Good morning, good afternoon, welcome to Nomad's first-ever Investor Day. I'm Taposh Bari, Head of Investor Relations. We are thrilled to have you with us today and look forward to bringing the Nomad Foods story to life with this virtual experience. As an initial matter, some of the information that we will discuss today is forward-looking, including but not limited to information regarding Nomad's future plans, strategies, and anticipated performance. In today's presentations and in our SEC filings, we will detail material risks that may cause our future results to differ from our expectations. Our statements are as of today, November 10th, and we have no obligation to update any forward-looking statements that we make. With that, let's get started today with our objectives for the day, which are twofold. First, we want you to get to know us better as a company.
Throughout today's presentations, you will hear more about our categories, our operations, and all the work that we're doing around sustainability. Second is to outline our longer-term growth strategy and financial objectives. You'll hear from many of the senior leaders within our organization today. By the end, we hope you come to appreciate Nomad Foods as not only a great investment but also a company with incredible brands, a unique culture, highly engaged employees, and a portfolio that is not only well-equipped in today's environment, but also perfectly positioned with the future of food. Let's jump right into today's agenda. Our CEO, Stéfan Descheemaeker, will kick things off momentarily with an overview of who we are and where we're going.
We'll then hear from Albert Mathieu, our Chief Commercial Officer, who will provide greater insight into our fish and vegetable portfolio, these are our two largest anchor categories, and how sustainability is such an integral part of our company's DNA. Next, we'll take a virtual trip around Europe to hear from our three regional managing directors who will each showcase examples of Nomad's growth model at work and how we win at the country level. Jason Musk, our Chief Supply Chain Officer, will provide an overview of our supply chain organization and outline some of the drivers of productivity that we have in place. Finally, Samy Zekhout, our CFO, will conclude the day with a financial perspective.
We will conduct a Q&A session following today's presentation, so please make sure to submit your questions online throughout the day, and we'll get to as many as we can at the end. Without further ado, let's begin. To kick things off, we'd like to play a message from our two founders, Noam Gottesman and Martin Franklin.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for participating in our first-ever Investor Day. We're thrilled to have the opportunity to speak directly to the investment community and to outline the long-term growth prospects of our company. 2020 marks an important milestone for Nomad Foods as we celebrate our five-year anniversary. We founded Nomad in 2015 through two transformational acquisitions, creating the third largest frozen food company in the world and the undisputed leader in Western Europe. We unified the Birds Eye, Iglo, and Findus brands under one ownership while creating a world-class organization with unique culture, well-defined values, and a growth mindset. We designed and executed a new strategy which reprioritized our core portfolio, revitalized our iconic brands, and put us on a path to sustained organic revenue growth beginning in 2017, and we've not looked back ever since. We have complemented organic growth with a series of strategic acquisitions.
In 2018, we acquired Goodfella's and Aunt Bessie's, two leading frozen food brands in the U.K. Now we're thrilled to announce the acquisition of Findus Switzerland, an incredibly strategic asset that will extend our footprint into one of Europe's largest frozen food markets and unify the Findus brand under Nomad ownership. Many of you have come to know us as Europe's leader in frozen food and a company that delivers consistent financial performance, generates strong free cash flow, and puts shareholder value creation at the forefront through the disciplined and accretive allocation of capital. We're proud of the reputation that we have built with the investment community and believe we have a strong foundation. Today is about reinforcing all the qualities you've come to value as investors in our company.
It is also about showcasing our iconic portfolio, the depth of our management team, progress along our sustainability initiatives, and of course, our long-term strategic roadmap. Martin?
Thanks, Noam. We couldn't be happier with the performance of the business and the team that Stéfan has assembled around him. With 15 consecutive quarters of organic revenue growth in the books, it's clear that the company is executing with great cadence while laying the foundation for sustained growth for years to come. Our people are our greatest asset, and the performance of the business is a true testament to the hard work and commitment of our nearly 5,000 employees. They share a common set of values that makes our company special, and we are grateful for their collective contribution. Noam and I are particularly proud of the way the organization has stepped up this year throughout the COVID-19 crisis by keeping our employees as safe as possible and ensuring the uninterrupted supply of our brands. It has indeed been a memorable first chapter in the Nomad story.
Shareholders have been rewarded, and our company is beginning to be recognized for the world-class organization that it is. As you will hear throughout today's session, our goal is to sustain the strong organic growth profile of this company
Achieve a high level of earnings power and to convert a significant percentage of our profit into cash. One of the long-term objectives that you will hear today is our intention to generate over EUR 1.5 billion of cumulative adjusted free cash over the next five years. This amount, which represents over one-third of our market cap today, will create opportunities for us to pursue our M&A strategy and repurchase our shares, which we continue to believe are fundamentally undervalued. Depending on the circumstances, it may also present us the flexibility to initiate a dividend. Both Noam and I believe that Nomad's best days are still ahead of us, and are excited by what's still to come for this fantastic European frozen food company, both organically and inorganically. Thank you for your interest in our company, and we hope you enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you.
Welcome, everyone, to the Nomad Foods 2020 Investor Day. It's great to have you with us today. As you know, this is our first ever investor day. We would have loved to have hosted you in person, but we're very excited to bring our story to life through this virtual experience that we've done. I'd like to begin today with the conclusions first. These are the key messages that we hope you walk away with from this presentation today. First, we have incredible brands with strong market leadership across frozen food in many European countries. As you will see, not all frozen food is created equal, and our brands have a distinct quality premium and real reasons to win. Second, we have a portfolio that is well positioned to sustain growth at the high end of our long-term, low single-digit growth algorithm.
Third, we're committed to driving strong free cash flow. Over the next five years, we expect to generate over EUR 1.5 billion of adjusted free cash, which represents around one-third of our market cap today. Finally, we plan to generate EUR 2.30 in adjusted EPS by 2025 based on the drivers you will hear today. With that introduction, I'd like to spend the time today telling you more about who we are and where we're going. I often use the word "journey" when describing the story of Nomad Foods. As I stand here before you today to talk about the exciting future of our company and to outline the next chapter of our story, I think it's only appropriate to start the conversation by framing the path that brought us today where we are.
I joined Nomad Foods as CEO back in 2015, at a time our founders, Noam Gottesman and Martin Franklin, had just assembled an incredible group of iconic brands. They just needed investment focus and a new strategic direction. Although we had just become an operating company, Nomad was at that time still considered by many to be a SPAC or a frozen foods roll-up. We had a highly concentrated shareholder base invested behind the reputation of founders as value creators, and for good reason, but a business that was in decline and losing market share. Fast-forward to 2020, Nomad Foods is in a completely different place. Just last week, we reported our 15th consecutive quarter of organic revenue growth. Our core brands, Birds Eye, Iglo, Findus, are not only growing, but are thriving in their respective markets, thanks to increased media support, but also exceptional brand-building efforts.
