Hello, and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Stockholders of Linamar Corporation Annual Meeting twenty twenty one. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. During the meeting, we will have a question and answer session. Please note that your registered name will be announced along with your question during the Q
and A
session following the formal portion of the meeting. Guests will not be able to submit questions. Please also note that all participants are in listen only mode. If you experience technical difficulties during the meeting, It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Linda Hassenfraud, Linamar Corporation Chief Executive Officer. The floor is yours.
Thanks very much. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the twenty twenty one Annual Meeting of the Shareholders of Lindamar Corporation, which will commence shortly. I'm Linda Hasselfras. I'm CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. In accordance with our bylaws, I will be acting as the Chair for this meeting as our Executive Chairman, Mr.
Frank Hausenfratz, is unfortunately unable to join us today due to an unavoidable conflict. I'm joined today by members of our senior executive group, Jim Gerald, Dale Schneider, Roger Fulton and Mark Stoddart. I'd like to note for all of you joining us today that the slides we have prepared should be available to you on the screen in front of you. We unfortunately cannot advance the slides for you in this particular system. However, we will intermittently call out the slides that we're referencing so you can advance them yourself in line with our formal comments.
In order to protect the health and safety of our shareholders as well as that of all of our participants, our meeting is being held online on the Lumi platform via live webcast this year, as you can see. The webcast platform allows all participants to attend the meeting remotely and will allow our registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders to raise motions and vote on matters of business during the formal portion of the meeting if they have not already done so. We'll wait until the end of the team's presentations after the formal part of the meeting to address questions that are not pertaining to motions or votes. As the meeting will be held virtually via live webcast, we think it is necessary to set out a few rules for the orderly conduct of the meeting, which we have laid out for you on Slide four of your meeting materials, if you'd like to advance to Slide four. First, questions in respect of emotion can be submitted by any registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder using the instant messaging service of the virtual interface that you're now using.
When asking a question, please indicate your name, which entity you represent, if any, and confirm that you are a registered shareholder or a duly appointed proxy holder. We will receive your questions after they are submitted, but as I've just suggested, they will only be addressed during the question period during the investors' presentation after the conclusion of the formal part of the meeting unless they're related to the formal meeting proceedings. Questions and motions regarding procedural matters or directly responding to motions before the meeting may be addressed during the meeting. For the purposes of the meeting today, voting on all matters will have been conducted by proxy voting. For those registered shareholders who have not submitted their votes by proxy but are joining us here today, you will be allowed to vote on all matters by way of electronic ballots.
These ballots will be made available over the course of the meeting as each ballot item on the agenda is addressed. I should note that if you've already cast your vote by proxy, as we've encouraged you to do in our management information circular, your vote is already registered. If you choose to vote today on the Lumi platform, this will override your previously submitted proxy votes. If you don't wish to override your previously issued vote, please refrain from clicking on any of the voting options while the polls are open. When you're asked to vote, you will receive a message on the virtual interface requesting you to register your vote.
You will only have a certain amount of time to do so when the polls are open. You may change your vote at any time until the allotted time expires. All votes cast at the meeting will be added to those voted by proxy in advance of the meeting. On Slide five of your package, you will have an opportunity to meet the remainder of your Board of Directors, who are also joining us here today on the webcast, Teri Ryle Dennis Grimm and Lisa Forwild. Once the formal businesses meeting has been completed, there will be a presentation providing a general business update followed by a question and answer period.
We will now proceed with the formal business of the meeting, which is summarized on Slide six of your investor package. I now call the meeting to order. I will preside as Chair of this meeting. Roger Fulton will act as Secretary of this meeting and Arlene Agnew of Computershare Investor Services will act as a scrutineer for the meeting to compute the votes of any poll taken at this meeting and to report thereon to the Chair. I have been advised that there are voting shares representing more than 87% of all outstanding shares of the company present, and therefore, a quorum of shareholders of the company is present and the meeting is properly called and duly constituted for the transaction of business.
I have received the scrutineers report and I direct that their formal reports be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as a schedule. There are several matters that must be dealt with during this formal part of the meeting. Let me now explain the procedures that will follow for the meeting. In order to expedite matters, I have requested that certain persons make in second the formal motions and I will call on these persons at the appropriate time. Unless there is an objection, I will forego the reading of the notice of this meeting, which was made available to all registered shareholders in our management information circular, copies of which are also available on SEDAR.
The Secretary has the minutes of the last meeting of the shareholders, and these can be examined at any time by accessing the Investor Relations portion on Lindamar's website. I will forego the reading of the minutes of that meeting. The next item of business is the presentation of the corporation's consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with Canadian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and the auditor's report thereon. A copy of the financial statements for the year ended 12/31/2020, and the auditor's report was mailed to each shareholder with the notice of this meeting. With the consent of the meeting, I will forego with the reading of the auditor's report.
Please turn to Slide seven of your package now. We will now proceed with the reappointment of the auditors of the corporation. I ask Chris Merchant, a shareholder and an employee of the company, to provide a motion that PricewaterhouseCoopers chartered accountants be reappointed as auditors of the corporation until the close of the next annual meeting of the shareholders or until a successor is appointed and that the Board of Directors are authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration. May I have a motion?
I so move.
And I will now ask Mike Russell, also a shareholder and another member of the company to second the motion. Is the motion seconded?
I second the motion.
Unless there's an objection, I will now call for a vote on the motion for all registered shareholders in attendance who have not voted by way of proxy. We will now open up the digital voting polls to allow you to vote on this matter. We will pause briefly to allow the vote to be administered. I've been informed by the scrutineer that more than 50% of the total votes cast either in advance by way of proxy or received during this live vote are in favor of the reelection of the auditors. I therefore declare the motion carried.
On Slide eight of your meeting package, we will now proceed with the election of directors. The number of directors to be elected at this meeting has been set at six. I declare the meeting open for nominations. I will again ask Chris Merchant to nominate each of the persons specified in the management information circular delivered with the notice of meeting.
Madam Chair, I nominate each of the persons specified in the management information circular delivered with the notice of meeting, namely Terry Riddell, Lisa Forwell, Dennis Grimm, Frank Hasenfratz, Linda Hasenfratz and Mark Stoddard to serve as the Directors of Linamar Corporation to hold office until the close of the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until the successors are duly elected or appointed in accordance with the articles and bylaws of the corporation.
Those nominees have accepted their nominations. No other nominations for election of directors to Board of the Corporation were received in compliance with the Corporation's advanced notice bylaw. As there are no other qualifying nominations, I declare the nominations closed. I will now request a motion from Mike Russell that the six persons just nominated as directors of Lindamar Corporation be so elected. May I have a motion?
