Thank you for joining us both here in person and virtually for Cabot's 2024 Investor Day. My name is Steve Delahunt. I'm the Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer for Cabot Corporation. Before we begin, I want to mention a few things. One, we've prepared presentation slides to supplement our remarks during this meeting, which are posted on the Investor Relations section of Cabot's website and through the link to our webcast. During this meeting, we'll make forward-looking statements, which are expectations for the future. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could materially differ from these statements due to risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, those discussed in this meeting and the risk factors section of our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statement.
Please note, in today's presentation, we'll be making references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures can be found at the end of this presentation or in the other investor materials available on our Investor Relations website. Now, turning to the agenda, we'll start the morning hearing from Sean Keohane, CEO and President, who will provide a company update since our last Investor Day in 2021, and then share his vision for the next three years. Then we'll hear from Bart Kalkstein, the EVP and President of Reinforcement Materials in the Americas region, who will give you an overview on the Reinforcement Materials segment. After a short break, Jeff Zhu, the EVP and President of Carbon & Silica Technologies, Battery Materials in Asia-Pacific region, will provide an update on the Performance Chemicals segment.
Finally, Erica McLaughlin, the EVP and CFO and Head of Corporate Strategy, will review our financial framework before we proceed to Q&A session followed by lunch. We invite those of you in person to stick around and join us as the executive team will be available for questions at various tables. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Sean.
People around the world rely on products made possible by advanced materials. They're in the vehicles that get us to where we need to go, the devices that connect us with each other, and in the wind turbines that generate electricity to power our lives. They're in the batteries that are helping create a future of mobility and in a million other things that make modern life possible. At Cabot, this drives our business. This is our purpose: creating materials that improve daily life and enable a more sustainable future. We fulfill our purpose by focusing on three key priorities: driving materials innovation, using our team's expertise in the latest technology. We create materials that deliver new levels of performance and efficiency. We empower our people to challenge the status quo and pursue innovative solutions.
Supporting our customers, we help companies make products that enhance people's lives while helping achieve their sustainability goals. We partner with customers to develop solutions that give them a competitive advantage, creating a more sustainable world. Our materials can enable dramatic improvements in energy efficiency, resource conservation, and waste reduction. We are equally committed to reducing our own environmental impact, and we contribute our time and resources to help support and strengthen our communities. At Cabot, we create materials that improve daily life and enable a more sustainable future. That's our business. That is our purpose.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Cabot's Investor Day 2024. My name is Sean Keohane, and I'm the CEO of Cabot. For those that I haven't met yet, maybe just a few words of background. I've been with the company for 22 years in a variety of roles, leading different businesses. I've led our reinforcement materials business, our performance chemicals segment, and had a number of functional and regional responsibilities over that period of time, and I've been the CEO of the company now for nine years, and I'm excited to be here today along with the leadership team to talk to you about our vision for the future. And I think you'll enjoy the program. Creating materials that improve daily life and enable a more sustainable future, that's the purpose of the company and what motivates every one of our employees around the world.
You just saw a great video of that and how we bring that to life across the company. I think throughout the program today, you'll see examples of that, of how our products are enabling our customers to win in their markets and thereby benefiting the company and you, our shareholders. Let's get started. The Cabot value proposition is driven by a number of distinctive features, with leaders in our markets holding the number one or number two positions in our large established businesses of reinforcement materials, specialty carbons and compounds, and fumed metal oxides, with a global asset base that is well positioned to serve our customers with reliable and consistent supply. Over the past nine years, this management team has demonstrated a commitment to disciplined execution, resulting in the achievement of our goals and delivery of exceptional shareholder returns.
Our industry leadership, our legacy of innovation, and our commitment to continuous improvement have established Cabot as a partner to our customers, helping them to win in their markets. We're in the midst of a long-term transition where sustainability drivers are increasingly motivating our customers and defining their needs. They want more circular value chains, more energy-efficient products, and more sustainable solutions. And they want these innovations supplied by companies that operate in a responsible manner. At Cabot, we've been long recognized as a leader in this space and are well positioned to win this sustainability transition. And finally, we have a clear strategy that's focused on our strengths and built on a foundation of disciplined capital deployment to drive strong shareholder returns. For those that are new to the Cabot story, let me provide a brief overview of the company.
We have a rich and proud history dating back to our founding in 1882, and our history is marked by many firsts. We have the distinction of holding Marshall Plan Certificate Number One in post-World War II reconstruction. We were one of the early multinational companies to invest in China in the 1980s. We were there as an innovator at the beginning of the inkjet printing transition, and we co-developed the process for chemical mechanical planarization for wafer polishing, a critical step in the production of semiconductor chips. We're a global company with almost 40 manufacturing plant locations around the world, serving a diverse set of applications that cluster under five end market sectors: automotive OE, tire replacement, infrastructure and industrial, consumer, and construction.
In fiscal year 2024, which we just completed on September 30th, we generated $4 billion of sales and adjusted EBITDA of $777 million, representing a 19% adjusted EBITDA margin and a strong adjusted ROIC of 19%. The cash flow characteristics of Cabot are very strong, as we generated $479 million of discretionary free cash flow in fiscal year 2024, which funded our targeted growth investments and allowed us to continue our long history of dividend growth and capital return to shareholders. Let's take a closer look at our business segments and the leading product lines in our portfolio. In reinforcement materials, we are a global leader in the design and manufacture of reinforcing carbons for the tire and rubber industry, where we hold the number one position globally in capacity terms.
We are also an innovator in the rubber application space with our engineered elastomer composites, or E2C platform, which is now in the early stages of commercial ramp-up. In performance chemicals, the segment is comprised of a broad set of leading product lines that serve many common applications and customers. Specifically, we're a global leader in specialty carbons and have a strategic downstream position in specialty compounds for plastics, where our specialty carbons are formulated into various polymer systems to impact a range of performance attributes, including color and conductivity. Our fumed silica product line is a global leader serving applications in the silicones, CMP, adhesives, and coating markets. In battery materials, we have the broadest platform of conductive additives and are well positioned as a recognized leader in this space.
Additionally, we're in commercial ramp-up phase and selling our aerogel particles to customers in the thermal management application for lithium-ion batteries, and finally, as a recognized leader in aqueous inkjet dispersions, we're well positioned to capitalize on the digital transition that is just getting underway in the large commercial printing applications such as corrugated packaging and folding carton. Overall, we have a leading portfolio of product lines, a strong technology heritage, a blue-chip customer base, and our products are essential elements of our customers' formulations. At Cabot, we lead through the integrated deployment of purpose, strategy, and values. Our purpose, as you just saw, is creating materials that improve daily life and enable a more sustainable future. This inspires our work and each of the 4,300 Cabot employees all around the world.
We believe in the power of chemistry to address many of the world's most pressing challenges and are motivated by this opportunity. Our strategy, Creating for Tomorrow, sets out the choices and our execution plans. It is built on a clear understanding of our strengths, the importance of leadership, and market participation choices where we believe we have a strong right to win. And finally, our values: integrity, respect, excellence, and responsibility. They form the foundation of the company and knit together our globally dispersed organization into what we call One Cabot. This term One Cabot is something that you'll hear when you travel around the company and something that you'll see in practice. It means that people act in the best interest of the company and will make choices that optimize the whole, no matter one's business, functional, or regional affiliation.
Our demonstrated agility and our ability to pivot quickly are predicated on this strong cultural dimension of One Cabot. Our strategy is executed by an industry-leading team that is committed to delivering on our goals for shareholders. This team is diverse, seasoned, brings a track record of execution discipline, and works with this spirit of One Cabot to deliver for you, our shareholders. The team is comprised of several executives who have grown up in roles of increasing responsibility throughout the company, like myself, along with a blend of key outside hires that brought depth and specific expertise to strengthen our capabilities and our culture. We're a competitive group that's focused on winning and extending Cabot's incredible heritage. This is the team that has delivered for you over the last three years and the team that will lead us to the next level of performance and value creation.
Our management team is supported by a diverse and experienced board that brings targeted expertise to the company and a strong performance orientation. Our geographic breadth and end market sectors are well represented on this board, as is the experience in commercializing new technology and driving operational excellence to create long-term shareholder value. Of particular note is the fact that Cabot has long had a Safety, Health, Environment, and Sustainability Committee, which is a reflection of the importance that we place on our people and responsible operations. The committee provides oversight for our safety and environmental management systems and ensures that sustainability is embedded in our strategy. This board is helpful to me and the leadership team as we seek to grow the company while navigating an increasingly dynamic and complex global environment.
Consistent execution against our corporate strategy has resulted in very strong financial performance over a long period of time. Since this management team has been together, we've generated very strong earnings growth while raising the overall quality of returns. From the beginning of fiscal year 2016, when this team first introduced our chapter of corporate strategy, at that time called Advancing the Core, we've grown Adjusted EPS at a CAGR of 12%, driven by strong underlying EBIT growth. This performance over a nine-year period reflects the underlying quality of our business and our assets and our strong commitment to operational and commercial excellence. Over this same period, we've increased the quality of returns, with ROIC more than doubling to 19% in fiscal year 2024. Growing earnings while driving a disciplined approach to cash flow and balance sheet management has resulted in these strong returns.
As we look forward, we are confident in our ability to meet the next chapter of growth for Cabot. When we were last together about this time in December of 2021, we introduced our Creating for Tomorrow strategy and outlined a set of corporate goals for adjusted earnings per share and discretionary free cash flow. At that time, we targeted adjusted earnings per share to grow at a CAGR over a three-year period of between 8% and 12% and cumulative discretionary free cash flow generation in excess of $1 billion. We delivered at the top end of the adjusted EPS range, achieving a CAGR of 12% over this three-year period. We also exceeded the $1 billion discretionary free cash flow objective by a significant margin, reaching $1.2 billion. When we set our three-year targets in December of 2021, we made certain assumptions about the environment at that time.
