, but from the division, we've moved from 8.6 Lost Time Injury Frequency in 2016 to 0.4 during 2024 and 2025. We're at our best safety performance ever. Really happy with that development, really happy with what it said about the professionalism of our workforce.
In terms of production assets, we have Luleå and Borlänge, as you know, Raahe, Hämeenlinna and tube mills in Finland, plus then service centers in Italy, Netherlands and U.K., plus Arendal in Sweden, and then as we look at the segments, very balanced in what we sell, very balanced, not over-dependent on any one segment, so we can handle construction slowdown by mitigating with automotive growth and so on, and also not overexposed by any single product group, so very balanced in terms of our product offer at this moment. Perhaps just a little bit too much hot rolled if you look at hot rolled cut to length coils and plate, and Luleå transformation will address that. One key thing here, I think really relevant as we come into 2026, is that 88% of SSAB Europe sales go into the continent of Europe.
As we position ourselves in the face of carbon border adjustment mechanisms and safeguarding actions as they come into force in 2026, we're very well positioned to exploit any opportunities that they present, but we're also not very well exposed or very highly exposed to retaliatory factors on export sales. Current position, where are we? As we talked about earlier, innovation, upgrading, moving to advanced steel grades, developing our premium sales mix. We've moved from 2015 of 27% premium sales mix to 48% in 2024. I put some numbers and some color to that for you. 21% of our sales is 675,000 tons. Each ton of premium grades, on average, EUR 100 more margin than a standard ton. So this in itself is EUR 675 million , EUR 67.5 million on the bottom line.
Also, very important to us that we retain our home market leadership, and we're going to build on it. So we work with Tibnor and Ruukki Construction, as we've said. We've retained over this period a 45% home market share where we have a leading position, and we take price leadership very seriously. Some of the products that we sell, we talk a lot about advanced steel grades, martensitic steels, ultra high strength steels for automotive, where we've had a significant development. We've doubled our volumes. We come back to it later. GreenCoat products, we created a range of color-coated products called GreenCoat. They use bio-based technology, and we offer warranties of up to 50 years, creating more value for our customers.
Piles, we have a great example that you'll be able to see in the exhibition later of where we add value to our piling products that supports infrastructure and foundation work for new buildings, but where we create huge extra value for our customer with a unique application that you'll be able to see an example of in the exhibition. You'll see it later, and then also we have the opportunity to sell, first of all, decarbonized steel, SSAB Zero, and then we do value creation internally at our mills. For example, in Raahe mill, where we have a plate processing center, which drills and bends and bevels and cuts at very, very high, very close dimensional tolerances, we add value.
This example here is the blue steel part is a base plate for a heat exchanger for Alfa Laval made from decarbonized steel and fully produced in Raahe mill. In terms of product development and automotive, I said that we've grown over this period by more than double in advanced high strength and ultra high strength steels. That's really development, and that's helped our resilience versus the standard market in Europe and reduced our exposure to unfairly cheaply imported products. We've done it through constant innovation, constant upgrading, exactly as Per described with Hardox. We've done it with Docol. What we're talking about here is really absolute niche of the niche. We talk about advanced high strength steels growing. The benchmark for where advanced high strength steels moves to ultra high strength steels is about 900 megapascals.
We're talking with Docol being at 1,700 and even 1,900 megapascals. So ultra high strength steels, niche of the niche. As the market develops, we are developing at the richest end of that mix. It is very interesting how we've done it with the customer base. In 2015, we accessed the market through we had a very small amount of OEM approvals. We accessed the market through service centers. Over this 10-year period, we've increased the number of OEM approvals by 430%. We now negotiate directly with the automotive companies. We engage with them at the design phase rather than in the delivery phase. They're freezing the model design and specifying our material on the application. Three examples here of how we create value for our customers. Two of them are lightweighting. The first one is steel for steel.
It's an upgrading, as described by Per, similar concept, which then delivers a weight reduction of 20%, a cost reduction of 10%, and a 20% CO2 reduction, as you all know, particularly automotive, very much still focused on their decarbonization journey and their decarbonization targets. So we have to find ways to create value for them with CO2 reduction as well. The second one is a similar example, but it's an example where we use Docol 1500M product and we substitute it for aluminum. So in this case, the weight is pretty similar. We've managed to get a thin enough product, strong enough product that we can take aluminum on and be like for like in terms of weight, but then it's half the cost for the customer. We're reducing the cost by 50%.
Therefore, because we're using so much less material, we're reducing the CO2 emissions by 34%. A third example to prove that we're not exclusively looking at automotive: this now I have to look at my Finnish colleagues, so I'm going to really try for you, but Hailuoto bridge in Oulu, Northern Finland, close to our Raahe mill. The original product that we supplied the bridge with was an S355 material, but it was painted. Now we supply a weathering steel in a 460ML. It's substantially stronger material. We can use lighter, thinner material, but it's also a weathering material that doesn't corrode. It no longer needs painting. Not only do we take weight out of the bridge, less material consumed, therefore cost saving, but we reduce the life cycle cost, with no need to continuously paint the bridge year after year after year either.
We take life cycle costs down and then we deliver CO2 reduction. What that's given us over a period of time, as Johnny talked about earlier, we have over the last decade outperformed our European peers. Maybe not the performance that Per has delivered, maybe not the performance that Chuck has delivered either, but we're in a situation where in the market that we are playing, we put ourselves in a very strong position. That's despite the fact that we still have some challenges with our cost structure, which the transformation of Luleå will address. If we look a little bit further forward, what does the market look like for us at the moment? I think we expect to see. I think we've had quite a lot of headwind in the last year or two.
It's not been an easy market to operate in steel industry in Europe, as you know. We've done okay. We've held our heads above water. We've been resilient, but I think that we're going to be in times for structural change now. From the 1st of January, we have implementation of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism on imports. The numbers aren't finalized yet, but the impact is likely to be for each imported ton of steel between EUR 40 and EUR 60 additional cost. Thereafter, as Johnny touched on, we're going to go into this period of safeguarding where we have a reduction of around about 18 million tons or a halving of the tariff-free material that will come into Europe, and this, in all likelihood, will drive prices substantially higher, and it will also drive utilization rates higher.
We expect something like between a 5% and 10% increase in utilization as a result of safeguarding as we move forward. Not just safeguarding, but we also have the situation in Europe where I think 50 million tons of capacity has come out of the European steel industry in the last decade. So the European industry is not so resilient in terms of meeting the gap that the safeguarding actions will create. So I think we're really well placed, high utilization, very likely higher prices as well. And then also demand growth. Construction, infrastructure, for example, the German government's EUR 500 billion infrastructure bill, it's the green transition, all going to be helpful for creating demand for us, as well as this migration towards lighter material requirements for automotive. So we're going to have some good demand drivers as well.
And then Steels and Metals Action Plan. Very much see public procurement projects process being put in place, melt and pour being put in place. We expect to see some real beneficial elements to our business as we move forward. And in terms of the market, what does it look like? Now we're in a situation where we have a lot of legacy blast furnaces. There will be fewer blast furnaces in operation in the next 10 years. Some will still be there to be run for cash, but not all of them. We have a very small amount of electric arc furnaces in Europe at the moment. That will grow. As will, in all likelihood, there will be some mini mills in Europe. SSAB will have one. There will probably be one or more other ones. And then imports will change. Because of CBAM, we'll have imports still.
We'll have fewer of them, but we'll have greener imports to circumvent the need for the carbon tax so we see a reasonably good position for ourselves as we move forward in terms of supply and then demand growth, numbers are what they are. The automotive numbers and the heavy truck, we come back to that in a separate slide. Construction, we talked about urbanization, infrastructure projects. They're going to drive demand. We've also had a relatively weak construction market for the last four or five years. We expect some rebound coming in starting in 2026, but these are going to be long-term drivers for the products that we produce. Energy, this 20% is related to renewable energy, solar and wind investments, but both heavy consumers of steel products and steel products that we supply.
And then shipbuilding, very important, particularly for Raahe, where we have the plate mill, we see very strong demand at the moment. Up in Finland, Meyer Turku build these Icon series ships. They now have been awarded seven of those. We supply many tens of thousands of tons to each one of those ships. And then also icebreakers here as an example. You'll all be aware that the U.S. Coast Guard recently announced the procurement of 11 icebreakers, the first four of which will be built in Finland, and then the next seven will be built in Texas. But we work together with our colleagues in the U.S. how we can get product from unique product from Raahe mill into those applications that are built in Texas as well. And this is the example that I was talking about. I come back to in automotive.
In 2015, 26% of the steel content of an average vehicle was advanced high strength, ultra high strength, or press hardened steel. By 2030, that number will grow to over 60%, and it will grow in the products that we want to produce. So as we move forward, ultra high strength steel grows substantially, and that is when we always talk about unique Docol products, that is ultra high strength steel, and that's where our development will be at its greatest. But the challenge we've got is that we are at a capacity constraint. This is really important to understand why we are investing in additional capacity in Luleå so that we can meet the market needs here. It's not about producing more steel. It's about producing more of the right steel that the market wants.
Of course, the drivers here, we touched on most of those already. As said, Luleå transformation is the cornerstone of SSAB Europe's strategy. I talk a little bit about the products and the cost position later, but the thing to focus on here, I think, is this number one. Additional premium capacity is very important. Overall, the Luleå transformation will increase our steel production by 500,000 tons. Our cold mill capacity, our cold roll continuous annealed and metal coated capacity will go up by 1.2 million tons. That's 1.2 million tons of premium capacity that we can produce premium products. Therefore, we will have a reduction in the standard sales of hot rolled coil. We will sell fewer standard commodity grades in the future than we do today, and we'll sell more special.
And we need this investment to give us the capacity to do that because we're constrained at this point in time. Of course, also here, CO2, still massively important to our customers. There was a question earlier. Yes, we still have the request from our customers. They are still prepared to pay a premium. In fact, I come back to that in a second. In terms of the product offer, we have a lot of new grades available to us, a lot of new coatings available to us, and we have a wider dimensional capability in Luleå in the future than we had in the past. And what it does is it takes us from having a sort of medium to high offer in the European Union amongst our peers. We're very competitive at the moment. We've got good production assets.
We've got good product offer, but we go best in class everywhere. We go best in class, dimensional offer and the qualities that we can offer and the coatings that we can offer. One example of which would be at this point in time, we can't supply metal coated for exposed products in automotive, so hoods, bonnets, doors. When Luleå is transformed, we are able to do that. And if you look on the right-hand side of the chart, what it means is that at the moment, we can only just about supply half of the material needs on a car. Post Luleå, if we choose to, we will have the capability to supply every ton of flat steel that that vehicle needs. And just coming back to this, do we see a need from our customers for decarbonized? We are consistently signing new partners up.
