Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome to our new space here, our headquarters at Hardturmstrasse 181 in Zurich. It's a great pleasure for us to have you all here. It feels already quite a long time ago since we had our last capital market day in 2019 in Belgium, in Wieze. I think you will also see a bit of the change here in the setup of our office, which we very much like, and I think it was a great thing to move into this new building after the pandemic, so it was also a great teaser to bring back everybody. You might not see as much people in the office today as normal because also we want to occupy the space for you.
Normally it's quite lively here, and we are very happy about this. Maybe you know me all. I'm Claudia Pedretti. I'm Head of Investor Relations at Barry Callebaut. I'm very happy that today I'm joined with our entire ExCo committee, and you will hear all of them speaking and alluding to our long-term strategy to you. Let me just quickly give you a run through the program for today. As I said, we will have presentations from all our executive members. We will start with our CEO and CFO, who will then after that be available for a short Q&A session. We will have a short lunch break on the lower floor, where you have the opportunity also to taste some fantastic ice cream creations for dessert.
This will be with the cherry on top, with an interview of our Chairman, Patrick De Maeseneire. We will then continue back here on the fourth floor, with the presentations on expansion, cost leadership, and sustainability before we have another short coffee break, and then go into the more interactive part as well with innovation presentation and then the experience tour. You will find on the backside of your badge assigned to which experience tour you are assigned. You will see then that the Ruby group is starting in the Chocolate Academy right over here, and the other team is starting in the chocolatier room there in the back. We will show you once more at the end. We will have a big Q&A after all the sessions, and a wrap-up at around four.
Any press, any questions, please note them down so you have them ready for the big Q&A session with the entire team. I want also to thank our whole academy team. All the nice treats that you are tasting today, they were freshly made by them for you. They included all our latest innovations again, and I hope you get a good bunch of chocolate today for sure. I also need to make you aware that we are recording this session, and we also have a photographer around, so who will take pictures during the event. With that, I hand over to Peter.
Good morning. Great to have you all here in our office, our Barry Callebaut headquarters, globally. It's our new home, and hopefully you get a good vibe. I'm at least very honored to have you all here. Big thank you for joining. Big thank you to Claudia for organizing the event. Hey, quite amazing, we are sold out, so it feels like a job well done. We hopefully can create a fantastic day for you. Hey, as the CEO of Barry Callebaut, I have the honor to take you through the long-term strategy. As you well know, that strategy is there already for 12, 13, 14 years. It's quite stable in its framework.
Therefore, hey, don't expect me presenting a change to that framework. Every strategy, of course, needs a translation to the times. Particularly, hey, the times are changing fast these days. Any strategy needs a kind of think through on how we deploy it, how we put it into action. As an Executive Committee, hey, we sit together, what we call our game plan is our strategy into action of how we deploy, how we bring alive, our strategy in all the markets, all the markets we are. Hey, important at the start of this kind of presentation is, of course, to see where we are, and I'm not going through all the facts.
Hopefully, you can read them better than I can, call them out. I want to take a few steps back and look at the history. 25 years ago, Klaus Jacobs, a man I have a lot of respect for, had a vision. He had a vision by bringing two rivals together, Callebaut, the Belgian Callebaut, and the French Cacao Barry, to create a company, a leader in cocoa and chocolate, that could be the outsourcing partner for food companies in the food industry. All subsequent CEOs, and I know a few, you will see one over lunch, but there are still a couple of them around. They really stayed true to that vision.
To be honest, I still feel we are executing against that vision of creating a powerhouse in the end in cocoa and chocolate. Staying true to that vision helped us to develop deep expertise, build, of course, an incredible reputation, create an unbeatable network, 64 factories, as you will see later on in the presentations. And hugely beneficial, of course, our presence in the origins countries. In that sense, it created a unique company with unique spirit, a unique culture around entrepreneurship and customer focus. I always say together with our customers, we are a business to business company. We bring chocolate happiness to the world, one joyous moment at a time, all around the world.
This job, this work, has resulted in amazing growth. I have to say, if I look to our growth trajectory over the last couple of years, it is an impressive kind of journey, particularly if you look at the number of years we'd already do this in a row. All right. Let me go and dive into our long-term strategy. I'm very happy today that you will meet the team I'm blessed with, to work with, the executive team. They're all here except one. I have to disappoint you there. I love this team to be that dynamic, but one of them was a little bit too dynamic on the tennis court a couple of weeks ago, so he's now sitting at home injured.
Rogier van Sligter, our president for EMEA, is not here. He's unfortunately. I had him on the phone this morning, still in just going around the house and of course running the business. Unfortunately, he couldn't be. He couldn't travel. He couldn't be here with us. What I'm also very proud on with this team is that if you count the years that we are in Barry Callebaut, you come to 180 years of experience. 180 years of Barry Callebaut experience, which of course brings a lot of knowledge, a lot of understanding of how to drive this business.
I really believe that the clarity of focus we have as a team helps us to be aligned and helps us to have an incredible bias for action. In that sense, a great team to work with. A team also that on a day-to-day basis brings the values of Barry Callebaut alive. The values, as you saw, as I already mentioned, entrepreneurship and customer focus, but also passion, integrity, and team spirit. If you see this photo of and maybe also, although they are a little bit more colorful today, if you look at this picture, you maybe think that we don't do diversity and inclusion. Let me reassure you, that's absolutely not the case. We are blessed with 13,000 employees.
We have 104 nationalities. What they told me, we have four generations, so going from Baby Boomers to Generation Z. We have already 30% of women throughout our company, and we absolutely see the power of diversity. As a team, we have our targets on that front, but as a team, we know that through the daily recruitment, through the promotion with keeping diversity and inclusion in mind, you will eventually see the changes in our leadership team. It will take some time, so please give us that. Our people, however, bring this company alive and make us the market leader we are. I can't stress enough the importance of a leadership position and of our leadership position.
We are the heart and engine of the chocolate and cocoa industry, and leadership comes with a lot of benefits. It comes with benefits on sourcing, it comes with benefit in recruitment, it comes with, of course, benefits in pricing, but it also comes in benefits in being top of mind with all the customers out there who know that we are the leaders in cocoa and chocolate. Be reassured, as a team, we really believe that although we have a leadership position in many markets, well-developed markets, there are still many markets out there around the globe where we can still win leadership. Therefore, through that process, we believe there's years and years of smart goals, growth to go through. All right.