We have developed Green Cuisine into one of Europe's fastest-growing plant protein brands, and we have completed organic growth with a series of strategic frozen food acquisition. This includes Goodfella's Pizza and Aunt Bessie's in 2018. Our latest deal to acquire Findus Switzerland is strategic assets which further advances our goal of consolidating frozen food across Europe. Most importantly, we've built an incredible organization with highly engaged employees who share our core values and a common purpose of saving the world with better food. That's the journey we've been on. Where are we today? To put it simply, we are Europe's leading frozen food company. With undisputed number one market share in the category, we generate nearly EUR 2.5 billion in revenues with offices in 13 countries, and we have nearly 5,000 employees. Now let's go to our categories.
First and foremost, we are a European frozen food pure-play. We specialize in frozen fish and vegetables, our two largest categories. This represents around 60% of our revenues combined. You will hear much more on expertise in these important categories later today with our colleagues, but that's what we are. In addition, we also operate in a number of other categories like pizza, like poultry, like potatoes. Plant protein is a small but explosive category. We expect it will represent at least 5% of our revenue within the next few years. We own one of the largest branded frozen food portfolio in the world, and we are the largest pure-play. Zooming into Western Europe, we are the undisputed market leader, nearly twice the size of the number two player. Three factors separate us from our peers who tend to be either category or country specialists.
One, we have a multi-country portfolio where we operate across 13 primary European countries. Two, we have expertise in multiple categories. Three, we have strong market share at the micro level when you look at category and country combinations, and that really matters. We make strategic choices within our portfolio. You may have heard the term "must-win battles" or core. This is the part of our portfolio that receives disproportionate resource and attention. Our core represents 70% of our revenues. This is where we have our strongest market share, highest margins, and the most head space for growth. The next % represents what we call secondary branded products, which are strategic as well, but don't get the full support of our growth model. You have to choose.
There is the remaining 10% of our branded retail business, which comprises mostly of legacy SKUs, and we operate primarily for cash. That all adds up to 90%, which represents our branded retail business, and the remaining 10% are comprised of food service and private label. We are a frozen food leader, but it's important also to recognize that we really focus on value-added product. This is in effect our core, our must-win battle portfolio, where our brands really excel. When you go a level deeper, it's evident that the competitive and growth properties within this part of our portfolio, 70%, are far superior to the overall frozen food category. To start, we have clear number one market share across our core.
In fact, our market share on average within this core is 50% within this group of products, which is quite different from the 14% share that we have of the total frozen food category. By being selective in where we play, and we have many categories which meet these criteria, we are able to operate with impact and generate a great return on our investment. Our strategy has resulted in a history of strong financial performance, and you can see that we have reported organic revenue growth every quarter since 2017, 15 quarters. 90% of our revenues are branded goods sold in the retail channel. We, in fact, brand people. Brand strength is really at the heart of our success. We have a portfolio of iconic market-leading brands. Our core brands, Birds Eye, Iglo, and Findus, have incredible awareness in their respective markets.
Our brands have the scale benefit of our pan-European infrastructure and organization, yet they act and operate with unique local adaptations, which drives strong consumer awareness at the local level. For example, we sell the Findus brand in many countries: Italy, Sweden, France, others. Each of these countries views Findus as a local brand. Fish fingers are a great example of our global-local model in action. We manufacture our fish fingers in a factory in Bremerhaven, Germany, the largest fish fingers plant in the world. However, the packaging of these products can vary by market. Here you see some more similarities between the U.K. and Germany, which each have a Captain, while Findus France, for example, uses a different icon, Croustibat. Under Nomad ownership, we've been refining this global-local model.
A great example has been the modernization and standardization of our Captain, and this across all our markets for the first time. This campaign, which launched in 2018 and will be rebooted in 2021, was an incredible success. Let's play a clip of one of our recent Captain TV ads.
Captain Birds Eye loves the simple things, like his crunchy fish fingers, made with 100% fish filet and golden breadcrumbs, crispier than ever. Birds Eye, real food simply made. Fancy a fish finger butty? Go big with our chunky fish fingers.
This video has played across 11 markets using the same captain, and is a great example of how we're leveraging the power of our central resources in service of our local consumers. We sell brands that our consumers love. In fact, our brands reach over 120 million people every day across Europe. Given our mass appeal, we have breadth across the spectrum everywhere you cut the data. Again, fundamental. However, there is a specific cohort where we tend to over-index, and that's young families. They rely on a portfolio of family favorites throughout the week. Our brands are purchased by approximately two-third of household across all markets every year. These consumers have a choice. In most cases, they are willing to pay a premium to buy our brands. Why do they turn to a portfolio? Fundamental question.
Our research shows that consumers value our products for four primary reasons: taste, convenience, quality, and health. Our teams have been working very hard to drive improvement across all these aspects, and the proof is in the results. Clearly, our ability to drive both physical and mental availability has made our brands more relevant and top of mind. Our brands offer consumers incredible value. When I say value, I'm not only referring to the cost of the food. Let me take an example. A classical plate of fish and chips along with a side of peas, all frozen. The fish, while caught and sustainably certified, is a great source of protein and omega-3. The peas are high in protein and fiber, and because they were flash frozen within 2.5 hours of the harvest, they will have preserved a high percentage of their vitamin C and other nutrients.
This entire meal provides just under 500 calories, it can be prepared in under 20 minutes, and has a cost of under EUR 2. I've spoken about our portfolio and our brands. One of our greatest assets is our people. We have nearly 5,000 employees working in 13 offices and 13 factories across Europe. Each year, we run an annual employee survey, which gives our people the ability to express their views on our company. Here are some of the highlights from our latest survey. 91% said they're proud to work at Nomad Foods, 83% feel energized to go the extra mile in their job, and 88% would recommend Nomad Foods as a good place to work as an employer of choice. Each of these metrics has shown improvement year after year.
To me, these results reflect the culture that we are creating, but also our common passion behind the growth prospects of our brands, our category, and our purpose. We have strong ties with our local communities. Examples include collaborations around food waste education or pea farmers to reduce local flooding and/or improve soil health, for example. Earlier this year, we donated over EUR 3 million across our markets in an effort to help those most in need, and they are a lot. We think of ourselves as being more than a frozen food company. Earlier this year, we introduced our company purpose, serving the world with better food. Yes, we sell food that is frozen and which is a good thing, by the way. We also have a portfolio of food which is nutritious, sustainably sourced, better for you and better for the planet.
When we acquire businesses, we strive to make them better where we can. As we look out to the future of food, we believe our business lives at the intersection of two very powerful themes, sustainable eating and convenience. Let's start with sustainability. While factors like taste and price will always be important drivers of food consumption, it's clear that people are increasingly conscious around the theme of sustainability. When they have a choice, they're turning more and more to brands that are better for them and better for the planet. The good news for us is that sustainability has been a fundamental pillar for brands for decades. Let me give you a couple of examples. First, over 95% of our fish is sourced sustainably and certified through third parties like Marine Stewardship Council or MSC.