While many of these assumptions turned into headwinds since 2021, particularly end market growth rates and foreign exchange rates, it didn't impact our focus on achieving these goals. I'm immensely proud of the entire Cabot team for the resilience and for the agility that they demonstrated in navigating a turbulent economic environment these past three years, while always maintaining our focus on serving our customers and delivering on our commitments. The Cabot portfolio has robust cash flow characteristics, and this cash generation power is the source of our value creation strategy. With these strong cash flows, we seek to allocate capital inside a balanced framework focused on three priorities. First, ensuring that our asset base is well maintained to provide a reliable and sustainable offering to our customers. Second, underwriting high-confidence growth projects to deliver long-term earnings growth. And third, returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
This management team exercises strong capital allocation discipline, and over the three-year period, we returned significant capital to shareholders, totaling $588 million for an adjusted payout ratio of 55%. This was achieved while investing to maintain our strong asset base and underwriting growth projects that we believe will drive long-term earnings growth for the company. The ultimate scorecard to measure the effectiveness of our strategy and our execution is TSR. And since our last investor day, we've generated very strong shareholder returns. As you can see in the chart, Cabot outperformed the S&P 400 Chemicals Index over this three-year period by a wide margin. While the peer index was up only modestly between September 30th of 2021 and September 30th of 2024, Cabot's total shareholder return was 137%. We delivered this exceptional level of performance by driving our strategy with a combination of discipline and agility.
Operational and commercial excellence remain at the core of our daily management practices and underpin both the value proposition to our customers and our strong earnings and cash flow growth. We use this strong cash flow to return elevated levels of capital to shareholders while funding long-term growth investments in targeted areas that we believe will create value for shareholders. The key takeaway here is that disciplined execution and capital allocation, two hallmarks of this management team, have driven this exceptional level of value creation for you, our shareholders. As we shift our sights forward, it's useful to spend a few minutes exploring our competitive advantages. These are the features that we believe distinguish us from competition and set us up for long-term success.
Our strong global footprint, heritage of technology leadership, extensive product portfolio that is aligned to key macro trends, and our demonstrated track record of leadership in sustainability, each of these work together in a reinforcing fashion to create differentiation in the eyes of our customers. Let's explore each of them for a few minutes. Cabot is a very global company with assets and sales equally distributed around the three major regions of the world: the Americas, Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Overall, we have 38 manufacturing sites across the globe in strategic locations, providing scale and cost competitiveness to serve our customers. This balanced geographic footprint and our model of make-in-region, sell-in-region is important in our respective businesses and is likely to become even more valuable as customers de-risk supply chains from China and place greater emphasis on regional supply security.
We've long been a global pioneer with operations in Europe since post-World War II and in Latin America for over 50 years. We've also built a strong position in China that dates back to the 1980s. In each of these regions, we have local assets to serve our customers, but it's more than the physical assets that distinguish us. We operate with local management teams, giving us unique market insights and the experience necessary to navigate local complexities. We also innovate close to our customers with eight R&D centers located across the three major regions of the world, and this allows us to engage closely with customers and to innovate with speed. The key point to remember here is the fact that our regional asset base is well positioned to serve our customers, particularly in light of the increasing trend toward regional supply security.
Turning now to technology leadership, we create value for Cabot through technology at three levels: application understanding, particle design, and process technology. Let's start with application understanding. Having technical knowledge of our customer's application is an essential element in the innovation cycle. All of our materials are incorporated into some sort of a polymer system to impart performance. As a result, it is essential that we can test our performance in model formulations and produce performance data that is recognized by our customers. Data is the language of performance in the chemical industry, and our breadth of application know-how and regional application labs allow us to engage directly with customers to drive an effective innovation cycle. The second key level of innovation competency is particle design.
Here, we translate application performance requirements into specific particle design parameters, both in terms of the structure of the particle as well as the surface chemistry to deliver functionality in the customer's polymer system, and last, and by no means least, we are experts in process technology, and our leadership is underpinned by proprietary reactor designs and differentiated treatment technologies. As a large-scale chemical manufacturer, innovating in our process to increase yields, drive energy recovery, reduce emissions, and incorporate renewable feedstocks are all areas that drive value for our customers and bottom-line impact. A significant driver of our earnings growth over the last nine years has been the result of excellence in process technology. Each of these technology levers is enabled and amplified by scale. For example, innovations in product and process technology are often deployed across multiple plants in our global network, thereby leveraging returns on R&D investment.
Additionally, as a global player with a broad footprint, we can invest in regional application centers to innovate closer to our customers. This is something that a strictly regional competitor would be unable to replicate. Building this world-class innovation capability has taken years, and the combination of this with our scale allows us to create differentiated value from technology. Leveraging our global footprint and technology competencies to capitalize on key macro trends is a competitive advantage for Cabot. As we look forward, we see three big macro trends that can drive differentiated growth in top line and margin. The first is the shift in mobility towards electric vehicles, where we can impact performance through our materials for batteries, as well as the light weighting of vehicles through the introduction of composites and plastics, and the improved wear and rolling resistance in tires that are required for electric vehicles.
While this development and the mobility transition will take some time, and it likely won't be a straight line, I'm convinced that this trend is irreversible. The build-out of global infrastructure is another compelling trend for Cabot. As an example, our products play an important role in the manufacture of wind turbine blades, as well as in the performance of power distribution cables. As the aging grid is renewed and new distribution lines are laid to connect alternative energy sources to the grid, we expect our products geared to wind energy and the wire and cable application to grow strongly. And finally, customers are increasingly demanding more sustainable solutions, from incorporating circular materials to innovations that drive the transition to water-based printing technologies and more energy-efficient applications.
Our products play an important role in the support of this macro trend, and we believe this trend will create innovation opportunity across the Cabot portfolio. You'll hear more about these macro trends during the course of the presentation and how we're targeting our efforts to capitalize on them. And finally, our leadership in sustainability is a competitive advantage for Cabot and one that ties directly to our customer value proposition. As we integrate sustainability into our strategy, we think about it in terms of being a responsible operator and through the lens of enabling applications for our customers. Ultimately, it's our expectation that investments in this space must generate returns because they drive efficiency in our operations through circularity, are valued by our customers and their downstream consumers, or are enabling a new growth vector for us.
We have a long history of leadership in this space and have been consistently recognized by third parties for our strong performance and record of innovation. For example, we've received a platinum rating from EcoVadis for the fourth consecutive year, putting us in the top 1% of chemical companies evaluated. Many of our largest customers around the world rely on EcoVadis to evaluate the sustainability of their value chain partners, and our top rating is a reflection of how Cabot is viewed in the industry. At Investor Day 2021, we launched our Creating for Tomorrow strategy, where we seek to leverage these strengths that I just discussed into performance and sustainability. The strategy remains the right one for Cabot and continues to be built around three pillars: grow, innovate, and optimize. To grow, we focus on investing for advantage growth in applications and geographies where we have a leadership position.
Our innovation pillar is focused on developing innovative products and processes that enable a better future and where we believe we have a right to win. Optimization is all about continuous improvement and incorporating that mindset into everything that we do. I'll now spend a few minutes to elaborate on each of these pillars. First, the grow pillar. Over the last few years, we've completed a series of targeted investments that we believe are advantaged and will contribute to our long-term growth targets. We recently started a new specialty compounds plant in Indonesia to capitalize on the rapid growth for plastic applications in the ASEAN region. Co-location of this asset with our reinforcing carbons plant allows us to cost-effectively serve the rapidly expanding middle class there. We also recently completed an expansion of a conductive additive dispersion capacity in Zhuhai, China, to support our continued growth in battery materials.
This additional capacity will not only serve growth in China but will also seed our customers with products in Western geographies while capacity is being constructed there. Finally, we completed a significant capacity expansion for specialty carbons in Suzhou, China, which creates growth potential in our global specialty carbons network. We also have a number of projects that are currently in process, including a new reinforcing carbons line in Indonesia to serve the rapidly growing ASEAN tire market and expansion of our E2C plant in Malaysia to support commercial growth of elastomer composites. Finally, we expect to further build carbon nanotube and dispersion capacity in the U.S., Europe, and China to support growth and regionalization of the lithium-ion battery market. Each of these battery investments will be paced with market need and certain commercial triggers, thereby mitigating the market timing risks to the greatest extent possible.
We expect each of these targeted investments to contribute meaningfully to our financial results over the next few years, and you'll hear more about our expectations from Bart and Jeff later in the program. At our Investor Day in 2021, we outlined the opportunity and our plans for our chosen growth vectors of battery materials, E2C, and inkjet for commercial printing applications, particularly corrugated packaging and folding carton. We continue to believe that the growth prospects in these vectors remain compelling and that Cabot has a strong right to win in these markets. Reflecting on the developments these past three years, there were certain elements of our plan that evolved well and others that have been more challenging. In battery materials, our volumes grew strongly at a CAGR of 30%, and our thesis that conductive additive blends would be valued has proven to be correct.
We also continue to deepen our sales relationships with the leading battery manufacturers, and we were recently recognized with a Department of Energy grant to build a CNT powder and dispersion plant here in the U.S. to support the regionalization of the battery supply chain. These aspects of our plans developed quite well and give us more confidence going forward. What we didn't anticipate was the sharp increase in competitive intensity in the EV and battery market in China and the slower build-out of capacity in the West. Given these realities, we've adapted our approach but continue to believe in the potential of this market as a long-term value creation lever for Cabot. In E2C, we are growing our commercial sales into the OTR, or off-the-road tire market, and have several customers that are in full-scale tire tests for truck applications.
We continue to believe that liquid mixing can be transformational for the tire industry over the longer term, as it can offer improved performance versus conventional mixing and a potential pathway to sustainable solutions, and finally, in inkjet, the market has been slower to adopt inkjet presses for packaging than anticipated in 2021, but the direction is clear to me. We're at the very beginning of a digital transition in large-volume commercial printing applications. While the ramp-up will require more time, it was clear at the industry's premier trade show, DRUPA 2024, that all of the leading press manufacturers have launched aqueous inkjet presses targeted at these markets. As a leader in the aqueous inkjet space, I believe that Cabot is well-positioned to build a meaningful market share position and benefit from this long-term earnings growth opportunity.
So in summary, between our legacy product lines and our growth vectors, we are very optimistic about the growth pillar of our strategy. Now turning to the innovation pillar. Over the past few years, we've launched and commercialized an impressive lineup of new products that position us for success and market share growth. These new product launches are a function of our deep application understanding and particle technology, which combine with our close customer relationships to drive adoption. Each of these new product examples is driven by strategic choices aligned with the macro trends I discussed earlier. The E2C and PROPEL product launches are addressing performance needs in the tire industry around tread life for electric vehicles and fuel economy. Our ENERMAX brand of products for lithium-ion batteries is targeting customer needs for improved cycle life as well as conductive additive blends to enhance conductivity and processability.
Finally, the latest products under our CAB-O-JET brand of aqueous pigment dispersions have been specifically targeted for inkjet printing and packaging applications. Our UltraBond brand of fumed silica is an excellent example of how our materials are contributing to the important trend of lightweighting in the automotive sector. The innovation pillar is a long-term differentiation lever for Cabot and one that we believe will create growth and margin benefit for the company. The third pillar of our strategy is optimization, where we drive a culture of continuous improvement in everything that we do. Our continuous improvement culture is built around two core platforms: commercial and operational excellence. For over 10 years now, we've invested to strengthen our commercial capabilities to serve our customers and drive margin improvement.