Here you see dramatized the strategy, which is already stable for a while, at least, this part, the left part of that strategy. This strategy has been very focused, and I think because it's so focused and because it is so stable and consistent, we have created a lot of depth on each of those pillars. I will walk through each of the pillars, give you my perspective on it, but of course, the presentations later today will go in much more depth by people who even know much more about them than me. What I want to highlight on this page is again, that our strategy has led to a lot of growth. We love growth. We think it's exciting.
We also came with the realization 7-8 years ago that, hey, to make it interesting also for our investors, we have to make it smart. We cannot just go after growth, as maybe sometimes happened in previous years, as Ben will show. We really have to make sure that the profit grows faster than the volume, and with that, of course, the margins and the returns on invested capital. That we can grow smart, I'm absolutely confident about. First of all, the easiest way, of course, to keep growing is through customer mix. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of customers. Hey, the general logic, bigger customers are in general not more profitable. Growing with the more profitable one is what we aim for.
That as a regional president, which I was till six years ago, was almost a daily kind of job. Hey, where do we allocate our capacity? Because we try to run our factories fully saturated. So where do we allocate the volume? In that sense, we can drive that customer mix quite actively. If you look at our numbers today, and already for quite some quarters, of course, we are incredibly happy with the growth we see in Gourmet. Because Gourmet is a higher margin business, and absolutely reflects that ambition to grow our smart growth or to grow our business in a smart way. A second way, you know I have a history as the chief innovation officer in this company.
We now have a much better one with Pablo, but still, innovation is deep in my heart. It's just incredible. If you listen to the presentation of Pablo later today, the kind of innovations we already brought to markets, which are still coming, which you can see around the office today, there's a lot happening. It's not only us having that capability, because I was sometimes frustrated, to be honest. We invested a lot in those capabilities, like sugar reduced, like plant-based already years and years ago, but you see those trends exploding. Trends like plant-based, super indulgence, sugar reduced or sugar-free are really exploding around the globe, and we want to claim it. You saw probably our announcement of our new site in Canada.
Hey, that's absolutely a way how we try to claim the specialty cocoa, chocolate and compounds. Because it's a space we want to own, and we think we are best set up to claim that space. Finally, and you will hear me talk a little bit about it in my presentation, you will see it reflected in the presentation of the team later on. I believe the next step in that growth journey is all about solution selling. We only do it in a few markets. I am not going to say if you now travel to China, which you should not do anyway. If you would travel to one of our markets out there, hey, it's often just getting a seat at the table.
It's just knocking doors, making sure we are going to sell the chocolate, and that's always the base of every customer's relationship. Don't underestimate the power of chocolate, because chocolate is a special ingredient. If you are a biscuit company and you just have plain biscuits and you want to start your premiumization journey, the first thing you will think about is that most popular flavor, chocolate. You will always try to get in touch with the chocolate players. We see that in ice cream, we see that in biscuits, we see that in all the different kind of applications. If you have that seat at the table, if you start to sell the specialty chocolate compounds and cocoa, hey, then I think we can take the next step in our journey with our customers.
That's about sitting down with their team, with their R&D team, with their marketing team, talking about trends, showing how we can really invigorate their innovation funnel and their product development funnel. With that, not only sell the chocolates and the specialty cocoa powders we have in our portfolio, but also start to include all kind of ingredients. That's what we call, hey, if you talk to the three different areas of Gourmet, of specialty chocolate compounds and cocoa, and then the whole kind of solution selling at the end, that's what we call acceleration along the value ladder. All right, let me now say a few words of each of the area of each of the pillars.
Expansion is of course the one which creates always the most excitement. It's where we say, "We want to grow. We want to create a network across the globe which is unbeaten, which is not matched by any other competitor." Customers who want to go to other regions, we want to go around the globe. They can partner with us, and we can serve them in each and every region. But we also say we want to grow faster than the market because there are a lot of companies, and of course, always follow the kind of communication of other companies. A lot of companies, the job they do is try to expose themselves to the growth segments of a market, trying to be there where the market is growing.
That's where there's a lot of focus on emerging markets. We say we want to grow confidently above the market. Yes, of course, we look at Nielsen, but we have shown, I think, consistently, that we are not dependent on the growth of the market. Even when markets are challenged, even when growth is not there, we are able to grow our business. We grow above the market through competitive share. Hey, through the strength we have developed as a company, there's still a lot of share we can gain.
We always believe the strength we have in sourcing, the strength we have in innovation, the strength we have in sustainability, in the end, will be exposed to our customers, and in the end, will bring them at our table to discuss about how we can do business. We grow above the market, because a lot of the market is still captive. As you know, open market is that part where we can fight directly with our competitors for business. The captive market is the big kind of confectionery players that make their own chocolate. Still, more than half of the world chocolate production is still in the hand of those players, is captive. We successfully, and that's why we talk always about outsourcing, we can successfully win business by bringing volume from the captive to the open market.
We can grow above the market in emerging markets. I'm very proud that we are big, and these markets are big in Western Europe and North America. We do more than 50% of our business over there, but only 7%-8% of the population lives in those regions. I believe in the end, everyone will eat chocolate, and everyone will enjoy that. The last argument why we can grow above the market is because you just see the per capita consumption being different across the world. Where it's 8.5 kilograms per capita in Germany, it's only 1.2 kilograms in Japan, and in India, we have just crossed 100 grams per capita.
I strongly believe that in the end, we will grow, and we see it happening again and again. I was just in Beirut, in Lebanon. They, of course, were very proud to show me the baklava, but they were already smart enough to give me the baklava with a little bit of a chocolate center. I'm absolutely believing that there will be in the future totally enrobed versions of the baklava. With that, we will see the increase of first compounds, probably, but in the end, also chocolate. Our confidence in growing our business far beyond the market is there even when economic downturn could play against us. Cost leadership. As I said, I love to talk about accelerating up the value ladder. I love to talk about innovation.
I love to talk about specialty compounds and chocolates. Don't underestimate the importance of cost leadership. Hey, listen very carefully to the presentation you get from Masha and Olivier in that area. This we can never lose. Because what often happen and what you have seen happening in other companies is that when you start to look at all the margin, added value stuff, you forget your base. We can never lose our base because that's our seat at the table. We drive an agenda consistently. I'm 10 years in Barry Callebaut, and this is very high on our agenda. In all kind of ways, we drive this agenda. On the one hand, through our footprint, every new site, every new outsourcing deal, we review from the angle, is it helping to establish the footprint for the future?