Second, with the expansion of Green Cuisine, we're really working very hard to further develop a new category, plant protein, which will only accelerate our sustainability agenda. Finally, we're proud to say that 90% of our portfolio qualifies as a healthier meal choice driven by the high protein and vegetable content of our products. When consumers purchase our brands, they're not only getting good food sourced responsibly, but also all the benefits of frozen food. Our fish and vegetable are flash frozen, natural preservation technique, which also lock in much of the vitamin and nutrition content. Convenience. Frozen food is easy to prepare while also providing consumers with year-round access to food independent of the seasons. Finally, again, sustainability. The fact is that frozen food helps reduce food waste. That was a bit on who we are. We are a leading European food company.
We specialize in frozen food. We have iconic market-leading brands recognized as local jewels within their respective countries. We operate in a growing category. We have a highly engaged organization, excited about the future of our company. Let's now shift gears to where we are going. Let me begin by stating upfront that we plan to sustain strong organic revenue at the high end of our long-term growth algorithm. We plan to do so through three core drivers, frozen category tailwinds, scaling our brands across multiple platforms, and building out Green Cuisine within the rapidly growing plant protein space. Let's begin with the category. Despite all the benefits of frozen food, the reality is that the frozen door is still opened far less frequently than the refrigerator or the pantry.
When I look at these numbers, I see a massive opportunity because the fundamental properties of frozen food and our portfolio is, in particular, are just fantastic. The good news is that consumers are starting to recognize the value of frozen food, as evident by the category's outsize growth during the last two years. Historically, the category's growth rate has been 1%, we've seen that growth rate pick up in recent years, partly due to our success as the market leader, also, of course, over the past eight, nine months, it's clear that frozen has been an outperforming category through the COVID-19 pandemic. Let me spend some more time on the impact that COVID has had on our business and why we believe we can retain a lot of the trials that's been occurring this year.
First with the fact there has been a significant influx of new consumers entering our portfolio this year as a result of the pandemic. Pre-COVID, we were gaining around half a point of penetration. That figure spiked to four points during the peak period of the pandemic in Q2, when most of Europe was on lockdown. Encouragingly, even as restrictions have eased, penetration has continued to grow at above historic levels. Consumption of our products has increased and stayed elevated this year for a number of reasons. One, the entire family is at home and our portfolio over-indexed to food at home and family favorites in particular. Two, we are seeing less frequent shopping trips with an emphasis on frozen, which is less perishable in nature. Three, the out-of-home eating occasion has shifted to in the home.
Finally, consumers see greater value in frozen food during times of economic uncertainty. We've been running focus groups and panels of our consumers this year to better understand their impressions of our products throughout the pandemic. The conclusion is clear. These new consumers have been happy and surprised with their experience, which bodes well for retention. These are exactly the reaction that we would expect given all the improvement that we've made to our portfolio under Nomad ownership. Everything, from nutrition to product quality to sustainability. We have elevated our brands and are reaching more consumers with our growth in e-commerce and discount channels. In summary, new consumers entering the category and are responding well to a significantly improved portfolio. The big question many of you have asked is what retention has looked like. Great question.
We've been closely tracking data, as you can imagine, across our three largest markets, U.K., Italy, and Germany. Overall, our goal is to retain 25%-30% of new COVID-19 users in 2021. What you can see here is that retention has been building according to that plan since June, when Europe exited its first lockdown. Moving on to the second pillar of accelerated organic revenue growth, which is to leverage the power of our brands. We plan to do so across the board. We have powerful brands which have the potential to be much larger across a number of platforms. Let's start with the most obvious opportunity, which is with our traditional retailers. We have an initiative underway, which we call space and place. This is effectively our goal of driving improved and increased distribution of our products with our core retail partners.
The opportunity here is significant. Frozen is a growing category with good retail margins and limited waste. Our brands perform well for our customers. One great example to share is our use of crowdsourcing technology as a way to track our in-store execution much more effectively. This tool should help optimize our performance at retail. We very much like it. We're also developing other retail channels, mostly hard discount and e-commerce. You will hear more on our success here later in the day. It's very clear that all brands have an important role to play across all channels. Special food is a subset of our food service business, where we're leveraging our expertise in frozen food towards new end markets, also including healthcare industry. This via direct to consumers. Finally, geographic expansion.
As one of the leading frozen food companies in the world, we believe we have a unique right to win in the countries outside of our core. We have a small but developing international business where we partner with retailers and distributors all over the world, and we will continue to test the viability of our core SKUs along the way. I want to come back to online, which has been an incredible success story for us, especially this year. What you see on this slide are year-on-year growth rates of our sales online. Growth, which was in the 10%-12% range in 2018 and 2019, has accelerated to nearly 100% since the onset of COVID-19. As a result, online now represents 8% of our sales mix, up versus 5% at the end of 2019. The growing adoption of online benefits us for two fundamental reasons.
Frozen food is a category which over-indexes online. Second, all brands have higher market share online than they do in-store. Let's move on to Green Cuisine, our third driver of accelerated revenue growth. This exciting sub-brand officially launched in 2019, originally in the U.K. and Ireland, has since then been expanded across the continent in 2020. For those who are new to Nomad Foods, Green Cuisine is a new and exciting range of meat-free products available in the frozen aisle and for those looking to reduce their meat consumption. We have prioritized health, nutrition, sustainability, and most of all, taste, in developing these products. This is a business that we are accelerating quickly within our portfolio. In the past year, we have assigned a dedicated team internally to create direct accountability and have invested a significant amount of A&P to support trial and repeat purchase.
Green Cuisine is, in fact, one of Nomad's first big bets, and rightfully so. We believe that the movement away from meat is a structural theme as consumers embrace the health and sustainability benefits of this brand. It also happens to be a trend that plays right into our strength. Between our market leadership in frozen foods and our expertise in fish and vegetables, we have a unique right to win in plant protein. Our customers are also demanding more from their brands. Just last month, Tesco announced its commitment to increase the sales in meat alternatives by 300%, and we plan to be a part of that journey with them and are happy to be in a position to act quickly. Finally, we believe that we already have a winning formula with Green Cuisine.
Let's review our performance in the U.K., where we've been present the longest, a bit more than one year, and it is also the largest and most developed plant protein market in Europe. Since our launch in 2019, market share has risen to 7%, making Green Cuisine the number 3 selling brand in the U.K. While off of a low base, our business is up 10 times the category, which is up itself 26% so far this year. We like to say that Green Cuisine is democratizing meat-free mealtime. Yes, we sell burgers, but this is not a burger brand. We have a wide range of products which are tailored by market. Here you see the specs from across all of our European markets. A great example is our sizable vegetarian range of more classic meat-free products like falafel and veggie fish fingers.
Today, these types of products represent around 30% of Green Cuisine revenues. Finally, we also recently launched poultry in several markets, and the early signs are very encouraging. Great taste. I'd like to provide you also with some additional color on Green Cuisine today, which is now available in 12 markets in Europe. We expect these brands, which carries a high gross margin profile, to generate approximately EUR 30 million in revenue this year, up significantly from last year, where we only had three SKUs in two countries. While we are in nearly every market, approximately 80% of revenues should come from four countries, U.K., Germany, France, and Italy. You will hear more about some of their plans later today.