We call our program ComEx and have a center of excellence to support our commercial teams with the tools, analytics, and practices to drive outcomes. The same is true in operational excellence, or OpEx. Our approach is built around the lean manufacturing practices that drive yield, overall equipment effectiveness, and energy recovery. These core metrics are fundamental to long-term competitiveness in the chemical industry and are critical to our customer value proposition of quality, service, and reliability. This operating platform is the foundation of our execution culture. It has been a significant driver of our strong financial performance, and we remain committed to driving these practices in our relentless pursuit of continuous improvement. With a clear strategy in place and a highly developed execution culture, we expect to continue creating differentiated value for you, our shareholders.
Over the next three years, we are targeting a continuation of strong earnings growth while maintaining our attractive return on net assets. Our earnings growth expectation is underpinned by solid fundamentals in our large established businesses and supported by key macro trends, including the continued mobility transition to EVs, an expansion of global infrastructure, and the continued emphasis from our customers on more sustainable solutions. We expect to continue generating higher levels of discretionary free cash flow to fund advantage growth investments and return significant capital to shareholders. We remain committed to a growing and industry competitive dividend, and our current 10 million share repurchase board authorization supports our expectation for share repurchases as a use of excess cash flow.
We believe we are well-positioned to capitalize on the sustainability transition and are particularly excited about the potential for long-term growth and value creation from the growth vectors of battery materials, E2C, and inkjet for packaging. We believe we have a strong right to win in these applications and expect important progress over the next three years as we seek to build long-term valuable new businesses for the company. Transitioning now to our corporate goals for the next three years, we are targeting adjusted EPS growth at a CAGR of 7%-10% over the next three years, which will be underpinned by earnings growth in both reinforcement materials and performance chemicals. This expectation for adjusted EPS growth will translate into EBITDA of between $900 million and $1 billion by fiscal year 2027, putting us once again at a new level of earnings power.
To put this into perspective, when this management team took over in 2016, the EBITDA levels for reinforcement materials and performance chemicals were approximately half of this new target. We have confidence in these three-year goals and believe the targeted investments in our growth vectors will create lasting long-term value for shareholders beyond the three-year period. In summary, Cabot is a market leader in our businesses where we hold global number one or number two positions in our large established product lines. Our global asset base is well-positioned to match the increasing trend toward regional supply chains and greater supply reliability. Over the past nine years, this management team has built a track record of execution and delivery for our shareholders.
We will continue to drive the company with operational and commercial excellence at the core, and you can count on us to be excellent stewards of cash, driving a disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation. We expect that sustainability will continue to motivate our customers and their downstream consumers. While the pace of this transition is difficult to predict, we believe these trends are durable and that Cabot will build long-term value for shareholders through our investments in our chosen growth vectors of battery materials, E2C, and inkjet. We will maintain the pace of investments to match market signals but with a clear eye towards building long-term leadership positions, and finally, creating for tomorrow is the right strategy for Cabot.
We have a clear set of targets to create value for shareholders over the next three years, and this management team remains laser-focused on execution and delivering on our commitments. I look forward to the rest of the program this morning where you'll hear in more detail about these key messages from our leaders. I'd like to now turn the podium over to Bart Kalkstein. Bart is Executive Vice President and President of our Reinforcement Materials segment and the Americas region. Bart. Thank you, Sean, and good morning, everyone. It's good to be here. And for those of you I've met before, it's good to see you again. For those of you I haven't yet had the chance to meet, my name is Bart Kalkstein. I run our Reinforcement Materials business position I've had since 2016 and have been here at Cabot for about 20 years.
Today, I'm extremely excited to be able to talk to you about reinforcement materials, the state of the business, and the road ahead of us. Let's jump right in. There are four things that I'd like you to walk away with today. First, Cabot is the global leader in reinforcing carbons, a class of carbon blacks specifically made for tire and other rubber applications. We have a global footprint and a first-class customer base of global and regional customers. The business generates strong EBITDA margins and strong cash flows. Second, our earnings stream has been and will continue to be a durable one. We continuously sharpen our commercial and operational execution, and from this platform, we see opportunities to further grow and expand. This brings us to the third point.
We are targeting capacity growth in advantaged geographies such as Indonesia, where the growth rates are higher and the existing capacity footprint there isn't sufficient for local demand. In the more mature Western markets, meanwhile, we are taking a more prudent approach to growth through plant debottlenecks and operational improvements. Fourth, the mobility landscape is rapidly changing with the development of electric vehicles and a desire for more sustainable solutions. Our proprietary high-performance engineered elastomer composite, or E2C solutions, provide a very bright future for us, while we also are investing to develop a new class of reinforcing carbons under our EVOLVER Sustainable Solutions technology platform. In summary, the business has performed very well. It's healthy and strong, and the outlook is bright for us. What do our products do?
Our reinforcing carbons are mixed with natural and synthetic rubber and impart important properties to rubber applications. Our reinforcing carbons make tires last longer, handle more safely, and reduce road friction to extend vehicle range. They also help make belts, hoses, and mining equipment more durable. Growth and vehicle miles driven, new auto builds, and investments in the mining industry are key growth drivers for us. Our business is largely a make-in-region, sell-in-region one, which is important as customers typically do not keep or manage high levels of inventory of reinforcing carbons. Our production process converts byproduct feedstock streams into value-added reinforcing carbon products. In fact, our process captures the majority of the carbon atoms in that feedstock and keeps them from turning into CO2, which is what would happen if those streams were otherwise used to make power or heat for ships or power plants.
However, the lower levels of CO2 and other air emissions from the reinforcing carbons production process also require an increasing level of control, and this is limiting new capacity builds around the world as it has become significantly more difficult to secure permits in many places, as well as significantly more expensive for new entrants. As for Cabot, we have the largest capacity footprint in the industry and serve our customers around the world wherever they operate. We demonstrate our technology leadership in driving high production yields and producing high-performance products. And as we do this, we also capture and convert our byproduct tail gas to produce green power with no additional emissions.
In fact, we produce and sell in the form of power and steam more than 200% of the energy that we consume in our own manufacturing processes, which not only improves our economics but also reduces CO2 emissions in the geographies in which we operate when our neighbors can use our emission-free energy and displace the use of other fossil-based sources from their traditional suppliers, and finally, we have a unique position with our downstream E2C solutions business, which differentiates us from our competition. Let's move on now to the primary usage of our materials. As you can see on the left-hand side of this chart, about 80% of reinforcing carbons are consumed in tire applications, with light vehicles including pickup trucks and SUVs and heavy commercial vehicles like buses and 18-wheelers making up the majority of the volumes.
Industrial rubber products such as belts, hoses, and other rubber liners make up the other 22%. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see the breakdown of replacement and original equipment tires, and this is a very important feature of our business. As you can see in those bars on the right, about 76% of passenger car tires and 83% of truck and bus tires are replacement tires. In other words, there are over three sets of replacement tires for every passenger car and over six sets of replacement tires for every truck or bus in its life. The key takeaway here is that we are largely shielded from the cyclicality of the auto segment, and our business is driven more by the steadily expanding global miles driven statistics for passengers and for freight. Now, tires, of course, are produced all around the world.
And over the last several decades, tire companies, both established ones and newer entrants, have invested in new capacity throughout Asia and particularly in China. As a result, tire markets in the West and the Americas and Europe are now structurally dependent on tire imports from Asia. Now, this is not something new and has been the case for a long time. Today, in the West, the level of net imports is about 35% of all tire sales there, while in Asia, net exports are about 40% of all Asian production. Meanwhile, from a downstream demand perspective, miles driven in all geographies in the world have returned to pre-COVID levels and growth rates. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, replacement tires make up the majority of production, and so this recovery is an important marker of demand for our customers and for us.
On a customer level, the list of top tire makers globally has been made up of the same five companies for over three decades, even as Asian tire makers are growing at faster rates today. As the global leader, we serve all these customers all around the world. What's happening currently in the market? Our customers are right in the middle of one important transition and in the early stages of another one. First, automobile OEMs in the West and increasingly around the world have moved to larger tires on the vehicles they sell. While this transition is largely complete in terms of new cars being sold, the car park or the fleet of automobiles on the road today is in transition as there's a mix of older cars, rather, with smaller tires, which is gradually shrinking as newer cars with larger tires are being purchased.
For the past few years, the global tire leaders have been pivoting their focus and manufacturing footprint to win OEM business and support this higher value, higher growth segment, and this is leading to double-digit growth rates for most of them in the 18-inch and up segment, even while their overall volumes have been declining in recent quarters. Ultimately, this will be a positive trend for our business as a typical 19-inch tire is 30% heavier than a typical 16-inch tire, leading to more carbon black per tire sold as the transition to larger tires in the replacement market continues over the coming years. The second transition is driven by sustainability trends, both the use of more sustainable materials in tires and a growing EV market. This is the longer-term transition I mentioned before and one I'll talk more about in a few minutes.
At present, these transitions are contributing to increased export levels by Asian players to the West, particularly in the smaller tire size and to cost-conscious customers. As you might imagine, those who drive older cars are more likely to have smaller tires and also more likely to be cost-conscious, but this segment is also declining as older cars with smaller tires are retired and newer ones with bigger tires replace them. Finally, in response to some of these import trends, we are seeing a renewed focus on tariffs and anti-dumping duties. In August of this year, the U.S. International Trade Commission voted to extend anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese truck and bus tires for an additional five years. Just last month, the U.S. ITC voted to impose new tariffs on tires imported from Thailand as well.
In October, the Brazilian Foreign Trade Chamber approved an over 50% increase in the tariff rate on imported passenger car tires into Brazil to a new rate of 25%. I should add that all of this activity is before the coming administration transition here in the U.S. that is signaling further tariff activity. Let's transition now to Cabot's participation in this global market. As I mentioned on the last slide, ours is truly a global business. We are where our customers are all around the world with the right assets in the right places. You can see that our business is about equally sized in the Americas and Asia, and both regions are about twice the size of our EMEA business. Our locations are well-matched to that of our customers, and we make and sell largely in region from our 20 plants distributed throughout the world.
