Good morning everyone, and welcome to Minerals Technologies' 2026 Investor Day. We are broadcasting today from our Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is the center for R&D for Crystal Engineering technology, and also our corporate offices. Please note that some of the statements may be forward-looking, within the meaning of federal securities laws. There is a cautionary statement that you can find on this page in the presentation. Also, some of the numbers in the presentation might be non-GAAP. There is a reconciliation to GAAP financials at the appendix of this presentation, at the end of this presentation, that is also available online. Today's agenda, we will start with company overview presented by Doug Dietrich, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, followed by a presentation about our financial targets and our performance and strategy going forward, presented by Erik Aldag, our Chief Financial Officer.
Two of our product line leaders will present our growth strategies as well as innovative pipeline for Specialty Additives and Crystal Engineering, as well as high-temperature technologies focusing on steel making and metallization. Followed their presentation, we will have time for Q&A. For those who are online, you can type in your question and I will read it. We will try to answer as many as possible. Once we conclude webcast presentation, we will have an in-person R&D tour of our labs, where our leaders of our R&D for Crystal Engineering and steel making metallization will have a special presentation. Now I will introduce Doug, please.
Thank you, Lydia. Thanks, Lydia. Thanks really for everyone joining today, and it is really good for those that have joined online as well. We are really excited actually to do this here today. I know we did a couple of years ago at our Hoffman Estates laboratories. We showed you a couple of our product lines in our bentonite-based businesses. This will be a little bit different. This is the other side of the company. This is our high-temperature technologies refractories portion. We are going to take you through some of those technologies and pipelines today, and also our Crystal Engineering, which is associated with our Specialty Additives product line. Bethlehem, a little bit about Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
We have four buildings on this campus. This one you are in is our research and development campus, or research and development building. It is about 120 people reside here. No manufacturing, but R&D. We have our back offices, some of our business unit leaders as you see here, commercial, marketing, and some of the shared services and accounting are here. So about 120 people. It has been a longstanding place, one of the largest centers of people for Minerals Technologies in the U.S. Let us get started. I know many of you are familiar with the company and those online might not be, but I wanted to take you through just a quick overview of the company before I hand it over to the product line managers. First couple things, key differentiators for MTI.
We talk about this all the time, but it is our balanced portfolio of consumer and industrial businesses, and leading market positions that we have driven by the value we provide by some of the technologies you are going to see today that give us these leading positions in our markets. I'm going to take you more into why that balance of consumer industrial matters to our long-term growth. It's also founded on our vertical integration of our natural resources. We have mines throughout the world. These are world-class mines, and that provides that stability to be able to provide local content, local solutions to customers, which actually is becoming more important these days with supply chain disruptions. We're able to operate around the world with these technologies, giving us these leading positions in the markets we serve.
Minerals Technologies. Technologies has always been in our name. We are very focused on innovation and new product development. You're going to see some of that today. Being able to apply these core technologies that we call them, to these mineral reserves to provide valuable solutions into multiple markets, and I'll take you through that. Another key differentiator of us, not just vertically integrated, balanced portfolio, leading positions in our markets, we're very financially stable. We generate a lot of cash flow, significant cash flow, about 6%-7% of our revenue goes to free cash flow every year. That enables us to fund the organic growth, fund returns to shareholders, fund inorganic growth as well.
So a lot of optionality to the company. It's that growth that we're going to show you today, the profit margin improvement, that cash flow that provides the resources for the company to continue this and continue to drive value through that cash flow. You don't realize that every day from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, you're probably coming across one of our products, throughout your day. Whether you're actually consuming it, we have some products over here.
You're consuming it in a calcium-fortified beverage or a candy or food or some sort of pharmaceutical. You might be consuming it if you have a cat, as a cat litter product, a cat on the shelf. It might also be in something that you're consuming every day. It all starts with these unique global resources. We have, as I mentioned, resources around the world. It's really only two main minerals that we supply. We have global bentonite reserves. We're the largest bentonite producer in the world. Sodium bentonite is a very unique form of that bentonite, and calcium carbonate. Now there's limestone everywhere, but to have a global kind of a world-class mine is very different because having these unique resources, you have to have the right type of mineral. You have to have the right size and particle shape.
You have to have the right chemistry, and many types, the right color. To be able to apply these minerals to these diverse end markets, they have to be world-class in nature, and we have many, many years of supply of them. So, it starts with really unique global resources. More than that, you have to apply technologies to make them applicable and valuable in what they go into for our customers. We have four core technologies. We're going to talk deeper about two of them today. Those core technologies are functional additives, Crystal Engineering, Engineered Blends, and Particle Surface Modification. We can go deeper into all of them today, but when we apply those kind of core capabilities to our global mineral reserves, it enables us to be valuable in many different products.
At home, when you wake up, your toothpaste, a lot of the articles in your house, your cat litter, as I mentioned, your household products, maybe your fabric care products, building materials all throughout your house, personal care, your boxes, the box that comes decorated, or the Amazon box that top surface is something that we've probably participated in as well. We're outside. We're in your agriculture. We're in agriculture material or products that are helping with crop enhancement. We're in livestock in terms of taking toxins out of livestock stomachs with feed additives, water purification, as you know, with our PFAS remediation treatment, remediation landfill lining systems. We're in printing and paper, commercial buildings, cars and trucks, foundry steel, you name it. You're probably coming across something directly we've produced or using something that we've helped our customer manufacture every day.
Just a quick framework of the company. Many of you know this, $2.1 billion in sales. There's the balance between consumer, about 50% consumer-oriented, 50% industrial. These are our main markets that we serve, largest being consumer applications, as I mentioned, 18% into paper and more so into packaging, steel production, construction, that's residential and commercial construction, automotive and transportation. This comes in the form of also steel, but foundry products. The cars you drive and the heavy trucks that are delivering your products are coming with cast parts made from our green sand bonds. Largely United States-based or North America-based, 56% here. 24% our second-largest region, EMEA, and a growing 17% in Asia. Asia defined as China, Southeast Asia, India.
Oh, I wanted to mention, I'll go back, but I wanted to mention 4,000 employees, again, global company, 34 countries, and as we mentioned, innovation is key to us, so 12 R&D centers, this being one of them. You visited one in Chicago last year or two years ago, and we have one about 10 miles down the road in Easton, Pennsylvania. Here's the balance. Here's how we report ourselves in terms of structure with the two segments, consumer and specialties and engineered solutions, both about $1 billion of the company in terms of revenue. Four product lines, the household and personal care and Specialty Additives, that's in consumer and specialties. Why do we put them this way?
Well, in the consumer and specialty side, these are functional components in a variety of consumer and industrial goods, meaning these are things that you're either consuming directly or they're in something that you're using, a product you're using. On the other side, the engineered solutions is not something you're necessarily consuming directly that we make. We're making something that helps our customers manufacture something. So, think of steel, think of a lining system for environmental or wastewater treatment, horizontal directional drilling, foundry products that you're using in your car. So engineered solutions for manufacturing, consumer products or additives that you're consuming in your day. We're going to go through two of these today. First, I'm going to take you to our growth strategy, and we have described these product lines in a little more detail.
