Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you are. Welcome to Amcor's virtual Investor Briefing. Today, we're linking up with speakers in several locations: Chicago, Zürich, Shanghai, São Paulo, and here in Melbourne. I'm Tracey Whitehead, head of Investor Relations at Amcor, and as host today, my role is to ensure you get the best out of the three hours we have together in this virtual format. Before we move on, I point you to the disclaimers in the materials made available today, including those related to forward-looking statements. Please see our SEC filings for risks and uncertainties related to financial results. We have three objectives for today. First, we'll provide an overview of Amcor. Second, we'll clearly outline our investment case, and third, we'll introduce you to several members of Amcor's management team.
In terms of the agenda for today, our Chief Executive Officer, Ron Delia, will begin the briefing, and this will be followed by presentations related to sustainability and Amcor Rigid Packaging before the first of two 20-minute Q&A sessions. We'll then take a five-minute break before turning to Amcor Flexibles. The second 20-minute Q&A session, and then Ron will finish up for a few closing remarks. Before beginning the first, a few additional points to help us navigate through the briefing smoothly. For the best viewing experience, please switch to Speaker View. To help us manage the Q&A sessions, please ensure you have your full name displayed on your Zoom profile. Please adjust this now if necessary. The two Q&A sessions will be panel style, and you'll have an opportunity to direct questions to the presenters you've just heard from. There are two ways you can ask questions.
First, you can ask a question through the Ask a Question chat box. Using the dropdown menu in Chat, please take a moment to locate Ask a Question. Your questions will be queued, and I will read them out to the panelists. Second, you can ask a question by raising your Zoom hand. To do this, go to the participants at the bottom of the screen. This brings up the participant list on the right-hand panel. You'll see the blue Raise Hand button there. Keep your hand raised in order to maintain your position in the queue. When your question gets to the top of the queue, the Amcor team will locate you, and I will invite you to ask your question. You can submit a question at any time during the presentation.
In the event we're not able to cover all the questions asked today, the Amcor Investor Relations team will be in contact with you after the event. With that, I'll hand over to Ron Delia to go through the first session: Why invest in Amcor?
Thanks, Tracey, and thanks for all of you for joining today in different parts of the world, different times of day. Very much appreciated, and of course, we wish we were doing this in person. I think we're gonna have a good showing here today. We've got a number of members of our senior management team, as Tracey alluded to, and we've also got some videos to help bring you inside our facilities to the extent that we can in this virtual setting. We'll start here today where we always start, which is with safety. Safety for us is a value.
It's our most important value, and business priorities at times shift, but values really are pretty steadfast, and safety is absolutely at the top of the list for us. We've been at this for quite some time now, probably since the late 1990s, actually, and you can see the progress on the right-hand side of the slide. We're quite proud of that, but we are committed to no injuries. We're not there yet, but on a million-man-hour basis, we're at 2.8 recordable cases per million man- hours worked, which, if you're familiar with the OSHA benchmark, is a high- water mark.
We'll get right into it today, which is the theme of the whole event, really, is: Why invest in Amcor? And there's a lot of things we could talk about with regard to the company, why work for the company, why buy products from Amcor, but unapologetically, today is about why to invest in Amcor, and this slide here captures our key messages around the investment case. Firstly, we're a global industry leader with a 160-year history, a strong track record, and a clear strategy going forward. Our organic growth has been very consistent. We're supplying stable end markets. We've got several levers to pull, which we'll talk about in quite some depth today, and all up, we consistently deliver 3%-4% organic profit growth.
Our dividend has always been an important part of the investment case, remains compelling, will continue to grow, currently yielding over 4%. And we have an investment-grade balance sheet with lots of capacity to invest and no shortage of opportunities for growth projects, and really no constraints in our ability to pursue them. And then lastly, we have momentum right now. We finished a very strong financial year on June 30th . We're in the middle of another one, and we've got very good momentum across the businesses organically and also coming from cost synergies, as a result of the Bemis acquisition.
All up, this is an investment story that's around 10%-15% of shareholder value each year, which is a combination of EPS growth, and dividend yield, and we'll go through each element of that return, in more detail here this morning or this afternoon. Amcor, on one slide, we would present in this way. It's, again, 160 years old, founded in Australia in 1860. The company does about $12.5 billion in sales, just shy of $2 billion in EBITDA, listed in both New York, and in Australia, and a global business in over 40 countries around the world. Now, most importantly, the track record for the company over the last 10 of those 160 years, has been quite strong. I'd start with the financial approach the business has taken.
We've always maintained a relatively consistent capital structure, consistent approach to funding the business, and we've been quite active in a number of transactions, but there really have been no boom or bust cycles as it relates to our balance sheet. We've been maintaining an investment-grade position for over 20 years. From that position, we've delivered consistent earnings growth, high single-digit EBITDA CAGR, 8% EPS growth over this period, an attractive dividend that's yielded on average 4.6%. In all, our shareholders have been rewarded. The total return to shareholders from the appreciation of the stock price and the dividends has been 15% over the last 10 years. The company today is essentially supplying consumer end markets. Basically what we do, food, beverage, healthcare would be the largest of those three.
A combination of big multinational customers and local customers or national players. We're supplying four different primary packaging products, flexible packaging being the largest, rigid packaging, as well as Specialty Cartons and closures, and we're a global business. We operate globally, as I mentioned, over 40 countries, 230 locations, and importantly, the company feels very global. There's no one dominant region. As Tracey pointed out, you'll hear from leaders today in Chicago and Zürich, São Paulo, Shanghai, Melbourne, and that's pretty much what you would see at any Amcor leadership gathering. It's a pretty diverse group, and we pride ourselves on maintaining that feeling. The other point I would make on this slide is the emerging market position that the company has.
We've got over a $3 billion business in emerging markets, which in and of itself is quite diversified, across Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, 27 markets in total, and I'll come back in a minute as to why those are so important for us going forward. Our strategy, which has not changed, has three elements. First is the portfolio of businesses that we're in. The second is the leverage we get from those businesses, which we get through the differentiated capabilities we've branded The Amcor Way. And then lastly, and most importantly, are our aspirations and what we're trying to achieve, particularly for shareholders. A few words about our portfolio, really three points I wanna leave you with.
The first is that we've been very active managers of the portfolio for quite some time, really for several decades. Very active on optimizing the portfolio, always with an eye towards maximizing shareholder value, and also evolving and meeting evolving consumer needs, which have led us in different directions over the years in terms of package formats and substrates. But there's no sacred cows. We've been quite active, both buying and selling businesses, obviously, most recently with the Bemis acquisition. And even this year, we've done some portfolio pruning of some smaller parts of the business, just to sharpen our focus that much more. The second point about the portfolio is that all the businesses now that we operate have some things in common.
First of all, they're all consumer packaging, primary consumer packaging, where innovation is particularly important, and the opportunity to add value and help our customers differentiate is there, and, and it, and it creates an opportunity for us. Secondly, industry structure, critical. We would say probably the single most important determinant of success in packaging, and multiple paths to winning, including through scale and leadership positions. And probably the most important part of the slide here is on the right-hand side, which is the stable of businesses that we're in today are almost all in leading positions. You know, starting with our global healthcare business, flexible packaging in all of the major flexible packaging markets around the world, Rigids in the Americas, and Specialty Cartons globally.
Each of those businesses occupies a leadership position in the place that they play, and the last point about the portfolio is that the businesses are all very complementary, and we get real synergies on an ongoing basis from having these businesses together. Cost synergies are obvious commercial benefits, but also the talent and capability advantages that we generate by having these businesses as part of the same stable. The second part of the strategy is about what ties it all together, and we have run a relatively decentralized operating model for quite some time, but we choose to get leverage and competitive advantage through differentiated capabilities, and we call those The Amcor Way. These are the five capabilities we think the five drivers of success that we believe matter to winning in the packaging industry.
It's not everything, but we've made deliberate choices to double down and resource up in these five areas that you see on the page here. Competitive advantage, but also leverage and scale benefits, and additional growth and productivity, not to mention the alignment of our team around the world, in the disparate places that we operate. Probably the best way to bring The Amcor Way to life is just with one example around Commercial Excellence. This is the part of The Amcor Way we've been at the longest, goes back to 2006. Common in all Amcor businesses would be the way we manage the commercial side of the business. The pyramid on the right hand - on the left-hand side would describe some of the things that I'm talking about here, but capabilities like key account management, or pricing, or marketing.
One example on the page here is a tool that we use to manage profit in a very granular way at a product or customer or even transaction level, and it supports the ability to make very informed mix decisions. In the bottom right, you can see a scatter plot. Each dot, in this case, would represent a customer or a transaction or a product segment, and the idea is to commercially optimize that mix, and drive higher margins, and sales as a result. The Amcor Way has certainly contributed, in a big way to the performance of the company over the last several years. This is a margin chart going back 10 or 11 years.
For the business, EBIT margins have expanded quite consistently, 10, 20, 30 basis points every year, with a few step changes in there, as a result of bigger portfolio moves. The Amcor Way has absolutely been a major contributor to that outcome, and we expect it to continue going forward, including in the last fiscal year, where we added 100 basis points of EBIT margin to the business. Now, the last part of our strategy is arguably the most important, which is our aspirations and what it means for shareholders in particular. I mean, we've been around for 160 years, and we know to be around for another 160.
We've got multiple stakeholders that we need to be attentive to, but we also know we're a public company, and without any apologies, we know that our shareholders are the most important, and so we're gonna talk about how we think about winning for shareholders in a little bit more detail here. This slide is about capital deployment as much as anything, but it's our shareholder value creation framework, and it talks about how we take the cash flows of the business, which are very consistent, defensive, given our end market exposure, and how we allocate that capital, that cash, every year to generate 10%-15% value for shareholders.
I'll walk through each of these in turn, but before we walk through the framework, I think it's important to check in on the track record, which is this slide here, and basically says that the business has been performing for the last six or seven years very much in line with this model. We've had steady sales growth of about 2%, high single digit EPS growth at 8%, plus a dividend, has meant that on average, over the last six or seven years here since 2014 , we've been delivering 12% of shareholder value. Just so happens that lines up almost exactly with the shareholder experience. TSR over that period has been 11%.
And so we feel pretty confident that this is what the business is set up to deliver, and will continue to deliver indefinitely into the future. Now, I'm gonna walk through these drivers, starting with the organic growth drivers. Now, our business leaders are gonna talk in more depth about each of these themes, but I'm gonna just highlight what you can expect to hear from each of those leaders that you hear from later today. There are multiple sources of organic growth in this business, starting with the markets that we're in, which all grow, the way we manage mix, as I alluded to earlier, innovation and cost productivity, while we won't spend a lot of time talking about it today, we're gonna focus more on the commercial side of growth.
It's a big part of our formula, and we get scale advantages by virtue of the size that we have, and also capability benefits that come from areas like procurement, et cetera. So cost is very much a part of our agenda. I'm happy to take questions on that, but we've chosen to focus on the first three elements of organic profit growth. And I would also say a word here about sustainability. Now, sustainability, without question, is the single biggest driver of organic growth in this business going forward. And we've allocated an entire section of this agenda on the topic of sustainability as it relates particularly to more sustainable packaging. And so David Clark, who leads that part of our company, will speak directly after me on all aspects of our sustainability agenda.
Quickly, to hit on some of these other growth themes. Look, our end markets grow. We're supplying consumer staples, food, beverages, healthcare in particular. They grow because economic activity grows, consumption grows, population growth. All of those macro drivers contribute to steady growth, as well as then the packaging intensity in each of those segments grows, contributes to growth as well, premiumization, convenience, et cetera. All up, developed markets continue to grow at low single digits. Emerging markets grow a little bit faster than that at mid-single digits, and as I mentioned earlier, I think it's worth an extra comment or two on emerging markets. You'll hear from some of our emerging market leaders actually later today, but they're a really important part of our story.
We've been operating in most of our emerging markets for decades. We've been operating profitably and successfully, and we continue to be very bullish on emerging markets going forward. There are a number of key drivers of growth in emerging markets that make them particularly interesting for us. There's an intensity of use curve on the left-hand side of this chart here, which basically just plots packaging consumption per capita on the vertical axis, and then per capita incomes on the horizontal axis. And I think, you know, it should be quite evident that at lower income levels, you've got less sophistication in the retail setting. Quite often you have wet markets. You just have less disposable income. As consumers shift and incomes rise, consumerism rises, and other things become more important.
You have urbanization, and you have convenience and functionality becoming more important parts of the way consumers go about making choices. Packaging becomes a lot more important, and many of our markets are right in the middle of this tipping point here, China obviously being the largest, but many others as well. So we expect continued mid-single-digit growth from our emerging markets exposure going forward, and we've been successful for 25 years in most of these markets for many of the reasons that are outlined on the right-hand side of this slide. Most importantly, and listed first there, is the experienced and profit-focused local leadership teams that we have. And I can't emphasize this enough, that emerging markets for us have always been about generating profit and returns.
We've never been about expanding the number of flags that we've planted or subsidizing top-line growth for any long period of time. These businesses are all quite self-sufficient and robust, and it starts with the local leadership teams that we have in place. You'll get a chance to hear from two of those local emerging markets leaders later today. The next driver of organic growth, which you'll hear about from all of the businesses, but is worth mentioning here, is mix management.
Ongoing migration of the product mix, the segment mix, the customer mix, towards more higher value-added, more differentiated parts of the market, has been a big source of our profit growth over the years, the margin expansion, and also allows us to make informed and purposeful choices about the top line, sometimes foregoing some top line in the interest of bettering our position and furthering our margin position and differentiation in the marketplace. On one dimension, which is segment mix, the best example to point to is healthcare. We have a global healthcare business that's approaching $2 billion in sales, really two segments, a medical device packaging and pharmaceutical packaging. Split the sales for the combined healthcare segment, split roughly 50-50. As I said, it's a global business across both flexible packaging and rigid packaging.
