Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Gurit Full Year 2022 Results Conference webcast. I am Moira, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be immediately followed by a Q&A session, where questions can be posed via the ongoing conference call. As an analyst or journalist, you can receive the necessary dial-in details by registering at investor@gurit.com. Registered participants may then ask questions by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Mitja Schulz, CEO of Gurit Group. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Good morning. I welcome you to the presentation of our full year 2022 results. I'm here in Gurit's corporate office in Zurich, together with my colleague, Philippe Wirth, our CFO. Let's start. Have a look at today's agenda. I will start by providing you a business update, highlighting the key events and achievements of last year. Philippe will provide details on the 2022 financials before I will spend a bit more time explaining our view on the markets and our outlook for 2023. Following the presentations, we have scheduled the Q&A session. The year 2022 was a very special one. At the start of the year, we still had to deal with the COVID aftermath, supply chain disruptions, capacity constraints, and shortages of sea freights.
Mid-February, the war in Ukraine started while Gurit was in the middle of two M&A transactions. We were able to successfully close both the sale of the aerospace business to Isovolta, as well as taking over the majority ownership of Fiberline Composites to complement our wind product portfolio. The conflict between Ukraine and Russia led to an immense inflation, almost overnight, we had to deal with surging energy costs, exploding prices for raw materials, freights, and logistics costs, impacting the European economy and our company as well. Looking at the markets, our non-wind business had an excellent year with more than 20% year-over-year growth and healthy profit margins. The team progressed well in diversifying our offering to new customers and new product segments, I will provide later a few examples of that. The situation looked different in the wind markets.
China, as biggest wind market of the world, saw growing demands, and Gurit could keep a strong market position as supplier for PET and wind blade molds. Our Western customers have been struggling with lower demands and increasing cost pressure, which negatively impacted the profitability of the whole supply chain. For Gurit, that meant very low sales for wind blade molds and lower sales of core materials and kitting to our established long-term customers. Overall, Gurit achieved a revenue of about CHF 500 million for the full year and an operating profit margin of 4.5%. Excluding the gain on the divestment of the aero business and adjusted for restructuring and impairment charges, the adjusted operating profit margin comes in at 2.3% of net sales.
Due to the significant funds required and the resulting debt level from the strategic acquisition of the Fiberline business and the current level of profitability, we recommend not to pay out a dividend in 23 and to use the cash flow to reduce the debt level of the company further. Tactically, our teams focus on operational execution with an all-hands-on-deck mindset. We work hard to mitigate energy and raw material cost impacts as good as possible and improve our net working capital position. We are on track with our Fit for Future program, improving our global manufacturing footprint and targeting reductions of indirect and SG&A costs, primarily in high-cost countries. Ultimately, we continued to execute our Strategy 2025, and we successfully improved our ESG performance. I will highlight a few examples on the coming slides.
Before getting there, I want to introduce two new members to the Gurit executive team. Lars Fuglsang joined the team already last year with the acquisition of Fiberline and leads the newly established business unit Structural Profiles, while Daniel Dahlquist joined us in January this year, leading our Wind Systems business unit. We inaugurated our new wind campus in China and Chennai, now combining all wind businesses of Gurit underneath one roof in India. The teams successfully launched production for PET and kitting and will reach full capacity utilization in 2023. We also booked the first revenues for molds and mastered the industrialization for carbon pultrusion in just half a year after closing the transaction. We increase manufacturing capacities in Chennai as we speak to further strengthen our Indian footprint.
We already have a strong footprint and team in China that is addressing the market needs with corresponding design-to-market solutions. To manifest our market position in China and strengthen our competitiveness, we continue to invest in our plants in Taicang and Tianjin and implemented a more decentralized organization to empower our team in China. Aiming to increase customer proximity and further reduce time to market. Talking about China and wind blade molds, we see a continuous trend towards larger rotor diameters. Gurit is leading the race with technologically advanced modular designs and most extensive offering of blade manufacturing solutions for our customers. Product innovations are the key for future success. Our new OptiCore design platform, which is now being validated by one of our key wind customers, has been recognized as finalist of the prestigious JEC Innovation Award.
