Good morning, everybody. Welcome. My name is David Kinney. I'm the Head of Investor Relations for LyondellBasell. I want to welcome you to LyondellBasell's 2019 Investor Day. Thank you all for joining us here in Houston. It's great to see so many familiar faces out here. It's great to see a filled room. We travel well. It's always pleasing for us to see your interest in the company. Today, we're going to be discussing our plans for the future, which will include some forward-looking statements and some non-GAAP measures. We think our assumptions are reasonable, and the measures are useful. Nonetheless, we hope you review the text on this slide, our regulatory filings, and learn more about the factors that could lead our actual results to differ. You can find these materials, our filings, and our reconciliations on our website at www.lyondellbasell.com/investorrelations.
Before we get on with our agenda, I'd like to start with a brief safety moment. In the unlikely event of something unusual going on here today, you should exit through the doors to the right of the room, or even more directly in the doors in the back of the room. The escalators can lead you down to the ground floor, or there's a staircase behind the rear doors as well. Another important factor is the restrooms are located down the hallway to the right there. Today, we will start with a session led by our Chief Executive Officer, Bob Patel, followed by a Q&A with Bob and our Chief Financial Officer, Tom Aebischer. Following the break, those of you who are in Houston will break out into three breakout rooms. We're going to do things a little bit differently this time.
If you have a red dot on your badge, you will stay in this room. The other third of the group, if you have a green dot on your badge, you'll go to the Meyerland A ballroom, which is downstairs on the third floor. Just take the escalator down one floor, and it's on your right as you get down to the landing there. If you have a blue dot on your badge, you'll proceed to the Meyerland B room on the third floor, right next to it. Just to be clear, you don't have to rotate among rooms. You will stay in your breakout rooms for three sessions, where we'll discuss some of our businesses. The speakers will rotate around the rooms for you.
If you're listening on the webcast, you'll be staying in this room, and you'll hear the presentations in the order indicated on this slide here. After the three breakout sessions, you'll have a Q&A in each of the breakout sessions as well. We'll take a brief break, and we'll come back for a session with Thomas and some closing remarks from Bob. After that, we're going to have a Q&A session with all the speakers here up on the stage. For those of you in Houston, you have the option of staying with us throughout the day. We're going to take buses, and so we'll proceed downstairs for lunch and a tour of the construction that's underway at our Channelview site for our new propylene oxide plant. It's about 20 miles away here.
We'll have some materials on the bus for you to consider, and then a lunch and a tour of some of the facilities, our technology center, as well as one of our control rooms on the site. After that, we'll return to the hotel for some refreshments to close the day. We have a lot ahead of us, so let me get on and introduce the leaders. Oh, one more thing. I know that many of you were asking about the Wi-Fi password. Our network is Marquee_Conference. The password is lyb2019, lowercase. Let me get on and introduce the speakers that will be presenting today. In front of you have a group of very experienced and thoughtful leaders. They're bringing a lot of diverse experiences to the company and how we manage the company.
By my math, their resumes add up to some 250 years of industrial experience. Pretty impressive. Before I get started with the folks on the slide, I want to point out a couple folks that are in the room somewhere, I believe. I see one of them at least. I see both of them. Today, we have our Chief Legal Officer and Executive Vice President, Mr. Jeff Kaplan. Jeff, can you stand just so people can see who you are back there? We also have our Treasurer, Mr. Larry Somma, in the back corner of the room. As far as the speakers go, let me start on the right side of the slide and introduce our Senior Vice President of Technology, Mr. Jim Seward. Jim, could you stand? Jim also leads our R&D and Sustainability efforts in the company. Next is Richard Roudeix.
Richard is our Senior Vice President for Olefins & Polyolefins in the Europe, Asia, and International regions. Next, I'd like to introduce a face that might be new to many of you. Some of you have met him already, but it's Torkel Rhenman. Torkel is our Executive Vice President in charge of Intermediates & Derivatives for the company. Another new addition to our team is Ken Lane. Ken Lane is the Global Executive Vice President for Olefins & Polyolefins. A more familiar face might be Jim Guilfoyle. Jim Guilfoyle is currently leading our Advanced Polymer Solutions segment, the newest segment in the company. Jim is also responsible for our supply chain. Second from the left is Mr. Dan Coombs. Dan Coombs is the Executive Vice President for our Refining segment. He also leads our global manufacturing and projects initiatives.
Finally, I'd like to introduce my boss and our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Thomas Aebischer. Well, without further ado, I would like to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Bob Patel.
All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for being with us here in Houston and for those following us on the webcast, thanks for joining us today. As always, we appreciate your interest in our company. I was talking with someone earlier that I remember two years ago when we did our Investor Day in downtown at the New York Stock Exchange, there were a lot of people from Midtown who thought that commute was difficult
On the other hand, coming down to Houston is not so bad, is it? Thank you for being here. We have a really interesting day for those of you who are here because you'll get to see one of our flagship sites at Channelview, and you get to see our large PO/TBA project. Let me get started. First of all, a few introductory comments. What I hope you hear today is the presentation of a company that has a very compelling investment thesis, one that is well-positioned to deliver substantial value and sustainable value through a range of market environments. Our journey over the last 10 years, I'll reflect on a bit as we inform you a little bit about how we got to where we are today, but we're very confident in our ability to deliver outstanding results in a range of market environments.
One of the hallmarks of LyondellBasell to date has been that we've been known to be a very strong cash flow generator. I'm here to tell you that that cash flow machine is alive and well, and one that's going to kick into a higher gear as we move into the next few years. I'll show you the specific math on why we say that we're poised to deliver more cash flow irrespective of what happens in the market environment in the next two years. I'm going to show you our portfolio that has advantage positions, is resilient, I'll show you how to think about our company in a little different way, with a lot of proof points along the way. I think those of you who have come to know us know that we are all about substance.
We'll present to you not only our investment thesis, but why we think it is so compelling. As I was getting ready for this Investor Day, I talked with Dave and Thomas about the last Investor Day. This is for me, my sixth Investor Day with the company. I remember the first one for a number of reasons. One, because it was my first with LyondellBasell, but many of you, as I look around the room, you were here on that first Investor Day. That was the Investor Day where I was getting ready to move to Europe. It was an exciting time for the company because we were starting to really establish this back-to-basics foundation, if you will, which was operate well, operate safely, get our cost structure right.
As I was getting ready to go to Europe, we were thinking about how do we do that globally, and at the same time, shale gas was beginning to emerge. The idea was, as we solidify this foundation, how do we now start to take advantage of the shale gas revolution? I think our company was unique in some ways because we undertook debottlenecks rather than greenfield expansions during that period. In 2013, we talked about seize the moment. On one hand, we were really consolidating our gains in Europe, and on the other hand, here in the U.S., we were really kicking the debottlenecks into high gear. Through a series of debottlenecks, we added about a million tons of ethylene capacity, so about 2.2 billion pounds in roughly half the time and half the cost of a greenfield cracker investment. 2015 was the handoff.
It was my first as the CEO of the company, and I remember coming to that Investor Day thinking that I want investors to walk away with a sense that, first of all, what got us here won't be forgotten. Safe, reliable, cost-efficient operations. I was a part of all of that in the past. Not only that, but we had a great foundation, and it was now time to think about what will we do with that foundation? How will we build upon that foundation? In 2017, we talked about value-driven growth. I'm going to offer you some points and commitments that we made and give you a scorecard on how I believe we've done since 2017 on those commitments.
2019, as we stand here today, we present to you a company that has leading global positions, one that's advantaged and is considered the best operator in the industry, and one that has demonstrated a disciplined approach to capital allocation. Leading, advantaged, and disciplined. When you put those together, you create strong value for your shareholders, that's what we're here to do. We're going to be very clear about how we're going to go about doing that. Let's look at our commitments in 2017. First of all, we said to you that as we think about growth, we're not going to forget about running what we own well. Operating our assets very efficiently, safely, with the same low-cost structure, efficient cost structure that we've come to be known for over many years. We achieved top quartile performance in many of our assets.
We've maintained a very strict cost discipline sort of culture. What I'm most proud of is that through a range of market environments that we've seen, we've generated a tremendous amount of cash flow, and here you see that we've generated $5.4 billion on average annually between 2016 and 2018. That's resulted in our ability to pay a very strong, progressive, and secure dividend. Our dividend today, based on this three-year average, has more than a 3x coverage. Our ability to run assets and generate cash, first and foremost, gives us the opportunity to pay a very large and secure dividend. All the while, we've said to you consistently that we want to be a strong credit rating.
Today, we stand before you a BBB+ company with a range of options in front of us. In 2017, we said we would be disciplined when it came to organic growth or inorganic growth. On organic growth, we're nearing completion of our Hyperzone polyethylene project. We should be in production sometime by year-end. Our PO/TBA project is well underway. I think when we talk about discipline, it's often important to talk about what you didn't do as well. We haven't undertaken a large greenfield cracker project. We are not going to build a PDH. We're building derivatives that get our olefins to market. Lastly, in inorganic growth, we closed the acquisition of A. Schulman about a year ago.
At the time that we announced that transaction, we acquired about $200 million of EBITDA, and we promised to you, our shareholders, our commitment to you was that we would deliver $150 million of synergies by the end of two years. Today, we're prepared to tell you that we're committing to $200 million of synergies. My number with Jim is a lot higher than that. We're pressing, I think this is an indication of a company that's applying its strengths to create value through acquisitions, running others' assets better to create value. Disciplined organic and inorganic growth. This will be the hallmark of our company as we go forward. A brief performance snapshot over the last 12 months. We've had $6 billion of EBITDA in the last 12 months. That includes a very challenging Q4 of 2018.
You'll recall there was a period of significantly declining oil prices, and the entire industry had a more difficult Q4. Despite that, we've been able to deliver $6 billion of EBITDA, and our return on invested capital continues to be the best in the industry at 30%. Today, our investment thesis is about these three themes. A company that has a leading global portfolio of proven and flexible and focused assets. We have an advantaged global position that we believe makes us the best-operated company in the industry. When we generate the cash flow from this great asset base, we put it through our capital allocation framework in a very disciplined way to create long-term value for our shareholders.
I'm going to go through each one of these and offer you proof points on why we believe that these strengths, this thesis, has great underpinning, is very solid and very resilient, and will position our company to be successful no matter what lies ahead. Let's talk about the leading global portfolio. First of all, we don't intend to re-segment our business in this way. What we thought we would do is we would group our businesses a little bit differently to help you understand what underlies the segment structure that we report on a quarterly basis to all of you. The first of these groupings of businesses is integrated polymers. This is our olefins and polyolefins franchises, if you will. Olefins and polyolefins account for a little under 60% of the EBITDA of our company. I think what's really unique about this portfolio is that it's global.
It's large scale, has a flexible set of assets in terms of crackers that can perform well in a high oil environment, in a low oil environment. When you combine that with our operational excellence, we're able to consistently deliver value to our customers and to our shareholders. Our polyolefins business largely deploys our own proprietary technology and our own proprietary catalysts. Another source of strength for that franchise in olefins and polyolefins. Another grouping that we offer to you is technology-enabled products. This includes our licensing business. It includes our Advanced Polymer Solutions business, the APS business that we talked about earlier, which is the combination of our legacy compounding business, which was mainly polypropylene and automotive oriented, and the acquired A. Schulman business, which has a variety of end-use segments beyond automotive.
Our propylene oxide and derivatives business also exhibits almost specialty-type characteristics in terms of its earnings profile. It's underpinned by our proprietary technology in PO/TBA and POSM. These technologies, as you will see later from Torkel's presentation or Jim's presentation, that these technologies in PO are positioned in the lowest quartiles of a technology cost curve, well-positioned to deliver outstanding value in a range of environments. Our intermediates and fuels businesses. These businesses have a stable base in terms of earnings and have significant upside. For example, when the styrene market really does well, we find upside. IMO 2020 is a source of upside in our fuels business, to name a couple of sort of upside opportunities in the intermediates and fuels area. Again, my colleagues will be presenting more details about each one of these groupings of businesses.
What we thought we would do here is show you our company in a little different way, because there are businesses that are in segments that perhaps are seen in a different light. Today, we really want to illuminate why we believe this could be a very interesting way of you to think about how to value our company. Thomas will talk a lot more about that as well in terms of how to put some more numbers to this grouping of assets. Let me step back and provide a couple of introductory slides about our company. For those who are new to us, first of all, we have a global business. We're a nearly $40 billion revenue company with nearly 20,000 employees, and more than half of those work outside the United States.
We have manufacturing sites in 24 countries and customers in more than 100 countries. This network of assets serves a $4 trillion chemical industry. We play in the heart of the chemical industry, in the largest part of it. As you can see here, we have leading positions in our major product areas. When you combine our participation with our leading position with a global network, you have a company that's a very strong one. I've talked about the word resilient, we thought we'd put some numbers to why we believe we have a resilient portfolio. Here we show you our EBITDA from 2014 to 2019, last 12 months. What you see here is that our company has delivered very strong results in a range of market environments. During this period of time, we've had very high oil prices and very low oil prices.
We've seen some fluctuations in GDP as well, depending on where you are in different parts of the world. I think what this shows, first of all, is the power of our global portfolio, that we have a natural hedge in Europe with enough scale that in a lower oil price environment, we're able to generate significant cash flow on assets that are not as capital intensive. Those assets have been right-sized and have a very lean cost structure to be able to deliver significant cash flow. Here in the U.S., we have a very flexible cracker fleet that also can do well in a range of feedstock environments, and I'm going to talk to that a little bit later in another slide. Our resilience from a demand standpoint comes from the fact that about 2/3 of our sales go into end uses that are nondurable.
A lot of them are tied to growing markets like China and India, build out infrastructure and so on. I think the combination of our global asset base that has both strength in cracking naphtha and LPGs in Europe and a flexible cracker fleet here in the U.S., combined with 2/3 of the markets that we serve are nondurable in nature, provides us with a very resilient portfolio and participation in the industry. Some of the macro trends that I think favor our company and favor our direction and where we're going. Infrastructure, the build-out of infrastructure in emerging parts of the world like China and India, and eventually into Africa. For example, polyethylene pipe will be very important in building out infrastructure for sewage, for delivering clean water. We have one of the strongest portfolio of polyethylene pipe grades in the industry.
Providing food safely and providing access from farms that are far away to urban centers. For example, in China, polyethylene film enables that. It keeps food fresh for longer. Cleaner air and fuel efficiency in automobiles. When you think about our APS segment, light weighting of our automobiles will be enabled by plastics. We're really well positioned to capture that as well. With the growing demographic trend towards aging populations, not only here in the U.S., but elsewhere around the world, our polyethylene and polypropylene grades are some of the more preferred grades in healthcare applications. As you look at these macro trends and you look at the size of these markets, our access to large growing markets will be part of what makes us successful going forward.
Let me offer a few proof points on why I believe we have an advantaged asset base that makes us the best operator in our space. There are five factors that contribute to what we believe this advantaged position as the best operator. Safety leadership, it underpins everything that we do. We talk about it at every earnings call. I'll show you some statistics on our performance. Operational excellence, how reliably we operate our plants. Feedstock flexibility positions us to do well when LPGs are favored here in the U.S. and in Europe. Commercial excellence. This is about delivering innovative products to our customers where those products create value, and we're positioned to share some of that value with our customers. A backbone of innovation and a legacy of innovation in this company that goes back to the 1950s. Safety leadership.
To me, safety is really about culture and about systems. At LyondellBasell, we have a culture of ownership, and I think we have a culture of family. We look after one another. When people come to work in the morning, they want to go home safely, and they want their colleagues to go home safely. We have disciplined systems on safety, whether it's process safety or occupational safety. This is something every Monday morning when I have my staff meeting, we start by talking about how well did we do over the past week since we last met. I believe, and my colleagues believe, that the discipline to deliver strong safety performance translates to everything else that we do, and the discipline it takes to operate plants well, to operate with a low cost structure, and to have the discipline to not have your costs drift when times are good.
