A very warm welcome. Thank you very much for coming to Grönichen. Grönichen, the center of gravity, at least for the Zehnder Group, for more than 130 years. I know for you it might not be exactly around the corner, so I appreciate very much that you came through fog and traffic to this beautiful location. Probably you have seen coming here that actually this is quite a vibrant area. We are literally in the center of Switzerland. The four largest German-speaking cities, are only half an hour apart away from here. We have train and we have highways. You probably know that most of the large distributors, but also logistics companies, are actually located here. Here we are in a small valley. It is the Wiener Tal. We have also our train for more than 100 years.
That's the reason why also this valley actually has quite a long industrial history. Particularly, you know, we're talking about small and mid-cap or mid-size companies, family-owned. It's not just Zehnder. We don't want to talk about the Wiener Tal. We want to talk about the Zehnder Group. What we want to talk about particularly today is our ventilation business. The ventilation business, which we have started more than 20 years ago. The ventilation business,, that today is two-thirds of our total revenues. The ventilation business that has grown average 14%, over these 20 years per year. Obviously, therefore, is our core business and even more so our strategic pillar going forward. The way we want to do that, this deep dive, and that's also the title, is with a few sessions, but also then a visit of our academy.
I am supported by my colleagues. I will start with a kind of an overview, also strategic overview. We have Dorien Terpstra. She is our Chief Commercial Officer, for the EMEA region, who will talk about the markets and the initiatives that we have in terms of service in particular. We have Johannes Bollmann. He will talk about product innovation, also new solutions that we have. He is our Chief Operating Officer, for the ventilation activity. We will break for lunch. Because we have a rather large group, we are going to split up. While some have lunch, you know, the first group would go over to the academy to really understand and see in detail on how these units work. We switch. After lunch, we will talk about Clean Air Solutions. That is a little bit a separate activity.
While we reported on the ventilation, Clean Air Solutions is really a company within the company that is concentrating on commercial filtration. That will be done by Patrick Frans éh n. He is in charge of that activity for, I guess, now eight years, if I remember correctly. Finally, I think also important financials. That will be done by René, our CFO. Most of you know him already. We will have plenty of time afterwards to wrap up and obviously cover all the questions that you might have. Now, before we dive into the topic, I just would like to show a small video. It is really to give you a sense what it is all about, this controlled mechanical indoor ventilation, and what it is all about with good indoor air quality or good indoor climate.
The Smiths, can finally call themselves homeowners. They're keen to make sure that their home is energy and cost-efficient with a comfortable and healthy climate for the whole family, all in accordance with the legal requirements. That's why their new home, is airtight with excellent insulation. However, the more airtight and insulated the house is, the more difficult it is for stale air to escape and for fresh air to get in. The Smiths, may as well be living under a glass dome. Odors and moisture, are trapped in the rooms, which can lead to health hazards such as mildew. Constantly opening windows wastes a lot of time and energy and means that unwanted allergens such as dust and pollen have no problem getting in. How do we get around this problem? It's simple, really, with comfortable indoor ventilation from Zehnder. Let's take a look at how it works.
An external wall vent sucks in fresh air, which is routed to the ventilation unit. Invisible pipes feed the air into the individual rooms as needed without making a sound or draft. Living areas and workspaces, are supply air rooms. Bathrooms and kitchens, are extract air rooms. Both areas are connected by an overflow zone, such as a hall or landing. Here, moisture and pollutants are extracted from the room air and fed outside with the stale air. Zehnder, comfort ventilation units use heat exchangers to set the fresh air to the right temperature and transfer up to 95%, of the extract air heat to the fresh air. Comfortable indoor ventilation from Zehnder, combines healthy, comfortable, and energy-efficient ventilation in a single system. Whether you're involved in a new build or a renovation project, it's time to experience the comfort of a permanent fresh air supply at the perfect temperature.
Visit our website and see for yourself.
Perfect means now that we know what it is all about, let's maybe look at, you know, what is really our ambition. What is, let's say, also the vision of Zehnder. What we want to become is really the leader for these kinds of solutions for innovative sustainable ventilation, but also heating and cooling solutions. We will get to that throughout the day. Now, this is a vision, but I think it's fair to say that already today, if you look at ventilation, and we're talking about this controlled mechanical ventilation, we are the reference in the market. Global, is a very big word. Yes, we have still our heavyweight of our activities in Europe, but I will also try to show you what America, the North American markets, means to us also going forward.
At the same time, we're already selling today our products and our solutions in more than 70 countries. I think if we just look back at what has happened over the last 20 years, you can really say it has been a major transformation. From what was originally a component manufacturer, namely the radiators for a water-based heating solution, we have ventured into a system and solution provider in the HVAC industry. As I mentioned before, in the ventilation space, we talk about heat recovery and energy recovery ventilation. We are today number one in Europe, but we're also number one in North America. We'll explain to you why we believe this is a market that will continue to grow, and it's just at the start. It's not just about particular components of such a solution.
Yes, you have a ventilator, but obviously you need a whole solution with air distribution, possibly with other elements. I think that's where we're quite unique because we provide the total solution. That means we don't only sell the total solution, we also make sure that whoever deals with us is actually accompanied along the whole life cycle of the product. It's about design, it's about the planning, it's about the installation, it's also about the after-sales service. I think that's where we really can have a differentiation also to all the others that are in the market. Now, after-sales, immediately triggers the topic of service. Yes, service is probably not yet to the extent that we should have it. It's something that we strategically want to build up.
What is good to know is that in the last five years, we were able to double the proportion of service in total sales, now to 15%. The business that I referred to before as Clean Air Solutions business, is actually pure service, and is obviously a substantial part of that. Just to give you a feeling, we in Europe, only have about one million installed base, of these kinds of solutions. First went in more than 20 years ago, growing steadily. Obviously there is a huge opportunity to actively manage the service part. One way to have replacement parts like filters, we recommend that every unit should have their filters replaced once or twice a year. We know that we do not cover yet the majority of all this potential, so that's something.
At the same time, it's obviously also something that we can build further with cleaning of air ducts, but we'll hear more about that later on. A lot of that was own growth over the last 20 years, but I think it's also fair to say that we had many acquisitions that we carried out throughout that time. In a way, we were a consolidator in the market, a market that has been very fragmented, and that's something that we also want to continue. All that led now to the situation that it is two-third,s of our total sales, and that has shifted quite substantially. When I started seven years ago, the ventilation business was 45%, of our total sales. The rest was still hydronic components, and now it's 66%. You see that transformation is actually happening, is happening with an ever-increasing speed.
Now, at the same time, and that's not the focus today, yes, we also managed hydronic components actively. And yes, probably that's more our sunset activity, but it's still an important part of what we're doing. What we have done in the last couple of three years, we reduced capacities in all our production facilities along the decrease in market demand. We also closed two radiator factories. One is the factory that is here in Switzerland, or was here in Switzerland, right opposite of the road. Another one we closed in China. We also exited the closed ceiling business. That's actually what you see up here. That was an activity that we had for quite a while, but we were not able to make profitable. Let's go back to ventilation. Why do we believe ventilation, is really the right horse to bet on going forward?
Because there are actually some relevant economic factors, that will drive that demand. One,, is the regulatory environment. Today we estimate that roughly 50% of all new built homes in Europe, are what is called close to zero energy building standards. It is anticipated that this portion will increase substantially in the next coming years up to around 80%, 2027, 2028. That is obviously a driver. The tight hall means, and you saw it in the video, you need to reset or you need to circulate the air. I think another very important driver is an increasing requirement for a healthy indoor space, an increasing consciousness or sensitivity. That has to do, yes, we spend 90%, of our life indoor. You know, you have shifting patterns in society, remote work, but you also have an increasing aging population.
Indoor quality of the environment, healthy indoor quality, is very important. I think that's something that we, for example, see. Overheating of apartments is a big topic, but also obviously what you bring in from the outside to the inside and what you're able to suck out to extract. It's also about affordable living space. We all know that there is scarcity of living space. I think at the same time it's a problem of affordable living space. We believe that with our solutions, which really goes beyond just the ventilation into climate solutions, that if we're able to do that and, you know, position that in the market as an alternative to what is currently used, namely these water-based solutions, actually because you need the ventilation anyway, the tight hall, remember that we can at one point in time make a water-based solution redundant.
It becomes also interesting, not just because of the energy savings, that's an addition, that's a benefit, but because you actually don't have to have two separate systems. You can combine all in one system. These are really the drivers that we feel will play into our hands. These are trends that are actually happening in Europe, but not just in Europe. I just learned yesterday that, for example, California, as of January 1, 2026, for all multifamily homes, will require mandatory heat recovery and energy recovery ventilation, in every new built house. These are trends that are also happening in other markets of the world. We believe that we will benefit over proportionately from these global trends. Obviously, with our position that we already have and hopefully that we can extend, we then also will see the success.