We converted our site in Ringkøbing, Denmark, into an R&D and technology hub for our wind blade customers and opened our new Wind Innovation Center, where we work together with multiple customers on new improved kitting designs. A quick recap on the acquisition of the 60% stake of Fiberline Composites. Fiberline is a manufacturer of glass and carbon pultruded profiles for the wind industry, headquartered in Denmark with manufacturing sites in China and the meanwhile completed investment in additional capacities and footprint expansion in India. Fiberline's strong R&D capabilities fit well to the Gurit DNA. Since May last year, we achieved a revenue of CHF 102 million, still yielding a negative operating profit. While the market for carbon pultruded profiles will grow strongly over the coming years, we expect flat sales in 2023 due to a delayed ramp-up of a major customer in India.
The business will not reach profitability before 2024. Consequently, we have launched activities to further improve the cost structure of the business and increase the operational performance. We also do leverage Gurit's access to our Chinese wind customers, as well as our strong position in the marine and industrial segments to extend the current customer base. The strategic rationale behind the acquisition remains intact. It was an important enabler on our trajectory to serve our wind blade customers as a full-service provider. With the addition of Fiberline's capabilities, Gurit's extended wind blade product portfolio is unique in the industry. Gurit is able to cover up to 50% of the blade value chain. This positions us as a leading supplier and development partner towards our customers and marks an important step in our transition from a pure material supplier to a solution provider to our customers.
Strengthening the non-wind business is part of our strategy and remains highly relevant for Gurit. Our teams have been successful in diversifying our green PET offering towards new customers and market segments while using the economies of scale from the wind business. We continue to see an increasing thrive towards sustainability that drives boat builders to use recycled PET foam as core material. Same trends in other industrial segments, recycled PET being used in many new construction projects, building and transportation applications. To complement our marine product offering, we have launched a new Corecell iFoam to substitute PVC. We newly developed the business with customers for rotor sails, where we are indirectly part of reducing the CO₂ footprint of large transportation vessels. That brings me to an update on our ESG initiatives.
We are progressing in all group-wide work streams, and we can claim that we are executing our sustainability strategy according to plan. Our health and safety campaign enabled us to achieve the lowest LTA ratio since the start of the program, which underlines the health and safety of our employees has highest priority for us. We implement greenhouse gas reduction targets and launched CO₂ and energy-saving campaigns in our plants. Another highlight was the introduction of the one share, one vote principle and the implementation of the single registered share in May, which further strengthened Gurit's corporate governance. Finally, we are proud to see that our commitment towards sustainability has been recognized by improved ESG ratings. With this, I conclude the business update and hand over to Philippe Wirth and the 2022 financials.
Thanks, Mitja. Let me start with the P&L, and here is a quick summary on sales. Sales in materials include CHF 102 million from Structural Profiles. Excluding these sales and adjusted for the sales we lost due to the sale of our aerospace business, the organic growth of materials is 3.6%, and the group is declining 8%, both at constant exchange rates. The organic growth in materials of 3.6% includes a strong growth of more than 20% in our marine and industrial business, coming mainly from our recycled PET. The material sales for Wind Systems and the decline of kitting of 14% is the result of the reduced blade demand in Western Europe.
Manufacturing Solutions declined 21.5% compared to last year against a record first half year last year. We continued to see the low level of sales in the Western world. However, these sales are picking up again already in Q1 of the new year 2023. In total, this led to an increase of 17% in sales for our continued operation, which includes Structural Profiles but excludes aero. When we look at the P&L, obviously profits are impacted by the declines in the wind market in general, but there are some special items that I would like to elaborate on. Gross profit margin is 5.3 percentage points below prior year.