The way we grow the company, it's a pretty basic strategy, but it has some depth in how we go about that. The first thing was we look to grow the company in a balanced way through these Engineered Solutions and consumer products into higher growth markets. The consumer piece is one of those. We purposely put ourselves into higher growth consumer markets about five years ago, acquisition of pet litter companies, combining to be the largest private label pet litter company to move ourselves into higher growth markets. We've also innovated in natural ingredients for personal care. Again, higher growth consumer market, putting ourselves in higher growth geographies in Asia cat litter, innovating around renewable fuels. We've talked a lot about sustainable aviation fuel, and then also putting ourselves in Asia for metal casting, which is an under-penetrated region for our supply or our product.
These are higher growth markets, either themselves or in geographies that we've put ourselves into to drive growth higher in the company. The second piece of this, though, is deepening positions in our core markets. We are leading positions around the world in many of our markets, but we can do more to gain share in those markets, and we've done that by moving ourselves into packaging. We're going to talk about that today into steel making. We're going to show you how we've done that today with refractory formulations and automation and intelligent systems. We've deepened our positions in North America metal casting with new formulations for our customers here and also developing and deepening in environmental solutions as that market continues to grow for need for solutions that we provide. Underpinning all of this are new solutions and innovative products.
We're seeing these markets and we're seeing these opportunities, and we're seeing opportunities to create products that are higher margin and putting ourselves deeper into these two geographies or into growth markets. We've done that with, you'll see today with Electric Arc Furnaces, in steel making, in PFAS remediation, repurposing waste stream in the paper market. We're going to talk a lot about NewYield and how we're looking at extending that technology into other markets and other revenue streams. Then I mentioned with sustainable aviation fuel, which is a very quickly growing market, and our product operates very well in that solution. Let's talk about innovation a bit. What is our strategy? We've really changed the nature of how we innovated MTI over the past five, six years.
I mentioned this a lot about six years, seven years ago, about 10% of our products, our revenue was generated from new products. That's now almost 20%. We've doubled the impact on our top line from new product development. How do you do that? It used to take us about four years to develop a new product, and that's down to 14 months. What we're doing is we're really speeding up the engine of innovation in the company. We're moving quickly through the process, making sure if it's going to work, we're going to focus on it. If it's not going to work, let's stop working on it. We've really cranked up the innovation engine. Our pipeline right now, and this is a representation of our four product lines, it's about $1.4 billion in potential value. How do we get there?
We work closely with our customers. Certainly, we do not want to be working on something that our customers don't want to buy. We focus heavily on our voice-of-the-customer activities to make sure that we're innovating something that they want or they need or they're willing to buy. It's close collaboration, but we're also looking for next generation. We're also looking for ways to apply our core technologies in new ways to solve solutions. We're looking for that next generation of core solutions, and we're going to describe two of them today that are in this pipeline. We're going to show you how we've done that more recently, and what's going to be continuing to drive growth for this company over the next coming years.
We're also focusing on, as I mentioned earlier, moving ourselves into high growth markets and also into higher margin products. Erik's going to show you how that's driving our growth further and also lifting the margins of the company to make a more valuable company. Just like I mentioned, a couple of stats. 19% of our sales in 2025 were from new products created over the past five years. We've launched and commercialized over 300 products over that period in five years. We've got the pipeline, and there it is. 80% of our projects are developed with input from customers. What they're asking for, in many cases, is sustainable solutions. 67% of what's in that pipeline is something that's helping us save energy, our customers' energy, recycling, some sort of renewable, sustainable benefit.
That is becoming a very big piece of what we develop and how we innovate in the company. Okay. With that's a quick overview. What you're going to see today, I'm going to pass it over to Erik, take you through a couple financials, and then we'll move on with some technologies. Erik ?
All right. Thanks, Doug. Good afternoon, everybody. Great to be here with you today in Bethlehem. First, I want to remind everybody of the targets that we set for ourselves in 2023. That's organic sales growth of 5% on average through the cycle, operating margin of 15%, free cash flow at 7% of sales, a strong balance sheet with flexibility for M&A, and all of this should result in an ROIC of 12%. Today, we're reiterating these targets for you. The company is set up well to deliver on all of these targets. Over the next few slides, I'm going to share performance against these targets over the last five years, and also what gives us confidence that we're set up well with these targets over the next five years. First, on revenue performance. This bridge is first looking back over the last five years.
You can see we've delivered a net top line CAGR of around 4%, and that's in a relatively challenging macro environment, I would say. That really speaks to the resilience of the portfolio and the durability of our products. You can see that our organic growth strategy has delivered $540 million, or about 5% CAGR over that time period. As Doug mentioned, the growth strategy has really been to expand in higher growth markets, like the consumer-oriented markets, deepening our positions in core markets and geographies, and in commercializing new products and solutions. Inorganic growth over this time period delivered $100 million. That's added about 1% to the CAGR over that time period. Just to remind you, this was the full year impact of Normerica . That was a cat litter acquisition.
This was a small specialty PCC acquisition in the U.S., and this was Concept Pet, another cat litter acquisition, relatively smaller cat litter acquisition. We have had a few of our end markets cycle lower over this time period, and we've talked a lot about these impacts, but namely, this has been the residential construction market, commercial construction, agricultural equipment, and heavy truck end markets. On a net basis, with the 4% CAGR, that brings us to around $2.2 billion this year, made up of the 5% organic growth, 1% from inorganic, offset by 3% from market headwinds. Going forward, we do see that organic growth strategy playing out similarly, continuing at 5% growth. It's really a continuation of the same strategy. We've also got some new exciting opportunities. We're going to be talking to you about a few of them here today.
This all gives us a lot of confidence that we can deliver this mid-single-digit top-line growth through the cycle, and that would take us from approximately $2.2 billion in revenue to $2.8 billion-plus in five years. Next, I want to share where we are on margin and where we're going. We're at 13% for the first half of 2026. Like a lot of other companies, we've experienced higher energy-linked costs starting in the first quarter of this year. We've talked about how, in a portion of our business, we've got a pricing lag of around 90 to 100 days, mainly in the consumer and specialty segment. We do expect to recover this margin as soon as costs plane over. I do want to take a minute here just to comment on our shorter-term outlook.
In the third quarter, probably comes as no surprise, we're experiencing higher energy-linked costs than we expected in our guidance for the quarter, given where diesel and natural gas prices have trended. Right now, we're expecting about a $5 million higher cost than we included in our guidance at the beginning of the quarter. That being said, we're continuing to adjust pricing, and we're confident that when these costs plane over, we'll recover this 75 to 100 basis points of margin that you see on the screen here. This is the same thing that we went through from 2022 to 2024, I should say 2022 to 2024. On the back end of that, we expanded our margins. We're in a pretty similar situation again today.