Worth repeating here that Green Cuisine has a nice balance across product type, with half of the business in meat analogs and the other half in the vegetarian foods, ready meals, and ingredients. You heard me talk earlier about our consumers, where we over-indexed amongst young families. With Green Cuisine, we're seeing a clear over-index amongst a broader set of younger consumers, which is quite interesting and a great opportunity for our portfolio overall. We're pleased with the progress we're making in this exciting space. I mentioned earlier that Green Cuisine is on pace to achieve EUR 30 million in revenue this year, putting us on pace for the EUR 100 million-plus goal that we have previously articulated by 2022. In summary, Green Cuisine presents an exciting new dimension of growth to our portfolio and should help contribute an incremental percentage points or so to our overall organic revenue growth.
While we have an ambitious target to achieve by 2022, EUR 100 million in revenues, it's not certainly our end game. We are continuously advancing our strategy to build Green Cuisine into a significantly larger business, and we'll be sure to update you as these plans develop. Thank you for your attention. I hope you enjoy the rest of the presentations, which will again provide you with even further insight into who we are and where we're growing. Hello, everyone. I am Albert Mathieu, Nomad's Chief Commercial Officer. I've been with the company since 2016, joining from Mondelez, where I was the president for biscuits in Europe, and before that, I spent many years with Mars in a variety of roles in marketing first and then general management across many categories and multiple countries.
As Chief Commercial Officer, I have the privilege of developing our commercial strategy and then working in close collaboration with the local teams to make sure they have the right resources and capabilities to execute our growth model and deliver fantastic results. Stéfan has already shared our plans to build a winning portfolio in plant protein. I would like now to take you through the heart of our portfolio, fish and vegetables. Those two categories are representing more than 60% of our revenues and are very well positioned to sustain long-term growth. Before getting into the specifics of those two categories, let me take a step back and speak about our broader portfolio. We believe this portfolio is competitively advantaged and is fundamentally future-proof. Why? Food that is both good for people and good for the planet has a bright future.
Our consumers and our trade partners are looking for this sweet spot between health and sustainability. You heard Stéfan talk about our purpose, serving the world with better food. Between fish, vegetables, and now plant protein, we have an incredible starting in serving food that is better for people and better for the planet. In categories that we have recently acquired, take pizza, for example, we are playing our part in making these products better across these criteria. As a leading European food company, we have a clear role to play in the transition to net zero society. We have a portfolio which is flexitarian at heart, and that is fully aligned with the United Nations sustainability goals. We are working across all these goals, but we are focusing in particular against some of them in which we can have a real big impact.
For example, SDG goal number two, responsible consumption and production, in particular, focusing on food waste reduction, SDG goal number 14, life below water for obvious reasons, and SDG goal number 15, life on land. As you will see later in my presentation, we are building strong external partnerships to help us maximize our positive impact in those areas. I mentioned that our portfolio is better for people, this all starts by providing great nutritional values. We are using a nutrient profiling tool that we've been adopting from the U.K. Ofcom model that is delivering an objective measure of the healthiness of our products. This model is taking into account the entire nutritional composition of the food allow us to really track year after year the progress we are making in our nutritional performance.
The model is penalizing products that are high in fat, high in sodium, high in sugar, but also, the model recognizes the positive value of protein, fiber, and vitamins, which are nutrients that we all need. We are proud to say that today, more than 90% of our portfolio qualifies as healthier meal choices. You have a great example in this chart of Croustibat, which is a blockbuster stew that we have in France targeting kids and family with kids that has been recognized as a high source of protein and also low saturated fat levels. The good thing is that this nutritional score, which is very positive, is going to be increasingly visible for consumers and for our trade partners, as many countries are now adopting nutritional labeling in the products.
Here you have a good example where this Croustibat is scoring A, in that label. Actually, in France, more than 90% of our portfolio is scoring A or B in that Nutri-Score labeling, which is great. This is a bit about nutrition. Again, even when we acquire companies that may start with a lower starting point, our goal is to make the nutrition of their respective categories better and improve them year after year. Our portfolio is great in terms of nutrition, but it can also have a very strong positive impact on the planet. We have commissioned a research earlier this year that actually is modeling the impact of diets on carbon emissions.
This research has confirmed that doubling our consumption of vegetables from 150 grams to 300 grams per week, eating fish twice a week, and replacing some red meat consumption by plant protein meat substitutes can help reduce the carbon footprint from one's food by as much as 60%. When we know that the food value chain represents around 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions, encouraging our consumers to eat more of these products can drive a big change. Eating more fish and vegetables is great, but if they are frozen, it's even better. We have recently conducted a number of life cycle assessments, converting factors across the entire food chain into carbon equivalents, and the results so far are looking very promising.
A high-level initial LCA shows that actually our fish fingers and our peas are similar or even lower in terms of carbon emission versus other temperature regimes. The significant lower food waste is a key driver behind that. Same, you wouldn't be surprised to see that when we do these high-level LCAs on our Green Cuisine products, it shows that actually, the carbon emission for a Green Cuisine burger is 85% lower than for a beef burger. Let's now take a deeper dive into our core fish and vegetables portfolio, and specifically take you through why we believe our portfolio is uniquely positioned, and why we believe they can continue to deliver strong growth. Let me start with fish. We have a fantastic fish portfolio, which is powered by our famous captain. This brand icon is everywhere.
It's on pack, it's in our advertising campaigns, even our executive ballroom here in Bedfont is called The Captain's Table. We have the largest fish brand in Europe, with commanding leadership in the vast majority of geographies and segments where we operate. Fish is a powerhouse. It's a powerhouse in our portfolio, will continue to do so in the future as consumers are increasingly aware that fish is a delicious, healthy, and sustainable option. We don't stand still. We have zero complacency. Actually, we are keep improving our fish portfolio year after year. After having rejuvenated the Captain in our advertising campaigns two years ago, we will modernize the Captain's logo and improve our packaging design across Europe as of Q1 next year. We renovate our core portfolio every two to three years with improved recipes, more convenient and sustainable packaging.
As you can see in this slide, there is a great example coming from Germany with the recipe fish, which is a blockbuster there, where we've been replacing the aluminum tray by recyclable paper tray, which is better in terms of sustainability and also allows consumers to cook it from the oven, but also in the microwave. We are leveraging more and more some of the strong assets and stories we have in sustainability with eco claims like MSC or like the Nutri-Score that I mentioned before in the French example. Beyond our obsession for renovation and modernization in our fish portfolio, we have a pipeline of innovations that will drive more consumer engagement and category growth in the future. You can see some examples in this slide.
Let me start with our brand new fish provenance tool that will allow our consumers, by just scanning a QR code that will be in the back, it will allow them to know where the fish is coming from, and they will live a fully immersive experience with augmented reality technology. This is super cool and will be launched in Q1 next year across Europe. To drive and support the increase of fish consumption, we are also working on alternative fish sourcing options and are actively developing aquaculture partnerships. Finally, we have a strong portfolio of innovations that are making our products more exciting, more modern, tastier, and healthier. A good example here is our new range of fish coated with healthy and crunchy grains. Let me now move on to our vegetable portfolio.