Maybe just to give you an understanding about what really defines good indoor air quality or a good indoor environment. In the end, it's all about controlling certain parameters. We all understand temperature, that's an easy one, so between 21-24 degrees. Humidity, is obviously one that is very much underestimated. We all know summertime, 25 degrees at 50% humidity, is comfortable. 25 degrees, at high humidity is muggy, is murky, is schwül. That's something that obviously also needs to be addressed. In wintertime, it's the other way around. It's very dry. Then you have coughs, you have a rough throat. That's something that has to do with humidity. I think tight buildings, no air is going out. To cycle the air, you obviously want to get rid of the CO2 in the house.
You want to bring in the fresh air. That's another element that needs to be controlled. At the same time, yes, you could open windows, but if you open windows, whatever is in the outside air obviously comes inside. Just one topic, allergies. It's a very big topic. 25%, of Swiss population, and that's the Bundesamt für Statistik [Foreign language], have hay fever. It's something that, you know, you obviously want to keep outside. You have other situations, fine dust that you do not want to have in the house. At the same time, you want to get not just the CO2, out of the house, you want to extract other volatile compounds. I mean, if you cook, that's a typical one, every Swiss, knows that. You don't want that. Actually, these are also sometimes, you know, things that are not very healthy.
It's quite interesting. I had one of our new sensors that shows you green, red, or orange and shows you how the quality of the air is. I have a house from the 1980s. It's quite interesting when you cook on how bad the air actually gets and quite fast. It really helps also to raise the sensitivity on that. Finally, when you do that, you don't want draft. Everybody knows the American air conditioning units. When you switch them on, you have a stiff neck and you don't want noise. All these parameters actually we're able to address with our ventilation or with our climate solutions. We are the leader. Now the question is, how do you define the leader? We are the thought leader.
We are the innovator that comes with new concepts, and you will see that, and hopefully you will be also convinced. We also are the educator, educator of the market. Very often, I'd say the typical housebuilder doesn't know about it. What we are doing is we really go into the market and we train stakeholders, be it architects, be it planners, be it installers. That's what we do in our academies. That's the one from Switzerland, that you will see later on. We are really the educator, but also in a way the influencer. This thought leadership, I think this is what we want to maintain, but also hopefully extend.
With the growing market, obviously really have the success and have strategically our position in the very large HVAC space, because they are the big animals that focus on heat pumps and air conditioning, which are commoditized. This is where we want to be in that particular space where we can really differentiate and also secure a strategic position long term. Nurturing thought leadership, yes, I mentioned it's about innovation. It's about, you know, total solutions, about integrated solution. It's about this life cycle support service. It's about the education. It's about the training. It's obviously about the geographic presence. We focus on Europe. We still have large opportunities in Europe. We'll hear about that later. We focus at the same time on North America. I will talk a little bit about that myself.
The world is still big after that, but we have to make sure that we do not dilute our activity. These are the two main focus areas. At the same time, yes, we sniff at other markets, be it in Southeast Asia, be it in South Asia, and hopefully, you know, are able to then, once these markets start to really drive, benefit from that as well. Coming with different markets or even within Europe or within North America, you also cannot just have one standard solution. Important is that you are able to have, I call it now, adaptable solutions. You have different climates in Italy, than you have in Norway. You have the same situation in North America. You have also different building standards. You have different regulations. To have solutions and a portfolio that actually can cater to these differences, that is the key.
I think that's obviously a quite fragmented business as a smaller company. I mentioned before the very large companies in the HVAC industry, we might be better positioned for doing that. In a way, it's also not so easy to build that all up. Size, is not the key factor. It's really the way you can adapt to the local situations. What are the key measures going forward? Clearly we bet on geographic growth. I mentioned before what the two main areas are. The service business, you saw before, it's still relatively small. I think it's something where it's an area where we really have opportunities. We want to continue to be a consolidator.
Now, ideally, we look for bolt-on acquisitions, be it in certain geographic areas where we have a little bit of an underrepresentation, be it also on some technologies that we can then integrate into our solutions. At the same time, yes, there are also certain segments in the market where we are not yet historically very strong. Historically, we have had a very good position in single-family homes. One is obviously the move towards multifamily homes, but another one is also to get into the renovation. Renovation, as you can imagine, has different challenges. Therefore you again need certain products or solutions that are adaptable for that. Replacement, obviously, it's not a unit that lasts forever. It's good quality, but it has mechanical parts that turn all the time. We guesstimate that probably after 20-25 years, you need to replace the units.
Since we were increasingly growing our business, that should be kind of a ground noise, additional support in our way forward. We do not know exactly today how much that already is because a lot of these units were sold to partners. We do not know exactly where they are at. I believe that already today in certain markets, it is a relevant portion of our sales and that will increase over time. It is maybe interesting to know that the Netherlands, today is our largest market in ventilation. That is also the market where we have been probably for the longest. Probably one part of that market is, in fact, replacement business. This is our track record. You see it is a transformation that is ongoing. Actually, what we really want to do is to accelerate that transformation.
You see that it was own growth, but obviously also with several smaller bolt-on acquisitions. That is exactly the way we would like to continue. Now I just want to lose a few words about North America, because it is something that we might not be so familiar with here. I mentioned the new law in California. North America, you have totally different situations. First, Canada versus the U.S., because in Canada, actually it is mandatory to have energy recovery ventilation, in every new home. It is the market that has a 100% penetration on new built. We were able to purchase or acquire the company that had the number one position in Canada. That is the jump that you see between 2020 and 2022.
That is where you also see that actually the Canadian portion of our sales, is higher than the U.S. portion, even though population is 10 times less. Also, at the same time, you see that we have already a substantial part in the U.S. market. The U.S. market is 50 states. You do not have national building codes. They call it codes. You actually have codes by state or possibly even by community. I mentioned before the example of California. We have certain states in the U.S. that have the same penetration rate for these controlled mechanical ventilations like we have in Switzerland, for example, state of Washington and Northwest. You have other pockets where it is already a known alternative as a standard.
I think there obviously what we want to try to do is to extend our leadership in Canada, but at the same time, and this is going to be a phased approach to really drive the development in the United States. Again, what we can provide is not just a product, but like here in Europe, we can provide the total solution. Here you see where we're located. Red dots are our, let's say, locations and factories. We have three factories, in fact four factories. It's a small factory in Vancouver. They produce heat exchangers. We have a big factory in Buffalo. That's right at the Canadian border, in the state of New York. We also acquired this company in Canada, which is only about a three-hour drive from Buffalo in London, Ontario. Then we have a factory in Massachusetts for hydronic.
That's a radiator factory. We also have our center of competence for, let's say, the formerly imported products from Europe, which today we assemble locally and also source to a large extent all the components locally. As I said, leadership in Canada, we want to extend, but we also want to now focus on the U.S. The way we do that, in red, are our focus areas, our focus states. You have an existing base. I mentioned Washington before, but also in the Northeast. That is very much with building stands, maybe also with, let's say, sensitivity for even environmental topics because that then normally drives codes. You see that California is the one that we really want to focus now as an expansion state. In California, I think the time is ripe.
You do have people that want to have that indoor air quality like you have here in Europe. What we earmarked, and that is in a way a little bit of a different approach, is Texas. Why Texas? It is just the state where it happens. I think that is where the money is. There it will not be the codes. It will be an approach to really go in and try to be understood as a lifestyle product because in Texas, you have the highest amount of custom-built homes. That is in a way a trial. If this is successful and we have staged that in gates, see when we achieve what, and then we invest more, we want to do exactly the same thing in Florida.
Now, if you take the climates in Texas, you have very dry, but you have also very humid. Big issue. Florida, very humid topic. We feel that these solutions that we can provide are not only much more energy saving, but it's actually really yielding a better environment indoor. I think that's what we are trying to develop, like we did here in Europe, hopefully much faster in the North American market. If I look at, let's say, how will the market develop in general? Yeah, North America, you hear that, you know, building activities are rather weakening. I mean, you hear different stories. In effect, that's not really an issue for us because for us, it's the issue, are we able to follow with the codes, understand what that means, and then really increase the penetration rate?
Because the penetration rate, is still very, very small. So overall market development is one, but much more important is, are we able to push our solutions into the market? Whereas in Europe, yes, you know, I mean, I was asked already today, how do you see it now? You see it more positive. Yes, we have signs that, you know, some markets have already recovered and some, you know, are maybe shortly before recovery. One of the big question marks is obviously Germany. And in Germany, you know, if you look at Euroconstruct, the anticipation is actually that there will be higher building permits next year. Let's not forget, we are always late in the cycle, so we are not the ones that benefit early. Like a Geberit, you know, a ventilation unit is normally installed rather at the end.