The discipline to have structured, innovative programs that create value for customers. Simply put, this discipline underpins our success, and we see that, and you'll see this in the operational excellence slide that I show you next. Here we show you that our assets consistently run at very high utilization rates. We have a process for this, and we have a system by which we measure how well we operate. We calculate every hour that we're down and the value associated with that hour. We have what we call gap closure plans for every asset, and the gap closure plans consist of what's the best possible from that asset, whatever scale it is, and how do we achieve that? We're not necessarily thinking about what's the best for that asset in the industry. We're thinking about what's the best that asset could be.
By the way, that gets redefined every year. We also benchmark relentlessly in our company where benchmarks are available. There are many third-party benchmarking services in polyolefins, in olefins, in refining. Those benchmarks also inform where those gaps lie and how do we close those gaps. Our commitment to sustaining capital, $1.1 billion annually, very important to achieving this kind of operational reliability and operational performance. One of the things that Dan and I often talk about is that it's not just that consistency of the turnaround cadence, but also our effectiveness in how we spend that money. We want to efficiently spend $1.1 billion to maximize the benefit as we deploy that capital.
Every dollar is precious to us. We want to have the highest leverage for the dollars that we spend to achieve this high reliability and consistent reliability, which is what our customers expect of us. I also think what underpins this great operational performance is the sense of ownership that our employees have. As I go around the company, I go visit plants, I'm always struck by the fact that operators really treat it like their own. It's their company. That sense of ownership translates into attention to detail and treating every dollar we spend like their own. I think it's one of the things that makes us unique. Feedstock flexibility, another source of advantage that we have. We have one of the most flexible cracker fleets on the Gulf Coast.
As I mentioned to you in my opening remarks that in 2012 and 2013, we worked hard to capture the shale gas advantage. Part of that was increasing our ability to crack ethane. At that time, I recall in our conversations in our leadership team meetings, we said we don't want to convert to ethane cracking. We want to increase our flexibility to crack ethane. As we thought through a range of market environments, we said that we want to do well when ethane is favored, when propane is favored for short periods of time like we've had where Naphtha has been favored. We've preserved the flexibility that we had before or our ability to crack heavier feedstocks, we increased our ability to crack ethane through our debottlenecks.
I think that is the hallmark of our U.S. Olefins & Polyolefins business, our world scale crackers that are highly flexible. We literally can change feedstocks within a week or sometimes within a couple of days. We've also now introduced predictive analytics to help us think through the direction of pricing. Could we anticipate where feedstock prices are going and be positioned and acquire those feedstocks before the price arbitrage closes? We've been quite successful in that area. Just like everything we do in our company, we measure how well we do on that too. We think through, does it really create advantage, or is it just something nice to do? I'm here to tell you that all of these things deliver tangible value to the bottom line. In Europe, we've increased the flexibility of our cracker fleet in this decade.
Back in 2010 and 2011, we had a cracker fleet that was mainly a Naphtha cracking cracker fleet. Today, we're able to crack more propane, more butane in Berre and Wesseling, and we're able to flex a lot more than we used to eight, nine years ago. I know Richard will talk a little more about that. He leads the European O&P business. In the O&P integrated chain strength in olefins, flexibility in olefins is incredibly important in delivering strong profitability. When you combine this flexibility with the operational performance that I showed you earlier, we can deliver and have delivered truly exceptional results. I've talked a lot about safety, operating well, watching our costs, but ultimately, we're here to serve our customers. Some of our customers, they simply want a high-quality product delivered when they expect it to be delivered.
More and more, our customers are looking for innovation in Jim's area, in APS. Innovation is a very important component of our value proposition to our customers. It's becoming more and more that way in our polyolefins business. As the sustainability trends increase, there's more innovation through our QCP joint venture, which I'll talk about a little bit later. As you go into the breakout sessions, you'll hear from some of our business partners. Our largest supplier, Enterprise, and my friend Jim Teague, he has done a video for us that you'll hear about and how he thinks about us as a customer. You'll hear from our largest PO customer, Brad Beauchamp at Carpenter. You'll hear from our partner in SUEZ at QCP. He's the COO of QCP, Jean-Marc Boursier. Alejandro from Grupo Kuo, who will talk about our sales of styrene to them.
You'll hear from our customers through these videos and hear what's important to them or our partners in the case of Enterprise. I talked about innovation and a heritage of innovation. Our legacy of innovation goes back to Ziegler and Natta back in the 1950s. For those of you who are familiar with our industry, Ziegler and Natta developed the catalyst that produces most of the plastics today. They are part of LyondellBasell's heritage. They were scientists at our company many years ago. As you fast-forward to today, we have some of the most leading technologies in polyethylene with our Hyperzone polyethylene technology. We'll operate that soon, and we believe that it's positioned to deliver differentiated products and set a new benchmark in polyethylene. We have our Spherizone polypropylene, which is the latest technology in polypropylene. We're also very well known for our polyolefin catalysts.
Our scientists in Ferrara are some of the most capable catalyst scientists in the world. When you combine process expertise with catalyst expertise, you get differentiated products, and you're able to be an industry leader in areas like polyolefins. The PO/TBA and the POSM technology came in through the Lyondell part of our legacy. Today, as I mentioned, and Jim will show you this in his presentation, that both PO/TBA and POSM are positioned at the lowest points in the PO cost curve when you look at a technology cost curve. We think this is a durable advantage, and one, when we build at the scale like we're building at Channelview that many of you will see today, there's additional advantage related to the scale that we're building. Sustainability.
If you go back to 2017 to our Investor Day, I was thinking back, and I don't think we even talked about sustainability. We talked about a lot of other things, some of the points that I mentioned earlier, but we didn't talk about sustainability. I can tell you two years forward, as we stand here today, sustainability is one of the most important pillars in our strategy, and we're moving on multiple fronts. We think about our areas of focus for sustainability, I really think about three main areas, mechanical recycling, molecular recycling, and bio-based feedstocks. You see some illustrations here of things that we're doing. For example, mechanical recycling. We entered into our joint venture with SUEZ nearly two years ago. That joint venture is called Quality Circular Polymers. At QCP, our partner, SUEZ, brings segregated waste. That's polyolefin waste.
We wash it, we grind it, we add our additives and our innovation capability to develop new products for mainly packaging customers, but you may have also seen a Samsonite suitcase that is now being made from products that come out of QCP. We're becoming a more and more important partner for many of the largest brands in the world, like Unilever. Richard mentioned to me today that we got their Partner of the Year Award, and Richard, I'd like for you to talk about that during the breakouts when you present. There's only one company that receives that, and we received that yesterday. We're very proud of that, and we're proud of the progress that we've made at QCP. The key with sustainability, I think, is that, first of all, it has to be underpinned by innovation. For us, sustainability is not about marketing.
This is about substance. That innovation should lead to economic models that are sustainable, pardon the pun. We want economic models that will allow us to continue to reinvest. Because of that innovation basis, we've now included that in Jim Seward's responsibilities because I want R&D and sustainability to be together. Innovation-led sustainability strategy, one that results in viable economic models that provide the kind of returns that LyondellBasell expects. Some other areas in sustainability where our company's been very active in leading, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. As many of you know, we stood that up earlier this year in January. It wasn't even a thought back in 2017. I would say to you that in January of 2018, it wasn't even a thought. Today, the Alliance has more than 40 members across value chain. We have converters, brand owners, chemical companies, waste handlers.
We will get retailers. We don't have any yet, but we will. The idea is to bring the entire value chain together to think about how to create circularity end to end. Our most recent project as an alliance that we're backing is called Project STOP in Indonesia. We're particularly excited about this because what it aims to do is it aims to perfect the circularity model in Jimbaran in Indonesia. The idea is that Jimbaran is one of the highest leakage areas in the world in terms of plastics leaking into rivers and into the ocean. The idea is to collect the waste, to wash it, recycle it, produce new products, all within a 20 mi, 30 mi sort of radius. One of the most important things in recycling is to not move the waste great distances and add more cost.
To the extent that we can perfect this model, this model can be applied around the world, especially in the Far East, I think we start to address systematically the challenge of plastic waste. You see, plastics are a great sustainability story. The issue aren't plastics, the issue is plastic waste and the collection of that waste. That's what the Alliance aims to do, is to enable infrastructure to collect the waste, have innovation so that waste can be converted into useful products, educate people about how to dispose of waste and the value that's in the waste so it's not just thrown on the street, engage in some cleanup activity as well. Infrastructure, innovation, education, and cleanup. Those are the main pillars of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste.
The other area that our company is beginning to assess is CO2 regulations. Jim and his team have been doing a lot of work on that as well. I can tell you that two years since the last Investor Day, today, sustainability is firmly on our minds and is at the center of our strategy. It's one that I think can be value creating as opposed to just playing defense. I've talked through why I believe we're leading, we're advantaged. Let me now talk through our disciplined capital allocation approach that drives value for our shareholders. You're familiar with our framework, but we show this to you in a little different way than we have in prior engagements like this. First of all, our priority is to pay a strong, progressive, and secure dividend.
I showed you in an earlier slide that based on our last three-year average of cash flow from operations, we have about a 3X coverage on our current strong and progressive dividend. It's very secure. When you combine our leading advantaged positions, we believe that we can generate a significant amount of cash flow to assure that that dividend will continue to progress and will be very secure. Next on our priorities is to continue to maintain our assets so they run at very high reliability. I talked about a $1.1 billion sustaining capital expense rate. We expect that we will continue to have that rate over the coming years, and our aim is to target this investment to maximize reliability of our largest assets. Our growth CapEx has been in the range of $700 million-$1.2 billion.
2019, as I'll show you in a minute, will be our highest year in terms of CapEx because we're executing two large organic growth projects: our Hyperzone polyethylene and our PO/TBA. Polyethylene project will complete at the end of this year. We'll continue on with our PO/TBA project. As we've not added another large project, our CapEx is poised to decline. I will show you that in a minute. As part of our capital allocation hierarchy, we also continue to evaluate share repurchases versus inorganic growth and at times versus organic growth as well. I think we've proven through our actions that we've been very disciplined in how we've applied this capital allocation framework. We've frankly moved on all fronts. We've increased our dividend. We've committed to sustaining capital. We're building plants. We've acquired A. Schulman.
Schulman, and we're delivering, we're exceeding the synergy targets, and Jim's going to exceed the $ 200 million that I mentioned. We're going to do a lot more than $ 200 million. All of this is undertaken with the objective of being a strong investment-grade company. I think that's critical for us to be able to capture opportunities when others experience more difficulty or if the market were to get more difficult. This framework makes us resilient and positions us to deliver outstanding value for many years to come to our shareholders. Now, let me build out the proof points on our capital allocation discipline. Our pipeline of organic growth. I've talked a little bit about what we've already done. Low-cost debottlenecks, whether they're in ethylene, they're in polyethylene.
I think on the left side of the slide, what's most important is that you don't see a greenfield cracker here, and you don't see a PDH. You should expect that discipline to continue. Our current projects. The polyethylene plant will finish construction. We're already in the commissioning phase of many aspects of that plant. By year-end, the CapEx will roll off, will be completed, and PO/TBA will continue with an expected completion date in the second half of 2021. Our future investments, in some ways, look much like our past. We still have one more debottleneck we can do at Channelview, 250,000 tons. We decided to prioritize building polyethylene first a couple of years ago, and we consciously said, "Let's push the debottlenecks until we build more derivative capacity." We will do those. Those are very high return debottlenecks. We've already done the engineering. They're shovel-ready.
Likely in the second half of this coming decade, we will build another polyethylene plant, another polypropylene plant. It's unlikely that we'll undertake those investments in the next three to four years. Our approach to inorganic growth. We said we would be disciplined, we meant it. When we think about inorganic growth, what is it that we endeavor to do? The first thing that we think about is: how do we apply our strengths to create value? I talked about our strengths, which are safe, reliable, cost-efficient operations, a global footprint, the ability to reach global markets, the scale of our company. Can we apply that to create value? Where are we going to play? What would we think about acquiring? One of the things that I think is the hallmark of our company is we know who we are, we know which areas we compete in.
Our aim in M&A in inorganic growth is to continue to build along existing value chains, perhaps some adjacencies. We want to leverage our feedstock positions around the world. The APS platform that we've built with the acquisition of A. Schulman is an example of an extension of our value chains downstream. We were already in polypropylene compounding. We've now increased our breadth in terms of participation. Joint ventures have been an important part of our growth strategy. Going back 10, 12 years, we have a portfolio of joint ventures in the Middle East and in Asia where we're able to reach global markets, but we don't invest 100% of what's required. Our technology is what enables us to get into those joint ventures. Recently, we announced the signing of an MoU of a joint venture in China with Bora.
Ken's going to talk about that during his presentation. I think that's an example of our discipline. It's an example of how we think through what's the path to earn exceptional returns. Building at half the cost of Gulf Coast, U.S. Building in half the time. A project that's already half complete. Combine our technology with their capability, with Bora's capability to operate and build. Produce in China for China. That's the strategy. Ken's going to give you some numbers that will help you to perhaps estimate what kind of returns we could expect from a project like that. Speaking of returns, we're very value-minded. We said to you back in 2017 that our criteria was to earn at least 12% on inorganic growth. Depending on the type of inorganic growth, we may have higher targets to compensate for the risk that we may be taking.
We said accretive to EPS in two years or less. We're delivering that on A. Schulman, and all the while maintaining a strong investment-grade rating. Ladies and gentlemen, I would submit to you that in inorganic growth, it's important to think about not only what we have done, like the A. Schulman, but also what we haven't done. We had the discipline to walk away from acquisitions that we felt wouldn't meet our criteria, wouldn't deliver exceptional value for our shareholders. We have the discipline to say yes, and we have the discipline to say no, and you should expect that that will continue for decades to come. I'm going to show you three slides to finish, and I want to walk you through the math of why I think LyondellBasell is poised to increase free cash flow generation in the next three years.
This increase in free cash flow generation is not dependent on market factors. It's not dependent on cycles in polyethylene or IMO or any of that. It's very simple, very straightforward. I talked about our CapEx moderating. 2019 is our highest CapEx year as we look at the next three years. As the PE plant construction completes, we'll take a step down, and then in 2022, when the PO/TBA project completes, we'll take another step down. That doesn't mean that we're not going to be doing organic growth in the meantime. We have a series of small and medium-sized projects that we're executing. They're just not large enough individually to speak with you about, I'll show you the earnings potential from those in a minute. We're continuing to do organic growth. It's more about phasing. It's not that we've stopped doing organic growth.
This is all about phasing the organic growth. To be clear, we do not intend to build a greenfield cracker in the U.S. We do not intend to build a PDH in the U.S. That I can take off the table. As you think about the investments we have been making over the last four or five years, we're now on the cusp of realizing the benefits of those investments. As I mentioned, the A. Schulman synergies are still coming in. The current P&L, as reported, shows also cost to achieve those synergies. Those will roll off. When you think about a bridge from 2019 to 2022, we expect from synergies, not from market conditions changing, an additional $200 million of EBITDA from the A. Schulman integration. We have a series of small and medium-sized projects. I'll give you an example of one. We're extending catalyst capacity.
As our licensing program builds out under Jim's leadership, we supply catalysts to our licensing customers. We're investing in new catalyst plants. We're building one in Edison, New Jersey, for example, where we have existing catalyst capacity. These are high-return, medium CapEx projects. We have a series of these that we're executing, and I think this will continue to build our muscles on doing organic growth when we choose to build the next polyethylene plant. Our major projects, the PE project, $170 million-$200 million of EBITDA. Our PO/TBA project, $400 million-$450 million of EBITDA. The two together, $600 million of additional EBITDA by 2022. Our JVs, which include the Bora investment. When you look at this, irrespective of cycles and market conditions, our investments are poised to deliver $1.3 billion of additional EBITDA between now and 2022.