We are also well-positioned to leverage the scale benefits of such an extensive network. This geographic platform has enabled us to deliver excellent financial performance. As you can see here, we have been very successful at driving EBIT, EBITDA, and EBITDA margin growth over the past decade. The business delivered record results again in FY24, and I'm extremely proud of our team, their commitment to excellence, and their execution and delivery. So how have we done it? It starts from our customer relationships, relationships which we aspire to be partnership-based rather than transactional. These include the global tire leaders as well as the faster-growing Asian players. We serve these customers with high-performing and high-quality products which command a fair price, and we deliver these products from our assets which continue to get better each and every year.
This allows us to generate cash that we reinvest into our business in sustaining compliance and growth projects with significant excess cash that funds growth programs like E2C, batteries, and Inkjet, and also helps fund the return of cash to our shareholders. Our formula has been a successful and powerful one. So that's where we have been, and now let's look to the future. First, the foundation for us is continued margin improvement through commercial and operational excellence. Second, we will invest in targeted capacity additions in geographies where the investment makes sense based on market conditions. Third, we are focused on winning the sustainability transition. And fourth, we will look to capitalize on the mobility transformation that will be taking place over the coming many years. We expect these four growth levers to lead to margin and volume growth for Reinforcement Materials.
So let's dig in now a bit to each one of these. As Sean mentioned in his remarks, we have a culture here at Cabot of strong execution and delivery, and I'd like to call out two specific things in the reinforcement materials business. First, commercial excellence. Our leading supply position with key global and regional tire and industrial rubber products customers is one that has been earned and must be maintained through ensuring that our customers get the product they need when they need them and at the quality and consistency that they expect. This is job one for our commercial team and has been the key driver to our improved performance in all regions. We have also been sharp in our pricing formula evolution.
One of the key things about our business is our philosophy that pricing starts with a base price and then adds cost pass-through mechanisms based on the market-based pricing of input costs. Our pricing formulas start with published indices that represent our feedstock sources. We then adjust these prices based on our cost for transportation, CO2, and other external costs. As such, our price formulas pass on these cost oscillations, which sometimes results in additional savings for our customers, to ensure that the integrity of our commercial relationships stays strong and that we get paid a fair price for our offering. This mindset and a focus on upgrading the mix of products that we deliver to our customers has resulted in a 7% CAGR for our unit margins since 2015. Moving to the right, let me spend a moment on operational excellence.
A key performance marker for our manufacturing teams is OEE, or overall equipment effectiveness. This is a measure that tracks how well we are producing relative to the capability of our equipment. Specifically, we measure, one, our production throughput levels, two, how much off-quality or OQ we produce, and three, the uptime of our units. Relative to our 2015 performance, we have improved by 7 percentage points, and this improvement has been a key driver to unlock 140,000 metric tons of effective capacity, which has helped support our volume growth, so as you can see, this has been a place of value creation for us looking backward and will continue to be so as we move forward. Let's move on now to the second one of our growth levers, capacity expansion. As you saw before, the global market for tire growth is relatively modest.
So in our mature markets like EMEA and North America, our strategy is to grow through OEE improvement. However, there are certain places in the world where that growth rate is substantially higher, both because of domestic growth and export markets. Southeast Asia is one such place where we see recent growth rates that have been about 5% annually, and specifically, our plant in Cilegon, Indonesia, is the only carbon black plant in that fast-growing country. We are nearing completion of our third production line at our site there, one which will nearly double our capacity and add about 80,000 tons annually. This will allow us to serve the growing customer base there, and we anticipate this asset to be online in the middle of 2025. We continue to explore other expansion opportunities through either organic or inorganic investments in attractive geographies.
Let's transition now to the third of our growth drivers, winning the sustainability transition. Our engineered elastomer composite, or E2C solutions business, is a particularly exciting opportunity for us. Now, E2C may be new to some of you, so what is it? It is a unique rubber composite material made from a patented process that enables rubber compounds to have a level of dispersion that is significantly more homogeneous than rubber compounds made from conventional mixing processes. You can see an example of this in the slide here over on the left, where the E2C solutions compound shows none of the undispersed material represented by the black dots there that the conventional compound typically does. Why is this important? Well, quite simply, it makes the rubber better.
A tire made with E2C can last longer, it can run cooler, which helps with range, and it can reduce the risk of catastrophic tire failure. E2C also enables tire customers to improve their own plant utilizations as what we deliver to them is already premixed for their operation. And not only do longer-lasting or cooler-running tires have a sustainability benefit, but the E2C technology also allows a higher loading of novel sustainable materials than traditional mixing supports today. When we look at the worldwide consumption of rubber compound annually, we see a total addressable market that is about $100 billion. Now, our E2C solutions deliver high performance at a premium price, so some of that opportunity won't be a fit for us.
Still, even just a 1-2% penetration level could generate $1-2 billion of additional revenue, which would be very significant for our business. Over the past few years, we have launched several products aimed at the mining markets, specifically for ultra-large mining tires where our technology can lower the level of heat buildup in those tires. This allows for trucks to move faster and for the mine to output more payload more quickly given their level of equipment investment. E2C can also help these giant tires last longer, allowing mine owners to improve their sustainability footprint and have less production downtime from replacement. We are shipping commercial quantities of E2C solutions material for this application to multiple customers and continue to see volume growth in this application.
Our next application is truck and bus tires, where customers are looking for longer tire life and better rolling resistance. Much of this market is fleet-operated, and those fleet operators work hard at reducing their cost per mile. Tires with better rolling resistance and longer life help these fleets in two ways. They reduce fuel costs, and they reduce overall tires consumed and, in turn, those companies' environmental footprint. We have multiple customers currently undergoing long-term road tests with hundreds of tires to confirm performance and prepare for commercial release. I anticipate commercial sales for this application beginning in 2025. To meet the demand growth that will come from supporting the truck and bus market, we have initiated a $25 million project to double our capacity at our Malaysian plant, and we expect this capacity to come online in the second half of 2026.
Looking forward, our development team is hard at work on a series of E2C materials that can improve the efficiency and life of passenger car tires for the growing EV market. Enabling greater range and helping individual drivers as well as fleet operators lower their total cost of ownership presents a very attractive additional opportunity for us. In summary, I'm very excited about the growth opportunities from our E2C business and the investments we are making in it. Another investment in winning the sustainability transition is our Evolve Sustainable Solutions technology platform, which is focused on offering sustainable content with reliable performance at an industrial scale. In particular, we have technology projects focused on producing reinforcing carbons from renewable feedstock, recycled materials, and with a reduced CO2 footprint. We have launched two products already from this platform and anticipate continuing to launch new products over the coming years.
As of today, we have seven of our production sites ISCC Plus certified, which allows us to offer to our customers from these sites certain reinforcing carbons products, which are fully circular as their feedstock comes from recycled tires. Let's transition now to the fourth growth driver for our business, the changing mobility landscape. Unlike the data we saw earlier, which was tire data, this data here is focused on cars themselves. The data on the left shows the projected growth of light vehicle or passenger car production over time. You can see that industry analysts anticipate that 43% of vehicles produced by 2030 will be EVs. Now, the chart in the middle shows the vehicle park. Again, this is quite simply how many total cars there are in the world.
You can see that although 43% of new vehicles will be EVs by 2030, only 16% of the park will be EVs by then. This is because the average car lasts 12 to 13 years today, so it will take quite some time for older internal combustion engine vehicles to be retired. As I mentioned earlier, our market is more driven by replacement tires, not new tires, so the park is a better representation of the overall market opportunity for us. Still, we are very well positioned to benefit from the macro trends that Sean shared earlier this morning. As the mobility landscape shifts to electric vehicles, automakers will need to deal with the challenges of higher torque, heavier cars, and the desire for lower noise and longer range.
These needs present excellent opportunities for us in terms of volume growth, better product mix, and the opportunity for new material innovation, both in terms of reinforcing carbons and E2C. While this transition will take quite some time, it represents a long-term supportive trend for our business. Why do I think it will be supportive? It is because, quite simply, EV tires really do wear faster. You can see here that this is a common refrain from major tire makers and represents a real opportunity for them and for us. Both from a reinforcing carbons perspective and our E2C platform, we are excited about the future that EVs present for us over the decades to come. I hope I have given you some insight into our market, our business performance, and the opportunities in front of us today.
We are a global leader with robust cash generation, a strong operator with a record of execution, and we have attractive growth opportunities in advantaged geographies where we know how to operate and do so successfully today. And finally, we believe our sustainable solutions led by E2C will be a true differentiator and platform for significant growth into the future as mobility continues to evolve. Thank you for your time today, and we will now take a 15-minute break. There are water stations along the wall here, coffee in the atrium out the doors there. And after 15 minutes, we'll be back with Performance Chemicals and my friend Jeff Zhu to the stage.
Thank you. Okay, welcome back, everyone. We're now kicking off the second half of our Investor Day meeting.
I'd like to turn the call over, or the meeting, over to Jeff Zhu, Executive Vice President and President of Carbon and Silica Technologies, Battery Materials, and the Asia Pacific region, who will provide an update on the Performance Chemicals segment.
Thank you, Steve. Good morning. Welcome back. I'm Jeff Zhu, President of Carbon and Silica Technologies and Battery Materials. So I'm here today to present to you the business fundamentals, strategy orientation, and financial performance, particularly the growth prospects of this segment here today. Can we move on the slide, please? Yes, thank you. Coming out of 2024, we are glad to see the recovery of the segment, and we're even more excited about the growth potential. The Performance Chemicals segment comprises multiple product lines and serves a wide range of applications. I would like to condense them to four key takeaways here today.
First, we are serving very diversified markets, of which many are high-growth, high-value applications. We are well-suited for growth because we align our focus on innovation, global reach, and the sustainability trends. Second, in the past three years, we have made some strategic investments in our core and the growth segments, and we are glad these investments have been contributing to our results, and we are glad these things will, in the future, provide future earnings possibilities. With supply chain disruption and the customer destocking behind us, these investments will further expand our earnings capacity. Third, we faced some challenges in 2023 and 2024 due to unprecedented customer destocking. I'm proud that our team responded swiftly by executing our commercial and operation programs to expand our unit margin and to implement cost-saving actions.
We certainly observed a strong rebound in the second half of 2024, and we project further earnings growth when volume is connected with underlying market demand. Finally, we are facing some exciting growth opportunities in EV batteries and inkjet printing markets. Cabot has leading technologies and a great partnership with leading industrial players to capture the opportunities. Today, I will focus more on our progress in the battery material market. The Performance Chemicals segment is serving a balanced portfolio of end markets, including infrastructure and industrial, mobility, consumer, and construction. Our product lines include specialty carbons, specialty compounds, fumed metal oxides, aerogel, battery materials, and inkjet. These product lines provide solutions to the customer through functionalities such as conductivity, pigmentation, reinforcement, rheology control, and surface modification. Many of these applications are high-margin, high-growth, with high barrier to enter. Let's start with the infrastructure and industrial market.