We now have more than 65 partners in our fossil-free partnership network from mobility sector, predominantly. They are the ones that are pushing the hardest, but then also from construction and industrial and energy applications. 65 customers with a commitment to buy 2 million tons of steel from us. 65 customers with a commitment to buy 30% of that 2 million tons as fossil-free steel or SSAB Zero steel. We have that demand in place. So when Johnny said we look at 15%, we have partner agreements that cover that 15% already. And then as we grow, yes, we're going to work on the premium grades. Yes, we're going to work on decarbonization, but we're going to continue to develop value added.
What we're looking for is 4% CAGR over the strategy period, driven by an increased use of our downstream service centers, an expansion of those service centers and of their capabilities. We've just made an investment in Ghedi Service Center in Italy, where they can now cut to length Hardox material. They couldn't do it before. We add more value downstream, more and more plate processing, as we talked about, and then more and more solution applications like the pile wall you'll see. It's very important to us as we do this that we work with our subsidiary divisions, Ruukki Construction and Tibnor, to add that value and to create that additional value for our customers going forward. I have one more summary slide, but this one is almost a summary slide.
We go from 1.5 million tons of advanced steels to 2.4 million tons post Luleå transformation. You can probably work that out, what I just said about how much a premium ton is worth versus a standard ton. Then we go to a product offer, which is 25% decarbonized. Then the remaining amount is EAF production from Luleå with some product from Oxelösund. And then we still have the conventional blast furnace production from Raahe, but we're giving the option and flexibility that Johnny described earlier to our customers in terms of product offer, but then also the decarbonization. If they're prepared to pay for it, they can have it. If not, they don't have to. And then very important that we retain our home market position in Nordics, as we will do.
We will grow substantially through our subsidiaries, but also with the expanded product offer that Luleå gives us so that we're able to take more of the home market than we've previously been able to because of either capacity constraints or offer constraints. And so in summary, where do we go from? We go from a 48% mix of advanced steel grades to a 56% mix post Luleå. In terms of decarbonized steel, we reduce our CO2 output significantly with the electric arc furnace conversion, and we deliver at least one million tons of SSAB Fossil-free steel or SSAB Zero. Value added services, we grow by 4% CAGR, and we change our cost position. At the moment, with the way we're configured in Sweden, particularly, we're a relatively small mill. We don't have the economies of scale, nor do we have a very cost-effective production route.
As we move forward, we have a step change in our operating costs and our flexibility. 10 seconds left. That's good timing.
Thank you, Tony. That's very good timing. Before we go to coffee break, you talked about the changes in the European market. In light of the strategy you just presented, how does that sort of create the outlook for SSAB Europe going forward?
I think mainly I covered it. I think that what we have is we're going to have some demand recovery. There's no doubt about that. But we're going to have a lot of changes on the supply side. So CBAM is the first one. It comes in January. It's already having an impact on the volumes that are placed with importers to bring into the European Union. It will impact prices immediately in quarter one.
Prices are inevitably going to go up in the first half of next year. Then safeguarding will come afterwards, and then the supply situation is completely different. Utilization rates up between 5% and 10%. That is going to be a massive game changer for us. The whole industry in Europe has been operating at less than 70% utilization, and that is not sustainable. It's certainly not sustainable at the price levels that we've had to work with in the recent years. So it's going to change a lot.
Thank you, Tony. This takes us to the end of the first session. So we will now have coffee, and we will have coffee for 15 minutes. That means that we will start again at 11:00 A.M. Swedish time, also for those of you on the webcast. Coffee served at the back end of this room, and see you back again soon.
Okay, welcome back everyone, and welcome back everyone also on the webcast. So we will continue on the route through our divisions and then continuing with subsidiaries. Our next speaker, representing SSAB Americas and the longest serving member on the executive committee is Chuck Schmitt.
He's been with the company since, well, with IPSCO since 1990. IPSCO was acquired by SSAB in 2007, and you've been on the management team since 2011. Welcome, Chuck.
Thank you, Helena . Nothing like being introduced as old. So I come from our North America headquarters in Mobile, Alabama. I'm going to take you through kind of three focus areas for the Americas. Number one, our leadership position today, followed by a look at the North America plate market as we see it, and then in consideration of the first two, how we move forward with a customer value proposition. But let me start with a quick snapshot of who we are, and I apologize for those of you who probably know a lot of this.
A steelmaking capacity of 2 million tons coming from our Montpelier, Iowa facility, as well as Mobile, Alabama, operated by Special Steels, as Per described, and then supported downstream by three cut-to-length temper level lines in Houston, Texas, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Toronto in Ontario. Our shipments go to the segments listed here. Fairly large exposure to energy, both renewables such as wind, where SSAB remains the leading supplier for wind tower plate, but also in the traditional oil and gas, which includes pipe as well as electrical transmission. Also includes heavy transport, which is shipbuilding, barge building, rail car, and then rounded out by heavy equipment and construction. At the same time, these same segments are serviced through a network of distributors and major service centers that make up, in any given year, 45%-55% of our shipments.
And speaking of customers and segments, as Johnny described very well, we are second to none in terms of quality and customer service. I'll get to that in a minute and how that is rated and where that comes from, and combined delivering a better-than-average margin performance for the past five years of 25%. So our leading position really starts with that point on quality and service. It's an elite customer experience that we deliver in combination with a low-cost operating model. And to exemplify that, if you look at this five-year average and the Jacobsen, it's a third-party survey doing this for over 30 years every quarter for not only SSAB, for a number of steel companies in North America.
If you look at the five-year average, you can go back almost to year 30 that we have owned this position on being number one in quality as well as the service and overall customer satisfaction. When you look at our operating model, which is really laser-focused on productivity in a low-cost model in combination with efficiency delivered on a daily basis. One example there with our continuous improvement, our Black Belt teams and in Six Sigma delivering a targeted amount of generous savings every year. More recently, in the last couple of years, we've been working with equipment manufacturers as well as data companies on advanced digitalization, specifically in our electric arc furnace and gearing towards reducing our power on-time savings and reducing costs in the steelmaking area.
The ability to drive the low-cost model down and generate operating profitability throughout the entire cycle is drawn up here when you look at both our Mobile and Montpelier facilities. A very strong track record, as Johnny described, of a utilization rate through that period significantly higher than the industry average that has been wandering around 78%-79%. And then on our decarbonization journey, you've heard a bit about this already from Europe as well and probably very familiar from our announcement a couple of years ago of introducing the world's first zero-emission steel coming out of our Montpelier facility, where we have 99% renewable energy primarily coming from the Iowa wind farms.
And that's used in combination with biofuel substitutes that we introduced at the time, and at this point producing over 300,000 tons of that for customers both in North America as well as Europe. More recently, just in the past couple of months, and hopefully you have seen some of this, that we achieved another major milestone, producing a very stringent and aspirational, quite frankly, IEA standard for low emissions using our hybrid pellets. And we accomplished this in combination with doing a prototype wind tower for GE Vernova in the United States. And a bit later in the exhibit hall, Katie Larson, Head of our Sustainability in Americas, will be there, and she can give you the full journey and even the technical background with Ben at the table as well.
Then lastly, in terms of benchmarking against our peers, Johnny's described this, so I won't spend a lot of time on it, but this is strictly from our plate peers in North America. And when you look at the top four producers, including SSAB through this period, it's number one in volume that represents over 85% of the market supply. And we've shown a consistent ability, seven out of the last eight years, to deliver on top financial performance. So what are we seeing going forward for the next five to 10 years? And particularly, no doubt you've been following in North America and what's happened in the tariff world that we operate in today. Where are we going with green steel in light of changes on the emphasis of the current administration?
There is no doubt that the new and existing state and federal policies in the U.S. are driving the U.S. industrial agenda. That's really not debatable. And you look at the impacts here, not only has been identified earlier with 232 tariffs, you now have downstream derivative products under tariff, and the expectation is that is going to stay in place in some form and in some level going forward. Was touched on the melted and poured requirements, made in America requirements, with the local supply chains being developed now in the U.S., the reshoring of manufacturing driving a good deal of that. And if you go on the demand growth part of legislation here, it starts with what's already put in place is the bipartisan infrastructure bill. And when you look at particularly bridges and roads, they lean very, very heavily into steel plate.
More recently, legislation on the SHIPS Act to accelerate fabrication of military ships as well as commercial ships in the U.S. and even in combination, as Tony has described, on the icebreakers. And then the energy dominance agenda, and I'll speak in a bit more detail on that, but the expansion for electrification in response to the boom in data centers as well as CHIPS Act and in AI, like a number of places around the world, is just accelerating very, very rapidly. And that in turn is driving particularly key plate market segments. And you can see the growth rates below in construction, which has probably lagged most everything else, but expectations for non-residential construction that is going to benefit from these onshoring activities as well as these investments.
The SHIPS Act that I've already mentioned, wind, which has drawn a bit more of attention on the challenging side, but keeping in mind that the tax credits are going to run through the end of 2027. And so the expectation is for the next several years to really move very, very quickly for installation and getting that tax credit. And then by the time we arrive at 2028, then we're also under a new election and to see what the next negotiations are. And then above all, and one of the strongest markets that we've seen and that we participated in, transmission tower recently announced that $1.1 trillion invested by utilities to rebuild and as well as recreate the transmission grid in the U.S. So if we look at the supply-demand balance in the U.S.
Now, specifically for plate, and we assume that we have a growth rate of 2.93% for the numbers here, we quickly come to an imbalance between the supply side. And that calculates in even new investments, recent expansions at full capacity. And that particularly becomes out of balance as we see the imports decline, which has already been happening this year. And so it's highly unlikely that sort of the tier two, tier three suppliers would respond anywhere fast enough with old legacy mills, particularly up to newer specifications here in order to fill that gap. So we have a leadership position combined with a relatively strong market outlook. And so describe here how we leverage, how we advance that to a customer proposition now of value targeting our customer segments as well as our products. We intend to outperform our ability to maintain leadership on quality and service.
Our team is quite proud of the recognition that we get from customers and surveys that providing the number one quality plate in the U.S. at the same time with a full-service package. And then we look to target some of these key accounts, identifying growth here, and then with a broader portfolio of products and services. And this is just one example of three of those with the targets we see for substantial growth to us because of positions that we have today that we feel we can leverage. And those are just a couple of things being mentioned there. The shipbuilding, which is, you have a fair amount of the largest shipbuilders in the U.S. located down in that Gulf Coast area as well as the Southern West Coast that we participate in. And Tony mentioned the Texas operation.
Our Mobile operation here is extremely well-suited to participate in that. Then when we look in transmission tower, we've participated and been a top supplier in this through our downstream cut-to-length lines. These products now continue to advance in high strength and high toughness, and we have temper mills and added facilities to process that. Likewise, in the Midwest, our Montpelier facility is well-suited there. In addition to our R&D facility and Ben Cowling and his group work very diligently with the local ag equipment, construction equipment, people all located in the Midwest on customer projects. We certainly think we could leverage that as well. So the products we talked about, Zero Steel, it's been touched on. We continue to see the demand is real.