When you combine the lower CapEx with increasing EBITDA, you have a result that's a significant increase in free cash flow. Let me walk you through the math. $1.3 billion of additional EBITDA by 2022, as I described to you in the prior bridge. Thomas will show you that our conversion rate of EBITDA into cash is about 80%. Very strong cash-generating company. That's about $1 billion of higher free cash flow, $1.1 billion reduction in CapEx. You put the two together, LyondellBasell is positioned to increase cash flow by more than $2 billion, and that increase in cash flow is not dependent on market cycles. It's essentially realizing the benefit from our investments that we've been making. I've talked about a company today that's leading, it's advantaged, and has demonstrated its discipline in terms of capital allocation. We have a resilient and focused portfolio.
The resiliency comes from the global footprint, it comes from the feedstock flexibility, it comes from having I&D and O&P, and now APS. Our focus on strong operations, on safety, on having a competitive cost structure, when you combine that with our feedstock flexibility, we believe it makes us the best operator in this space and the most advantaged chemical company in the world. We've demonstrated our discipline on financial policy. Strong investment-grade rating. We've pulled all the levers to create value for our shareholders. Strong dividend, disciplined organic growth. We've been disciplined on inorganic growth. We've bought back shares. Since we went public, we've bought back about a third of our share count. We moved on all fronts to create value for our shareholders.
What I'm most excited about is that we're going to continue to think through how we build a great company for decades to come as we continue to grow our company in a disciplined way through organic and perhaps inorganic means. As we've demonstrated to you, we'll be very return-minded as we undertake those decisions. LyondellBasell is potentially the most compelling investment in our space. We're leading, we're advantaged, and we're disciplined. Thank you. I'm happy to take your questions, and Thomas will come up and join me for the Q&A. Okay. You want me to call them out, Dave, maybe?
Yeah, please.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Just one question each, please. We only have about 10 minutes here, I think.
Thank you, Kevin McCarthy, Vertical Research Partners. Bob, you've made it very clear that you're not going to be investing in U.S. ethylene, at least in terms of a large-scale cracker. U.S. PDH, likewise off the table. You have, however, I believe, signed an MoU with Bora in China, and my impression is you'll be funding that investment to some degree. Can you talk about how that fits into the capital framework that you've laid out over the next couple of years and what that's likely to look like?
Sure. First of all, we think of that as more of an inorganic sort of transaction. It'll be financed with leverage, so it's not all equity like a greenfield project would be. Ken's going to go through a lot of the details in his presentation about the investment cost, the amount of leverage, and the progress that we're making over there on the MoU and moving towards definitive agreements. I think what makes that unique is that it's a project that's already in progress. It's about 50% complete and it's built in a geography where CapEx is nearly half of what a similar investment would cost on the Gulf Coast. I think that's what distinguishes it from a greenfield investment in the U.S. Low cost, halfway through construction, and it'll be largely debt-financed. Yeah. P.J.?
P.J. Juvekar from Citi. Bob, another question on this China project. When you announced that MoU, I guess, how do you decide between being closer to the end customers in China versus being close to feedstocks in the U.S.?
I think, P.J., for me, I always think about return, and there's different ways to get at a high return or one that meets our hurdles, right? If the denominator is much lower in terms of the investment cost and we don't have to ship product from the U.S. to China, then I think that when you look at the scale of that asset as well, we think that the cost position will be relatively very strong in China. We'll be very close to the end market, and we're investing less than half of what we would in the U.S. I think when we look back on this project 10 years from now, we'll say that it added to our resilience.
As we think through a range of oil to gas environments and so on, well, the key is to not put too much capital on the ground, right? This one will be largely debt-financed as well, which won't affect our financial metrics. It'll be JV financing, which we've done in many of our other JVs. Yep. David?
Thank you. Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Bob, I think on PDH and polypropylene, at one point you were a little more positive about perhaps building a PDH unit in the U.S. with a PP plant at the back end. What's changed in the last, I think, couple of years in your thinking on PDH and polypropylene near-term?
Polypropylene, it really hasn't changed. It's just more about phasing. As I mentioned in one of the slides on the organic growth, that we will build a PP plant in the next decade. On PDH, it's really we think through make versus buy, and if we can buy based on having owner economics, and we can de-risk because we have a partner who can execute the project well and they can focus on that while we focus on building the derivative unit that gets the product to market, then I think it's a low capital cost way of participating in the value chain. You'll see more news on that in the coming week about our plans around propylene. We're not prepared to discuss that today, but you'll see soon. Yeah. Frank, and then Jonas.
Yes. Hi, Frank Mitsch, Fermium Research. Bob, I appreciate the picture catalog of the previous Investor Days. If we think about two years from now, if we have another Investor Day, what is the likelihood that we'll see the refining as part of the portfolio? What's your outlook there? Obviously, you looked at monetizing that asset a couple of years ago. How core is that business to Lyondell?
Well, Frank, I've said this in prior earnings calls that our highest priority has been to run that asset more reliably. I think under Dan's leadership, we've been doing that. We've been running at very high rates. Unfortunately, the light-heavy differential has not been favorable to us. Longer term, I've also said this often, that I think that that asset likely creates more value as part of a network of refineries as opposed to one refinery and a chemical company. I don't want to speculate what we may or may not do. What I always think about is how do we create the most value with any of the assets that we have, the refinery is no different, frankly.
Today, our focus is on controlling what we control, which is operate well, watch our costs, think through how much capital we spend, and longer term, we'll think through what creates the most value for LyondellBasell. Yeah. Jonas?
Step back. Look at the presentation. It looks a lot like you're going back to your 2010 outlook on the world, right? You're slowing down your investments. You're not planning any, or you're finishing up your investments. You're not planning any new ones. You're focusing on returning money to shareholders. Is there a genuine difference in how you see the world and your role in it, and can you elaborate on that?
I think, Jonas, it's more about phasing of projects. If you go back and look at our investor communications over the last two years since the last Investor Day, we've said that we would build more polyethylene plants. To me, it's just about phasing. If we build the next Hyperzone plant a year later than we thought, I don't think that's a reflection of some dramatic change in our view about the environment. We've been pretty consistent about not building a cracker. If we were going to do it, we would've already done so. On PDH, I've been just thinking through and with my team, is it better to build or buy? Should we focus more on the PP, which is really what gets the olefins to market, and it leverages our technology.
I would say it's more about focus and phasing, not a significantly different view on the market. On Braskem, it was really a value-based decision, just like it was on A. Schulman. Our view of the world has not changed significantly. It's just more about phasing projects.
Right, Jonas. As you have seen on what Bob presented on the EBITDA bridge, roughly $350 million, $300 million contribution going forward now to 2022 from smaller projects. Bob also presented the investment in profit-generating CapEx in 2022, roughly $700 million. What we are looking for at the end of the day is really the returns. I think the 30%, which was demonstrated over the last few years, is a contribution and a proof point that we will continue to invest in growth initiatives with significant and attractive returns.
The other thing I would add there is that our recent announcement of the Bora JV is an indication of our belief in the long-term trends in the market. We talk about the growing middle class in China. We talk about growing middle class in India. Strong base business in U.S. and Europe, which are large markets that are growing at GDP plus a little bit. All of those trends are still very durable, and we're thinking through how do we build out a portfolio of investments that positions this company to be very resilient and create significant shareholder value consistently. I think that's what we've outlined. Yep. Steve.
One last one.
Yep.
Steve Byrne from BAML. What does your technology licensing business tell you about incremental new polyethylene capacity globally in the next couple of years?
Well, we've been fairly active in that space for more than a decade now. First of all, what it's telling us is that there are fewer licensors of technology. That's been one of the outcomes of how the industry has evolved. In terms of the pace of licenses, we see a very similar pace to what we've seen. Maybe it's a little bit more, but a reflection of a growing base. When you look at global consumption of polyolefins compared to 10 years ago, it's much higher. 3% today or 5% today means a lot more plants that you need just to meet the demand growth. We're not seeing the creation of another wave or something like that. More of our activity is in China, where the market's growing the most.
I'll tell you this on trade flows, that China will continue to be a very large net importer of polyethylene and by what we see from the IHS figures, that short is as big or growing as we look through the next decade in polyethylene.
Okay. Thank you. I think that's all the time we have right now. We'll have plenty of time for other questions throughout the day. Before we reassemble at 8:45 A.M., we're going to take a brief break. Just to remind you, we're going to split into three groups. If you have a red dot on the back of your badge, you'll stay in this room. If you have a green dot on the back of the badge, you'll proceed down the escalator to the third floor to Meyerland A. If you have a blue dot on your badge, you'll go to Meyerland B, which is right next door. The speakers will rotate. The webcast will listen to this room. After those breakouts, we'll return here for another plenary session with Thomas and Bob again. Please, 10-minute break, 8:45 A.M. We'll start again with the breakouts. Thank you.
[Break]
All right. Hope you had a good break. Can you hear me? I don't know if the mic. There we go, now the mic's on. All right. Now what I'd like to do, we're going to move into the breakout sessions, and I'd like to introduce two of my colleagues who will walk through some information that gives you more color around the integrated polymers set of businesses. Ken Lane recently joined us. He's the Executive Vice President of Global Olefins and Polyolefins. He had a long career with BASF and with Amoco and BP back in the day. Richard Roudeix, who runs our European O&P business. Richard and I have worked together for nearly the full 10 years that I've been with the company. Both guys are very well-informed, and we'll get into some of the details of integrated polymers.
Before we do that, we wanted to share a short video from the CEO of Enterprise, Jim Teague, and he'll tell you a little bit about our relationship with them.
We're what's called a midstream company. We have about 50,000 mi of pipelines, 1.5 million barrels a day of fractionation. We have refinery-grade propylene splitters. We have plants that make propylene out of propane and isobutylene out of butane. We're a large exporter of hydrocarbons, everything from crude to olefins, and we're the largest exporter of LPG in the world, and we do a lot of business with LyondellBasell. The thing I love about LyondellBasell is they know who they are. What I see is professionalism, looking out for the interest of Lyondell, but at the same time, understanding. We've been doing business with LyondellBasell for probably 25 to 30 to 40 years, and our intent is we're going to keep growing with LyondellBasell because they're going to be the best commodity chemical company around. I want to grow with them.
All right. Good morning. Glad to see all of you here. The room is a little thinner. I know that everybody's in their breakout sessions, so I won't take that personally. First of all, I want to just echo some of the things that Bob had mentioned this morning and talk first about the strategy for the global Olefins and Polyolefins business. I really think about this in two storylines. The first one is all about the integrated foundation that we have with a leading and advantaged portfolio of assets. When you think about what Bob was talking about around our ability to operate these plants safely and reliably with a lot of flexibility and optionality, that generates tremendous value for us. We're also focused on differentiated products.
We've got a set of derivative technologies that allows us to produce products that do generate a premium in the marketplace, and that's something that we're going to continue to do in the future. The next part of that story is really building on that foundation that we have for the future, and that's around the disciplined growth and leveraging the innovation that we have to build more profitable businesses in the future. One of the things that we're going to be looking at are the sustainable business models in order to help make our products have a longer life in use. That means we're going to focus on business models that advance circularity, and as Bob said, builds a return for us in that business space.
Just quickly, I want to talk about the global Olefins & Polyolefins business and give you a little bit of a snapshot of what we have today. It's just over 50% of the EBITDA generated by LyondellBasell, so it's $3.5 billion. We are a leader in polypropylene. We're number two globally. We're also a leader in polyethylene, focused on high-density polyethylene as well as low-density polyethylene. In all three of those lines, we've got, again, a very advantaged product portfolio. That's built around a robust manufacturing network, with 29 sites around the world. That includes both wholly owned and joint venture sites, and we're very excited to see that expand in the future. Now I want to shift and talk a little bit more about the advantages that we see in this portfolio.
I think if you go back to the beginning of the last cycle, to a similar position where we are today, we didn't have the advantages of shale. The world has moved on tremendously. We're in a much better position today as a company. We've optimized our portfolio of assets. We've got access to advantaged feedstocks, and that feedstock flexibility has improved in the years since then. We are extremely well-positioned to have a very solid performance and a very high level of cash generation through the cycle. Now, the competitive advantages, I'm going to hand it over to Richard so that he can walk you through what we see as really differential performance drivers for us in the industry. Richard.
Thank you, Ken. Over the next three slides, I will explain to you our operating strategy, the three pillars for our differential performance, and how we add value and deliver value on top of our industry peers. This mindset is deeply rooted in our core values of excellence, ownership, and teamwork. Focus on detail, whether in safety, operation, or commercial, drives improved reliability and predictability. This is leading to improved differential performance. Our operating model is very simple. It's relentless benchmarking against our peers. Agility to identify initiatives to close the gap to first quartile performance, and continuous improvement to maintain or extend our lead over our peers. As Bob mentioned, it all begins with attention to detail from a foundational focus on safety.
This focus on detail carries over to operation, leading to reliability, because at the end of the day, we cannot predict when the market will offer opportunities. However, our high reliability allows us to capture profitability. The fact that you can find this result in all geographies and all products is a testament of its ingrained and resilient nature. After operational excellence, feedstock flexibility is the second pillar of our differential performance. Every single day, we optimize for the most economic feedstock in a given business and technical environment. In the U.S., our two Midwest crackers in Morris and Clinton were designed to take advantage of low-cost stranded ethane and propane. Three of our crackers on the Gulf Coast have the full range capability.
They can crack from ethane, propane, butane, condensate, and naphtha. This provides a distinct advantage compared to new build crackers that can only process ethane with limited flexibility. In all our four crackers on the U.S. Gulf Coast, we have improved the capability to process low-cost, unpurified mixed NGL fractions, known as Y-grade. Today, we are able to crack about mid-single digit in our feedstock. In Europe, in a similar way, we have improved our flexibility, and now our crackers can run up to 50% of advantage feedstock. We have explained operational excellence, we have explained feedstock flexibility, and now commercial excellence is the third pillar of our differential performance. This operating strategy based on differential performance is delivering sustainable and resilient profitability. The net effect of the benchmarking activities is the integrated polyethylene margin, additional margin we are able to deliver over our peers.
It's typically $120 per ton for the U.S. and $100 per ton in Europe. In the U.S., it's mostly driven from the olefin side. In Europe, it's mostly driven from the product side. Our commercial excellence is built around intimate knowledge of our customer's application and value drivers. We are defining value propositions that fit customer needs. Finally, we are aligning the resources accordingly in terms of targeted innovation and product or support services. This positive reputation and recognition along the value chain, be it from customers, from brand owners or retailers, is providing or offering us a unique opportunity to over-participate in attractive markets. On a global basis, we are leveraging our technology and capability, expertise to develop innovative grades to participate in high premium, high margin segments. Ken will now provide our current view of global markets.
Thank you, Richard. Now I want to talk briefly about the global polyethylene market. Currently, we still see a very healthy operating rate in the industry, and we expect that to continue. That's going to be driven by robust market growth. Even in the mid- to long-term, we're expecting a 4% growth rate. There are a lot of discussions right now about the new capacity that's coming on stream, and certainly there is more capacity coming online. I think if you go back to the Q3 of 2016, and you look at what was predicted then, it was predicted, as shown here on this chart, that there would be much more capacity and a much lower operating rate than we're actually experiencing today.
We believe that history is going to repeat itself here, or at least the future is going to be very similar to that. People make these decisions based on what they see happening in the environment. We definitely expect that we're going to continue to see these capacities come on the market. The capacities that are speculative, we do expect are going to get delayed similar to what we've seen in past cycles. Having said that, I want to go back to what I mentioned a few minutes ago. Our portfolio is extremely resilient. We're in a very strong position. We've got an optimized asset base. We've got advantages that Richard just talked about, and I feel like we're extremely well positioned for all seasons in this environment. Now, I want to talk briefly as well about the Hyperzone investment, and Bob had talked about this earlier.
The project is really winding down in terms of construction. We are in the midst of commissioning that plant, and between now and the end of the year, we expect to have all of that complete. Why we're so excited about this technology is really because of the ability that it gives us to make products that are going to be differential in the market space. We're going to be targeting applications like high pressure pipe, like large car blow molding that are very technical, very specified, and that are going to give our customers the ability to process these products, these resins very efficiently and not sacrifice the properties in the application that they're going to use them for. We think that that's going to give us a differential advantage.