The growth is primarily driven by infrastructure investments. Governments worldwide prioritize infrastructure development to boost economic growth, improve connectivity, and promote clean energy transition. Cabot actively participates in a wide range of markets such as wind cable, pressure pipe, geo membrane, and structural adhesives. The latest development in AI requires significant investment in energy and energy transmission, and our conductive carbons are essential to enhance the electrical conductivity of the cable insulation and help to ensure a more controlled and even flow of electricity throughout the cable system. It is a high-switching cost market, and Cabot is well-positioned to benefit from the sustained and expanded demand. The automobile industry's vast scale, innovation-driven needs, and the transition to sustainability make a cornerstone for the chemical industry. There are abundant innovations going within the industry, such as electrification, safety enhancement, lightweighting, connectivity, sustainability, and appealing.
On top of conductive materials for the battery market, our development programs are well-connected with these drivers, and our products are widely adopted in the interior, exterior, and structural applications. Despite a slow growth in the automotive production market in the past three years, we've had very healthy growth in automotive coatings, structural adhesives, and compounds for specific interior designs. Adhesive is a critical element to enable lightweighting, which is a key trend driving the sustainability of the development of the auto industry. Cabot's fumed silica is an industrial reference in adhesive formulation, and we achieved a CAGR of double-digit growth in this application in the past three years, and we believe the growth trajectory will continue. The consumer market offers consistent demand, innovation opportunities, and access to a vast growing global customer base.
By aligning with consumer market drivers like sustainability, personalization, and digitalization, Cabot can unlock significant growth potential. Cabot has meaningful participation in CMP for the semiconductor industry, pigment for the fiber market, and a high color for the display market. Digital printing is expected to grow rapidly due to its ability to offer high levels of customization and increased sustainability compared to traditional printing methods, making it ideal for on-demand production, especially with the rise of e-commerce. We expect aqueous inkjet printing to enable the transition from analog to digital printing, especially in packaging applications. Cabot is a global leader in supplying aqueous pigment dispersion, which is a critical element of inkjet printing. We currently work with and sell to a majority of leading hardware OEMs and have developed a position as a key partner to capture this growth opportunity.
The construction market faced some short-term challenges in the past two years because of a depressed global market. However, the construction market's long-term positive outlook remains by fundamental factors like population growth, essential needs, urbanization, and economic development. We expect a turning of the market in 2025, and the demand for our fumed metal oxide product line will be stronger due to the recovery of the construction market. In conclusion, we are optimistic about the underlying demand of the four end markets I described, especially with our connections of some macro trends. Our balanced regional exposure is a strength at play. More than 90% of our business is conducted in the region with our regional supply assets, providing our customers with supply chain security and efficiency. We strategically invest our FMO assets in a fence-line partnership with major silicon producers.
They provide us with stable volume and price raw materials, and we supply them fumed silica for their downstream applications. Our byproduct, hydrochloric acid, is looped back to achieve partners' material balance. Through this partnership, we achieved cost competitiveness and formed a circular economy model with long-term sustainability advantages. Most of our specialty carbon assets are co-located with our reinforcing carbon assets, which maximize energy, feedstock, and operational synergies. Some of our specialty compounds assets are co-located with specialty carbon asset units, offering flexibility, efficiency, and cost competitiveness. Through the integration and the partnership, our product lines have strong cost competitiveness, and we can manufacture grades globally depending on customer needs and regional raw material supply dynamics. Furthermore, we will soon be able to produce CNT powder and dispersion globally with our plant in Europe and North America investments.
Though there were challenges of our 2024 financial performance compared with our past growth trajectory, largely due to unprecedented customer destocking and a heavy foreign exchange headwind, we are pleased to see our volume normalized in the second half of 2024. We believe that the destocking is behind us, and our current volume is connected with underlying market demand. With the recovery of activities, positive trends of end markets, and our continued expansion in high-growth markets, we are confident that the segment is well-positioned to deliver sustainable earnings growth in coming years. Looking forward, there are four drivers for the growth of the Performance Chemicals segment. First, we will continue our excellent commercial and operational execution. We recognize this is our strength, and this is the foundation for all growth initiatives.
Second, our investments in past years have created sufficient capacity and unlocked flexibility in our network to support the growing demand. Third, we believe there are favorable macro trends supporting our business growth, such as infrastructure investments and innovation in the auto industry. Finally, EV battery and digital printing offer significant growth potential that we are ready to capture, and we'll put some spotlight on the battery market development today. So allow me to cover commercial and operational excellence first, which are deeply embedded in our culture and management processes. In the past couple of years, we faced tremendous inflation pressure. The cost of feedstock, utilities, transportation, and process chemicals, etc., have increased over 33%. I'm proud that the Cabot team has indeed expanded unit margin by 12 points on top of offsetting all headwinds by focusing on high-value segments, optimizing our product portfolio, and increasing prices.
Operationally, we cut costs swiftly when activities slowed down. We adapt our organizing structure to fast-changing business environments. The Cabot team successfully overcame and endured challenging situations, proving our strength and resilience in adversity. Commercial and operational excellence is always our driving force in growing profitability. Despite COVID impact, I'm very proud that the Cabot team has completed four investments in the past three years, and these investments are contributing to our results, and we expect more earnings from them. First, we doubled the CNT dispersion capacity in China to meet growing demand domestically and internationally. We also invested in a state-of-the-art R&D facility co-located on the site to develop a new generation of CNTs and blends. Meanwhile, we invested in a new European battery technology center in Münster, Germany, working closely with European customers to commercialize our products.
Münster is a hub of battery technology in Europe, and we can tap into great talent resources over there. With this investment, we believe we're equipped with all necessary tools to be successful in the Europe market, which is a top priority for battery development. We acquired the reinforcing carbon assets in Suzhou, China, from Nippon Steel, and converted it into our 40,000-ton specialty carbon facility, which we believe is a highly capital-efficient way to invest new capacity. It is running well, and it supports the growing demand in the Asia-Pacific region. We also successfully commissioned a 20,000-ton specialty compound unit in Cilegon, Indonesia. Southeast Asia is a fast-growing economy thanks to its abundant natural resources, large young demographic, and incoming foreign investments to diversify the global supply chain risk.
Meanwhile, with the expansion of reinforcing carbon capacity on the same site, our compound investment will leverage the operational and the cost synergy to unlock substantial growth opportunities in the region. As we discussed the favorable macro trend before, I would like to highlight here the wider cable market, which will significantly benefit from the global infrastructure build-out. It is a major growth opportunity for Cabot, and we are a leader in this application. Two-thirds of the global grid needs to be replaced by 2050, amounts to almost a $1 trillion investment every year, partially because of the aging network, partially because of the new investment required to support AI, data center, and the clean energy transition. Conductive carbons are essential in the wire and the cable market because they provide a good balance of electric conductivity and the mechanical properties.
In the cable insulation system, especially of high voltage, conductive carbon can effectively dissipate static electricity and distribute electrical fields more evenly, preventing potential damage and the degradation of cables. Replacing the damaged cables can be very costly. Therefore, the entry barrier is very high. Cabot has developed a range of conductive carbon grades targeting the wire and the cable market over the past many years, and it is a leading supplier to the top-tier industrial players. We achieved a CAGR of double-digit growth in the past three years, and we believe that growth will continue. Similarly, wind power is the second fastest-growing renewable energy source. Our treated silica is an industry reference in bonding paste adhesive for wind blades, and we are pleased with our continuous growth in this application. Now, let me put some spotlight on the battery material business, which offers a tremendous growth opportunity for Cabot.
We believe in this opportunity. We have committed significant resources and capital to drive the growth, and we are pleased with our progress in the past three years. Electrification is a top priority for the automotive industry, and the EV market grew 37% CAGR in the past three years. Cabot grew our volume by CAGR of 30% and had commercial sales to nine out of 10 top global battery producers. Margin in China is lower than expectations because heavy competition in the Chinese EV market impacts the profit pool of the battery value chain. To counter this headwind, we focus our development on non-China markets as well as high-performing Chinese battery requirements. Several notable achievements here. We were awarded with a European customer new gigafactory business. With this award, we expect to grow the European volume and the profits.
At the same time, we have built incumbent positions with a large number of emerging Western battery producers, including some top OEMs, offering us a strong pipeline of growth. We are proud to be selected for negotiation of a $50 million U.S. dollar DOE grant to build a fully integrated CNT powder and dispersion facility in Michigan. Upon completion, Cabot will be the leading local supplier offering all types of conductive materials in the United States so that our customers can be free of the concerns of supply chain security with abundant choices of conductive materials in their battery formulations. Our specialty carbon units and the CNT units obtained IATF 16949 certification, enabling us to meet stringent quality and regulatory requirements of the auto industry. There are many amazing new technologies evolving rapidly, generating new demand on conductive materials.
We have kept pace with the latest development, and we launched 24 new products that position us well in new battery platforms. All these achievements establish Cabot as a leading global conductive material supplier, and we are excited about the growth potential in coming years. Despite the challenges in consumer adoptions, we remain a promising outlook of the EV market. We believe the electrification trend is irreversible. Projected CAGR of around 20% in the next five years. Today, this market is led by Chinese players, where Cabot has built strong business relationships with. At the same time, Europe and North America are expected to catch up with their own battery supply chain build-ups. Consequently, their share is expected to grow to 50% of the global output from 20% today.
We expect the profit pool of the non-China market is much larger than that of China because the industry structure is very different, and the non-China battery producers place greater value on high performance, quality consistency, and the supply security of conductive materials. Cabot has been working with these non-China customers for years, including some top OEMs, and have built incumbent positions with our products. We anticipate our investment in technologies, capacity in Europe and the US, and customer partnerships to pay off with accelerated volume and profit growth in the non-China market. We believe that Cabot has a strong right to win in the conductive material space for the battery market, starting with our unique product portfolio. We have a full range of conductive carbons, carbon nanotubes, and the carbon nanostructure.
Each product line offers different conductive efficacy, and our blended formulations offer versatility, performance, and the cost in use. Our LITX and Enermax product range have built a strong brand power, enabling greater battery performance of energy density and fast charging. We invest heavily in technology development so that we can continue innovation of cutting-edge conductive solutions in cathodes and anodes. 70% of our battery business SG&A is spending on technology development. We are also engaged in frontier technology development under DOE sponsorship so that we are ahead of the future battery formulations. We are very pleased that Cabot is considered as a partner of choice of conductive technology by our customers. Finally, our global manufacturing network is critical to winning customers. China and the non-China market have distinctive market dynamics, and we are able to answer both with our technology choices and the supply chain arrangements.