I do want to highlight that the price cost dynamic on this slide, that piece of the margin bridge, that is more transitory. But the next two margin levers here are more structural. These next two levers are driving structurally higher margins for the company. Just moving on to this volume leverage lever. As we continue to grow sales in the mid-single digits, we expect that volume leverage to improve margins by 75 to 100 basis points. This is because our incremental margins are at 30% and higher, for some products, and we have a very efficient fixed cost base to leverage those higher volumes into higher operating margin. As we continue to grow, we expect the growth to be margin accretive.
Lastly, the third lever here, the new products in our pipeline that we are going to be talking about today, and really all the products that we have been commercializing over the last five years are higher margin on average. Also, the fastest-growing product lines that we have are higher margin product lines. So, we are expecting this continued margin uplift. We have about 50 basis points on the screen here as we continue to commercialize higher margin products and as our mix continues to shift toward higher margin products. The only other thing I will mention here on this slide is that 15% is not a ceiling for the company. You can see that clearly from the fact that the Engineered Solutions segment is at 17% right now. They are already delivering a 17% operating margin.
As we continue to grow and innovate and as we catch up on this temporary price cost impact in consumer and specialties, we see 16% for the total company as a realistic long-term target. On the balance sheet and cash flow, the company has always been a strong cash flow generator. We target free cash flow in the 7% of sales range, and you can see on the slide here on the top left, we have averaged free cash flow at 6% over the last five years. That is despite some challenging market conditions and some temporary margin pressures. We typically target returning approximately 50% of our free cash flow to shareholders when we are at or below 2x net leverage. You can see, over this time period, we have returned 56% of our free cash flow to shareholders, right on target with what we have stated.
In the meantime, we have also increased our dividend by 2.4x over the last few years. Our balance sheet remains strong, with net leverage around 1.6x and liquidity over $700 million. Just to summarize here, we have delivered around 4% growth over the last five years, and that 5% target is well within reach. We delivered on our 15% target on operating margin back in 2024, and we have got a clear line of sight to return to that level and higher. We expect to generate free cash flow at a similarly strong rate, delivering a significant amount of cash flow over the next five years. Delivering on all these metrics will result in an ROIC of approximately 12%. On the slide here, we are showing 9% as an average of the last few years. Just to note, we were over 10% in 2024.
Combination of top-line growth, margin improvement, continued disciplined capital deployment will all contribute to this 12% ROIC. With that, I am going to hand it back over to Doug to talk about the technologies and capabilities that we are going to be focusing on today.
Okay, thanks, Erik. Let us go through. I show these icons a lot. Again, we mentioned them. Crystal Engineering is what we are going to go through today. In a nutshell, this is our basic capability to grow crystals. We are able to form them from primarily calcium carbonate and fit for purpose, and they are value-added elements in their shape. We are going to show you how we do that today in our laboratories. Engineered Blends, we are also going to go through today. This is in our high-temperature technologies business, but this, we are going to talk more about how we apply it in our refractories and steelmaking.
Particle Surface Modification is where we take a particle or a mineral that we have, and we modify the surface of it for a functional use. Think of our FLUORO-SORB product and PFAS remediation. That is where we apply this type of technology. Functional Additives, just the minerals themselves and the combination of minerals and how we treat them can be functional as they go into a product. We have knowledge of how to apply the minerals, the shape, the color, the chemistry, so that they become a very functional part of a consumer product or of an engineered solution. Okay? These four technologies map with the way we have organized the company and product lines. Functional Additives are mostly used in our household and personal care business. Crystal Engineering and how we apply this to calcium carbonate in our Specialty Additives product line.
I just mentioned Engineered Blends and is the primary core technology for our high-temperature technologies, and Particle Surface Modification in our environmental and infrastructure business. Today, we are going to take you through two of those product lines, the Specialty Additives and high-temperature technologies. I am going to let the two gentlemen that come up next take you more in more depth, but you can see how these are some of the products on how they apply. We are going to take you through our laboratories and show you how we apply them and how we generate these things and get you a little bit deeper into the process. Let us start with Specialty Additives. I am going to introduce you to Jim Wright. He is the president of our Specialty Additives business. He is going to take you through a couple of interesting new innovations as well. Jim?
Thanks, Doug. Hi, I'm Jim Wright. It was great to meet several of you at lunch, and welcome to our facility here in Bethlehem. I'm the President of the Specialty Additives product line. I've been with MTI for about six years, primarily leading the paper and packaging-focused business through that tenure with the company. Today, I'm going to take a deep dive into our Crystal Engineering core capability, and I'm going to describe how our teams tailor particles to a diverse range of applications and end-use markets. Historically, this business has developed the capability for calcium-based products, including ground calcium carbonate and precipitated calcium carbonate, or GCC and PCC. We have traditionally operated with two business models.
One is a satellite-based model where we co-locate plants at paper mills around the world, and we sell slurry, PCC, or GCC to those customers for use as a filler or a coating additive in the paper-making process. We also operate a merchant-based business where we locate our plants at a mine or a mineral reserve, and we make a diverse range of end-market applications or end-use products, both in the PCC and GCC space using our Crystal Engineering core capabilities. In the satellite PCC business, we operate at 56 plants around the world, supplying slurry, PCC, and GCC products used in coating and filling applications for both printing and writing and packaging applications. In the merchant PCC business, we produce what is called SPCC, or specialty precipitated calcium carbonate, which includes a range of crystal morphologies, surface chemistry, and particle size distributions.
Our capability to produce this broad range of characteristic lies within our core Crystal Engineering capability. Looking at the capability more broadly, what we do is we take inorganic compounds, and we use proprietary technologies and processing techniques to deliver specific performance attributes in our end products. On the right-hand side, you can see an example of how we do this in our calcium carbonate-based businesses. In the blue box, you can see a natural limestone particle, or what we would refer to as a ground calcium carbonate, GCC. You can see there's a varying size and shape of the different particles that are shown in the microscopic image. We can also take that same resource, and we can turn it into a precipitated calcium carbonate, which you can see on the further right-hand side images.
Scalenohedral on the right-hand side would be a particle that is engineered for use in a filler application in a paper sheet. Provides bulk, and it takes up more space than the fiber takes up in the sheet. On the top right is the acicular morphology, and that's designed to lay flat and align on a coating formulation to give good printability and gloss in a, if you take as an example, a box of pasta that would be on the shelf in a grocery store. On the bottom left, there's a rhombohedral morphology, which is used in a range of applications, including caulks and sealants. The rhombohedral are little tiny squares, and you'll see later on in the lab a better image of what those look like.