Certainly, we're expecting to see a significant impact next year from this asset as it ramps up through the year. That's going to be something that's very exciting for the business as we go through and begin working with our customers to introduce all of those new products. Now I want to touch base on our joint venture model, which we've had a lot of success. This has been a very profitable model for us over time. It has generated high returns for us. It's a key part of our growth strategy and frankly, has allowed us to expand our reach well beyond where we have our wholly owned assets. With our reputation and our long history in this market, we are an attractive partner. We help bring more value to our partners, That's what they certainly appreciate in having LyondellBasell in the joint ventures.
All of that drives a very steady stream of EBITDA for us, and we do certainly see that continuing. There's an added advantage there that we have, and that is through our licensing business and through the catalyst business that we have. When you leverage all of that, this becomes an extremely high return business model for us and one that we're going to continue to leverage as time goes on. I think that's a great segue then into talk about the MoU that we signed recently with Bora. The picture that you see here on the right, I think is an important part of the story. That picture was taken just before the signing ceremony a couple of weeks ago. You can see this project is very well advanced.
By the time we get to closing this deal sometime next year, the window between closing and operating this asset is going to be very narrow. It is going to be a CapEx-light way for us to have a position in the largest, fastest-growing market in China with an advantaged investment position. We're looking at a $2.6 billion investment for the world-scale cracker plus the derivatives. That's everything included. That's 100%. Half of that investment is going to be ours. However, 2/3 of that is going to be joint venture finance through non-recourse debt. This is really a highly leveraged, high return asset for us, and it's the right way for us to enter the market, where we do see a lot of growth opportunities in the future. I expect that it's going to be something that we can build on in the long-term.
We expect to see operations commencing in 2020. That's going to be, again, a very exciting time for us and a big contributor for the EBITDA development going forward. I want to come back to some of the models around sustainability that we've talked about. We've got the QCP joint venture in Europe that was launched just a couple of years ago. This is the mechanical recycling joint venture. It's up and running. I'm happy to say that what we've seen through this joint venture with SUEZ is our ability to make resins by leveraging our strengths and our competencies, along with theirs, for the collection and the sorting and the cleaning of these materials, these post-consumer waste materials, and converting those into resins that we can sell to customers like Samsonite and like Unilever.
One of the things that we wanted to prove through this is our ability to market these and get these resin prices up to at least, if not higher, than virgin resins. We are seeing that. We've been successful in doing that. The demand for these products, the demand for these resins is very healthy. We believe that as we scale it up, the profitability is going to become even better. Two examples that were mentioned earlier. You can see here a suitcase that Samsonite has already made and marketed. Now it takes 3,500 yogurt cups to make that suitcase, that's quite a lot of yogurt. I eat yogurt, but not that much. That's a totally recyclable suitcase. The liner is also made from PET recycled resins as well.
The other one I want to highlight here is the shampoo bottle with Unilever that we've developed. They did give us a Distinguished Supplier Award that we're very excited to have received. I think this demonstrates the value that our customers are putting on the ability and the innovation that LyondellBasell brings into this market space. Next, I want to come back to the growth agenda, and we had talked earlier about the fact that we're winding down the large projects that we're investing in. Hyperzone, the polypropylene debottleneck here in North America, all of that is going to be winding down. As that does, in the near to midterm, our focus is going to be on more modest investments. Modest investments around things like more optionality, more flexibility in our crackers, and improving the efficiency of those assets.
We will be ready when we need to be to make the next round of investments for the next polyethylene investment, the next polypropylene. We're going to be very prudent in how we move on that. Now we shift into a phase where we're going to harvest from the assets that we've built. We're going to harvest that and maximize our EBITDA generation and our cash flow from this business. Just to wrap this up, I want to come back to the fact that we're going to build on our leading position with our global asset position that's very advantaged. We're going to continue to be highly disciplined in the investments that we make going forward. We will invest at the right time, but we're going to shift our focus to maximizing the EBITDA generation out of this business and to generate more cash for our shareholders.
With that, I want to invite Bob back up to the stage, and we'll open it up for a few minutes here. I think we've got about five minutes left for questions.
Okay. Probably got time for a couple of questions. Vincent? We need to get a mic.
The mic's not on, guys.
Is it on? Let's try that again. It's not on yet.
Try that one.
Nope. Hang on a second.
Thank you. Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. I just want to go back to slide 40, and you've got the effective operating rates for global polyethylene and just want to clarify two things. That's, I believe, an amalgamation of consultant forecasts rather than your own. Is that, number one, correct?
That's right.
That's right. Okay. They're predicting a deceleration in utilization rates, even though your chart here would still assume it's above 90%, but it is a deceleration. Could you maybe talk about what your own view is and compare and contrast what you expect? On the supply side versus the demand side, in particular address, I think the big thing that's changed in the consultant forecast has been the pull forward of capacity, principally, in Eastern Europe as well as in China. Just sort of talk about how possible that truly is, that capacity would come earlier than expected versus the historical cadence usually of being later than expected.
Sure. Well, look, I think when you look at all of these analyst reports, what you'll find is that they bake into that a certain amount of speculative capacity. That's what we take into consideration, because we are on the backside of the cycle, there's no denying that. As you get to those points, people make different decisions. They announce things, but history has shown us, and it's going to continue, I believe, that they're going to delay those investments to a point in time where it's going to generate more returns for them. That's the way we look at this, is that not all of the capacity that gets reported is firm or under construction. There's always a significant amount that's speculative, and I think you have to discount that, and that's what we do in our minds.
Yeah, Vincent, I would just add that also the financial wherewithal of some of these entities that have announced new expansions may limit them from executing. They're having to stand on their own as opposed to being supported by the government. In some cases, like the one next door to Bora, there's a project actually that's been announced, and when we were there for the MoU signing, we actually went to Panjin to the site, and there's one bulldozer in the middle of a field. There's really nothing there. Literally. I think these things will evolve and just to reiterate what Ken said, if you go back five years ago and the amount that was predicted, well, a lot of it did come on, but project delays, some got pushed. We'll see a combination of that.
Difficult to predict which ones, but we think that statistically history will repeat itself. Yeah. Matthew?
Hi, it's Parag Patel with.
Yes.
It's Parag Patel with Capital Preservation Advisors. You had mentioned that these two gentlemen recently joined your company and that you had some previous experience with them before. Could they briefly speak about why they joined and what attracted them to come to Lyondell?
Yeah. Well, just to be clear, this one's been with the company for 30 years, and he's about 30 days.
[crosstalk] Yeah. Two months.
Two months.
Look, I'll tell you. I've been in this industry, by the way, the chemical industry, since the early '90s. I've seen a number of cycles. One of the things that attracted me to LyondellBasell is exactly what we're talking about today. The strength of the portfolio, the streamlined cost structure that we have, and the competitiveness of this business, and ability to generate cash through the cycle. It's a sustainable business and one that frankly I'm excited to be a part of. Discipline and growth and knowing who you are and where you want to be, that's a great thing. That's a great strategy. I believe in that. That's why I'm here.
Yeah, maybe just to comment, yes, I've been with that company and predecessor company for 34 years. It's quite a long journey. I think one of the reason why I stay with LyondellBasell is because we really have this impression with all the team to build a legacy. We are building something which will last for decades. That is one of the driver for myself, but also a lot of people to stay with that company.
David.
I think that's the one that doesn't work.
Is that the one that doesn't work? Let's try that one, okay, yeah.
Thank you. Matthew Blair from Tudor, Pickering. Slide 40 talks about global PE demand growth in the 4% range. Given that Lyondell is a leader in recycling and sustainability efforts, Bob, I was hoping that you could just help put into perspective what's the risk long-term to demand growth from issues like focus on single-use plastic, bag bans, those types of areas?
Well, first of all, single-use plastics are a small part of the overall polyethylene business, and you still have pipe and large part blow molding and many other applications. Ultimately, I think, Matthew, recycling will have some impact in terms of demand growth, but on the other hand, the base is continuing to grow at a very high rate. When you net the two out, what we think about is could you see 50 basis points come out of growth? Maybe. It's not so substantial that it changes our view about how we invest longer term.
I just want to add one thing, that that growth rate already has baked into it what we see emerging, right, in regulations and potential deselection. We've already got some downside baked into that.
Let's do one more with David. Yeah.
Thank you. Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Bob, just on the JV in Bora, can you give some background as to how it came together and why they brought you in so late into the process, and your confidence in their ability to operate the unit going forward?
Yeah. Actually, the licensing agreement, we engaged in that more than a year ago. As you know, I ran the technology business before, and I often talk to Jim Seward about, "Hey, look, whenever we sell a license, we ought to think about should we participate?" As time went on, we really kind of saw how well Bora operate. We didn't know them as well. They have a 300,000 barrel a day refinery right next door. Bora decided that they'd like to have a partner to help them get the product to market. Because it was our technology, as our discussions evolved post the licensing agreement, we thought maybe there's a way to co-invest here. Richard was working on that for quite some time leading up to the MoU. Do you want to add a couple words, Richard, to that?
Yeah. I think it has to do with every partner is providing something different to this joint venture. We recognize Bora is a very solid partner in terms of operation, in terms of local presence with the government and the regional government in this area. We can provide also additional value with the technology business and marketing effort. This was a recognition from both sides and leading to this MoU.
Yeah, that's a model that we're very familiar with, and we have that in our three Middle East ventures. We have it in our Korean venture, our Thai venture. Essentially, we're going to replicate the model that we have already in place. Back before even LyondellBasell, Basell had started down the path of these joint ventures. We feel very good about both partners bringing strengths to create value. All right? Well, thank you very much, and we'll conclude this session.
[crosstalk] Thank you.
Ready? Welcome, everybody. This is the breakout for technology-enabled products, and we're going to provide you with some insight into how innovation enables and adds value to our growth initiatives, and really spread across the company. We're going to start with a brief video from our partner in our innovative recycling joint venture in Holland, Quality Circular Polymers. This is Jean-Marc Boursier, the Chief Operating Officer of SUEZ.
I am Jean-Marc Boursier, and I'm SUEZ Chief Operating Officer. SUEZ is a worldwide leader for slops and resource management. LyondellBasell is a partner of SUEZ. We have created a JV in Europe called QCP. We are producing together green polymer, recycled polymer for big brands like Unilever and P&G. We are creating a new world for the production of green polymer. Innovation is absolutely key for both LyondellBasell and for SUEZ. We are thinking already about developing new technology, new solutions, to be able to produce high-quality polymer for the future. Both SUEZ and LyondellBasell are amongst the two founding members of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which is a big brand coalition in order to reduce plastic pollution in developing countries and notably in Southeast Asia. Our dream is to enter into the world of the production of green chemicals together.
I'd now like to introduce the speakers for the session, Jim Guilfoyle and Jim Seward. Two Jims.
Okay. Thank you, Dave. Welcome, everybody, to the technology-enabled products session. What we would like to ask you to do is to spend the next 20 minutes, half an hour, thinking about LyondellBasell through the lens of technology. We have a tremendously rich heritage in technology, more importantly, we believe that our technology positions us in a really unique way going forward. Technology-enabled products, it represents about a quarter of the company, about 25%. What we're talking about, just to anchor you there, is our technology business, our licensing and catalysts, which I have responsibility for. Our propylene oxide business run by Torkel Rhenman. Our Advanced Polymer Solutions business run by Jim. When you think about LyondellBasell, we are a company that is quite narrow in terms of scope, but we're very deep.
What I mean by that is that we play in our industries where we choose, in technology, in products, and in compounding. We believe that it's this deep knowledge of our industry value chains that we play in, which really helps. A lot of that is informed indeed by technology. It allows us to accelerate commercialization. I think it means that we are the partner of choice for many customers, suppliers, and others, including potential joint venture partners. It also informs the way we grow. We have a very disciplined growth approach, as you've seen. I think that our technology is one of the kind of North Stars when we think about deploying that technology for advantage to growth. Examples of that are the major projects we have on at the moment, Hyperzone, Advantage Polyethylene Process, PO/TBA, which Jim will talk about later.
Joint ventures, as Bob says, has always been a very important part of our company. When we think about joint ventures, people very often come to us. Partners will come to us because they seek our technology, and they also seek our deep and global market reach and customer intimacy. Again, that technology provides a kind of competitive advantage in the way we want to grow, and of course, informs an important way our M&A strategy, as you've already heard today. Finally, technology or innovation is really the key that we seek to unlock the sustainability opportunities of today, as we try to create novel business models for tomorrow. When we think about technology-enabled products, we're talking about $1.4 billion, more or less, across those three platforms that I mentioned earlier.
In terms of sites, most of the sites are in Jim's responsibility, in APS, about 85, I think. We also have 6 large world-scale and leading propylene oxide sites, and a number of technology sites, essentially around catalyst manufacture. As I said, we're the leader in a number of areas in this space, particularly in licensing and polypropylene licensing, and we're also the largest producer of polypropylene compounds, and maybe the largest producer of compounds, to be honest, globally as well. I repeat, where we play, we play very meaningfully, we play to win, and we're very deep in these spaces. If we think from the economics of this, we have a rising profitability over the last three years. That profitability has been driven in part by licensing success, by our acquisition of A. Schulman, of course, our APS.
The future, as you go forward, of course, our very important growth project, PO/TBA, will drive that profitability growth further. We think that these earnings are very robust, and we'll talk about that. Very solid. Also, in this part of the business, we have a very high conversion of EBITDA to cash as well. How do we think about polyolefin licensing? Let me say a couple of words on that. Some of our technologies, we choose to license. For example, our polyolefin technologies, polypropylene and polyethylene, we license broadly and as I'll show you, we're the leading licensor. Our business model there is licensing. Within technology business, we have licensing, we have catalyst, and we have business services. Licensing acts as a kind of a pull-through, if you like, for also our catalyst business as well, which is important.
If we think about our polyolefin licensing business, it's a very strong business. As you can see from this chart on the right, we're really the leader. We play in polyethylene and in polypropylene licensing, and really lead where we play. To be honest, pretty much anywhere in the world, somebody wants to build a polyethylene or a polypropylene plant, chances are we'll be the first person they call. We have a very attractive business model which we think is hard to duplicate, partly because of our heritage, partly because of our leading technology, and partly, to be honest, because of our scale. If we think about the size of our install base, that makes us a very low-risk opportunity on the one hand, a low-risk licensor, but also we have a recognized leadership in innovation.
If you're going to build a plant, you're going to build it for the next 20 years. You probably want to build it with somebody that's going to continue to innovate in that space. We think that you put together the licensing business with the catalyst and the technology services, and we think that creates a very profitable business, also for the years to come. I'm now going to hand over to Jim. He's going to talk about our propylene oxide business.
Thanks, Jim. As Jim talked about the licensing in polyolefins, we're going to switch gears and talk about the propylene oxide business and the proprietary technology that we have in that space, which was the business I ran before being assigned to our Advanced Polymer Solutions business. There's two proprietary technologies. There's POSM and there's PO/TBA, all within the LyondellBasell portfolio. As you can see on this cost curve, both technologies represent cost-leading positions in the industry. POSM is propylene oxide in combination with styrene monomer. This technology we typically deploy in markets where styrene is still growing, which is a bit challenging to find these days, but when you look at the space of Asia and China, you still see positive growth rates in that region. We tend to focus our POSM technology in that space. For PO/TBA, again, tertiary butyl alcohol.
The primary use of tertiary butyl alcohol is for ethers. It's MTBE and ETBE. It's a global gasoline market. As we go to market in PO/TBA and try to find the appropriate place to build an asset, we look for cheap feedstock. We look for cheap butane. And that's why you'll see today, for those in Houston who will be going out to the site, we have elected to build our PO/TBA plant here in the Gulf Coast on the back of shale gas and cheap NGLs. The plant that we're building in Channelview is next generation. As Bob mentioned in his opening remarks, we expect that this asset will reduce our cash cost position of about 5%. Again, that's from an already leading PO/TBA position of the industry, primarily driven by scale and by operating efficiencies.