We have a wide portfolio in vegetables, the core of our range is made of strong blockbusters like peas and spinach that have built shares in excess of 50% in the largest local segments. We have the pea markets like the U.K., Sweden, Portugal, and Italy, where we have shares above 50%, the spinach markets like Germany, Austria, Netherlands, and Belgium, where again, we have more than 50% market share. This builds a very strong foundation of products that are locally relevant, with strong brand awareness, delivering superior quality, and all that translating into strong shares with healthy price premiums. To build value perception and support our price premiums, we communicate and deliver against strong quality attributes in our vegetables portfolio. A few examples. In the U.K., we mention how quickly we freeze our peas after having been picked.
In Italy, we play very strongly the local provenance of our ingredients in minestrone, for example, which is a hero stew there. In Germany, we focus on the unique balance between cream and leaf in our hero spinach stew there. Sustainability plays a key role in vegetables, and we have been driving sustainability for years, for decades, actually. We will continue to do so in the future. Importantly, we are going to make sure that this sustainability advantage is visible for our consumers. Our peas in the U.K. are the first ever to receive a gold level FSA assessment in terms of sustainability. We are extending that assessment to the rest of our portfolio with the aim of achieving gold certification on all our contracted vegetables, and at least silver with the rest of our portfolio.
Amongst all the sustainability stories that we can play, we know biodiversity is resonating particularly strongly with our consumers. We have always taken action in that area. For example, in Germany, we've been planting flower strips along the fields for more than 15 years. We will soon dial up this biodiversity message by building some strong partnerships and delivering some specific campaigns around biodiversity. As much as we believe that our core portfolio like peas and spinach have a bright future, clearly, like for fish, we are building a strong pipeline of innovation to modernize our portfolio and to make sure they are also appealing to new target groups like millennials.
You can see here in this chart some great examples, ranging from vegetable mixes with trendy and healthy ingredients like pulses and quinoa on the left, modern cooking methods like wok that we are going to launch across Europe, also the implementation of recyclable packaging that is quite critical in vegetables. Our goal, by the way, is to achieve 100% packaging recyclability by 2022, which is ambitious. We will deliver it. This will be delivered before many of our FMCG peers. Success in vegetables will not just come with market share gains. Success will mean that we are able to drive significant category growth. Doubling vegetables consumptions from 150 grams per week to 300 grams per week is fundamental for health and sustainability reasons, as we have seen before. We want to be a driving force behind that.
To deliver that objective, we are going to roll out next year our Eat in Full Color campaign that is encouraging consumers to eat more colorful vegetables, which we know is what drives health and variety. We're going to implement this type of campaign to drive consumer behavioral change. We're also developing new freezing technologies that will continue to improve the texture, the taste, and the nutritional quality of our frozen vegetables range. I hope that was a comprehensive overview of our fish and vegetables portfolio, which are clearly aligned with our goals of serving food that is better for people and better for the planet. These anchors will be complemented by our efforts in plant protein, which will create another important dimension to our advantage portfolio. The work doesn't stop there.
We are working to extend our pipeline across a number of breakthrough longer-term growth platforms like, for example, new sources of proteins, new processes for protein to stay ahead of the competition in our strategic plant protein big bets, next generation packaging, ready meals, which is a segment where we still have a lot of white space for growth, and finally, connectivity of devices so that we can encourage the consumers to open the door of the freezer more often, which is critical for future category growth. More to come in those areas as we are making progress. In summary, we believe Nomad Foods has a competitively advantaged portfolio, future-proof, and aligned to help drive a more sustainable food system for a better future. We have many strategic partnerships to make this a reality, as you can see in this slide. Too many actually to go into details.
One of our key partners is the Marine Stewardship Council, the MSC. I'd like now to play a short video from the MSC about their partnership with Nomad Foods and how we are helping create more sustainable fishing practices across the industry.
Unsustainable fishing is a growing problem around the world, affecting millions of people. More than a third of the world's fish stocks are overfished. If this continues, this create risk for the supply chain, for this whole industry sector and, of course, for our oceans. However, there is still hope. Overfishing is not irreversible. The Marine Stewardship Council is a global not-for-profit organization. We work with scientists, NGOs, and the industry, to develop a globally recognized standard for sustainable fishing, but also to incentivize fisheries, supply chain consumers to catch, buy, and sell sustainable products. More than 17% of the fish and seafood caught in the oceans is now engaged in the MSC program. Sales of product carrying the MSC blue eco label top EUR 10 billion. None of this would be possible without the partnership and commitment of companies like Nomad Foods.
Nomad's commitment to source 100% seafood from sustainable source by 2025 with the MSC's help not only help the oceans, but it ensures livelihoods and will ensure that Nomad customers can buy sustainable seafood for future generations.
Far today, you've heard Stéfan and Albert showcase the advantages of our portfolio. They also articulated our growth strategy across a number of interesting, hopefully new dimensions. Let's now shift gears by taking a closer look at how we win across Europe when we apply our growth model at the country level. Over the next 30 minutes, you will hear from our three regional managing directors, Wayne Hudson, who oversees the Northern European countries, Steven Libermann, who manages our Southern European countries, and Antje Schubert, managing director of Western Europe. They'll each focus on a specific Nomad market, outline the actions behind our success to date, and articulate what's still to come in the future.
Hello, everybody. For those of you on the call that I've met before, it's great to get the opportunity to speak to you again. For those of you who have not met me, my name is Wayne Hudson. I'm the managing director for Northern Europe, which includes the U.K., Ireland, and the Nordic countries. A little bit about me. I've been in FMCG marketplace for about 38 years, and I've had the fortunate pleasure to work in every single temperature regime, whether that's ambient, chilled, or frozen. I've also worked with multinational brands, domestic U.K. brands, as well as having extensive experience in private label. I joined Nomad at the start of the Nomad journey, in January 2016. Obviously, Nomad was founded earlier in 2015, and I initially joined the exec as managing director for the U.K. and Ireland business.
In January this year, January 2020, the Nordics were added to my accountability, and a few words on those a little bit later as we come to the end of my section. As you can see, this region accounts for 45% of total Nomad revenues, it's a hugely important region for the business. Just a quick snapshot of some of our key brand icons across the Birds Eye portfolio in the U.K. and Ireland. Under the Birds Eye brand, this business is represented way beyond our core of fish and vegetables. With the exception of ice cream, we actually are represented in all of the large categories, which includes pizza, value-added poultry, potatoes with the roast dinner occasion, as well as many others. A hugely important segment, and a very complex portfolio.
Back at the start of the Nomad journey, the Birds Eye business, both in the U.K. and Ireland, wasn't, to be honest, in great shape. The category itself had had a number of years of decline, and the Birds Eye U.K. and Irish business had suffered even greater declines. What we started to do in 2016 was the turnaround journey for total Nomad and specifically for Birds Eye U.K. and Ireland. What we did in those initial stages was we invested very heavily in our products, in our people, in our categories, and also in our communication. That led us to some growth in 2017, and growth actually accelerated throughout 2017. Midway through 2018, we acquired the pizza business in April, and we followed that up very quickly with the purchase of the Aunt Bessie's business, in July 2018.