I so move.
I will ask Chris Merchant to second the motion. Is the motion seconded?
I second the motion.
Voting on those standing for election as directors is conducted in accordance with the corporation's majority voting policy. I will now call on a vote call for a vote on the motion. For all registered shareholders in attendance who have not voted by way of proxy, we will now open up the digital voting polls to allow you to vote on this matter. We'll pause briefly to allow the vote to be administered. I've been informed by the scrutineer that more than 50% of the total votes cast either in advance by way of proxy or received during this live vote are in favor of the reelection of each of the nominees.
I therefore declare the motion carried. And accordingly, I declare those nominated to be the duly elected directors of the corporation for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed. Since there is no further business, that concludes the formal business brought before the meeting. A report disclosing the number of votes cast in favor and against each of the motions will be filed on SEDAR promptly following the meeting. I now will request a motion to close the meeting.
Chris, may I have a motion?
I so move.
Mike, would you please second the motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you very much for attending, and I now declare the meeting to be terminated. We will now give a presentation related to the business performance of Linamar Corporation, following which my executive team and I will moderate a brief question and answer session. First, I would direct your attention to the cautionary statement, which has is being displayed on Slide 10 of your package. This statement, as you will see, addresses the use of forward looking statements, which we may use during the presentation. Okay.
So let's get started then with a review of our business at Linamar. We can advance two slides. Great. So we're on Slide 12 now. You're all familiar, I'm sure, with our mantra for the last year that tough times don't last, tough teams do, and we are one tough team.
After what feels like a very long sixteen or eighteen months, I feel like we're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for the pandemic as we get increasing numbers of people vaccinated and can look forward to getting life back to something a little more like normal soon. Our Lindamar Health First plan is what saw us through that time frame with a focus as always on each of our employees, our communities, our customers and of course, you, our shareholders. There is no more important time to pay attention to balanced decision making to drive a sustainable business than in a crisis. That was our approach just as it has been our approach to running our business for the last thirty years. Let's go ahead to Slide 13.
Let's take a look at some of the highlights of our performance last year, as you can see illustrated on slide. I would say outstanding support of our communities and health care during the pandemic really stands out to me as a real accomplishment last year. We also launched an engaging new top talent program. We saw great business wins in strategic areas, notably in electrified products as well as global regions that we're targeting. We saw excellent market share gains in every one of our businesses.
And I feel like we really did an outstanding job navigating the two months global shutdown and then flawlessly restarted after that. I'm really proud of what our team accomplished in that regard. We also very rapidly implemented a series of actions to help us focus on managing the financial side of the organization last year. We had weekly financial reviews giving us great visibility out a couple of quarters in terms of exactly where we would be in terms of sales, earnings and cash flow. We implemented cost control systems immediately and as a result, saw strong free cash flow in 2020.
If we go ahead to the next slide, we will take a few minutes to review some of the key elements of Lindamar's strategy. Going ahead to Slide 15, we'll start with the macro environment because we are certainly living in a time of extreme uncertainty from a variety of perspectives, pace of change of how quickly things are happening, availability of data, disruption coming from all kinds of different angles, the digital economy and all the implications of that and of course, politics and the economy and the uncertainty that, that can bring to the table. If you go to the next slide, I would say that exacerbating this uncertainty were other business challenges that we've had to deal with over the last few years, things like misinformation that is making the future increasingly uncertain, the social media that inspires rage and passion, not centrist viewpoints and tends to feed your bias in terms of the information that we are taking in. Populism has certainly taken hold in many parts of the world, and I feel like COVID-nineteen was really an opportunity for those populist leaders to take more power. And finally, disconnected volatile markets.
It feels like the volatility in the markets today and over the last couple of years has never been higher. If you go to the next slide, of course, COVID-nineteen has added just a whole new layer of question of uncertainty and change and potentially created lasting impacts in the world. I mean lots of questions exist still exist in terms of when we're going to achieve herd immunity, what's the future of health care systems, global supply chains, education systems, how are people going to work and what is the impact of that going to be, what will consumer behavior look like and what's the impact of that. So lots of questions, lots of uncertainties and certainly driving a lot of change. If you go to the next Slide 18, I'd like I'm happy to say that the good news is we think that we can absolutely succeed through these times of uncertainty by doing a few important things.
We talked a little bit about some of these ideas last year, and they are absolutely still relevant. We need to rely on our culture of who we are as a company, which happily is very responsive, very flexible, very opportunistic, very focused on results and balanced decision making. And I think that, that really sets the right stage for our success. On top of that, we need to be sure to stay flexible and to develop flexible strategies. The flexibility of our strategy should directly correlate to the level of uncertainty out there.
And that is what allows us to be really nimble, to pivot wherever we need to in order to maximize success. Of course, we need to keep innovating, right? Every day in big ways, in small ways, ultimately that is what drives our competitiveness. I think it's really important right now as well to think long term, to think big picture, to think look sort of end to end in terms of product life cycles and what the right solutions are for some of the problems that are out there, really thinking cradle to grave to understand where the best opportunities and technologies are and make sure that we're lined up behind them and then really just staying focused. And this road map has really been what we've been focusing on for the last several years.
And I think it's really paying off for us. I mean it's paid off in the short term dealing with the pandemic, and it's absolutely paying off in the longer term by ensuring that we've got a great flexible strategy ready to move in any way that the market is going to move. If you go to the next Slide 19, you can see here our plan for long term growth. It's pretty simple, and it's something that's familiar to you. We want to diversify our business into new but related markets.
We want to globalize our business, and we must focus on green technologies as the underpinning strategy for success in terms of the products we're designing, the processes we're using, how we're managing our plants in order to win in what is an increasingly climate conscious world. If you go to the next slide, you can see some of the key global trends that are influencing what's happening in markets around the world and therefore, has influenced our chosen areas of market focus. As just noted, the growing intensity to address environmental concerns is absolutely one of those key global trends, as is the rapid technology evolution also noted. At the same time, we have a growing global population, an aging global population that is increasingly moving into urban centers. So all of this sets sort of the stage for where we need to focus, where the opportunities will be, where technology is needed to help us deal with some of these challenges.
And it's from that then that we sharpened our focus into six key markets that Linamar feels are the markets that will lead us to success in the long term. Mobility, infrastructure, food and agriculture are markets that we are most heavily invested in today and that you're most familiar with at Linamar. Power, water and age management, medical devices are new areas of investment for us. There are areas that we're likely invested in today. We're doing work in each one of these areas, but not to the meaningful size of our mobility infrastructure and food markets.