The decrease compared to prior year includes a dilution due to the acquisition of Fiberline of 2.4 percentage points, the remaining decline is mainly coming from Manufacturing Solutions, where we are losing in the full year about CHF 12 million compared to prior year due to lower prices with Chinese molds, which impacts our gross profit margin negatively by about 2.6 percentage points. You will note that I do not mention material price increase on this slide, this is because as a group, not with every product and customer, we are able to catch up on offsetting higher material costs with higher pricing. While this had a dilutive impact on our gross profit margin or about 0.8 percentage points, we are not materially impacted in Swiss franc terms for the full year. EBITDA amounts to CHF 39.1 million.
It includes a gain of CHF 18.3 million from our sale of the aero business and a restructuring expense of CHF 5.1 million to right-size our organization to the current demand in the wind market. This includes closure and relocation of our kitting production in Denmark and partly in China, as well as further downsizing of our balsa operation. Excluding these items, our EBITDA is decreasing, and like on gross profit level, the reduction is due to lower volume mix and price, only partially offset by savings from our cost savings program. Adjusted operating profit excludes the gain on the aero divestment, restructuring and impairment charges, and amounts to CHF 11.2 million for the year compared to CHF 33 million last year in the same period. The next slide summarizes the key drivers for this reduction.
Compared to prior year, we lost CHF 17.3 million due to the reduced sales volume in wind and the inclusion of Structural Profiles, which made an operating loss in the eight months in 2022. As mentioned earlier, we have experienced a significant profit drop in our Manufacturing Solutions business since we almost only sold Chinese molds. We lost about CHF 12 million on profit due to that. This was partially offset by savings of CHF 7.6 million resulting from our cost savings initiatives, and we are ending the year with an adjusted operating profit of CHF 11.2 million or 2.3% of sales. I would also like to highlight two impacts that you don't see in this walk anymore if compared to earlier presentations. You don't see a weakening due to the material price increase, I explained that before.
We had no negative impact due to the ramp-up costs since the new manufacturing sites in Mexico and India are up and running and stabilizing. Okay. Now let's move to cash flow, which strongly rebounded in the second half of 2022. As a reminder, free cash flow in the first half of 2022 was -CHF 19.3 million. In 2022, we experienced an increase of the average trade net working capital compared to prior year. In the graph, you see an average of the last 12 months. This is caused mainly by an, on average, longer payment terms on receivables in the wind business, which is amplified by the reduction of tooling business, which is favorable on prepayment terms. We have experienced inefficiencies in our inventory levels. First, we need higher safety stock to overcome supply chain disruptions and long lead times.
We experience a much more volatile demand. Orders tend to be rescheduled or even canceled in short notice more frequently. We have ramped up production in India. To counter these trends, we have put several initiatives and measures in place to bring the net working capital back to approximately 22% of sales. The first results we see on this chart in 2022. You go back to the KPI net working capital of sales in June 2022, you see an improvement of 1.3 percentage points within the second half of the year, down from 24.8%. CapEx amount to CHF 15.2 million in the year. CHF 10.7 million or about 70% of it is related to capacity increases, mostly to our footprint expansion in India.
Free cash flow, which equals to net cash flow from operations after CapEx, amounted to CHF 3.5 million. Compared to the previous year, we faced a lower EBITDA from operation, offset by a favorable impact from the timing of cash paid, lower tax payments, and lower CapEx. To conclude on the financials, a couple comments on the December balance sheet, which is more leveraged, as you know it from Gurit due to the acquisition of Fiberline. Net debt increased by CHF 45.7 million since December 2021, almost entirely as a result of our M&A activities in 2022. Net debt has reduced by CHF 20 million since June 2022. The equity ratio is 31% and is reduced mainly due to our accounting policy that offsets new goodwill against our equity and due to currency.