We have key customers in very key segments such as wind and rail, still very much interested in our ability short and long-term to provide that product. Laser Plus is becoming a much more attractive and necessary. That is a very high-growth area with the advances in burning, in cutting, requiring steel performance that's flatter than we've ever made it. Likewise, they're expecting that performance and that flatness both post-processing and pre-processing as well. And then through our downstream operations as well as customer opportunities, providing OEMs with efficiencies in logistics and handling and processing that we provide and becoming much more popular on a circularity for scrap for the bigger users that we deal with and how we collect that and return it back to our mills. So I'll just summarize very quickly from a very strong starting position with market leadership.
What we see is the market dynamics for supply-demand definitely in the manufacturers or the producers' favor. Our cost position certainly protects us in the trough of the market, but we certainly don't see that within the near term. Improving our offering for premium steel and services. That's it. Thank you and look forward to your questions.
Thank you, Chuck. So one question before we move forward. How do you see the competitive landscape developing in the North American market, and how do you defend the number one position?
A lot to be reported on there with expansions and some growth in capacity, but those numbers were all factored into the chart there. For us, there's this combination of our customer experience. I say with a matter of certainty that nobody's making high-quality steel plate at a lower cost than we are. Putting us in an exceptionally strong position for the preferred supplier at plate. We'll probably have more people to the space, and we welcome the competition, but we're accustomed and very proud of having that number one position. I think we're well-suited to continue.
Thank you, Chuck. So with that, we have walked through the three divisions. It's time for the subsidiaries. We will start with Tibnor, which is a key part in our distribution and value-add capability. Happy to introduce Fredrik Haglund, President of Tibnor. Fredrik, the stage is yours.
Thank you very much. Good morning, or maybe I don't say good morning anymore. It's 11:20 A.M. I will go through our current position, our starting point, as well as the strategy going forward for higher profitability. Now, Tibnor is a leading distributor of steel metals as well as processing services in the Nordics. We have roughly 10,000 customers. We're primarily targeting all small and medium-sized customers and companies buying steel and metals. We are in all customer segments. I will say construction is primarily 40%, and the general industry being the majority. We have 1,050 employees, and we are close to our customers at roughly 40 locations if we take into account our sales offices, our local stocks, as well as our centralized processing sites. Now, we have a strong operational performance.
We have a 0.0 LTIF rolling 12, so no accidents with lost time, and we have a high and stable delivery accuracy above 95%, very important in steel distribution. Now, all in all, we are distributing roughly 800,000 tons of steel and metals. That's SEK 12 billion in last year's sales. Roughly half of our volume, that's SSAB products, and the other half being a full range of external products. We have a Nordic market share of 23% in steel distribution. By that, we are the clear number one. Now, we have a leading offering already today. First of all, we have a wide assortment, a full-range product assortment, including a depth within the SSAB premium segment as well as other external supplier premium products. Also, we have developed a leading low CO2 assortment across many of our categories. We also have a broad set of processing services.
Now, every product we are supplying to the market, we also can do processing of, using the first steps before it goes into a customer operation. And thirdly, we are very strong in more customized solutions for more complex OEMs and big subcontractors, offering digital integration and just-in-time deliveries into the customer's production site. And as a contrast to that, I would say we also have the strongest offer for the smallest customers on the local markets. But we have established, I would say, a quite unique setup over the last five years. And one example of that is Handelsgruppen , which I will come back to within short as well. Now, as I said, we have built a strong position. Steel distribution typically is a low-margin business, but a high return on capital employed.
We have a ROCE of 8% as an average over the last 10 years and an EBITDA of 4%. We have been outperforming our peers over the last 10 years, and especially over the last two years, we have been clearly outperforming our peer group. So I will say we have improved our resilience as well as low-point profits in this cycle. Now, beside the standalone value creation, we also offer significant value creation to the SSAB group since we are sourcing roughly 400,000 tons with a full long margin of a complete portfolio of SSAB products. Now, to mention a few of our important structural changes over the years. In 2019, we acquired Sanistål Steel Division in Denmark, making us a true Nordic player. In 2021, we created a Handelsgruppen SSAB.
We have made five smaller acquisitions over the year of local outlets, and we have made five greenfields investing in industry-intense attractive areas. We have also done significant cost savings, productivity measures over the years, but also some very key strategic investments in new value-add, which has been ramping up very well. I'll come back to that as well. Now, as I said, we are having an important role in supporting SSAB on the Nordic market. Roughly 400,000 tons of a full assortment of products being delivered to customers, primarily from the Borlänge, Raahe, and Hämeenlinna mill, but also from the Oxelösund facility. The other half of our volume then comes from all other major European mills for non-SSAB products. We can offer a full range assortment. More than 50% of our customers are buying more than four or five product categories.
So there is a broad customer value of offering a broad portfolio, is important. Now, we have successfully strengthened our position over the last, I would say, specifically the last five years. We've been growing our market share roughly one percentage point per year up to 23% last year. And we have a leading market position in all our Nordic markets. We are number one and number two in all countries. And if we only consider the internal products, the SSAB products, then we are the number one in all countries. And of course, on the Nordic scale, we are the clear number one. Now, the strategy towards higher profitability will be around growing in our three high-value areas: the premium steel products, processing, and the local presence.
Now, the premium steel products, we have had a strong track record of upgrading into SSAB Europe premium and also a low CO2 assortment. Processing, we have set some very important CapEx in place over the last two to three years, which will drive growth going forward organically. Local presence, as I said, we have established a quite unique setup targeting all the small customers. Now, of course, being a distributor to strengthen the basics is always critical. I will say we have a leading cost position over the years. Also, capital efficiency over time has been fairly strong with a capital turnover above three. Pricing excellence, I would say we have been the clear leader in since we have a couple of million of transactions, 20,000 articles, more than 10,000 customers.
Pricing excellence is key, and we have seen a very good effect on gross margins the last couple of years thanks to that. Now, the three high-value areas: premium steel products, processing, and local presence is twice as profitable compared to distributing a standard product. Currently, in 2024, they were 45% of our sales. Now, already this year in Q3, we're up to 50% consisting of the high-value areas. The plan is to continue the shift mix to get to at least 65% in 2030. This will clearly drive profitability, but also clearly drive our customer offering into more value-add areas. Now, let's deep dive into one of the areas within high value, the processing and solutions. I would say we have a very strong footprint already now. We have nine sites working on a primarily Nordic basis, offering a full scale of processing.
Currently, 21% of sales, but targeting 30% by growing organically, primarily through the important CapEx already in place. We are fairly unique, I would say, in the Seinäjoki service center in Finland, where we can offer components primarily for mid-size OEMs for laser cutting, bending, machining, and beveling. Also, we have just recently, early this year, installed a new production line in Sweden in Köping for plasma drilling of long products for the construction industry, which has been ramping up very well, and actually, in September was the first month ever that we from that site sold more processing than stock products, and that is one of our bigger sites in Sweden. So we have been seeing a good ramp-up of the investments we have done. Now, the other area in the high value, local presence. Now, this is the local market, fragmented smaller customers.
We have more than 5,000 customers within this channel served by roughly 20 local stocks. In Sweden, we have this organized under Handelsgruppen, a separate company, where every company acts under its own brand. So, for example, we have Stålshoppen in Örebro in Sweden, which we acquired a couple of years ago. They act on their own local market with their own brand, their own salespeople. Roughly 50% of the customers are coming to the stock, picking up the material themselves, both flat steel and long products. So the flexibility and the customer service of this segment is quite different compared to the mid-size OEM or larger subcontractor segment. Obviously, we are creating a quite unique customer value here in the marketplace.
As I said, we have done five smaller acquisitions over the last five years and five greenfields in areas where we want to grow and invest in industry-intense areas. We also have a wide offer in Norway and Denmark, particularly for the small customers. In Norway, we acquired a company on the West Coast earlier this year, offering primarily processing for the offshore industry. We foresee a strong growth outlook, primarily organically in this segment going forward. Now, as I said, continuous strengthening of the basics will still be key for us. We have achieved significant cost improvements over the last five years. We expect to keep cost per ton flat over the coming five-year period, primarily thanks to digitalization of the value chain. We are already now on a level of above 35% of all order rows going through our different e-commerce channels.
But on the other side, the capital efficiency, now capital turnover, has been on a historical level of three on the low point last year, 2.4, given the market conditions. But we see a clear improvement potential coming back to more normalized historical levels in the coming one- two years. Also, we have done some significant improvements in our Nordic setup of purchasing as well as inventory steering. Now, summarizing, I would say we are well positioned for taking the next steps for higher profitability. We are the clear market leader in the Nordics. We have shown a strong growth journey together with SSAB and with other key products, achieving a significant long margin for the group. We have been achieving clearly better profitability than the peer group, especially in the low cycle, thanks to a strong cost position as well as being the leader in pricing excellence.
Also, we have shown good track record in growing several of the high-value areas, for example, the local presence as well as the premium steel products, and we have seen a very good ramp-up of the processing investments we have done recently, so the targets going forward now is an EBITDA in the short term currently above 6% and a ROCE of 15% and a long-term EBITDA of 8%. That's all. Thank you.
Thank you, Fredrik. Before moving on, looking at from your customer's perspective, what does this shift to more value-added services and more premium mean?
I would say, I mean, primarily subcontractor OEMs can focus more on welding, the core areas of their processing, and we take over the first step of processing.
Same with construction, where we can handle very, very large components, hollow sections, beams, and they can focus on assembly and the next steps in those operations.
Great. Thank you. That takes us to the end of this presentation, and it's time to move to the last presentation before the Q&A. And that is the second subsidiary, Ruukki Construction, and president of that unit, Sami Eronen. Welcome on stage.
Thank you, Helena. I'm so pleased to introduce Ruukki Construction, the Nordic leader in roofing and building envelopes. Ruukki's vision is realizing future buildings already today, and I think that this picture is also telling the story a little bit, and I hope that this is my to-be plan to have a cottage in Norwegian mountains.
Ruukki Construction today, so we are operating locally in 10 European countries where we have the local presence, so meaning Sweden, Norway, Finland, three Baltic countries, Poland, Czech, Slovakia, and also Ukraine, then in addition to these countries, we have also export to other countries based on our factories in the core market area. We have 1,350 professionals working close to our customers every day and 14 specialized factories serving our customer needs on the daily basis. From sales and headcount point of view, the biggest countries are Sweden, Finland, and Poland, where we have also the majority of our production operations. We are running two businesses, namely roofing and building envelopes. Let's come back to those in the next slides, so we are using steel as our raw material and also other metals.