Is this strengthening our footprint? Because hey, look at transportation costs nowadays. It's fantastic to have Ghana where a little bit less than 20% of world production is produced. You can't distribute from Ghana to the whole world. You need to have a kind of closeness, proximity to your customers. The fineness of our network is also important to make sure that we, for example, get liquid chocolate to our customers. Moreover, therefore, it helps. A good footprint helps to get the economies of scale, but definitely also helps to optimize the transportation cost. Of course, we do everything to get as much volume on the lines we have. If you have a line, hey, we will saturate it.
That's the advantage we have. That's why we have the opportunity to outsource, because we don't have seasonality like a lot of our customers do. Our customers, if you are an ice cream, hey, you clearly have seasonality in your production. If you are in gifting, you clearly have seasonality. Because we are in all those different customers, all those different applications, we are able to flatten out seasonality and fill those lines and bring them to the high kind of utilization. Thirdly, of course, continuous improvement. Even more interesting space now with the whole digital smart factory. Hey, we don't tell too much about it yet, but hey, that's an exciting part. A lot is happening about understanding our lines better and trying to get more out of them.
Finally, don't underestimate the impact of sourcing. I'm blessed with having Steven and Massimo in my team, experts in sourcing. 70% of the cost we charge to our customers is ingredients. Hey, look at ingredients. There's quite some volatility there. Having expert teams, having teams who are really on top of this, really help us to be a cost leader and will help us to be so in the future. All right. Innovation. Now, I have to say, I leave the floor to Pablo later on. Innovation is, of course, an area where we are famous for. We deliberately bring those big, bold innovations like Ruby and WholeFruit chocolate to the world because we want to be known. If customers think about innovation, we want them to think about us.
We want them to send us an email or give us a phone call. Innovation, the impact of innovation is often much different. It's in the daily contact with customers, listening, sitting at the table. If we take on a new customer, the most exciting part is often the beginning. Because our R&D, we have 300 R&D people close to the customers, spread around the world, all focused on cocoa and chocolate. If they get their hands on a new portfolio, the first thing they start to do is to see whether they can make it more cost efficient, whether they can let the products run more fluently and fastly and better with better quality through the factories. Of course, they try to help our customers to innovate.
As I said, because of our focus in R&D, I think and in innovation, you see the biggest power of our focus, because we are in this business. We don't do anything else. We don't give ourselves an escape. We buy one out of four cocoa beans in the world, or one out of five, sorry. We know our stuff. We keep investing in understanding a cocoa bean. We keep investing in how to get the best chocolates out there. Combine that with the very unique perspective we have on markets, because we have chefs. You're sitting here beside a Chocolate Academy. We have in every location or many locations around the world, we have these Chocolate Academies. We are always aligned with the best chefs in the countries.
Hey, that gives us a very interesting outlook and perspective on what the trends are on the high streets, in the big hotels, in the big cities around the world. That gives us the kind of foresight which is interesting for our customers. Bringing the deep R&D together with the market perspectives, I think makes us a very successful innovator. Finally, we'll keep mentioning, I think this will grow significantly, as you've seen also in some of our numbers. I always love when we are at a stage when we can start to co-create with the customers. I think we can grow this in the future through this digital. This is the moment where you just say, "All right, we sell you your chocolate. Hey, of course, you have asked for plant-based chunks. We also provide that.
We can help you to make a little bit calorie-dense kind of products. Let's now really own together your product and innovation pipeline. With our product knowledge, because our product knowledge is quite different than the product knowledge of our customers. Let's together create your pipeline. Then, of course, in that process, we share our trends, we give our chefs the space to give their ideas. We, in the end, will provide chocolate. We will, of course, as much as possible, sell our specialty chocolates and compounds, but we also start to include all the other kind of ingredients which fit that innovation. That's where the nuts come in. That's where the inclusions come in. That's where the decorations come in. That's where the fillings become important.
That's, in margin terms, a business which is not comparable with chocolate and highly accretive. In that sense, hopefully you understand how that gets me excited, because that will help us accelerate up the value ladder. Finally, sustainability. Also there, we will talk more later today. With Marcel or Steven talking about sustainability. Big topic, hey, not only with us, luckily anymore. When we launched our Forever Chocolate strategy in 2016, we were very ambitious. We wanted to pull 500,000 farmers out of poverty. We want to eradicate child labor. We wanted to be carbon and forest positive. We wanted to source all our ingredients in a sustainable way. We knew at that moment that those targets were very ambitious.
I still believe it is the right thing because it set the right standard for us to get creative, to really come up with the big, bold ideas. It challenged the industry to raise the bar. We said from the start, we can't do it alone. We need governance. We need legislators. We need suppliers to chip in together. Is there still a journey to go before we have closed the gap to our targets? A huge one. Hey, does it make me nervous? Yes. Do I believe we are putting everything against it? It also helps us to bring I think our people in, because our people love to work on that agenda because they also want to contribute to a better world. More to come on sustainability.
Big agenda, big important topic. Happy also that we see much more legislation coming in, also from the EU, because it will help to really make sustainable chocolate the norm, which was in the end the ultimate kind of ambition of Forever Chocolate. As we have done over the last 12, 13, 14 years, we will keep executing our long-term strategy. The pillars of cost leadership, expansion, sustainability and innovation, we know how to execute them. We have built deep expertise, and we know what we have to do. That, I think, underlies in the end our confidence to confirm and to still believe strongly that our midterm guidance is the right one, and that we will deliver against it.
We have proven, I think, that we are reliable, even when big storms are there, and I think we have a few these days, through COVID, through huge inflation, China crisis. Hey, we always say yes. Hey, it also challenges our business, but we will find a way to deliver our numbers. In that sense, I hope you share that confidence in our delivery with us. We will keep growing our base business, and hopefully that is coming strongly out of my presentation. We will keep strong growing our base business in chocolate, compounds, and cocoa. We still need to open a lot of doors and get at the table with a lot of customers around the world.
We know that's always our base business of doing chocolate or selling cocoa powder or selling compounds. From there, the value-added journey starts. From there, we start to create ideas how to enrich their innovation and the product pipeline. From there, we start to co-create. From there, we start to really include not only our chocolate, cocoa, and compound product, but also our ingredients. In that sense, we are evolving and becoming more and more an ingredients company. Just for fun, just to bring this a little bit alive and not just believe me on my words. Hey, let's go to the donuts. You know I've lived in the US, and I'm not a converted one, but they eat quite a lot of these things. 25,000 donut stores in the US.