Lots of opportunities to differentiate. The value proposition is quite broad. Our ability to add value is quite high. And this set of segments, medical and pharma, would be as attractive as any in our mix as a result. Very briefly on innovation, where again, we'll spend more time later today. This is clearly a differentiator for our company relative to our peers. We get lots of positive recognition, most importantly from our customers, but also from the industry at large. We've got extensive resources. We would spend over $100 million a year on R&D with an extensive patent portfolio that's growing over time and continues to set us apart. We made a big announcement today on a first of its kind flexible packaging development.
It's a pouch that's retortable, which means it can be heated to almost 200 degrees. The food is cooked inside the pouch, and it's fully recyclable. We'll talk more about that, I'm sure, later today, so innovation is an important part of our agenda in every one of our businesses, and a big contributor to our growth going forward. Now, if we think about the second way we allocate capital on a regular basis, there's the dividend, which has been attractive and has been growing, and continues to be compelling, particularly in a low rate environment. You can see the current yield is about 4.7%.
The S&P is yielding less than two, so it's 2.5x the yield you'd get in the S&P more broadly, and obviously, with rates as low as they are, it becomes even more compelling at the present point in time. The dividend's also been growing consistently. We were admitted earlier this year into the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats list, which puts us in some really fantastic company with others who are as committed to their dividend as we are. And then lastly, but certainly not least, we've been allocating a substantial amount of cash after capital expense in the business and after dividends. Over the last 10 years, that's been over $3 billion of cash in acquisitions and buybacks.
That's about 2/3 , M&A, about 1/3 of that cash has gone towards buybacks. That's before the Bemis acquisition, which was an all-stock deal. We've completed more than 30 deals in the last 10 years, and we have a really rich pipeline looking forward, and we will absolutely be active across our portfolio. Just a word on the Bemis transaction, which was by far the largest deal in our history, which we closed in June of 2019. Brief word on the status after 15 months. In short, it's gone very, very well so far. Financial benefits accruing in the form of cost synergies also organic margin expansion. Based on the momentum of the business, the quality of the business that was acquired has been phenomenal, and the strategic benefits are starting to become clearer and clearer every day as well.
I've just described how we allocate the cash flows of the business for the benefit of shareholders. I've walked through the allocation towards CapEx and the drivers of organic growth, which you're gonna hear more about. The dividend, which is an important part of the investment case here, and then the acquisition and buyback history. I think another way to look at this, simply put, is that the sources of return to shareholders can be described as 5%-10% constant currency EPS growth, and a dividend, which has yielded historically between 4% and 5%. All up, 10-15% shareholder value proposition each year.
I'm gonna pass it over to Dave Clark here in a second, but just to summarize the investment case, I think it's hopefully set out clearly on this slide, but we've been around for a long time, and we have a really strong track record with a clear strategy looking forward, consistent growth, and a healthy dividend, backed up by a strong balance sheet with lots of capacity to invest, and momentum across all parts of the company. I think, without further ado, given the importance of sustainability and the opportunity that it represents, for Amcor on a number of dimensions, I'm gonna turn it over now to Dave Clark, for a deeper dive.
Thanks, Ron, and hi, everyone. I'm really pleased to be able to be here today and talk about how sustainability is contributing to Amcor's winning aspiration to be the leading global packaging company for our investors and our customers, and also for our employees and for the environment, and the role that sustainability is playing in the growth of the business and differentiating our products. We'll spend a lot of time talking about products themselves and their end-of-life scenarios, but it's important to take a step back and understand that our sustainability strategy is much more comprehensive than that. It starts with our plants and our operations.
We've had some really good success reducing greenhouse gas emissions across our business by over a third, significantly reducing the amount of waste that comes from our own operations, and also improving the efficiency of water use across our business. That's one part of our strategy. Another part is reducing ESG supply chain risk, which is important for our investors and our customers, and then ensuring that the materials we use, our product design are as sustainable as possible, and securing good end-of-life solutions for those products. We've received a lot of good independent recognition by different organizations that take a wide range of ESG matters into account, and those awards have been for both, the quality of the work that we're doing and for our reporting and transparency.
Many of you have probably seen this slide before about Amcor's points of view on packaging strategy, but it really forms the foundation of the work that we're doing around sustainability. People are living longer, and they're healthier than ever before in the history of our planet. And one of the reasons for that is the way that we're able to produce food, medicines, personal care products, and other products, and then distribute them around the world in ways that are safe so that they're available and ready when people need them, and that's never been more important than now. There is always going to be a role for packaging to play in preserving products and reducing total waste. We've done a great job of that over the history of the company, but of course, demands are changing.
Consumers are expecting more sustainable packaging, and in particular, packaging that leads to less waste. So our sustainability strategy is really focused on delivering responsible packaging that's designed well, but then works with waste management infrastructure and ensuring that infrastructure exists and consumers can use it. And you'll hear about how Amcor is uniquely positioned and how we're leading the way in these areas. Bill is going to come on and talk about how we're innovating, developing new products, more sustainable products. We're collaborating with stakeholders, not only our customers and suppliers, but waste management companies and others who are parts of the solution. And we're informing the discussion with governments, NGOs, and others about our vision and the steps that we're taking to reduce plastic waste and create more sustainable solutions.
When we talk about more sustainable products, there are really a large number of levers that we can pull. And those range from looking at raw materials, in particular, using more recycled content or using renewable or bio-based content. For example, the Löfbergs coffee package or the Espoma garden products packages we released this year that included renewable or bio-based polyethylene, which not only decoupled the source of the raw material from fossil fuels, but also offered a lower carbon footprint.
But then also looking at the design of the packages, reducing the amount of materials that we use, lightweighting and down gauging for efficiency, lower carbon footprint, using less raw materials in the first place, designing for end of life, and that could be recyclability of plastic packaging, also the packaging that fits into recycling streams in the aluminum stream, for example, or paper-based packaging, which is also recyclable, and then looking at other end-of-life scenarios, for example, packaging reuse. Our RefPET business is really exciting and growing, and Eric Roegner will be able to talk more about that. Packaging reuse is a growing area with a lot of interest, and then other scenarios like compostability that are suitable for some products and some markets, and we're able to offer those as well.
When we look at developing responsible packaging, of course, packaging design is an important part of it, but it needs to fit within a waste management infrastructure. And as I said, that infrastructure could be reuse, it could be compost, or it could be recycling. And when we look at recycling infrastructures around the world and the ones that work, what we see is in every case, there's some form of collection. That could be curbside collection that many of us have. It could be some type of drop-off program. It could be less formal programs that exist in other parts of the world today. And after material is collected, it needs to be sorted because recyclables flow into different areas. We have what we call recycling streams for paper, for metals, for different types of plastics. That sorting may take place with the consumer if they have multiple bins.
It may take place after collection in what we call municipal recovery facilities or sorting centers. Once the material is sorted, it's typically sold as a commodity to other processors. For example, you know, the paper mills that are making recycled paper, glass plants that are making bottles from recycled glass, or plastics recyclers, which could be independent recyclers or resin manufacturers. So when we talk about building the infrastructure, we're talking about getting all of those parts in place so that we can create the circular types of solutions that we want to make sure that the packaging that we make stays in the economy and out of the environment, and then, of course, it's critical that when those systems exist and the packaging is recyclable, consumers know what to do with it.
This is really important because one of the ways that consumers most engage with feeling responsible or feeling more environmentally responsible is through recycling. If we can create packaging that's recyclable, give them opportunities to do that. That really helps develop the identity that our brands want and helps consumers identify with feeling more recyclable or feeling more sustainable. When we get into discussions about more sustainable packaging solutions with our customers, we really have to take the full life cycle into account. That often begins with a discussion about the carbon footprint of the packaging. We're part of our customers' supply chains, and they often have targets about reducing the carbon footprint of their operations and their products.
The packaging that we make often stacks up really well against other substrates in terms of reducing carbon footprint, and we'll continue to build on that success using, as I said, bio-based products, recycled content that further reduces the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the packaging that we make. Our customers are interested in the recyclability of the packaging. Plastic packaging has often had a reputation or a misunderstanding that it's difficult to recycle. If we look around the world at recycling rates today, we can find examples where the recycling rates for PET bottles are as high or higher than the recycling rates for similar types of packages. It's not just in areas like Scandinavia or Japan. In Michigan, where I'm from and where the Rigid Plastics group is based, the recovery rate for carbonated soft drink bottles is 90%.
In California, the biggest market in the United States, the recovery rate is 70%. So we can show that, you know, it's the package and the infrastructure together, needs to come together to reach these types of high recycling rates. And I'll talk more about how we're doing that with flexible packaging as well. When we get into discussions with our customers about, "Can we put recycled content in?" The answer is yes. But this is an area where PET bottles can really stand out. They're the only package today where we see 100% recycled content being used in practice and at scale. And it's not just beverage containers like Naked Juice or TAZO Tea. We're doing it now in food packaging, like the Hellmann's Mayonnaise jar.
We're doing it in home care products made for Method or Everspring, and new categories like vitamins for Ritual. Eric Roegner is going to talk more about how we're really a leader in this area of incorporating PCR into our PET packaging. We're increasing the amount of recycled content that we use in our flexible packaging, too, with new releases in several markets. When it comes to flexible packaging, here's a misconception that I really want to try to clear up with many of you. You may have read in reports or talked to people who say that flexible packaging is not recyclable or multilayer flexible packaging, what's called MLPs in some parts of the world, is not recyclable. That's really not the case.
When it comes to developing recyclable packaging, we really need to make sure that we're developing packaging that fits into those recycling streams that I talked about. You can make monolayer packaging out of materials that are not recyclable. It won't be recyclable. And you can make multilayer packaging out of materials that are compatible with recycling, and it will be recyclable. And these are some of the breakthroughs that Bill's going to talk about, in terms of moving our flexible packaging into recyclable designs, recycle-ready, that then will fit into those recycling infrastructures. So here's a little bit more about what that looks like. Obviously, we need to design packaging to be recycled, and that means fitting into one of the major recycling streams.
As I said, there are existing streams for PET bottles, aluminum beverage containers, different types of paper, corrugated, newsprint, for example. And if you get enough of those together, you can sell them on commodity markets. There are existing commodity markets today for PE film in many parts of the world, and we're developing commodity markets for polyolefins as well. And as those markets are developed, then the infrastructure comes into place so that consumers can recognize these packages are not only designed to be recyclable, I can recycle them where I live and where I use those products. And when we get to that point, that's when the products truly become recyclable and get recycled at scale.
Those designed for recyclability standards are really important to align our industry, not only the packaging industry and the consumer brands who are using packaging, but the recyclers, for example, to understand the products that they're going to get, what's in them, the potential value. And Amcor is contributing to those discussions in a number of ways. We work with CEFLEX, the Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging in Europe, developing standards there, sitting on their board. In the United States, we have the How2Recycle label, which is really the arbiter for what's recyclable in the U.S. That's based on standards from the Association of Plastics Recyclers. We sit on their technical committee.
We also work with REDcycle in Australia, which is linked to the Australian Packaging Covenant and their PREP tool, which is used to develop recyclable, flexible packaging, or as they call it, soft plastics in Australia, and we work with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which is a global organization that's trying to help ensure that packaging is designed to be recyclable and fits into a circular economy. In many cases, Amcor is sitting right in the middle of all of this standards development, and that creates a really important advantage for us when we look at how do we transition our own portfolio to be more recyclable. If our rigid plastics packaging and our folding cartons are virtually 100% recyclable already, there are existing streams, they fit into those, and those streams are widely available for consumers.
On the flexible packaging side, many of our packages today are designed to be recyclable and can fit into existing streams where those exist. There's some of our packaging that is that multilayer packaging that may be designed with materials that are not recyclable today. That's the part where our R&D teams are working to innovate new products, like the AmLite HeatFlex product that you may have seen launched today, or other products that are moving that 61% quickly into the 70s, 80s, and beyond that. As I said, Bill Jackson's going to talk more about the work he's doing to make those recycle-ready products available for our customers so that we can get them into the market and ultimately in the hands of consumers and recyclers.
When it comes to flexible packaging, if you remember, I said there's design for recyclability, there's collection, and then there's the processing infrastructure. And there's a really clear path that moves us from left to right on this slide that shows that in some countries today, there's no collection and no recycling, but then the first step is we start adding collection, and it may be drop-off programs, it may be local in certain cities. Once we start collecting and we can get enough material together, then we can start developing the markets for recyclable materials, and we see that today in many parts of the world.
Right now, probably only Germany and the Netherlands are to the point where virtually 100% of households have access to collection of flexible packaging, and that's one of the reasons the AmLite HeatFlex product was launched in the Netherlands, but in many cases, where that packaging is collected today at scale, there are outlets to be able to recycle it as well, and of course, our goal is to get to full collection and full recycling of the packaging that we make, so we're actively partnering with others to try to get that waste management infrastructure in place. We work with the ReSource: Plastic project, which is part of the WWF. We're working with The Recycling Partnership here in the United States. I mentioned the Ellen MacArthur Foundation before, EUROPEN in Europe, several others in different parts of the world as well.
And what's really important here is these organizations are not just NGOs with support from businesses, but they're really bringing together our customers, the consumer packaged goods companies, also our suppliers, companies like Indorama and Borealis, ExxonMobil and Dow. The waste management companies, SUEZ, Veolia, in the United States, Waste Management and Republic, so that we can work together and collaborate, understand what materials are coming into these systems, how to make them better, more efficient, and what can come out of them. And again, Amcor is partnering and leading in trying to bring these types of projects together. I'm going to show you an example of just one of these projects. This is the Materials Recovery for the Future project. And what you're about to see is one of the sorting centers that I talked about.