But we think they're highly opportunistic markets where there's a lot of opportunity for Lindamar to grow. If you go to the next slide, you can see depicted Lindamar's, I think, value creation model. Like what we've tried to do is create really independent businesses in our three businesses in mobility infrastructure and agriculture, which, of course, is the core Linamar machining, forging and casting and assembly business, MacDon and Skyjack. So we've got these three very independent businesses that run independently of each other, but are deeply interconnected to drive more value together than they ever would individually. And I really love this sort of best of both worlds approach of autonomous independent businesses and all the innovation, ownership and accountability of that, but coupling it with levering our great strengths as a connected business to really optimize results across a whole bunch of different vectors, whether it be IT systems or purchasing or supply chain management or accessing our global footprint to help each of these businesses grow on a global basis.
Moving to the next slide. The great news is that all of our markets are definitely in growth mode right now at Linamar, which is fantastic to see after a tough 2020. The next Slide '23 shows you our automotive market as a first example. Vehicle sales are trending up in comparison to prior year in every region. North American vehicle sales have been particularly robust.
April and March selling rates for the seasonally adjusted rate of selling in April and March were the second and third highest in history since we have started recording seasonally adjusted rates and vehicle sales, which is quite some time. This will drive a sustained period of strong production levels in the region once supply issues from the strong rebound that we saw already happening late last year are dealt with. Moving to the next slide, you can see for Skyjack in the access market that double digit growth is expected in the core North American and European markets as well, again, after a very tough 2020. You can see Q1, the orange bar, already showing a positive variance to last year. And as you can see, double digit growth north of 20% expected in each of those markets for the full year.
So obviously, expecting accelerating growth in these markets in 2021. Moving to the next slide, you can see a similar picture for our agricultural market. Again, strong double digit or high single digit growth globally this year, depending on the market you're looking at, the core North America market, which is very critical to Maxon and a significant portion of their business is looking at 15% growth for the year, so a very strong outlook there. So overall, markets are definitely on our side this year with double digit growth across the board in auto, in access and in agriculture. Okay.
Let's move ahead to a focus for 2021. So I'm going to have you go ahead couple of slides to Slide '27. So again, after a tough 2020, I can tell you that growth is the key theme of 2021. We think we need to focus in a few key areas to drive that growth. Efficiency, talent and creativity are critical to driving the growth, but equally important is innovation.
Innovation, again, is the cornerstone to competitiveness. It is how we win business and how we grow. If you go ahead a slide, just focusing a little more on the idea of innovation, it does continue to be the driving force behind our competitiveness in every one of our businesses as it long has been at Linamar, and it will continue to be the key driver of our growth. Why? Because innovation drives performance, right?
Performance of our products, performance of our facilities in terms of processing to make those products just as efficiently and competitively as we can. Innovation is what grows our market share. It's what brings our customers to us. And innovation drives better efficiency. So this the whole area of innovation is absolutely a top priority for us.
And if you go to the next slide, which is 29, you can see sort of the three key areas of focus from an innovation perspective. So innovation driving green technologies, digitization and operational efficiency is really the underpinning strategy in each one of our businesses. And if you go to the next slide, you can see how that plays out. So first, I'll say that this innovation is focused both on products that we design and also our facilities and how we run them. Product innovation and process innovation are together the key to driving competitiveness.
So in our Mobility business, for instance, the priority is, of course, around electrification and emission reduction, lighter, quieter products. Clearly, that drives the environmental footprint, but it also drives the efficiency of the operation of the vehicles. At Skyjack, the focus is also on electrification and finding other ways to reduce the power consumption of our products. So obviously, a key focus from an environmental perspective. It is also about digitization and telematics to enable our customers to more efficiently manage their fleet.
So again, bringing in that digitization and operational efficiency. For MacDon, the future is really all about precision agriculture. What that means is you use what you need, where you need it and not elsewhere. That dramatically reduces the environmental footprint of our farming operations as well as helping us obviously to optimize the harvest and drive better efficiency. And then on our newly established medical business, where we are in production on our first few projects, it's really all about, again, compact and energy efficient products that, again, are reducing the environmental footprint as they operate.
It's also about digitizing and automating, which again is going to help to drive better operational efficiency. Now at the same time, investments are happening on the facility side to reduce our carbon footprint and drive better operational efficiency as well as access to data. And that all helps us to run our plants more efficiently as well. Moving ahead to the next slide, which is Slide 31. You can see a little more detail around our electrification strategy in our mobility business.
What I love about this strategy is it's multilayered, right? So it's going to offer the most potential combination of opportunity. We're targeting diverse products in four key systems: the propulsion system, the structural and body areas of the vehicle, power system solutions and chassis solutions. We are targeting every type of vehicle in all types of electric propulsion, from battery electric vehicles to hybrid to fuel cell electric vehicles. We're doing it for traditional customers as well as new entrants and for products of varying complexity, so components, subassemblies, integrated systems and full system solutions.
So we really have a lot of optionality for our customers. We have a lot of different products that we can provide in a lot of different ways to different vehicles and propulsion types and different customers. And the reason is we want to be ready for any direction the market is taking us. And I feel like we really have the pieces in place to do that. The electrification of mobility presents the biggest opportunity in history for building a business in this sector, and we're really excited about that.
If you go to the next slide, which is 32, you can see one of our most recent developments in this regard, which is the partnership we recently announced with Ballard to jointly develop and pursue fuel cell solutions for light vehicle light duty vehicles. I think it's a really great combination of complementary technologies of two great Canadian companies: Linamar's e axle propulsion systems, our tank, our innovative hydrogen tank, our chassis experience, alongside Ballard's long history in fuel cell faxes systems that I think is really going to make for a winning combination. If you go to the next Slide 33, you can see why we think it's important. We are big believers actually that hydrogen driven fuel cell vehicles will be the future of mobility. And this slide sort of lays out why that is.
Number one, and probably the most importantly, it's actually clean technology from end to end, from fuel source right through to the tailpipe. And that's because it's not reliant on less than green electricity grids, which are how electricity is generated the world over is not carbon free, nor is production of large battery packs, which is enormously emitted. So that's a really important piece. It's actually clean. And after all, that's what we're trying to achieve when we move into electric vehicles.
Other advantages are it's quick to refuel as quick as current vehicle technology. It is efficient, given its very high density of energy in hydrogen. And it's more viable, in my opinion, due to its lack of reliance on regionally concentrated sources of conflict minerals like cobalt and lithium, which are predominantly controlled by countries like The Congo and China. If you go to the next slide, you can see how our strategy is paying off with solid gains in business wins for electric vehicles. That's the orange line there that you can see has a great solid trajectory of growth.