As they told me, 10 billion donuts eaten per year. That is 30 kind of donuts per year. We were approached by a customer who has a lot of stores, but particularly in a convenience kind of channel. They say, "Yeah. Hey, we do this kind of bake-off thing, we get them frozen, and we sell them. We can often charge just EUR 1 or $1 in the U.S., of course, not much more. We have heard that chocolate is the most popular flavor. We want to talk with you how we can bring a little bit more excitement into the donut space." We said, "All right, give us a little bit of time. We will also do our investigation.
We will look at trends. The first thing we found, of course, on donuts is that in the coating of a donut, it's very important to have the right pickup, because if you have a very sticky kind of chocolate, you will put far too much chocolate on it. That's, of course, not good for the profitability of the customer. Very important to have great shine, so consumers want to have a shiny coating. We saw all the big trends on diets, of course, lower calories. We saw plant-based. We saw super indulgence being big. We came back to this customer with a couple of different coatings.
Of course, a very good, and we believe the best chocolate-tasting coating with the right kind of rheology so that the dipping gives exactly the right kind of coating on top of it. Of course, it had a brilliant shine. We had different kind of solutions for low calorie. We had plant-based solutions also for them. We opened a box of all the decorations and inclusions which we have in our Mona Lisa range. Some of the solutions we have in La Morella or our nut range. That customer from there has grown their range considerably, so they now really have high growth kind of business in donuts.
Of course, what is much more interesting, they think they have better tasting donuts, and donuts for which they can charge almost the double. Of course, hey, are they happy? Absolutely. We have reinvigorated their innovation pipeline. They have made them successful in their markets. Hey, are they very, very critical in these discussions about all these little decorations we can add? No. Of course, their discussion about pricing is much different than the traditional discussions we have on cocoa powder and chocolate. That's the whole kind of high margin business we are after and where we are just starting. Key takeaways. We will keep growing smart. As I said, many opportunities to do so.
Accelerating up the value ladder, hopefully you get and keep in mind also for the future, because this is here to stay. It always starts with the base business, but then we want to accelerate up the value ladder. We accelerate by growing fast in Gourmet. We accelerate by selling specialty compounds, cocoa powder, and chocolate. Then finally, we really further accelerate if you really go in co-creation and include all our kind of specialty ingredients, like decorations, inclusions and fillings. With that, hey, again, I want to share my confidence that we will deliver on the midterm guidance. You know, 5+ to 7% volume growth is what we promised. We promised that in local currencies, the EBIT will grow faster than that.
There's still one half year to go, so in that sense, hopefully you are happy with our confidence to confirm this number. It's a little bit too early. I expected. I already got the question, but it was a little bit. It's a little bit too early to come up with new midterm guidance. Hey, the long term, and you feel that in this whole team, the long-term kind of trends in our business, the long-term kind of setup and how we bring alive our long-term strategy absolutely makes us comfortable that we keep growing smartly and that we keep growing far above the market and in a profitable way. With that, thank you, and I hand over for now to Ben.
Thank you, Peter. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very pleased to be here with you again after we spoke last month for our half year results. A warm welcome to Zurich. As I said to a couple of you, we didn't pay extra for the weather, but it's always nice when we have a beautiful blue sky because it puts us directly in a good mood to talk about very interesting growth opportunities here at Barry Callebaut. Let me go to the first slide. We have told you that we have seen a continued growth momentum in our volume growth. Again, we were able to grow our volume well ahead of our underlying markets. We made further progress on our return on invested capital and delivered strong adjusted free cash flow.
Today, ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk more beyond the numbers. I want to give you some further insights on how we sharpened our business model and provide you with a framework to give you additional information which my ExCo colleagues this afternoon will give you more details on. As you know, I've been working for Barry Callebaut for more than two decades now, and we have seen an impressive growth journey. Growth is in our DNA, and that shows in the numbers. Let me start with the numbers we have achieved over the last decades. Since 2011 to 2020, our average sales volume growth was 5.7% per annum. While the underlying markets, the confection market grew less than 1% per annum.
Our EBIT in local currency grew on average 8.2%, well ahead of our volume growth. Growth in the last two midterm cycles, and in the current one remain based upon our successful long-term strategy as outlined by Peter before. Growth is what we do. We have built a truly global footprint with more than 60 manufacturing plants across all continents, supplemented with a wide range and wide network of chocolate academies, like you see here one, where we make our innovations tangible, where we train our chefs with our products, and where we can co-create with our customers. Consistent, strong results have been achieved, and you see it here in our key financials performance indicators. In line with our smart growth approach, we have substantially improved besides our top line and EBIT, also our adjusted free cash flow and our returns.
Our return on invested capital improved by 110 basis points to 12.2%, and our return on equity to 14.3%, despite the negative impact of a bad COVID year during 2019-2020. The strong results are also reflected in the increased earnings per share and dividends paid to our shareholders, ultimately, also our share price. We are continuing on our smart growth path, as I mentioned before. We are currently in the middle of our midterm guidance period, and we are confident on delivering on it. Therefore, we continue to clearly outperform the markets. Our leading position in innovation and sustainability is creating more volume growth. You will hear more from my team members, from the ExCo team members later on.
We also continue to grow from a crystal clear focus on our key growth drivers, and I want to touch base upon that one. Key growth drivers are emerging markets, outsourcing, and Gourmet. On the EBIT side, first of all, we are well protected from the inflationary environment that surrounds us, thanks to our proven cost plus model. Smartly driving our business, product and customer mix, in combination with cost leadership, will enable us to achieve EBIT growth in local currencies above volume growth. Of course, this is on average and barring any major unforeseen events. I will come back to you in more detail on how we further leverage our scale to drive cost leadership. Our management remuneration is fully aligned with these growth drivers. The value that we create for our shareholders is reflected in the short- and long-term incentive plans.
How do we create value to our shareholders? We are a growth company, as Peter mentioned, before. To put it simply, we are driving shareholder value by growing constantly but smartly, which means making sure that we achieve faster growth in more profitable segments, not only in Gourmet, but also climbing the value ladder, as you heard from Peter. We continue to be obsessed with optimizing capacity and leveraging our footprint. Last but not least, of course, a strong discipline on working capital management, but this from the ground up. This is by strong inventories, focus on inventories, payables and receivables. It's not rocket science. Now, let me give you a little bit more background on our three growth drivers, as I mentioned before, and the important contribution they have to successfully grow our business. First, emerging markets.
With 4.1 billion consumers, emerging markets have proven to be a fantastic growth driver for us. Despite a COVID year, we grew on average 6.9% per year over the past five years, and these markets already represent more than 37% of the overall Barry Callebaut volume. The chocolate consumption here per person in these markets is still relatively low. There is still significant growth opportunity for us for the years to come. Barry Callebaut was an early mover in many of these emerging markets and will continue to increase market penetration through an extensive and growing distribution network, expanding our sales force and of course, our digital reach.