We've made modifications to our technology over the years, and this gives us an opportunity to employ that innovation in our new design. The growth rate of PO can support approximately one asset per year globally. We find that with our position in respect to our costs of our technology, that we will be the supplier of choice in the space of propylene oxide. A little bit on our new asset that you'll be visiting later today. It is a two-site location strategy with respect to the construction. We are building the PO/TBA plant in Channelview. There are existing ether plants already in Channelview. We will be making a new combination of facilities with an existing ethers derivative plant. The ethers plant is actually going to be built in Bayport, where we already have a PO/TBA unit already in operation.
What this two-plant design does, it allows us to create efficiencies with respect to moving materials between the two facilities, which is another, I would say, value that we've seen by creating a two-location strategy with respect to the asset. Today, you'll be visiting the Channelview facility. Construction, I'm happy to report, is roughly 20% complete. If you were to go by the Bayport plant, you would see steel coming out of the ground. With respect to Channelview, it's a much larger site. Mostly what you'll see today will be mostly foundational work. You'll get a sense of the scale and scope of the facility, but we've been really focused currently on undergrounds and getting the foundation finalized. You'll be seeing that on the tour later, if you'd like to go.
With respect to this facility, this facility will generate $400 million-$450 million of EBITDA once it is commissioned. What you're also going to see is a declining capital spend profile with respect to this asset. When this asset starts up at the end of 2021, we anticipate that full year 2022, you'll see the full power of this facility in our earnings. Propylene oxide. Propylene oxide goes into many uses that we encounter every day. For example, the seat cushions you're sitting on right now are made of polyurethane, which is one of the main uses of propylene oxide, which accounts for about 50% of the raw materials for that particular derivative. You'll also see it in mattresses. For those of you from New York, bed in a box is a big polyurethane application that we've seen growing fairly substantially.
Spray foam insulation for the efficiency of homes with respect to cooling or heating. You see it in coatings and adhesives, and as well as other type of industrial applications like de-icers for aviation. The demand growth rate in this space typically exceeds GDP, primarily following the demographic change in the ever-growing middle class. We're going to switch gears now to tailored products, which is primarily centered on our new Advanced Polymer Solutions business. As you may recall, this is a new division that we formed, new segment, which combines the polypropylene compounding businesses of LyondellBasell, the specialty resins of LyondellBasell, which is the Catalloy and PD1, with our recent acquisition of A. Schulman.
The great thing about the combinations of assets and the upstream that we have with our commodity businesses is we can use our catalyst and our polymer technologies that Jim has described to you, combine that with the innovation and customer touch of our polypropylene compounding position, and provide full end-to-end solutions to our customers, which most customers who have been buying from our competition in the compounding space before have never been exposed to. We think this is a unique advantage for us in terms of our opportunities to provide our customers really innovative solutions. For LyondellBasell, as Bob said, when we do acquisitions, we always try to think of what we can bring to the company that would be part of LyondellBasell.
In the space of A. Schulman, it's operational excellence, it's cost structure, and it's also the commercial strengths and that whole market view that we have from our legacy commodity space, as well as our downstream experience in the polypropylene compounding area. What you're going to find is these synergies that we generate are going to be an additional cash generation tool for us going forward. Let's talk a little bit about synergies. Bob mentioned synergies. We promised $150 at closure of the A. Schulman transaction. We're now indicating that we see a pathway to $200 million in synergy run rate at the end of the two years from closure. That is at the end of August of next year. That $200 million represents a doubling of the EBITDA that we acquired through the acquisition of A. Schulman. How are we going to do this?
How is LyondellBasell going to extract this type of value from this acquisition? It's through our centralized management structure and leveraging the positions that we have in the industry, which helps us in procurement, helps us in logistics. It helps us in our safety culture and bringing that to A. Schulman, which has been very impactful. We've already improved the safety performance of Schulman. We've cut their TRIR by a half. We're seeing substantial improvements in the safety performance and establishing that culture. Our manufacturing excellence, our finance and tax strategies, being a large-scale company, as well as our commercial combined with their innovation and the innovation downstream into our customer base.
The success that we show here is going to validate to the market that we have the systems and the processes to successfully integrate acquisitions going forward. Advanced Polymer Solutions, what does it do for LyondellBasell from a market-facing standpoint? The polypropylene compounding business that LyondellBasell had was primarily focused in the automotive space, heavy OEM exposure. What we have now with the A. Schulman acquisition is a much broader scope of markets. We have ag, we have industrial, we have packaging. It creates a much broader footprint for our compounding businesses to support. The interesting thing about these market segments is that they do grow differentially to the space that they service. I'll give you an example.
Automotive growth rates, we typically outpace the automotive growth rates because we're constantly looking for ways to do intermaterial replacement, finding ways to lightweight tailgates, finding ways to lightweight vehicles. This is more and more plastic that works its way into the vehicles. EVs is a good example, where our position with EVs is very strong, and the growth of the EVs will also help in the growth rate of our Advanced Polymer Solutions business. This is a highly fragmented market, a $65 billion market, lots of small players, and we feel when we stand up this platform and we're successful in the capture of those $200 million in synergies, we'll be ready to start looking at modest acquisitions to help build on this platform.
What I'd like to do now is pass it back to Jim, who's going to talk about the innovative solutions in the space of sustainability that will really set the future for LyondellBasell in the industry.
Thanks, Jim. Let's say a couple of words on sustainability and the initiatives that we have there. Firstly, as I said earlier, the way we think about this is how can we view major trends in the industry or major trends in society, to be honest, as opportunities and turn that into business models? For us, the concept of circularity is really important. The concept of trying to keep products, molecules within the economy is the opportunity that we see that can be the platform for business models. We're doing that in three ways. Mechanical recycling, then I'll talk a little bit about chemical or molecular recycling, and also using bio-based feedstocks. What we've done in each of these areas is try to understand what success looks like in terms of sustainability of economic business model.
If I just say briefly in terms of mechanical recycling, this is our QCP joint venture with SUEZ you've seen before. It was clear to us that what needs to change in this business was the way pricing works. Previously in this market, you had companies that are involved, and actually today you have companies that are involved in recycling that are not connected to companies like us, not connected to the virgin polymer makers. Therefore, what has happened is you've had a norm in the industry of discounting from prime product pricing to recycle. Recycles tend to be sold 70% or much lower than prime. What we're doing successfully is changing that model by applying our technology, by applying our customer intimacy.
I'm happy to report now through QCP, that actually we are selling product at at least the same price, in some cases higher, because we are able to forge those relationships with end users and bring that product technology to market. That's the first example. Secondly, when we think about chemical recycling, which is very important for those plastics, mixed plastics, or those hard plastics that are difficult to mechanically recycle, we've identified that actually the key to unlock value here is scale. We are working very hard in our R&D to understand how we can redesign and reimagine those chemical recycling processes to provide production scale. Different driver, but the same idea. How can we present, how can we deliver sustainable economic business models out of sustainability?
For us, when we think about it as LyondellBasell, we see a huge opportunity, a wasted opportunity, if you excuse the pun, in the current situation. Our vision is that plastic doesn't become waste, is that plastic is used and becomes a useful raw material or feedstock for some other purpose. We think that is a possible future state. As I think is clear, we have a very disciplined approach to growth. Just suffice to say that technology informs the way we grow. It's very clear that the way we think about growing is we build on our strong technology platforms, essentially utilizing technology behind those growth strategies. Finally, just to summarize the situation. These technology-enabled platform products are high margin. They're very stable. We believe they're growing. They represent a really important part of our portfolio.
In addition, the technology itself allows us to have higher operating rates, allows us access to product and customer intimacy and excellence, and also, I think, informs the way we grow for the future. A kind of North Star, if you like, in the way we think about our business. Finally, of course, innovation will lead the way in terms of how we want to reimagine business models in the sustainability space. Thank you very much for your attention. With that, myself and Jim would be happy to take questions. We have one.
Steve Byrne from BAML. What was the headcount at Schulman when you made that acquisition, and what do you think it'll be next August?
Well, the headcount at A. Schulman was roughly 5,000 employees when we acquired the company. I think I would prefer not to discuss maybe where we would end up, but I think it is fair to say that there are some cost measures that we are taking place to improve that position for us going forward.
Thank you. Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. You mentioned that some of these recycled plastics or polymers that you're selling now, you're pricing above virgin material. Could you talk a little bit about the profitability of those products and where the overall QCP JV is? Is it profitable, or what's the path to profitability? We
Okay. There are two things I'd like to consider in terms of that. Firstly, which is interesting, what drives profitability in this part of our business is not monomer polymer deltas, of course, right? Because what you have actually is an input, which is waste. Now, we actually choose to have quite a high-value waste, so we pay for that. That's not free, but it's a pretty stable price. What's really driving profitability is two things, price and scale. We think that we have a path to really drive. For us, we want to get to reinvest in profitability because it's not going to be enough for us to have one QCP. That is not our vision. Our vision is it's a platform that we will be able to build on.
From the pricing part, as I mentioned earlier, we think we're very happy with where that is. In terms of the scale, we've already moved QCP from 25 KT to 35 KT. We're going to make a further step there. We will continue to grow. We see a very nice path in terms of getting from where we were, which as I said, is in general, historically, the mechanical recycling business has been pretty tough in terms of getting that step by step in terms of our target, which is reinvestment economics. We're happy with the pricing part. We're working on the scale part.
Matthew Blair from Tudor, Pickering. Jim, you talked about these additional Schulman synergies at a time when it seems like APS is facing some headwinds here. I think EBITDA was down to $139 million in Q2. Could you talk about what's working, what's not working in APS, and what do you see as normalized EBITDA for this segment going forward?
Yeah. I would say in the space of synergies, where we've actually encountered more success than maybe we anticipated upon closure. On the procurement space, I think we found a lot of value in the scale and scope of LyondellBasell and our ability to buy raw materials at, I would say, more competitive prices. We've also found that the consolidation of assets and the removal of fixed costs from our portfolio, we had quite a bit of assets running at extremely low operating rates. We've been able to combine those products into existing assets or consolidation of assets, and we found that cost that was available to us through that type of manufacturing optimization has been greater than maybe we originally anticipated. I think your comments around the performance of the business is right on. I think there are quite a few headwinds in the market right now.
The automotive market has not been, I would say, strong. I would say that we have seen some recovery now in the space of Asia. I think we still have a little ways to go with respect to regulations around automotive emission standards. I think it is creating somewhat of a bottleneck in terms of consumer demand in the space of automotive. I will tell you that the synergies we are capturing are real. The other thing you have to consider is we're offsetting a lot of those synergies right now with cost to achieve. The thing you have to consider is into the future, the cost to achieve will roll out, and the synergies will be sustained. Try to keep balanced the fact that we are also reporting run rates.
Those as we qualify new grades, we transition to new raw materials, transition into the new pricing, it will take some time. We are tracking run rate, and unfortunately, now you are seeing the cost to achieve offsetting some of that. I would say the run rate, when we put all three businesses together, we advertise roughly $600 million in terms of stable market conditions with respect to the APS segment. Of course, with $200 million in synergy capture, that should push us up close to $800 million when the cost to achieve start to roll out of the division. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you very much then.
All right. Thank you.
Okay, good morning. Let's continue now. Welcome you to the breakout for Intermediates and Fuels. In this breakout, we will give you insight into how we deliver the value from our advantaged coproduct and PO technology, integration to advanced shale-based feedstocks, and upside from market opportunities. We have a brief video prepared. A video from Brad Beauchamp, the President of Carpenter, a PO and EO customer, as well as Alejandro de Barreda, the CEO of Grupo Kuo from Mexico. He is a styrene customer. Before we go there, I would like to introduce Torkel Rhenman, who runs our I&D business. He joined us t hree months ago, Dan Coombs, who is in charge of refining and manufacturing globally. With this, let's play the videos, please. Thank you.
My name is Brad Beauchamp, and I'm the President and Chief Operating Officer for Carpenter Co.
I'm Alejandro de la Barreda, Grupo Kuo CEO.
Carpenter Company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of polyurethane foam.
Kuo is a Mexican conglomerate founded over 45 years ago, with global presence in more than 70 countries.
I would say that LyondellBasell is one of the premium chemical raw material suppliers in the world.
LyondellBasell is a professional and reliable company that honors its commitments, guarantees the supply and quality of its products with a top-notch service.
They do a very good job of actively trying to understand our business, where we're going with it, and how it fits into the larger context of the global marketplace.
Their clear business vision, the ability to develop their own technology, coupled with their state-of-the-art facilities and sustainable culture are key advantages for the future.
LyondellBasell's decision to make a large-scale investment in the Houston area sends a strong signal that they're interested in being in the business for the long-term.
Thank you, Thomas. Good morning, everyone, again. I will now cover the intermediates and the fuel portfolio, which should be seen as a portfolio of resilient businesses capable of capturing market opportunities. These businesses have strong assets, advantaged feedstock, proprietary technologies, and unique capabilities, as you'll hear about the Houston Refinery. We take a very focused approach and disciplined approach to growth. They support our sustainability effort. I'll talk about the oxyfuel benefits in terms of reducing greenhouse gas. We also make biofuels, which is part of this. We see these pillars as long-term durable advantages, and on top of this, we leverage our company's core strength in operational excellence. This portfolio generated $1 billion EBITDA 12 months trailing. While assets are located in the U.S. and Europe, 40% of the product is exported outside of those regions.
This business is comprised of three value chains: the oxyfuels, our Houston Refinery, our intermediate chemicals, acetyls, styrene, ethanol and oxide, and derivatives. They are interconnected to various degrees with other parts of the companies on feedstock then also in operations. From an earnings standpoint, let me describe how the benefit from the market upside that I introduced as a theme for this portfolio. If you look at the graph, in 2018, they benefit from upsides in styrene and acetyls as the industry struggled with supply. With LyondellBasell's high asset reliability, we're able to capture market upsides, both in volume and margin, making 2018 a very strong year. In 2019, we see styrene and acetyls weak, we have an upside on the oxyfuel sides that we're capturing. Oxyfuel is delivering a very strong year.
For 2020, we see upsides that Dan will talk about for the marine fuels in our IMO 2020. To the first business, oxyfuels. We make oxyfuels from TBA. One-third of the TBA is used for making isobutylene that goes into end products such as tires and lubricants. We have our new PO TBA plant starting up second half 2021 that Bob mentioned. This plant will have 5% lower cash cost and will be the lowest cost PO plant in the world. Lower than the second lowest plant, which is also a LyondellBasell plant. This new plant incorporates the next generation PO TBA technology and will be our sixth PO TBA plant that we built. You will see where some of these advancements for making that possible when you visit our Houston Technology Center, where they've been working on the improvements in this process.
Ethanol is our competition, but we see oxyfuel as a cleaner, more efficient fuel and better at reducing pollution such as smog. We see new regulations driving efficiency in cars and stricter air quality as growth drivers. Oxyfuels currently only have a 3% penetration in the total fuel space, so we see opportunities to increase this penetration through the benefits of the product from a sustainability standpoint. Just look at the graph in terms of our performance. For 2019, you see crack spreads lower, but butane upgrade very strong, and hence a good year, and again, supporting our theme of capturing upsides. For more on fuel, let's hear it from you, Dan.
All right. Thank you, Torkel, and also thank you all for being here with your interest in LyondellBasell today. We have one refinery. It is located here in Houston. Houston, our location is very strategic because we are located on the ship channel with our own docks. We have access to Canadian crude through the pipeline and through rail. We have access to heavy crudes from around the world, and access to not only our own pipelines, but terminals and pipelines for many others to receive the best valued crudes for our operations and to sell our products domestically into the U.S. market or to export them around the world. It is also one of the largest refineries in the U.S. at 268,000 barrels a day.