This is based in the Philadelphia area. It services about 1.3 million households and brings together their mixed materials recycling, where it's sorted into the different commodity streams. And this was a test that we did, of course, in collaboration with others, to try to allow the households to put flexible packaging into the recycling bins and see if we could successfully sort it to begin to develop the technologies to manage this on a scale where we can develop markets and move forward. So with that, let's take a look at this video.
There's 12 billion lbs a year of this material used to package product in the U.S. We know these molecules of plastic have value. We want to keep them in play and get them into a next life product. Optical sorter technology can read what the material is so that a human hand doesn't have to pick it out of the stream. They get cleaner paper bales because they're removing the flexible packaging from that bale, and that sells for a greater value. And at the same time, they get to make a new product bale called rFlex.
This project absolutely proves that flexible plastic packaging can be collected and sorted in curbside recycling programs. That means that flexible packaging can be part of the circular economy, and we're really excited that we can replicate the learnings from this project to create a plastic system that works.
There's no question that this is the right thing to do. We must deal with these flexible materials, and I don't think that we'll have any trouble demonstrating that to other facilities that, hey, we got something here that, that's gonna work for you.
That's one example of the work that we're doing to enable the collection and sorting of flexible packaging. Another is the project Holy Grail, which was recently launched in Europe using a technology, but also looking at how flexible packaging can be sorted to get the most value from it. So stand by. I'm really excited about some of these projects that are coming up. And of course, as I said, once the infrastructure is in place, we have to make sure that public, NGOs, and governments all understand these systems and, you know, are comfortable using them. So we're actively working to inform and educate the public. We have the Amcor Big Ideas Podcast, where I interview outside industry experts about packaging sustainability.
We've had almost 30 thousand downloads of packaging of Big Ideas Podcasts, which to me is phenomenal that many people are interested in packaging sustainability. We've launched a number of webinars this year, since we haven't been able to travel to conferences. We've had between 400 and 1,000 people attending six or eight different webinars that we've produced this year. Our social media is very active in engaging with people within industry, also consumers and others, to help them understand the sustainability propositions and the direction that we're going with the packaging that we make. And of course, we're also collaborating with others.
Every Bottle Back is a program from the American Beverage Association with our beverage customers and others, communicating with consumers that when you're finished with that package, we want it back because we're going to make a new package out of it, and you can enjoy it again in a few weeks. REDcycle is one I'd mentioned before, where we're trying to align you know our colleagues across the value chain in Australia and New Zealand to help consumers understand that soft plastics are recyclable, and demonstrate the products that can be made from soft plastics. So I've been really excited to be able to share this short presentation with you. I'm looking forward to the presentations from my colleagues. I think you'll see many of the elements that I described here in the presentations from across Amcor, and I'm looking forward to your questions.
Thank you very much, and with that, I'll turn it over to Eric and Carmen.
All right. Thank you so much, David, and hello, everyone. With 6,000 employees working out of 50 manufacturing locations in 11 countries, with a comprehensive network of technologies and manufacturing across North America and Latin America, Amcor Rigid Packaging has delivered, in the last year, $290 million of EBIT across $2.7 billion of revenue. And with that base, we are the market leader, the absolute market leader, across these technologies. And we are the market leader here. And the reason I know that we are this market leader is because of our customers.
When customers really want to make a difference, whether it's a large customer that's looking at changing the game and revitalizing a category, if they want to drive lightweighting, if they want new product design, if they want to increase the amount of PCR that they have, they will call us. If it's a new customer, a brand-new customer that wants to change the game, revitalize an entire category, what they will do is they will call us because they're gonna need a partner. A partner that has the technology and the manufacturing footprint across this entire network that will enable them to meet those needs, and it's as we develop that value proposition, that our customers win.
What we're going to do over the next couple of minutes is, Carmen and I are going to deep dive this value proposition and show you why we are so convinced that Amcor Rigid Packaging is an attractive and profitable growth business. Oops! Please, if you could go back one page. As Ron described, there are several elements of this value proposition. What we start with is the markets. Over the last 10 years, what the team at Amcor Rigid Packaging has been able to do is move from what has traditionally been a commodity type of market in cold fill, CSD, and water, and transition in, into an expansive set of very attractive markets. In Beverage, we've grown into hot fill with very nice markets, in isotonics, in sports drinks, healthy hydration, specialty waters.
But more than that, we've been able to expand into non-beverage segments, such as food, home, personal care, pharmaceuticals, and spirits and wine. And in doing this, the other thing that we really focused in on is optimizing our mix towards those attractive customers and subsegments. For example, small and medium customers or distributors or co-packers, or those especially attractive subsegments in bigger markets, like aseptic dairy or the healthy hydration. And anchoring all this together has been innovation. Our intellectual property foundation, with many of the things we've already briefly mentioned, from the lightweighting to the use of PCR to design, has enabled that growth into those new segments and helped those customers be successful. And anchoring that and really reinforcing that, has been our network and the corresponding cost position.
By really optimizing our manufacturing base into large regional hubs that can provide the full set of technologies and manufacturing capabilities in different areas, that is then complemented by bespoke on-site or near-site manufacturing locations, not only do we have a world-class and leading cost to produce position in those areas, but we have established a foundation of technologies and capabilities that will enable even more growth. What I'm gonna do now is change gears a little bit, because overall, ARP being a large business across multiple regions, in the interest of time, what I wanna do is focus on North America, and all of the levers that I'm about to discuss are equally as relevant in Latin America and elsewhere, starting with manufacturing.
Over the last couple of years, as we've worked very hard to integrate acquisitions and enable growth in new technologies, what we have done is double down on our manufacturing network to establish world-class regional hubs that have the range of technologies as well as technical support, where our customers are and where they need that support. Those then are complemented by the bespoke on-sites or near sites that can leverage the resources back from that hub, and that will then establish not only a really world-class cost position, but enable that expansive growth. And with that, what we've been able to do is take new technologies that we've either acquired into the company or that we've developed organically. We've expanded materials from the base of PET, we've moved into polyethylene, into polypropylene, into multilayer coextrusion, materials.
We've taken what we actually physically do in the facilities from the base of injection and two-step blow molding into linear and rotary extrusion. In- mold labeling, we've been able to go into assembly, and that foundation, having it where we need it around the U.S., has enabled us to not only grow beverage into more attractive markets, but it's really enabled us to grow into other areas, and particularly, non-beverage categories that we've talked about, so let me get a little bit more specific on that. With that network and those capabilities, our beverage market has grown into hot fill, attractive markets like sports drinks, healthy hydration, enhanced waters, aseptic dairy, things that are growing above average with the market, but even more so into the non-beverage segments.
What we can see is the attractive parts of those markets that really resonate with the PET and the lightweighting plastic value proposition. Home personal care, food, pharmaceutical, spirits and wine, even to our closures business, which not only supports all of those markets, but with its depth of intellectual property and differentiation, has also grown into very attractive adjacent markets like industrial cleaners, lubricants, and even agricultural chemicals. Let me back down again and double down on the beverage market, because it's very important that we understand that the underlying beverage market is an attractive growing market, with liquid refreshment beverages still growing at about 2%. Within that market, the portions of the market that lend themselves to the PET value proposition are growing even faster than the base liquid refreshment beverage market.
PET is growing in this space, and what's been fantastic news for Amcor, given all of the work we've done over the years to really invest in our capabilities and the attractive markets there, is that it is resonating. Last year alone, we had over 200 new product launches in those attractive portions of the beverage market. For example, big new launches in sports drinks, in enhanced waters, in healthy hydration, in brewed teas, you know, in aseptic dairy, in those portions of the market that are growing quickly and are really attractive. Underpinning that growth, not only in beverage, but actually across our whole portfolio, is that incredible value proposition of our materials and capabilities. We all know plastics have some just inherent advantages in the markets that they support.
There are physics around the fact that it's not breakable, that the materials lend themselves, as David mentioned, to multiple sources, including having bio-based polyethylene, for example. But particularly in today's world. In today's world, the story around sustainability is resonating, and that is anchoring on the use of PCR or post-consumer resin. As David had talked about, using PET, it is infinitely 100% recyclable, whether it's mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, all of those molecules can go right back into packaging forever. One of the things that's particularly unique about PET, that only PET can say, is if you want to hold a package in your hand that is made of 100% recycled material, only, only PET will do that. And that's a very compelling value proposition.
And as end consumers are demanding that recycled content and linked into the broader story around greenhouse gas emissions, where like for like, any PET container is a significantly better greenhouse gas footprint, up to 70% better than other materials. As consumers are demanding that, and it gets into the brand owners, what we have been seeing is a radical growth rate in the use of PCR in the market, and that is something that we are capitalizing upon. What I'd like to do now is hand over to Carmen, who's gonna take us on a deep dive into some of those most attractive markets. So Carmen, over to you.
Thank you, Eric. So I think here, the first segment we're gonna look at is gonna be regional customers. And about five years ago, we recognized that the growth rate for regional customers was outpacing the overall market, and this was not a segment that we were really paying attention to, but we saw great potential. So we took the time to think about how do we structure ourselves, and we came up with three changes to our approach to these type of customers. The first was we developed a dedicated commercial team that would only concentrate on regional customers. These were the only customers they would call on. The second is we went to a regional hub, as Eric mentioned earlier. We took small volume platforms and placed them across our network.
This really allowed us to diversify and make sure that we were in proximity to these regional customers, as well as to have low volume order production in a cost-effective way. And then finally, we shared our world-class innovation, and between this focus and positioning, we really made it attractive to work with small regional customers. We could help them launch quickly. We could help them innovate and differentiate versus their competition. And as a result of this focus approach, we've seen over the last five years an annual growth of 13% per year. We expect this trend to continue, and this is gonna be a big focus area for us going forward. Eric, can you take us to the next slide? So next, we're gonna look at pharmaceuticals. Again, very attractive segment overall for Amcor.
And here, there's really four sub-segments that we're gonna focus on. First is gonna be ophthalmics. We are the industry leader in ophthalmics, and we see this continuing to grow as the population ages. Our next is nutraceuticals, and essentially, here, we're talking about vitamins and supplements. This has been a trend overall as consumers become more aware about their health and wellness, and they really want to proactively take care of their health. So again, good opportunity for us. A third is diagnostics, and this is really a new category for us. Here, we're talking about blood and culture vials, along with dropper-style assemblies for virus testing. This just has not been a strong area for us. It was really the technology specifications were tough. It was dominated by glass. But over the past couple of years, we've had strong innovation and have been able to convert...
See the glass-to-plastic conversion, so really excited about this. It addresses a key issue that we have in healthcare, and that is the breaking of glass vials, so great opportunity, and then final is animal health. Here, this is just a growing category. It's a result of increased pet ownership, as well as just they spend a lot on their pets, so really excited here. Part of what gives us a superior value proposition is our experience in the ophthalmic category. We understand how to navigate the heavy regulatory requirements to launch new products. We know how to effectively operate in clean rooms, and in fact, we have four to six clean rooms across four plants, and this is really important from a redundancy and business continuity.
It's a long qualification process to get new products launched or to go to new production places, so redundancy is very important. So really attractive segment, something that you're gonna hear about further and later with the Flexibles business group as well. Next slide. So the last area that we're gonna look at is Dairy, and here I wanna really clarify, we're not talking about the gallon jug of white milk you buy at the supermarket to take home. Really, here, we're talking about single-serve, on-the-go consumption of value-added dairy, dairy alternatives, and meal replacements. Brands in this area really need to innovate. They need to differentiate. They need to improve their sustainability footprint, and they need to figure out how to get more out-of-home consumption and penetrate e-commerce. And this is where Amcor really has a great offering. We have one-stop shopping.
We are able to offer our PCR expertise is able to help them improve their sustainability footprint, and with our barrier technology, we can help them get into non-refrigerated distribution channels, so again, really great segment. We see opportunities, and if you look at over the past five years, we've seen double-digit growth rates, and we expect this to continue into the future. And so I think what we've noted here is that our innovation and technology really is one of our primary growth levers. It's an area where we have launched, on average, over 200 products per year. We have been able to develop proprietary technologies that's allowed us to have 170 patent families.
And if you look at the key products we're launching, they are really around package design, light weighting, barrier capability, as well as increased use of PCR. So to give everybody a better feel of our world-class innovation and R&D capabilities, we're going to share a short video right now.
It all begins at Amcor Rigid Packaging Innovation Centers. This is where art and science collide in a symphony of creativity, precision, and engineering to craft the perfect, lightweight, recyclable package that's better for the planet. Our high-tech design studio buzzes with brand specialists and creatives, obsessed with conjuring unique containers for our global customers in search of more sustainable solutions. An unusual collaboration commences with an array of Amcor experts spanning design, engineering, prototyping, and pre-production. Each passionate professional united by a proprietary process that channels their talents into iconic packaging. A mix of manpower and next-generation materials come together to advance the commercial aspirations of our client partners, while delighting consumers with innovation and inspiration at the moment of truth. It's true that shoppers may not know about our accelerated design and collaboration process, world-class engineering, 3D prototyping capabilities, rapid tooling development-...
E-commerce certified labs, and countless industry awards. But they can see and feel something special, born, designed, and shaped by dedicated hands and unbridled imaginations at Amcor Rigid Packaging Innovation Centers.