We can still go further here, though, tapping into new territories with deeper distributions into tier two, tier three cities, increasing our Gourmet first approach, like we did, for example, in Colombia or in Africa. By the way, Africa, which is evolving from an origin continent also to a major consumer markets in the next decades. Our second key growth driver is outsourcing. About 60% of the market is still captive. This means a very large outsourcing opportunities for us to come, for many decades to come. We have a strong, proven track record based upon a successful long-term partnerships. Testimony of that is our recent renewals with some large customers, which you all have seen.
It's also about ongoing client continuations with plenty of all other types of customers, smaller and larger types of customers. We continue to see a strong pipeline here across all regions and from all sizes of customers, small and large customers. We believe that the market and economic dynamics keep on favoring outsourcing. The increased complexity with the rising demand for specialty products, global supply chain disruptions, and last but not least, also sustainability efforts are supporting this trend. Our third growth driver is Gourmet. Our global market share in Gourmet is around 21%. It is 21% in a highly fragmented market, and therefore we are well ahead of any of our competitors here. We do, however, see here plenty of further opportunities so that we can grow our market share. As we have learned during the COVID crisis, Gourmet goes far beyond restaurants and hotels.
We have successfully sharpened our business model by broadening our reach into different segments, coming from HORECA into confectionery, bakery, ice cream, to give you an example. We drive value here rooted in our vertical integration, allowing us to offer from premium cocoa powders to chocolates and compounds, but even further into exciting fillings, but also inclusions and decorations, as Peter mentioned in the donut example. We still go on to further expand through investments in this market. First of all, as mentioned before, we want to explore new markets here by a Gourmet first approach, like we said, in Colombia and Africa. We put more feet on the ground with direct sales. We continuously add new distributors. We just announced yesterday a new distribution channel in South Africa. We activate continuously our push and pull drive. This thanks to this digitalization.
To give you an example, we were training on average 40,000-50,000 chefs a year in our academies. Now, because of our digital reach, we are training last year, we trained 335,000 chefs. That's digital tools are allowing us to grow further there. Now, let's have a look on how we further benefit from our scale. We are continuously running very targeted programs to improve our internal processes and reap the benefits of our scale. In short, it's about first optimizing our productivity, reducing complexity to drive cost leadership and ultimately our profitability. Our global footprint allows us to grow efficiently by clustering volumes in the right location. This enables us to run these factories better than any captive player can achieve.
We have some very nice examples recently, like the dedicated dairy-free facility in Norderstedt, Germany, or our new specialty factory that we just announced in Ontario, Canada, that will become operational in 2024. Proximity here is an important driver for high-level customer service that helps us to optimize our transportation costs, which creates enormous value to our customers because it leads to a lower total cost of ownership for them. Secondly, operational excellence. Here we strive to improve internal processes. For example, our finance operating excellence is about combining our top-class operating model with great finance expertise, which leads to advanced analytics and that gives us faster, meaningful business insights. Here, the increased use of shared service centers helps us tremendously, further streamlining our costs, but also improving quality by standardizing and optimizing our processes.
Lastly, Barry Callebaut has always been at the forefront on using digital tools and automation. You will hear more about smart factory later on from Masha and Olivier, but you'll also see a virtual factory tour later this afternoon. It's all about using our CapEx smartly, building modular factories so that they can grow with demand, but also with the right level of automation and connectivity for analytics. Beyond the factory floor, we're further rolling out SAP in all of our organizations in a very systematic manner. As an early B2B implementer of Salesforce, we keep on building world-class cloud connectivity between our customers, our suppliers, but also more recently using end user consumer pool data for Gourmet as well.
At the end, it's about making it easier for our customers to do business with us while creating internal efficiencies like better planning and maximizing our output. Now, let me take you through the balance sheet and how we finance Barry Callebaut. Essentially, we finance fixed assets with equity and working capital with debt. While our core working capital is funded with committed long-term fixed rate debt, the swings in working capital due to seasonality and/or by raw material prices are funded by tapping into a diverse range of uncommitted liquidity sources. These are backstopped by our committed EUR 900 million revolving credit facility. Furthermore, we continue to focus on diligently managing the working capital and aim to grow it equal or less than our top line.
This is mainly done by further inventory efficiency, as I mentioned earlier, taking into account the planning activities, but the proximity considerations as well, always aiming to reduce our complexity. Lastly, the robust business model helps us mitigate the impact of price volatility, as I mentioned, with our cost-plus model. This supports that our profitability remains resilient no matter which crisis, and this further bolsters liquidity. As a result, we have significantly increased, strengthening our financial profile and show strong credit metrics here. Adjusted net debt over equity is at 20.4%, and the adjusted net debt over EBITDA is only at 0.7 times.
Do recall that for the adjusted free cash flow and the adjusted net debt, we exclude beans, which is considered as readily marketable inventories that can be turned into cash if needed, as an extra source of liquidity. Now, Remco said in the past once that he's a bean counter, and I remember that very vividly. I see myself as the chief cocoa bean counter here at Barry Callebaut, and I feel very proud on it as well. Because cocoa beans itself, I see it as the oldest sense of of cash and currency. Actually, I just saw something here that we should have mentioned.
It's actually you're walking here on a floor that is made from the waste of cocoa beans, of the shells of cocoa beans, so you can turn it, even the waste into value. After having said this all, let me summarize what I hope you take away from my presentation. First of all, Barry Callebaut has a successful track record on delivering on growth, and importantly, profitable growth. Increased ROIC driving continued value creation for our shareholders is utmost important. We have sharpened our business model by smartly driving our business, product, and customer mix. We continue to leverage our scale through cost leadership, through productivity, complexity reduction, and overall operational excellence. Hence, we are confident to deliver upon our midterm guidance.
Also the long term, for the long term, we have all the elements in place to allow us to continue our profitable growth journey. With that, thank you, and I'll open up for questions.
Hi, thank you for the presentation. You know, it's Chris Tuffey at Credit Suisse. Actually, just wanted to ask on this working capital improvement, and I think, you know, you did a great job, you know, in the last few years. Now, what is actually the scope to improve this any further? You mentioned, you know, inventory management, but what is, you know, kind of now the range of improvement that you can still achieve now?