More importantly, it's a very complex refinery, and it has the ability to take the heaviest, highest sulfur crudes in the world and convert them to ultra-low sulfur products. In fact, it is one of the highest coking capacity per crude capacity at 35% of a refinery in the world. It also produces about a 50% distillate yield, which is above the U.S. average of 35%. It's a machine that's designed to take the heaviest, highest sulfur crudes and convert them into ultra-low sulfur fuels. Our operations have also been much stronger over the past three years. In fact, Bob reported at the earnings call over 97% operating rates through the middle of the year, and those good operations are continuing. Now I want to shift gears to a chart that talks about the benefits of IMO. IMO stands for International Maritime Organization.
It's an agency of the United Nations who regulates maritime shipping. They have passed a regulation as of January 1st of 2020, that will reduce the sulfur in marine fuels from 3.5% to 0.5%. It's a major change in marine fuel regulations. There are many refiners around the world today that can take a heavy barrel, they can top it, and they can blend some of those higher sulfur products in the heavier ends into maritime fuel. Their ability to do that will be restricted. We believe, and the consultants believe, that the demand for heavy high sulfur crudes will decline. Furthermore, since the ship owners will need to buy lower sulfur components, we also believe the demand for the low sulfur distillate products will increase. Decrease in demand for heavy high sulfur crudes, increase in demand of low sulfur distillate products.
That fits the ability of our refinery very well. HRO, Houston Refinery, is very well positioned for this. First of all, we're operating well. Second of all, we've completed all our major maintenance activities for the next two years. We don't have another major maintenance turnaround scheduled for over two years. This chart shows the Maya 2-1-1 . You see a historic chart, and then you see a band going forward. The band is because we've taken the range of three consultants. Remember, we run 95 million or more barrels a year of crude oil. 95+ million barrels of crude oil per year. A $1 shift in this margin would be worth $100 million, roughly for us. These consultant views range from $5-$10 per barrel. $1 is $100 million, 5- 10x that.
It shows a range of benefits that the consultant views would have for our refinery. We're very well positioned for this new regulation. I will turn it back to Torkel, who will cover the intermediates businesses next. Thank you.
Let me then start with styrene, and styrene is made from our second advantaged co-product technology for making propylene oxide. This is the second lowest cost technology. We have three assets. We have one located in Europe. If you look at an equity basis, actually 80% of our capacity is based in the U.S. with advantaged low-cost ethylene and natural gas. While styrene growth in the U.S. and Europe is probably less than 1%, in China, we see the growth being above 4%. With that styrene being imported and lack of supply in China, we see styrene opportunities growing there. For us, Logic, what we're looking at is potential investments into POSM expansions into China. On our acetyl sides, here we take advantage that these assets are all based in the U.S. We start with natural gas to make methanol.
From butane, we make TBA, and with TBA plus methanol, we make our MTBE, which is part of our oxy fuels. From methanol, we also make acetic acid, and adding ethylene, we make VAM. Today, we are about 75% integrated in methanol, e.g., that we consume 75% of our methanol internally. As we start up the new PO/TBA plant, we'll actually be 100% integrated into methanol, e.g., all of it will be consumed in-house. This portfolio, all U.S.-based, take maximum advantage of shale gas benefits that we have. We see this making it a very long-term, durable, sustainable business. The markets that this platform serves is very diverse, going from durable, non-durable, consumer, industrial, transportation, and we see that this diversity supports making this a very earning, stable business. On sustainability, 50% of our oxyfuels is ETBE, and in making ETBE, about 42% of the component is bio-based ethanol.
We are the number one ETBE producer in the world. From the strong sustainability benefits, we see growth opportunities. I'll take it as an example. This is a recent study that has been made in Europe. Europe currently has about 95 octane gasoline, is the most commonly used. If you would increase the octane level to 102 and take the advantage of higher efficient engines, you would see a reduction of total fuel consumption by 7%, and the corresponding CO2 reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will reduce in the similar amount. Gasoline price would go slightly up, the cost per driven mile will actually decrease. The consumer, a typical European consumer, would save $150 a year if this would be a change made in Europe. It takes advocacy effort to do this.
We're investing in that together with the industry, to promote those changes to happen. We see growth opportunities in these sustainable fuels that benefits the climate and pollution. As Bob mentioned, we take a very disciplined approach to growth in our capital allocation. Our PO/TBA project builds on proprietary leading edge, next generation PO/TBA technology and will contribute to $400 million-$450 million EBITDA. Once complete, we have lower CapEx and hence a double boost to cash flow. To capture the opportunities in China, both for propylene oxide and styrene, we see there are opportunities for expansion with POSM. We see it likely through a joint venture. Through that, as Bob explained, we have lower equity through leveraging up. We have lower CapEx. We have faster execution by having a local partner, and hence, we see a better return.
What I would like you to take away from this portfolio of business is that this is a resilient portfolio, taking advantage of our technology, the advantaged feedstocks, and market opportunities for upsides. We have a track record of delivering on those market opportunities, and we see more opportunities in the years ahead. Dan talked about the IMO 2020. I see opportunities for oxyfuels, acetyls, styrene in China. There are opportunities for this platform to also profitably grow. On a personal note, this is a very exciting time to be joining LyondellBasell. I've been here now for almost three months. I see LyondellBasell as an exceptionally strong company. I'm very impressed with what I see in our operations side and how lean one can manage to operate as well as we do.
With that, I look forward to leveraging those strengths in taking advantage of the opportunities that we see for this business. I'm sure that Dan sees the same excitement when it comes to capturing the IMO opportunities on the refinery sides. Thank you. I'd like you to open up for questions.
Okay. We do have questions. We have microphones, and if you'd wait for the microphone, please say your name so that the audience will know, that's online, who you are, and then take the question.
Thank you. Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. On styrene, there is a lot of capacity coming on in China. How do you think that will impact U.S. styrene margins going forward? How resilient can they be in the face of this new Chinese capacity?
I think we're already seeing margins compressed already, with, I think, a slowdown in the growth of styrene. Being new to the business, three months in, I'm still learning in terms of that outlook. I see still, I think everybody believes in the opportunities for growth in China. Probably the question mark would be about the capacity utilization in other regions.
Thanks. Matthew Blair from Tudor, Pickering. I had a question for Dan on the flexibility of the refinery as it relates to IMO. In August and September, we saw Gulf Coast high sulfur fuel oil prices really come down. At the same time, Maya crude stayed relatively elevated. Could you just talk about can the Houston Refinery switch to running fuel oil as a feedstock in that kind of a pricing environment? What kind of impact might it have on your yields?
Yeah. Okay. Good question, Matthew. First of all, we did see the fuel oil markets moving downwards, so the price of high sulfur fuel down in August. There's been some instability in that in September related to the Saudi events, more than likely. The refinery runs Maya crude, but we also have the ability to run many other crudes from around the world. We can run about 10% lighter crudes and about 90% heavy. We do source a number of other feedstocks intermediate to the crude if we have, and we do typically have additional cat cracking capacity or even coking capacity based upon the feedstock. We run the plant to its most optimum. We buy crudes to create the most value, and we have that flexibility.
We do expect, again, the benefits of IMO to be more seen in the Q4 and certainly into next year as people start getting ready and get the fuel in the tanks and getting it sourced in the right places around the globe now.
Thank you. Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. With the perspective joint venture in China that you're considering or would look to consider on styrene, obviously you bring the technology to the cost position, but what, in particular, are you looking for your partner to bring to the equation, and how much of the JV would you want a 50/50 JV, or what do you look to get out of it?
Yeah. I think we have multiple options. We already have a joint venture with Sinopec today. We have multiple options in terms of who we would be with. We look for a partner to be a local in terms of bringing the ability to execute quickly at low capital cost. Those are the advantages. I would also emphasize that even though styrene is interesting because of the growth, our investment is primarily to capture the PO opportunity. The styrene is a complement to that platform, which makes us very competitive because we have the benefit of both. I don't know if that answered your question. Next question.
Steve Byrne from BAML. You mentioned you had 3% penetration globally in oxy fuels. I just would like to hear your view. Is there a real value proposition of the oxy fuel, or is this really driven by regulatory drivers?
It's a combination of both. I think the regulatory, of course, needs to happen for the industry to change. The U.S., as you all know, went ethanol. If you look from all these experts, Europe went for oxy fuels with MTBE, ETBE. Japan went for ETBE. Mexico went for MTBE. It has a stronger sustainability story. The reason why the U.S. went for ethanol, in my view, are twofold. Supports the grain lobby, and secondly, you had leakages of tanks that contaminated the groundwater. Now, in other regions, everybody has double-hulled tanks, and we have not had any leakages of groundwater into Europe or other regions. For us, we do our lobbying effort and our promotion advocacy. We think we have a fantastic story in terms of the benefits of MTBE and ETBE. That's the way I look at it.
Yes. I think Dave again.
Thank you again. David Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Two quick things. First, on the POSM JV in China, any sense of timing? Secondly, any desire to get bigger in acetyls in the U.S., acid and/or VAM? Thank you.
On the first one, I don't have anything to say at this time. We hope to come back when we are ready for it. On the acetyls, I like the business. As I mentioned, the strengths that we have being integrated into low-cost feedstock. We're not the largest in this, as you know. I think that there are opportunities for us to grow this business in a profitable way. Being new to the business, we're of course, going through working our strategy. It's one that I find very interesting.
Thanks. Matthew Blair, Tudor, Pickering. Dan, I was curious, how excited are you about these Tier 3 gasoline standards? They originally came into effect in 2017. We haven't really seen too much of an octane premium since, but octane spreads have been widened out so far this year. How much of an impact do you expect to see in 2020 when Tier 3 comes fully online?
Yeah. Tier 3 will be more of an impact next year than it has been. We completed our investments to produce Tier 3 gasoline, which is less than 10 parts per million sulfur, in 2017. The ability of people to use credits from the Tier 2 regulation will end at the end of this year. 2020 will be more impactful. Number one, we can produce a gasoline to that standard. Number two, some of the gasolines that were imported up to that point will not. There are some refiners that cannot meet that standard. They'll need to get credits from those that can, but without going back to those historic Tier 2 credits. We do expect this to be another benefit for us and our capability to produce these ultra-low sulfur products, including distillates and gasoline as well, Matthew. Great question.
Any further questions?
Thanks. Vincent Andrews again. If you could just clarify on the PO/TBA at Channelview, you made a comment about 5% cost coming out. I just want to make sure, is that facility is going to be 5% more cost competitive than your other facilities, or you're taking out 5% of the cost out of all of your PO/TBA production?
It's the new technology and all the advancements that we have in designing and building the new plant that will lower that plant's cash cost by 5%.
Okay. Just that one plant.
Which will make it the leading plant globally. Any further questions? I'd like to thank you all very much.
Okay. Thank you very much. Now we have take a 15-minute break. Please reconvene in here at 10:45 A.M. Thank you very much.
[Break]
Welcome back, everybody. If you can take your seats, and we can move on to the next session, where we're going to discuss our financial performance. Before we get towards the end of the program, I just want to take some time to thank some people that helped us out quite a bit. Beyond our Investor Relations group, we recruited somebody from Mike Waldron's Communications group to help us out, a woman named Veronica Adamczyk, and she did an outstanding job in coordinating all the production and everything that goes on today to make this run smoothly, both here in Houston and out in Channelview later this afternoon. I just want to thank her for that.
In the Investor Relations group, I'm trying to see who's in the room right now. I think, Cheryl Fletcher, who many of you know for many years has worked with us, she's outside there, probably somewhere still. Cheryl has done a great job and organized this. Sandra Martinez will be my assistant moving forward. Cheryl's moving on to Torkel, so we're going to have a rotation in the group there. I wanted to make sure that all of you had a chance to meet or will have a chance to meet this afternoon Anna Chang. If you could just stand up, Anna. She's the newest member of the Investor Relations group here at LyondellBasell, and so I hope you all get her contact information or business card and know how to reach out to anybody in investor relations. Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the hard work of Carrie Bear.
She just did an amazing job in getting these materials together, designing the slides, keeping everything consistent, everything on track. Just an amazing job. Please, a big round of applause for Carrie Bear. Stand up. Great. Now I'd like to continue the program, and we'll move into financial performance, and I'd like to introduce our Chief Financial Officer, Tom Aebischer.
Okay. Welcome back to the plenary. I'm sure you had very informative and interesting breakout sessions with our three platforms, with my colleagues. Bob talked about leading, Bob talked about advantage, and I would like now to spend a little bit more time with you on the discipline approach to value creation. The first thing I would like to start with is the slide you've already seen. This slide is just a different depiction of the capital allocation framework in LyondellBasell, but really hasn't changed. First and foremost, obviously the start is a very strong cash flow generation from operating activities. That strong cash flow generation, which I will go into a little bit more detail in the following slide, is distributed in a very meaningful and in a very disciplined way. First of all, we finance with our cash flow from operating activities our dividend.
When you look at this circle here, we are looking at 2020 to 2022. We estimate our total dividend payment to be somewhere between $1.4 billion-$1.5 billion. That takes into account certain assumptions, obviously with respect to dividend increase and also with respect to opportunistic share buybacks. Second, equal importance is obviously maintaining our assets. The investments going forward, 2020, 2022, in maintenance, sustaining CapEx between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion. That maintenance CapEx number is extremely important to, first and foremost, invest into safe operations, which is tied to performance, financial performance. You heard that from Bob as well. The way I look at it as a finance person, virtually our safety performance statistic is a leading indicator on how we are going to do in our business. Very important, and the rest, obviously, is to maintain our assets. We maintain our assets well.
It wouldn't be possible to run at these very high utilization rates, some of the highest in the industry, in certain businesses, the highest in the industry. That wouldn't be possible. Contrast that $1.1 billion-$1.2 billion in sustaining CapEx with a depreciation charge somewhere between $1.2 billion-$1.3 billion. It virtually is in equal parts, maintenance CapEx on one side, depreciation charge on the other side. We talked about growth CapEx. Growth CapEx 2020, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion going forward, and in 2022, $700 million. There was a question earlier around that moderating CapEx envelope for growth, for profit-generating CapEx. Don't forget, I would like to remind yourself of the EBITDA bridge Bob has shown, the smaller growth CapEx have very interesting returns. I will talk a little bit more about return on invested capital on the following slides.
Last but not least, we have surplus cash available to continue with opportunistic share buybacks as we have done since 2013, and/or obviously value generating inorganic growth. You have seen the parameters, the investment hurdles we have put forward, the after tax, at least an IRR of greater of 12%. Bob has shown that to you, and that hasn't really changed as we have looked into opportunities also in our past. Everything and every decision we made, and also as we obviously stress test our dividend, as we stress test our profit generating CapEx, our investment in inorganic opportunities, the guiding principle clearly is a strong investment grade rating. Let's move and go a little bit deeper. How do we actually generate that cash flow from operating activity? A very important piece to it is how lean and efficient and effective we actually do run our business.
You see here on the bottom right the chart which shows you on the SG&A level, at what level LyondellBasell operates versus some of our peers. 2.7%, that's the number as a percentage of revenue. Clearly the best in the industry. We don't make shortcuts. When we have a value proposition towards a customer, for example, we obviously test that value proposition towards a customer, and we deliver that value proposition as long as we get the value for how we service our internal and obviously even more importantly, our external customers. Benchmarking not only in manufacturing but also in SG&A, is part of our DNA. We benchmark virtually anything where we have a benchmark to compare ourselves to first quartile. We generate gap closure plans, and as we then put together budgets and plans, we execute on these gap closure plans going forward.
I would like to say it one more time. The lean and effective and efficient cost structure is really part of the DNA of LyondellBasell. It's part of our culture. Because it's part of our culture, we believe as well, it's very difficult to copy. Another important factor, that cash conversion, is our focus on net working capital. We have very frequent meetings. We sit together as a management team at least on a monthly basis to go in detail to the different components of net working capital. What you see here is our cash conversion cycle. In average 2016 to 2018, 53 days. You see on the left-hand side, on the bottom of the left-hand side, the chart. Also in these metrics, compared to our peers, clearly an outstanding performance. Do not believe that we are satisfied with 53 days.