That gives viscosity characteristics that allow the caulks or sealants to flow and to extrude through their processes and gives the producers of those an ability to make the right product characteristics for use in applications such as a sealant in a car or a caulk that goes around a window. Also on the bottom right is a spherical particle. This is more for new markets for us, but this provides a flow ability and a bulk that takes up more space in the matrix in which it's incorporated. Before we dive deeper into the Crystal Engineering core capability, I'd like to review our growth strategy and talk about the drivers that we committed in our 2023 Investor Day. I'm going to provide you with some perspective as well on how we've done against these growth drivers.
You can see on the left-hand side, we laid out our strategy as geographic expansion into Asia, expansion into packaging markets, and new product innovation delivering 3%-5% compounded annual sales growth. You can see on the right-hand side, the growth that we've achieved during this period of approximately 5% is a result of new satellite PCC and GCC plants in Asia, which included five new packaging agreements and expansion of our NewYield technology as a platform for growth in the Asian markets. It also includes a small acquisition that Erik mentioned earlier during his review. We have not been without our challenges in this space as well. You can see on the next bar, there was a decline in the residential construction markets that primarily impacted our merchant precipitated calcium carbonate and ground calcium carbonate businesses.
We also had five paper mill closures which impacted satellite operations which we previously operated. Next, I want to talk about our continued growth. We feel very strongly that we can continue the trend of delivering 5% organic growth in this business by continuing with the same strategy. We're focused on new packaging opportunities, further penetration of the NewYield platform and innovation with a pipeline that was shown earlier, which includes about $400 million of opportunity in the Specialty Additive space. We also anticipate that residential construction markets will inflect and will begin to improve at some point before the end of 2027. All right. Next, I'd like to give an example of our core Crystal Engineering capability and talk about the NewYield platform, which you've likely heard about through many of our investor conversations.
I'd like to relate that to an extension of the capability to talk about how we can drive growth using that core capability. I'm sure you've heard of NewYield, which on the left-hand side is a schematic showing the general process. We take a waste stream that comes from our paper customer's pulping operation. In this case, it's lime mud. It contains calcium, but it's not in a form that's usable by the customers to be put back into their products. We have proprietary technologies which allow us to refine, purify, and change the morphology of that product, which turns it back into a filler that then can be sold back to the paper mill for use as a filler in their packaging and printing and writing paper applications.
Using the same type of capability, we can expand beyond the traditional calcium carbonate markets that we have historically focused on. On the right-hand side, I am describing an opportunity where we deploy this into a new market. I think we are all very familiar with the need for current supply of critical minerals in the U.S., especially to support new infrastructure, battery investments, electronic vehicles, aerospace applications, and defense. We have identified that steel slag contains many of these valuable minerals and streams, and they are not currently being extracted due to a lack of technology that allows you to separate the steel slag into its component compounds. There is approximately 3 million tons of steel slag that is landfilled in the U.S. alone, and beyond the U.S., there is even more steel slag that goes to landfill.
Applying the same type of technology that I discussed with NewYield, we are able to separate that steel slag into its component streams, and you will see later today that we can generate several different products of higher purity and custom-tailored morphologies that are of high value in many different downstream applications. We use our world-class R&D capabilities with that core Crystal Engineering technology in order to process this and to work with our downstream customers to make sure that we are tailoring these particles for their specific applications. And finally, I want to provide a little bit more of context on that specific opportunity and talk about how that capability can be applied even more broadly.
For those joining us on the tour later today, you are going to see in one of the labs a demonstration where our R&D team is going to take the components of a steel slag, and they are going to show you how we can separate that into different streams and extract these valuable downstream products through our proprietary processes. With this specific opportunity, we are able to create streams that include critical minerals, including magnesium and manganese, that would go into batteries, defense applications, alloys, and automotive. There are calcium-based products where we have a broad range of applications depending on how we treat that calcium-based product and which processing techniques we deploy. Iron oxide is a product that is returned to the steel mill for use in their steel-making process. And finally, there is a cement pozzolan stream that is used as an additive in low-carbon concrete mixtures.
Our current status on this is that we have a lab-scale pilot at our facility just down the road in Easton, Pennsylvania, where we are able to make representative products that would come from this production process. We are targeting a larger-scale pilot operation to be co-located near one of these sources of steel slag in the U.S. that would generate about $5 million of annual revenue. We see this total opportunity for just the steel slag processing to be in the range of $250 million annually. What I am most excited about here, though, is the application of our capabilities and being able to expand in markets beyond just the steel slag or the lime mud that we get from a pulp mill.
Our R&D teams have proven a capability where they can take proprietary knowledge of how to process inorganic materials and turn them into valuable downstream products based on their ability to manipulate those products and engineer different morphologies that allow our customers to use those in ways that they have currently been unable to do. With that, I'm going to turn over to my colleague, Chad Trent, and he's going to take you through our High-Temperature Technologies capabilities. Chad?
Thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Chad Trent. I'm the President of High-Temperature Technologies, which encompasses our two business metal castings and refractories business. I've been with MTI for 24 years now, and I've spent much of my time in the refractory business in various commercial roles with that business. With that being said, I'd like to highlight our refractory business today. I'll mainly be focusing on that business for MTI. Two product lines make up this business, mainly refractories and another business we have, a product line we have called Solid-Core Calcium Wire. With these businesses, we hold two market-leading positions. One is advanced monolithic refractories here in North America, and then we hold a number one position for laser measurement technology on a global basis. We have a number one market position with that.
On our advanced refractories business, we provide products and solutions for virtually every steelmaking process that there is, from blast furnace steelmaking process to the Basic Oxygen Furnace type steelmaking process, Electric Arc Furnaces, casting machines, and also steel ladles. So, we are pretty penetrated in the market. Not only do we provide products for those markets, we also are embedded heavily in the steel industry with our application technology equipment. We have a massive footprint in our customer sites, and we also have service teams that are local there. Because we're so embedded in these operations, we have a very close ear to the voice of the customer. Virtually 100% of what we develop within the business is directly getting from feedback from our customers. Speaking of voice of the customer, you may have heard this term mentioned on some of the analyst calls, MINSCAN LSC.
I know that Doug has mentioned it, Brett has mentioned it as well. That particular technology was derived from voice of the customer that we received. As you may know, there's a major push to lower CO₂ emissions in the steel industry, not only in the U.S., but around the world, and that's converting production from the blast furnace type steelmaking and BOF type steelmaking to electric furnace type steelmaking. The MINSCAN LSC serves exclusively the EAF steel market. What that does is we are combining our laser technologies with our robotic gunning maintenance technologies, and we've created a fully automated refractory system, which is really the only one in the world. Not only do we have that technology that we work with and that we lease and/or sell to the customer, but we also provide our refractory materials along with it.