Gross debt to EBITDA ratio has increased to 2.8 times as a result of lower earnings but higher debt. This ratio benefits in 2022 from the gain of the aero business. Mitja will talk later more about the outlook of 2023, but this aero gain will not repeat in the first half of 2023, and we expect that our profitability will only recover significantly in the second half of 2023. In order to keep the balance sheet ratios under control and generate some headroom for unexpected events, the board of directors will propose no dividend in 2023 to the AGM, and no shares will be granted to the Gurit management and board. Our return on net assets was negative in 2022 due to a theoretical goodwill impairment of Fiberline.
The impairment was necessary given the updated demand projection in 2023 and probably 2024, which is below expectation as a result from the difficulties in the Western wind market. While this shift does not impact our long-term view of the carbon pultrusion business, it does have a negative impact on the discounted cash flow valuation of the business as of December 31, 2022, which results in this impairment. As a summary, difficult year in wind, but a highlight in marine and industrial. Much stronger execution on many levels in the second half of 2022 than the first half gives us confidence that our countermeasures bear fruit. We are cautious going into the first half of 2023 on the balance sheet and have debt reduction as first priority. With this, I hand back to Mitja.
Thank you, Philippe. Now let's come to the business outlook, allow me to start with a look at the profitability of the wind industry. As you can see in the blue chart to the right, there is a disproportional margin distribution within the wind energy value chain. While wind park developers and asset owners make decent margins, the turbine manufacturers and their supply chain are struggling. Last year in particular, the Western turbine supply chain saw a strong decline in profitability driven by the known circumstances. As illustrated in the lower chart, Western wind customers increased prices for future projects quite significantly. The ASP, the average selling price of new wind turbines, increased by 30% compared to 2021.
Considering that demand is driven by a growing need for renewable energy, we anticipate an improvement on profit margin generation along the wind supply chain in the coming years. Our view on the wind market outlook and referencing to the latest market outlook from Wood Mackenzie, there are a few observations. China will continue to drive the global installation growth. We anticipate even higher levels than the dark blue bars shown on the chart, potentially reaching 70-80 gigawatts levels this year already, and gradually growing over the next few years. That underlines the relevance of the biggest wind energy market of the world and emphasizes the importance of China for Gurit and other global players. According to WoodMac, the new turbine installations in the Western markets are stagnating in 2023 and 2024.
What we see for this year, and we are using a chart from one of our Western customers on the right side of the page, is a declining blade demand versus last year, since order intakes have been low, driven by the mentioned increases in ASP, and customers still eating through sizable blade inventories. For 2024, we think that the PTC extension will lead to a rebound of the North American installations, providing an upside to the numbers shown. We see that some of our customers already investing in capacity extensions for North America, and we consider this as an encouraging signal. The growth rate for Europe seems reasonable, with an upside potential in 2024, depending on country-specific decisions on subsidy schemes for renewables. Overall, a positive midterm outlook with blade demand reductions of Western customers for 2023. A brief look at the marine and industrial market segments.
Gurit was growing above market average. We expect this to continue in the coming years. As I already mentioned, we see a trend of replacing conventional materials with Kerdyn Green in multiple industry segments. We expect the marine sector growing steadily, and we will continue to strengthen our position in those markets. Let me conclude today's presentation. 2022 was a challenging year for the wind energy supply chain. Our focus was and remains on operational execution and debt reduction. The initiated Fit for Future program yields the expected savings. Western wind markets continue to be volatile near-term, while first positive signals in North America and offshore are coming. The China wind market momentum remains high. Marine and industrial with a strong ongoing growth and profitable growth trajectory. We are on track with our sustainability ambitions and Gurit's Strategy 2025 implementation.
As full-year outlook for 2023, we guided net sales of CHF 450 million-CHF 510 million, driven by reduced blade demands of Western wind customers, as explained. We expect an operating profit margin between 2% and 5%, which compares to an adjusted operating profit margin of 2.3% in 2022. Beyond 2023, we see a sound growth momentum driven by stronger wind markets, further PET diversification, and a profitable Structural Profiles business. This ends our presentation. Thank you for joining us today. With this, I'm handing over to the operator for the Q&A session.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Pre-registered participants can now ask questions by pressing star one on their touchtone telephone. Questioners are requested to use only handsets and turn off the volume from the webcast. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star two. The first question is from Laura Bucher from Octavian. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just to be sure, can you hear me?