Excellent. As you saw in the video, innovation is at the absolute heart of what we do, and one of the best examples of how Amcor has used innovation to grow an entire category and grow a wonderful growth market, is what we have seen us do in the hot fill market. Now, hot fill is different than cold fill in that when the liquid goes into the package, it's going in at 185 degrees or more. And what this does is the thermomechanical and the barrier challenges, the properties that this presents are staggering, because as the liquid goes in and the material expands very quickly, and then it contracts and pulls a vacuum, everything about that package needs to be designed in a way to address that. And this is where Amcor's intellectual property and innovation engine really comes to bear.
With a patent portfolio of over 60 families of technologies, where we look at the sides of the package, where we look at the bases to put rigidity in, or we look at active bases. What we have been able to do is constantly drive innovation that enables more and more sophisticated and lighter weight, more PCR packages into this space, and it plays right into our value proposition. Very specifically, what I'd like to do now is talk about the huge trend that we have been at the forefront of leading, which is the light weighting of this package. In the last 10 years, by constantly driving generation after generation of this technology, we've been able to provide our customers with options that they can use to take over 50% of the weight out of these packages.
You can do it in generations, starting with the sides, then being able to put more of the mechanical properties into the base of the package, which liberates design freedom and lightweight in the side, and then by making an active base technology, that as the vacuum starts to compress, you can handle that inside the base, and you won't have the walls collapse. All of this has been fantastic and allowed our customers to succeed in the market, but that's not where we've stopped. We have the next several generations already in the pipeline. In fact, some of them we're working to commercialize today.
Beyond just lightweighting, what these technologies enable us to do is they are the same underlying technologies, coupled with additive manufacturing process expertise, that will allow us to use even that much more PCR inside of the packaging, marrying that light weight and that PCR to drive what I'm going to call true revolutions in the next generations of packaging. In conclusion, I just want to say that I feel so blessed to be part of this team that is taking the value proposition that Carmen and I just described, that helps our customers win, and that is what is going to serve to drive that profitable growth in the future.
Whether it's large brand owners that want to completely revitalize their brand by coming up with revolutionary new designs, by finding ways to take the whole new step change of weight out, take PCR to 100% levels, even in hot fill applications. We are the ones that they are going to call and partner with. It's a brand-new customer we don't even know yet, who has an idea to revitalize or completely redefine a category. And what they're going to need is that partner, that brings not only the technology to design that new package, but the manufacturing capabilities and infrastructure across the entire region that they need to be there, that can help them every step of the way, from 10 million to 100 million, to 1 billion to 2 billion units. We are the ones they're going to call.
And as we work together intimately on technology, developing those radical new packaging solutions, and then commercially and on that operational footprint, here's what I know is going to happen. We will grow profitably, and we'll do that because our customers will win, and our customers are going to win because we have and will deliver. And with that, thank you. And, Tracey, Ron, I'm going to hand it back to you. Thanks.
Thanks, Eric. This brings us to our first Q&A session. Ron, Dave, Eric, and Carmen will join the panel for the next 20 minutes. So please submit questions which are most relevant to this group. Just a reminder, before we start, our panelists are all located in separate rooms, so please bear with us as we navigate through the session, queuing each other in as necessary to make sure that we get your questions answered. You can submit questions at any time, either by raising your Zoom hand in the participant list, and I will invite you to ask your question at the relevant time, or by writing your question to the Ask a Question chat box. Your question will then be entered into the queue, and we'll read it out to the panel.
The first question today is from John Purtell at Macquarie, and his question is: What drives Amcor's confidence that sustainability is its most exciting long-term organic growth opportunity? What are the sustainability risks, and will you derive higher margins from more sustainable products? Dave, I will pass that question on to you to get us started.
... Yeah. Thanks, Tracey. I think I'd outline the opportunity in three ways. First of all, if you look at Amcor's pledge, where we've said we'll make our packaging recyclable or reusable, use more recycled content, and work with others to increase the collection and recycling of our packaging, we did that two years ago with a small number of companies. Since then, it's become the Global Commitment sponsored by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and United Nations, and we're getting close to 1,000 different companies, governments, and NGOs signing on to that same Global Commitment, and that represents a significant part of the overall packaged goods market.
So what started as an Amcor pledge, and a few other companies, has now really become a movement that's creating an opportunity for alignment within the industry, and then for Amcor to leverage our presence across a much larger customer base. I think second of all, the value proposition for sustainable packaging or more sustainable packaging is changing. Certainly, consumers are indicating they're more willing to pay for more sustainable options and products. But at the same time, we're seeing changes in other forces. California just passed a regulation that's going to require beverage bottles in California to include certain percentages of recycled content. We're seeing regulations in Europe that are gonna create advantages for packaging that contains recycled content or advantages for packaging that's more recyclable.
So the value proposition of the offerings that Amcor has is really going to change, and it's going to create more value for those more sustainable packages compared to packages that may not be recyclable or may be made from all virgin materials. And third, I think when you put those two together, with Amcor's global position, our scale, the level of investments we're making, the talent that our R&D team has to bring these new innovations to bear, and then the way that Amcor can bring solutions to both the global, you know, consumer brands and also the regional brands who are interested in more sustainable options. When you put those together, it's a really great opportunity for profitable growth for Amcor, and it's gonna be a win-win for the environment, too. So back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Dave. The next question we have is from Brook Campbell-Crawford at JP Morgan. So Eric, this will be a question for you. And Brook asks: "Can you confirm how many plants have been closed in relation to the restructuring program initiated in 2018? And how much capacity has been taken out of the Rigids business and will be taken out of the business once this program is completed?" Eric, over to you.
Thanks, Tracey, and great question. Very important to note that over the last five or so years, as we've done the combination of integrating acquisitions into the ARP family, while also really optimizing our manufacturing and technology footprint into, as I described, these large, at-scale regional hubs with the bespoke on and near site assets. What that's enabled us to do is consolidate a number of locations, particularly small or medium-sized stranded locations, into one or the other of those capability centers. Now, in doing that, we did collapse a number of sites in, and as a result, several hundred roles were restructured out of the organization. But it's important to note why we did that. The goal was not to take capacity out of the network. Quite to the contrary, actually, our capacity utilization has stayed high.
But what we've done by collapsing and consolidating as we did, is we've been able to establish a world-class low cost to produce, so a great cost structure that leverages that infrastructure of those sites. But even more importantly, as we've wanted to grow into the non-commodity beverage spaces inside of beverage, and even more so into the non-beverage markets, by doing it this way and moving the right technologies into the right locations, we've enabled ourselves to have that technology set in the regions necessary so that we could actually grow with these customers and in those markets where needed. Thanks, Tracey. Back to you.
Thanks, Eric. The next question is another one that I'll give back to you. It's from Andrew Scott at Morgan Stanley. Andrew's question is: How are customers that have shifted to recycled content generally promoting this? Would we see this on the label? Would we see it as part of an advertising campaign, or do they have other methods of promoting to the consumer the recycled content? Over to you, Eric.
Thanks, Tracey. Okay, Tracey, great question. And I'll tell you what, the answer is all of the above. There are very many ways that our customers are doing this. There are some customers that have latched on to the PCR value proposition very early on and go right out on the label from hand soaps like Method or the Hellmann's mayonnaise jar that David mentioned, where they are leading front and center and saying: Look, this container has 100% PCR, and it's right there in all of their marketing and all of their advertising. There are others that the way they're approaching it is making broader claims about getting to certain levels of PCR across their product categories, and then they're feathering it in.
Sometimes those claims will be quite overt on the label, sometimes they're a little bit more subtle, but they've decided to market it more across their whole portfolio. So what we're seeing is that segment by segment, customer by customer, product by product, we are seeing different ways of them communicating it into the market, but they've all looked at their end customers and said: "What's the best way for us to do this to get that message out there?" ... Back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Eric. The next question over the Zoom chat box is from Julia Weng at Paradice Investment. Dave, this is one for you. And Julia's question is: Would Amcor seek to directly invest in recycling infrastructure or technology to accelerate the process of recycling plastic?
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Thanks, Tracey. I can say that we certainly consider it, and we consider it from a couple of different perspectives. First of all, if you look at the processing side, when I first joined Amcor, I was running the business that made recycled resin for the rigid plastics business. We had operations in the United States and also in Europe. Over time, we realized that the better strategy is probably to move away from vertical integration and develop a supply chain and supply base, and we were able to dramatically increase the amount of recycled content that we could put into our packaging.
If you look at the collection side, that's really a specialized business, and and there are people, you know, companies like Veolia, SUEZ, Republic, and others, who are managing that waste management infrastructure, and it's really not just plastics collection. If you look, plastics play a very small part in the recyclables business, if you look at all of the material that's collected from households in terms of, you know, paper, metals, and other things. So it's a very broad business with a completely different skill set. I guess I would say that, you know, would we consider it? Of course, the answer is yes. If we saw that it was a faster pathway to achieve our goals that also delivered profitable growth, it's certainly something that we'd consider. I'm sorry, back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Dave. No problem. Thanks, Dave. The next question that was pre-registered is from Brook Campbell-Crawford at JP Morgan. Ron, this will be one for you. Amcor has made a number of asset sales over the last 12 months, including a flexible packaging plant in the U.K., two plants in LatAm, and last week, the AMVIG sale. Were these transactions part of a broader rethink about the portfolio, and should we expect to see these sorts of divestments continue over the next 12 months? Over to you, Ron.
Yeah. Thanks, Tracey. Thanks, Brook. Look, I wouldn't consider it a broader rethink of the portfolio. I would say it's really a continuation of a theme that's been the way we've managed things for a long period of time, and there's been a lot of acquisitions, but there's also been a lot of businesses that we've exited, some big ones over the years. These that you mentioned are... I would put more in the portfolio pruning bucket. You know, these were in the first three examples that you mentioned, a business in the U.K., which was producing bread bags, business in Argentina, making disposable products for food service, a joint venture we had in Brazil with Huhtamaki to make tube laminate.
These are one-plant operations, not places that we were going to really double down in and invest to win, and so we're essentially dabbling and decided to get out and just in the spirit of further focusing and refining our resources and our management attention. In the case of AMVIG, it was a unique ownership structure we got into in 2003 or 2004. We took an ownership stake in a public company called AMVIG, which makes cartons for tobacco and some other products in China. It is a company that trades on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Essentially, we took an option on that business about 15 years ago, and again, never committed to really double down and further help drive growth and consolidation and decided to exit that stake last week. So I wouldn't consider it a broader rethink of the portfolio as much as just a continuing evolution and refinement and really tightening up the focus on the places where we think we can win, and you know, you're hearing a lot about those today, Rigid Packaging, in particular in the Americas, Flexibles globally, cartons and closures as well. So that's what those are about. Tracey, back to you.
Thanks, Ron. The next question is through the Zoom chat box platform, and it's from Richard Johnson at Jefferies. Question for Eric. Could you talk about the competitive environment in the U.S., and particularly as it relates to rising customer self-manufacture? Over to you, Eric.
All right. Thanks, Tracey. And one thing is I'm not gonna talk about any particular competitors, but what I will say in this market in general is that if you are positioned as we are, as the innovation leader in a market that is dynamic, where there are growing and attractive segments that lend themselves to innovation, then the ebbs and flows of certain trends, like self-manufacturing, are things you're aware of, but don't really fundamentally change the underlying nature of the business. Generally speaking, this is a well-structured market in North America. We have a very advantaged position. As I mentioned earlier, we'd spent quite a bit of time and effort over the last number of years working on that mix of assets and technologies, customers, and products to deprioritize and de-emphasize the more commodity products.
For example, CSD and water cold fill, to really enable us to win in the advantage segments, like hot fill categories that we talked about around healthy hydration, and even more so, diversifying beyond beverage into those specialty container markets that Carmen talked about. And so while there are ebbs and flows in a number of those different areas, we really think that we are especially well positioned in the attractive growth markets, where innovation will lead. Back to you, Tracey.
... Thanks, Eric. The next question we have is a Zoom raised hand, so I'll hand over the microphone to for the person to ask the question directly. And the first one on the raised hand platform comes from Larry Gandler at Credit Suisse equity. So, Larry, we'll open your microphone, and then we'll go directly to one of the panelists to answer the question. Larry, go ahead.
Thank you, guys. My question, I guess, is for Eric. Excuse me, I'm a bit of a technophobe. I couldn't find the chat box, but I'll get it from Damien. So my question relates to that slide you had up there with volume. You showed unit growth over time. Could you talk to, particularly with regards to lightweighting, how resin, your, your resin use has grown? I think that would be a great sustainability message, if you could perhaps describe that your use of resin has not nearly grown as much as your units over the last few years.
Excellent. Yeah, this is Eric. Thanks so much for the question, and by the way, I completely empathize with the chat box thing. It's right there next to the page turn, which I couldn't figure out earlier. That's a great insight, because back to this point about lightweighting and use of PCR complemented with lightweighting, while the units have grown, we've been able to actually hold our total resin consumption, both the combination of resin and virgin, just about flat over the last number of years. And we plan on maintaining that trend, if not even improving on it, going over into the future. So bringing that innovation to continuously drive the lightweighting enables us to hold resin at level or drop it while the units continue to grow. That's a really good insight. Thanks, and back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Eric. The next question is from Andrew Scott at Morgan Stanley. And Ron, this will be one for you as well. Andrew's asking, "Gearing remains manageable. Do you feel you have the management bandwidth for acquisitions? If yes, should we think of this being focused on Rigids, or do you see scoping Flexibles, even with the Bemis integration ongoing?" Over to you, Ron.
Tracey, thanks, Andrew, for the question. Look, the balance sheet is in a good position. It's been well managed, consistently managed for a number of years now, and it puts us in a comfortable position that the Bemis deal being an all-stock transaction obviously preserved flexibility for us. Cash flows in the business are strong. So from a financial perspective, there's no question that we've got the firepower and the capacity to pursue acquisitions. From a management bandwidth perspective, if you think about the Bemis acquisition, it really fits within the Flexibles perimeter. And even within the Flexibles perimeter, there's four different regional businesses that are each at different stages of integration.
