Good morning, everybody. A very warm welcome to the Media Conference 2022 of the Zehnder Group. I'm particularly happy to welcome quite some people here in the room, but obviously also a very warm welcome to the participants that dial in. Therefore, first question to the Régie, are we on air? Very positive. I will do the presentation today together with my colleague, our CFO, René Grieder, and we have split it up in three parts. First we'll do a business review 2021. He will then go further into just some details regarding the financials. In the third part, I will try to give a short outlook, and obviously we should have plenty of time for questions to be answered.
Let me start with a snapshot of the key financials already published in January. Our sales grew by roughly 13% to close to EUR 700 million. We also were able to increase our EBIT to a level of 9.9%, which equates to EUR 69 million. That's now the second consecutive year where we are in the bandwidth that we announced in 2019 of 8%-10%. If you look at net income, actually it increased even more with 51% to EUR 60.3 million. There is a special effect. René will cover that later in his presentation. Now, if you look at the operating cash flow, another solid year with roughly EUR 80 million.
I would have to say that 2020 was a little bit unusual. Anyway, we feel with the 11.5% that this is also quite a good figure. Then, hence, we were able to increase the net liquidity to EUR 123.2 million, and also the return on capital employed quite strong increased by 5.6% to now 22.6% in 2021. 2021 was another demanding year, and we had ever-changing challenges. Obviously, all the COVID-related challenges with restrictions, ramifications. All throughout the year, like in the previous year, it was our main focus to make sure that we take care of our people.
I think I can again report that we were able to operate all organizations throughout the year. We didn't have any major fallouts and also obviously were able to protect the health of our employees. Now obviously we had some other challenges, and that's particularly in the supply chain. It started in the beginning of the year with some sharply increasing raw material costs. These we were able to some extent to pass on to the markets. However, what bothered us even more was in the second part of the year, increasing availability issues on electronic components. I'm afraid to say that this is not over yet. We're still in the midst of it, and that also makes the outlook a little bit more challenging.
I know that we are not the only company. It's obviously a challenge that everybody faces in the industry. Now, I think at the same time, it was always important, not just in 2021, but already in the previous year to stay on course, and I think we were quite able to do that and to execute our strategy. Now, we put a special focus on two topics, also not new. One is to really bring the digital transformation a big step forward, but also to strengthen our focus on sustainability, but I will cover that in a little bit. Let me first refresh your memory on our product line strategy. Essentially, we have four paramounts. We have the ventilation business. It's our growth activity. There we want to grow along three axes.
One is to obviously defend market share and possibly extend market share. Here probably we have to agree that some of our competitors had a more stable supply chain initially. I would say hindsight now, we are semi-satisfied with what we were able to achieve there. On the other hand, we also have two other axes, and one is to extend the product portfolio in adjacent businesses. There we reported in fall the acquisition of 75% of the French company Caladair. Caladair is producing compact units, where you have not just one unit per living unit, but one central unit for several apartments. That's obviously something that gives us additional possibilities to cover needs of existing customers.
We found Caladair after a detailed research all across Europe, and we're very happy that we were able to conclude that deal. We feel they are very competitive in terms of products, and obviously what they were missing was the market reach. In combination, we feel that we can make something out of that. There is a third axis that is obviously to extend also in market where we have a limited presence. There you saw that on Friday we were able to announce the acquisition of the Canadian company, Airia Brands. We are very happy about that. In fact, yesterday we already closed. I will tell you a little bit more about that company in just a little bit. We have the radiator business, and here we were very successful last year, and that makes us happy as well.
All across the year we had high demand. Normally, that's one of the big challenges, the seasonality in that business. This we did not experience to a large extent, and that obviously helped us to keep the factories at high utilization. At the same time, we were continuing to improve operational excellence. Also with the good result, we were able to invest into some important capacity increases, but also into some replacements. Finally, we already provide solutions in most of the markets. We're not just selling ventilation units, we sell the whole system, including the air distribution. We have the ambition to go further and actually add functionalities to the ventilation systems, meaning humidity control, but also tempering the air.