Because we have that full package deal that we can offer our customers, we are able to enter into supply contracts for over five years and really beyond, because once you establish a footprint in a customer site, it is very difficult for us to be removed from that site. A major win for us, all based upon the voice of the customer that we have received. Looking at our second core business within the refractories business, looking at Solid-Core Calcium Wire. We have been producing calcium wire at our Canaan, Connecticut facility for over 40 years. We have been producing calcium metal at that facility for over 50 years. I will say this, we are the only producers of calcium metal in the Western Hemisphere. The other producers are located in China or Russia.
When you look at calcium cored wire, really the criticality of it to the steel industry is mainly tied to inclusion control. What I mean by inclusion control, well, calcium wire, when it is injected in steel, ties up with aluminum oxide, and it removes that aluminum oxide and changes the shape of it so that steel can be casted through the thin slab casting machines. There is over 30 million tons of thin slab casting in the U.S., and they cannot cast steel through a thin slab caster without our calcium cored wire, which is another leading market position that we have. Just like Jim, I am going to give you an overview of our growth momentum within the product line itself, both refractories and metal castings.
Over the past five years, this product line has contributed over 3% of CAGR over the last five years, mainly driven by our core strategies, which is essentially expansion in our core markets, particularly with the refractory businesses. Innovation has been huge for both businesses, relative to new products that we have developed for the EAF market within the refractories business, but also our green sand bond technologies that we have been able to have a lot of success here in North America with, but have taken that to Asia and have grown that business roughly 8%-10% over the last several years. We continue to see growth within this business, relative to expansion through automation, too, that I have already mentioned with the MINSCAN LSC, which has contributed to the 6% CAGR with our growth strategy over the last five years. We have had some headwinds, though, with this business.
Despite the fact that we have grown so much with our growth strategy within the foundry business, which is what metal castings is tied to, the agriculture business has been depressed for the last several years because commodity prices have been low and inventory levels of farm machinery have been high, and inflation rates continue to be high. The automotive market, which is a big market for the metal castings business, has been rather stagnant over the last several years. Heavy truck market has been stagnant as well, although we are seeing some turnaround in the heavy truck market in the last half of this year and possibly moving into the first half of next year. Relative to the refractory business, a lot of headwinds we have seen in Europe. Geopolitical events have affected that business significantly with the Ukraine war and now with the Iran conflict.
That business continues to be a little stagnant, despite the fact that there's been even some safeguards put in on the business, and we're hoping to see that business start to pick up in 2027 and hopefully for sure by 2028. Looking forward, a lot of exciting things for the overall product line. We're looking to grow this business anywhere from 3%-6% CAGR, continue to build on the foundation of the MINSCAN LSC. There's a lot of runway with that particular business as Europe begins to transition into the electric furnace market. A lot of our products for the EAF are just now being developed, and we'll continue to have a lot of runway with those products too as well. Then we'll continue to see green sand bond growth in Asia. Right now, we consider our penetration there to be only 25%.
Again, I'm going to use that word again, a lot of runway in Asia for that business. But the main driver for high-temperature technologies is going to be innovation over the next five years, where we see roughly $280 million worth of growth over the next five years. With that being said, I've got something that I would like to share with you that we're all excited about regarding innovation. Some of you may have read, and I'm sure that you've read that and seen that the government is making a big push to onshore the production of critical minerals that are tied to national security. This includes rare earth materials. That's been in the news a lot lately.
I know that the U.S. government has issued significant funding to several potential producers, to establish rare earth mining, processing, and metallization, particularly of rare earth magnets in the United States. The bulk of the rare earth magnets are made with neodymium, and iron, and boron, but there are some rare earth magnets that undergo high-temperature applications, and these rare earths are alloyed with dysprosium and terbium. These type of rare earth magnets are used in defense, aerospace, electric vehicles, energy renewables. Some of the big offshore wind turbines have quite a bit of rare earth magnets in them. Also, lots of electronics and robotics, and then also the medical field as well. In addition to dysprosium and terbium, there's also yttrium. Yttrium is not used in rare earth magnets, but it's used in a lot of defense applications, particularly with thermal barrier coatings and also in semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
Why am I bringing this up? Why are we interested in high rare earth elements? Well, in order to produce heavy rare earth metal, it requires calcium metal to do that with, to be able to refine it. I've mentioned earlier in the previous slides that we are the only producers of calcium metal here in the United States. So heavy rare earths cannot be refined without calcium metal. So, we as a company, we are going to be able to offer this industry two things. Number one, a product that meets the industry specifications in order for them to be able to refine heavy rare earth metal. And number two, we offer a domestically produced product that meets their mandate for national security purposes. Just looking at the process in and of itself.
Heavy rare earths are generally, the process that is associated with it is you mine the heavy earth ore. The ore is processed into oxide, and then the oxides are metallized, which is done primarily with high-purity calcium metal. You make the heavy rare earth metal, and then that heavy rare earth metal is then translated into heavy rare earth magnets, base magnets. You cannot produce heavy rare earth metal without high-purity calcium metal. It is the only practical way to do it. From our standpoint and where we are at with this process and engaging with the potential customer base, we have completed our lab development for the high-purity calcium that we now will be producing at our Canaan, Connecticut facility. Our pilot plant construction is underway for this process.
Our customer base, and I can tell you this right now, the bottleneck to onshoring all of rare earth production here in the United States is in the metallization piece of this because there is already mining going on in the U.S. for heavy rare earth ore and the processing of the oxides, but the metallization piece is the bottleneck. That development is undergoing right now for the potential customer base for this market. We are providing our customers with product already for their development process. Our product has been proven to refine yttrium. It has been proven to refine dysprosium. It has been proven to refine terbium. You will actually see some dysprosium that was refined with our calcium in the lab here later on in the tour. So, what is the value of this market?
Right now, we are estimating the market value to be around $100 million- plus in the near term. That is primarily starting off the business or the market with refining of dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium. There are other rare earths that may be refined that is still yet to be determined. Okay. Doug, I think it is yours.
Thanks, Chad. Just to add to Chad, our Canaan facility, as Chad mentioned, has been making calcium metal for 50 years or 40 years. We are going to be looking to expand that facility to meet the demand that we are seeing from these customers that are developing here in the United States for this metallization process. One thing I do want to add to all of this is, I think what we tried to do today, at least in the short presentation, is to show you the company's capability to grow through its organic growth strategy. So, putting ourselves into growth markets, deepening our positions in some of our core markets and our core product lines, and also innovating, right? We have been able to grow the company at that 4%-5% range net.
Yes, we have some market challenges that will continue to cycle, but that's where the balance of the company comes in. We have these higher growth markets, and some of our industrial markets will cycle. We see that that combination of that balanced portfolio will continue to drive through the cycle growth, sometimes higher, sometimes lower than that 5% number, but on average, the 5% growth. We continue to do that. We continue to innovate. We continue to put ourselves in these markets. We continue to do things like put ourselves in the rare earth market and look at how we open up the aperture using our NewYield technology to different types of waste streams. We think we can continue, not just with the FLUORO-SORB that's coming out now, not just with sustainable aviation fuel purification that's out now.