We are not a steel producer, but our specialization is producing building products to roof and wall applications to our customers. On the annual basis, we are serving more than 20,000 customers, big and small customers, positively fragmented customer base, meaning that we are not dependent on individual customers in our markets. Two businesses, roofing that is mainly for residential buildings, about one third to new construction, about two thirds to renovation applications, which is much more stable in these market circumstances. About 60% of our sales is going through different dealers, wholesalers, while then remaining part of customers' direct deliveries to installation companies and construction companies. What we deliver in roofing is roofing profiles, different accessories to deliver a complete roof solution to our customers.
Then, another business, building envelopes, so meaning how do we cover the building with wall and roof solution, not only steel products but also insulation solutions, so basically complete roof and wall structures to our customers. This is typically a new construction market, mainly to non-residential applications, and all the products that we manufacture here, we already know who is the customer, what is the product, so very much make-to-order type of business in this field. Then, our distinctive edge, we have three building blocks here. It is very wide product offering so that we have the widest product offering to the market in the field of roof and wall solutions. We have service. This is not only about products but very much services that are closely linked to our products and deliveries. And then the third topic here is very powerful brands in the construction industry.
From the product range point of view, high-quality raw materials, premium products, and then also a very strong sustainability agenda as the market leader in the sustainability development. What comes to services, we want to offer to our customer a good digital experience, tracking their order to delivery performance, but not only to buying customers. What is very important is that we are active in the pre-sales phase, working closely with architects, working closely with structural designers, making their life also easier with our design tools and solutions and technical support. In the construction business, we want to be also very close to our customers and their construction sites so that we have good logistic solutions. We have outlets covering our market areas and close to our customers. We are running powerful brands, main brand Ruukki, but also Plania in the Scandinavian roofing market.
What we are building on our brands is partner programs together with our customers, both increasing sales, increasing business size, but also building loyalty together with our customers. Shortly about our journey so far, so when we started this journey, we were the company having different kinds of businesses in different geographies, not so much common denominators. Today, we are much more focused. We are a much more prioritized company focusing on roofing and building envelope business, product businesses serving our customers. We said at the beginning that we have three phases in our strategy. The first one, fixing the structure, so we divested a big part of our business in Russia in building systems where we were operating product business, and we said that we want to be a product business player. That we did successfully.
In the second phase, focusing on the core, how we are able to create growth and higher profitability in our core businesses. We were delivering very solid performance in profitability, targeted EBITDA 10% 2019 until 2022 when we saw a major slowdown in the construction market. This focus on the core phase was also supported by complementary acquisitions in geography, in product offering to have more premium offering, more complete solutions. So five acquisitions completed in Nordic countries. And now we have been adjusting our operation, our cost structure to slow down in the construction market, which has basically come down about 40% in the Nordic main businesses what we have been doing.
Our decrease has been less than the construction market decrease, and we are not on the targeted profitability level, but we have adjusted and we are ready for the next phase, which is growth and especially market growth, no matter what is the market situation. So how we make this growth happen until 2030 and starting what is Ruukki's position as a part of SSAB Group. So we had two roles, as we have heard already today earlier, starting from the so-called blue box. So we are consuming about 40% of color-coated output that SSAB Europe is delivering on the annual basis to the market. So this is an important channel to market, but also building premium offering, premium market in color-coated and going forward to construction products.
Then, what is becoming even more important is the so-called red box here, that how we create additional value on the top of the market price steel raw material that we are using. We have constantly been building our offering so that we have more value added. We have a more differentiated portfolio. We have been doing that successfully, and in the next phase, we are able to speed up that even more. Then how the market looks at the moment, so we are very much in the bottom of the construction market cycle, which is, I would say, positive for the next steps. We have been doing our homework, and we estimate that during the strategy period, the market is also going to support us in a positive way.
If we take average estimates at the moment in residential, non-residential business where we are operating, it's about 4% annual growth that is estimated for the coming years. We have seen that this growth is more positive on the Central Eastern European market, but also Nordic. We expect to have a good outlook for the coming years. Then market outlook is also supported by structural changes in the construction market that we see more strict regulation from the authorities' point of view, targeting to net zero buildings. What is very important is also the lifecycle efficiency in construction, meaning that energy efficiency is becoming an even bigger topic going forward. Then how to make growth happen? Profitable growth through premium product offering, which is strongly the product focus. But then what is very important to us is also driving the higher share of wallet development at our customer base.
As I said earlier, we have about 20,000 customers annually, and they are doing roof, they are doing walls, and we want to make an even wider portfolio and have a higher share of wallet at our customers. So accelerating premium product development in all the markets today, those are representing about EUR 100 million of total EUR 500 million net sales what we have. By the end of the strategy period, we believe that we are able to double this by developing our premium offering and then increasing the share of wallet. Still in these 10 countries where we are operating, we see good possibility for growth going forward with the existing portfolio, but also new development in R&D, and then we are opening also new markets outside of current home territory with the focus of premium product offering. What kind of products then we do in practice?
This is one example. This is a residential example from the roofing side, and our history has been very strong in delivering roofing profiles made of steel covering the roof. During the past years, what we have been doing much more is to increase our so-called accessory parts, adding comprehensive offering on rainwater systems, on roof safety products, complete flashing packages, lead-ins, and so on and so on. Latest acquisition what we have done in Sweden is a company called DesignTak that is delivering ready-made entrance roofs to different kinds of buildings. This is the product view when the project takes place, but what is very important is that about 60%-70% of the lifecycle emissions are generated during the lifecycle of the building. And what we bring here, residential application example here is solar PV solutions that will generate energy to house owners.
On building envelope side, we are able to have energy-efficient, airtight envelopes supported by solar solutions as also, so that is supporting the lifecycle efficiency of the investor and the house owner. As I said, this business is not only about products, but we are very close to our customers. We want to deliver to them instant availability with a premium portfolio. One example is 15 Ruukki outlets that we are running in five different countries. This portfolio, what is available every day here, it is very much focused on the premium portfolio and supported by customer service, technical applications, technical support to our customers. This is very much about on-site physical services. Then what we are doing also is that we constantly develop our digital channels. We are generating, based on our very strong brands, more than 10,000 leads on the annual basis.
What we have recently established is a so-called certified installation partner network where we have roofing installers companies that are partnering with us. We are generating leads in the digital format and guiding these leads to our customers so that they are able to close ready-installed roof deals with their consumer or professional customers. This is obviously driving growth in the business, but what is very important also is that it is driving loyalty with our customers. We are able to steer leads to customers that are able to close deals with their clients and being loyal to us, having a high share of wallet at the product side. From the production operations point of view, we have been investing during the past years. We can say that about EUR 50 million strategic investments on top of our regular R&D investment frame.
All of these investments are to support occupational safety work on our sites, our employees, but it is very much also about the premium portfolio expansion and also unit cost efficiency, so keeping basics in order. A couple of examples: our roofing factory in Finland, our roof safety factory, one of the latest acquisitions, company called Piristeel, expanding portfolio mainly to the Scandinavian market, and then our sandwich manufactory in Sweden that is in the commercialization phase at the moment, serving customers close to our markets in Scandinavia going forward. Summarizing that, what is our strategy in a nutshell? We say sustainable growth together with customers. We want to make this company even more customer-focused. We have a growth strategy, and we strongly believe that sustainability is playing an important role going forward. Two strategic objectives here: growth.
We are targeting EUR 700 million net sales by 2030 by widening our offering to premium, to more complete geography, growing in existing home market, exporting more outside of this one, and then sales channel development, especially on the roofing side where we have about 60% through dealers. We want to have an even higher share of direct sales going forward. In Ruukki Construction, we have been driving a very decentralized model, having local accountability in our units that we will continue, but at the same time, we want to reach more scalability through more standardized processes and business models going to market. At the end of the day, over the cycle, EBITDA target is 10% in this business. Final picture here. One example of our sustainability, low-carbon offering development. This is the first building ever built in the world based on fossil-free steel material.
Together with our customer Peab and the investor Wihlborgs, we delivered roof and wall structures to an industrial facility of about 6,000 square meters in Lund in Sweden. And this is giving a good example that having a fossil-free portfolio, we are able to reduce 50% of emissions in the building envelope. That is when the construction process is ongoing. But then even more important that during the lifecycle of the building with these solutions, we are able to reduce energy consumption by 30%. So a very successful project and good cooperation together with our customers and also together with designers. So our customer promise is building your tomorrow. That is for our customers, but also to other stakeholders in construction business and in SSAB. Thank you.
Thank you, Sami.
Before we break for some lunch, let's bring back the division heads and Fredrik up on stage for a short Q&A. Chuck, Tony, Per. Tony and Per will get the microphone to share here because you're not mic'd up. Let's see if we have any questions to any of our speakers. Yes, Marjan, if you move with the microphone first, and then we'll move to this side of the room.
Yes, hi. Tristan Gresser from BNP Paribas Exane. It's a question for Per. In the last capital market day three years ago, you were targeting 2.2 million tons of shipments by 2030. If I applied a 5% volume growth you expect per year, you're going to get to 1.6 million tons by 2030. What has changed over the past three years? Why on the volume side you're a bit more cautious?
It seems the market has been growing, so how tough competition has been in Asia, which is where I think you maybe have lost share. And yeah, if the product is so good, why is it so hard in Asia? And do you have a risk of seeing Asian competitors moving into market in North America and Europe?
Yeah, if you hello? Okay. Thanks. If you look at the past few years, it's been a quite rough market altogether. I mean, we have a lot of conflicts and stuff like that, and we have been forced to move out, of course, from Russia and so forth, and that drew with it a lot of sales in Europe and so on.
If we look at the competition or the competing situation in Asia that you ask about, yeah, it is increasing, and that's why it's so important for us now to make sure that we continue to grow on the Hardox 500 Tuf and the grades where we are unique, because these grades are not available from any other competitor.
Yes, we had more questions on this side of the room, so let's yeah.
Hello, Johannes Grunselius, SB 1 Markets. I have a question also for Per, and that's about your relatively new products, the 3D printing material. I mean, can you I mean, what kind of volumes are we talking about and your base for now? I mean, that must be very low. And can you maybe also touch upon necessary CapEx to sort of getting this into a more meaningful volume product?
If we look at the volumes today, it's on a research scale that we do here. You will actually see that facility later on today when you do the tour here, so it's on a research scale, and when it comes to this, we talk about tons, not kilotons. That's sort of the level of volumes. If we go forward, yes, we will increase the production, but the good thing with this is that you can take it shaft by shaft. You don't have to go for a wide variety and take all the volumes at one time, so you can build one shaft at a time, like the ones you will see today, or a little bit bigger.
Exactly where it's going to end and how much capital we intend to spend on that, we don't know yet, because it's a startup from the time being, and we will take it piece by piece. But we're 100% sure that this is something that will grow going forward. But the pace is hard to say at this moment in time, but piece by piece, we will get there.