Of course, we have already seen quite big improvements, so don't expect from us now a next big bang. For me, it's all about the quality. When I became CFO, I made it very clear as well, it's not just about the number, it's what's in your inventories, what's in your payables, what's in your receivables. Managing that smartly. As I said, it's not rocket science. It's making sure that you have the right stock in the right locations, that you have the right turnover speed, and I believe there's still some work to be done there as well. It's about complexity reduction. Linking it also to the right footprint of your factories and so on as well, having the stock in the right location.
Also our GDC, and you will hear more about it, our global distribution center. Having a more automated global distribution center allows us also there to better manage our inventories. It's a lot of small things that I see. It's not like it's a big overhaul and so on as well. It's continuously improving our working capital measures as such. Actually, when you think about incentive structures, I talked a little bit about the ExCo team here as well. Everybody in the team has this as part of their incentive structure as well. When you're working in a factory, you have inventory targets, the turnover speeds there. When you're in sales, receivables, collecting your.
From your customers, it's not just about selling, it's about collecting the cash as well. It's about negotiation with your vendors on the payable side as well. It's really truly from the ground up that we're trying to improve.
Yeah, I don't underestimate. I think through the whole digitalization, particularly in inventories.
Mm
I think we will still get smarter and smarter over time.
Mm
To understand where the right inventory should be, really managing the quality of the inventory. I strongly believe we see that in our production, in our kind of logistics. We get more and more insights through the data which is provided, and that will help us to take little steps, not a big-
Yeah
Breakthrough steps, but to further drive our continuous improvement.
Thank you. I have a second question on, you know, the Gourmet business. I think, you know, you mentioned, you know, the 21% market share and, you know, the fragmented industry. What's your assessment in terms of growth, you know, as a make or buy decision or whether you would, you know, want to acquire, you know, or whether you want to do, you know, your own investment to expand, you know, the franchise?
Yeah. I mentioned this to a couple of you before as well. We always look at the two. It's not like we're excluding one, inorganic versus organic growth. We have seen some very nice acquisitions. As you've seen some nice acquisitions from our side, more into this specialty area as well, more in terms of the value add, in terms of decorations and so on as well. We will continue to look at it. Absolutely. These are definitely gems, but it needs to deliver upon the credentials of our cocoa and chocolate. It needs to fit very well together. It needs to be able. Is it linked to certain technical capabilities that these companies have?
Do they have a certain route to market that we don't have as well? Those are the parameters, of course, and the price that we have to pay for it as well is very important from my side. Those are the parameters. We will always try to grow organically as well. These are very nice to add to a portfolio. The core, what Peter was mentioning, is very important. That's something that we can grow with our own CapEx, and that's why we have quite a significant CapEx allocation to keep on growing, because we think for our core brands and so on, not only for our global brands, but also for our local Gourmet brands, that we can do it organically better.
No, yeah, absolutely, Ben. We are very driven as a team to drive a return on invested capital. As we both shared, and you know from us, you know as well, I think we have a lot of strength to grow our market. What you have now seen, for example, the acceleration in the Gourmet business, not in the easiest time, is, I think, us identifying the opportunities and going after it. If we can grow organically, we will always have a preference for that. I would not hang too much on a market share, right, whether it's 25 or 20%, to be honest. I think we are even redefining, as we said in the last couple of months, a lot in those discussions.
We found new segments where we were underrepresented, which we didn't include too much in our Gourmet business. Where we said, "Hey, the whole proposition of Gourmet, that service model where we bring our brands, bring all the insights and all the service, that's still relevant for other segments in the market as well." That has accelerated our growth in Gourmet. I still see us doing that for quite a while. If there are markets which we can open or where we can go for leadership, as I said, we want to be leaders in each and every market. There are markets where we aren't. If that could accelerate through acquisition, we would definitely review. That's more on a total business.
Acquisitions become interesting more from a technology point of view. If there are capabilities which we can leverage, not only in Gourmet then, we always need to scale over them as well. That's often where we are very interested to look in acquisitions as well. That's how we often look. I have a strong preference for organic growth because I believe we are so focused, we have so much in-house, to leverage. Don't want to pay this kind of goodwill because that will not help me to drive the return on invested capital. If necessary, of course, we will invest, and we will go for an acquisition.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
John?
Yeah. Hello. John Ennis from Goldman Sachs. I've got a question on outsourcing, and it's kind of got two parts. The first is in relation to the open versus closed proportions that you gave on the slides. If we rewind the clock back maybe close to 10 years, you used to talk about it being 50/50% split between open and closed, and it's obviously a lower ratio now. I appreciate that's a definition change, but can you explain that change for everyone here and maybe also talk about what it would have looked like if you kept the old definition to give us an indication of how outsourcing has changed on your previous definition of the market? The second part of the question is, as we look forward, what do you think that ratio could get to?
I guess when I look at the regional splits that you put on the slide, is it a case that you think the rest of the world starts to move towards the North American split, which looked to be 55% outsourced from the slide that you put up? Is there still room for that ratio in North America to continue to grow? Maybe more than two parts, actually, but a few parts.
No, we are as intrigued as you on outsourcing. It's always, for us, a fantastic way to grow our business to create scale. Often it's bringing the scale also to improve our footprint. Going into countries, also honestly said, we also always learn how much volume is out there, both in the open and the captive markets. You hear our excitement over the last couple of years, I think, for example, all the kind of smaller outsourcing deals we are finding now in Eastern Europe. Our whole performance in outsourcing was mainly driven by Eastern Europe because we see that there are a lot of smaller family companies who make their chocolate always for years and years. They need to start to renew their assets.
They look at us, they look also for a partner to innovate and to deliver and take the first steps on sustainability. That's a market, I think, where we, in the past, always looked at the big ones, the huge ones. We are very interested to convert those opportunities as well. I think it's a good thing that we see more opportunities. The market in Americas or in North America, of course, is very different. The opportunities for outsourcing are not that big, or at least different than in Europe. In the US, it's much more a cookie market.
People are much more used to buying their chocolate, and therefore, hey, you see a much bigger market still to be tapped into in Western Europe and the Middle East.
Yeah. Just, John, so to add in terms of the definition, indeed, we definitely looked at more opportunities. It's about market intelligence and so on. Going deeper, we found definitely more players, more in Eastern Europe, but also in Asia as well, it's that they are making certain coatings and chocolates and so on as well, which is a very interesting market when you think about it. Because, yeah, not everybody starts at a super premium. A lot of them started as the market is growing as well, and I experienced that when I was living in Asia as well. It starts with a very simple chocolate-flavored product that has the right value to consumer.