These are things that will continue to add growth and value to the company over many years. Just keeping with that kind of growth rate from where we are today, we see another $600 million of revenue. Acquisitions have always been part of our growth strategy as a company. I just put up some balance sheet statistics there that Erik gave you. We've got a very strong balance sheet right now that gives us a lot of options. 1.6x leverage. We've got $730 million of liquidity. We think that very easily we could probably add $1 billion to $1.5 billion of revenue, another $200 million plus of EBITDA to the company. When you add all of that up, you're looking at a company that's well over $600 million, $700 million of EBITDA.
That can happen with that balance sheet and with some of the products that we've shown you today over the next five years. You're probably going to ask me at some point, what are you looking at when you're looking at acquisitions? It follows along the lines of accelerating our organic growth strategy. It is extending our positions geographically in some of these higher growth markets. There are opportunities to do that. It accelerates our expansion into higher growth markets like pet care and consumer products, and we did that. We executed that acquisition strategy to build the private label cat litter business that we have today. We also, as you can see, I think getting to $3 billion- $4 billion as a company, it increases the scale of the company. I think that scale comes with the resources.
We're always looking to maintain that cash flow generation profile of the company, and I think that just generates more value for you as shareholders. What do we look at? We're looking at things that are the same minerals, but they could bring us into new markets. We could look at new minerals, but likely they're probably going to be in similar markets or markets that we know. I don't think we'll go so far afield as looking at new minerals in completely new markets. There are a lot of opportunities in that kind of two by two I just gave you. They're small. There's some bolt-ons, but I also think there's some transformational acquisitions that we could acquire to really change the scale of the company and the nature of the company.
Before we move to Q&A, what did I want you to take away today? We gave you two examples of products that are in that pipeline. But those are just two. There's hundreds of products in that pipeline that make up $1.4 billion of potential. These two that we put out today to show you, they're quite exciting, and I think they're relatively near term, and I think they could be big for the company. But there's others in there, and we won't commercialize all $1.4 billion, but we've shown you that 20% of our revenue consistently can come from new products. We commercialized 300 of them just in the past five years. We can keep this engine going through innovation. We can keep this growth going through putting ourselves in these markets.
As Erik said, we can start to drive our margins higher with some of the products like the two today that we showed you to continue to drive more value for the company. What I want you to take away is we're pretty confident that we can maintain our 5% average growth target going forward. We wanted to show you how we apply these capabilities and these technologies differently. It's not just going to be with calcium carbonate. It's not only going to be in refractory products. That calcium metal is valuable in a totally new market that's been developed here in the United States. That NewYield kind of technology and processing is capable, not only in calcium carbonate paper and packaging, but now somewhere else into critical minerals as well. Again, we think we can drive higher value through that, through our margin expansion.
I think maintaining the financial strength to fund all of that growth, we can do all at the same time. Fund the growth, returns to shareholders, and acquisitions. That is a financial capability that I think defines Minerals Technologies and value generation for you. Okay? Those are the things I wanted you to take away. For those of you here in the room, we'll do some Q&A, and then after that, we're going to show you some dysprosium in a little bit. We're going to show you some calcium metal. We're going to show you some iron ore that's precipitated out of steel slag. Hope you're excited to see that, and we're going to take you through our laboratories. But before we do that, we're going to start with some Q&A.
I will say, if you have a question, we're going to have to give you a microphone so those on the webcast can hear you. We'll start in the room, and I think we probably have some, hopefully, that came in from online.
For those who are online, you can type in your question, and I will read it here in the room so we can address it. You can do it right on the webcast.
Peter. Who could I get? I don't see whose arm. Oh, there you go.
Hey, good afternoon. Pete Osterland, Truist Securities. Thanks for all the color today. I wanted to start with the Specialty Additives business. As you grow internationally, particularly in Asia, what's your most significant competitive advantage? I'm just thinking about the quality of the PCC, the ability to operate the satellites most efficiently, or other products like NewYield. What differentiates you the most, and how close are regional competitors to offering a similar value proposition?
Yeah, I think it's a number of factors. I think it is the technologies that we provide those customers, whether it be core paper manufacturers or packaging manufacturers. What does that mean? Well, it first comes with the capability of 24/7 being able to deliver this pigment. I mean, without fail. So, you have to be there every day. You have to know the precursor materials. You have to be able to create that morphology and deliver it 24/7, 365. That's number one. But when they're picking somebody to do that with, you have to be very cost competitive. You have to be capital efficient. You have to be efficient with the energy that's provided to you on-site. So, we'll win that business being able to just be a core good provider.
But another thing that comes into that decision from a customer is, well, I see that there are two capable ones, but who is going to live with me for I mean, these satellites, our average age of satellite is probably 20 some years, right? So, when they are there, they are there for a long time. I do not think we have ever lost a satellite except for the paper mill closures. We have lost some of those. But when you are there, you want to be able to go with a partner, or the customer is going with a partner that can bring new technologies to them.
So, we are bringing NewYield to them. We are bringing high filler technologies to them. So, things that help them save money. So, there is a portfolio of capability that comes with your choice of who you are going to live with for 25 years, right? And that is how we compete, and that is how we win.
Very helpful. Thanks. Then I just wanted to ask a follow-up on the long-term margin target. So where within your portfolio do you see the most room for margin improvement from current levels? And overall, do you view that target as achievable through self-help, whether it is productivity or continued product innovation, or does that target require some incremental help from an improved macro environment?
He is looking at you, so you want to answer that?
Yeah.
I might chime in, though.
Yeah. It's largely in the consumer and specialties segment, and particularly in the household and personal care product line. It's temporary. It's painful as we're going through this period. The main driver of that is in the last quarter, we've seen diesel go up $1 per gallon, and we've seen natural gas in Europe go up 50% from what we were expecting starting out the quarter. There's this temporary lag in terms of passing that through. That impacts that business in particular because there's so much trucking, there's so much freight involved, logistics cost involved with moving the minerals from the mine to our processing facilities and delivering to our customers' shelves. It really is just a matter of being on top of it with the pricing. We continue to adjust pricing almost on a daily basis right now.
As soon as the costs plane over, we don't need to see necessarily a reduction in costs, but as soon as the increases sort of decelerate, we'll be able to pass that through, recover that margin, and as I said earlier, we've shown historically that on the back end of a period like that, we can expand margins by hanging on to some of that pricing. We're confident we're going to get through it. A little bit of a challenging period temporarily here, and it's really confined to a portion of the consumer and specialties segment.