We do not expect the big impact in 2026. But should that really now materialize, obviously it is definitely something that will support then more in the midterm. Nevertheless, we feel it is quite a stable situation and probably rather going in a positive direction. I also read other news, and now you could also see it more negative. Yesterday, there was an article. Switzerland, is at the brink of a recession. Germany, the barometer, is again lower for the outlook than it was the months before. Nevertheless, we feel, you know, overall there should be rather an improving situation. That is all for the big picture. Maybe just as a summary, yeah, we want to be the leader. We want to be the innovation leader. We do have strong market positions.
It's not a huge market, but it is a very beautiful niche where we can be the number one, where we also can defend the number one position. We clearly want to grow in solutions, and that's something that you will learn about today. We want to also grow externally and play a role in the consolidation of the market. At the same time, besides Europe, we clearly also have a focus on the North American market. Finally, service for the, let's say, ventilation business and the residential. That's the one that we mostly talked about right now, but also for the Clean Air Solutions. That's what Patrick will present.
It's definitely an area that we want to build up to ultimately also have a much more stable situation, get less dependent on the new build cycle, which already today, and I think people who have attended the half-year conference, is also quite advanced because even in Germany, where we have seen a decline in new build over the last few years, all our key ventilation markets, actually were able to grow. That gives us also the confidence that this growth is on a sound foundation and that we can build on that and hopefully accelerate that.
That's what I want to do. Good morning from my side. In the coming 30 minutes, I will go a little bit more into the detail of the European strategy, first with some definitions and market sizing, and then the key actions that we're taking.
I'll come back to your question during the presentation. I realize standing here in front of you today that I might be a little bit of a new face. Please allow me a quick introduction. Dorien Terpstra's, I've been in the construction industry for approximately, I just realized, nearly 25 years. Time goes fast with companies such as Siemens Building Technologies, for over 16 years in different markets in Europe and Asia. Afterwards, with an engineering firm called PEURU, based in the Nordics, but a global provider. Since 2020, with the Zehnder Group. I started as Managing Director, of Belgium and the Netherlands, and since the start of 2024, as CCO for Europe. The second thing before we get started is why do I work for Zehnder?
I will never forget during the interview phase when coming to Zehnder, yes, we have beautiful solutions and it's definitely a USP. I had an interview with one of the account managers, and I asked him, why do you work for Zehnder? He said, I can make that very clear. He said, I just recently sold a solution to a customer that was experiencing health issues. No, I cannot take away the disease, but because of the healthy indoor climate we created, actually the medication of that person could be reduced. Now, if that doesn't wake you up in the morning, it does for me. We not only create healthy solutions, we also have a contribution to it being more comfortable in the homes. The indicators Matthias already gave, but we also contribute to the energy transition with heat recovery technology. That as a quick start.
Let's now get to some numbers and indicators. What are we talking about? In the first half year of 2024, total ventilation sales, was $328.4 million, and it consists of different segments. I will be talking about the red quadrant, the indoor ventilation, and I will give you more detailed definition in a second. My colleague Patrick, will talk about Clean Air Solutions, in the afternoon. We have a separate, under a separate brand, core heat exchangers. One portion, of those heat exchangers go into the channels and into our solutions, and another portion, goes via third party straight to market. When we look at indoor ventilation, we have different aspects of it.
You will also see later today, and some of you have seen it before, is the actual climate devices that together with the air distribution and accessories, such as valves and sensors, etc., we create into climate solutions. That is one thing to have a full climate solution. It also needs to go to market. It needs to be installed. It needs to be commissioned, a very important step, and also needs to be serviced over the life cycle. To give you a little bit of a feeling, now we come to the half year, 2024-2025. What are the key indicators? Within indoor ventilation, we see that the product share still takes the lion's share of all our sales, so approximately 92%. Yet service has already grown to an 8%, and I will show a little bit later on what our plans are for services across EMEA.
We talked a little bit about new build and renovations and what we have seen, and I will show that in the upcoming slide. Here you already see the result is that our markets, due to the construction, new build construction going down in Europe a little bit, that our customers also move more into renovation. If you look at our share of where we sell our solutions today, we see 65%, in the new build and 35%, in renovation. Then we have what we call, so have a so-called residential buildings, single-family homes, multi-family homes, but we also have light commercial. Think about schools, think about daycares, and there we already have a 15% share,, of the total market as well. Matt already indicated with all the trendings and the economic indicators that yes, we see the first markets in Europe.
When you look at single-family homes and multi-family homes, we see some return of the market. If you talk about Europe, we have many markets. Some markets grow faster than others. Fundamentally, the first indicators are positive for our growth areas. Having said that, at the same time, we are very well aware of everything that's going on in the world, which also impacts Europe. We always remain cautious and plan accordingly. Just to come back also to the statement of Germany, we always plan on all scenarios so that we are proactive in steering our business. We come to a picture of potential. I always get very enthusiastic about this picture. It's something we have trained our organization on as well to have a common language across all European markets, to understand and define our strategies.
What you see here is a segmentation of our market. On one hand, single-family homes, an area that Matt, already indicated that we were already known for for many years. In the second column, the multi-family homes, which is a clear growing market segment, and the light commercial. You also have bigger scale commercial and industrial solutions, where typically also Clean Air Solutions fit in. Then you have the new builds, the renovation share, and the service share. Now, I could imagine that when you look at this picture, you say, what are your sources? What we do and what we have built, and that is not something that we do one time. It is a structural process that we follow.
We have a market intelligence dashboard that we use within our company that is being fed by external statistical sources and is being validated in customer interviews. That means that we follow government statistics on new builds, permits. We look at typical penetration rates, into certain markets, and we combine that with the average volume, that our solutions provide into a typical building. Now, for some of the markets, it's very clear and known, these statistics. Next to being CCO, I'm also president of the Ventilation Association, in the Netherlands. Their statistics are extremely clear. If you move a little bit further to the east of Europe, it's more challenging. What we try to do there is with ongoing customer interviews because the parties in the market are known and cross-correlating volumes to come to a good assessment. As mentioned, this is not a one-time exercise.
We started this already in 2023 when we started developing targeted strategies across Europe, and we try to enrich and improve the information. I think fundamentally the key message is there is a lot of potential. The question is, how do we capture that? There, similar to what you have seen from Matt's presentation, in the first section, also Europe, has an action plan encompassing geographic expansion into growth markets across Europe. We will focus on the service business moving forward. I will talk a little bit about one of the most recent acquisitions that, without any doubt, you have read about, the SEBER acquisition, and how that helps us to grow in multi-family homes. Talk a little bit about renovation. Maybe you saw already the cube outside, if not, later on over coffee, have a quick look.
I will talk a little bit about our fundamental growth levers, how we train and which customers we approach in which channels. Let's start with the first one. Geographic expansion. On the right-hand side, you see the actual results and markets, our top markets in Europe today. We also indicated it in a geographic map. That map in the coming years will move beyond the current green fields. Which areas are we looking at? We see a clear growing demand in the east of Europe. We saw it already coming in the south of Europe, even though the Spanish market, is currently a little bit struggling, but structurally, long-term demand is clear for the Spanish market. At the same time, in north, we have a huge expansion for servicing. I will show the share of the service later on.
For each of these markets, we took the segmentation that you saw on the prior slide and detailed it so we can make tailored strategies. We have a leading position in several markets, but we see growing shares, and you see it already if you look at the top 10, and you see certain markets that we will be expanding and will also see in the future. One example being Poland, on the rise, hopefully pretty soon. We can also mark that in the green. That's geographic expansion. Now, let's talk about service. When we talk about service, it's important to understand what types of services there are. In our industry, there's typically two types of services or a common definition that's being used. One, is product-related services, and there you can see filters, spare parts, commissioning services, maintenance services.
At the same time, you also have full replacement services. I will show a little bit the famous 1 million units, that we have in the field where the shares are across Europe, but that provides, of course, a huge potential. The second term, which is often used in our industry, is value-adding services, and there we start moving on to digital services. To give you a concrete example, a ventilation solution today needs filter replacement. You can sell filters. That's one option. Number two, you could create subscription services. Second option, we already offer that today. Imagine a world where we proactively monitor your unit and can advise you, this is when you need the new filter, and it would automatically be sent to your home.