We continuously look for opportunities to actually improve the cash conversion cycle even further, be it on inventory management, be it on our procurement, working with our procurement on the supplier side, and obviously continuously as well with our customers on the customer side. The effective tax rate, we said that in the Q2 call for 2019 is forecasted to be 17%. That's the effective tax rate. The cash tax rate for 2019 will be significantly lower than the 17%, obviously, that's another contributor to that very high conversion rate from EBITDA to cash flow from operating activities, which we have achieved over the last few years, a conversion, a yield, as we call it, of 80%. Again, we continuously look forward to improve that yield even further. The next I would like to talk about the leading cash generation.
Companies in the material sector are often defined by products and markets they serve. The rationale is that more specialized products and markets deserve higher valuations. This here shows you on the bottom left-hand corner of the chart how we fare vis-à-vis some of our peers. Clearly, less volatility in cash flow and a higher percentage in terms of enterprise value of cash flow we produce. When you look at this, that consistent cash flow delivery over time at a rate somewhere between 12% and 14% of enterprise value. That discount as we trade towards other clearly leaves a lot of room for value creation and further improvement on our valuation. Let's move on to the increasing cash flow profile.
I think Bob went through the simple math on how we look at the business from where we have invested, what we have invested, and how are we now going to harvest the fruits of our labor over the coming two years. I remind you again, we expect about $1.3 billion of additional EBITDA out of this growth investment we have done. You convert that with a yield of 80% into cash flow from operating activity. That's roughly $1 billion of additional cash flow. I talked to you about the reduction, respectively, the lower levels of profit-generating CapEx. That's another $1.1 billion, a little bit more than $1 billion over that period of time. On a free cash flow basis, we're going to generate more.
We are going to double the free cash flow, as you see on the slide, from roughly $2 billion to more than $4 billion of free cash flow. That only takes into account the cash generation from investments we have done, or we are in the process of doing. Hyperzone, which is coming on stream almost as we speak, PO/TBA 2021. We talked about the A. Schulman acquisition, and we talked also the smaller profit-generating CapEx envelope, which has a very, very attractive return profile. What it does not include is market dynamics, which may provide headwinds, which may provide tailwinds. That's obviously all of us have maybe some different expectation on these assumptions. Spending just a moment on, again, the past before we go into the future. I think it's important to remind us since 2016, since 2015, we have invested into growth CapEx about $3.3 billion.
Some of these projects have started back then or are ongoing, as I said, the two very large projects. We have invested $2.4 billion during that time frame, which obviously mainly was Schulman, into inorganic investments. Because of all these investments over that period of time, on average, we have produced a return on invested capital of 30%. Really very attractive numbers. If you are interested in reconciliations to these numbers, they are in your handouts. At the very same time, so we work on all cylinders. At the very same time, we have paid a dividend of $5.8 billion and we have done share repurchases of $10.3 billion. Let's spend a little more time on dividend. The dividend is sacrosanct. You heard Bob talking about stable and progressive as we go through the cycle of a dividend.
We are currently in the 93rd percentile of the S&P 500 with respect to our dividend. We have had 11 dividend increases since 2011. We paid the first dividend in 2011 with $0.55 and have a dividend now of $4.15. On an annual basis, totally on an annual basis, it's $4.20, which gives a dividend yield per share with the current share price of somewhere at 4.9%. These yield numbers don't mean much if we don't translate that into how secure the dividend actually is. The coverage ratio, if you look dividend versus, and you compare it to cash flow from operating activities, so it's a three times coverage we have based on the last 12 months. Over the last five calendar years, we have continuously produced stable cash flow from operating activities between five and $6 billion.
On this $5 billion and $6 billion basis, it's clearly even higher than three times coverage. All this is supported by a strong balance sheet. We have currently a total liquidity of $6.1 billion. That's the liquidity by the end of August of 2019. Very recently, including the tender we've done back in July on our own shares of roughly $3.1 billion. We have a very strong, one of the strongest credit rating in our space with a BBB+ from S&P and a Baa1 from Moody's. Our target total debt to EBITDA ratio is between 1.5x- 2.5x . You may ask yourself, where are you currently in that ratio? Currently within that ratio, we are about in the middle. We're about two times.
Clearly that balance sheet gives us flexibility and gives us opportunities to act if we want to act on any type of value creating opportunity there may be it inorganic, be it organic, or be it for shareholder remuneration. The balance sheet is supported by a very balanced maturity profile. Some of you may know, we have just recently issued two tranches of each EUR 500 million in the Euro market, bonds in the Euro market. A seven-year with a coupon of 0.875% and the 12-year with a coupon of 1.625%. The cost of debt with this transaction, the total cost of debt is currently roughly 3.87%. The 3.87% is before tax and before any positive impact on our derivative strategy we are deploying with respect to fix to floating. Very balanced profile.
We finance mainly in U.S. dollars and in Europe, which obviously is a natural hedge towards our assets, which are also mainly in Europe and in the United States. Low refinancing risks, and as we go forward, we continuously work on that maturity profile to even further improve it. Before I close, let's come back to the three platforms. One of the aims of the three platforms really is to separate our business based on some of the attributes, which hopefully you have learned a lot during the breakout sessions with my colleagues. Another message clearly was we are not just an O&P company only. We talk about integrated polymers, $3.5 billion on the last 12 months EBITDA. An EBITDA margin of 23%. We talk about technology-enabled products. Last 12 months, EBITDA of $1.4 billion, margin of 19%.
I'm sure you learned a lot with respect to Jim Guilfoyle in the Advanced Polymer Solutions in that section with respect to the execution and capturing of synergies in that space. The expectation clearly is that that margin is going to further improve. Last but not least, an intermediates and fuels platform with about $1 billion. We talked about, I was part of that session in the intermediates and fuel platforms. We clearly talked about the opportunities, the upside we see in that space. Lyondell trades at a blended multiple currently of approximately 6.3x. When you compare this with the three platforms, clearly the lowest trading multiple. I think what I conclude here, clearly if that discount, what we are trading on at this 6.3x, is moderating clearly a significant potential value upside over time. In conclusion, three points.
Leading cash flow generation, prudent fiscal management, and disciplined capital allocation. I hope we could bring across a little bit better today and closer to you how we generate the cash flow and how we are focused on actually maintaining that leading position in cash flow generation in EBITDA and turning that EBITDA into actual cash flow. We shared with you our prudent focus on the balance sheet, our focus on maintaining a sound and strong balance sheet with a strong credit rating. Last but not least, our very focused and very disciplined capital allocation strategy, working on organic CapEx, working on inorganic, and obviously, as we have done in the past and will continue in the future with decent and attractive shareholder remuneration. With this, thank you very much for your attention. I would like to hand over to Bob for his closing remarks. Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you, Thomas. Let me offer a few closing remarks before I invite the management team up for our closing Q&A. First of all, I hope that you found the breakout sessions to be informative as we explain a little bit more in detail by the groupings of the businesses, why we believe they're leading, why they're advantaged, and why those advantages are durable. The other thing we talked a lot about today was resilience, and I think that that comes through in the EBITDA over a period of time in high oil price, low oil price environment. The resilience is bolstered by global footprint. It's bolstered by feedstock flexibility. We have enormous feedstock flexibility here in the U.S.
We've increased feedstock flexibility in Europe, and I'm convinced that our cracker fleet across the world will do well in a range of market environments, whether it's higher or lower oil price. Today, we introduced you to this very sort of compelling investment thesis of a leading global portfolio of proven and flexible assets, advantaged in terms of our flexibility and our footprint, our ability to operate well, which provides for strong, fat cash flows in a range of environments. When we generate that cash, we put it through our disciplined capital allocation framework to create value for our shareholders. Thomas talked about our framework. I want to repeat it one more time. Strong, secure, progressive dividend. Consistent sustaining capital. Disciplined organic growth measured by what we have done and what we haven't done.
A very disciplined, value-minded approach to inorganic growth, again, demonstrated by both what we have done and what we haven't done. All of that solves for a solid investment-grade rating, which we believe gives us flexibility to take advantage of opportunities. As I mentioned about our inorganic growth, it aims to apply our strengths of operational excellence and commercial excellence to create value with assets that are in or adjacent to the value chains where we compete today. I think our strategy is very clear on who we are and what we want to be long-term, and we have the patience to execute along those lines. Free cash flow improvement. I walked through this math earlier. Thomas repeated that this does not depend on cyclical improvements in markets. These are essentially benefits from investments that we've undertaken over the last three, four years.
We're now about to harvest the fruit of these investments. We're continuing with small and medium-sized projects. We will do more polyethylene and more polypropylene expansions as we go into the next decade. It's merely a matter of phasing those projects as we see how markets develop. With an increase of $1.3 billion in EBITDA and $1.1 billion reduction in CapEx, we'll convert that into $2.1 billion of additional free cash flow. When you combine our leading position, our advantaged assets, our disciplined approach, we think that creates extraordinary value for our shareholders. I would submit to you that LyondellBasell today is positioned to do very well in a range of outcomes and is one of the most compelling investments in our space. With that, I'd invite the management team to come up for the closing Q&A.
Okay. We're happy to take your questions. Yep, there's one in the back of the room.
John Roberts, UBS. Bob, at the last Investor Day, Thomas had the slide with your investment capacity, and it was up to $30 billion. We sense a pivot here that something big is not on the horizon here. Is it just that you've been, again, preoccupied with Braskem, that it's been very hard to tee anything else up, and you're transitioning CFO right now. If we go out to when you have a new CFO in place in another year from now, and you've got all this new cash flow, do we kind of go back to you look at those big opportunities again?
I think, first of all, the number you quoted has grown since we last spoke. I think the idea here is our company strategy is very consistent. There's a bit of an evolutionary element to what we're doing. I think, John, you know what's important is that when you think about inorganic growth, we're very value-minded. We want to be opportunistic, and we're solving for a solid investment-grade rating post a transaction. As we've shown you by our actions, we're not in a rush to get something done. We're going to be value-minded, and we will play that card when we see the value potential, and we're willing to be patient on that. I don't think that's changed. I think it's very consistent with where we've been since 2017, and I think our actions have shown that. Yes. Jeff?
Jeff Zekauskas at J.P. Morgan. In your presentation, you divide your businesses up into three categories, and one is your technology-enabled products. You look at that and you say, "You know, this really deserves a nine times EBITDA multiple." If in the course of time, the multiple of Lyondell doesn't really change very much, does it make sense to reexamine whether these businesses should be a part of Lyondell, separate them off, and try to capture that above-average EBITDA multiple? Even on a smaller scale, you've done a very nice job with the compounding business of Schulman. Should that compounding business be spun free again and go into the public markets to try to capture a higher EBITDA multiple?
Well, thank you for your question. First of all, when you think about those businesses, many of them are based on our olefins backbone, so they're either ethylene or propylene-based businesses. It's very important to keep all of that connected. I think that's what makes this company so resilient in terms of its earnings power in a range of market environments. In the case of compounding, as I've said to Jim often, our focus today is to really set up the platform that we have envisioned with the combination of our legacy business and with A. Schulman. Our work is well underway. I like the progress that we're making. I want to see that platform complete, and then I think we'll be positioned to grow from there, whether it's inorganic or organic.
Today, our focus is on standing up a great platform. By the way, our compounding business was the only business on the planet that belongs inside of a company where we have process technology, catalysts, base resin production, and compounding. I would submit to you that integration of capability makes us very nimble in terms of how we innovate for our customers, whether it's for light weighting of vehicles or for unique packaging solutions. Today, it all fits very well together.
Thank you.
Yes. Vincent.
Thank you. Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. There isn't a slide in here on polypropylene and the market outlook. I can walk backwards from you pushing out your PP plant and all that. You're not buying Braskem. I wanted to conclude that maybe the PP market going forward is going to be a little softer than you expected a couple of years ago. Maybe you could just give us a broad outlook of where you think that market stands today, what you think supply and demand outlook is and what the margin expectation is.
Sure. Well, first of all, we didn't include it because we thought really the polyethylene cycle was most on investors' minds, and we had limited amount of time today. The polypropylene business has been very constructive. There's more capacity coming. I think given our position, our global position in polypropylene, we feel very good about the prospects of that business going forward. The timing of the PP expansion is just phasing. It's not an indication of us having a view about the PP business itself. In fact, the Bora JV will have polypropylene as well as output. We're growing also in our Thai venture, we're growing in our Korean venture. There is polypropylene growth in our company globally. It's a matter of just phasing it as we think through a multi-year strategy, as opposed to what are we just going to do this year. Right.
I don't know if my colleagues, Ken, if you want to offer any other.
No, I would agree. We are expanding the capacity currently with the debottleneck in North America. We've got a high return investment there that's going to be coming online. Certainly, it's going to be a market that continues to grow, and has been a stable earnings generator for us over the short-term, and we expect that to continue in the midterm.
Okay. Thank you. David? Yep.
Thank you. Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Bob, in one of the times in this slide, you highlighted very high ROIC of roughly 30% for the last four years, which is great, but implies you may have missed or passed on some value-creating opportunities. You've been too cautious. Would you agree with that assessment? Does that frame your thinking going forward, that being maybe a little more aggressive, either organically or inorganically going forward over the next three to five years?
No, I'll tell you, I feel very comfortable with the investments we've made, and I don't think we've missed an opportunity. If you think about back to 2013, 2012, we did the debottlenecks. We were early on that. I would argue that what we did was we built an integrated complex, but we did it over five years or seven years. We built the ethylene first. Now we're coming behind it building the polyethylene. We did the Schulman acquisition, PO/TBA. What I like about our investment profile is that we're investing in each of the large businesses in the company. We're not just investing in one business. I think that positions us to do well in a range of market environments. All of these products have their own cycles, if you will.
The ability to invest along three value chains, ethylene, polyethylene, propylene, polypropylene, propylene PO, I think makes us unique. My sense is we haven't missed any opportunities. Yep. Question in the back.
Great. Thanks. Arun Viswanathan, RBC. I guess I just wanted to get your thoughts again on China. There's been a lot of new capacity that's slated to come on. A lot of it is naphtha, but it seems like there's a little bit more capacity to swing to LPG for some of those facilities than initially thought. Do you envision a future where many of those crackers are running more LPG and naphtha prices come down structurally, such that the North American advantage shrinks from, say, $0.15 or $0.30 down to $0.05-$0.10? How do you think about the North American advantage evolving over the next several years?
Ken, you answered a similar question during a breakout, so please.
Right. Yeah. Our view on the advantage in North America is that that's going to continue. If you look at the development of NGL production in North America in this market, and you include a conservative view for exports, even with that, we expect that there's going to be a significant excess of ethane in this market. That advantage is going to continue. LPG is already traded around the world. That's not going to change, but it's also not going to detract from the value and the advantage that we see here in the North American market.
Frank.
Frank Mitsch from Fermium Research. Bob, sitting through the various breakout sessions and understanding that operating rates don't look like they're going to collapse. You've got Hyperzone, you've got Schulman Synergies, you got IMO 2020. Is it reasonable sitting here today to assume that 2019 is a trough in terms of Lyondell EBITDA?
Well, I think when you add up all of our investments that are now coming to fruition, and yes, I think one could draw that conclusion very easily. Yes. In the back there. Yep.
Jose Almonte, Legal & General Investment Management. Just wanted to ask, with respects to your commitment to the strong investment grade ratings, as you think about inorganic opportunities that you might have over the next several years, how do you think about that balance sheet flexibility and your willingness to, I guess, take leverage beyond the target and what your plans might be in that situation and what would you be willing to accept in terms of a credit rating, a minimum threshold, if you will?
Look, I think we have a lot of capacity on our balance sheet today. There's frankly no need for us to contemplate having more aggressive financial policy. I think given the parameters that Thomas has described, it avails us to the kind of opportunities that we may have interest in, overlaid with this sort of drive for returns and leveraging our capabilities. I don't foresee a need to have to do that. Thomas?
No, absolutely agree. We just shared with you our targets. We are not now kind of putting the targets at risk. I mean, the targets are what we have communicated. I think we have some debt investors here amongst us as well. The 1.5x- 2.5x , really, if you look at it into the rating space, leaves you actually very nicely at a strong investment grade rating. That's what we are solving for. That's what we are not going to put at risk. That's a very important message today. As I said, we are somewhere in the middle of that range. I leave it to you to calculate what that means in terms of capacity. You can run the numbers as well as we can.