We are rapidly closing the gap in terms of booked content per vehicle for electrified vehicles compared to internal combustion vehicles, and we're winning more business every single day in this really exciting market. If you go ahead to the next slide, you can see Skyjack's innovation strategy laid out. They have a very strong innovation strategy as well, again, focused on both alternative and next generation power solutions, but also, as noted, on digitization of our products and associated systems. And why that's important is it allows our rental house customers to seamlessly manage their fleet operations and really optimize performance. If you go to the next slide, which is 35 no, 36, you can see how that's paying off again.
I mean, are targeted markets, booms, telehandlers that we are trying to grow on a global basis, and we have a good, strong, consistent trend of growth in terms of market share in both cases. If you go to the next slide, which is 37, you can see Mastodon's innovation strategy, which is really designed to optimize the harvest through product performance, through technology. They have a strong team focusing on innovation in a whole variety of areas and are well entrenched in terms of their patents and technologies that they have produced. Again, if you go to the next slide, you can see how it's paying off in market share. This is a targeted market.
European combined draper market is one that we have expressly targeted over the last few years, and this technology development has been absolutely key in helping us to drive, again, consistent trends upward in terms of market share. On the next slide, you have a little information on our Synaptive medical manufacturing partnership. So I mentioned that at the outset that we've launched our first programs into the medical area. It's proceeding well with our launch late last year of the MODIS five automated digital microscope, which you can see pictured on the left hand of the slide. It is designed to reduce surgery time, to improve workflow and ergonomics for the surgeon.
So good for the patient, good for the surgeon, good for the hospital, which is, again, driving great operational efficiency and environmentally better solutions. On the right side, you can see the every MRI machine. This is innovative MRI technology. It's revolutionary in the fact that it's quite small, very efficient footprint. It's 2,000 pounds instead of 10,000 pounds, so 80% lighter.
That means that you can locate these MRI machines across the hospital, not just in the basement to support the systems and the weight of the traditional type of machines. You can have them in the operating room, the ER, the ICU, again, for a revolutionary approach to patient care, also lower operating costs and again, superior environmental footprint. On the next slide, you can see Linamar's AI road map laid out. A big part of innovation today is increasingly about artificial intelligence and how we can employ it to improve performance, to enhance our productivity and to improve employee engagement. So this sort of lays out how we are looking at AI.
So we're basically looking at utilizing artificial intelligence to improve three things: improve the efficiency of analysis, automate repetitive tasks and improve the accuracy of the predictions that we're making. And that's how we get that better performance, productivity and engagement. And this isn't just the shop floor. This is in the office. It's on the shop floor for sure.
It's in the quality area. And it's in the offices where we're also making a lot of predictions and doing a lot of analysis and, in many cases, repetitive tasks. So all of it just makes us more efficient, more productive and better engaged, right, with people focusing on more value activities. If you go to the next slide, I mentioned at the outset that talent is also a top priority in 2021 for us at Linamarck. We talked about growth.
We talked about innovation. Talent is absolutely a top priority for us. Attracting talent in the advanced manufacturing industry is something that is absolutely a key focus. It's what drives our results every single day. Our talent is what is driving our exciting growth and transformation plans, and we have never needed more talent.
We are particularly trying to attract young talent, who we think will be attracted to our evolution as a business into more and more technology as well as our mission of solving some of those key issues on a global basis. If you go to the next slide, you can see our talent process. So it's all about identifying the talent through a variety of means, developing and coaching them into having the capability that we need to fill the needs of our facilities. So who do we have in the talent pipeline? When will they be ready?
And where will they be needed? Those are kind of the key pieces. So we've launched comprehensive end to end talent development program this year at Linamar called SEAL, which will encompass all of these ideas of identifying the people, teaching and developing and coaching and really clearly laying out what we see as joint ownership of every leader and every employee to own talent development and make career goals a reality. And Jim is going to tell you a little bit more about that shortly. So if we go to the next slide.
Lastly, I just want to briefly reflect on Linamar's dedication to sustainability as an organization. So if you go to the next slide, which is 44. Linamar has long held a philosophy of running our business as a balance of the needs of our people, our customers and our shareholders. You've heard us talk about that year after year after year, long before it was trendy to do so, right? Long before CEOs started writing letters of commitment that they were about more than just financial performance and growing shareholder returns.
We have been doing that. I want you to know that this is a core part of who we are as a company at Lindamar. It's how we measure performance. It's how we reward our people. It's how we articulate our strategy, and it is how we make decisions every single day.
If you go to the next slide, ESG is something that a lot of shareholders are talking about. I'm wondering what company philosophies are in that regard. I mean for us, clearly, green technology, as I've just described to you, is the underpinning innovation strategy in each of our businesses. And running sustainable manufacturing facilities is core to how we run. So the environment is absolutely core to us at Linamar in terms of what we're trying to achieve.
We are deeply committed to diversity, both in terms of gender as well as in terms of racial or ethnic diversity. We're deeply supportive of our communities in many ways. And we're constantly enhancing our approach to governance, again, with respect to diversity, but also with respect to shareholder engagement and communication. And hopefully, you've seen that as we try to find new ways to engage with you, our shareholders, on an ongoing basis. So just taking a quick deeper look at this.
If you go to the next slide, you can see illustrated Lindamar's long term sustainability roadmap and goals. We've recently made a bold commitment to the future to be net zero emissions by 02/1950. That means our own facilities and how they operate and the emissions that we're creating, but also those of our suppliers and the products that we supply. So why have we done that? Well, really three key reasons.
I mean, what we do today determines the future of our planet. So you have to act now, not in the future when the crisis deepens. Secondly, the future of our planet matters to us, and it also matters to our employees, to our customers, to our shareholders. We're hearing that messaging loud and clear. And thirdly, addressing environmental challenges is a global imperative, which we think will create massive market opportunity for those with the solution.
So there's great business reason to do so. We've established some principles around which we will guide the execution of this strategy. So first and foremost, it's something that each and every one of us needs to commit to, right? What each one of us does matters and counts. Secondly, what we do impacts others.
So we do need to lead by example in doing what we do better for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. And finally, as it won't be a surprise to you, we want to find balanced solutions that optimize impact for the environment, but also for our employees, for our customers and for our financial performance. And we're confident in our ability to be able to do that. A few thoughts on diversity and inclusion on the next slide, which is 47. As noted, diversity and inclusion is something we're deeply committed to.
Why? Really three reasons. We think it gives us access to a bigger talent pool, right? It maximizes access to 100% of the talent pool. And as just noted, talent is what drives results.