I would say, Peter, that's probably the biggest near-term catalyst to margin improvement. We're 90 to 100 days out of that. I will say the structural pieces of it, we're talking about new products that are out there that are much higher contribution margins, and one that Chad just shared with you today. The average contribution margin of our products today are probably 30%, 35% across the company. These are well above that. I think you're seeing that with sustainable aviation fuel products. I think you're seeing that with some of our new innovations, the PFAS, although our FLUORO-SORB, it's still kind of on its trajectory upward. These are very high margin products, and I think that structurally. Yes, we're going to have price cost challenges as we go through the next five years. There'll probably be another one that hits us.
We'll survive that as transitory. But what's really changing the nature of the company is putting out these innovations that are going to drive structurally that number higher. And that's why 16%, one of our businesses already did 17.5% last quarter. We get the price cost right in the other one. I think you're at 15%, and I think with some of these new products, you can get higher than that.
Great. Thanks a lot. I'll pass it on.
Yeah.
Thank you. Thanks, Doug.
Hey, Dan.
Thanks, Erik. Dan Moore with CJS. Wanted to drill down a little bit more on a couple of the opportunities that you laid out today. First, rare earths, high purity calcium metals. Without getting too specific, you mentioned $100 million in near term revenue opportunity. That is a very specific number. Talk about the range of outcomes. Maybe, I do not know how high you want to think about, but what that could look like and then what near term looks really, what does that mean? Is that within a five-year window and just your visibility into that building, and any CapEx that might be associated with it?
Yeah, I have to say we struggled a little bit with what number to put on the screen for you, right? We landed on 100, but then we put a plus symbol next to it, right? Look, I think that is probably a three-year out number. We are going to be working on expanding our facility. We have the capability right now to produce high purity calcium. I think we have the capability to produce what we see as demand in the next year plus. We are going to be expanding to meet that demand over the next three years. So, I would probably put that number as a three-year number, and then the plus is on out. What is a little bit hard to see past that is exactly how much rare earth will be produced here, which ones they will be.
Chad mentioned that there could be others that are on shore, how fast these companies ramp up. I will also add to that it is not just U.S. domestic rare earth companies. There are other rare earth manufacturers that require a more domestic or U.S.-based source. So, we are not just supplying in North America, we are also supplying elsewhere that would like to diversify away from China and Russia.
And then maybe contrast that with, on the slide that related to steel slag, a $250 million TAM, just described a little bit differently. Again, timeframe, is that similar? Is that a TAM or a revenue target? And maybe just sort of break out, I think you mentioned critical minerals first, is that the biggest piece of that?
Yeah, I'm going to [crosstalk].
CapEx again.
Yeah. I'm going to probably cast that one as probably a little bit further out, only because we're going to be building. We've proven the technology. We know that this is a capability that we have. As Jim mentioned, we're going to be building a pilot facility that's probably going to take us about nine months to get rolling. Once operational, we're going to be working through the offtake streams. So, there's a couple of very valuable ones in there, magnesium, manganese, but then also the calcium carbonate and our ability to synthesize that calcium carbonate through that reaction and finding its valuable purpose on the way out. That's going to be doing that, and then we'll scale that up to a bigger. So, I think you're probably three year, probably year two, and then three for a larger scale.
I think the next one could be worth in the $25 million-$30 million range. As we get through those hurdles, again, that provides, we think that this market just for those offtake products could be worth $250 million. So that's probably an outside number. As we ramp up and as we prove this, I think you're looking at the $5 million-$25 million range in the next two to three years. Probably bigger than that. I'm sorry. Probably in the $75 million in the next three years, but it's going to ramp up probably in the next two.
Between these two, then you add PFAS remediation into the mix, are there any capital and/or managerial constraints to go after all these opportunities? Thanks.
No, I think they fit very well within our four product lines. I think the management, the capability within those product lines are able to deal with these. You have seen them. They are already kind of launched already, so they are capable. I do not see from a capital standpoint. We will have to see the steel slag, where that capital comes in. That will depend on after that pilot plant. I do not think any of these opportunities, the two that I have given you or anything in that pipeline, creates some sort of outsized capital requirement beyond our normal kind of $100 million per year. That might cycle $10 million up or down, but we have shown in the past that we are capable of funding pretty large growth capital through this kind of routine, $100 million a year. I think this fits right into that.
Hi, Doug. Hi, Erik.
Hey, Wayne.
Wayne Pinsent with Gabelli Funds. Just in terms of transformational acquisition opportunities, would that fall more into new minerals in kind of markets you are in right now, or minerals that you have in adjacent markets? Just in terms of minerals that you have right now, is that looking for new reserves that have different characteristics, or is it new technologies? Then just your thoughts on the pipeline and valuations that you are seeing now.
Yeah, I was trying to kind of show how we think about things. I think there are opportunities in the current minerals that we work with, and we do have more than just two. Those are the primary minerals that we have. We are familiar with others and other minerals that are like bentonite and calcium carbonate. I would say we would be looking to grow in those two minerals in particular, and that could take us deeper into a consumer market or a different market that we are not in. It could take us into a new geography. We are very familiar with that mineral, and so being able to move it into a new market or even a new geography is not going to be. W e operate around the world. We would look at new minerals to the portfolio.
I think we operate with a number of minerals in the portfolio that we do not currently own. We are familiar with them in our Engineered Blends. We are familiar with them in our products that we manufacture in metal casting, et cetera. We could go into a new mineral, but it is probably going to be something that we know very well and how to use it in the market that it is in. I would say it is not likely that we go completely new mineral in some new market that we know nothing about. I am not going to say that as an absolute.
We might surprise you and do something like that, but it is probably going to be something that is really tied to a core technology that we know, a market that we understand, or a mineral that we already have, if I can give you that. From a valuation standpoint, I think from where we were five years ago, I think valuations were very high. I think over the past two to three years, they have come in a bit. Multiples have come in a bit, and I think that is largely you have seen some of the slowdown in activity, and I think expectations for what people are willing to sell for and buy for have come in line.
I think there are some opportunities out there for us. We are patient, and we have been looking at some things for a while, and yeah, hopefully, we will get some of those done over the next few years.
Thanks.
Yep.
Janet Lewis from Royce Investment Partners.
Hi, Janet.
So for these processes that you develop for things like extracting minerals from steel slag, are they patent protected, or are these processes that therefore you create a moat that others can't replicate?
We are. We're looking to create that moat. I will say that this is not the only time somebody's tried to take steel slag and process it into its constituent parts. But I think what we've come up with is probably the most cost-effective way of doing it, the most efficient way of doing it. And you'd say, "Well, Doug, why don't you just stay in your lane? Why would you get out of calcium carbonate and go into steel slag?" Well, we're pretty much resident on every integrated mill, steel mill in the country, so that's our position in refractories, number one. Number two, we operate with that customer and many of the off takes of that process would go back to the customers we know. And three, one of the pieces of the off take is calcium carbonate, which we know very well.