Great. We had more questions. Yes, a lot of questions on this side, so let's take a couple more.
Thank you. Anders Åkerblom from Nordea. Question to Chuck. If we start on U.S. exports from Europe, could you please remind us how large of a share that could be subject to sort of evolving tariff regimes, particularly for automotive, high-strength steel?
Just to clarify, you're talking about exports from Europe to the U.S.
In terms of total volumes for it to be tariffed?
Potentially, yeah.
Yeah, it's probably more for Tony on automotive, yeah.
So it's talking about the division of SSAB Europe rather than the continent of SSAB, of Europe?
Yeah.
Okay. For us, it's around about between advanced high-strength steels that we supply into the automotive industry purely in the U.S., not in North America, and then some of the hot-rolled product that we supply from, typically from Borlänge. It's something less than 200,000 tons in total.
Thank you.
Hi, Adrian Gilani at ABG. A question for Tony as well.
On the European steel safeguards, I mean, I agree that's a very positive long-term for the market, but given that it's going to be implemented mid-2026, do you see any risks that distributors might sort of stock up on as much cheap Asian steel as they can between now and the implementation date?
Yeah, just to put some color on it now, I had a question in the break, very similar, but it's like a two-step change to the sort of trade policy. The first one is CBAM. That comes on January the 1st, come what may. And it's not necessarily the absolute number that causes the problem. It's the uncertainty that causes the problem. So there's been a reluctance during Q4 to specify too much for Q1 already.
Then, because of the uncertainty around the application date for safeguarding, there's a reluctance now to buy further forward from importers in the first half of next year. So while I don't see a big bang impact, what I can say is that I expect fewer imports to come in in the first half of 2026 than came in the first half of 2025, even if safeguards do not get applied until the 1st of July when the existing safeguard rules come to an end.
Okay, thank you.
All right, thanks. Christian Kopfer from Handelsbanken for Chuck. You've been in the industry for quite a while. And given that experience that you have and the latest development on tariffs, what's going on in the market, competition, and so on and so forth, where do you think we are in the cycle right now in the Americas?
We're close to trough? O r how do you see it developing into 2026?
Yeah, I see an upcycle for sure. Again, talking about the past administration, current administration, quite serious about manufacturing investments, and although on the energy scale, that may have changed a bit, but we've already started, or they've already started, a pretty significant investment cycle. So I think the prospects are pretty good. I think for good reason. Capacity has been expanded in the U.S., both in strip, as we're seeing is plate. But if you look at the utilization rates for particularly our mills and in mills in plate, it stands to grow. So I think for sure over the next five-year period is these policies, some of which have already kicked in, as I've described, our bridge business and in others as well. Shipbuilding is attracting a lot of attention.
There's just so many markets, and I didn't go into details if barge building, a huge plate consumer, is in the trough of its cycle. But replacements now, you just simply do the math right now. This replacement cycle is starting to come out of the trough. It won't be far. You have rail in the same position. So all of these very heavy on plate, so I see it quite positive.
All right, thanks. And if I have, can I have one question for Per as well? If you can compare the special steels market, which you have in the Americas, and to the market that you have in Europe, is it a big difference on capacity utilization and market demand, and how you see it developing into next year?
I think that, I mean, if you look in the past now, Americas has been better than Europe, but Europe is picking up quite fast right now. So I think the pickup in Europe will be higher than Americas for us for the next year because we're coming from a lower level.
We'll take one more question. Yes.
Bastian Synagowitz from Deutsche Bank. I've got one for Per as well, actually, or two. So just on your volume capability, I guess you already did close to 1.5 million tons, but I guess you're also contributing a lot of the growth ambitions to SSAB. So in the current setup and before investing, what is your actual volume capability before you really have to deeper bottleneck further?
I guess that depends a lot on the product mix and your selling, but I would say at a desirable mix, how much volume can you actually do? That's the first one.
That's a good question. I mean, if we look at rolling capacity, we have a lot of capacity. We are operating the mill in Mobile, where we supply a lot to the Americas division as well. And now we are increasing the capacity in those mills with tempering and so forth. And that's, of course, to open up bottlenecks and also make sure that we can supply a more premium mix, because the more the premium plate it is, the more production capacity it takes, simply put, right? But when you look at the total capacity, we also have the strip mills in Borlänge.
So at the end of the day, I mean, I'm not going to say we have unlimited capacity, but if we grow across the full portfolio when it comes to strip and plate and so forth, we have a big potential and a lot of capacity.
Okay, so basically it's more the market rather than your capacity layout at the moment, which is constraining you in that sense. Can you produce all grades with material which comes from the Mobile mill?
We can produce, well, simply put, today we haven't developed all the grades out of the Mobile plant because, I mean, we supply certain markets from Mobile, and if the need hasn't been big enough for certain products on these markets, we have chosen to do it in Oxelösund in order to have a larger scale potential.
Now, tariff comes and all that, then we develop really fast to put more plates into Mobile so we can produce them locally. And we can produce pretty much everything. We have started to produce even protection plates in Mobile now, which is the toughest and most difficult grades we have.
Okay. And then lastly on pricing, I guess you said that there is an opportunity to improve pricing if the cycle improves. I guess special steel used to be very much a case where you really, I guess, improved your margins while selling a solution to your customer and then capitalizing that. Capitalizing that. So hence, do you see further margin uplift potential as well from the new products you bring to the market?
Yeah, I think the more we sell of the, what we say, the products where we have the highest customer value, for sure, there is an improvement to increase. Because by the end of the day, we sell the solution, the three times longer lifetime or the uptime or the payload, one ton and so forth. So yeah, there is potential to do that for sure. And that's why we want to go into that area even further, of course.
Thank you.
Okay, let's end this Q&A session here. We are ready for, we have come up to the next agenda item, which is lunch. And lunch is served in the next ship here on the left-hand side. We will take a 45-minute break.
That means that since we're rescheduling the agenda, we will be back again at 12:50 P.M. for those of you on the webcast and for those of you in the room. See you soon.
Okay, now we have sound, maybe. Welcome back, everyone. I hope you enjoyed lunch, and welcome back, everyone, on the webcast. I hope you also found something to eat. We're going to go into the last and final presentation block, and the next topic is about technology and transformation. But before we go into that, let's look at a little film about the Luleå transformation. So our next speaker is CTO and Head of Transformation Office, Carl Orrling.
Carl has been with the company since 2003, and in this role since earlier this year. Carl, the stage is yours.
Thank you. As Helena said, I'm Carl Orrling, and as of April 1st, the new CTO of SSAB. In my presentation, I will cover how technology will transform SSAB. In the steel industry, we have over the decades seen how technology has driven improved productivity. It has driven lower costs and also allowed us to new steel grades. We can take one example: oxygen steelmaking in the 1960s starting to replace the old Martin furnaces. They took steelmaking processing time down from three hours to 18 minutes, or continuous casting that replaced the old ingot casting, improving yield from 80% - 95%. At SSAB, throughout our history, we are no stranger to transforming our operations by new technology.
Fifty years ago, this site was operating old Martin furnaces and ingot casting. If we hadn't changed technology back then, in the 1970s and 1980s, I would assure you this mill would have been a museum today. What we're seeing now in technology development of the steel industry is big electric arc furnace mills reaching over three and a half million tons, combined with sponge iron replacing old fossil-based blast furnace and coal plant mills. At SSAB, we're now doing a significant technology and transformation development with the two projects. Here in Oxelösund, we're investing in a new electric arc furnace that will start up commercial production in 2027. Then, as the movie showed, we're building a new mill in Luleå. The Oxelösund conversion will give SSAB new capability and increased flexibility.
What we're doing here is, and you can see it in the background, we're closing down the world's oldest coking plant from 1952. We're closing down two small, from an economy of scale, inefficient blast furnaces, and we're replacing that with an electric arc furnace, and we're also investing in a modern infrastructure. What you can also see in this picture is the harbor. This harbor has the deepest port on the Baltic Sea. It's an excellent location to bring in raw materials, excellent location to bring out finished products. That's an advantage that SSAB has. What we will be able to do with this new electric arc furnace is to start already in 2027, produce SSAB Zero, and as Johnny and also Tony has alluded to, that will come with a premium pricing. We will have a flexible steel production.
We can virtually regulate steel production from, I would say, we say one million tons here, but I'm sure even with one shift per day, we could go down to 500,000 tons, up to 1.5 million tons. That will allow us to actually meet market demand and volume requirements in a much better way with the current system. Then, of course, we can optimize the overall Nordic production system. We will have, for the midterm period from 2027, we will have a base between coal, iron ore, electricity, and scrap, and that will allow us that. Then, as a result of this technology, we will eliminate 1.5 million tons of CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to 3% of Swedish national emission levels. There's a lot of talk. Can you make advanced steel grades of electric arc furnaces?
Actually, that's been a talk of this industry since the first electric arc furnace was put in operations. We at SSAB, we have a strategic advantage by having already two electric arc furnace mills with close to three decades of experience. We have also integrated the U.S. operation into our specialty business. We have already today proven that we can commercially supply Hardox 500 Tuf, Hardox HiAce, Armox grades, Strenx, and also automotive grade Docol 1500M through the electric arc furnace based on slabs or production in the U.S. Actually, Docol 1500M produced by slabs from the U.S., we have already supplied that to our customers in Germany for the automotive industry. We are working closely between our teams. We also have an advantage.
We have grown a lot as a company, but we're still a small company where it's easy to collaborate, and we have sent operators from Sweden, here in Oxelösund, to our facility in Mobile learning how to operate an electric arc furnace, and we've had several experienced senior members of the U.S. operations to be part of the transformation project, helping us setting the specification, making us set the right design requirements when we work with equipment suppliers. Moving on to the Luleå mini-mill. This mill is an end-to-end solution filled with new advanced technology, starting out with a highly efficient digital electric arc furnace, powerful secondary metallurgy, a high productivity caster, direct rolling, reducing electrical, or sorry, energy consumption in the hot strip mill by 75%, and then a whole new coil mill complex designed only for advanced high strength steel grades.
Also in Luleå, you can see we are very close to the harbor, and it will be 900 meters from the dock to the melt shop for bringing in the scrap, and it will be roughly 1,100 meters from our dispatch down to the harbor where we will have the coil hotel. No other site, I would dare you, no other site in Europe has this infrastructure in place, and this will have some of the highest material turnover rates of all existing steel plants. This mill, in 1.5 kilometer length, will be able to produce 2.5 million tons of advanced high strength steels in less than three hours. Of course, being on an existing site, we already have the infrastructure.