We are on that journey to come from classic services to slowly but surely move on to digital services, but our first top priority is to expand the existing service packages that we've defined in our mature markets across Europe. To give you a bit of a feeling, and you will see on the circle central, northeast, southwest. It was not mentioned before, but to give you a feeling, within Europe, we work with regions based on technology and geographical trends. At the same time, also all regions have a bit of a different recipe for the next steps moving forward. So region central stands for Dachbene. And there, of course, from a historical perspective, we have a huge installed base, and we will be expanding much more into new types of services.
If you look at the northeast, west, south, there we have already quite a substantial share in north, but there we are really looking into expanding the existing service packages that we have defined already for region central into these new markets. If you're a growing market such as the east, then of course you also need the supporting tools and processes, and that's exactly why we put on European level one team, in place to start supporting that expansion across Europe, with the proven solutions that we have. Now, out of that 1 million, over the years, Matt, named it already, Netherlands as one example.
Of course, we've already brought replacement solutions to the market, but I am convinced, based on the market intelligence that we have, is that we have huge potential there for the coming years moving forward, and we need to be proactively in defining what we offer at which point in time. We developed an action plan across EMEA, and we are aiming for a 15% service share, by 2030. Again, first based on proven packages we have today, expanding them across Europe, and at the same time making our steps into new digital services. I move to value-adding acquisitions. Here you see the case of SEBER, a beautiful company that we bought in Spain. We bought it for two reasons. One of their good positioning within Spain, but also with a clear expansion plan for multi-family homes.
They have a solution which fits exactly for that target group. Two purposes. About the integration, I think what we've done in the last, I think it's 12, 13, 14 months now. What we decided to do is to do a lean integration. Really understand which activities do we want to integrate because it was a smaller company. We are a little bit bigger in size. There are many bigger companies, but what you do not want to do is overload a company. There was a very clear plan what to integrate, what not. There was a dedicated team put in place and a very clear 100-200 day milestones. At the same time, we also identified that piece of the portfolio, that we wanted to expand across Europe, with a clear cascading of which markets first.
We have already launched in Italy, the Baltics, and Belgium, and are hitting the target. That makes me personally very happy as a commercial person. The current plans, and actually as we speak this week, we have the big launch in the east to go live in 2026. All activities have been cascaded to have this expansion across Europe. For multi-family homes, this acquisition was very important. I think when we talk about acquisitions for the group, it always is correlated to the strategic expansion, that we want to achieve. Now, when it comes to renovation, how do we approach the market? On one hand, and the question came before, it is with targeted solutions. On the other hand, what is also important for us is that we get the message out there, and that goes from a multitude of channels. It is not only marketing.
It's creating awareness, and it's also not a short-term campaign. This is a campaign, that we will run for multiple years. What do we do? We create, on one hand, awareness. In the second step, we start loading with knowledge articles and events. In a third step, and we already launched this in the first two markets, we also create lead generation tools with already the first results to make it very targeted over time to go into that market segment. Renovation is, for example, we go also a little bit beyond. I'll give you two examples. One from the U.K., one from the Netherlands. We are heavily involved in the Healthy Homes initiative, of the U.K. government, and it focuses on mold in renovation, which is unfortunately the case.
We try to influence also that regulation, which is already improving exactly in the U.K., that that also is that regulatory environment, what Matt, indicated already in his section, that drives not only the business, but also fundamental change that we need to see in these markets. Second case, is that also in the Netherlands, together also with multiple parties from the market, we were heavily involved in influencing the government to focus on what the impact is for housing associations and why beyond standards on energy labels, we also need standards for a healthy indoor climate. On one hand, structural campaigns, including lead generators, at the other hand, also influence on the legislation. The question came, how in Europe, do you approach the market? Now I come also to two fundamental topics in how we go to market.
We, from back in the day and through acquisitions, we had basically three different types of routes to market. On one hand, the classic sales via wholesalers, installers, to investors and users. We also have markets where we directly approach installers and investors, and we also have markets or channels that we go straight to the end user. What is our strategy moving forward? If you look at the sales time spent, and the sales time spent is something else than where the money flow comes from. In the construction industry, this picture will not be new to many of you. Normally, the financial flow goes via the wholesaler, but it is about where you spend the time and where you create the demand. The current time spent across Europe, with our sales force is shown in the pie diagram.
I think what is very important, we have tailored strategies by region on which channel we want to approach. For example, one market that traditionally might be focused on wholesalers has set a clear target. I want to move to installers. Another market that I visited last week has a very clear focus on, I want to increase my go-to-market to architects. By market, we define on the market characteristics, what is needed and redirect our sales force to go exactly in that direction so that we can maximize our position. Training, extremely important point. Training for us, this is the number on European level. By market, I would have to detail and quickly look it up, but the overall number is approximately 25,000 trainings. It's not something, there are a few things going on in the market in general.
On one hand, we have a lack of skilled labor force, and there is increasingly pressure with fulfilling the needs for construction to also have a one-time right. It means that if we train our partners, we can reduce their time on the field because it is one-time commissioning and they know how to do it. Whereas otherwise, we would have back-and-forth questions through which our partners lose time in the field, which they really do not have with the number of skilled labor force that we have across Europe. One other trend that we see that I did not mention before, but still would like to highlight, is that due to the reduced labor force across Europe, we see an increasing need in industrialization of houses. We see, on one hand, houses being produced in factories, what we call prefab companies.
The second trend is that you see a lot of off-site construction concepts, so not built in the factory, but one concept that are being rolled out across markets. What we actively do, and that's the advantage of being a European player, is that we can support across markets. Typically, Baltics, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, have these kinds of providers, but those installations might end up in other markets. We can still service it if it comes from other markets into market A to market B, because we have the workforce to support that. That is one of the advantages that we have. Coming back to training, it is very important that we train our partners so they are effective in the field. It also gives them a value-add. In that sense, we have tailored trainings for the different channels, so different trainings for architects.
We have different trainings for specifiers, installers. At the same time, today you will see it live, one of our academies. Already in the last year, we expanded. We just recently opened up in Norway. We're going live in January, with an academy in the U.K., and we have an extension planned also for our location in Zwolle. We have one team across Europe, that provides knowledge assets that all our trainers locally can use and tailor to their specific demands. I think the last element I would like to mention about the academies, in many of the markets, the academies, we also work with partners, meaning that, for example, in the U.K., we have a partnership with the Healthy Homes Association. We also can certify later on people beyond our own activities into the market.
We try also together with educational facilities support there. We currently stand at 25,000. I would like to see that number increase also with the expansion that we have planned across Europe. In short summary, we have identified in Europe, the potentials by market and made a tailored plan for each market. We will be focusing on regional expansion in those growth markets. We will expand the multi-family homes, with the solutions we acquired recently. Service business, proven packages from mature markets will be expanded across Europe, at the same time that we commence in digital offerings. We continue to focus on our go-to-market strategies and academies.
Good morning, ladies and gents. Also from my side, I have the pleasure to use the next 30, probably a bit more, Alex, you forgive me, minutes to give you a deep dive on our European, residential ventilation business.
When we talk about residential ventilation, and we have heard it from Matthias earlier, we talk about heat recovery ventilation business. The reason we do that and believe in that solution, you see on this slide. If you want a healthy indoor air quality and an energy-efficient building, the solution to go for is heat recovery ventilation. You might say, I guess you're all number-driven persons. How can you say that in that confident? I just would like to mention two studies we did, or one study we participated, the other one, another one. First, Project Büren. That's a multi-family home in Switzerland, for apartments we looked at together with the University of Applied Science. We equipped all the apartments with sensors, for indoor air quality, also the windows, so we could calculate for how long, how wide the windows were opened.
We also knew what people were living in there. Just to give an example of the findings there, as we observed that project over the course of a full year, if you look at the air quality, in the master bathroom of two apartments, both a couple was living in, one couple had two cats, the other couple only a dog. We measured the hours in the year where we had CO2 concentrations above 1,000 ppm. That is considered that some ventilation is required. The air, is not fresh anymore. In one bedroom, we had how many hours? 1,000, 2,000, 3, 4, 5. We had more than 5,000 hours of CO2 levels above 1,000 ppm. If we look at the other one, we only had 100 hours in a year. We are talking out of 8,600 hours, more or less.
Now, what's the difference? Some might say dogs are good for indoor air quality, cats not. It's a different case. One apartment had a ventilation unit, a ComfortQ, the other one not. I think it clearly shows if you want to have a good indoor air quality, it's a mechanical ventilation you need. A similar study was done in the Netherlands by VHK. It's a research consultancy working a lot on behalf of the European Union, together with TU Delft. They looked at 60 homes, with different ventilation systems, from window ventilation to mechanical extract ventilation, heat recovery ventilation. They came exactly to the same conclusions. They calculated a bit different. It's a so-called Moniker study. They calculated the number of excess doses CO2 you get, and then also the energy consumption during the heating period.