We compete in China with speed and the portfolio management, while we focus on the non-China market with high-performing grades and the local supply chain build-outs. We believe bifurcation strategy is paying off, and we are confident that the battery market will offer significant earnings potential to the performance chemical segment in the future. In summary, we expect a double-digit earnings growth of the performance chemical segment in the next three years, thanks to our leading product portfolio, our innovation capability, our proven record in execution, our state-of-the-art investment, and finally, our leadership position in the fast-growing segments. Many thanks for your time and attention.
At this point, I would like to pass the stage to Erica McLaughlin, our CFO, to discuss the financial framework. Thank you all.
Thank you, Jeff, and good morning to all of you.
I want to first thank you for coming out today, those of you in person on this chilly December morning in Boston, and those of you virtually. We're very thankful that you took the time to spend with us this morning. As Jeff said, I'm Cabot's CFO and head of corporate strategy. I've been at Cabot for 22 years in a number of business and financial roles, and I've been Cabot's CFO since 2018. So far today, you've heard Sean, Bart, and Jeff talk about the many accomplishments over the past few years and the many exciting opportunities we have that lie ahead. I'm going to take a few moments now to talk about how this all comes together in our financial performance. As I walk through this section, there are four key themes that I want you to walk away with.
First, our strong execution since the implementation of the Creating for Tomorrow strategy cuts across all aspects of our financials and has allowed us to meet our financial goals despite significant macro headwinds. Second, Cabot has robust cash flow characteristics as a company, and our performance over the last three years has marked a continuation of these fundamentals. Third, our capital allocation priorities remain balanced with a focus on accelerating growth and shareholder value, and finally, I believe in our growth plan. Based on our strong execution and a balance sheet that provides exceptional flexibility to invest in growth, I'm confident in the path ahead. As you can see from this slide, we've delivered on our financial commitments. We set an adjusted EPS CAGR target for ourselves of 8%-12% in 2021.
Many of the underlying assumptions did not hold, and there were significant macro headwinds during the three-year period, but we delivered a 12% CAGR from roughly $5 in 2021 to $7 per share of adjusted EPS in 2024. In addition to the growth over the last three years, you can also see that we have an impressive growth story since Sean took over as CEO in 2016. We earned $2.49 in adjusted EPS in 2015 and have delivered a 12% CAGR over the nine-year period as well. This was delivered through strong growth in segment EBIT, which has seen a 9% CAGR since 2015. This is due to the exceptional execution of the management team that is here today and for all of the employees at Cabot. Our exceptional execution cuts across the commercial and operational excellence levers that Sean, Bart, and Jeff talked about earlier.
While delivering this earnings growth, we also significantly improved our return on invested capital from 8% in 2015 to 19% in 2024. This improvement in ROIC is due to our disciplined capital mindset and strong execution in running our businesses. The 19% ROIC showcases the attractive businesses we are in and our disciplined capital allocation framework. In addition to the growth in earnings and returns, we've also seen a growing discretionary free cash flow. As a reminder, our discretionary free cash flow is our operating cash flow less any changes in net working capital and less maintenance and compliance capital. We increased our discretionary free cash flow from an average of $213 million in the 2016 through 2020 period to a new average level of $396 million in the 2021 to 2024 period. This improvement was driven by our strong and increasing EBITDA levels.
Looking ahead, we expect that discretionary free cash flow will continue to grow to a higher level over the next three years to at or above $500 million in 2027. The strong cash flow generation enables significant flexibility for Cabot to continue to make smart investments to drive growth and return cash to our shareholders. Supporting these results has been a strong and supportive balance sheet. With rapidly growing EBITDA and a gradually reducing debt, our net debt to EBITDA continued to move lower, reaching 1.2 times at the end of fiscal 2024. This positions us really well as we look ahead, and we have plenty of firepower available for our investments in organic growth projects and for acquisitions. We have an investment-grade credit rating with BBB from S&P and Baa2 from Moody's. We have a staggered maturity of our outstanding debt and over $1 billion in available liquidity.
We have a maturity that comes due in 2026, and we intend to refinance that in 2026. So, as I look at where we are right now, we are incredibly well positioned to support the future growth in our Creating for Tomorrow strategy. Now, as we think about our capital allocation framework going forward, we will continue to focus on a balanced capital allocation priority set. Similar to recent years, we will prioritize high-confidence, high-growth projects. You've heard from the segment leaders today about the exciting opportunities we have for growth projects, and these growth projects are at the top of our list in terms of priorities because we feel we have a very compelling business case to grow the company, and we expect we'll be able to fund these investments with our strong operating cash flow. In addition, we will have a disciplined approach to M&A opportunities.
We will look to execute strategic acquisitions to improve scale, capabilities, and participation across our key end markets. We expect to maintain a competitive dividend yield, and we continue to expect to be active in the share repurchase market. Given our expectation for discretionary free cash flow cumulatively of $1 billion in the coming years, we believe we can do all of this while maintaining our investment-grade credit rating. I'll now take a bit more time to talk about each priority in the capital allocation framework, starting with investing for growth. We'll focus on growth investments in the high-return, high-confidence projects where we believe we have the right to win. These include capacity expansions that will enable future growth, particularly in the differentiated parts of our portfolio. As we think about hurdle rates for these types of projects, we usually fund projects with IRRs greater than 20%.
Our growth investments are part of our overall capital expenditures, which we expect will be between $250 and $350 million per year over the coming three years. This will fund our maintenance and compliance capital, which we anticipate will be between $150 and $190 million per year. The spending is aimed at maintaining our world-class assets that meet regulatory requirements and ensure reliable supply to meet our customer needs. We also envision funding growth projects over the coming years for capacity in high-growth areas of the company, both in reinforcement materials and also performance chemicals. In reinforcement materials, this includes completing our Indonesia reinforcing carbons expansion that Bart talked about earlier. We operate the only reinforcing carbons plant in Indonesia, and we plan to expand that facility.
We expect this will come online in the second half of 2025 with 80,000 tons of incremental capacity to serve the fast-growing region of Southeast Asia. Our other growth investments are focused around our growth vectors. Within reinforcement, we plan to expand E2C, as Bart mentioned. We're seeing Thai customers adopt our E2C solutions, and we'll add this capacity at the existing site in Malaysia. This will double our capacity and is expected to be online in 2026. Within performance chemicals, we're focused on capacity to enable battery materials and inkjet. In battery materials, we're planning a smaller set of expansions at our CNT plant in China to enable future growth both in the China market and also to support the build-out of our European business. We expect these to come online over the coming years.
In addition, as we see the growth in Europe and North America materialize, we're planning additional capacity to enable local supply chains for our battery materials customers. We expect to build a plant in Europe and in the United States, both of which we would anticipate being online in 2028. We also expect to expand our inkjet plant in the U.S. that meets the needs of our inkjet product line for growing in the packaging sector. These projects are expected to come online in 2027 and 2028. So, as you can see, we have a lot of exciting opportunities across our businesses to invest in, and we are planning to invest in these high-return projects to support future growth.
We will continue to pace the timing of these investments to align with demand, and we expect to fund the capital expenditures for maintenance, compliance, and growth with our operating cash flow. Moving to M&A. As we think about how M&A fits into the strategy, we'll continue to look for opportunities for acquisitions. One, to strengthen our existing businesses. Two, to support our Creating for Tomorrow strategy. And three, to drive incremental growth above our current targets. These opportunities will include capability and capacity investments in the high-growth areas of the company. We will look to increase scale, geographic access, and participation across our carbon black and silica franchises, and we will also target technologies related to sustainable materials, batteries, and conductive materials. Of course, we will maintain discipline when it comes to M&A opportunities and evaluate targets against our investment criteria.
We expect acquisitions will enhance our margins, be accretive to earnings, and to see an ROIC in excess of WACC in the first three to five years. If I now turn to the dividend. As Sean mentioned, we have had an impressive run of an uninterrupted dividend since 1968. Even with the impact of market downturns, we were able to maintain this attractive dividend and grow our dividend payments every calendar year since 2015, largely because of our strong cash flow performance. You can see on this chart this has resulted in an 8% CAGR in our dividend since 2015, and in May of this year, we announced another 8% increase. This latest increase demonstrates our confidence in the outlook for the company and continued commitment to maintaining attractive dividends for our shareholders.
Dividends remain a core part of our capital allocation framework, and we are committed to paying a growing and competitive dividend going forward. In addition to the continuous dividend, we've been consistently buying back shares. Since 2015, we have repurchased almost $900 million in shares. These repurchases resulted in a share reduction of eight million shares, which is net of the dilutive effect of our incentive compensation plans. This equates to a 13% reduction since 2015. Again, this is consistent with our capital allocation framework and aligned with our Creating for Tomorrow strategy. Since 2015, between dividends and share repurchases, we've returned approximately $1.7 billion to our shareholders, which equates to nearly 60% of our discretionary free cash flow. We understand the importance of dividends and share repurchases and how our shareholders think about their total shareholder return, and these remain important parts of our capital allocation framework going forward.
Now, if we look ahead in terms of our three-year financial objectives, we expect EPS to grow between 7% and 10% CAGR over the next three years, and we anticipate growing the EBITDA to between $900 million and $1 billion in 2027. This is driven by the anticipated growth across our segments. There are a number of assumptions that go into these expectations, and they are detailed on this slide. We expect to generate strong operating cash flow over this time period, which we expect will fund our capital needs and to return a healthy amount to our shareholders. We believe we can do all of this while maintaining our investment-grade credit rating. As we think about the contribution from each segment in terms of EBIT over the next three years, we expect $80-$100 million of EBIT contribution in both Reinforcement Materials and Performance Chemicals.
We expect the growth in reinforcement materials to come from both volume and margin improvement, as our continuous commercial and operational excellence improvements are expected to more than offset inflationary cost increases and the cost associated with new assets. We expect performance chemicals will be driven by higher volumes that are underpinned by the completed growth investments that Jeff highlighted and the demand outlook for our key end markets. We also expect an acceleration of EBIT from our growth factors of battery materials and inkjet. This is expected to bring the sum of our reinforcement materials and performance chemicals segment EBIT to grow from approximately $700 million in 2024 to between $860 and $900 million by 2027. Sean made the point earlier about our exceptional total shareholder return since the 2021 Investor Day.