What we set about doing was actually consolidating all of those three businesses from July 2018 onwards into one Birds Eye U.K. and Ireland operating business. All of that became effective right from the start of January 2019, where we created one Birds Eye business with the three iconic brands. With Birds Eye, with Goodfella's, and with Aunt Bessie's. One of the things that I want to confirm to you today is that in the next seven weeks in the Birds Eye business for U.K. and Ireland, we will actually hit a critical milestone. If you remember a few seconds ago, I talked about a series and years of decline. What we will achieve in 2020 with Birds Eye U.K. and Ireland is four consecutive years of growth, and that's unprecedented actually in the Birds Eye U.K. and Irish history.
Another key fact is that actually since Nomad's acquisition of Birds Eye, since the start of January 2016, in seven weeks' time, when we close out the year, the Birds Eye U.K. and Ireland business under Nomad ownership will have actually doubled in size, both through organic Birds Eye growth and through M&A. A tremendous milestone for the business as we close this year. Over the next few slides, I'm going to talk specifically a little bit more in detail about how we've done that, but also, more importantly, how we continue and intend to continue the growth story, and continue with Birds Eye being a growth and powerhouse for the overall Nomad business. I'm going to focus specifically on the U.K. The U.K. as a business accounts for just under 30% of Nomad revenues. Actually, it's a hugely important business as you've seen.
We really focus on strategic business plans, or Joint Business Plans with our key retailers. We have a really laser focus on our consumer, our shopper, and our customers. That focus actually has been there ever since the start of 2016, and it's been crucial to the Birds Eye business' success, and it will also be crucial to our ongoing growth story. What we started to do way back in 2016 is actually look at the category from a holistic perspective. We think about the category approach, we think about our retailer-specific strategies, and then through that, we actually find opportunities to grow. What we do, first and foremost, is 3 stages. We think about category opportunity, we think about customer opportunity, and then we think about how can Birds Eye leverage that and grow as a consequence.
In essence, what we're doing all of the time is we're aligning and marrying the macro consumer and shopper trends with individual retailer strategies to find avenues of growth, either margin or revenue, for them and for ourselves, while satisfying consumer demand. One of the key areas that we do this is we work with retailer strategies, whether that's existing ones or new emerging ones. What we ensure that we do is that we really work with our strategic business partners, and with our key retailers on those plans to make sure that we capitalize on the opportunity. The JBPs are also multi-channel, so it's not good enough to think about a retailer holistically. If you think of someone like Tesco has an estate that covers super stores, supermarkets, it covers convenience and high street, as well as a significant online channel.
It's really important that we have specific Joint Business Plans for every single channel that the retailer is working with. One of the key things that's driven our success is also a laser focus on the core of our business. Again, referring to years of decline, we'd lost a bit of focus and focused heavily on innovation. The core of the business is absolutely crucial because it underpins the ability and the opportunity to develop into other categories. Some of those categories like we're just entering into this year, like Green Cuisine and plant protein, are going to be hugely important for the future growth of the business as we go forward. As I said, really focusing on the core is hugely important.
In the last quarter of this year, the Birds Eye brand, including Green Cuisine, will have achieved an incremental 16,000 distribution points in quarter four, which are all going to be critical, not just to the outturn of this year's numbers, but really for 2021 and beyond. As you've seen in the media, one of the emerging channels is the channel of e-commerce. That's accelerated quite a lot since COVID really hit the U.K. market in March. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that in more detail over the next couple of minutes. A couple of stats first and foremost. U.K. is Nomad's largest online market. It actually accounts for round about 66, 67% of total Nomad revenues, so it's hugely important.
Additionally, it's not only important to us and our customers, it's actually vitally important to our consumers and shoppers because actually, the Birds Eye brand is the second largest brand in the online channel, second only to Coca-Cola. Hugely important for all of our key stakeholders. As I said, whether that's a customer, whether it's a consumer, or whether it's a shopper. As you can see on the graphs, frozen and Birds Eye specifically, Nomad, this channel is hugely important. Pre-COVID, the average participation of the grocery channel was about 5% or 6%, with frozen being about 8% or 9%, and the share of our revenues being about 13%. Frozen, very important as a category online, and also Nomad, very important to the category at a total frozen level. What we've seen most recently in our year-to-date numbers is that the category has exploded.
Retailers have coped with the incremental demand, and challenges of the online business because they've had to increase the number of slots, they've had to increase the number of deliveries, and the channel in frozen has taken a large proportion of that growth. The overall category in frozen has grown around about 50% year to date. Conversely, Nomad, again, has outstripped that growth. We've grown as a business round about 60%. Resourcing this channel is crucial, and it's really important that we not only get that right now, but we get that right to capitalize on the future growth potential. The category dynamics are really in our favor. They're in favor of frozen. They're in favor of us as a business. As I say, we'll continue to do so as all metrics continue to get exceeded.
If you look at this a little bit deeper, the key levers that we pull are really focusing on the basics, making sure that we win in a point of purchase. We think of the online channel just in exactly the same way as we think about bricks and mortar. Our brands have to be visually represented in a way that makes it very easy for shoppers to actually purchase our products. We spend a lot of time making sure that we get onto favorite lists, and we make sure that we get all of the brand hierarchies and the communication right when that shopper goes onto a site and wants to make a purchase. What we also do additionally in the online channel is we think about how can we solve shopper missions, create more demand, and drive incremental purchase and transaction size.
A key way to do this is to link our own products together so you can do a bundle deal on things like chicken, Aunt Bessie's chips, Birds Eye peas, and get the three meal solution products for a specific price. Alternatively, you can link like the picture depicts on a meal occasion like big night in with pizza and beer. Real opportunities for us, for the retailer, and ease for the shopper and the consumer with simple solutions. We're also, with retailers, getting more traction as what we call category captains. That's where specific retailers look to us to provide advice on how their website should be laid out in things like frozen, what the hierarchy should be. That allows us to really drive on performance of the category, then obviously the Birds Eye business' performance within it.
We are trusted partners to many retailers, specifically online, but also in bricks and mortars as well. The last angle that I do want to touch on is how we focus on retaining and rewarding those consumers. We use all of the tools that are available, whether that's at couponing for retention and repeat purchase at point of sale and/or on the tills when people go through the till and pay for the shopping, or indeed in consumer marketing, where we're marketing direct to consumer, and utilizing social media very heavily to talk about our brand. We're using all of the tools that are available to us, either within retailers or within the wider market to improve our overall performance. In summary, the U.K. has been and will continue to be a strategic powerhouse for Nomad.