Thank you.
Yep. P.J. and then, yep.
Yeah. Hi, P.J. Juvekar. Bob, you mentioned adjacencies. What does that mean? Would vinyl emulsions that go into paints and coatings or MDI, would that represent adjacencies to you? How do you think about investing in specialties versus just ethylene and polyethylene if you want to improve your multiple?
If you think about our company, P.J., the backbone of our company is the cracker. We make from C1 to C4, and then those molecules have value chains that go downstream. I think about those value chains as kind of our playing field. We could go upstream if we found interesting opportunities in the midstream space. We don't today. But if we did, we may be open to that. Downstream, we've talked about compounding as kind of being the outer boundary on the downstream side, because it still connects very well with the cracker technology catalyst and all of that. Specialty versus commodity. I mean, first of all, if I were to poll all of you'd probably have different answer on what you really think a specialty is, right?
The way I think about it is specialty businesses tend to be very heavily innovation oriented, very customized, and don't really lend themselves well to a company that runs large scale assets. This is where it's very important for us to be real clear on what it is that we're good at and how do we apply that to create value. What are we good at? Safe, reliable, cost-efficient operations. We're demonstrating our ability to build assets reasonably well. We're going to get better and better. We've demonstrated our ability to integrate. Our backbone is polyolefin and PO technology. We're going to stay pretty close to that core and think through what are we good at and how do we create value. I think real specialties don't belong in this company. Yes, Jonas. Oh, I'm sorry, Matthew. Matthew. Let's go to Matthew first. I'm sorry. Then Jonas. Yeah.
Thanks. Matthew Blair from Tudor, Pickering. I'm a little reluctant to ask a question on politics. Several U.S. presidential candidates have floated this idea of a total frack ban starting day one. Bob, I think it was one of your first slides, you mentioned the benefits of the shale revolution on your U.S. system. Have you looked at this issue? How do you think it would impact your business? Obviously, a disparate impact on U.S. versus non-U.S., what kind of alternative measures or mitigating factors could you take to offset some of the potential negatives here?
Yeah. Well, Matthew, first of all, as you said, the probability is fairly low. When you think about how energy has really turbocharged sort of the U.S. economy, it'd be difficult for something like that to really come to reality, and the citizens of the United States of America would be okay with that. Right. Now, in the context of being more environmentally responsible and thinking through how do we further our sustainability efforts, absolutely, we need to do that as an industry, whether it relates to emissions or plastic waste or what have you. I think that will continue to be a global phenomenon. The way I'd like to address your question is really think through more things that could happen with energy price changes because of supply-demand. As I mentioned, given that we have such a large European footprint, we're building out our Asian footprint.
I think the global participation that we have and our global reach, which is expanding, makes us more resilient in a range of political outcomes, if you will, around policy. That's why I think we need to continue to think of ways in which we can increase flexibility of our existing crackers, think about ways that we can participate in Asia where it's value-creating as well, and continue to support our European asset base, which we believe is second quartile or better on a European cost curve. Okay, Jonas. Yep.
Thank you. Jonas Oxgaard, Bernstein. We mentioned the Chinese building new capacity, there's also the oil majors plowing ungodly amounts of CapEx into the space, or at least promising to. As far I can tell, if those two put the amount of money they say into ethylene, there's no room for anyone else to build a cracker in the next 10 years. In that world, what role does Lyondell play? As a possible leading follow-up to that, are you positioning the technology part of the business to be your escape hatch?
Well, Jonas, it's difficult to predict what others may do, and the trend that you're describing is one that's on many investors' mind. The way I think about it when I bring it back to our company is that certainly we should be thinking about a range of scenarios, whether it's the supply side or the demand side. Ultimately, I think our actions really show that we're a company that's very deliberate, very thoughtful in how we're undertaking investment. I like the fact that as we sit here today, we have really a range of optionality, whether we continue to raise the dividend, which we've said we would do, build, buy back our shares. I like the position we're in today. I don't think we have to make a large capital allocation decision today.
We'll move when we see it, and we're monitoring what might happen in the big oil space. It seems to me that the reason they have interest in the downstream is because it creates value. If that very value gets destroyed, then you have to say to yourself, why would they invest further in that? That's, I think, the deliberation, that we'll have to see how it plays out. I have no insights into all of that other than I think about how does a company like ours prepare for a range of outcomes and be resilient so that we can create extraordinary value no matter what happens. Today, what we've presented to you, I think, positions our company to do that. Yep. Kevin? Right up front here.
Kevin McCarthy, Vertical Research Partners. An earlier questioner probed a little bit on your technology-related businesses and whether you might separate Schulman. I guess I had a similar line of questioning as it relates to technology licensing. If we look at some of your peers in that space, they tend to trade at 11x or 12x EBITDA kind of on a bad day, or maybe double Lyondell's multiple, roughly. Some of them claim that not being in the polyolefin business is a competitive advantage for them because they're licensing to polyolefin producers. I guess my question is, if it turns out over some period of time you don't command a meaningful premium to, let's say, the Westlakes of the world, might you be tempted to separate?
If the answer is no, we really wouldn't be tempted, maybe you can just elaborate on the value that you think that it creates resident inside of Lyondell.
I think it's a little bit building on Jonas' question about whether we would license more to generate cash flow. I actually think about this business, the technology business, as being very strategic. Great companies have great technologies, and I think we've shown today that in the key product areas, we have those technologies, and we continue to invest to develop the next generation, whether it's PO, polyethylene, polypropylene, or the catalysts that go into polyolefins. Kevin, the way I think about it is that, first of all, after the compelling arguments that Thomas provided, we're certainly going to get more credit on some of the parts. We're going to look forward to that translating.
In the event it doesn't, I continue to think that technology is an enabler for our company, and it's a real source of strength, and it's not one that we would monetize or separate for that amount of EBITDA. The value that it creates in our product business, I would tell you that our ability to innovate because we have end-to-end capability, we're much more nimble. When we think about the Hyperzone polyethylene process, two years ago, we were taking pilot plant material to customers in Germany and here in the U.S. to trial the product. We were able to get the proof of concept that yes, indeed, these products provide the benefits to our customers that we thought they would. It's all done in-house. We're able to do it quickly.
There's no concern about who will own the IP if now I have to get a producer involved. I think it's a form of integration that over the long-term creates value, just like ethylene and polyethylene. I think having the technology and being able to develop and test your new developments in-house allows us to be more agile and create value over the long-term. Again, I think of technology as an enabler.
Can I add to that?
Please.
On the specific point about having a technology business and a product business, right? The first thing to say, I think if you look at the technology and the licensing playing field, we have been incredibly consistent over 30, 40 years, and we're unique in that. You look at the space, technology companies being bought and sold, and bought and sold. You also look at a proof point at our market share and licensing. I showed that earlier. We're very successful. What I hear from our licensees is they love the fact that we are also a product player, and they love the fact for two reasons. Firstly, when you buy a license, you buy a license for 20 years, I said that earlier.
You're buying into the fact that we will continue to innovate, and we will continue to innovate because we're in licensing, we're in catalyst, and we're in product. You're not buying a static point in time, you're betting on the fact that we will continue to be a leader in innovation. The second point is simply in the marketplace, many of our products are the benchmark products in that marketplace. We've been really successful in China, for example, because our product with our great name is the benchmark product in high-density polyethylene pipes in China. When a licensee comes to us, they say, "Okay, if I buy your technology, I already know that you've done the hard work in terms of establishing benchmark products. I already know that with your reputation, you are going to keep innovating."
If I'm going to have a relationship with you for the next 20 years, I want to de-risk myself by aligning myself with you, by partnering with you." Actually, I've heard this question before, but my almost universal reaction from licensees is they love the fact that we understand products, we understand their business, and we're committed to continued innovation.
Well said. Thank you. Yes. Question in the back.
Alex here from [inaudible]. Do you have an internal view on how recycling and other government actions in this area might impact industry demand for polyethylene, polypropylene or other resins? And should the industry adjust its capacity growth plans because of that?
So, yeah, we've obviously got a view on that. And when we look at the growth rates in the industry, we look at the applications where we see recycling or substitution being the most threatened. Those are the non-durable single-use plastics. Actually, single-use plastics is a relatively small part of the market. And our portfolio is really geared towards the more durable part of the portfolio. But when we look at the growth rate, we talked earlier about a 4% growth rate. We've already baked into that what we see with a longer term view in terms of some of the recycling impacts of the targets that are being set in Europe, as well as some of some of the states in the United States. And that takes about a half of a percent off of the growth rate.
So we've baked that in with what we think is a reasonable view. I know there's a lot of ranges out there in terms of the impact. And what Bob said earlier is the key is we've got to be ready with our position in terms of our assets and our product portfolio to be able to compete in any environment going forward. And I think we're in a very good position for that.
Aebischer, did you want to add anything about your experience in Europe with the recycling industry?
Yeah, I think one of the key points there is to be able to offer to our customers a full range of products, whether this is prime product, recycled product, or any blend in between. And effectively, what we are doing is changing our business model, where we, if we are anticipating, if we are one of the first companies to be able to participate in those different markets, we will establish, as mentioned by Jim, we will establish the benchmark. We will establish the target markets. And that is all the work we are doing right now in Europe is to elaborate what could be the future market and making sure LyondellBasell is one of the pioneers in those activities.
Thank you. There is a question right up here.
Hi, Mike Sison. [inaudible] Mike Sison, Wells Fargo. If I think about the $6 billion in EBITDA you're at now, and then you add the $1.3 from future investments, takes you a little over $7 billion in 2022. If the economic environment actually accelerates or improves over the next couple of years. Where does that $7 billion potentially go? If there's sort of a weak spot over the next couple of years, what's the resilience in that $7 billion over the next couple of years?
Great question. On the upside, you could go back and look at 2017, 2018 margins in our O&P business and imply that onto the asset base in 2022. You could get upside there. Also, our refining business, I think there's kind of a two-step sort of upside process there. One is just more normalization of the earnings. The earnings have been depressed because of the market conditions, especially the light heavy differential really coming in because of the issues in Venezuela. On the other hand, because sweet crude production has been so high out of the Permian, right? We think that refining margins should normalize. That'll provide a step. IMO could provide another step. Likely, you heard Dan talk about our leverage and what $1 per barrel means to us. It's nearly $100 million of additional EBITDA.
On the upside, we have not incorporated that into our numbers or into our bridge, because I think you have to take a view on the market, and we'll let you do that. On the other side of the equation, the downside case, if you will, I think this is where we really wanted to bring out the resilience of our portfolio, the I&D business complementing O&P, having a European position, having a U.S. position. I think our portfolio, and with the backbone of very competitive crackers across the world, I think we'll be very resilient in terms of the kind of earnings we've delivered. Look at 2019, the last 12 months. We're around $6 billion, with arguably a really bad Q4 for the industry that was one of the worst in the past few years. Even with that, we were at $6 billion.
All right. Just one quick comment. If you're going to buy another Cleveland-based company, the Browns, you might want to get them early. I see a lot of Super Bowls coming to Cleveland.
I like that. Are you listening to that? You hear that? All right. One more.
It's Parag Patel with Capital Preservation Advisors. Your public disclosure has indicated that you have a superior safety record. I forgot the stats on accidents. Can you talk about the company culture, procedures, process that allows you to achieve that?
Yes. In my opening remarks, Parag, I mentioned about systems and culture. The systems are, we have this operational excellence standards where we do audits very regularly. Dale Friedrichs, who's here, who runs our HSE team. His team and the manufacturing folks collaborate very well together to do routine audits around process safety management. We also have a culture, I think of ownership, and one where at each site, you'll see this at Channelview, I think today, that there's a great sense of ownership and a sense of family at these sites. They look out for one another, and they're really focused on the task at hand. They think through, "Do I have all the equipment I need? Do I have the safety gear I need? Do I know the procedures? Do I feel equipped to do the work that I'm about to do?"
Every individual has the authority to stop the work. If they say, "Look, I don't feel comfortable," or, "I see something unsafe," every individual in this company has the authority to stop the plant if they have to, literally. Dan, maybe you'd like to add more.
I think you did very well, Bob. I think it starts with a basic value in our culture. Values are what you use to set your priorities, and safety is really a core value of the company. We don't sacrifice anything for safety. Stop work authority, good audit plan. We call our framework Operational Excellence, which is health, environment, safety, and also goes into reliability so that we are running safe and sustainable operations, and our customers can expect that, and our employees certainly are a key part of that and so are their families.
I want to add one more thing to this, Parag, which is that I go out to the sites reasonably often, and typically, when there's a big turnaround, I like to go out and do it during the shift change at night. I like to talk to the contractors. I can tell you what makes me really proud is that universally, the contractors, not the management of the contractors, but the guy with the wrench in his hand, he says to me. One guy didn't know what I did. He just said, "You must be someone important because you're here. I don't know what you do." He said, "Whenever there's a turnaround at Lyondell, I ask my boss if I can work there." He said, "I always feel safe when I work at one of your facilities.
I always know that I'm a person that's cared for, whether I'm a part of a contractor or I'm an employee. Those lines get blurred once I cross the gate. I'm a person who should be kept safe while they're on the site. I hear that in Lake Charles, I hear it in Wesseling in Germany. Across the company, contractors say, "If I have the choice, I'm going to work at one of your plants because I know that you'll keep us safe." That, to me, speaks volumes about the culture in the company. One last question. There's one there. Yes, Steve. All right. Any other questions, then? Yes, there's one more back there, and then we'll leave it there.
You're showing $1.9 billion EBITDA expectation for 2022. Should we think about it as a trough from which it will grow going forward or a normalized level that you expect over the course of the cycle? Could you just frame that?
From the new investments, you're asking?
I think it's $1.9 billion total for the company, if I understand correctly. CapEx.
Oh, CapEx.
CapEx.
Right. I thought you said earnings. I was like- Wait a minute, do we have a typo somewhere?
No, I said CapEx.
Okay, good. CapEx. Look, I think you should definitely think about our CapEx in 2019 as a high water mark for the next 5 years. I feel very comfortable in telling you that. I think we'll have to see how things develop, how the opportunities develop beyond that. We're very clear about no cracker by ourselves in the U.S., no PDH unit. We will likely build another polyethylene plant, second half of the next decade, a PP plant. I think you can kind of think through layering in those sorts of investments. By then, as the company has grown in terms of its earnings capability, I think the cash flow story of LyondellBasell has been proven very strong. The message you should take away today is that that cash flow machine is about to move into a higher gear in the next three years.
With that, thank you very much for your participation. We really appreciate the attention, for you to come down. For those of you who are joining the tour, I think you'll really find this to be very interesting, and I encourage you to engage our people and ask them about how they feel about working at Channelview and at LyondellBasell. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Bob. For those of you on the webcast, that concludes our program for today. We appreciate your attention. For those of you in the room, for those of you here in Houston, we have some lunch for you. Just got some great barbecue, got some vegetarian options out there too. If you're joining us for the afternoon, please proceed downstairs. You want to go to the Crawford Street side of the hotel, which is towards your backs as you sit right now. If you have baggage, we can take your bags at our reception desk over there. We have a locked room that we'll keep them in while you're gone, and we'll be here until about 6:30 P.M. or so after our reception, when we come back from the plant. If you're boarding the buses, we do have color codes for the buses again.
Green dot means bus number one. Blue dot means bus number two. Again, it's color-coded, red for bus number three. We're going to go to Channelview. We'll first all have lunch altogether, then the buses will go in different directions depending on the phases of the tour that we'll be hitting. We'll be looking at the control room there. We'll be looking at the construction site, and we're going to tour the research center. After the tour, we'll come back. We're going to try to get back to the hotel, probably leave the site perhaps 3:30 P.M. We'll see how quickly we can get everything done over there. The idea is to get back downtown before rush hour so that we can get on with the refreshments. Thank you, everybody, and look forward to the afternoon.