So we want access to that talent pool. We think it's logical, right, that our leadership should reflect the demographics of our workforce and ultimately, our communities. And finally, we feel like it will optimize our performance because we really believe that diversity of opinion and thought drives better decision making. The next slide, which is 48, lays out some of the key principles that we have established for ourselves, which is really create opportunity for everyone and then advance on merit and ensure proportionate representation, as noted, of leadership to demographics of Linamar as opposed to the use of quotas. So these are sort of the guiding principles that we are using with our team to implement our diversity and inclusion program.
On the next slide, you can see a little more detail around that. Our diversity and inclusion program at Lindemars is called Diversity Drives Results. And the reason is simple, right? Diversity gives us access to talent, as just noted, and talent drives results. So diversity drives results.
And our efforts are focused in a lot of different areas. We've established a diversity council, for instance, to help attract our metrics and give ideas on how we can improve our results. We have a lot of different metrics we've established that we're measuring. We're investing in our communities in many different ways, including many in the area of increasing diversity to science, technology, engineering and math and trades. If you go to the next slide, you could see depicted our signature program for women in STEM that we are really proud of.
We call it, see it be it's SCAMIT or SBS for short. SBS promotes science, technology, trades, engineering and math to young women through the use of role models. So we've got actually closer to 300 role models now featured on our website. And we also produce an annual calendar profiling amazing women doing incredible things to keep that story going all year long for students out in classrooms making decisions. And lastly, of course, supporting our communities was a huge effort for us last year, really in three key areas: ventilator production, rapid testing of employees and establishing a vaccination clinic.
So on Slide 52, you can see a little more information on our ventilator program. We launched five different programs, in fact, last year to support health care in our community. In total, we made nearly 1,000,000 ventilator parts or full assemblies of ventilators. So I'm really proud of our team for their incredible flexibility, agility, the manufacturing expertise that allowed them to rapidly respond to the public's needs in this regard and quickly get into production on these programs. On Slide 53, you can see our testing program.
We launched regular testing of our Guelph plant employees just this year. Our goal is to reach twice per week for all of our 9,000 employees. We tested about 6,500 in the first week and are actively working with other businesses to encourage and help them to launch their own testing protocols. And lastly, our vaccination clinic, we established in early March, we have a capacity of 2,000 shots per day. We're ramping up to that level as vaccine availability is made available to us.
We also, by the way, have posted a playbook on our website to assist any company in launching their own clinic quickly in areas where capacity is required. Okay. So Slide 55 just sort of sums up our strategy, the areas of focus for us this year. For us, 2021 is going be all about growth, innovation, talent and a continued focus on sustainability. And I think that, that combined with the strong growing markets that I illustrated for you is a really great recipe for success.
So with that, I'm going to invite our President and Chief Operating Officer, Jim Gerald, to focus a little more on our accomplishments and initiatives in the operations. So over to you, Jim.
Thanks, Linda. And it's great to be here with everybody, albeit virtual once again at our meeting, but it's great to be able to provide some performance updates. So if you go to the next slide, we used this actually at our Linamar award ceremony actually yesterday. Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.
And to start, really would like to tell you the shareholders here, we've been in this storm probably for about a year and five months now and have really learned how to dance in the rain as a company. Certainly from a customer side, deliveries, launches, customer service, working commercial agreements, employee side, learning how to train people virtually, motivating people, hiring people. I mean, it's been really difficult. And of course, on the financial side, bringing back our sales, right, and really focused on cost and cash every single day. If you go to the next slide, Linda showed this.
We showed this to you last year. If you were working in Linamar, you would see this every single day. We read it, we talk about it. And really it has been our mantra to get through, this really tough time. And if you go to the next slide, when we use this, I think we look at this a little bit as a tough team.
We've been on a bit of a journey over the last year. It was not a trip. We believe a trip is predictable, a trip is planned and a trip can be a little boring. A journey certainly you discover a lot of new things and certainly what we've been through over the last year and a bit on what we've seen was not predicted, was not anticipated and certainly was not planned. If you go to the next slide, so a lot when I get asked about Linamar, I'm usually
What really is your goal at Linamar? What are you trying to achieve? And here you can see it under command intent. And what command intent means is what is a successful company look like a successful mission, a successful program. And to us, it's employer of choice, supplier of choice and investment of choice for you, our shareholder.
So if you go to the next slide, the second question that I get asked is what do you guys do day to day with your team for all the hours that you put in? And the answer is really we manage the present and create the future And easy to say, easy to understand, but not so easy to do. Ask any executive, with the complexities that Linda laid out, even in this time, it's a lot more complex on dealing with this. But these are our two jobs. We have to get them right, and balance that certainly for the future.
And so if you go to the next slide, I'm going to really go through a manage the present, create the future concept with each one of the groups, because each one of the groups have really done a great job and I want to highlight what the Presidents and their teams have done. But here you can see since the last annual meeting we had, we made an operational operating group change. You would have seen two other groups here. You would have seen one called Linamar Seizenschmidt Forging and you would have seen a Linamar Montoupe casting. And what we have done is consolidated into three mobility groups geographically, which is North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
And each one of these groups offers the full capabilities of the Linamar traditional platforms of casting, forging, assembly, machining. Everybody has access to what you see on the left, which is our engineering, our innovation hub. And as well, the other big change that we had done is change from transportation to mobility. And really the simple reason behind that is that's really the markets that we're servicing the better view of that as well. So going to the next slide, I wanted to highlight please hit the next slide.
Thank you. Let me follow-up here. It'd be Slide 63, I believe. Yes. So 63, this is really the highlights of North America.
And you see our Group President, Sean Cogden, who's led the organization there for the last while and done a great job. On the left, managing the present, you can really see all around awards for customers with Stellantis FCA in the top three powertrain. GM, five years in a row, we've been supplier of the year and have received two overdrive awards. On the right, really creating the future. They won a great new driveline disconnect program.
They launched all the ventilator projects that Linda talked about. They were actively engaged, pivoted their organization, vertically integrated forgings and casting, great e vehicle wins. You can see battery trays. You can see cold plate for battery enclosures, lots of gear sets and differentials. And at the bottom, high potential, you can see great future business here, drive units, cradle fabs, full e axles, crank phasers and supercharger, turbochargers.
So great work out of the North American group under Sean. Go to the next slide, which is Slide 64. Sam Koka, our Group President in Europe, really with those three groups that really got consolidated, that was one of the biggest things of the rightsizing that we did in Europe. On the left, they've received a great JLR Quality Award. And also they focus a lot on OEE overall equipment effectiveness, improving that 12%.
