To this short presentation at the Tula Group Annual General Meeting. I'm Magnus Lunder, the CEO, and I'm going to walk you through very briefly some key conclusions of this very strange year and this challenging reality that we've all had in a pandemic year. And if you look at it, it's easy to think that everything has been digital, everything has been virtual. But luckily for the Tulle Group, since we do products for people that want to be active and live an active outdoors life, it was a year that actually had a lot of that as well. So starting with sales, you can truly say that this was the most challenging year I've ever had in working for more than twenty five years in terms of differences between months and quarters.
We saw a year where everything started well up to February, mid March. And then as of mid March, when lockdowns took place and the world went into a little bit of hibernation in the measures to try to contain the pandemic, it was clear that we saw a significant reduction in sales. And in fact, from mid March until mid May, it looked gloomy indeed. Then luckily, when people were allowed to go outside again and to pursue activities and to keep fit and well out in nature and in the cities, we saw a fantastic second half where we not only caught up with what had been left on the table, so to speak, in what is our normal peak season, which is in the spring and early summer, but also on top of that saw a fantastic momentum. That extremely strong second half of the year meant that we as a company for the year in total had a growth of 13 in sales in constant currency, a fantastic result.
And of course, being able to achieve that high second half of the year demand was a key proof of how strong our supply chain team has been performing. So I'm extremely thankful and proud of what they did. The sales growth was also followed on by a fantastic EBIT performance. As you may remember, in 2017, we set a new EBIT margin target that we should reach in the mid term at minimum 20%, and we passed that target already now in 2020 with 20.3 EBIT margin. So as I said, a proof that we could handle with all those restrictions and all those complications that were out there, a fantastic fall through on the sales growth.
So I'm extremely proud that we could deliver a 27% in constant currency increase of EBIT and, as I said, passing the long term growth target or EBIT margin target of at least 20%. If you look at the sustainability measures, it was a challenging year from one big aspect. As you can imagine, when you normally plan your business, we always have a setup that is flexible, and we definitely had to prove that in 2020 with the huge swings in demand. But when you normally then work, you try to be as both cost efficient and as environmentally focused as possible in the way you distribute, which means a lot of boats, and you try to do it in different ways as you ship around the world. And as we sell in 140 countries, that is a significant part for our business.
As the demand came so specific and so peaking in the second half of the year, we could not, and I'm sure you've followed the general, challenges in the whole world in logistics, we could not continue to distribute and ship in the normal ways. And we therefore did see an increased greenhouse gas emission due to the logistics of shipping our product. We took that conscious choice that we actually, although having a long term ambition to continuously decrease, we needed to take those additional logistics situations in order to be able to capture the upside that was there and to satisfy those consumers that had a demand for our products to live active lives in the outdoors during 2020. I can assure you that we keep on focusing on sustainability and in fact on many of the measures within our Scope one and two, so within our own plans, you can see that we continue to deliver really well on the long term targets that we had set in 2014, both by greenhouse gas emission reductions above and beyond what we had targeted in our own plans, high recycling rates, reduced water consumption, but we could not offset the increase in logistics.
So overall, when you look at it and look at our targets, you can see that we are meeting all our long term targets. We grew with 13% on sales. We had an EBIT margin of 20.3%. We have now a very low leverage of 0.2 times. And in the specific situation that happened, the Board of Directors, as you may remember, in the 2020, decided not to propose a dividend in all the uncertainty that was there for the pandemic and instead now are proposing for the AGM a double dividend, you could say then, the dividend that was planned for twenty nineteen's year and the dividend now for 2020 as well.
So if you look at that, also a high dividend in line with our targets, which is also why I am happy to announce that we, today, at the same day as the Annual General Meeting, are presenting some new long term ambitions that there is a separate presentation available on tulagroup.com that I truly hope that you take in. Thank you for your patience with us and your belief in us. And I especially want to thank all the team involved in the Till Group for a fantastic result in 2020. I am 100% sure we will do another fantastic year in 2021 and set ourselves on the journey of meeting our new long term ambitions that we are presenting today. Thank you.