Yes, thank you.
Okay, good. Can you provide us a roadmap of sorts of how exactly should Fiberline reach the 3 x 2021 sales by 2025? I mean, is this still how you're communicating this? Would you need to reach this CHF 300 million to reach the targeted profitability, which was communicated to be similar to Kitting?
Yeah. Sure. Let me comment on that. I mean, what we see is also what we anticipated. We anticipate still a strong penetration of carbon fiber profiles in longer wind blades. I would say the technical baseline to use in modern blade designs, carbon spar caps and replace glass infusion is still intact, and this is still what we see, and that has not changed, technically. The question is now, and this is probably also what we are reflecting here, is the speed of that technical penetration still the same as we anticipated a year ago?
Looking at what we see right now from our customers and that they are basically in 2023, Western customers are still, I would say, pausing with growth and also still holding a number of new blade designs. We would probably today think that that will rather being pushed out by a year or two. Coming back to your other question, Laura, related to what's basically the break-even sales, right? No, I don't think we need CHF 300 million there to reach the break-even level because, as I mentioned, we are working on multiple measures as well to improve the profitability of the business. It's not a sheer function of sales and volume.
As we outlined, we are in the process of basically launching production in India, which will obviously give us a better and improved cost position, and also initiated other cost out related measures to improve profitability and operational performance. No, our projection to reach break-even levels is not 100% linked to a CHF 300 million sales level. Hope that answers your question.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Daniel Koenig from Mirabaud Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. I have a couple of questions. First, I was wondering what is the target in terms of net debt, where you would think, well, we feel comfortable, and if we could also envisage a dividend payment anymore again? I was wondering what is the exact reason why there is flat sales this year for Fiberline? Can you explain that one more time? I'm just wondering. My final question is, I saw Vestas had a very strong order intake. I was wondering at what stage one would expect Gurit to benefit from that order intake. Because I saw in the transcript that Vestas the order intake was just phenomenal. Yeah, the current trading is a little bit problematic. That's it.
Yeah. Daniel, let me cover with your two questions, number two and three. Philippe will touch base on the 1st question, okay? First related to the 3rd question, Vestas order intake. I mean, the information we have seen, not only looking at one quarter, but looking at the last year, order intake was actually not phenomenal. I think there is another important element and which is certainly an important element with Vestas and which is something they also communicated, so I think we can share that as well. I mean, they are still eating through sizable blade inventories in their supply chain. And sizable means really sizable.
This is also when you look at their sales outlook and you deduct the service business and you consider probably this year already a recognizable 10% ASP increase, then you see that they actually year-over-year will decline in the announced sales for new wind turbines. That on top comes a blade inventory which they are currently eating through. This is actually what we see in the numbers. We see a decline year-over-year, a mentionable decline year-over-year there in terms of new blade production.
I think there is always, and this is important to understand, I think there is always also a little bit, a difference in looking at a sales number and the number for new turbines versus what they really manufacture for the different elements, towers, nacelles or even blades. To your second question, Fiberline, what drives the flat sales in 2023? Well, as I tried to explain, we were targeting a major customer project out of India. The customer declined, or not declined, delayed, that's the right word, delayed that project by six months probably. This is hitting us from a sales perspective, and that's why we have the numbers. We project basically a flat sales year-over-year. The first question I hand over to Philippe.
Yeah. on the net debt question, we look at it more from the gross debt level. You know, some of the cash is in countries where it's not so easy to take out, so we look at gross debt. I think an underlying gross debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.5 is for us a comfortable number, because with the 1.5, then we have again headroom to do acquisitions or investments into business growth. we try to reach this 1.5, but that does not mean that we wouldn't pay dividends before, you know. I mean, that always depends on the outlook, on the seasonality of our profit and cash flows. I would not tie it hardly to a fixed number. A 1.5 debt EBITDA ratio for us is the target.