Last spring at the ISH, which is the largest fair here in Europe, we were able to announce the launch of a product that actually is doing exactly that, which will enable some customers that build insulated houses, for example, the prefab industry, to actually get rid of the central heating circle that is water-based and do everything through a ventilation solution. Let's not forget that we have also three smaller activities. Clean Air Solutions is one, and this was always the ambition that these smaller activities are able to contribute over proportionally to sales growth and profitability, but also to grow independently. In a way, they are companies within the company.
Definitely, we're able to prove that again on Clean Air Solutions, but also on CORE, our heat exchanger business, which we sell under the brand of CORE, not under the brand of Zehnder because Zehnder is just one customer. It's a big customer, but we also cater into the whole ventilation industry. There with the acquisition or the partial acquisition, 51% of the Chinese company, Fortuneway, we are the first globally active company and have the excellent market position to benefit from that market, which is a niche, but at the same time, a core component for every energy recovery ventilation solution. Obviously there now the challenge is to bring these things together, these organizations. We have two facilities in Europe. We have one facility in Canada, now one in China, and to really generate value for our international customers.
We have the last smaller activity, which is Closed Ceiling. That's an activity that, let's say, in the group is doing for quite some time. It's a market that is growing. Now, there we had challenges for many years. We are still working on a turnaround, but at the same time, we made good progress, we had good growth, and we also were able to now carve out a separate organization to have full transparency, full focus, and ultimately make sure that in this business, which is a little bit different from the rest of our business, core competence is project management, that we're really able to make a good future also out of that activity. Now let's look a little bit into further details regarding the ventilation. To maintain market share is important.
That obviously is only possible if you are an innovative company. What you see here is a typical example. That's a new unit that has a very small footprint and is ideal for multifamily homes. Multifamily home is probably the driver going forward, also in new build. With that unit, we combine our technology with again, an extension of our market opportunities. I mentioned before, challenges in the supply chain. You also see that the sales grew only 8%. That is below our ambition. We want to have a double-digit growth in that activity. It's fair to say it's not the market, it's definitely how much products we can put into the market. Obviously, that's also then the big challenge for this year.
Particularly in the Netherlands and in Belgium, we face these challenges because these markets are more dependent on the proportion of ventilation business is much higher than the radiator business. On the positive side, again, I mentioned several new launches, but also the acquisition of Caladair, which you see here on the left. What you see here in the middle is the unit that I mentioned before. That's this ComfoClime solution. ComfoClime solution is now really making the whole climate in the house. For that, we also have to strengthen our capacities and competencies on the control side. There we built up a small team in Italy to actually help us to develop that in-house competence. On the right, you just see a nice example of a first European 3D printed home.
You see that we are also able to secure these kind of projects with our products. Now, the radiator business, 20% sales increase, something that obviously we're very happy about. Nevertheless, it's our heritage. It's still a substantial portion of our activity. We had the highest growth rates in our largest radiator market, which is France, but also in the U.K. and Italy. For sure, it was partially a recovery from 2020, first half that was weak. Also compared to 2019, that is an increase. Obviously there was some support. Everybody heard about home improvement in the renovation market, particularly in DIY, do it yourself.
We saw some good sales, but also there are some new regulations, for example, in France that support the replacement of older units with newer units that they have a intelligence. Also fair to say that the supply chain in radiator was more robust and obviously hence we were able to satisfy the needs of the markets. Couple of highlights here. We finished the big investment in our French plant in the Picardy in the North of France. That's a new painting line which gives us more efficiency, but it's also obviously a replacement for a quite outdated equipment. At the same time, it also generates a much smaller footprint in terms of ecological impact. What you see on the right may be also something to mention.