What you clearly see as a result, the houses where you get the least amount of excess CO2 doses and which are the most energy efficient are the ones with balanced ventilation, so heat recovery ventilation, while window ventilation, as well as mechanical extract ventilation, are positioned more in the top right. I think now knowing that the solution to go for is heat recovery ventilation, why is that? We briefly heard also from Matt that we see a strong trend towards nearly zero energy buildings. I think that's also on, at least on a European level, as you all know, 40%, of the CO2 emissions, are coming from buildings. We have a target of net zero within the next 25 years, so I have to do something about it.
That's why on a European level, we drive the building standards towards this nearly zero energy building, low energy buildings, whatever you call them. Now, I think what are two key characteristics of a nearly zero energy building? I think first and foremost, we also have heard it's an airtight building envelope. So the building itself cannot breathe anymore. You need a lung for a building, which is a mechanical ventilation system. Now, probably some of you might ask, if it's that crystal clear, why don't we do more business? I think that's probably also related to a rather abstract value proposition, at least at first, in combination then with some limitations in knowledge about the building physics. If I ask you, what's a good ventilation system? You don't want to see it, you don't want to hear it, and you don't want to feel it.
We heard no draft. For this, you pay CHF 10,000-CHF 15,000. Rather a lot for something you do not even notice, at least at first. I think that is there. It is our challenge to really drive that consciousness, the awareness of what is required to make a building forward across Europe. I think, especially in the context we have seen, probably also the last two or three years, I was yesterday at the summit here in Switzerland, for our HVAC industry, whose partner presented their study on the construction cost development, over the last 10 years, which increased in Switzerland, around 25%, on multi-family apartments, more than 30%, on single-family homes. This, even though we did not see much of inflation in Switzerland, compared to our neighboring countries.
In that context, it's a lot of money, and we have seen certain challenges that are also convincing really to make the ventilation system, being installed. I think if I look at recent developments, I'm positive that this will, at least in the mid to long term, change. Just to give you three examples, if we look at the EPBDs, the Energy Performance of Building Directives, that's the framework on the European Union, driving the construction or the building regulations. They were revised last year, and for the first time, we managed to get the indoor environmental quality into them as a pillar, a key pillar for a sustainable and healthy home. On a European level, we have recognized we just cannot have airtight building envelope, high insulation, and the heat pump. We need something more that the building works.
Now it's up to the member states to implement this in their own countries over the next couple of years. Another example, and this is on a global scale, I think many of us remember a few months ago in New York, United Nations, the General Assembly, there was an initiative of 130 corporations, universities, NGOs, placing a pledge for healthy indoor air quality. I think it's the first time that on a global scale, it's the drive to make healthy indoor air quality, a public topic and really driving towards that goal on a global scale. The last example, a third one, I don't know whether we have anyone from the U.K. in here. A few weeks ago, end of October, the so-called Awaab's Law, came into place. Not sure whether you have heard of it.
It has a tragic beginning as it's the consequence of the death of a two-year-old Isaac Awaab. That's where the name's coming from, who died because of continuous mold exposure. He was in a flat without ventilation. They had mold continuous and got infected and died. And this Awaab's Law, makes actually now the landlords accountable for the building health. They cannot blame the tenants anymore, that it's because they are not ventilating or whatever. It puts quite strict deadlines on how you have to respond to inquiries or complaints, acknowledging within 24 hours, three days to investigate, 10 days, to find a solution. I think that's also what we see in the U.K. when we look at the market, which has been a very positive market so far, as this was expected. This law comes into force. We see a strong growth within ventilation.
If you look at the different ventilation segments, an upgrade towards higher quality systems. From single point ventilations, the ones you know from the bathrooms, which only run when you have the light on, to continuous mechanical extract ventilation, and from this even into heat recovery ventilation. Overall, it takes time. Sometimes it's a bit of a bumpy road, but I think especially also what we have seen now in the last years, the awareness is increasing. With this, we also are confident that over the years, the adoption rate of heat recovery ventilation should drive hopefully also our business. That was about the first airtight. Coming back to my initial questions, the two characteristics, of nearly zero energy buildings. The second one, good insulation.
If you look at these buildings, I mean, coming from Switzerland, where you traditionally have heating as a key topic during wintertime, if you talk of a passive house standard, low energy, you usually have 10 watts per square meter peak load, you should have. If you have a 100 square meter flat, it's 1 kilowatt. This is equal to a hair dryer. With a hair dryer, you can heat throughout the winter your apartment. Or in other words, if you look at ourselves, each and every one of us is a small radiator. We have 60 to 100 watts of heat, we emit, meaning you need probably seven, eight people, put it in that apartment, and you won't need to heat it anymore. If I look at us here, we have probably four, five kilowatts of heating power.
That's why we have aircon and the ceiling activated to keep the temperature at a good level. We have only a few months left with limited requirement for energy. In combination, I think that's also what has been on in the headlines all over. Just a few weeks ago, ETH, also published a study about the global warming, the trend. We do not need much energy for heating anymore. Heating is probably required November, December, January, February. As of April, May, you have another topic, cooling, which is also now north of the Alps, something we have to deal with. Especially also look at office buildings, a lot of people inside, then the laptops, et cetera, the load you have on those. As of May, you usually start cooling those buildings until September.
This becomes not only in commercial, but more and more also in residential building a topic. I'll come back to that later on how we try to leverage on that trend. Now coming to the second part, a bit more our offering, what we have been doing and are doing going forward. Oh, sorry, that was a bit slow. Good. I think I won't spend too much time on that. We have later on also in the academy time to look at our products. I think in general, we have a rather wide product offering, really targeting the residential ventilation business, where we really can, depending on the requirements, offer a good solution. It's not only heat recovery ventilation, as we see up here, it's also extract ventilation, especially in two markets. We are actually quite strong also in extract ventilation market.
With the acquisition of Galader, we also entered the commercial air handling unit market, different market, a big market, probably more stable. Also filters, we have heard, part of our service business. We did an acquisition also a few years ago, Filtech, which really gives us everything it takes to develop the filter business, where we on one side see a lot of potential on our install base, but it is also an interesting market by itself. Now looking a bit more in depth of our product portfolio, and I think we have heard it before, Zehnder, we try to differentiate through the value of our products and systems. We are not a price fighter, but we really want to differentiate. We have heard thought leadership lead the way. I think a perfect example of what we mean by that is the ComfortQ.
It's an old, it's an oldie, but still a very successful unit. Actually, if you look also at the growth we are experiencing at the moment, this unit is one of the important drivers behind the growth. Now, why? I think it's still a benchmark in terms of heat recovery ventilation unit. It's a champion in stakeholder management. We have heard we have the wholesalers. They are interested in few numbers, SKU numbers. You have left, right version in one, so you cut the stock keeping units by half just by that. We have the installers. They want easy commissioning installation. Guided commissioning is still best in class. We have the end users. They do not want noise, energy efficiency, best in class. We have obviously the specifiers. We have heard a crucial part, which are also interested in this.
There we really managed to satisfy all the different stakeholders in a way that they are coming back and stick to this unit and drive the growth. Now, we remember what we just discussed before. Nearly zero energy buildings. You need ventilation due to the airtight building envelope, and you need little heating, and you need cooling. That is what we did here. We have our core, the heat recovery ventilation unit. That is our core competence. We build on this. We add the so-called ComfortClime. It is an air-air heat pump, reversible, where we can in summer cool the supply air. We blow into the flat at 15 degrees, for example. In winter, we can blow in at 55 degrees. To complete the complete system, we have developed a fully insulated air distribution to avoid any risk of condensation or whatever in summer.
As we also have heard from Matthias and my example before, nowadays for heating, you need one, two kilowatts. That is what we can bring through the air. We have first examples. We also have field studies in Italy of a passive house where the only system for ventilation, heating, and cooling, this ComfortClime system, is where we can ensure a comfortable indoor air quality and climate throughout the year. It is not from today to tomorrow. It takes time. We have heard specifiers. The decision makers are crucial, and that is now our job to really convince them, explain them, and get those new systems into the market. We have talked about our product systems, and I would like to highlight briefly also innovation, as we spend quite some money on product development.
You have seen a brochure on your desk with what we have been doing and launching the last few years. I would like to highlight three examples of systems we have been developing and highlighting in the last year. I start with the ComfortDuct Attivo. Now, what's that for? We have heard renovation is a market we want to grow. Not that easy, due to the framework you have to deal in. One of the challenges we face there is we have our fresh air, and we have heard air distribution. We usually distribute the air in tubes to the rooms. Now, to get those tubes in, that's a lot of work. You need to open all the walls, put in the tubes, close them again. Can't we find a way where we don't need to use tubes to distribute the air?