Linda talked about artificial intelligence and they did an AP automation project over in Europe. And also part of management present is a big reduction on cost of poor quality, a real focus on that. On the right side of the page, you again see great potential new business. E Axles, you'll see that resonate across all regions. Gears, which are basically take those across any architecture and then traditional connecting rods, balance shafts and cover modules for cylinder heads.
So great work with Sam and the team in Europe. Going to the next slide. Henry Wang, our Group President in Asia, has done a super job with his team during this last year and a half. Great awards from customers, also vertically integrated Linamar casting into the place into Asia. Two of the facilities, we have a Chairman Club Award.
Some of you wouldn't know that, but they won two of their facilities. Two facilities were in the top of the stepping stool, and we expanded our McLaren engineering in the region as well. And some of the innovation stuff on the right, looking at robot reducers or gears, electronic braking systems, e axles for sort of smaller warehouse automation vehicles and super turbos as well. So great work with Henry and the team and thank him for that. Going to the next slide at MacDon, Kurt Buehler, our President of MacDon, done a great job.
On the left again, you'll see a theme of really winning customer awards, which always tells you about focus on operations, quality, delivery. One of the other things that they had to really do over the last year, and Linda mentioned the growth of the ag business, is really bringing on an extra 300 people basically and and also using about two seventy people working remotely and keeping that business going. So great balance and work threading the needle on that, of course. And creating the future on the right, we've got two product launches. We've got 17 partner engagements.
We've got 13 products in development. We got 110 patents, 50 patents pending, and we have about 120 people working on technology innovation. And what we're really proud on the right hand with the picture is the FD2 launch, which is proving to have 70% more flex, 30% higher cutting fees and 20% more capacity. So really excited about what's going on at MacDon. If you hit the next slide with Skyjack, Ken McDougall, our Group President there, who's done a great job with the team.
On the left, you can see SkyWorld, a virtual trade show. Obviously, no face to face trade shows have been going on. So the team did that virtually and had a great connect to the customer base. So we're really happy with that. A couple manage the present things, the commonite engineer, steel, weight and thickness and gained some big savings.
I missed the automated welding and processing with suppliers, big savings there. Expanded our global warranty team. We've expanded the whole product line going more global. So have done that to improve our efficiency and customer service and really have been punching down the receivables and long term AR as focus on cash side. So really great to see that.
On the right, certainly the growth, they created a Chicago office. The Mighty Micro scissor is now out, which is a smaller scissor that's new in the market, which is really getting great publicity and great feedback from our customers. We talked a lot, I think, in the last couple of years about telematics, and you can see this is basically monitoring the state of the health and the machine information that you can access remotely to help the uptime of your equipment and launched new articulating booms and a new series of telehandlers. So great work from Ken and the team at Skyjack. Going to the next slide, Slide 68, really our innovation hub.
First and foremost, just so everybody understands, this got launched and started up in the middle of the pandemic. I think it was April. And so you can see Augustino has taken a bit of a sit down right now. But on the top left there, Thornhill Ventilators, that's what they pivoted to and created out of that facility right away. As Linda mentioned, Synaptive, they're doing these products at the iHub.
They created a CleanSlate, which is basically a bacteria removal unit from your devices. They're working on two speed electric transmission, startstop, factory of the future and then a Thermal Lift product line, which is really combining three in one furnace, AC and hot water. So really a lot of focus on innovation, really important products for the future. Going to the next slide, Linda highlighted the Ballard Linamar relationship. And I think this is really, really critical for you, the shareholder, understand.
This is really important for the future and where things are going. And Linda talked about the whole concept behind it, but we're now moving fast and furious on this and really creating the finalization of a statement of works. We're getting out to the market right now to gauge the product and the acceptance. We're creating a fuel cell subsystem. We got to get a balance of plant parts into that subsystem and ultimately want to get a demonstration platform in a rolling chassis that you sort of see here depicted.
So this has got a lot of great future opportunities, a lot of momentum in the market, and we see this as a real viable relationship with two great strong Canadian companies. Going to the next slide, new business. As Linda said, growth, I mean, if you're not growing, you're dying is a mantra we use here. Last year, 1,400,000,000.0 of new business wins. So that was very exciting.
If you go to next slide, Slide 71 here, total Chase right now about $5,800,000,000 of work that we're going after. So a lot of activity on that. If you go to the next slide, you'll see on Slide 72, if you're growing a lot and have a lot of chase items, you better have a great launch program, you better have great quality, you better have great delivery. So we have 127 launches as of today. We color code them to ensure that we have the right attention on them.
Parts per million, which is a quality indicator, we're punching about 30% better than industry. Delivery is about plus 97%, which is ahead of industry as well. So we're really proud of our activity around that as well. Next slide, you'll see employee number, 26,000 employees eliminating waste. To us, waste is eliminating non value added and it's using less of everything.
And the idea is if we get all 26,000 employees focused on this, we will be very, very successful. So go to the next slide here, it's showing a number. Our cost attacks that we've done was $143,800,000 achieved through 2020 to a goal of 140 And working on the next slide, if you go ahead, working with our supplier partnership, eliminating waste was about CAD72 million. So a lot of great focus on cost and cash as you have seen in our performance. Going to the next slide, turning to from a people perspective, Linda mentioned this program called SEAL.
It really basically means teaching and educating employees at Linamar. And if you do that, you're successful. And under this umbrella, we have probably 15 different Linamar training programs that we have homegrown that really adapt to our culture of teaching people how to run businesses, to technically do what they need to do and be very successful. And so with the great new program that we've got and bottom line on this one, every one of us is responsible in our own way to teach and educate. So really critical for leadership around the world.
Going to the next slide, Slide 77, just a couple of things that dovetail off of the SEAL program. Obviously apprenticeship, we've got close to four fifty apprentices globally. Next slide, if you go Slide 78, each one teach one another program under that steel, we've got close to 900 more than 900 under that each one teach one program. So really, really successful. So next slide, again, Linda highlighted the rationale behind this, but this is our diversity council, representative from people all around the world.
We meet quarterly. We talk about the right activities and how be a diversity type of company and how to better that. So really got a lot of great, great feedback and interaction from this diverse global group. Next slide, turning to digitization and really AI. I'm sure we've shown this before to you, the shareholders, but it really is telling you our data connection, robotics that we have hooked up, vision systems, our LMMS, which is our own internal data collection and management of operation efficiency system, really shows you the numbers that we are really dealing with on AI, machine learning and digitization.