We will never, ever lose sight of what has made us successful. There is absolutely no new news here. What is going to be making us successful in the future is actually what's also made us successful in the past. A real focus on the core of our business. The strategy is really clear about that, and it remains laser-focused on that. We will continue to grow and leverage the core whilst also ensuring that we adopt and adapt to macro consumption trends like plant protein with our Green Cuisine brand. We've got great consumer and customer traction with Green Cuisine. We have got a three-year growth plan with Tesco in this particular arena, which is fantastic news. There is huge potential because it really links into macro eating trends, macro sort of consumption occasions.
We're very well-placed with a lot of different types of products satisfying different types of consumer needs. The online channel will become increasingly important. It'll take an increase in participation of total grocery sales. It's really important that we remain focused on that, as well as making sure that we adopt and adapt to retailer strategies as they change and seek out further growth opportunities. As I said right at the beginning of this presentation, the Birds Eye business has been through a transformation phase. It's got huge opportunity for growth. To close on Birds Eye, we have had four consecutive years of growth, totally unprecedented, and this year we'll see the key milestone hit of doubling the size of the Birds Eye business since Nomad ownership. A fact and a figure that all of the organization is hugely proud of.
Just before closing, it would be remiss of me not to give you a few words on the Nordics, and on the Findus brand, in particular. The great news for me is that what I see in the Nordics and Sweden in particular, which is the largest Nordic market to us, is a lot of similarities now with when I joined Birds Eye in the first place. We've done a lot of consumer research this year. Consumers love the Findus brand in the Nordics, so that gives me great sort of comfort that there is huge opportunity. It's also been an incredibly busy year. In Finland, the smallest of our Nordic markets, we continue year in, year out to grow the business and to grow share.
In Norway, we've returned the business to market share growth, in the last couple of months and will continue to do so over the months ahead. In Sweden, we've created a completely new senior leadership team with enhanced capability. We started to focus, just like we did in the U.K., on the category, on the retailer, and then actually can we have simple solutions to help their growth story. I'm pretty confident the future, without sort of specific targets and measures to share at this stage, that the future for the Nordics is bright.
Hi, I'm Steven Libermann, Managing Director of Nomad Southern Europe region, which consists of Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. Together, this cluster represents approximately 30% of total company revenues. I have 1`7 years of comprehensive experience in the frozen food business, originally as part of the Findus Group and then Nomad Foods since 2015. I've held several roles within the company across marketing, sales and general management functions across Europe and earlier in my career held a role at Nestlé and Beech-Nut. Today I would like to spend some time discussing the incredible success that we have had in France which recently surpassed Sweden to become Nomad's fourth largest market by revenues. Here you see a snapshot of Findus France which has a portfolio highly concentrated in two core categories fish and potatoes. These two categories combine to represent approximately 90% of our revenues in France.
Vegetables represent a large part of the remainder. As we will discuss shortly, Green Cuisine will provide an important new dimension to our portfolio. Going back to the early days of Nomad in 2015, France operated both the Iglo and Findus brands. Ultimately, we decided in 2016 to consolidate the market into one brand, Findus. This created a baseline for us to build on our market share, which was already relatively high across all core categories. You can see that we have delivered strong performance since 2016 with market share increases across the board. Since 2016, our revenues have grown at a CAGR of 5% per year, gross profit at 6%, and EBITDA at 10%. I would like to provide some more background on the drivers of our success in France, a market where many FMCGs companies often struggle.
Core to our success in France has been the successful adoption of Nomad growth model. This included establishing product superiority. We improved the nutritional and sustainability profile of our products. Today, we are proud to say that 95% of the Findus portfolio scores green in the Nutri-Score labeling system, and that 100% of our fish is MSC or ASC certified, meaning that it was sustainability sourced. We also built on the scale of the overall group. A great example was the introduction of the Fish and Chips range. These products were existing within Nomad countries, but we tailor-made the concept for France. Today, the Fish and Chips range is a EUR 15 million business with accretive margins. As a branded business, we increased our media impressions through improved media efficiency and strong ROIs. In fact, we reach an index of 175, well above the food media norms in France.
Finally, we deliver strong commercial execution across distribution, assortment, and in store. With our internal sales force, we are helping our retailers to make frozen looks good for shoppers. France is a great case study of how the Nomad growth model, or playbook, can be applied to other countries or potentially newly acquired businesses. Turning to the future, we are currently in the process of introducing Green Cuisine to the French market. This exciting new sub-brand will help Findus to develop another leg of growth in addition to fish and potatoes, and help develop our vegetable business as well, which is relatively small in this market.
Again, applying our must-win battles strategy, we are using a 360 degrees approach built around a dedicated TV copy as part of our new communication platform in France, digital activation with 500 influencers, dedicated promotion in stores and in e-commerce, and finally, great execution in store. We are covering 1,200 point of sales with what we call our Green Cuisine with secondary placements, and close to 5,000 stores will carry specific point of sales materials to generate visibility. Thank you.
Hi, everybody. My name is Antje Schubert, and I am the managing director of Nomad Foods' Western European region, which includes Germany, Austria, Netherlands, and Belgium. These markets, which account for approximately 25% of our company revenue, are home of the Iglo brand. I've been with Nomad Foods since 2014 after spending my career on an international journey in markets like Poland, Spain, U.K., Netherlands, and Austria, and I had a fortune working with our many large FMCG companies such as Kraft, Reckitt Benckiser, and Danone. Today, I'd like to share with you some perspective on the success we've had in Germany, which has been Nomad Foods' fastest growing country since 2016, with an organic CAGR growth of 11% and an EBITDA CAGR in the mid-teens. How did we do this? Well, we base our success on three pillars. First, we invested heavily in rebuilding our brand heroes and reestablishing the emotional value.
Second, we masterminded the execution of all elements of our growth model and improving, in particular, the distribution by ensuring that Iglo was accessible to as many German shoppers as possible. After all, we are a brand for every household, and we must be present where those people shop. Third, we put focus on our people. You can have the greatest products, but without the right mindset and values of our people, you cannot be successful. Hence, we re-engineered our culture and leadership profile. We are a branded food company, and it all starts with consumers' love for our brand icons and our portfolio. Iglo Germany stands for fish, vegetable, Captain Iglo, Blubb Spinach, and increasingly, Green Cuisine. We have made a lot of progress over the last years to become a loved brand. The situation, however, was quite different back in 2016.
At that time, we knew we had a strong consumer awareness and great product, we saw a fundamental need to enhance and sharpen what our brand stood for. What did we do about it? Each of our core categories were set up with a dedicated 360-degree campaign, which contemporized every element of our brand. To mention just a few examples here, we strengthened our communication model. We reactivated our brand heroes, Captain Iglo and Blubb Spinach, and spread our comms into a much wider media channel mix to reach our target audience at all channels they were viewing. We optimized our portfolio with very clear innovation focus around our company purpose, with a very rigorous look onto health and sustainability, establishing salt and sugar reduction programs, just to give you a few examples.