That is exactly an active overflow element we see here. We bring in the fresh air centrally, which is usually easier, especially if you also look at the floor maps of old houses. You have a central corridor, and from there you have the different rooms. We use this overflow element to get the fresh air into the single rooms. If we look at this product, and I think we are not the only one doing it, but we took a new approach to it. We use different kinds of fans, which are more efficient and less noisy. Instead of actual fans, we have a centrifugal fan. We have used new materials, a foam, which is mainly used in automotive, which has very good sound damping characteristics.
We have managed to get it from a size-wise in a design that you can flush mount it within an 8, 10 centimeter wall. All you see is the two grills. I think a nice product. Obviously, you're interested to see how much sales we generate. We do not talk about specific sales numbers, but I think we can say we are not there where we want to be. It takes time. We launched it three years ago, but a few weeks or three months ago, for the first time, I got a prescription on my desk of a project here in Switzerland, new build, where we have several hundreds of those in the prescription. We still have hope, and we keep going to also get those nice products out in the market and increase our share in renovation. The second example is the ComfortVar Aero.
That's a variable airflow regulator. If you have a multifamily house, 50 flats, you still want to have the possibility to get the airflow per apartment. You use this one. In the end, it's a valve opening or closing, so you get more or less air. It's actually quite a competitive and existing market, several 10,000 alone, in Switzerland, where all have the same solution. It's a sheet metal box, two valves, controls on it, and you ship it. There we also took a completely different approach. First of all, from the design side, we split supply and extractor. This gives full flexibility. We moved from sheet metal into, let's say, EPP plastics, which gives us, from a material scalable point of view, an advantage.
We developed and also patented a new valve, which is a so-called ball valve, which has very nice properties, as we have a linear airflow, not creating any turbulences. With this, we have much lower noise levels, which is always a concern of the people living there. By the way, for a few years we also have seen that we are not the only one liking that idea, as there is a SkyFlow, for example. At least from a look and feel, it looks like this, obviously it does not have our valve technology. Last but not least, I would like to highlight the ComfortFit 100. It is a so-called CMI central unit, targeting especially multifamily homes. In multifamily homes, you have heard before the questions, what is the difference? Usually, they are smaller, and we actually see now a trend towards smaller apartments again, so you need less air.
Since they are smaller, you also do not have space for a lot of technical installations. You need to be compact. That is exactly what this unit is doing. We can bring 100 cubic of fresh air, in an hour. Usually, as a rule of thumb, you have 30 cubic per person. We can cover up to two bedroom flats with this, studio, one, two bedroom flats, which is a considerable market. You have full flexibility in terms of installation. You can put it on the ceiling, you can put it on wall or in wall. With this, we have also a solution now really addressing the multifamily home market, which obviously is slightly different compared to single family home, as it is also much more specifier driven, which you do not really have in the single family home.
Again here, launched three years ago, we learned earlier this year that the idea was appealing also to certain competitors, which presented that ISHA prototype, to be launched next year. I hope we really make use of our head start. Taking one step back in terms of innovation and where we focus on, I think there we have three areas we deal. We have seen we have a big product portfolio. Obviously, this requires quite some maintenance. That's where we upgrade products. We have end-of-life components. Especially a few years back, probably some of you remembered, there was quite some challenges in the electronic market to get components where we spent an awful lot of time to find replacements on component level in order to keep our production running. We have the so-called technology area.
There we work also a lot with external parties. There it's all about finding new materials, new technologies which we can use in our product solutions. Now, as we have heard, in the end, we have the topic noise. We have the energy efficiency of the fans. We have the heat recovery, and we have the size. Unfortunately, these are contradicting. The smaller the unit, the higher the noise, and the lower the efficiency. The bigger the unit is, so you need to find a compromise. We are looking at new materials. I mentioned before the overflow element with the foam we have used, which are sound damping, which we can use in our products.
Another topic we are looking in is all the electronics controls together with IoT connectivity, that we easily integrate into smart home systems, where we are on the way to develop a complete new platform for all our products. A last topic which we have been or still are working intensely is automation, especially in our assemblies. We have had quite some external collaboration with universities there as well, as we were developing a set of tools and methods on how we can later on use the automation robots in our assembly line. This obviously also had an impact on our design, which is now ongoing in the development organization, the design for automation that we can later on take the next steps. Last but not least, probably the most important part, what we have seen, what I talked, the new product development.
We are not short of ideas, and we are working on nice, hopefully good projects. We want then also to present the latest in Frankfurt, at the ISH, the lead fair for HVAC in 2027 early. Good. That much about the innovation. Coming to the last part, our operational backbone, the footprint. You see briefly the overview of all the locations we have. I do not know whether some of you remember our last capital market day, which was many years ago up in Zwolle, where we have the biggest location, a well-invested plant where we produce all the heat recovery ventilation units, where we also have all the development team, the lab. Now we have in Lahr a team, which we also have been growing. It used to be only air distribution. Now we also have established a team for decentral heat recovery ventilation.
They're the development, which is mainly a German market, so to be close to the market and the customers there. Then we have a team in Campogalliano, that's newly established in the last five, six years. On one side, they have been bringing up all the climatic ventilation devices and hopefully also some more to come, you have seen. On the other side, we have established there our electronics team, software development for this new platform, but they also were obviously doing the control algorithms for our climatic ventilation systems so far. Porvoo, in Finland, that's a small location, mainly for the Finnish and Norwegian market, came with the acquisition of Enervent, many years back. We have new Maidstone. Last time it was still Lenham, I think three years ago, probably we moved into a new location close to the old one, but twice the size.
At the same time, we started to renew all the machine park we have there. I think I'm quite proud of the team there, as if I look back in the last three years, we managed to triple revenue, out of that factory and are actually now already optimizing the space in order to be ready to grow further. Last but not least, we have Galader, the acquisition we did in France, also a very nice plant, not too old, well invested. There we also have the whole commercial business, the air handling unit business, also a good year so far. There we are also working on how we can extend the capacity further. Coming to an end of my part, and I think that's the nice part, if we look at the ventilation business, it's primarily a people business.
You need to know, you need to have the right engineers, you need to know the right people on the sales side, be specifiers, installers in sales, in how we see the market and develop the units. It is not that much about how much capital you have, although we need capital as well. The primary part, what we do is really assembly. It is sub-assembly, assembly, and then a crucial part, quality assurance, testing of each and every single unit. We have two production parts. I will consider production on one side in France. It is the sheet metal bowing. We have punching, cutting, shearing to build the casing of air handling units. As just mentioned before, we have in Maidstone now, we have the whole injection molding where we do the plastics parts.
For Lahr, also more and more for Zwolle, but there it's always, if they want to get the order, they need to be better than the external injection molders. That's a way to keep us fit and agile, and at the same time, we manage hopefully to extend the space to keep up with the growth. Good. That's it from.
Two words about myself. Before I start, my name is Patrick. I'm from Sweden. Worked for Zehnder, for eight years and spent 20 years before that in the chemical and coatings industry. I'm very happy that I'm here to talk about cleaner solutions with you today. This is a small activity, but an extremely interesting activity that we have. In the next 30 minutes or so, you will hear me talk a lot about particles, about fine dust, about particulates. It might sound quite boring to start with, but I'm going to try to make you as excited about this business as I am by the end of the 30 minutes. Hold on to that. You will see in this presentation, I've added a number of pictures from our customers. You can see how we install our equipment.
If you're interested, on our website, you will find in a library 40-50 such cases. I personally find it very interesting because it gives you flavor for our business. Each business case, sees why the customer chooses us and what the benefits, how we help them. You will see the wide array of different kinds of customers we have. I would encourage you, have a look there. You don't need to look at all of them. Pick two, three, four, five, ones that you think sound interesting. Just by browsing through the descriptions, you will see what our business is all about, if you haven't understood it in detail after my presentation here today. To set the stage first, what are we talking about? Clean Air Solutions, we are one of the smallest activities or divisions within Zehnder Group.
We're 10%, of the overall ventilation business. We have activities in Europe and North America. We're very independent. I think Matthias, said it in the beginning. We are a company in company. We're very independent, and that for a good reason, because what we do is very different from the rest of the ventilation business. First of all, we focus on industrial customers. Our products are different. Also, how we sell, our channel to market is different. We sell a service and not a product. That makes us very special within Zehnder Group. Within Zehnder Clean Air Solutions, within our organization, we have everything we need to do business. We have the production, R&D, sales, marketing, logistics. Everything is in there. That makes us a little bit special. Why is Clean Air Solutions, such an interesting business?