And to that point, if you go to the next slide, Slide 81, we have created an AI committee, so an artificial intelligence committee, again, around the world, representatives from all of our different groups so that we can align on sort of techniques and standards that we can use across the board. This will be owned at every single plant and every group, but using the same tools and analysis is pretty critical to know how the information is flowing. So going to the next slide, we are absolutely proud. I mean, this if you talk to our people, we're very proud. And I put this up for two reasons.
On the left is a ventilator note from one of our workers' sons, Ashton Atkinson. And basically, it's telling you, hey, we're really proud of Linamar and thank you for making ventilators. I miss my dad, but he's at work making ventilators. So I'm okay with that. And you guys are out trying to save lives.
So that was really great to see that last year when we got that. And then on the right hand side, feeling liberated, a class operation at Linamar's vaccination clinic, very seamless, everyone there is awesome. Don't feel the damn needle. Whole thing was over in thirty minutes, feeling great, no poem today because nothing rhymes with Pfizer. So we've had great feedback on that.
And I thought those were really two critical things to know that we're working on the business, but we're also working on our community awareness and working with our communities. So finally, the last slide here, certainly in the business during a time of crisis, there's really nothing more important than a company culture. At certainly we're no different. And we are first and foremost a global team using our leadership behaviors and core values. And as usual at Linamar, I would say that we have once again discovered a lot during this timeframe.
A lot has changed. We've learned to work virtually. We've learned to step up and create new leaders, create new team members and really have focused in on our command intent, which of course is employer of choice, shareholder of choice and our supplier of choice. So with that, I'm going to pass it over to Dale.
Hello, everyone. You should be on Slide 84. I'm just going to give you a quick financial update of the performance that we've achieved that you would have read about in our annual financial statements and MD A and our most recent Q1 MD and A and financial statements. If you go to Slide 85, if you look at Linamar as a whole, we have a long history of great financial performance, whether you're looking at it from sales, which we have achieved double digit sales growth over the last ten years and we've maintained that record over the last thirty years as well. Similarly on earnings, we have a great track record there as well, but also with double digits in both time periods similar to sales, but actually growing slightly faster than sales.
Key for 2020 was looking at cash and leverage. We did a great job on leverage in 2020 as you can see in the chart. And we've always maintained strong cash flows at Linamar, but we've been doing a great job recently. If you go to Slide 86. So looking specifically at sales, for 2020, it's not surprising the biggest impact that we had from the sales was the lockdowns and other impacts of COVID-nineteen, which we did see to start to see volumes recover in Q3 and Q4 and continue into Q1.
As a result, overall consolidated sales were down 22%. From a segment point of view, industrial segment was down 34% mainly out of the access equipment market. There really wasn't much impact on the ag market in 2020. And mobility was down almost 18%. Looking at Q1, we did see recoveries coming out of COVID-nineteen and volumes starting to return.
Sales were up 15% over last year with industrial going up 17% and mobility up 15%. So we're starting to see growth in both segments. So what does that mean for the full year? We still expect to see double digit sales growth over 2020 in both segments. In industrials, do expect to see that double digit sales growth in both Skyjack and MacDon.
And the mobility is really being driven by the strong level of launches that we have coming in, in 2021. So we expect the full year 2021 currently to be consistent with our long term performance of double digit growth. Go to Slide 87. If we look at earnings for 2020, it was mainly impacted by the loss of volumes due to COVID in 2020, which is what's the biggest driver to lower operating earnings. We did see overall consolidated operating earnings down almost 32%, 39% in industrial and 27% in mobility.
Q1 though is an awesome recovery as we saw OE increased almost 114 driven by the strong sales growth, but we also had a lot of structural cost improvements mainly driven out of cost savings, which Jim highlighted a few of those items in his presentation. And to a lesser extent, we did see some positive FX in Government Systems and Bags. I look at it from a segment point of view, industrial grew 46% and mobility grew 143%. How does that look for the full year? We do expect to see industrial margins expand further and closer to our normal range of 14% to 18%.
Mobility should be in the middle of our normal range of 7% to 10%, which is great to see. And likewise with sales, we're expecting double digit earnings growth for this year consistent to how we've been performing over the long run. We go to Slide 88. From a CapEx point of view, obviously, we're in a cash conservation mode in 2020 and that has continued in 2021. So we did see CapEx efforts delayed to conserve cash.
And that's one of the benefits of our flexible manufacturing systems is that we can layer in CapEx as the volumes dictate. We have continued that trend in Q1 pushing off any necessary CapEx further a year and utilizing available equipment. So we've been able to show lower CapEx in Q1. We do expect the full year though to see more spending in CapEx and we should be back to our lower end of our normal range of six to 8%. If you go to Slide 89, we look at leverage.
One of the benefits that Loneramar has always had is a very strong and conservative balance sheet. We've been able to take advantage of that balance sheet for strategic reasons whether that's organic or M and A opportunities, but we've always been able to quickly delever afterwards. And we saw that coming out of 2019, where leverage dropped from 1.5 times to half a turn by the end of twenty twenty. And by Q1, we were 0.3 times. And looking at the full year, we still expect to delever over 2020 levels.
If you go to Slide 90, the great story of 2020 when everyone is concerned about liquidity and cash was Linamar had a record year in free cash flow generation, where we generated $1,200,000,000 and we were able to maintain liquidity at $1,600,000,000 at the end of the year. We continue that trend into Q1 with strong free cash flow generation. Our last twelve months free cash flow yield is almost 25% and we were able to maintain our liquidity. Looking for the full year, we still expect to see strong cash flow generation in 2021. So if you go to Slide 91, just to summarize, Linamar has had great financial performance despite COVID-nineteen in 2020 and consistent to our long term over the last ten year and third year performance.
So with that, I'll conclude my comments and I believe we're opening up to questions now.
Thanks, Dale. Okay, we've had quite a few questions submitted through the portal. It feels like a record number of questions for our AGM. I'm not going to lie. Usually, we're a little light on the questions.
I notably remember the year that the only person the only shareholder asked the question was my father. Anyhow, so turning to the questions. So the first one is actually comes right off of Dale's last slide. We have a lot of cash generated at the end of twenty twenty. What are the plans?
Are you going to pay higher dividends? So great question. We did have a solid year in terms of free cash flow when we're looking very positive in terms of the balance sheet. Our primary use of our strong balance sheet will always be growth. So continued capital expenditures for new programs that we're launching.
We have quite a strong book of business that we are launching at the moment at Linamar. So that takes continued capital investment, also potential acquisition opportunities out there. There's a lot
of
interesting opportunities that would also be a priority to drive growth. With respect to increasing the dividend or a buyback, these this is a question that we address with our Board every single quarter to look at the cash requirements that we have coming up, what the cash generation looks like and then understanding what makes sense in terms of balancing the needs of our shareholders. We did just increase the dividend two quarters in a row. So we increased back in November, again, at the March. So we're absolutely listening to our shareholders and trying to make balanced decisions for that.