We have a railway connection, we have a highway, and most important, we have a skilled workforce already in place that can go and they can transfer to this new operation. Just want to show some of the technology highlights. We will have the most advanced electric arc furnace in the world. This furnace combines digital energy control with continuous scrap-free heating and a fully automated operations. We call it no man on the floor. What will this give us? It will give us 10% less electricity consumption than conventional electric arc furnaces, less emission, and improved steel quality. That means both lower costs than competitors, but also improved and supporting our strategy to be advanced. To give you a bit more flavor of this furnace, we have a short movie that will give you more insight to how this furnace will operate.
I hope some of you recognize the tune. Our supplier, Danielle, has also already provided us with a frequency for the Swedish national anthem, but we'll save that for the inauguration of the new mill. Another key component of the Luleå mini mill, which makes up a substantial part of the business case, is the new advanced cold mill complex. This part of the mill will feature first-of-its-kind processing lines. They will be fully electrical heating. They're tailor-made for advanced high strength steels, and it will have a flexibility in coatings. We will actually be able to do three different types of coating in this facility, and we have a combination of annealing and coating capacity. What does this do in terms of benefits? Well, 15% less energy consumption compared to a natural gas operated furnace.
It will also allow us to do product capabilities for the future and current. For example, in this facility, we will be able to make third-generation advanced high-strength steel that is outside current capability, but also we will be able to do press hardening steels and also exposed panels that SSAB is today unable to do, and because of the flexibility of this facility, we can switch between coatings and steel qualities depending on customer demands or on market cycle, and to give you a bit more, we have a brand new movie regarding the coal mill complex, so let's please go, so these two projects are progressing according to plan. You will today see the new electric arc furnace building going up.
It's by far, with my experience of the steel industry, I've never seen a construction program, a project proceeding as well as the one we are doing here in Luleå. One of the things we've done to de-risk our project is that we have spent, I would say, the last eight years in close dialogue with the machine suppliers, refining the technical specifications. Just to give you an example, I mean, the contract we have with Danieli includes 165 individual documents on technical specifications. We're buying equipment and contracts from well-established suppliers. We have Danieli from Italy, German SMS. They are the best of what they do in this industry. We have also well-established contractors. We are working with NCC, both here in Oxelösund and also in Luleå. In Luleå, we're also working with Peab that are, I would say, recognized as a big construction company in Nordic.
And then we have ABB for the electrical distribution. We have today already signed the majority of all the equipment contracts at fixed cost and also with very strong performance guarantees. And also in the CapEx that we have presented, we have a healthy contingency. But maybe the most important thing to de-risk this project is the SSAB experience. We operate today electric arc furnace in the U.S. We have hot strip mills in Raahe and Borlänge with a lot of trained operators. And we have cold mill complex in Hämeenlinna and Borlänge. And all of these resources, they are part of the project team working today as we speak on making this happen. And then compared to others, we don't need to invest in core infrastructure. We already have that in place. It's a proven chain. It's a proven, I would say, logistical solutions that we have in place.
Of course, switching from one technology to another technology, in this case from blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces, means also switching raw material supply, so we will be going from coal and iron ore to scrap, virgin iron, and then of course electricity for the energy, and we have multiple options that we are using now to secure our raw material needs, so today we have internally falling scrap from both SSAB direct operations, but also from our subsidiary, and today we actually sell a substantial part of this scrap to external customers, this we can insource. We have also signed strategic partnership, for example, with Volvo Cars, the biggest steel processor in Sweden, for take-back agreements, so whatever they will sort of trim off from the coils, we will get back to in our operations, and we also have partnership with, for example, Stena Recycling for post-consumer scraps.
We can access the spot market. Spot market in Europe is roughly 17 million tons. We estimate that we need roughly between 5%-6% of that spot market for our needs, which means that given, I would say, now a bit postponement of electric arc furnace and projects in Europe, there's good availability for the mid-term and long term when it comes to scrap. Long term, we also need virgin iron units. Our main partner for this is, of course, LKAB. We have been tied together with LKAB for decades. The supply chain, Malmberget, Luleå, Oxelösund, and Raahe is a strong one. It's a foundation of Swedish industry. Also, in the mid-term, we can utilize excess pig iron capacity from Raahe for the Luleå and the Oxelösund operation. Pig iron is an excellent feedstock for the electric arc furnaces.
Then, of course, there's a growing external HBI market. You can buy sponge iron on the external market. There's quite a lot of seaborne capacity available to us. Then also, we're pursuing some other options when it comes to direct reduction projects and initiatives around the world. To conclude, the transformation is key for our business strategy. We will be able to do more advanced steel grades. We will have volume growth that we now don't have. That opportunity. We will also have decarbonized steel meeting both, I would say, regulations, but also customer demand. We will have substantial operational and financial benefits. The projects are proceeding according to plan. We can build on our extensive experience that we have today. With the future setup, we will lower our fixed cost proportion by 50%.
That means we can reduce or increase production without substantial increase to the fixed cost, and we will also have very flexible raw material sourcing for both Oxelösund and Luleå. But technology is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is the operator. And to quote Maverick from the very famous movie Top Gun, it's not about the plane, it's about the pilots. And we at SSAB, we are the best pilots in the steel industry.
Thank you, Carl. I was going to ask you a question, but nothing can top Top Gun. So we'll take it with the Q&A together with the rest of the group. Thank you for sharing that presentation. We have, it's started, we're coming towards the end and it's time to start to sum this up and tie it all together.
And first out to do that is our CFO, Leena Craelius. Leena has been with the company since 2005 in various finance roles in SSAB and Rautaruukki and as part of the executive committee since 2021. Leena, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Helena. Such a privilege to be here and so nice to see so many familiar faces in the audience. It's so nice to be here at site. Soon you will get to see EAF project in action. And yeah, it's been a cold day, but soon, soon you will get some motion. Good. I will talk about financials for obvious reasons. In my presentation, I will reflect a bit backwards, a few years back, how we have performed when it comes to our financial targets. Then we will do a short analysis over the cycle profitability performance we have today.
Then I will do a short recap of the presentations you've heard today. All the division heads, Johnny, Carl, Fredrik, and Sami presenting their strategies because that's the content. I will go through the figures, but the content behind the figures is what you have heard today. The ambitious targets with the premium products and so forth. So I will consolidate that. And then we will have a look how we have performed. I think, Johnny, you promised that I will show how much we have invested in strategic investments in the past. And then it might be interesting to also see what this journey we have ahead of us means going forward, CapEx-wise. So I will present that. Then we will simulate the cash flow. How much money does it need? And I will walk you through that.
And perhaps the sort of the most interesting and important part of my presentation is that how we quantify and calculate the benefits on a group level after all these strategic investments have been finalized. Let's start. Reflecting backwards, this is something Johnny already touched upon earlier today. These are our financial targets. If we start from the profitability target, which we measure EBITDA margin compared to our peers, the list of peer group is at the bottom of the slide. So fairly solid previous four years. We've been number two. And of course, the goal remains to be number one. No doubt about that. Each and every division was hinting to that direction that that is the goal. Capital structure, which we define as the plus minus 20% net gearing. We became net debt free at the end of 2021. And we have been net debt free ever since.
Good cash position and good starting point, strong starting point for these investments. And of course, we target to sustain the rating that we have, triple B minus. That's also important for us. And then the dividend, 40% of the net profit we have been delivering. The two years in between due to COVID, those were canceled, but we have been delivering 40% of the net profit to our shareholders. Then we have a short analysis of our EBITDA margin performance over the cycle. Just a quick walk through how we have done this. We have summarized years 2016 and up until 2024, which is pretty much the slide or the time period that was illustrated in the previous slide. We take the nominal average, we are on the level of 13%. Then we are adjusting with real values, 2025, we add SEK 1.7 billion.
You have seen that the journey to grow in the premium mix; it has been a steady growing trend. Then we do a simulation with these structural changes; we add one billion. Currently, we are on a level of 55% when it comes to premium mix. Then, as it says here, exceptional years, we have moderated a bit. We have taken a bit downwards the exceptional years that we had 2021 and 2023. So we subtract 1.7. We land on a level of 14%. That is a starting point. Let's do the short recap. This you have also seen before. I think one thing to remember from this day is that in the core of our strategy is truly the accelerating premium leadership goal. Three focus areas.
If we quantify volume value-wise, the box on the top, advanced steel grades, each and every division and subsidiaries they have been talking about. Of course, now Carl also pointing out that all the investments are targeting to grow here, enabling us to grow even further. Per was telling about the 5% growth ambition annually. Tony was talking about the automotive premium growth still to continue upgrading. Each and every division has actions and activities around this target. Value-added services and solutions, fascinating new innovations that will grow in the future. And then the decarbonized steel. And I think, like Tony pointed out and Carl also, that we will now increase our capability to grow the premium product portfolio. The investment is supporting to grow in that volume-wise. Now, what have we spent in strategic investments in the past?
Since 2015, which is right after the merger of Ruukki and SSAB, it has been fairly modest. It looks rather modest, doesn't it? Maybe to point out to 2019, we were investing in Q&T capacity in Mobile Mill with the ambition, of course, to grow the premium products and drive the special steel division strategy in the U.S. Then 2022, we started the Oxelösund pre-phase. Then Oxelösund continued end of 2023 and 2024 and also this year, the EAF conversion phase of the project. Here you can also see that the Luleå mini-mill project, the planned CapEx for this year, SEK 4.5 billion. We are picking up the pace. Then I will show you how does it look going forward.
But before I go there, just to point out that there has been this small portion, smaller portion of investments in Q&T capacity and value add services so that we continue to do also going forward. And this is how it looks like. Already mentioned Oxelösund conversion to continue. And here we have a cash out plan. We will continue to spend in Oxelösund conversion 2026, 2027, and some portion will be also impacting 2028. Luleå mini mill picking up, peaking 2027 all the way up until 2030. This is the planned cash out for these investment projects. And as mentioned, these other premium expansion investments, some of these already approved, planned, but some still to be approved by the board. We have done a lot of simulations, scenarios, and planning.
All of these, including this plan, which we think that is the most realistic one at the moment, they do fit into our net gearing frame. In our scenarios, we have also included the dividend for each and every year. Let's then continue to look at the cash plan. What does it mean? As already mentioned, the starting point is very strong. Q3 net cash position was SEK 10.8 billion. Then we have modeled the cash flow. And here we are including years 2025 up until 2030. We are taking over the cycle EBITDA performance, but we have moderated that. We have taken into account the consensus and our own view and expectations. Then, as already mentioned here, we will continue R&C investments. Those will continue, so we need to take that into account. Then we subtract the tax around 20%.
Then we have included the dividend payout. And maybe just to sort of point out that the share buyback option, ideally we have that also going forward in our toolbox. We do have the mandate at the moment. And of course, depending on the AGM and the board eventually, if it comes to that, we do have that option as well. But here I have kept it neutral because we don't have a share buyback program actively ongoing at the moment. If we summarize these columns together, we are on a level of SEK 50 billion. And if I now consolidate all the strategic plans presented today, including investment need, then we have a figure 58 billion as a total. So that is the planned strategic CapEx for 2026 up until 2030.