Okay, thanks.
The next question is from Markus Mayer from Baader Helvea. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Three questions with the main. The first one is on what you said, Philippe, on the net term capital to sales level of 20% you want to go to from currently 23.5%. How quick do you expect that this is happening? Is this mainly happening due to lower prices at the millimeter side? Or is it due to volumes or selling down of your inventory levels? That would be my first question. The second question is what you said that customers so far in Western Europe are pausing demand. Is this also coming from the uncertainty on the U.S. IRA that customers will know exactly what kind of incentives they get.
Here I would think that these kind of customers have now more clarity for because they have more clarity, then this demand from the U.S. IRA may, should start to kick in the second half at least. That would be the second question. The last question is more housekeeping items. Could you maybe guide on CapEx and D&A for 2023? Thank you.
Marcus, let me start with the market related question and then Philippe covers your networking capital and the housekeeping question as you called it, okay?
Mm-hmm.
Your question was in particular related to the anticipated IRA impacts.
Exactly.
When we are talking to customers today, and not only to customers, I mean, we have our own team in the U.S., and trying to get our hands around specific interpretation and the specific guidance how to read the IRA and the implications of it. I think what we see is that it is confirmed that the manufacturing tax credits will have positive impacts on, for example, local blade manufacturing. I think all our customers see that, and this is also why, basically all of them have announced to reopen blade plants in the U.S. Yeah. That's, I think, that's the first point.
When we go a little bit more into details and then we talk to all of them, then they are still not fully clear how they actually get access to that money, what are the real preconditions, then probably also in terms of, of percentages of local content, U.S.-based local content. There is an anticipation that this will be provided by the IRS in, in June, July-ish timeframe. We see two different kinds of customers. We see some who are basically still in a wait and see mode and who are also in their outlooks not very bullish in terms of North America, neither 2023 nor 2024.
We're talking to others who are a little bit more bullish and who basically already announced, to extend manufacturing capacities, not only reopen but extend capacities, who are basically preparing, who are also with us already in discussions to secure 2024 capacities for core material, for example. A little bit more bullish, yeah. Clearly we do not have anyone who would currently say there is a major, a sizable impact, a sales impact or demand impact in 2023 already. Everyone we talk to expects, let's say, recognizable impacts in 2024. Yeah. That is what we see.
This is also why, in 2023 we still anticipate, again, as I mentioned, that customers are preparing, are eating through blade inventories, are cautiously probably, investing, but not full steam ahead.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
On your, on your networking capital question, I think it is important for us that we drive this down. You know, the last couple of years were not particularly easy to do this with all the supply chain interruptions and with customers that don't have money and pay late. However, couple of factors will help us getting to a decent level here. First of all, in 2022 and 2021 as well, we had a lot of changes within our internal supply chain, right? We increased or we added new factories in Mexico, we added new factories in India, we closed factories, we moved production around. This all doesn't help to get smooth processes on inventory and planning, et cetera, in place.
That's one big factor that will help us going forward managing our networking capital better. In detail, you know, the receivable side, yeah, we work with our customers. We follow up on their payment behavior. This is difficult in wind. You know, in wind our customers sometimes demand a 180-day payment term and bridging this to our suppliers. Our suppliers, they need to understand that they deliver into the wind market if they supply to us, they cannot expect payment terms of 30 days net if they sell to us. On the inventory side, we launched different projects by site now where we monitor more closely operational KPIs, et cetera.
We work hard on this, implement new ways of working on the inventory side, you know, global planning processes, et cetera, et cetera, that should help us bring down our inventory levels. With this, all these myriad of initiatives, we try to bring this down. On the CapEx, I think you can expect similar CapEx levels again, like in 2022, CHF 15 million, since we have we are past now our big investments in India and in Mexico.