So we have a good track record of that. So every quarter we look at it and we will make an assessment as to whether we can pay a higher dividend, potentially a buyback or do we want to continue to conserve cash for growth requirements? This person also asked, when will I be able to meet Frank and have him sign a copy of his biography, Driven to Succeed, which makes me gives me the idea that we should have some kind of minimum shareholder level. If you hit a certain number of shares, then we'll get you a signed copy. So that could be motivation to buy a few more Linamar shares.
Another question was what lessons have you learned through the pandemic about the resiliency of supply chains? And then a related question around the semiconductor shortage, chip shortage out there and how that's affecting us and our customers. So I think without doubt, you stop something big that's moving, it takes a lot of effort to stop it, and then it takes a lot of effort to start it up again. And that's for sure what we're seeing in terms of supply chains around the world as shutdown operations are restarted, as demand surges back in a lot of different areas and supply struggles to keep up with that demand. And the most notable example of that is the semiconductor chip shortage, which again, thanks to the shutdowns last year, capacity was reallocated from the chip makers to non automotive customers, and we're paying the price for that today.
So unfortunately, there's a bit of a volatile situation. It's a little not the most predictable of situations in terms of impact. But the good news is two things. One, additional supply is being put in place. So there is an end that will come as supply starts to be generated to meet demand, which we believe will be happening in the back half of the year.
And secondly, because as noted, the level of demand certainly in North America is so high, and as a result, inventory levels are so low, once that chip supply starts rolling again, we will have an extended period of very strong production levels that we will be enjoying at Linamar. I'm going ask Jim to speak a little bit more volatility.
Yes. Think it's a really valid question and it's a very difficult thing to predict at this point. I mean to get into the weeds a little bit, I would say on a week to week basis, day to day releases are changing. And so we have to be very flexible with our workforce, very flexible with our supply base, as Mike here knows for sure. And so really, it's week to week and day to day.
And as Linda said, what we're hearing is that they will recover, right? And so that's the really good news. So again, when we get back into place, it will be full throttle, I think, hopefully Q3, Q4, we'll see how that rolls. But really, it's day to day. The other thing I would say that related is labor side.
Labor around North America right now is difficult. I mean, like a supply basis of anything steel, lumber, you name it, is really difficult on the supply side. Labor is also not as easy as it was at one time to get. So that's another struggle at the OEM level. Certainly, we focus on ourselves, but would be another thing that does disrupt some supply chain.
Thanks, Jim. Okay. Next question was around, are we going to continue to make ventilators after the pandemic? So the majority of those programs were short term programs where we were helping out a variety of companies to meet the surge in demand for ventilators. Certainly, programs where we were making components.
The more complex assemblies, Thornhill project where we were making actually, it's more of a life support system, kind of like an ICU in a box, a very complex product with 1,700 different components in it. We did continue to manufacture through the year and could be an interesting product if Snorkel needs continued support going forward because it is a more complex sort of assembly. And of course, it fits well with our desire to move into the medical device area. So I think the answer is it really depends on the product and how well it fits with our strategy.
Yes. We're set up right now, as Linda said, on the Thornhill at the iHub. And so we are working on plans to continue at a lower level of volume because again, once we stop, I think Linda's point on stopping is very valid, then it's hard to restart. So we want to keep that flow going, working with Thornhill, our partner, but all the other ventilator programs have been finished. And so that would be the working with General Motors or O2 or other customers.
But yes, with the Thornhill, we are working on plans to sort of keep that one going at some low level of volume.
Another question was, was there significant renegotiations of contracts for customer products with existing customers during the pandemic? And I would say no. I mean, that's not at all really a thing for us. I mean, we had a couple of months of shutdown and then a quick surge back up on the auto side. Renegotiating contract isn't something that's really going to happen in that circumstance.
Yes. I would say, again, absolutely no, we didn't get any price relief. And quite frankly, it goes the other way with the mobility sector. I think as we've talked here before, they continue to look for productivity savings from us getting more efficient. And so as you could see earlier in the presentation, we did about $140,000,000 of waste reduction internally and working with our supplier partners about $72,000,000 So we have to get more productive and offer our customers in mobility price reductions.
Now saying that there's been a lot of pressure on the steel side of the industry and shipping. If you look back on shipping costs from Asia to North America is almost tripled in the last year. So obviously that could push things on our supply side. But right now, we're sort of holding the own with our customer side and also our supply side.
Next question was around some color with respect to takeover of product contracts from failing competitors. I would say we had some of that in kind of late twenty nineteen, in particular in Europe. We had some takeover contracts. I wouldn't say there's been much of that coming out of this recession, to be honest. In contrast to 02/2009, where we saw a lot more companies failing, I think the sharpness of this shutdown and then the quick rebound did not result in that same impact.
I 100 agree. I think there's just been some supply like we talked supply chain issues and to move things around right now could be very disruptive on its own. So I think there's a lot of support that's been coming through either governmental support or even on the customer side supporting as well, companies that may be struggling.
Okay. Next question was around acquisition targets. So as noted, of course, acquisitions are something that we're always looking for. In terms of priorities for acquisitions, I would say in the mobility area, obviously, continuing to build our electrified product portfolio would be our top priority in terms of acquisition on the Skyjack side. Global growth would probably be our top priority from an acquisition perspective as we look to penetrate a growing market in Asia and continue to penetrate the market in Europe.
And from an agricultural perspective, I'd say the priority would be mainly around product expansion in order to continue to grow that business. And then the last question is about MacDon. Is MacDon now fully integrated? Jim, do you
want add Yes. I would say we are 100% integrated. We, again, I think did a very good job in that integration with the cultural side and certainly letting them own their business. But I would say fully integrated into the Linamar systems, fully integrated into the team. And we as I think Linda showed earlier on a slide that interaction between Linamar, traditional Linamar, Skyjack, MacDon is really working effectively.
Great. Thanks, Jim. Okay. So that is it for the questions. So I'll just quickly conclude really coming back to where I concluded earlier that we're feeling very positive about 2021 after a tough 2020 that I feel was well navigated and that I'm really proud of the team for achieving what they did.
So poised for success in 2021. 2021 will be all about growth. It continues to be all about innovation and talent and sustainability and building on a foundation of growing market. So we're excited about where things are going, and thank you for being right alongside of us. Our shareholders are key stakeholders for us, and we appreciate your continued support and alignment.
So with that, I wish you a great rest of your day.
This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.