In that sense, a little bit simpler equipment and so on, they start on a small scale. Having that insight is very important for us, but it took us some time to build it. I think when you go back to the early days and so on, I think the overall markets that we address is bigger than we thought it was years ago. It's very important because you still want to keep track of them, you still want to help them, you still want to think about outsourcing because they are, to use your words, also climbing the value ladder, but starting from a much lower base in a way.
Please get confidence. You know, from what we just announced on Hershey and on Bimbo, we are renewing contracts. The proposition we have in outsourcing. We have explained, I think, in both presentations quite well why it's interesting, why we are better able to leverage scale into our network. The proposition is an appealing one. We have brought down our ambition, not so much because the opportunity is not there. We still see a lot of opportunities, and we are sitting at many tables to discuss, but it also needs to fit our plan. It also needs to fit our footprint on the one hand. I always say it's a huge opportunity to fine-tune our footprint if there's a big customer contract, but it also need to make sense financially.
Sometimes, hey, we have, as Ben is always saying, we have a lot of discussions, but many times we also walk away because we say, "Hey, that's not fitting our financial target.
It's not the right time yet, we always say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hi. Morning. It's Alex Sloane from Barclays. Thanks very much for having us here today. Peter, in your presentation, I think you made the comment that you saw, you know, Barry Callebaut becoming more and more of an ingredients company going forward. Obviously, you're developing a lot of really interesting new ingredients, like from the WholeFruit chocolate, which I'm looking forward to hearing more about today. I wonder with that comment and, you know, as you see yourself moving into a sort of more co-creation model, you know, should we think about your M&A strategy being part of that? Are there more ingredients that you'd like to have in your toolkit to go after that approach?
A good question. It's consistently what I say on the topic of acquisition. I believe there are certain technologies, certain products where we don't have capabilities, where we don't have technology around our global network, where we would be interested to invest if they are relevant in our application. Because that should not. Hey, we're always a little bit hesitant to call ourselves an ingredients company because we are not just going after all ingredients here. Hey, we are in ice cream, we are in bakery, we are in confectionery, we are in beverages. There, we always have a discussion about cocoa powder, we have a discussion about chocolate chunks, chocolate sprays, et cetera.
We just see, hey, that seat at the table, which is so much about premiumization, it's just a lost opportunity if we don't take that relationship further and start to see what we can more bring into ice cream, what we more bring into a bakery. We did some, we acquired some products also in the past which had totally different routes to market. Then I say, "Hey, then you don't create a scalable model. Then, you are not really building the synergy into our business." Please look at that perspective. Yes, we want to add ingredients to our co-creation sessions. We want to sell solutions, but in the specific applications where we now play.
Mm.
Yes, I think an acquisition can be interesting.
Mm.
Pascal.
Yeah. Thank you. I'm Pascal Boll from Stifel. Also, two questions on Gourmet. First of all, during the pandemic, you won a lot of new customers. What will be the focus from here? Is it more winning even more customers or cross-selling and selling more products, more value-added products to that new customer base? I think you showed in the slides that in Gourmet, you had volume growth of roughly 4.9% on average over the last few years. Now, we have seen an exceptional growth over the last few quarters. What is your expectation of a new kind of growth from here? Also in regards that this 4.9% is at the lower end of your 5%-7% midterm targets. Thank you.
Thank you, Pascal. Yeah, I think you hear loud and clear that we want to drive the customer mix. We want to grow smartly, and therefore Gourmet is very interesting. I also have to, I said it in my opening, hey, we had a fantastic founder in Klaus Jacobs, that he launched us to be an outsourcing partner. Therefore, there was always a lot of focus on our FM business and growing that part. If you really want to grow smartly, you want to drive the mix, we all acknowledge now, we want to still grow with the big players, but we want to grow faster with Gourmet.
I think the leadership we have put in place on optimizing that route to market, and that already started 3-4 years ago, because this strategy is not the last couple of months, I think has led in building of capabilities to increase penetration through distributors. Hey, we don't go directly to the end user. We use distributors. That's a capability you have to build. I think we have built that capability in a very, very smart way, reinforced by digital, because you can push your products through the distributor, but you have to pull them then again out of those distributors again. I think that's the game. That's the biggest impact, and that's a capability which is here to stay. I believe. Hey, sorry, some of you said you use Brazil too much.
I lived in Brazil, so I always said, hey, a couple of years ago, we had a few hundred distributors in Brazil, but the total world of distributors in Brazil is 20,000. We have increased, but we are by far not having the penetration and the reach into that market that will give us the maximum business. Let's say in China, let's say in India, let's say in Indonesia. There are many markets around the world where we can build it. One last point. COVID has increased our market because as I always said, from one day to another, I was President Americas. From one day to the other, suddenly the cruise liners stopped going out. It was a big business, huge business. Very attractive, very profitable.
Yeah, I still have my targets to deliver. You force yourself to look, hey, what are we missing? What are we missing? Where can we go with Gourmet? We found segments in the market, and that's what you refer to. We have found a lot of new direct customers as well, because we identified segments where we underrepresented, where we didn't put a lot of focus. One segment, as I've called out a lot, is bakery. A huge segment around the globe. We always were too much focused on confectionery. We were too much focused on pastry, the kind of high-end kind of applications of chocolate. Now, you can imagine how much volume there is in bakery around the globe. Again, we are just scratching the surface. A lot of growth still possible there.
If I just want to add, you heard me some time before, my living example in India is to the bakery segment as well. You have a lot of professional or semi-professional bakers and so on in a lot of second-tier, third-tier cities and so on. They know very well what quality chocolate is about. They're very well connected on a digital front. When we did interviews with them, there were two things that they were demanding. First of all, it's like, "In my city, I cannot find your chocolate." That's already making sure that the product is available in those places. Secondly, it was about your packaging. Yeah, of course, European packaging, 2.5 kilo, 5 kilo is for a smaller user, it's okay.
When you're a professional home baker and so on, you're making cakes, you're selling it online, or you sell it in markets, you cannot afford immediately a big pack. It's about cash conversion as well. You make it smaller. It's still for professional users. It's, we have not changed our model. Having those things, first of all, the product available in the right pack size drives again our reach. These chefs, they know exactly what's going on. They know all of our ambassador chefs. They follow our academy online. They see our YouTube videos and so on as well. There is still plenty of things to do there.
Don't underestimate the power of digital again, because it will help us to go much deeper in the interaction with our end users to really convert them to new recipes. Of course, we will make sure that our products shine through in those recipes. That's with a lot of these kind of slightly less skilled chefs, that's a very powerful model to keep driving the further growth of our Gourmet business. I can keep going on. That whole business of Gourmet, I really believe, it's a growth opportunity for us for years to come.