So based on these figures, of course, these are subject to changes, but it looks like that we can well afford it, but even more so, we have secured the Luleå financing, and even here in this room, we have many people who have been involved in arranging these fantastic financing packages, which is allowing us to have a smooth project implementation. Export credit agencies, they have been giving us guarantees, Riksgälden. We have Nordic Investment Bank loaning us, and then the majority of our partnership banks are involved in these financing packages, and the fantastic thing is that we use it when we need it, so it is also flexible. If we then have a look at the targeted performance, profitability performance over the cycle target that we are trying to reach with all these investments, the starting point is the over-the-cycle performance today that we illustrated.
Then we add up all the division actions when it comes to increase the premium products, advanced high-strength steels, upgrading the steel grades. We summarize Per, Tony, Chuck, and then we take subsidiaries even because everyone has a plan to support this. We sum it up, it sums up to SEK 5 billion. SEK 5 billion improvement. You have been hearing about the value added services and growth in subsidiaries. When those plans have been implemented, we add another billion. As a finance person, I want to be rather conservative, so I have kept my premium pricing premium modest. Here I have only SEK 0.5 billion, SEK 1.5 billion. But the potential is here, like Johnny was stating in his presentation. It could be higher, but we keep it modest because eventually it might start to fade away, but it is still there.
Very important thing that Carl was pointing out, the cost structure change that we will do. Majority of this SEK 2 billion saving is linked to the Luleå mini mill transformation. We will have a logistic setup, which is much more optimal, less fixed cost, as Carl mentioned. We have included here, of course, simulation of raw material base, energy, and also some part, small part of the CO2 emission. All these activities, strategic investments, finalized, implemented, we will reach over the cycle EBITDA performance level of 23%. From relative terms, 14% up until 16%. That will be our goal going forward. Let us do a short recap, the financial targets unchanged. As the header says, we do not see a need to change these. These are really well supporting our journey going forward. We still want to have the number one position compared to our peers.
That's important to us. So we are striving towards that. The net gearing, as I said, that we have done a lot of simulations, scenarios, we can fit it well within this frame, plus minus 20%. So we don't see a need to change that either. And of course, we still commit to the dividend target, 40% of net profit to our shareholders. I promised to reflect a bit backwards our financial performance against our financial targets. Then we had a look at the over the cycle profitability performance. And then we did a short recap of the strategy that you have been hearing today. What does it mean CapEx-wise? Can we afford it? How much cash do we need to have? And then what is actually the outcome in profitability after all these investments have been finalized? So with that, I guess we are open for questions.
Yeah, exactly.
So thank you, Leena. So now let's bring back Johnny and also Carl on stage for a final Q&A. We also have a moving mic, so if anyone wants to ask anything to any previous speaker, that is also possible. And since I always started from this end of the room, let's start from this end of the room this time.
Thank you. Kaleb Solomon from SEB. On the 2 billion of cost savings you just went through, how much of that is sort of only reduction of fixed costs versus the cost avoidance of carbon allowances? And kind of as a follow-up to that, can you give some color on what assumptions you're making on how much will be covered by free allowances the first 5 year to 10 years and what kind of price you're assuming for the carbon allowances?
From the cost saving point of view, majority is related to fixed cost. So it's a very small portion. We have been very conservative in our evaluation of cost savings when it comes to CO2. So majority of that is related to fixed cost savings.
Thank you.
Yeah, let's move to the left.
Thank you, Alain Gabriel at Morgan Stanley. For your production, your future production at Oxelösund and Luleå, what percentage of your cost base would be energy such as electricity and natural gas? And I guess electricity would be quite an important component. What's your purchasing strategy there? Is it fixed cost PPAs or how much would that lead into in terms of advantage over the continental European competitors?
What am I allowed to say? Okay.
Well, first of all, we can say we will buy very little natural gas.
Just to give you a perspective that we will have a capacity of 70 tonnes of storage for natural gas at the Luleå facility, and currently, if I compare it to what we have at Raahe, we have 600 tonnes. So natural gas is, I would say, minor cost. Electricity will make up with the modeling we've done on future electricity prices in Northern Sweden, roughly 7% of the total cost of goods. And the strategy, I think it will be a combination of, I would say, spot market, but also long-term contract and probably some hedging as well.
Yes, next question.
Igor Tubic, DNB Carnegie. Can you just give us some sort of rough number how we should think about maintenance CapEx going forward?
It has been on a level of SEK 3 billion per year. And of course, eventually it will start to go a bit lower downwards.
But I would say the next coming years, you could estimate to be just below SEK 3 billion.
Yes.
Yeah. Hi, Adrian Gilani, ABG. Just one question for Leena. In the bridge with the modeled free cash flow for the coming five years, is that just based on the current mid-cycle or do you assume any improvements before the Luleå plant is operational as well?
In the cash flow generation, of course, we have been using over the cycle EBITDA performance, but we have adjusted it a bit downwards for next few years, taking into consideration the consensus view for the performance. But that's sort of the starting point and the basis for the analysis.
Okay, thanks.
Yes, let's take, [Marlian]'s there. Then we'll move to this side.
Thank you. Anders Åkerblom from Nordea again.
I was wondering a bit about your strategy for sort of securing high-quality scrap in the future. And you mentioned before good availability of scrap internally. Could you quantify perhaps a bit how large of your potential future demand is covered by that? And also sort of how you view the ability to transfer potential price increases in the scrap market to customers to sort of negate steel spread margin compression over time?
So we see a need for roughly 35% of, if I call it high-quality scrap for the overall mix, and it has to do with the residual levels in copper. That translates roughly to 300,000, maybe roughly 1.3 million tonnes. And we have today, I would say, secured at least 600,000 tonnes of that.
Okay, yes.
Yes, hi. Tristan from BNP Paribas Exane.
In the presentation, you mentioned you expect more support to come from the Steel Action Plan, not the CBAM or the safeguards, but other measures. What could it be? We've seen some funding coming through. Do you expect maybe more subsidies that are possible on the energy side of the equation, any sort of support? And if you could share your view also on the allocation, free allocation, the treatment if you export outside the European market, if you could get something there as well.
Just to answer your first question, I don't think it's likely that it will push more subsidies into this direction or to energy production as what we've seen so far, but there are a lot of support coming from the European Union.
When we speak about preferred markets, that's an initiative that they are now putting together where they encourage or force municipalities and governments to actually buy fossil-free or low CO2 emission steel. It's very likely that that is going to go through. So that's what they call preferred markets. And that's something we really, really support. I mean, this EU Fit for 55 initiative is for real. And the European Union is doing everything they can to support the industry in Europe to do this transformation and transition. We know for a fact that the Central Europe doesn't really have the infrastructure to do this transformation in a cost-efficient way for the time being. Hence the reason why a lot of them are postponing their initiatives. I think that gives us a clear opportunity for the future.
But having said that, to your second question, what do you think is going to happen to the ETS system, the free allocations? This is just based on speculations. When I go to Brussels, quite a lot, and a lot of the commissioners that I meet, they are saying that we will defend this system that we have by any means. And then we have a few others who are saying that this is hurting the Central European industry. We need more time. So it's really hard to say. No matter what, we have done a lot of simulations on what kind of impact that's going to have on SSAB. It's going to have very little impact on us. We have been very cautious and moderate in our models going forward. So we feel quite comfortable.
If there would be any change, I think the only thing they would do is probably extend it from 2035 to 2040 or something like that, but that's just based on speculations. Like I said, it will have very little effect on us.
Yes, let's move here. Microphone coming.
Thanks, Tom from Barclays. Just on the SEK 9 billion bridge, I guess we've heard the SEK 5 billion number before from Luleå, the new SEK 4 billion, I guess, mostly Tibnor, Ruukki, and cost savings. Just wondering if it's possible to break out Oxelösund out of that. I mean, I guess it's maybe not as easy an exercise to have this level change. I'm just surprised, I suppose, that it's not in any of those levers. I'd be interested in that.
And then also, as part of that SEK 9 billion, are you making any kind of assumptions around EU protectionism, safeguard measures? What kind of steel price are you kind of baking into that number, I guess?
I don't have a breakout for you for specifically Oxelösund figures because you know that the Special Steel Division is actually a division that is sourced by other mills and that's sort of the combination of the result. But of course, the SEK 5 billion that we have been talking about earlier related to Luleå mini mill, that's embedded in this nine. And then we need to add the other divisions on top to reach this total of SEK 9 billion. I'm not sure if I catch the other question.
Maybe just following up on that first. So Oxelösund is not included within the SEK 9 billion.
It is. It is.
All the strategic plans, everything you've been hearing today has been consolidated in that figure.
Okay, but it's not possible to kind of break out Oxelösund separately within the SEK 9 billion, you mean?
Of course, it's possible, but
We don't have the figures to give out here now.
We don't want them.
No worries. And then the second one was just around the other assumptions around policy for that SEK 9 billion bridge and getting to SEK 23 billion EBITDA. Are you assuming the safeguards actually come in as anticipated? Are you assuming metal action plan? Or is this more a sort of purely from self-help? There's a SEK 9 billion uplift. If we get protectionism, it could be more.
In that SEK 9 billion, we don't have any speculation about the policy changes.
It is based on our view of the premium mix improvement, how we can reach the improved profitability, and then the cost saving actions there. So it is a rather simple model in that sense. So no speculation about policy included.
Yes. Yes, hi, Leena from Danske Bank here. I have more of credit-related questions. And Leena, you mentioned your triple B minus rating. I was just thinking if you could share any ongoing discussions you have with S&P and also what's their view on your upcoming investments. Could that trigger anything with your ratings?
Of course, we have regular meetings with S&P and ongoing discussion. There hasn't been any indication that the transformation investment would be impacting the rating as such. So we have all the chances to sustain that on the current level.
Perfect.
Yes.
Thank you very much. Jonah Levy from Baker Steel Capital Managers.
Just a few more questions on some of the assumptions and the CAGRs that we saw throughout the morning. So specifically the 18% transmission CAGR, for example. I suppose looking at some of the thematics in the U.S., but then over to Europe as well, data center build-out, some of the nuclear build-out with the recent Kamikawa Westinghouse deal, for example. How much of that is baked into these numbers? And I suppose if, for example, nuclear died a fourth death and AI or data center build-out and growth was slower than anticipated, is that massively impactful or are they not necessarily hugely calculated inside some of those assumed growth rates?
Are you looking at me?
I'll look at anyone.
I don't recognize this 18%.
That must have been in either Americas' presentation and the 18%. And I think it's based upon sort of what's happening in the United States.