We're proud of this performance, and we expect to continue to deliver strong shareholder return over the next three years. This will be enabled by our expectation for growing Adjusted EBITDA to approach $1 billion in 2027, which should drive our Adjusted EPS growth of 7%-10%. In addition, we remain committed to paying a competitive and growing dividend. We also expect to remain active in the share repurchase market. We announced yesterday that our board has authorized 10 million shares for repurchases, which would equate to over $1 billion at today's share price. We expect that the combination of growth and earnings and our commitment to cash return to shareholders will deliver attractive Total Shareholder Return over the next three years. So, in conclusion, I will come back to the four points I started out with.
We have executed very well against the targets we set for ourselves three years ago. The company's cash flow outlook remains strong, and our performance over the next three years is supposed to continue that trend. Our capital allocation priorities remain balanced with a focus on accelerating growth and creating shareholder value. And finally, I believe in our growth plan based on our history of strong execution and a balance sheet that is in great shape to support our future growth opportunities. I will now turn it over to Sean to provide closing remarks. Thank you.
Thanks, Erica. Let me take a few moments now to try to tie it all together before we transition to the Q&A portion of the agenda. We believe that Cabot offers a compelling investment thesis. Our Creating for Tomorrow strategy is the right one to drive continued growth and shareholder value creation. The strategy is built on the pillars of grow, innovate, and optimize, and we drive the company with a disciplined operating system founded on commercial and operational excellence. Our excitement and confidence is underpinned by our global footprint and strong product portfolio that is aligned with the three key macro trends I discussed earlier. First, the changing mobility landscape towards electric vehicles, which is expected to drive growth across the Cabot portfolio.
Second, the build-out of global infrastructure is expected to drive demand for important applications in our portfolio, from specialty carbons for power distribution cables to fumed silica for wind turbine blades. Third, the sustainability transition, where our customers are increasingly seeking more circular and sustainable offerings to meet the needs of their downstream consumers. We have set clear growth goals targeting an adjusted EPS CAGR of 7%-10% over the next three years, with growth expected in both business segments. The management team has a proven track record of execution over a long period of time, and we are committed to delivering for you, our shareholders. Finally, cash flow and capital allocation. The Cabot portfolio has strong cash flow characteristics, and this is the source of our value creation strategy.
We expect to continue growing the discretionary free cash flow of the company and will deploy that cash in a balanced and disciplined fashion, with a focus on funding advantage growth investments and returning significant levels of capital to shareholders. The execution of our strategy has driven exceptional shareholder value creation over the last three years. We are very proud of that track record and are confident we'll continue to do the same in the coming years. Thank you for your attention throughout the program here, and I'd like to now invite Erica and Steve back up to the stage, and we'll transition to our Q&A portion of the agenda.
Thanks, Sean. We'd like to begin the Q&A session of our meeting. If you'd like to ask a question and you aren't in person, please raise your hand, and Vanessa will get you a microphone. We ask that you state your name and company before asking the question. If you are participating virtually, please submit your question to the online portal. With that, I'll turn the stage back to Sean and Erica for Q&A.
Hi, Dan Rizzo from Jefferies. You mentioned adding capacity in Indonesia for your rubber black. I was just wondering what your expectations are for the rest of the industry. I assume there's not going to be much capacity addition in Europe or the U.S., but in India and China, if that means that it'll have some sort of negative effect on pricing and supply demand?
Yeah. So, as Bart talked about earlier, certainly the Indonesia investment is targeted to the fast-growing ASEAN market. It is the fastest-growing tire market right now, and then our position there in Indonesia is unique, and we're the only player there, and Indonesia needs more capacity to meet the growing tire demand. So we feel very good about that and feel that it's advantaged. I would say in the West, the expectation, it's a pretty modestly growing industry in the West, and so the expectation we've not seen any material supply-side adds, and we wouldn't expect any in the West in the coming year. Certainly, our approach, as Bart talked about, is really about squeezing out capacity through OEE, which is the most efficient way to provide growth capacity for the industry and the modest growth rate that it's moving at.
So I think that's the logical way to sweat the assets and do it that way. To the extent that you run out of runway on OEE, I would say there's still room there for the industry. Every plant has some level of capital-efficient debottlenecks that you could do to squeeze out a little more. So I think that's certainly our philosophy about how we think about capacity in the Western regions. And I think this trend right now towards sort of increasing supply security and regionalization and decoupling and all of these things, while that's always been the case, that reinforced materials is a make-in-region, sell-in-region business, I think that's probably only underscored more by this trend right now. So that's how, Dan, how we'd be thinking about no real capacity additions other than OEE-type stuff in the West, and then advantaged sort of targeted investments in Asia.
Real focus on ASEAN. We have no expansion plans in China in this business at this point. We're a strong operator. We'll continue to run our business really well there, but no further investments at this stage planned for reinforcement in China.
Thank you, Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Sean and Erica, in your three-year targets, what's your expectation for pricing in reinforcement materials and carbon black? And on the same track, when the war does end, what is your expectation for Russian carbon black supply moving back into Europe at some point? Thank you.
Yeah. Dave, thank you. We'll maybe split that one. I'll ask Erica in a second to talk about the assumptions that are embedded in the range that we talked about, and maybe I'll spend a few minutes talking about the Russian carbon black sanction. So just to sort of level set everybody, for a long period of time, the European market, tire market, and the carbon black consumption market relied on pretty significant volumes of carbon black from Russia into Europe. The tire market, I think, maybe relied on it to the point of maybe about 40% of their requirements, and since the invasion of Ukraine and the war there, that product has been sanctioned. The Russian product was sanctioned effectively July 1st of this past year, and we have seen through the import statistics that there's no more carbon black coming from Russia anymore.
There's one Russian-based carbon black producer that operates in Belarus, and that the sanctions against the Belarus plant went into effect October 1st, I believe. So once we see the import statistics, they tend to lag a couple of months. I would expect you'd see that fully shut off, and so what has happened is a bit of a daisy chain because Europe is net short, there isn't enough carbon black capacity on the continent in Europe. The customers value local supply, but with that material out, what you've seen is that Russian material has been flowing into other markets, some of it flowing into China, which really doesn't need it, and it's a pretty long supply chain, but some of it's been going there, as well as to secondary markets, Middle East and other countries.
And then the needs for carbon black into Europe have been backfilled by some other imports rather than imports from Russia. So that's a bit of the lay of the land there. Now, what happens if there's a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine? Hard to know what the corners of that negotiation would be. One person's view, I find it hard to believe that there would just be a rollback to, well, let's just do business as we used to do business. I find that difficult to believe. But I guess the other thing to remember here is this business has been improving its results over a very long period of time, including in Europe well before the invasion in Ukraine when the Russian material was a part of the supply network in Europe.
So our view is that there might be a different daisy chain or knock-on set of effects, but in the end, the amount of capacity that is in Europe and the value that's placed on local supply, I think, puts us in a pretty good spot. In terms of the assumptions maybe embedded, maybe you want to take a shot at that, Erica?
Sure. So, David, as I laid out on my slides, the contribution we're expecting from reinforcement materials is $80-$100 million over the three years for EBIT. You saw on Bart's slide quite a dramatic improvement we've had over the last year. So last three years, EBIT improved about $200 million. If you look from 2015, about $400 million. And at the same time, the EBITDA margin's going from 15% in that 2015 time period to 23%. So quite, I'd say, a strong track record here over the last few years for reinforcement. We expect continued growth. That $80-$100 million would translate into about 5%-6% growth over the time period. And as I talked about, it's really both volume and margin improvement.
So on the volume side, low single-digit growth would be aligned with market, which includes the capacity in Indonesia to help support and have a higher growth in that region of the world. And then margin improvement, which includes pricing and mix and some of the operational levers that Bart talked about in excess of inflation and the cost of the new assets that come in. So in terms of reinforcement materials, I'd say you have a balance of that volume growth and the margin improvement as you think about what comprises that $80 million-$100 million.
Yeah. Sean and Erica, I have an online question. And the question is, you talked a lot about the growth factors back in 2021, and they didn't materialize as anticipated. So why was that, and why do you think they'll become more material by 2027?
So I addressed some of this in my remarks, but let me try to underscore it a little bit more. I think when we think about where to invest, the first thing we think about is our right to win, and we make choices based on that. And so when you think about batteries, E2C, and inkjet for packaging, we feel there's a really strong right to win there. And so in battery materials, it's because of the importance of conductive additives and our strong legacy in making high-performance conductive materials for many, many years, initially in power distribution cables and other applications that require connectivity. But that legacy, that strength that we have was an incredible starting point, and therefore we felt we have a strong right to win to penetrate that market as it was growing and needed conductive additives.
In the case of inkjet, we were there at the very beginning in founding this industry, and it was really a small office, home office market. It eventually moved into networked office printing and split some share with laser jet. And then that market has been sort of flat to declining, actually, as we're just printing less these days in our homes and doing more on our devices. But what is emerging here now is the transition in large-scale commercial applications from analog printing to digital printing, where you can really print on demand. You're not talking about traditionally manufacturing printing plates and then long setups and amortizing those over very long runs the way that you would produce newspapers, for example.
But in some of the more customer-facing applications like corrugated packaging or folding carton, things like this, those are transitioning to inkjet because you can customize at a really competitive cost. And so given our legacy position in inkjet for small office, home office, and networked office, it's a logical extension for us as they move to aqueous inkjet presses. So strong right to win there. And then in the case of E2C, our view is that liquid mixing really has the potential to transform the tire industry over a long time, admittedly. The tire industry is one that traditionally is very methodical in its development cycle for good reason. There are safety reasons why that happens. But our legacy position in this technology and how we've further developed this technology platform over time, we really feel like there's a strong right to win there.
I would start there that our right to win view hasn't changed. I acknowledge that some of the assumptions that we had at the time when we were last together in 2021 didn't develop exactly as we thought, but some really important proof points along the way. In batteries, it's very clear that the market is growing. Maybe the CAGR is lower than we thought, but we still grew our volumes 30%. The expectation out through 2030 is that those will continue to grow at a CAGR of around 20%. We're very well established, being qualified, and over the last three years having sold to nine of the top 10 battery producers. This is a very concentrated set of customers, and we've got a really strong position here.