To confirm then, sorry, just one more follow-up. In quantitative sense, you expect to grow ahead of this 4.99% for the next years in Gourmet?
We don't give too much specifics, but we have been very strong here saying we drive the customer mix, and we are very happy with Gourmet driving faster than the rest of our business.
Yeah.
That is the aim. We still have to bring it home. That's absolutely the aim.
Andreas?
Yeah. Good morning, Andreas von Arx. I have heard a lot about growth this morning and you know wanting to get a seat at the table. I'm a bit worried, you know, that this probably has some slight negative margin implication, given you know these new customers already you know might lack scale in these new markets. Have you considered maybe to focus more on the profitability side in the strategy? I mean, if I look at your presentation, you're already close to twice as big as your next competitor.
Yeah.
What's the advantage of adding here additional growth? I mean, wouldn't it make more sense to add here, you know, more profitability and let's say focus on a significant margin expansion that would bring you closer to your target of getting that ingredient company that you have as a long-term vision?
Well, let me first start, Andreas, that's exactly what we're doing with smart growth. It is carefully looking at all of our different segments, customer segments, the product segments and so on, as well to drive value. Managing that mix is all we do day in, day out. I think it's so ingrained in our business. Then when we talk about overall growth, of course, outsourcing is important, but we always look at it in combination with the other things that we're driving as well. That's why I always say it's like our sweet spot at the moment for outsourcing is about 30,000-40,000 tons on average. We're not saying it needs to be 70,000 or 80,000, and that's for that specific reason.
We still want to drive value there as well. We want to still be the leader and continue to be the leader as well. That's why we're looking at all these different angles.
Yeah. I think, Andreas, just, I think we drive for long-term shareholder value. That absolutely has made us conclude that we need to grow smartly, that we grow the profits faster than the volume. Yes, we also believe we want to invest in our future leadership positions around the globe.
Mm-hmm.
Sometimes that costs money. To be honest, if we open a whole new market, and we have to build our footprint, and we invest in the longer-term leadership position in that market because we know that return will be very beneficial in the end for those owning this company. Could we just, sorry to say the word, could we just stop doing that and focus only on all the ways to aggressively increase the profit? Yes, we could do, but then you would in the end kill the growth in our business. I think the long-term leadership in all the markets which are still out there for us to
Let's not forget, it's all about scale as well. It's making sure that, Gourmet needs a strong FM because you leverage the scale. You make Gourmet efficient by having a factory footprints that is filled with food manufacturers. Food manufacturers and Gourmet need cocoa being vertically integrated, especially for sustainability and so on as well. It does make sense here. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Given the strategic evolution you have shown us this morning, is there reason to believe that I, as a, an analyst or investor, should expect a significant different margin development going forward as compared to the last years, that's now excluding COVID, you know, where you have used the same strategy?
For me, it's about. You see it in our midterm guidance, and we are very confident, and that's where we deliver EBIT above volume growth. It is there to stay.
We have, I think, the same four pillars. We keep executing them. In some markets, as came through in my presentation, we take the game to the next level. If you have your penetration, if you are really sitting at many tables, yes, you want to bring more added value into that, into the business. We put more emphasis, I think here, on accelerating the value ladder. In that sense, we are confident that we can do much more in improving our margins. Our guidance remains the same.
Yep.
In that sense, hey, please know, Andreas, we do everything to get the most profit out of this business without jeopardizing the long-term.
Long-term
... growth of our company as well.
Jean-Philippe?
Thanks. Two quick questions from my side. In Gourmet, when you're not winning a new distributor, when you're not winning a new client, what are the pushbacks? Is it the price point? Is it the differentiation you have in a certain region? Maybe, if you can help us here to better understand it. Second question, just quickly checking on momentum. The opening item is benefiting. Cost pressure at consumer company is benefiting. Premium demand is coming back, benefiting butter. Is this a fair conclusion for momentum?
Yes.
Thanks. Next question.
The first question, it's a full game you play on Gourmet, no? Absolutely. Listing a new distributor is great. I always say to my teams, "Guys, don't blind me. Give me also the growth numbers in a distributor, because I want to see how we are winning share within that specific distributor." Opening a door to a distributor, listing your business is only the start. It's the same as all with the fast movers. When you are on the shelf, or in this sense, you are in a portfolio of a distributor, it's then making sure that that salesperson of the distributor is talking most about your products, that we get more time in the conversations they have with customers, that we get more of our products listed in their portfolio than the competition is doing.
Hey, it's only the start of a journey of growth, when you're listing a new distributor.
That's the push part. Don't underestimate the pull part as well. It's connecting with end users. In a digital way, of course, it's easier. Connecting them to the distributor and wholesalers as well. That creates a demand from the other side. "Hey, we want to buy Barry Callebaut's products and so on as well," which then creates momentum again with our distributor and different types of discussions as well. Having that push, but also having that pull, and especially with influencers and so on as well, with Chef Network as well, with different applications, recipe development and so on, is very critical to play that very well, the push-pull.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
I think we have time for one last question before we move on to lunch.
I just wanted to come back on the outsourcing opportunities in the U.S. You said it's a bit different there because of the market characteristics. Could it also partly be due to your cost leadership might not being as significant as it is in other markets?
No.
No, it's not like that. Of course.
It's a different market.
Yes
With all other difference. You have a lot of long-term partnership opportunities in that market. It's not that our cost base is different or because we have these deals. One of our biggest one is with Hershey. We have a very big one with Bimbo. These are very price sensitive customers. If our cost structure would not be right, they would not resign the contract as they just did. I think what Peter was trying to give a little bit more color on the U.S. market and so on. There's a lot of smaller companies coming up and so on, a lot of ingredient in ice cream and so on as well, where chocolate is used as an ingredient and so on.
Yes, you have the confection market, which you all know the structure in the confection market in the US. At the same time, there's so many people that never did insourcing. They immediately from day one, they started to buy chocolate ingredients. That's what you were saying about chocolate chips. An enormous chocolate chip and chunk market because of the way that these type of baked goods are being sold. It's definitely a favorite product there. Never really was an insourced product for anybody. We already have a leading position there, and we keep on growing there, of course.
Mm-hmm.
That's it. I'm sorry. Sorry.
Sorry. Please don't be disappointed if you haven't had the opportunity to ask your question yet. There will be another Q&A towards the end of today.