I think it's not too far from being within the realm of possibility that the management bandwidth frees up and some of those businesses, if not all of them, can start to think about, you know, what's next from an inorganic growth perspective, and then clearly in the rigid packaging segment, I think Eric and Carmen did a great job of describing some of the opportunities, particularly outside of the beverage space, where we already have a really big scale position. Lots of runway for growth in North America, in particular, outside of beverage, and that business has not been tied up with an integration.
So I think, long story short, Andrew, we've got the financial capacity to pursue deals, and I would say more or less, we've got the management bandwidth, particularly over the next couple of quarters across the whole company. So you can expect to see us be active, going forward as we have been, historically as well. So thanks for the question, Andrew. Back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Ron. The next question is a Zoom chat box question from Matthew Ryland at Greenc ape. Ron, I think this is another one for you. It relates to sustainable products, and the question is: Will the sustainable products initially gain greater penetration in short-run packaging markets?
Yeah, Matt, thanks for the question. Look, I think that over the years, we've seen lots of innovation come from places that maybe we wouldn't ordinarily expect. Some of the smaller companies in the developed markets, some of the niche brands who've been more aggressive in terms of marketing their products, merchandising their products. Eric mentioned Method Products company, which gained pretty significant share on the back of their sustainability credentials in a relatively staid category like home and home care products several years ago. You see innovation come from brands like that, and we also see innovation coming from the emerging markets and some of the national brands that you'll hear a bit more about later. I think it's not so much that the more sustainable technologies are better suited for short runs.
I think that there's every bit as strong a likelihood that some of the smaller customers get to the market faster with some of these innovations, which take a bit of a leap of faith in some cases. Those companies have proven over the years to be a bit more aggressive in marketing and launching new products. It's not to say that the larger customers are not active. We've got extensive agendas with all of the big FMCGs that you would think of, and they're quite active as well. But I would say I'd put equal money on both types of customers in terms of who gets to the market first, with some of the more innovative solutions on more sustainable products, whether they're recyclable or those products with higher recycled content.
Thanks for the question, Tracey. Back to you.
Thanks, Ron. The next question is a raised hand question, from George Staphos at Bank of America. George, your microphone will be open very soon, and you can go ahead and ask your question, then the panelists will jump in to provide an answer. Over to you, George.
... Great. Thanks, Tracey. Thanks, everybody, for the presentation so far. I had two questions. Number one, Dave, you had mentioned several recyclability statistics across your portfolio. I think 61% for Flexibles, 95%+ for Rigids. Can you talk about the percentage of material within those product lines that are economically recycled, closed loop, back to packaging? And then the second question I had, Eric, appreciated your presentation. You talked about mix enhancement. You talked about the hub and spoke approach, lightweighting, certainly, which has been going on in the PET industry for a long time. What do you think we'll need to see on a going forward basis to see a, an even better profit performance out of the Rigid business on a going forward basis? Thank you very much.
Yep. Thanks, George. That's a good question. I think first of all, if you look at the collection rates around the world, and the percentage of that is going back into packaging again, a good indication is in the United States. You have probably about half of the PET, maybe a little bit less, that's being collected, going back into packaging. Some of that's going back into beverage containers. Actually, a larger percentage is going back into thermoforms today, and we see that as actually a good thing because, you know, if you have multiple competitors trying to buy the same material, then that helps to support the market.
We see other markets, you know, in Europe with typically 40%-100% PCR, which Coca-Cola has just made that commitment in the Nordic countries. The economics vary a bit from one location to another, depending on producer responsibility, regulations, and other things, but we're seeing that level increase year on year. Within flexible packaging, it's still a little bit earlier, both in terms of the collection rates and the amount that's being put back into packaging. But we're seeing, you know, Amcor products with 30% PCR being put into them in some cases today. Of course, we're working to make those rates much higher. Back to you, Tracey.
Thank you, Dave. That brings us to the end of the first Q&A session. So thank you to all the panelists, and thank you to the audience for all the questions. There are a number of questions which will remain in the queue, and we'll take those forward to the second panel and address those then. We will now take you on a short five-minute break. So you'll see some videos rolling through this break, and we will join you. We will come back to focus on Amcor Flexibles business. And so we'll be back in about five minutes. Thank you.
Hi, everyone. I'll have the pleasure to kick us off here for the Flexibles session with a couple of slides in order to get us started.
... And I wanna, I wanna do this by running through the key messages that we want to leave behind, and that we will probably come back to as you go through the following conversations with us. So the first one is, we're the only player with a truly global footprint. And wherever we play, that's the number two, we have leadership positions in, and, and we operate at scale in every single region. And you will see that clearly when we take you through the other slides that are going to come. The third one is we're leading in differentiated and growing segments, and that's really important because we make choices about where we want to play. We do not want to be everyone, everything for everybody.
The fourth one is we're having a world-class R&D infrastructure and capabilities, and the last one is we have multiple sources of organic and acquisition growth opportunities in the business. Now, the next slide that I'm going to get to is speaking to the scale of the business and to the global reach. We're talking about the Flexibles segment here, and the segment reaches about $10 billion of sales, as you can see on the upper left-hand side. And it's actually very well distributed across the globe, with about 30% being in North America, 30% being in Western Europe, and 30% being in emerging markets. A very small piece is in Australia and New Zealand.
You see that we have about 180 plants in about 39 countries, and we operate with about 40,000 employees, so that clearly speaks to the scale of the business. As I then dissect the Flexibles segment, I would get to two businesses, two separate businesses. One is the global business and Specialty Cartons, and the other one is the Global Flexibles business. Both of those businesses make up for the Flexibles segment that I just talked about. Now, the Specialty Cartons business is a great business. Many of the things that I just talked to on the global Flexibles segment apply here also. It is definitely a global business, and we're the only global player in the world in that particular product segment. It is an innovation leader.
This business has excellent relationships to a consolidated set of customers, and it is run extremely well from an operational point of view, so you pull these things together, and you get yourself to a business that generates really good margins and a strong and very consistent cash flow, and therefore, this business becomes a very attractive business and an extremely important contributor to the Flexibles segment. Now, this is the only part in the presentations where we talk to the Specialty Cartons business, and the only reason for that is that we needed to make choices what we wanted to discuss as we're going through the Flexibles segment.
And we made the choice to discuss and focus really on the Global Flexibles business, which is by far the bigger piece of the business, and which is probably the more interesting one, also given the acquisition that we've made about eighteen months ago, and that is the Bemis business. So as we talk about the Global Flexibles business, let me take you through this chart, and there is a couple of messages that I want to leave behind. First of all, again, it speaks also in the Global Flexibles business to the global reach of the business. We also see here the market size, the size of the markets in which we operate, and they're significant.
Now, the first message that I want to leave behind here is how the market size compares to actually the size of our business in each region. And that speaks to the fact that the markets and the businesses in every single market are fragmented, and that we have ample opportunity to grow in the business through acquisitions. The second big message here is that we are in leading positions because we've compared ourselves here against the next biggest competitor in the different regions. And you can see that in every single case, we are significantly larger than the next biggest competitor.
And the mere fact that you see different colors here for the different competitors by region, it just indicates that there are different competitors in every region, which also speaks again to the fact that we're the only truly global player in this field. Now, the final point that I would like to make before I hand it off here to the innovation piece is, again, coming back to the sources of growth that we have in the business. The first one really is that the markets in which we operate, they're all growing, so should we, we should also be growing. The second one is that we're active mix managers, and that, again, speaks to the fact that we're trying to move our portfolio into those areas of the market where we expect higher profitability at more attractive opportunities.
The third one is the innovation capabilities. We have world-class R&D capabilities and infrastructure, and we're a leader in high-barrier film and foil technologies. The last one is the cost productivity side. We have proven over the past that we're able to take costs out of the system and expand our margins, and we believe that we have more opportunity to do so as we go forward. That should be enough as a quick introduction to the Global Flexibles business. With that, I want to hand it off to Bill, who is our Chief Technology Officer. Bill?
Okay. Well, thank you, P.K., and good day, everybody. So I have the pleasure of walking you through our Global Flexibles R&D organization and how we're positioning our talent and our pipeline for growth. So let's take a quick look.
...Conceived with success in mind, the Amcor Innovation Center helps customers capitalize on the value of packaging to create a new and better world for their consumers through informed development. Using a hands-on, cross-collaborative approach to combine industry knowledge, material science, and market insights, our customers can devise and evaluate new packaging options with speed to market and growth in mind. Our fully equipped, consumer-focused lab spaces offer on-site iterative solution validation and package testing, from consumer focus groups, to a customizable retail lab for at-shelf assessments, to consumer use experience environments. Our cutting-edge prototyping lab brings flexible and rigid packaging concepts to life quickly, utilizing an asset foundation for the fabrication of one to thousands of highly functional prototypes.
The Packaging Machine Center provides customers with a wide range of technology and packaging machinery at their fingertips, featuring specialized healthcare, liquid, food safety, and cold protein labs, each with dedicated space for development trials, testing, and larger scale prototyping. The Amcor Innovation Center is excited to collaborate with all of its domestic and global visitors in their pursuit of discovering the most groundbreaking, inspirational, and intuitive packaging solutions for today and the future.
Okay, pretty exciting. So, let's actually go back one page, give you a little more flavor of our capabilities and where we're going. One more. There we go. So I was very pleased to give you a little preview to the Neenah Innovation Center, and very pleased to announce that more like that are coming. So, stay tuned on this. But I like to tell the R&D guys, there's never been a better time to be in R&D than with Amcor R&D right now. Why do I say that? Because we truly have a world-class team of engineers and scientists around the enterprise, around our countries and businesses, that operate in a collaborative environment. We're getting all the funding we need from the company. I wanna thank Ron. We're getting incremental resources to double down on sustainability.
We're building out enhanced capabilities for testing and customer-focused trials, and we're expanding our innovation center footprint so truly, never been a better time to be in R&D. Now, we have a strong focus on intellectual property creation and protection. In the past 36 months, we've filed some 70 patent applications, which takes our portfolio to north of 350, and that number is growing year over year and many of these are around breakthrough sustainability formats, and so you'll hear more about that in a minute. The team is well-decorated. I think you've seen that in the past and that's nice recognition for the R&D guys, but what we really like is when our customers see the value and then they buy the films.
And I'll say that our legacy Bemis North America vitality rate was something north of 20%, three-year vitality, and so that's a sign of the relevancy that we do have for customers on an ongoing basis. So with runs through Bemis, Dow, and General Electric, I can look at you and say there's never been a better time to position the innovation of Amcor for future growth. Let's go ahead and take a look. I'm on a pause.
You want the slide advance?
Okay, yep. So, as I mentioned before, we're going to be expanding our footprint. We're going to include sites in Europe, Belgium, and China, and more to come on this. But what I like about this, it's going to be a network of innovation centers working collaboratively, and it will be the magnet to draw in customers for packaging design, and that's how we get products to shelf quickly. And this will be part of our $50 million commitment that we made to accelerate our sustainability agenda. Next slide, please. Here. Okay, there we go. So, Dave Clark talked about our efforts to innovate, to deliver responsible packaging. And as you saw earlier, our flexible packaging portfolio on the right, and we'll go to the left, about 61%.
When we started this journey, and I came in from the Bemis side about a year ago, we were just shy of 50%, and so we've been able to get that up 10% and probably more at this point. I can tell you that we now have addressed some of the most difficult problems to solve. We have solutions in hand. We're going through validation trials, and I can speak with confidence that we will get to 100% recycle-ready alternatives for our flexible packaging portfolio well before 2025. Really good progress, and we're sharing these alternative designs around the world, so they're available for our customers in every region. And so now we have solutions for the polyolefin recycling stream that you see in the upper left, aluminum in certain cases.
We do have innovation platforms for compostability, bio-based materials, and pretty excited to say that we have a suite of barrier paper packaging products that now, and will in the future, be able to fit in the paper recycling infrastructure. We are in the midst of doing some exciting development to expand a high barrier paper that would be aluminum-free, paper packaging that can fit into the paper infrastructure, and that is some breakthrough technology that we are pursuing today and filing some intellectual property on. Now, I will say here also that one of the secrets to success is our innovation model, while we have embedded R&D in each business unit, in each region, we do have a central corporate Research and Development team that works to create advanced technology, platform technologies.
This is the long-term research that balances with the short term that we do often in the business units, and then we can innovate across new segments or existing segments with new designs, and then push that out to all the regions to put into the building blocks. So one region does not get ahead, or I should say, behind another. We can bring everybody up. So that is one of the secrets to our success, and we do this in a very collaborative way. Now, it's not so easy, actually, to redesign these products to be recycle-ready. A lot of headaches, but fortunately, we've been able to work our way through a lot of these challenges. And so I'll give you a little science here as we take a closer look.
So, as Dave Clark rightly said, these are multilayer materials, but they can be designed to be recyclable if you know what you're doing and you take a look at the entire system. Today, in many cases, exterior layers of packages are made with polyester. Now, polyester is great because it has good heat resistance and dimensional stability. It's good for printing, that's what the customer holds. But the headache with polyester is it's not allowed in mechanical recycling. It's a bad guy, so we have to engineer it out, and we've done just that by creating an innovative suite of common polyolefins that can have the heat resistance by imparting some certain properties via physical process that gives us dimensional stability and now removes the bad guy, polyester, to be compatible with mechanical recycling.