And then now what we're starting to see is a real bifurcation of the supply chain sort of at China and the rest of the world market. And you saw in Jeff's slides, the view is that by 2030, about half of the battery production will be outside of China. Today, something in the range of 75%-80% of it is in China. So that's pretty significant. And I think the industry structure, the competitor set, and then the standards are quite different. All of the global automakers require you to have IATF certification that Jeff talked about. That's just part of their management of change process. In China, with the local customers, that's not the case. So the dynamic is just very different and expected to be different. And so our confidence about that shift happening is quite high.
I think like any transformational change, I think often the end game is clear, but the pathway may not be a straight line. And it certainly is hard to predict that. But what we've learned from this process over the last few years is that, number one, we're a real leader in this space. We've got somewhere in the order of 20% market share in this space, and we feel very good about the investments that are happening for gigafactories in the West. And I think our recent DOE grant award is a reflection of our leadership, our recognized leadership. And so we feel very good about that. But we are disciplined about trying to pace these things because you've seen many companies that get out over their skis and end up having significant write-offs.
The most recent one was Northvolt, a leading battery, well, developing battery manufacturer, but at one point was, I don't know what it was valued at, $4 or $5 billion or something like that. And it's basically in a state of bankruptcy now, I think. So you have to be careful not to get out over your skis, and I think we've been very disciplined about that. But I have complete conviction on the end game on this one. And then on E2C, the liquid mixing, the performance is real. In the case of off-the-road tires, for those that don't have the history here, we first commercialized this technology with Michelin in a licensing fashion. And that licensing arrangement made sense both in terms of the economic terms, but also establishing that this works with a customer.
And so over the course of that licensing arrangement, it brought in significant value to Cabot. And of course, that technology has now been proven and developed in the OTR space. And as Bart said, we're selling to OTR customers now, and that revenue, while small, is really beginning to go. And a lot of work happening on the truck tire side. So I see lots of proof points since we were last together that give me confidence. But I will admit, while the destination is quite clear in my mind, the pathway is not always a straight line.
Chris Perrella from UBS. I appreciate all the color. When looking at performance chemicals and the significant growth that you guys have in there, I guess, what's the underlying volume expectation given the different growth markets and vectors in there? And then how much price mixed lift do you have embedded as you grow into the capacity there?
Yep, sure. So overall for the segment, it's in, I'd say, mid-single digits growth each year, but it's different by product line. So when you look at the growth vectors, battery materials and inkjet, strong double-digit growth, as you would expect, anticipating growing as those markets grow. But they're growing off of a smaller base. So when you look at the segment overall, the other product lines like specialty carbons, specialty compounds, and fumed metal oxides are growing more in that mid-single range, which is also aligned to the macro trends we talked about and some of these infrastructure macro trends and the changing mobility that help drive that growth. So it's a mix of those two. And so I would say that most of the growth is volume-driven.
But as you're saying, as we get some of the higher-end product lines growing more substantially, then you do have a mixed uplift coming with things like growth in inkjet and those. And I'd say the other one that is meaningful in there is a recovery in construction. So our fumed metal oxide product line that participates in construction has been relatively weak over the past few years given the macro situation. And so we do expect some recovery as we move through the next three-year period.
John Roberts from Mizuho. So the previous three-year plan was 8%-12% growth. The current one is 7%-10%. What are the puts and takes that make the growth rate lower over the next three years versus the last three? Is that just mean reversion because you finished the last one above and you won't have the tailwinds? There might be headwinds in the forward. Is it China that's not contributing to the growth in the next three years like it was the last three? Maybe just some of the high-level things that caused the deceleration here.
Yeah. So I think, John, I think it's where you're coming from and where you're going to. So I think, as I said, with reinforcement materials, right, that 12% included a pretty significant growth in the reinforcement materials segment. So from the last three years, it was $200 million of an EBIT increase to where we ended 2024. And so while we have continued growth in that region, it's off of a much bigger base. And so still, I'd say attractive growth in that 5%-6% range. And then when you look at the mix of the other product lines and performance chemicals, some of those growth rates have changed from the last time we talked, battery materials being one where that growth rate three years ago market-wise was a bit higher than the projection now.
So as you look at all those and wrap it together, that's what's the difference in the 8%-12% or the 7%-10%.
Hi, Lydia Huang, JPMorgan. So you concluded an 80,000-ton expansion in Indonesia, I think in 2021. So is the new 80,000-ton in addition to that? And why does it cost meaningfully less than the last one? And I guess along the same line, do you think that Asian imports would either continue to account for a high percentage of total volume of tires sold in the Western Hemisphere, or do you think tariffs could be effective in sort of keeping that lower in the future? Thank you.
Maybe so two questions here, Erica. Maybe you take a shot at the first one, and then I'll come after that and talk a little bit about tire imports and how we're seeing things.
Yeah. So just a clarification on Indonesia. So we did not bring up an 80,000-ton line in 2021. I think in the 2021 Investor Day, we announced this expansion that we would be completing over the three-year period. And we're at the tail end of the expansion now. So we would expect that it would go in this fiscal 2025 year. So that 80,000 tons is just one 80,000-ton expansion. The cost of it has been less than what we anticipated in 2021. So the new estimate you see, $60 million, is because we've been able to manage the spend, I think, quite efficiently and enable that 80,000 tons for the 60 million. What's left to be spent in 2025 is about 20 million. So we've already spent 40 of the 60. So the go-forward's about 20 million.
And just to be clear on that, there was another Indonesia that Jeff talked about, whether it was our Specialty Compounds expansion, which is on the same site, but that's a different expansion. That's for Specialty Compounds products that we make for the Performance Chemicals segment.
Maybe before I comment on the tire imports, I just want to make another point around the capital cost because it is lower than what we originally projected. It's lower because one of the great things about our strong position in China, one thing China has demonstrated to the world is their ability to build things at low cost. Our experience there, our significant footprint there, has really enabled our internal engineering organization to learn from those things and try to take those learnings elsewhere in the world to result in lower, more efficient capital costs. Lots of techniques like modularization and things like that are embedded in our thinking now. It's part of our way of thinking around continuous improvement. Things like that have certainly resulted in the lower capital cost, which makes a ton of sense in a capital-intensive business.
So I just wanted to hit that point of how we connect learnings around the world and how our global position is actually quite a powerful one. Maybe on the import front for a minute. So what Bart talked about earlier in terms of the structure of the tire industry is that it is structurally in the West, structurally dependent on imported tires from Asia, primarily from China and ASEAN. That has been the case for a long time, and our view is that will continue to be the case. Now, what we've seen more recently is an elevated level of tire imports into the Americas and in Europe as well from Asia. In the U.S., more heavily skewed towards ASEAN. In Europe, more heavily skewed towards China. And so that elevated level of tire imports is having an impact on the level of local tire production.
There are a couple of things going on here, as Bart talked about. One is the major tire big global tire makers are very much focused on the high-end part of the market and investing there. Eventually, that part of the market will be very robust, and they'll be happy probably with that choice. There's a transition here where they seem to be placing less emphasis on the lower end, and that's filled by imports, and that has certainly escalated. It's a trend that we're watching carefully and also carefully monitoring the pushback that you're seeing against that. You raised one of the forms of pushback, which is tariffs and anti-dumping duties, basically protection measures that are happening here.
It's difficult to project exactly how all of that will shake out, but there certainly seems to be evidence that increasing trade protection measures will be happening, particularly around strategic sectors. The automotive sector is one because of its importance in employment and high-value employment, whether that's in Europe or the U.S. You certainly saw Europe put big tariffs on Chinese EVs. Does that ultimately extend more aggressively to other elements of the car? In the U.S., same thing. Certainly, the incoming administration is talking about using the tariff lever more aggressively. Hard to say exactly how that'll play out. It's certainly something that we're watching carefully. Ultimately, our global footprint is a risk mitigator in a certain way because no matter where the tire volume is, our participation generally allows us to catch that.
So that's a bit of sort of where we are on the evolving tariff front.
Sean and Erica, I have another online question. And the question is, what is your view of the pricing opportunities in the reinforcement materials segment going forward?
So I think Erica talked a little bit about that and how it's reflected in our numbers here, but maybe I'll take it from a bit of a strategic level. So I guess the first thing I would say is, number one, we love this business. Number two, we're a leader in this business. And number three, we expect to continue growing the earnings in this business. And if you look over that long period of performance that was illustrated earlier in Bart's presentation, you certainly saw a significant increase in the profitability and the quality of the business. And we needed to do that. We needed to do that to make it a strong reinvestable business. We needed to do that in order to make the investments in environmental controls and the kind of R&D to do the things that our customers want in terms of sustainable solutions.
And so that improvement was necessary to build a very strong and healthy business. And so we sit here today, and we're really pleased with where we stand in that business. Now, as we go forward, we are expecting to continue to grow the profitability of this business through a balanced set of levers. Certainly, enhanced pricing and product mix will remain an important part, as will growing our volumes in a smart way to meet underlying demand growth. And so that'll be important. And then we'll look for targeted areas for advantage growth. Indonesia's a good example that was showcased here today. And then finally, the productivity measures of squeezing out that volume growth through OEE, continuing to drive yield, continuing to drive energy recovery. All of those things will create a balanced composition of earnings growth in the business.
So, our view is over time, we'll continue to grow the profits in this business through a balanced set of levers.
Okay, John, I have one final online question. Cabot is now two-thirds of their way through fiscal Q1. Is there any update to your 2025 full-year guidance?
No change to the guidance. We gave a guidance in November. And so no change to the full-year guidance. As we sit here right now, substantially through Q1, we definitely saw quite strong volumes in October, and I would say normal volumes in November. I think the expectation is December might be a bit weaker than typical as some customers take extended shutdowns. And we did have a customer in the U.S. that very abruptly, a tire customer that shut down their plant. And we did have some supply exposure to that customer. So it might be a bit softer than we were originally thinking, but no change to the full-year outlook. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much for joining us here today.
As Steve said at the very beginning of the program, we do have lunch after, and so the team will be staying here and look forward to meeting you all and engaging over lunch if your schedule allows you to do that and let me just provide a final wrap on behalf of the team here. Thank you for taking the time to be here to hear about our next phase of growth in the company and I think through the course of the presentation this morning, I think hopefully you'd take away a few things. One, our leadership as a company. Two, this management team is committed to delivering for you, our shareholders, and execution discipline. Both Comex and Opex is at the core of what we do and you can count on us to be, I think, very good stewards of capital.
And we will invest in places where we feel like we have a strong right to win, and there'll be a balanced capital allocation approach with significant capital return to shareholders because the cash flow characteristics of this company are very strong. And so we think that will continue to compound into real strong shareholder value growth over time. So hopefully those messages came through clearly. Really appreciate your time and look forward to speaking with you further over lunch. Thank you.