A long, long time ago, Zehnder acquired a company, Runtal, a competitor in Switzerland, and we carried two brands for quite some time. We decided to give up the brand of Runtal and put these products into a Zehnder Studio Collection. Why? We feel that putting all the efforts in one brand, in one master brand is obviously helping us to get more push and more presence in the market. Let's get to North America and China. I mean, this picture just wanted to show you to also give you a feeling, energy recovery ventilation is happening in North America. This is an apartment tower in British Columbia, and we were able to secure that project. It's the first tower. Second tower is in planning. You see, obviously all units were equipped with Zehnder units.
I think that's a very nice example what you actually see now happening, particularly in Canada. In Canada, by the way, energy recovery ventilation is mandatory by law for new builds. In the U.S., it's not. The U.S. is obviously a much bigger market potential, but the U.S. is a little bit different. You have West and East Coast where this technology is starting to grab a hold, and then obviously some other areas where it is still underdeveloped. Let's look at China first. China was challenging. In China, particularly, due to the real estate crisis, our biggest customers are the really big real estate developers, and all of them, at least the ones that are privately owned, faced tremendous financial challenges.
That ultimately meant that this business in the second half was really weak. On top of that, we had to make some value adjustments on receivables, which are substantial. I'm sure the question will come anyway, so I can say it right now. We made adjustments between EUR 7 million and EUR 8 million. At the same time, we had Fortuneway developing very nicely. Fortuneway is catering mostly to the local markets. Why are they able to grow while we are not? Fortuneway actually is. The ambition is to change the traditional products, which are paper cores, paper heat exchangers with synthetic heat exchangers. That obviously means that they're still able to gain market share, even if the market overall is not doing so good. They're also into the export market.
What you see here on the left is such a product, such a heat exchanger or enthalpy exchanger. At the same time, I think it's also important to say that energy recovery ventilation in China is known, but it's still a niche. Where we are focusing on is particularly on new building standards, passive houses. In certain areas, that's something where you see quite some good development. For example, this project that is in Inner Mongolia, so it depends a little bit on the climate, where we have the possibility to actually equip all of the apartments also with these units from Zehnder. Let's look at North America. Well, overall, radiator business rather flat, maybe even a little bit disappointing. Here, unlike in Europe, it was not the challenge of the market.
The market as such was also positive. We had troubles to get enough people, particularly blue-collar people, various reasons. We are producing in Massachusetts and New York. These were very restrictive states in terms of COVID restrictions, to the extent that you have to go into the quarantine. Also, if you're just exposed to people that were infected. At the same time, and probably you're aware, the U.S. government in large part of 2021 had some subsidies for unemployed people, and that didn't help to actually attract people to particularly, let's say, lower-paid jobs. The situation is better now, so we also face quite a solid backlog on the radiator business in the U.S. It's not a challenge of the supply chain.
We feel that we should be able to actually catch up in 2022 what we were not able to produce and deliver in 2021. Ventilation on the other hand, and what you see here is what we already did before the acquisition, is growing nicely. You see it's still a relatively modest figure. Now with the acquisition, we add an additional roughly EUR 40 million. Again, it's not a huge market, but with the acquisition in combination, and I think that's the positive, we are among the top three players in the North American market. Obviously, we feel that the story is still ahead of us.
Having now this position also in different price levels, we feel that we are well-positioned to actually tackle that market and hopefully achieve a similar situation in North America like we did here in Europe. Airia is operating under the brand Lifebreath, and on the right you see such a typical product. Maybe just one clarification because you might have stumbled on top of that. In the U.S., we keep the Runtal brand. That has historic reasons, because it used to be a Runtal subsidiary, and Runtal has an excellent reputation because in the U.S., these kind of radiators are actually luxury products and designer products. Obviously we feel it would be detrimental to give up that name, and that's why only in the U.S. we're keeping it, we're keeping that brand.