But we have to continue through the rest of the layers. And so many barrier layers here might be PVDC, EVOH, aluminum foil, so we have to be able to mitigate those bad actors and bring in new designs that can be compatible with the exterior layers and the recycling infrastructure. We've been able to do that with some breakthrough technologies, and we referenced it earlier with this, really exciting AmLite, or Amcor AmLite HeatFlex, package that we've just announced, which could be for retort, but other applications. It is a platform technology that will have utility around the world. And then finally, we're engineering new approaches to the sealant layer. That's the food contact layer. We have to make sure that's part of the system, 'cause that's the layer that runs through the machines and then ultimately holds the package together.
And so, we brought some new advances there so that packages can seal well now with these changes to the barrier and exterior layer, and as a whole system, we've created a winning solution across many different application segments, and therein is the basis for a lot of the IP we're filing, okay? To protect our technology, to now claim legitimately recycle-ready alternatives for a variety of applications that we're disseminating around the world through our global technology leveraging process. And then, this has led to a number of new product launches over the last year and more to come, okay? New cheese packaging that would be polyester-free, to new aluminum-free barrier layers for retort, as we talked earlier, and novel sealant layers, which we're deploying into home and personal care applications, to name just a few.
And I'd love to spend more time talking to you about these today, but now I'm going to turn it over to Fred Stephan to talk about North America and AmPrima. Over to you, Fred.
Okay, great! Well, thanks, Bill, and, and hello to everyone. So just to talk a little bit about our North America business. We're the market leader in North America. It's a large market, a $20 billion market, growing in low single digits. Really the top four businesses in this industry only represent about 40% of the market. You know, we're a $3.4 billion business. We have 38 plants and about 8,500 people.
We're spread throughout the U.S., both on the West Coast as well as the East Coast, and we have a fair amount of redundancy in our network that, for our customers, really provides that stability of supply, and the surety that we have the scale to supply them, regardless of the volatility in the economy, even in things and occurrences like hurricanes. We participate in quite a few differentiated and growing segments, but we're quite selective of the markets that we play in. There's typically a value proposition around barrier products that leads us to have an offering in those segments. The ones we're gonna talk about today are the meat segment, the cheese segment, as well as our healthcare business. Traditionally, we've been focused on large customers, and with large customers, we're really the one-stop shop. We're the solution provider for those customers.
And so as they grow and they do acquisitions, we can provide products to them, regardless of the segments that they're in. And what you can see in the bottom right-hand side of this page are some of those customers that we provide those solutions to. Because many of these are also global players in the global Amcor network, we're also able to leverage the solutions that we have for these customers in the U.S. and expand those to global markets, regardless of where our customers are located. Over the past few years, we've put a big focus on small customers. We've revamped our entire network to be able to service small customers, and we've done that through a variety of means.
First, we've standardized many of our products, so we have a standard offering that we can bring to those accounts. We also have equipment where we're capable now of doing shorter runs, and we've trained our teams in our factories to appreciate the shorter run business as it comes in, and to be able to run it productively, so now we're equipped in a good portion of our network to service our small customers' needs, and what we tell our small customers is that we have a unique ability to help them start small and grow to be a big customer, so we've had some success in this area over the past few years, and in fact, last year, we added over seventy-five accounts to our network of small customers, and we see that only growing in the coming years.
One of the segments that we're focused on, and we've made quite a few investments in, is in the meat packaging area, and this is specifically in the high barrier meat packaging area. As we've seen consumers shift to more protein-based diets, we've seen these segments grow. Our strength is really on the processed meat side of the business, but recently, we've seen significant growth opportunities emerge in the fresh meat side of the business, and again, where our technology can play a significant role. We have a variety of different solutions to bring to our customers in this area, as well as a differentiated value proposition. Probably, the strongest solutions that have emerged in this market are in the area of automation.
We have partnerships with machine vendors that allow us to offer, through roll stock solutions, an automated solution that reduces the need to actually have labor on the line. In some cases, it can reduce labor for our customers by as much as 50%, and this then allows them to have reduced labor needs, and especially in times of volatility and labor shortages, to be able to run more efficiently, so we offer solutions in this area that are both a bagged option as well as roll stock options that customers can run, and we see these trends globally, so in the global Amcor business, we now are able to bring these solutions to the global network of customers that we have as well. Similarly, in the cheese market, we see a number of different opportunities, and again, we offer the differentiated solutions in high-barrier cheese packaging.
We really like this segment because, again, as we've seen consumer shift behavior, it's been towards snacking. And this would apply to both meat and cheese products, but our high-barrier products are necessarily in those packaging formats to be able to preserve shelf life for meats and cheeses. We've also seen significant private label growth in this segment, and we've been the beneficiary of the growth in that with our strong relationships with those private label customers. And then finally, in medical packaging, we are the market leader in medical packaging in the U.S. And in fact, in our healthcare business, we participate in both the medical side as well as the pharmaceutical side. And you'll hear Michael talk a little bit more about their strength in the pharmaceutical side of the business.
And so we here, we have an opportunity to help each other grow in each of these segments. This is a segment that we really like from a long-term growth prospect standpoint, and based on our differentiated solutions, but also the high-quality standards that we're able to offer our customers, we have a unique position to help our customers grow globally in this segment. And now, over the past year, we've doubled down on helping those customers take those solutions to the global marketplace. And finally, to wrap up, one of the things that I'm most excited about from a growth standpoint is the process that we call Catalyst.
This is a collaborative innovation process that we run out of our Neenah Technology Center, and soon to be many of the technology centers that Bill talked about earlier, where we're able to bring our customers into the center to spend time with them, understanding the growth projects that they're interested in doing. As we understand those needs, we start to think about product solutions. And before the customer leaves our building, we can actually conduct a focus session with consumers, understand their preferences, and then have the consumer actually touch and feel a real package that we produce through 3D printing. This has resulted in a number of innovations that you actually see on this page. And now we've evolved this into actually being able to conduct the Catalyst sessions virtually as well, which are starting to produce dividends.
You know, Bill mentioned the AmPrima product. AmPrima is really our recycle-ready film solution. We've launched a number of these products just recently. It's offered in a wide variety of applications, which we will continue to expand, and what we're most excited about is that we're now pre-certified with the How2Recycle label. The Coors Light is another one. It's a fun one, with 12-pack of beer, merchandised traditionally, but in this case, it's a reusable bag, where a consumer can add ice to keep their beverages cool, during the hot summer days. So just a number of innovations that we are focused on bringing to the marketplace quickly.
You can see a few more on this page, but Catalyst is really one of the keys to our growth and, and really, you know, virtually all of the innovations that we work on with our customers, if they come to market, we have a much higher probability of success in actually launching those products with our customers. So with that, that wraps it up for North America, and now I'll turn it over to Michael Zacka to talk a bit more about EMEA.
Thank you, Fred. First, there's quite a number of similarities between the European business and the North American business, but if I just bring your eyes to the right-hand corner of the slide here, the Flexibles business across the EMEA region is an extremely large and attractive $16 billion packaging market. And you can see from this portion of the slide that while Amcor is a circa $3.3 billion business here, we are effectively 2x the size of our next competitor. But after the four competitors drop off, you can see here that the market is extremely fragmented, and that, of course, has with it some fairly obvious opportunities for us in the medium and longer term.
Coming back here into the specifics of our EMEA business, you know, we have an incredibly broad scale and footprint across all of Europe and parts of Africa. This is supported by a network of an extremely large and competent 58 plants. 58 plants across 22 countries, and an incredible 12,000 strong workforce that are highly competitive. I think one key aspect here across Europe, as it's a mixture of collection of different countries, is that with this incredibly strong plant manufacturing footprint, we really are in a position to meet and exceed the supply chain needs of our customers. Okay, so first of all, you know, we're extremely selective, and we choose where to participate within the segments here across Europe. And these can be summarized through...
There's roughly nine segments that you can see here in the, in the center of the slide, but in particular, we have an incredibly strong leadership position across segments such as pet care, coffee, and certainly, pharmaceuticals, and we continually focus, whether it be in these three segments or across the entire segments where we play, in order to really optimize our margins, and profit, again, pulling the key levers for financial optimization and growth. Now also, recently through Bemis, it's really pleasing to see that we acquired also some additional leading capabilities within both the meat and cheese segments, and you also heard Fred talk there, shortly regarding, medical, so while our product offering is quite focused, it's certainly very well in sync with our customer needs.
As a result of this, we're extremely fortunate that we attract the market leaders wherever we choose to play. Not only are we the number one in these key segments, we're also playing with the number one customers. For example, whether it be like a Nespresso for single-serve coffee, or for companies like Mars and Nestlé in the pet food segment. We equally play with all of the major leaders in the pharmaceutical space as well. Extremely fortunate, but it's through the strength of our products and our innovation. Now, similar to Fred in North America, and you can see here that we've got an extremely strong portfolio of customers that we would define as either multinationals or pan-regionals and/or a small but extremely nimble customer archetypes.
And our value proposition really resonates with all of these customer archetypes, and the skills needed to serve these customers are very similar, whether they're across our Rigid business, as you heard earlier from Eric, or across the Flexibles perimeter globally. Now, our innovation and our broad manufacturing footprint that I covered earlier, the 58 plants, this really enables us to manage this large scale of customers that you see here.
And, you know, for example, if we just reflect back during quarter four of fiscal 2020, and during somewhat the eye of the storm with COVID, you know, we really moved through this period and had, as a result of our scale and our very close relationships with our suppliers, we managed to secure raw materials without disruptions to keep our plants running, but more importantly, to be able to service our customers, small, medium, and large, in an extremely focused and expedient manner, while, for example, many of our competitors were impacted. So really, the so what from here is that our scale and our relationships with our suppliers and our customers really helped us through these more challenging periods.
Okay, so what I'd like to do now is step you through some examples of some very specific segments, starting with pharmaceutical segment. Now, first message is that Amcor is the clear leader in pharma packaging globally, and we really like this segment. And we really like it because it's got some really key value drivers, such as aging population, intellectual property protection, as you can imagine. There's also quite a deal of complexity through not only the materials but also through regulation. And lastly, the segment, right? The pharma segment, it's attractive, and it's growing, and thus it makes it profitable. And you can imagine that a market leadership position, it really doesn't come easily. But we've successfully carved out a value proposition that really resonates, not just with customers, but also regulators.
Now, for example I'd like to call out here, if you look to the left here, visual of the chart, we have a brand that we call Formpack, and Formpack is our leading packaging platform. This technology is used by all leading pharma brands across the world. It is leading from an innovation perspective. It has also allowed us, with our focus, to help build regulatory expertise and continually drive innovation in this platform, where we have a multitude of variations, for example, different barrier packaging, which meets the needs of different countries, where there are different temperatures and humidity differences. We have really been able to modify and have variations of this incredibly premium format, and that really helps us command the strong position that we have.
It's all about innovation. Okay, let's take a look at pet food, an incredibly attractive segment and with great opportunities to leverage globally. Now, first of all, why do we like this segment? It's growing. It's attractive. It has real demand in material structures as a result of the aggressive contents and the food protection and shelf life requirements. This results in, you know, innovative and complex structures, which, of course, helps secure very strong margins in this segment. Now, Ron spoke earlier about a world first, and we're really excited today because today we announced to the market a breakthrough from an innovation perspective with our new AmLite Ultra/ HeatFlex, and this is the world's first fully recyclable, retortable pouch, which also will deliver and come with around a 60% reduction in carbon footprint.
We're launching this as we speak, with Nestlé, with their Purina, pet food brand here in Europe. Very, very exciting. Okay, lastly, with respect to coffee. Again, a highly attractive and growing segment like pharma and also pet care. We like this because coffee is growing, both in-home and out-of-home consumption, and globally, consumption continues to grow. We play in two real key segments where we invest: what we call first single-serve, which is through the Nespresso capsule that you see here. And the building photograph that you see below is just one example where recently we're investing in $40 million in additional Nespresso capacity, tightly linked with Nestlé, with contracts, and this just shows the value proposition and also the confidence that Nestlé puts in us at Amcor. Next slide, please. In conclusion, we're the clear innovator here in Europe.
But let me start, or finish, I should say, where I started. EMEA is a large, attractive, and growing market. We have a clear market leadership position, and this leadership position is really driven by the 58 plants across the 22 countries with our focus on scale, innovation, quality, and service for all customer archetypes: small, medium, and large. Our leadership position has really been driven by the innovations, again, those shown here on this chart. I just spoke about the world first in pet care. In the right-hand bottom corner, under the coffee segment here, we have a fully recyclable and biodegradable package launch with one of Sweden's leading coffee brands. And as you can see across dairy and protein, we have a range of key innovations that are now out on the market.
With this, my friends, we'll close out EMEA, and I'm gonna jump on an aircraft and take us quickly to Asia. Let me start with an introduction to our Asia Pacific business. First of all, an incredibly exciting and dynamic part of the world. Asia Pacific is home to 60% of the world's population and over 4 billion consumers. We're the clear market leader here, and again, if you see to the right-hand bottom corner here of the chart, we're twice the size of our next competitor. It's an attractive region. We have a healthy, growing, but most importantly, we have a profitable business. $1.3 billion in sales, with 40 plants covering 9 countries, including a very strong position in Australia and New Zealand, through Southeast Asia, India, and of course, China, which we'll hear about more shortly. Next slide, please.
Okay, so to grow profitably in Asia requires real discipline and focus, and this $1.3 billion in sales has been developed by focusing on the most attractive and growing segments, not everywhere and not all products. As a reference, the food and personal care, and pharma and medical devices are really good examples.... And our portfolio has been strengthened also with new products recently transferred from the Bemis acquisition, more specifically in protein packaging for meat and cheese, and of course, the medical packaging for healthcare that Fred mentioned earlier. Our product portfolio is broad, but most importantly, it's competitive, and more importantly, it's relevant and it's attractive to our customers. And again, our customer base in Asia, we're extremely fortunate to have the leading multinationals, the leading national brands in each country, and also pan-regional and smaller customers.