We're well-rounded and I think that's unique for our position in that refining and separation technology. Others might be able to do it, but they're not quite versed in how to get the morphology of the off take minerals in the right shape to make them valuable. That's where we come in. We're able to do that with our core technologies. Like I said, this is the start. We've proven that we can do it. We have a partner. We're going to start building it out at pilot. We think that'll be successful, and if that is, we're going to be moving very quickly to scale. But there is a lot of free material out there that I think we have a capability of separating into things that are valuable.
Then just more generally, in your R&D processes, do you go after patents for most of these things that you're developing?
We do. Somebody help me with the R&D. How many patents does MTI have? We're in the thousands, I don't know. But we do patent protect them. There are some things that we. Just to let you know, there's a strategy around our IP protection. There are things that we will protect through knowhow. There's some things that we might do because we're so well at doing it that we don't want written up. But for the most part, if it's patentable and we can protect it, we'll pursue IP on that, yes. IP protected.
Yeah. Hi, Dave Silver [crosstalk].
Yeah.
With Freedom Capital Markets. I had a question about PCC and the next wave of innovation there. Over a couple decade period, you've moved from pills to paper to white top packaging. I think you are currently making some initial steps in a bigger market like coatings. If we're meeting five years from now, what types or what segments of the coatings market might your products or your current innovation or R&D strategies be working toward? Where might we see PCC showing up in the broader coatings market?
This is a perfect opportunity to put my business unit president right on the spot and give it to him and let him do it.
Thank you. We're very excited about the coating capabilities we have in the PCC business or the Specialty Additive segment. As I talked about with the acicular morphology, we can do some things in a coating formulation that economically cannot be achieved with other pigments. Namely, you're going to see in our labs today some boxes that are coated. It's a pasta box, just a recycled paperboard box, where those PCC molecules are engineered to lay flat on the surface to give a high gloss, a great printability. One of the advantages that we have in that space is the capability in several regions right now, in three regions, to make those products and to be able to take the water out of them and ship them to many different mills in the region.
Serving those products through a merchant model where they create a lot of value in the end use application. We're constantly working here in this building and in our labs elsewhere in the world to develop new innovations within coating formulations where we can displace higher cost ingredients if you take titanium dioxide or kaolin clays. That's the power of the Crystal Engineering capability within the Specialty Additives group.
Okay, and then maybe just, you've been asked, Doug, a lot about does CapEx have to meaningfully increase to achieve your next several year targeted growth rate? I just ask you about R&D in the same respect. You've achieved a certain amount of innovation over the last five years, and I believe you have not increased your R&D spend [crosstalk].
No.
As a percentage of revenues. Will the next five years be different? Can you achieve the next stage of broad-based innovation with a similar R&D spend, or does it have to ramp up?
I'll answer it this way. We do not hold back on R&D spending for any good ideas. We just follow a very rigorous process for how we're going to develop things. As I mentioned that earlier, that starts with sitting down with customers and making sure we get roadmaps with them of what they're looking for over the next five years. Ideas just don't come in. You develop them over time with close relationships with the customers and being able to take our technologies and see what's happening with them, their needs over time and applying our capabilities. That's how the pipeline kind of comes in. Yes, we invent some things here on our own without our customer input that we think could be valuable. Then we set a very rigorous process of how we're going to develop it through a Stage-Gate.
Many companies use that. I hate to use the word fail fast, but it's kind of cliche-ish, but yeah, we do. We try to make sure that if it's not going to work, we stop working on it immediately, and we focus our attention on something that will. Only focusing on things our customers want to buy, making sure you actually can do it, including manufacturing processes early in the process of development so that when it gets out, it doesn't get stuck, it moves straight into manufacturing. I think we have a really good engine. We have a really efficient engine. It's probably about 2% of our sales go into R&D, but that's not a limit. We'll spend as much as possible on anything, but we've been able to, I think, hit these kind of potential numbers of pipeline value Develop 300 new products.
19% of our sales constantly are through freshness of refreshing our product lines, and I think we're really efficient with that spend. If I thought it would go faster, further, and more, I'd put more money to it. But I think it's a pretty good pace right now, and I think we can continue it. I hope that answers your question.
Can I just [crosstalk].
Keep going.
The, I don't know. I don't want to say it, but one of your Specialty Additives used to be talc. So could we just get an update on where you [crosstalk].
Yeah.
See that process working out? Thank you.
Well, the bankruptcy process is currently abated, and that is now moved to district court in the Southern District of Texas. I've had a couple of administrative hearings, where we're looking to build and have the judge rule on a budget and rule on timing. We just had a hearing a week or two ago where the court would like to schedule biweekly meetings. The first one of those has not happened, but I think it's scheduled toward the end of the month. That district court is taking up the charge of ruling on whether the talc that BMI sold has sufficient quantities of asbestos to cause disease. So, we've always maintained that BMI's talc is safe. We've always maintained that it's not the case. It did not contain asbestos, and we're excited to prove that in court.
So that process has just now started. I don't have a timing for you in terms of it playing out. The idea would be they want to move it along expeditiously, but I don't have anything more of when that'll start to occur.
Thanks.
Yep.
Anybody else in the room? Okay, we have a couple of questions from online from Mike Harrison. MINSCAN has been a great success in U.S. but is still in the early stages in Europe. Can you give an update on how you expect that offering to grow in Europe over the next few years?
Chad, you want to take that one?
Sure. We're already working on expanding MINSCAN LSC into Europe. As everyone knows, that market has been depressed over the last several years because of, as I mentioned before, geopolitical situations affecting the market in that country. Capital's been very low there as far as expenditure goes in that market. As the push to transition into EAF grows, the opportunities are going to grow for us to bid on certain projects. We're already doing that right now. We're expecting to see the growth in the MINSCAN LSC market in Europe moving forward over the next several years as that market continues to improve.
Okay.
One more question from Mike. You walked through your M&A criteria, but what does a pipeline look like? Are you seeing that the environment is currently favorable in terms of valuations or opportunities that are coming available, and you might be able to execute on in the next year or so?
I kind of want to comment on exactly what's in the pipeline. I try to keep it general in things that we'd be looking for. Do I think we're closer to an acquisition now than before? I think that really depends on the seller and the buyer. I think we've kept the balance sheet in really good shape to be able to execute on something. We have a team in the company that is capable of analyzing and integrating. That team is still intact. We have the muscle memory to be able to integrate and capture synergies from what we buy. I'd like to think that something is imminent, but these are hard to predict. What I can give you is that we're ready.
We're going to be patient, and we're going to keep our eye on the things that we think the company should own and we can generate more value for our investors. Other than that, I'm just going to keep saying the same thing, Mike.
I think that concludes [crosstalk].
Anything else? Anything else online?
Anybody else in the room?
Anybody in here? Other questions? Thank you very much for attending this today. Appreciate the patience and listening in for an hour and 20- minutes. We are going to conclude this presentation online, and then we are going to have the folks that are in the room, hopefully, we are excited to take you through our laboratories and show you some things in more detail. Anyway, thank you very much for joining today. Appreciate that.