First of all, what we do is product as a service. This is one of these buzzwords since, I would say, five or seven years. Everyone talks about product as a service, as a business, or product as a service. Very few are really doing it all in. There are some great examples. The companies have really taken the step, and a lot of them are trying out and doing it. We are really doing it. This is 100%, of our business. We are only selling services, even if we are producing equipment. We produce the air cleaners, the one you see on this picture here. We produce the air filters. We have an own patented filter, that we use as a prefilter in almost all of our installation. We do not sell it. We do not sell anything.
It's all in a subscription that we offer to our customers. They are paying a monthly fee, and we clean the air, in their production, in their logistics facilities, wherever they want us to clean it. It's not a new business. We've been building this. We've been very busy over the last decade. We built this really step by step. We have by now more than 3,000 active customers on service contracts in more than 20 countries. We do everything ourselves. We go directly to the end user. We don't have agents or wholesalers or distributors in between. We go directly to the end users, and we use our own people to do so in the sales function, but also in the service function, since we're selling a service.
We're doing it all with our own people, and that allows us to control everything from beginning to end in delivering the service to our customers. This helps us really to deliver. We have consistently been delivering an above-average growth, for the past decade and above-average EBIT margins. Where do you find us, or where do customers call and get in touch with us? Particulate matter or airborne dust in general, it's a big matter, and it's very, very often underestimated by a lot of customers. We tend to group and say, okay, what are the triggering factors? Why customers need our help? Number one, product quality. Here the keyword is contamination. You see it here in the picture. This is one of our customers. You have a big hole. You have different kinds of production steps.
I think this is a plastic foil manufacturer ,that also printing on the foils. You have activities in one area that is creating dust, and we just learned it over in the demonstration just now. Warm air rises if it's from machines or it's from people. If you have dust somewhere in a big hall, that dust will go all over, which means you have something you're doing in the corner, and that can contaminate what you're doing far, far away from that. This can be in the food industry. Food and beverages, is a big area for our customers, but it can be in a lot of other things as well. Think construction industry, where you're mixing or doing things. The other triggering factor is process stability. As companies are optimizing, digitalizing, equipment is becoming more and more sensitive. You have more sensors.
The smallest thing can cause equipment to malfunction. We have customers who even hold production lines and come to standstill. That is a lot of money. For some of our customers, if the production line stands for five minutes, it costs them thousands and thousands of EUR or CHF. Here they are coming in and asking for our help to see how can we make sure that that is not happening. The third area is employee health and safety. The biggest danger with dust or fine dust, is when you inhale it. It can cause a lot of various health issues. When it comes to companies that want to attract and retain good people in the organization to take care of the indoor air climate, make sure the air their employees are breathing, that that is safe, that is a big issue for them.
It can be that they have a lot of absenteeism. People are calling in sick, because of the unhealthy air they have. That is also a driving factor for our business. When we come into customers, sometimes it is not just one of these things. They have a product quality or contamination issue, and they have employees complaining about the work environment. For us, that is kind of a home run. It is very easy for us then to find a solution. Very often, the driver is not legislation. It is because it makes business sense. A lot of these things is very easy. You have a contamination issue, and that happens five times a year. Each quality complaint or product recall costs you $100,000. That is $500,000.
If we come in with a solution that costs a fraction of that, and we can reduce that claim rate or product quality rate with 80%, it's a clear business case. It's easy for the customers to say, this sounds like a really good idea to go with. When it comes to air pollution in general, like I said previously, it's very often very underestimated, very underestimated by many, many companies. When you look at statistics, it's one of the largest factors for early deaths. People are not aware of it. We think very often also about the outdoor. We think about the polluted big cities in Asia or South America, but we don't think about the indoor air climate, especially not where we're spending 8 to 10 hours a day, namely at work.
The thing is, it doesn't really matter what the dust, is or what the particle is. It's the size and amount that is creating a danger. We often like to talk and use what we call particulate matter. We talk about PM10. These are particles that have a diameter of 10 micrometers or smaller. The human body has good filters. If we breathe through our nose, we have a good filter here that catches normally the PM10 dust, but not what is smaller. If you have large dust particles that we are breathing in, we can see it. We can have a sore throat. It's getting stuck here. We can have runny eyes. These are, I would say, the easy particles. The smaller ones are really dangerous. Yeah. Like I said, it doesn't matter what it is.
It's the size and the amount, which means if it's smaller than PM10, normally our filters in the nose and throat don't catch it. It goes into the lung. You see on the slide here, it can cause a lot of different kinds of health implications. When it's smaller than two and a half micrometers, it can cross the air-blood barrier. It gets into our blood, and then it goes up and down. It can affect, and it can accumulate in all our inner organs. It can even go into the brain. The smaller the particle, the more dangerous they are. The thing is, you have dust everywhere, and a lot of companies are not aware of the problem. We like to say that issues are created coming from different reasons. One is the manufacturing process.
A lot of companies have manufacturing processes where the process itself is creating the fine dust. You see here, it's a welding site. You see fumes. Fumes, is nothing but very small dust particles. You see here in this case in the picture behind me, you see a welder. He's protecting himself. He's got fresh air flow coming in. What about the people that are not standing right there, that are working, doing something else around him? They're breathing in this dust, and that's really, really dangerous. That could be here. You can think of any process where you're cutting, where you are grinding, where you're welding. That process, is creating the dust. It's natural. You cannot do it without the creation of dust. The other area we have is where companies are working with powder substances. Very common in the food industry.
If it's a bakery or if it's where you are making snacks and you're putting all the tasty flavorings on top, it's all powders. It's also in mixing, in the construction industry where you're mixing things. I'm coming from the chemical industry. If processes are not housed in, so it's an open where you're mixing, and there are a lot of companies that are still mixing by hand, you have dust. It's really, really dangerous for those people that are working for extended periods of time in such environments. We have an example of where the pure activity in a building is creating a problem. Here's an example. We have a lot of business in warehouses, in logistics.
Every time when the gates are opened and they get a delivery, all that dust, all that stuff that is in the truck that is delivering, that is coming in. You're moving goods. All that is coming into your plant and is being carried all over your plant or your warehouse. You're cutting paperboards. You have paper dust that is going up. You have forklift trucks that are moving about. 90%, of the cases, even more, they have rubber wheels. That rubber, as they're going around, just like your car wheels are slightly being abrased, that dust is spreading with the activity where you're going around. That is inhaled by the people working there. It goes on all the goods. Here it's also employee health.
It's also a large or very high cleaning cost, to take care of it if you don't have a system like Clean Air Solutions, in place. When I look at our business, 80%, of our growth, and we're growing since a decade, we're growing double-digit organically. 80%, of our growth is coming from new customers. Customers that never had a similar system installed before. When we get in touch with them, it's the first time for them to start thinking about such a solution. When it comes to us to generate business, and our business, is a lot about business development, step number one, we need to create awareness because most companies never heard of it, never thought about it. In their mind, there is not such a solution or they have not been looking for it. We need to create awareness of the problem first.
When we have awareness, next step is lead generation. Then we start to get specific. Then we start, okay, woodworking industry. Are you aware of these and these issues? Are you aware of how there are solutions out there? We kind of throw out the line, the fishing line, and see who is interested in it. Those companies that then are reacting say, okay, let's have a talk. We are in there, and then it's really about specifically together with the customer going through and validating their needs to see, okay, what is the problem? What are the possible solutions we can have? What is the payoff? For us, it's always a one-to-one. Even if we have standardized product, in the background, every solution is customized because every production hall or logistics hall is different. They have different ventilation systems. They have different goods.
There are different production methods. They have different problems. We try to adapt our solution to every single customer. What it all comes down to is that we are adapting it. That means that we are the ones together with the customer that discuss and suggest what kind of product solution do we have or do we propose. What kind of air cleaners, what size, where to install them, what kind of filter. Do we have one, two, three-step filtration? Which kind of filter in each step? We take care of the installations. We also discuss where is the best way to install them. Where are the dust sources in a building? How often do we want to change the filters? We take care of it, but we agree with the customer. We will come by every two, every three, every four months, and we do it.
Also there, we're really getting into the details together with the customer. It's a very straightforward approach. It can be extremely quick. We like the quick business. Really identify the problem, work out the solution, install it, and then get the confirmation from the customer that Zehnder, has made a difference. This approach helps us. We win new customers every single day. New customers that never had a similar solution in place before. For the customer, there are almost only advantages. First of all, it's an all-inclusive service. Yeah, it's not an on-demand. It's there. We take care of everything. We keep our customers happy because if they're not happy, they will cancel the contract with us. And they can. It ensures that we are on our toes every single day. Our system is a very quick and easy retrofit solution.