It's an extremely balanced customer portfolio. Next slide, please. I'd just like to give three brief examples before we dig more deeply into China, around the value of customer partnerships and how we have managed to create these partnerships in Asia. What you see on this chart is three examples of three greenfield sites. Greenfield sites that have been purpose-built with a key anchor customer and within a growth segment. Each of these plants and investments are also anchored with customer supply contracts. So for example, starting left to right, within the Philippines, we've built a purpose plant for Nestlé, for food and beverage applications in the Philippines. Moving to the center, going into India, a purpose-built plant for Unilever, for personal care applications. And lastly, to the right, a world-leading plant for healthcare in Singapore, for customers such as Ansell and Braun.
No other competitor has the capability or scale to drive this type of model other than Amcor. Okay, so with this Asia introduction, I'd like to now introduce you to Xin She, who is our president for our China business, based in Shanghai. So Xin, over to you.
Thank you, Michael. Hi, everyone. It's nice to be here, and sorry for my early morning voice. So let's spend a few minutes focused on China. China is a huge flexible packaging market with around five thousand local players. Amcor entered China market about 24 years ago and has grown as the largest player and a clear market leader. We have 13 plants cover our Chinese market, and we are really enjoying healthy and profitable growth. We provide flexible packages in food, dairy, beverage, home and personal care, healthcare, including pharmaceutical and medical device products. Also, we manufacture industrial film and tubes for our customers. The local market here has been growing steady, and now is at a strong recovery after the COVID-19 crisis in the early year in China. China is manufacture huge amount of consumer products for China itself and for world.
We focus on the selected customers and segments, mainly including the global key account, regional and large local customers, as well as the rising e-commerce customers. Next slide, please. How to win in China, this large scale but very fragmented market? Firstly, we use our scale economy, right, to gain the competitive advantages through consolidated procurement, sharing the capital and human resource across all Amcor plants, optimize supply chain, and provide fast and local delivery with stable quality. Amcor is a very trusted global brand in China. Like, in this year, during the COVID-19, we can provide stable and stable supply with high quality, but some of our competitors, they have to shut down the plants or they have issues on the transportation supply and so on. This further strengthen Amcor as the most preferred supplier to our customers in China.
With 25 years operation in China, Amcor has built up a very strong relationship and deep understanding of the global key accounts operation in China and large local customers. We also pay lots of attention to the rising e-commerce customers and develop them as our new growth engines. Amcor China has a large local field technical service team, and this will allow us to deliver fast response to customer needs, including, like, the troubleshooting on the customer side, the product development and quality issues, resolution, and so on. This strength not only differentiates Amcor with the many local competitors, but also differentiate import packaging products, as they don't have much local service here.
At the same time, our field technical service team also is a part of the global R&D team, the builds team, which can transfer the new technology and the successful experience from other markets to China. And last but not least, Chinese government has put very high attention and pressure on the environmental development with the so-called Blue Sky policy. And Amcor, as the sustainability leader, we are ahead of competitors in terms of developing sustainable products and from at a film or tubes development to all the sustainable structure for the laminates. Our sustainability leadership bring Amcor many benefits, especially for the global key accounts, and many of them also have the same 2025 goals. Also, our very big and strong investment on the, in our plants, like the RTOs, allow our plants to have minimum release of VOCs, hence the minimum impact on the Blue Sky.
This allows us, you know, during the polluted day, we can continue to production, while many of our competitors, they have to stop. Let's talk a little bit about the customers in China. We have around 3,000 customers in China, with the main focus in the food, dairy, meat, personal care, pharmaceutical, and medical device products. Global key accounts are large and stable, and they take around 16% of our net sales. We have been growing together with them in China, like, through the strong partnership with them. We actually have communication with all levels of customers, and each year we have innovation day with these global key accounts, and we always keep several innovation projects ongoing for each of them. One example is Colgate, which shares the same ambition as Amcor, that by 2025, all packages will be recyclable and reusable.
Amcor has developed PBL, means Plastic Barrier Layer, for Colgate toothpaste tubes, which allow them to take away the aluminum from the tubes and to be 100% recyclable. This product has been commercially launched and now well selling in U.S.A. and Europe, China. The local Chinese customers are growing faster pace, and we are focusing in the two categories, local, large, and rising stars, especially in the e-commerce. For the local large, we serve them in similar way as the global key account, but at faster response and speed. Speed is key to win in China. For the rising e-commerce customers, we provide total solutions, you know, not only packages and films, but also the marketing service, joint product developments, technical service, and so on. One example is Zhou Hei Ya, the number one duck brand in China today.
Zhou used to be the small company in Wuhan making processed duck. Its product is very tasty and fresh, and selling very well in Wuhan City, but only in Wuhan City, as its shelf life is only two days. Amcor has developed a tailor-made package for this duck meat and allow it to keep fresh for up to 20 days. And with the same freshness, this big innovation enables Zhou to extend its sales channels to entire China and made significant commercial success. Thanks for your interest for Asia and China, and now I parting, I hand over to P.K. Thank you.
Thank you, Xin. I want to introduce our LatAm business, which is a business that we are very happy with. Let me start out right there. It's a business that has been created through two acquisitions. Four and a half years ago, we made the Alusa acquisition, and that created a great platform for us in Latin America, but it left us exposed in particularly those markets like Brazil and Mexico, because we didn't have any footprint there. With the Bemis acquisition, that we made about fifteen months ago, we were able to close exactly that gap, and that created a business which is now $800 million in sales, 20 plants covering six countries, and with 6,500 people that are working in our LatAm business.
That makes us the leading flexible packaging supplier in LatAm, and gives us an opportunity to cover a broader space of countries in the LatAm continent than any of the others. In fact, you see this on the bottom right. We cover six countries in LatAm, whereas any of our other competitors would cover less. And that adds to our value proposition in LatAm for our multinational customers, but also for the big national or regional customers that we have in the space. When I move on to the segments that we serve, you will see again, like in the other regions, that we make choices in terms of where we want to focus. I'd say we probably have a very strong performance and representation in home and personal care and in healthcare.
We probably have some opportunities in the proteins business, which is essentially the high-performance film, meat and cheese, segment, and also in the pet care business, where we have some core capabilities out of Europe that we can bring to the LatAm market. When you look at the customers, you see a lot of the big names that we serve on a global basis, that we're very familiar with also in the other regions, but you also see a number of strong regional customers that we serve in our LatAm business, and then certainly also a number of local customers, a large proportion of local customers that we also have to be successful with. But before I hand off to Ruben, let me say the maybe most important thing, the business is in good shape.
The business is profitable, and the business is growing today. I would add to that, that the business has loads of opportunity. Now, the Brazil piece of our business in LatAm is the most important one because it's the biggest one. I wouldn't say it's the most important one, but it is the biggest one. With that, I hand it off to Ruben Molaro, who is our VP and GM in Brazil. Ruben?
Hello, everyone. It's a privilege for me to introduce you to our Flexibles operations in Brazil. For starters, this is a very different slide than what we would have shown fifteen months ago before the Bemis acquisition, because in the map to the left, you would have seen one site, a couple of hundred employees, and probably less than $50 million in revenues. A small, profitable plant focused in healthcare. Fifteen months forward, now we're a pretty big business. We're significant in size and footprint with 12 plants, more than 3,000 employees, and $400 million in revenues. Our plants are scattered throughout the south and southwest of the country, which is considered the heartland of the industrial and manufacturing activity.
With those 12 sites, we have capabilities in what we call four different platforms. About 80% of our business is within the Flexibles and the thermoforming platform. And then we have smaller businesses in a plant in laminated tubes and a small disposables operation. These four platforms service these end markets that it's a bit repetitive from what you have seen so far from my other colleagues, but our end markets are pretty well diversified between food, including proteins, home and personal care, and healthcare. And we have a very interesting customer portfolio, and as Michael said, we had a really good balance. About 50% of our business today is with multinational customers, but then the other half is with local accounts. Next slide, please.
Brazil, as everyone knows, is a pretty big market, right? It's actually a good market for us, with great fundamentals. With over 210 million consumers, a young urban population and a sizable middle class, you know, demographics are there for future growth. In addition, in terms of packaging, there's an increased demand for functionality and convenience and an increasing trend on sustainable packaging. I would say that within Latin America, Brazil is probably going two or three steps ahead in terms of that trend, and recently, most recently, a higher focus on health and hygiene. In terms of our operation, we have a profitable business in Brazil. But to tell you the truth, we needed to do a turnaround over the last 12 months.
Since day one, after the acquisition, we had to do some heavy lifting, by focusing on the basics, you know, of running a business, an operation, by optimizing our headcount, reducing our plant costs, and just overall improving our operational efficiencies, and that's what we call step one in our journey. In addition, the acquired business was pretty complex, so we are on the process of simplifying by basically strengthening our focus on the segments where we choose to play, and, as Ron mentioned earlier, by even exiting on a JV, business that we have with Huhtamaki. This reduction in cost and improved focus is leaving us in a better position to now really leverage on the fact that this is not a local team effort, this is a global team effort.
We are now leveraging on the Amcor global expertise, and you know, to name a few examples, we're using the foil expertise for pharma from Europe that Michael mentioned. We're getting a lot of insights on the medical supplies from the U.S. As we speak, our Amcor colleagues from Arenzano in Italy are helping us qualify big projects in the pet food segment with Mars and Royal Canin. In addition, we continue to strengthen our customer partnerships with four dedicated on-sites with key accounts that we have in Brazil. BRF with Predilecta, which is the leader in tomato sauce, and Unilever with ice cream. We feel so confident of what we did with step one.
Obviously, we will continue to work on our efficiencies, but now we're actually focusing our sights on what we call step two, which is basically acting on the key drivers to trigger top-line growth. Delivering on our service and quality promises to our customers, managing prices in a world, you know, with FX and raw material fluctuations, having early warning systems to proactively anticipate any issues with customers, and accelerating on our new business opportunities. I would say that we're in a great moment in Brazil. We're on a roll, we're gaining momentum, and we have a lot to work with, and are really excited about the future. Next slide, please.
You know, the proof is in the pudding, and I know that Bill Jackson is going to be excited about this slide, because it shows clearly how our unique value propositions enable us to grow. On the left, which is my personal favorite, is a really cool example of an idea that was born in Brazil's innovation center that Bill made reference to, in which we did a material conversion from a glass jar to a jar-shaped flexible pouch, as you can see in the picture. By combining innovation on package design with a sustainability approach, as any flexible pouch will have lighter weights and lower CO2 emissions than glass. In the middle, you are going to see what we have done with BRF.
BRF, so that everyone is aware, is our number one customer in Brazil and in Latin America. And here, our market leadership positions in the thermoforming perimeter have enabled us to really, really grow on the relationship with very good long-term agreements. This, in turn, has enabled us to open doors on the Flexibles segment, especially with proteins, which is a strategic segment for us and core business for BRF. So this is how we leverage on one perimeter to open windows of opportunity in the next. And last but not least is our global key account relationships.
Given the fact that, Commercial Excellence, and Value Plus that Ron mentioned at the beginning, we have a pretty sophisticated global key account management system, and we have been taking advantage of that in the relationship with Procter & Gamble, which paired with our presence in the haircare segment in laminated tubes, has opened up a tremendous window of opportunity in the home care segment with laundry pouches, which in this day and age, have converted into, drivers of growth for us here in Brazil. So all in all, I would say that, this is what Amcor is all about. You know, we're selective where we play, and then we play hard, and we play smart to win, to deliver profitable growth. So thank you for your attention, and back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Ruben. This brings us to our second Q&A session. Ruben will be joined by Peter, Ron, Dave, Bill, Fred, Michael, Xin, for the next 20 minutes. So again, please submit questions which are most relevant to this group. One more reminder, you can submit questions at any time, either by raising your Zoom hands in the participant list. I'll then invite you to ask your question at the relevant time, and the panelists will join in to answer the question, or by writing your question to the Ask a Question chat box. Your question will enter the queue, and I will read the question out to the panelists. The first question on this session is for Bill Jackson, and it comes from Keith Chau at MST Marquee. Keith has asked... Is saying: Sustainability is clearly an ongoing and likely increasing focus for Amcor.
Previously, Amcor has earmarked $50 million of investment into sustainability spend. How much of the $50 million has been spent to date, and are there any changes to the required targeted ongoing investment for sustainability? Bill, over to you.
Okay. Thanks for the question. So, it's a pleasure to get that $50 million. That really does contribute to accelerating our journey, and we have put together a very thoughtful multi-year plan to spend that. We're well on our way. We've hired a number of top scientists from around the world and deployed them against our fundamental global platforms that we're innovating and then bringing out to the regions. And you heard from Michael Zacka and Xin She and Ruben and Fred about how this is working. So, we've hired the engineers. We've also added in a number of research lines and pilot capabilities that let us innovate outside of our manufacturing environment, so we can, you know, trial and get to solutions faster without burdening our production operations.
Those capital expenditures are well on their way. You heard about the innovation centers. We are finalizing the capital for that now, and so we've good line of sight to the $50 million. It's going to be well spent. Back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Bill. We have another chat box question from Brian Maguire, and this one will go to Dave. So the question is: How, if at all, do bioplastics fit into your sustainability strategy? Are customers asking for it over PCR, and do you think bioplastics could be 5%-10% of converted resin by 2025 or 2030? Dave, over to you for some comments on this one.