I mentioned before, digital transformation is a big topic, and we have organized ourselves already one and a half years ago a little bit different in that we pushed all the initiatives into the operational units to really make sure that they are aligned with the strategies. We also installed a digital steering committee where, for example, group management is in, but also some key functions. On top of that, we have somebody that is helping us to coordinate all these efforts. Obviously topics are customer journey, so see where we have opportunities to increase value for our customers along the customer journey with digital possibilities. It's also connectivity of our units between each other, but also to smart home systems.
There are a lot of different smart home systems out there, so we had to choose which ones we want to be open to and how we want to be connected. One particular initiative I would like to highlight, and that's the partnership with Sentinel Haus. We in fact are mostly in contact with customers which we call our partner customers, which are planners, installers, architects. We are not really in contact with end users. The question was, how can we actually make sure that end users that possibly build a house once or twice in their life stumble onto, let's say in the name, onto our products when they face that decision? Obviously, there are various platforms out there, and we had to choose.
We felt to combine that with the healthy indoor air approach, that could be a very, very interesting proposition. It happened to be that there is a leading company in Germany based out of Freiburg. They're called Sentinel Haus Institut. They operate such a platform. They certify building products regarding their health impact or possible health impact. They're obviously also giving us the scientific base in terms of research, but also in terms of contacts to various important lobbying bodies. We felt that this is a company that we should explore. We got into a strategic partnership with Sentinel Haus, and the aim is obviously that we can generate leads, qualified leads by people that are interested in healthy buildings, and we would like to do that through Sentinel Haus.
At the same time, obviously, our products had to be certified as well, and they are. Now in terms of sustainability, I mean, I always said that it is a sustainable company, and it has been for many, many years. Obviously we continued on that path. You see several examples, so different initiatives. For example, the COP26 house that was at the summit in the U.K., but also a new solar plant on the roof of our Zwolle plant in Holland, and several others. For example, the ISO certifications in our production locations. At the same time, we also realized that we probably have to get a little bit less Swiss. If we do good things, we have to also convey these messages.
We obviously realized that the topic has to be approached a little bit more structured. Again, here we have installed a central responsibility at group level for a sustainability officer. We also have formed a committee, and in that committee we have the board also represented. Obviously, I am represented. There we went through the exercise to understand what are the material topics. We are working on the targets. We also realized that we have to commit to these targets. We also have realized that we have to communicate. The idea is obviously that we are setting up the necessary report also for the investor community going forward. This was the review, and I would like to hand over to you, René, so you can give us a little bit more details about the financials.
Thank you, Matt. Welcome also from my side. I would like to give you a deeper insight into our financials 2021. As mentioned by Matt, we had a solid increase in sales and profitability in combination with a high operating cash flow and a strong balance sheet. We also invested further in infrastructure to support the future growth. The sales increased by 13%. If I see the different region, also Europe increased by 13%. Organically, it was 12%. In North America in EUR, it was 5%, and organically it was 9%. In China, in EUR it was 15%, but organically it was a decrease of 3%. The growth in China was only due to the acquisition of Fortuneway. Also both product areas were able to grow.
Ventilation by 9%, organically 6%, and the radiator with a strong increase of 70%, organically 18. That is mainly due to the, I would say, also low base in 2020, because the radiator business was strongly hit by the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020. The two acquisitions, Fortuneway and Caladair, contributed about 1% to the sales growth. For Fortuneway, it was 8 months, so starting from May, and for Caladair, only two months, starting from November. The EBIT strongly increased, and that was mainly due to the sales increase. Especially for the radiator business, we had a very high factory utilization. Due to the quite high fixed cost base for the radiator business, it is very beneficial if we have a high utilization through the whole year.
We also kept our cost focus in the different areas. On the other side, we were negatively impacted by the rising material prices and also, bottlenecks in supply chain. For certain product, there were a strong price increase, and it was not easy to get product, and you had to pay premiums on the market to secure the supply chain. We also increased our sales prices, but we had a time lag between the price increases from the suppliers and the price increases to our suppliers. We also spent more for research and development, about EUR 3 million more, so in total, EUR 21.4 million. It's the first time that we spent more than EUR 20 million in research and development. If I see the results of the different region, this is clear, the biggest improvement is in Europe. The EBIT increased by EUR 22 million in Europe.