D&A, what do you expect for D&A for 2023?
D&A? What?
The depreciation amortization.
Oh, yeah, about the same. CHF 15 million-CHF 17 million. Yeah.
Same. Okay. CapEx and D&A level. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Perfect. Thank you.
You're welcome.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press Star and One on your telephone. The next question is from Tommaso Perto from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. A question more for the medium term, maybe. I was wondering, assuming, you know, Fiberline will take off, around 1 percentage point of the margin profile. By when do you expect EBIT margins to reach those, 8% to maybe 10% again? Secondly, if you could kind of remind us of the strategic rationale about the Fiberline acquisition. I mean, you mentioned it is important for you to be able to offer this kind of one-stop shop solution. How kind of does this translate into additional revenue? What are your expected revenue synergies, if you could comment on that? Thanks.
Sure. Again, let me start with the second question probably first. Yeah, as you rightfully said, we are following that solution provider, as we call it, approach, and basically trying to combine multiple blade value streams underneath one roof. We are, I would say, looking at a synergy perspective, because you asked for synergies. I think the first and most obvious synergies we are working there on is, can we get access to supplier to customers where we do not have access today? I alluded to that also in my status about the Fiberline integration. Yes, this is where we are actually working on right now.
As Gurit, we have a very strong link to the Chinese customers, while I would say that was probably limited for the Fiberline organization. We are currently in discussion with multiple customers here to basically penetrate new blades with the products we have there in the Fiberline portfolio. Is it spar caps or is it glass-based root connections? When will this materialize? I hope that we probably will reach first positive results here in 2024 with some customer projects. Obviously you need to also consider, well, you're talking 6-12 months qualification time usually when you are entering in such a business as a new supplier.
Yeah, that's what I said, probably mid 2024, that would yield to the first revenue streams, incremental revenue streams. There is another element to it, that is not only accessing new customers, but probably creating new product solutions. When we are talking new product solutions, you probably would talk about prefabricated parts, which would further reduce the complexity of blade manufacturing in the plants of our customers. These are new technologies. This is a combination of glass infusion and with some core material elements to it. Probably some carbon related structural profile elements to it.
Here what we see is very positive discussions with customers, and they are in this case then advanced engineering departments. Realistically, I think 24-30 months is a realistic timeframe you can take, if you wanna penetrate something really new towards a new blade or a new blade designs, because you need to wait until you have a corresponding blade where customer is willing to, I would call it now, experiment a little bit with the new technology. Then again, you have a certain duration for qualification. These two are the elements I would say where we are in the wind, in the wind world would see incremental sales potentials and the timelines as I indicated.
Coming back to your actually first question, the 8%-10% profitability range, when are we anticipating to see that again? Let me answer that in a two-folded way. When we look at the Gurit business without the Fiberline Composites portion, then profitability is primarily driven by three factors. One is our marine and industrial business, and that clearly is running within or even better than the projected target frame. We have our mold business, and here I think myself and also Philippe indicated that we anticipate that this year we will see a certain rebound. A rebound means more Western molds and with more Western molds also higher profitability within the target framework.
Then the third element is our core material, PET in particular, where also here we would say now after having finished our new investments in Mexico and in India and reaching full capacity utilization in these plants later during this year, we should also reach these kinds of projected profitability levels. They are probably not so far away from these profitability levels from a timeline perspective. In the Fiberline business, as I indicated, we expect profitability next year. I do not expect that this will be already on the targeted profitability framework. So that is then clearly a function of volumes.
I would probably say for Fiberline business, a targeted profitability framework probably will rather be between 5%-7%, and we will reach that, I would probably say in 2025 from today's perspective. I hope that answers your questions, Tommaso.
Yes. Thank you very much.
There are no more questions at this time.
Thank you so much for listening, and wish you all a fantastic remaining week. Take care and goodbye.