Hi, those are a number of really good questions. I think to maybe answer them in a different order. By far, the largest number of conversations we're having with customers, products we're launching or the amount of materials that we're using are really focused around using more PCR. And the reason for that, I think, in many cases, is because in addition to the advantages of reducing the demand for virgin resin, the benefits of carbon footprint, it's really helping to create that circular economy by bringing materials back, putting them into packaging again, and that's an easy concept for consumers to understand. In terms of bio-based resins, they do offer some benefits in terms of the lower carbon footprint, that decoupling from petroleum products.
And in some cases, where certain performance is required, they're a virgin resin. They're made with plants rather than with petroleum, but they can be engineered with the properties that are needed, so they can be drop-in replacements for conventional resin. So we do see some good uses for those. In terms of the market growth, I think that's a really difficult one that I'm not qualified to answer. I know there's a lot of interest in those areas, and I think people are working on that. We're obviously prepared to be able to use either of those, and I think the technologies are complementary, so that we'll see growth in both areas.
... Over to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Dave. The next question is also a chat box question. And this one's for Fred, from Brian Maguire from Goldman Sachs. Brian is asking: Historically, Bemis had trouble penetrating the smaller challenger brands in North America because the operations, equipment, and sales force were all set up to sell large runs to large multinationals. What has Amcor done to fix this, and how much of the sales are to large customers today versus the 85%-90% it was at legacy Bemis? Over to you, Fred.
Okay. Thanks, Tracey. That's a great question, and Brian, we actually have made good progress on this over the past few years. In fact, now, the percentage of business that we have coming from large customers is closer to 80%. So that ratio has changed in the right direction, and what we've seen is that our small customers are actually growing faster than the large customers. So we expect that to be a trend that continues. We've really shifted the culture of the business in North America around serving both large and small customers, and serving shorter runs.
And so, you know, I talked a bit earlier about some of the things that have changed, but for example, we have a dedicated sales team now focused on small customers, and that's both an inside sales team as well as an outside sales team. We have a very structured process about going after leads, following up on leads, and making sure that we have the appropriate person with the right training to call on those customers that want to grow with us. In manufacturing, we've also installed visual monitors, in each of our plants that does the short runs, so we're able to track changeover times, real time.
And, you know, in fact, in some of those factories, it's created a bit of a competition between operators to see, you know, how fast they can do the changeovers, and how much output that we can drive from those machines. So really, we've focused on balancing our network to have the capability to, of course, continue to serve those long runs for our large customers, but also to service the emerging needs of the small customers as well. Back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Fred. The next question is a Zoom raised hand question and from Larry Gandler at Credit Suisse. Larry, your line will be open very soon. You can ask your question, and then the panelists will jump in to answer the question as appropriate. Larry, go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. I believe you can hear me. My question is similar to the question just asked, but perhaps from a different angle. So can you guys contrast the use of digital printing by Amcor in Europe versus the U.S.A.? Maybe talk to how many digital printers. The reason I ask is it does directly relate to this small customer segment, and I guess perhaps even adding a little context to the question as well. If the North American industry is $20 billion, as you say, growing low single-digit 2%, that's $400 million of sales growth, which I don't think Bemis or Amcor was getting its share of that. Was that going to small customers, the small end of the market, where digital printing may be, you know, a necessary tool?
Thanks, first of all, for the question. Maybe I can have a go at this and then see if anybody else wants to build on it. The print technology relates directly to sort of the run lengths that you have coming off the different technologies. We distinguish between a couple of those. We have gravure print, which typically lends itself to longer runs. We have the flexo print technology, which is then getting a little smaller in terms of run lengths. There is some offset print technology, and then you have the digital print technology. I wouldn't know for sure how many digital print lines we have in North America, and maybe Fred can speak to that.
In Europe, we have a few, and they are mostly deployed in the healthcare space. And we use those in order to go to very short run lengths business on the blister packs, and especially the lids. But generally speaking, we're well aware of the adjustment of the print technology to the run lengths that are requested by our customers.
Thanks, P.K. The next question is a chat box question for Michael Zacka from Chris Schade at Martin Currie Investment Management. So Chris's question, Michael, is can you talk about the impact of plastic taxes in Europe on your Flexibles business, including taxes already announced in France, U.K., Italy, and the risk that the recent E.U. plastic waste levy will be passed on to packaging companies and ultimately the end user? Michael, over to you.
Certainly, so let me start, and then, Dave, maybe with some of your knowledge, you'd like to build. First of all, the taxes or levies, as we may call them, this is a relatively new phenomenon that's been announced by a number of the countries that were mentioned. There is no doubt that the thinking in terms of the mechanics of them, what they'll be, how they'll be structured, what they'll be for, how the money will be used, there's still not yet clarity around that. But if we just step back for a moment and just take a higher position here. First of all, we certainly welcome the government stepping in and starting to take a dialogue on this topic.
And we certainly support the direction on where levies or other taxes, if we call it that, may be incurred, certainly for the purpose of being channeled into infrastructure to work towards building the collection and recycling systems that you heard Dave talk about earlier. Now, regardless on how these mechanisms may or may not land in Europe, and I think there's a lot of water to go under the bridge. Back to the question. When we look at this, and we look at it through the lens of what impact would this have on the end retail price of finished products, it's extremely negligible.
So the so what of this is that in whatever form that they come, number one, we see that ultimately they will be passed through to the consumer. Number two, it'll have negligible or marginal impact on the retail price, and therefore, no impact on demand. Dave, I don't know whether you'd like to build around any of the specifics of the legislation as we know it.
Yeah, Michael, I think maybe the one thing I could add is, if you look at some of the legislation, many of it's still being written. There are particular carve-outs, in some cases, for more sustainable packaging. For example, the U.K. plastics tax doesn't apply to packaging that includes more than 30% recycled content. So this is one of those cases I was talking about, where we may create value opportunities for more sustainable packaging that can really play out from an economic standpoint. And I'll leave it there for now. Back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Dave and Michael. Next chat box question from Keith Chau at MST Marquee. And this is a question for Peter. And the question is, in relation to achieving the 2025 pledge for 100% of packaging to be recyclable or reusable by 2025 , can you provide some context on the process and timeframe to take a new innovation from concept to technology development and patenting, to validation and commercialization? How many years does this process typically take? Would Amcor enter partnering with or requiring external film manufacturers to develop sustainable technologies? Over to you, Peter.
Yeah, I think that's also a great question and not an easy one to answer. We have a wide array of different products, and obviously, the challenges that we face in translating our product portfolio completely to being recycle ready is very different depending on the specific product that you look at. We have a good innovation roadmaps, as we lined out beforehand, for the pieces of the business that are not recycle ready. We are working in close coordination with our customers in focusing on the right areas. We are bringing our own innovation capabilities to bear in order to run with that as quickly as we can.
And we do know that we're not going to find all the solutions in-house, so we would be very open to the concepts of open innovation, to tying in other suppliers or partners in order to get ourselves faster to the answer. We're actively having these conversations with partners. We're actively having these conversations with customers also. And it also then depends on the question of what type of investments do we need to make in order to ramp up and get to full industrialization. So all these factors play a role, and that's why I think it's not easy to give sort of a template answer to the question of how much time does it take from concept to actually full commercialization? Back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, P.K. The next question is a raised hand question, so we're going to hear from George Staphos from Bank of America Research. George, we'll have you on the line with your mic open very soon. You go ahead and ask your question, and the panelists will jump in. Over to you, George.
Thanks.
Thanks, Tracey. And again, thanks for the presentation, everybody. Two questions, first for Fred and Michael. You know, one of the things that we've certainly seen through COVID is that the larger companies with more capabilities have gained market share in packaging. Seems like that's certainly happening for Amcor over the last six months. Can you quantify or at least qualitatively speak about how you've been able to gain share from some of the less advantaged, smaller players that you competed in your very fragmented markets? And then a quick follow-on to David, if you could. Can you talk a little bit about the structure of AmLite? You know, what makes it unique in terms of its construction, and where would that get recycled back into, in terms of the waste stream, which resin? Thank you.
As a starting point, as we saw the COVID situation emerging in Europe here over February and March, our immediate focus was, number one, what are the steps and measures and protocols we must take to ensure that we keep our employees safe, both blue-collar and white-collar workforce in totality? The second one was really to ensure that we doubled down and focused on all of the aspects related to keeping our plants operational. This flowed through the entire process from raw materials, of course, to finished production. Coming back specifically to your question-
... It really relates to, I guess, our overall value proposition, that we continually drive, with our customers. Putting innovation aside for the moment, that was the ability for us to scale, source raw materials. The second one, the protocols that we had in place to keep our plants, open and producing. And then the third one, to use and utilize the travel and transport logistics next, networks that we could flow the finished goods to our customers. And there was no question, that both in North America and Europe, and around the rest of the world, that we really nailed this well. This gave an incredible level of confidence to all of our customer base during this period around our supply continuity.
I think it's really just reinforced the value proposition that we've been driving for a number of years. But it really came home to roost during these more challenging times. I think as we come out at the back end of this, we'll see that not only will our relationships continue to be strong with customers, but equally stronger. Fred, maybe you'd like to build?
Yeah, sure so thanks, Michael. And we had similar dynamics in our North America business, and did you know virtually all of the same things that Michael commented on. I think the only thing that I would add is I talked earlier a bit about our standardized products. And so by working on that a few years ago, we were actually able to partner more closely with our customers, make sure that we were working with them on standard products. And by having the redundancy in our factories to run those standardized products, we were able to offer you know greater amount of supply to both our large and our small customers during that period of time. And we've seen quite a bit of volatility month to month, but overall a net positive effect.
And as a result, we've been able to kind of meet those needs, and navigate our way through this period of time with the standard products. Back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Fred and Michael. The next question we have is through chat box, and it's from Anojja Shah, from BMO Capital Markets. And this one is in relation to Brazil, so I'll hand it over to Ruben to answer. Anojja's question is: You seem to have made significant progress in Brazil since the last acquisition. Would you say you've completed the process of focusing the portfolio, or is there more to go? Ruben, over to you.
Thanks for the question. I think that you never end reviewing your portfolio. You know, at Amcor, I would say that we continuously assess what we have, and I would focus really on what's ahead and probably ahead of us. There's further simplification in some particular segments, but also there's a further expansion into other segments that we probably do not participate today. If I could reinforce what I said earlier, Brazil is the biggest market in Latin America, and it's full of opportunities, and what we have done so far is really setting us up for a very promising future. Back to you, Tracey.
Thanks, Ruben. We have time for one more question, which has come in through Zoom chat box. And it's another question from Brian Maguire, and I'll hand this one over to Bill Jackson. It's a question on AmLite HeatFlex. How does the cost per unit compare to the product it's replacing? At what scale are you producing it today? And do you see any challenges in scaling up the technology? What is the total addressable market in U.S. dollars for the product? So Bill, over to you to start off, please.
Okay. All right. Thanks, Brian. Great question. Really exciting, just getting to market with this, so I'll give a little context, and then, since there's a North America commercial piece, turn it over to Fred here in a second. This is a breakthrough technology, and as we build scale, unit costs come down like anything else. But I'll tell you what, it's starting off to be reasonably cost competitive, okay? And we've engineered it as such. So pretty exciting, and the materials are fairly straightforward in the proprietary formulation that we have. So you know, we believe this is gonna have good commercial traction, and our customers are asking for it.
And so we expect premiums for the product as well because it is differentiated and it's best in class, and so we are scaling up and we're looking at demand as we scale up, so we see a bright future for this and just stay tuned because it has lots of applications across different regions and different segments, so we're just building out an even greater pipeline of opportunity for this, so Fred, perhaps you could address the market size.
Yeah. So I think the market size is actually quite large, and we have a number of customers who are interested in this. This really is a game changer product for us. And so, over the past few years, in fact, we've had a number of customers express interest and be willing to pay a premium, for this product. So like Bill said, we would expect, this product to grow, and as it does grow, the costs will come down. But in the meantime, customers are partnering with us or want to partner with us actively, and understand the, how the cost profile will change over time. Back to you, Tracey.
... Thanks, Fred. And this brings our second Q&A session to a close. Thank you to the panelists and the questions from the audience. I am aware that there are a few questions that we didn't get time to address that were in the queue. So for those people, please stand by for some contacts from the investor relations team to make sure your questions are answered. I'll hand back to Ron Delia for closing comments before we close the session.
Thanks, Tracey, and thanks to everybody for joining us today. I'm gonna finish where we started. If we could advance the slide, please, just to wrap and sum. You got a chance to hear from some of our management team today, not everybody, unfortunately, just given the time constraints, but a good picture for what this company is all about, and it comes back to the investment case in the company that we set out right at the outset here. You know, this is a global leader. Hopefully, that's become clear. We tried to bring you inside our emerging markets businesses with snapshots into Brazil and China as two examples. There were 25 others that we mentioned as well.
We've been around for a 160 years, with a really strong track record and a clear strategy that got us looking forward. The organic growth in this business comes from a number of different sources, and hopefully you've heard some key themes today, around customers, both big customers and small. I don't think that there should be any conclusion drawn here to the big multinational customers are not important. Far from it. They still work the majority of the market, but the small customers are also important, and I hope that you've felt the emphasis being placed on those throughout each of the business presentations today. Innovation, emerging markets, as I mentioned, but also the fact that the healthcare business in this company is almost $2 billion is a particularly attractive segment.
So organic growth coming from a number of different drivers, an attractive dividend, a strong balance sheet to pursue acquisitions with, and momentum. The company is really in a good spot with coming off, as I said, a very strong year, and have almost gotten one quarter of the way through another strong year in front of us. So again, thank you for your attention today. This is a story that all up yields a 10%-15% sort of return proposition. It's been a consistent earner for a number of years, and we expect it to continue. Thanks for joining us today, and we'll be back in touch with our first quarter results in about four or five weeks. We look forward to continuing the dialogue with you at that point. Thank you.