A lot of investment is ongoing in this field. When I speak with Chuck as well as with Per, you know what activities that's ongoing, energy transmission is a big thing. The transmission tower is being built everywhere. Oil and gas is moving, etc. So it's based on sort of the forecast that we've received from reports and that we've used in this material. Anything else you want to add to that, Chuck? Because those are your numbers, I guess.
Wait, sorry.
The data centers are certainly a strong component of that, but it's also calculated from the $1.1 trillion that builds that forecast as well.
Thank you.
Yeah, and maybe it's good to point out that in our scenarios, we do use the external forecast data as the basis. So that's important that we keep it in that sense neutral.
Thank you.
The microphone disappeared before I could ask my follow-up question. I appreciate your answer, Carl. I would just like to kind of get a bit of a better sense into how you view the potential of cost inflation and steel margin compression as you transfer to more scrap-based inputs.
Again, same thing here. We have used some reports. In all those reports, there is a cost increase of scrap because of demand. So we, of course, we've used that in our analysis. So there's quite a significant cost increase from a raw material perspective. Yeah, but then again, as well in this external figures that we get, we can also see that the ETS cost is also increasing, but here we have been quite moderate trying to have them on the lower end.
I think in general, we are quite conservative when it comes to the commercial benefits of sort of our strategic initiatives.
Thank you.
Yes. Let's do one more.
Hi, Carrie Bone from Cavendish Securities. I just want to take it back to operational assets. With your blast furnace, you're keeping to produce pig iron. Is that a case of you're just going to take that blast furnace to the end of its life cycle, or is it you're keeping it as kind of a backup plan? What do you see for the end of that blast furnace and the cost involved in continuing to operate it over those ye ars?
In Raahe, we have two blast furnaces as it is right now, and we are using both of them. And we will continue to use them until we transfer them to an electric arc furnace.
During that time, we will also produce some pig iron. But as soon as we have decided that we're going to invest in this electric arc furnace in Raahe, then of course, we will take down the two blast furnaces. We will not keep them. That is not our plan. But as I said before, when do we think we're going to do the Raahe conversion or transformation? It all depends on our raw material supply. There's a lot of questions about availability on scrap. There's a lot of questions on virgin material. Of course, this is a risk and a risk that we take into consideration. And in order to mitigate this risk, I feel very comfortable to have sort of iron ore-based production in Finland, which is significant.
First of all, that gives us raw scrap, which has 0% copper in it that we can use in the production in Sweden. Also we have the capacity to produce pig iron for our Swedish system. As a matter of fact, we have also had Swedish competitors asking if they can buy pig iron from us not so long ago, which we're not interested in, of course, but we have a good source of virgin material in-house, and that gives me comfort. If that took longer than expected, would you reline those blast furnaces if it come down to it? Yeah, so of course we have assessed this as well, and it's actually the drill hole area that we need to reline as a first step. For the rest of the blast furnaces, we have more time before we actually have to do the relining of the hole.
To do this, tap hole relining doesn't take too much time, and the cost is quite limited. So it's a very, we do that every now and then. Yeah. So that wouldn't be a big thing. It's more when we need to reline the whole blast furnace. But then again, I mean, we have to remember as long as we keep the blast furnace, we will continue to emit a lot of CO2. And of course, we want to reduce that as fast as we can, but like I said, it all depends on the raw material supply going forward.
Okay, thank you. That takes us to the end of the Q&A, and we will leave it for Johnny to do some final remarks until we give the practical instructions for the rest of the day.
All right, so the journey that we've been telling today is more of a long-term journey, a journey that we're on. I think it's very clear to all of you that we will capitalize on the competence of producing and selling premium steel. And I really enjoyed the discussion I had during the lunchtime. One of my neighbors sitting next to me during lunch said that he knows someone producing tipper trailers, and they say they only use Hardox as the wearing material because we are superior to all our competitors. And that is the case when you walk around speaking to the market and to the customers, they will all confirm that we are quality-wise superior to all our competitors. And sometimes we are actually too good. That's the way it is. We are extremely good by what we do.
Of course, we want to grow this business in a world of overcapacity, and I said it before, we have roughly 650 million tons of overcapacity in the world. And as it is right now, Europe hasn't produced as low an amount of steel as it is right now. I mean, we used to be at 180 million tons back in 2018 and going backward. It's been around that level. We're down at 130 million tons right now in Europe. This is a very, very low level. And that's because of the large amount of imports that we get. It's putting a lot of pressure on the European steel industry. Even if that is the case, I think that we are handling it quite well. And that's mainly because we have these premium grades. We have these downstream activities and the downstream resources.
And what do you do then going forward? We will continue to grow this part of our business. We continue to work with the value added. We continue to work with unique customer values that we can give. I think that from a European perspective, and I know that a lot of analysts have been questioning whether why should we do the Luleå transformation. Of course, we have looked at it many, many times. We've looked at the alternative to close it down will hurt the whole Nordic balance. That's going to be very, very difficult, not only for SSAB Europe, but very difficult for Special Steels as well. Because just like Per says, Borlänge is producing a significant amount for them as well. So it's not as easy.
We can't just shut down the Borlänge and Luleå part of the business because it will hurt the total amount of our business. To invest in old technology is not an option either for a lot of reasons. I don't think we will get the environmental permit. I don't think we will even continue to have this production permit. So we decided to go for the new technology. So not only gives us the opportunity to reduce our CO2 footprint, but it also gives us added capacity when it comes to producing the premium steel grades that we want to produce that we also know that we can get a premium for. So that comes down to repositioning SSAB Europe to a more premium supplier, becoming more like special steel in that sense. And then, of course, when Per presented his presentation, he produces 100% advanced high-strength steel grades today.
But what he's trying to communicate is that there's a market demand for protection. There's a market demand for more advanced high-strength steel grades. And what we're going to do is going to go further up in this ladder, selling more of the Armox, selling more of the Hardox 500 Tuf that we know that we are unique on the market where no one else comes even near. And then when we do that, we get even more premium. So the earnings will be higher and the unique customer value will be higher. So then to the question of Americas, what are we doing in Americas? I think that when Chuck presented this in his presentation, it was very, very clear that the USA plate market is quite limited. There are only a few competitors on the market. We recently announced that Cleveland-Cliffs closed down one of their plate mills.
They're now looking at the one in Michigan. That leaves us pretty much with only two competitors on the market, us and another one, and if you ask me after this meeting, I will tell you who it is, but it's pretty easy to figure out who it is. Algoma is pretty much out of the picture. That's a Canadian company, so that leaves us only with two competitors on the market, and the demand is going to be higher than the supply on a sort of an isolated market, and you are analysts, you know this better than me. If the supply is limited and the demand is high, then what happens to the price? Yeah, so I think from America's perspective as well, we are in a pretty good position. Of course, we also have the idea to go for more value added. I think that's really important.
Of course, we are investigating other potential initiatives, but we also have to respect and understand that we have a quite intensive CapEx profile ahead of us. So if we're going to do more investments, it's got to be a really good investment. I don't think it's healthy for us to turn to more investments at this point right now. I think the plan we have ahead of us is a very solid plan. I think it gives a really good return, repositions one of the more volatile divisions that we have, and it's going to generate a lot of value. I'm quite confident, and I've said it to a few other people. My background, I'm a metallurgist. I'm a researcher. I'm a nerd when it comes to steel. I even collect swords because I want to analyze what kind of microstructure they have in the old swords.
That's kind of a nerd I am, but one thing I do know is that the steel that we produce at SSAB is the best in the world. I think that gives us a very good platform to grow our business and make the return to the investors higher. I think having said that, I also want to say, now I get a little bit hesitant here. I don't know the schedule. I kept skipped this one. But I want to thank, first of all, is it time to, no? Sorry. Sorry, I read up on the schedule too good enough. But I want to say thank you for coming here and listening for all of you that's been here. We still have a few events ahead of us. We're going to go down on a, go around on the tour. You're going to see the electric arc furnace.
We're going to see the powder atomizing facility. Just like Per said in the beginning, this is still on our sort of R&D base. We are investing to increase our capacity. We know that there's a big demand for it. I didn't think Per told you, but there's a lot of interest from the defense industry. They want to 3D print spare parts out in the forest. They want to have advanced parts 3D printed. We see a great demand for this. I think it's a great potential for us because we are, as far as I understand, the only company producing powder for the military sector at this point. I think it's going to be interesting for you to go and see it. This is a sort of a future technology, and it's going to grow.
I think that we have a very good base to stand on when it comes to this. The electric arc furnace you're going to see, and then you also have a chance to go around our rolling mill to see that. I think that's it.
Before that, there is an exhibition. Maybe you want to say something about the exhibition.
Yeah, so what we tried to put together, I mean, we can't put everything there, but we tried to put together a little bit of what we can actually offer to the market when it comes to value added. I think the first booth you will see is sort of the Xmore bucket that we have designed, and we have customers can actually buy a license to produce this Xmore bucket. It's a very smart idea and smart concept.
You should ask more about this when you get there. You will also be able to see sort of the plates that we have produced through this new equipment here, the unique patented technique that we are using to sort of widen the plates in a very unique way. And then we do the quenching. You can't even see in the cross-section that it has been welded. So it's very, very unique in that sense. And then to the next booth, you will be able to go to SSAB Americas. You're going to see how we were able to fulfill this first mover coalition requirements when it comes to steel. I think that's a very enormously good achievement by SSAB Americas. It also shows how far ahead we are of our competitors. And you can ask more about that when you get there.
And you can also see a little bit about the wind power mill and the focus we have and also for some of the value added that we're going to do there. Then you're going to go to the SSAB Europe. You're going to see the Docol, the Strenx hollow section beams that we can supply. And there are some color-coated materials, etc. Really interesting to see that as well. And then you have Tibnor. You go through that, some of the processing that they can offer. It's a big booth, but very small components, so a lot of space if you need that. And then you're going to go to Ruukki Construction here.
You're going to have a lot more value added, where you can see some of the safety parts that we supply to the market as well, and also the roofing solution and uniqueness that they can supply. So take the time to do this and ask a lot of questions. I think it is important for you to understand that we offer a lot more than just steel. We are more than just a steel provider. And I think that's extremely important. And we are one step ahead of our competitors now or looking into getting into the sort of value-added journey. And we have already done that. And we are established on the market with a very good position. And if the construction segment comes back, and we think it will, we have a very good position.
Now, for years, both Fredrik and Sami have been working on reducing the cost structure, and you have done your homework. You can't brag about your profitability, but you have reduced your costs, so if your construction segment comes back, I think you have a really good opportunity to make some real money. That is our expectations. Everyone in this room is expecting that.
I think that's a very good summary of the exhibition also for our webcast participants that will unfortunately not be able to be part of the rest of the program, so it's time to say thank you for joining and goodbye to the webcast viewers. We have some very important practical information for those of you that are in the room, so please bear with me.