We normally come in when the customer already has a problem. Yeah, we're not in the project phase. We don't talk to architects and planners and all that. We come in when there's a problem and we help the customer to fix it. The best way is, and we have customers really also confirming, we've installed our equipment, the next day they see the difference. It is very straightforward and quick and easy. That is also because Zehnder is, in this case, we are the specifier. The customer doesn't know what kind of equipment or what kind of filters they need. We have 3,000 existing customers. We are pretty good at finding the right solution. We are specifying it, what kind of equipment, how to do it. We are producing it. We're installing it. We own it.
We own all the equipment, install it, all our customers, and we service it. That makes it also easy. If any of these steps are not to the satisfaction of our customers, it's Zehnder. We're one call away. We take care of it. That's our service concept. Also for the customer, it's very risk-free. It's no big investments. If it doesn't work, they can cancel the contract. It's also very flexible, because we know that companies are growing. In some cases, companies are shrinking. Sometimes they have to shut down their operation. We can adapt or we do adapt our solution all the time. We'll come in and say, okay, you started another shift. Let's see how we might have to adjust our installation here. You change your production. Let's see how we need to refit it and change it. We need to change the filter configuration.
In some cases, they are struggling and we say, okay, we can reduce it. We do not need to change the filters as often anymore because you have reduced your activity and that way you can save money. It is very much partnering on a daily basis. If a customer says, okay, I need to shut down my production. I do not need the air cleaning anymore. Or if something is broken or so, first of all, we repair it. We reuse it. We refurbish and we recycle all the return units. We do not do this because of sustainability. Sustainability, is a great side effect of this. We have been doing this long before people started to talk about sustainability. We do it because it financially makes a lot of sense.
If we look into the future, the nice thing about our business is the business potential is almost unlimited because we can have potential customers left and right. The business model, like I said, we've been doing this for quite some time. It's things you need to test and try and improve, but I think we have something that is quite good meanwhile. Best of all, it's scalable. We have it in our organization. We're trying to be as close as we can to our customers. Everything that's customer-facing, we do locally. We have local teams in all the countries where we are. Everything in the background, we do centrally. Yeah, we do one marketing, one pricing, one production, one logistics setup. We have the same offering in all countries.
We're trying really to make things easy in the background, and that makes it easy for us to scale it and also expand. Our business, we don't have large dependencies neither on single industries, single countries, or single customers. We learned this. We saw it when we were right in the middle of the corona crisis. There was a big advantage for the business because some industries completely shut down, and we could just move focus and try to compensate it with other businesses. The customer base we have is extensive. Like I said, 3,000 customers, in a number of various market segments. And we're growing with our existing customer base. There's plenty of upselling potential, with our existing customers. Growth trajectory, we've been doing this. We've been growing double digits for the last decade. We've proven that the business model works.
Market potential, like I said, the addressable market is large. We just need to select those things where we see the biggest short-term potential. That might switch from year to year, from country to country. The way we grow is on the one hand side in our main markets, in large markets like Germany, the U.K., or the U.S., we're talking about increasing sales density. As we're growing, we make sales territory smaller. We can increase efficiency, and we can generate more growth by expanding our sales organization. We're also going into new regions, new territories. Mainly in Europe, it's going eastward and south, and in the U.S., going westward. We have plenty of expansion opportunities there as well. We have a constant inflow of new business coming in. It's a very positive business, with a great future. My last slide.
I think this is really a business that is strongly positioned for future growth. We're still very small, but we're doing step by step. We're changing that. I'm not sure if you noticed in my presentation, I haven't shown any detail on products. I haven't gone into specifications. In our business, that's almost irrelevant. We're solving customer problems. The customer trusts us to come up with the best solution for their problems. If it doesn't bring, if we don't meet their expectations, it doesn't matter what the technical specifications are. Yeah, they will cancel the contract.
Financial insights. Pleased to walk you through the financial insights behind our performance and also priorities. I would like to start with a brief recap of the performance in the first six months. We were able to achieve a double-digit growth, driven by ventilation, organic growth, but also for the acquisition of SEBER.
The EBIT, increased significantly to EUR 32.7 million, mainly due to the higher volume, and also due to cost reduction, on the radiator side. We also had a strong focus on cash generation. That is reflected by an increase of 60%, of the operating cash flow. The net income was more than tripled thanks to the EBIT improvement, and also thanks to the absence of one-off costs, in the first six months. Our equity ratio, is still above 50%, despite the acquisition of SEBER in July 2024. Our ventilation business, achieved a double-digit EBIT margin, despite the investment in innovation, as mentioned by Johannes, and also expansion markets mentioned by Dorien. Again, the Clean Air Solutions business, is above this average of the ventilation segment. Also, the growth in the first six months in the ventilation business, was significant with 24%. Organically, it was 15%.
We also achieved a double-digit EBIT margin, in the last few years where the market environment was weak, and we invested further to strengthen our position. Here we see the development of sales and EBIT adjusted, over the last seven years. We were able to increase the EBIT margi,n between 2018 to 2021, to nearly 10%. In 2023 and 2024, the market environment was challenging. We also used this phase to strengthen our foundation and to make our homework to strengthen our competitiveness. I think we have proven in the first six months that these measures taken in the last few years, but also the better market environment helped us to significantly improve our performance and recover. Capital allocation. We have a clear and consistent capital allocation in place. We mainly have two areas.
On one side, it's the ventilation business, organic growth through market expansion, through innovation, and the other side through add-on or bolt-on acquisition, as already mentioned by Matt. The other part is a return to shareholders. We have a profit-oriented dividend policy, that we pay between 30%-50%, of our net income, as dividend, to our shareholders. How does it look in figures? In the last five years, we paid EUR 180 million, to our shareholders dividends, but also one share buyback program, and we invested EUR 180 million, in acquisition. That was mainly in two years. In 2022, it was the acquisition of Lifebreath in Canada, and then last year, it was the acquisition of SEBER in Spain. In these five years, we generated an operating cash flow, of EUR 383 million, and we also invested with more than EUR 100 million, in CapEx.
Middle tier with a small net debt, and I can say now we are net cash again. In addition, we have a syndicated credit facility in place of EUR 150 million. We have the necessary flexibility if we see opportunities to further develop the business. Regarding M&A, bolt-on or the value-generating add-on acquisition, many speak about the three fits. Of course, it must be a strategic fit on the ventilation side, explained by my colleagues in the sessions before. We also need a financial fit regarding possible sales growth, but also profitability level, and also the cultural fit is important regarding risks that are involved in a possible transaction. At the end, the biggest asset are mainly the people in a company, and that is also connected to the culture if there's a fit together. From the size, what is add-on?
We speak about zero to 200 million sales, and for us, the sweet spot is between 20 and 80 million. Why not 10 million or 5 million? If it is too small, then it is often a lot of efforts at the end for a small impact. If it is getting bigger, then it is also connected with more risks. At the end, it is our ambition to have a self-financing , over the longer period. There we also have some limitation. Region: clearly Europe and North America. From the focus areas, it is going to be market or technology, and different areas were covered in the session before. We speak about energy-efficient products, speak about heat recovery, air treatment, air filtration, air distribution solution, energy-efficient cooling and heating, also HVAC control technologies. Outlook 2025. The year is nearly going to the end.
We communicated our guidance for this year together with the half-year result. It is unchanged. We expect the sales level, between EUR 740 million-EUR 770 million. To bring that in context of last year, last year we have achieved EUR 706 million. We will have a clear growth in 2025. Also on the profitability side, the first six months, we achieved 8.5%, EBIT margin, and that is also the guidance for the full year. Also here, last year, it was EUR 50 million or 7.1% EBIT margin. Also on the result side, it will be a clear improvement compared to last year. It shows that the measures taken have a positive impact now in 2025. Also the long-term targets are mainly at the end, it is a balance between growth, investment, and also profitability.
On the sales side, we have the ambition to have a target of 5%, coming from the ventilation growth, in different areas, product, but also services that we develop, market expansion, and so on. Then on the EBIT side, it is also unchanged 9-11% EBIT margin, mainly driven by the ventilation share increase of the total sales. We also have an operating leverage, on the radiator segment where we have taken a lot of measures to bring down the break-even point of benefit if we have additional volumes. Also the balance sheet is important. The return on capital invested, we have a roadshow target of above 20%. On one side, it should come from the better profitability. On the other side, we also shift our business to a more asset-light.
That means ventilation assembly, but also the service business is clearly more asset-light than radiator production. I am convinced that we have a sound strategy to have a positive development in the next few years and that we can also create value for our shareholders.