We have a very different development in North America and in China. In North America, we were able to increase our profitability slightly. In China, there was a big drop in the profitability due to the mentioned valuation adjustments of accounts receivable. Without the acquisition of Fortuneway, the result in China would have been negative in 2021. If I go to the net income development, the earnings before taxes increased 45%. That is more than the EBIT increase. That is due to a better financial result. Furthermore, we had a very low tax rate of only 12%. That is due to the use of tax losses carry forward and also positive effects in connection with the Swiss tax reform.
That will not be the case in the future, so the tax rate will increase, and I would say an expected tax rate would be about 22%-23% normally. I would like to highlight the two semesters when we communicated the first six months result in July, which were very strong. Radiator sales growth of 33%, ventilation sales growth of 15% in the first six months, and with an EBIT margin of 10.8%. The second half for the radiator business was still a sales growth of 6%, but it need to be considered that the baseline from the prior was much higher. We are still happy with this 6% increase for the radiator business.
That is a strong performance with a high output of the factories and only very few, I would say, interruption in connection with labor shortage or with supply chain bottlenecks. The ventilation business was much more challenging in the second half of the year. The sales growth was only 3% due to bottlenecks in the supply chain. The demand was much higher. Overall, we were only able to grow 4% in the second half of 2021. The EBIT margin was also lower in the second half. In the first half, it was 9%.
Without these valuation adjustments of the accounts receivable in China, it would have been more or less equal in the first and the second half of the year. The country development was already partially explained by Matt. I will start with the negative development of Netherlands and Belgium. As mentioned, that is purely due to the bottleneck in the supply chain. We allocate the products to other markets which have more sales in air distribution and also with higher margins. Overall, Germany is still number one, France number two, and U.K. again number three. The strongest sales growth was in France, U.K., and Italy, and these were the markets which had this negative impact in 2020 due to the pandemic and closure of construction sites.
The split between ventilation and radiators is nearly 50/50. It's 51%- 49%. It's a bit less ventilation again due to the strong radiator development in 2021. The main part of the sales are still in Europe, so 84% of our sales were in Europe and 8% each in China and in North America. Besides profitability, cash and balance sheet is a strong focus. Our equity ratio is still 66%, so the equity further increased. As communicated in March 2021, we have a share buyback running. In 2021, we invested in total CHF 5.6 million to buy back 79,000 shares. We also bought back shares in 2022 until yesterday. It was 27,000 shares in January and in February.
As already mentioned by Matt, we had a strong operating cash flow of 11.5% of sales. It is less than 2020, but 2020 was a special year with a very strong focus on securing cash in connection with the pandemic. Net liquidity also increased, EUR 27 million. On the other side, we also invested further. The two acquisitions, we spent EUR 15.6 million, and we also invest in CapEx, about EUR 22 million, which is clearly above the 2020 level. Dividend was also paid of EUR 13 million. A few key investments. In Germany, we build a new building for training and for offices. We call it Center of Climate in Lahr. It's to strengthen the customer relations and also to have appealing workspaces for the employees.
The construction is ongoing, and it should be completed beginning of 2023. The total investment is about EUR 20 million, and in 2021, we spent about EUR 4.4 million for this very important project for the German market, but also for the whole group. Heat exchanger business was very positive in 2021. That also means we need to invest further to increase the capacity and also to increase the productivity. For that, we spent about EUR 2.1 million in Wolvega, that's in the Netherlands, and in Reinsdorf, that's in Germany. As already mentioned before, we also have a new solar panel plant in Zwolle that is above our assembly line and offices for the most important site for the ventilation business in Europe. To summarize the cash flow, the operating cash flow was EUR 80 million.
We spent EUR 22 million for CapEx. For investments in subsidiaries, acquisition, EUR 15.6 million. Dividends, EUR 30 million. Overall, we were able to increase the liquidity by EUR 30 million. Headcount FTEs. Yes, we have a higher level of FTEs, but it's mainly driven by the acquisition of Fortuneway and Caladair. Fortuneway about 150, and Caladair about 50 FTEs more. In Europe, it is mainly due to the high factory utilization of radiator business. We had a lot of temporary employees that we can keep the output that was necessary to fulfill the demand. For the ventilation business, we have a growth strategy. In 2020, we were not able to secure double-digit growth due to the pandemic. It was only 3% growth.
In 2021, we started good in the first six months with a double-digit growth rate. Then due to the bottleneck in supply chain, we were not able to keep the pace. Overall, it was 9% in 2021. The foundation is here that we can also further accelerate if we get supply chain issues solved. Sales and EBIT development over the last five years. It's a very positive trend for the EBIT margin. We were able to increase the EBIT margin than more than 1% each. Now we have to mention level between 8%-10%. That was communicated in 2018 as a midterm target. Dividend. The Board of Directors propose a dividend of 1.8 CHF per share.
That is in line with our dividend policy to pay out 30%-50% of our net profit, and it has to be seen in combination with the share payback and also with further acquisitions. With that, I would like to give back to Matt for the outlook.
Thank you, René. Well, first of all, I don't want to bore you because I mentioned most of it before. It's clear we feel we have a strategy. We feel it's sound, and we feel it's about execution, so we want to do that consequently. It's clear regarding outlook. Market is there. Market is solid with the exception of China. In China, I am in close contact. Obviously cannot travel there. It's still a little bit insecure. One of the general managers is rather positive. The other one is a little bit more conservative. The more conservative one is in the Beijing area, and the other one is in the Shanghai area. The Beijing area actually was closed during the Olympics, so production was shut down.
Realistically, it's too early to really say, because the first couple months in China always are very quiet, because of Chinese New Year. Nevertheless, overall, market demand seems to be good. At the same time, we do have the supply chain challenges. It's a roller coaster. Once you have good news, the next day you get some bad news. Obviously over time it will get better, but it's really difficult to predict. Obviously we have also political tensions, and what happens in the East will affect us slightly. Maybe just for your information, if you take Russia, Ukraine, Belarus as a total, that equates to roughly 2% of our total sales. Realistically, the sales impact will be limited.
Obviously we are very keen on understanding what it would mean going forward for us. I said we want to execute the strategy, means we are investing into new products heavily. Also products that have not been launched yet. We have several things in the pipeline. We have to increase production capacities, and we are doing that. I mentioned the two topics, digital transformation and sustainability. Overall we had heavy debates what should we give as a target for this year. Now we came to the conclusion, sales obviously with the acquisition of Airia Brands, we will have sales that will be above the 5% target. On the EBIT margin, we are rather careful.
We want to keep the bandwidth at 8%-10% for 2022. We do feel that if these challenges are resolved, that we are able to increase that bandwidth by 1%, and hence did adjust the midterm target to 9%-11%. Maybe also something that we can announce here has already been announced. With the acquisition of Airia Brands, we will change the reporting, that was a wish also from your community for quite some time, into product line segments versus what we have today, the regional segments, as of 2022, end of the year. Overall, I guess we are sound. We are in a strong position. We feel the Residential Ventilation Market will grow.
We have indication from many markets that along the Green Deal most of these markets are committed to. Ventilation is a product that will see some automatic effect. Obviously, radiators, we have proven last year that you can make money, that you can be successful. We want to continue this harvesting strategy. I mentioned before, two out of these three activities are nicely contributing, over proportionally contributing. They are in niches, but in very attractive niches. We still have one where we have to prove the turnaround, but we feel that we're also on the right path there. Obviously, you saw the financials, solid financial foundations. We feel that we are an attractive investment case, and obviously I hope that you feel the same way.