We executed very rigorous category management. We successfully fought for the introduction of Nutri-Score in Germany. Front-of-label packaging, which helps consumers with a better orientation on healthy and unhealthy products. This helped us to strengthen our position in the market. Just last month, we received an innovation award for Iglo, given by an independent jury of retail partners, market researchers, as well as market participants. This is a great recognition on what we did over the past years. With our brand in a healthier place, we recognized that we were significantly underrepresented in an important segment of the food market, discounters. Discounters like Aldi and Lidl represent 40% of retail in Germany. If you like to be where your shoppers are, you also need to be there. Hard discounters originated in Germany when the first Aldi store, at that time called Albrecht, was opened in the 1960s.
Back then, and for decades to follow, the discount channel followed a very, very simple model. Low prices, simple shopping, no brands. This segment over the market has evolved both within Germany and globally ever since. As discounters reached store saturation, they began to introduce A brands into their assortment. They also began to carry more SKUs and run promotions. In effect, then started to behave a bit more and more like traditional retailers in their effort to drive more sales. In Germany, the discount channel currently has approximately 50% market share of the frozen food segment, and one where our brand Iglo had historically been underrepresented. In a dynamic and ever-evolving retail landscape, our goal is to follow the consumers by ensuring that our brand is widely available.
After all, Iglo is an iconic A brand in Germany and one which should indeed be accessible to all consumers across all channels. As a result, we have evolved as well. Our growth in discount channels enabled us to gain new shoppers, hence grew our penetration and respective share. Now, you may say this is right pocket, left pocket, right? Cannibalizing the classical retail business. The answer is no. All channels, traditional retail, as well as discounters, grew in share over the past four years. This is absolutely critical. It comes back to the power and strength of our brand. This is what we wouldn't have been achieving without a strong effort on our brand. Our approach is to continue to develop our love brand and our portfolio. As you know, Germany is one of Nomad's largest market for Green Cuisine.
We look forward to extending this exciting new sub-brand and building on our brand strength across our network of retail consumers. To sum up, stay close to your consumers, particularly ensure where they fill their baskets and evolve with them. Brand visibility is key to business success, especially when it comes to in-store activation. It's all about best-in-class execution to create brand experience. To make it a bit more colorful, let me take you with us on a virtual journey, going shopping, filling our baskets in German retail.
Let's take a virtual tour of a traditional grocery store in the heart of Germany within the city of Bielefeld. We are at a store owned by Edeka, Germany's largest grocery chain. Upon entering the store, consumers walk through the produce section where they are presented with a selection of fresh fruits and vegetables. As they continue, they pass through the dairy aisle, followed by shelf-stable foods, and many more. Consumers have many great brands and categories to choose from every time they enter a grocery store. In fact, many of these options are presented to them before they even enter the frozen food aisle. As a result, our ability to gain share of stomach begins with our ability to win our place in the shopper's basket.
As a leading frozen food brand, our goal is to create an immediately attractive shopping experience for our consumers, and the path to success is to own the freezer cabinet. Brand blocks attract consumer attention onto our portfolio and are an invitation to shop. By facing our various products next to one another using a brand umbrella strategy, consumers have the choice of purchasing across the brand's entire portfolio. In Germany, Iglo is famous for its frozen fish products. The range of the portfolio is exceptional, which allows the brand to have brand block with retailers. Iglo's classic fish fingers are the top-selling frozen SKU in all of Germany. It's important that retailers fully stock their shelves with these beloved products. Double facing of our best-selling products allows retailers to keep their shelves full. In addition, point-of-sale campaigns, such as gifts with purchase, further enhance the consumer shopping experience.
A great example is a branded kids apron, a visible reminder of the role our products play in family mealtimes while helping to make cooking at home more fun for the entire family. Demand for meat-free solutions such as Green Cuisine are on the rise, so it is critical that consumers see these products easily within the frozen food aisle. Visual signage such as framed glass freezer covers allow us to showcase our distinct packaging. In summary, the combination of best-in-class in-store execution and an engaging brand experience allows us to drive incremental sales and strong repurchase rates. Success in food is all about share of stomach, and it all starts by finding our way into our shoppers' baskets.
Let's now enter our third and final section of the day. As Europe's leading frozen food company, our ability to source, manufacture, distribute at a competitive price is a key enabler of our success. Jason Musk, our Chief Supply Chain Officer, will introduce you to this critical part of our organization and the initiatives that we have underway. Following Jason, Samy Zekhout, our CFO, will conclude our Investor Day by summarizing everything that you've heard today into numbers.
Hi, I'm Jason Musk, Nomad's Chief Supply Chain Officer. I've been with the company since 2017, and I'm responsible for our entire supply chain organization, including procurement, manufacturing operations, distribution, and our continuous improvement and transformation programs. I spent my entire career in FMCG, specifically food and beverage operations with an international career for companies including San Miguel and Molson Coors, two of the world's largest global brewers, and the 2 Sisters Food Group, Premier Foods, and Vandemoortele, who are synonymous for excellence in food manufacturing within Europe. I'd like to spend the time today to provide you with greater insight into Nomad's supply chain and to outline the drivers which will help enable our longer term value creation and productivity objectives. Our supply chain is an expansive operation which incorporates procurement, manufacturing, and distribution functions, amongst others.
Simply put, we are responsible for sourcing raw materials, manufacturing them at a cost that makes our products competitive, and ensuring they're distributed at the right location and time for our retail customers. Our supply chain in totality has around 3,500 employees with a sustainable engagement level equivalent to high performing operations at 84%. Here you see a high level split of Nomad Foods' EUR 1.6 billion in cost of goods from 2019. What you'll see is that 69% of that cost sits in procurement, making our scale and ability to source raw materials critical to our success. 40% of this spend is associated with buying fish, 20% for vegetables, and a further 20% for meat and dairy products.
Similarly, manufacturing represents a quarter of our cost of goods, this is an area that we constantly focus on to ensure we continue to create value for our organization, both through leveraging our scale and footprint alongside efficient operations. Let's talk about fish. This is our largest category, representing approximately 40% of our revenues. Naturally, it's also a critical area for our procurement team. We purchase over 100,000 tons of fish from the world's oceans each year with a spend of around EUR 450 million. 40% of this spend is associated with pollock, making us one of the world's largest buyers in whitefish. 96% of all of our fish is sustainably sourced through the Marine Stewardship Council, the MSC, and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the ASC. Vegetables are another important category for us.
We work hand in hand with over 700 farmers with a European agricultural footprint which spans over 17,000 hectares. We harvest in excess of 360,000 tons of vegetables each year with a spend of EUR 190 million. Peas, potatoes, and spinach are our premier scale areas, representing more than 65% of the total vegetables sourced. We also have a dedicated center of excellence for breeding and growing our own exclusive varieties of peas for the Nomad Foods. That was procurement. Let's now shift to manufacturing, where we have a high performing and agile network across 13 factories in Europe. Our network is well positioned and scaled to serve all of our customer markets with 3,300 highly engaged employees in our factories.
Our flagship and scale sites in the U.K., Germany, and Italy are also supported by a network of smaller satellite sites and an extensive co-pack network, ensuring that we consistently meet our demand requirements. Together, we produce in excess of 750,000 tons of finished products. That was a quick update on who we are in supply chain, and we've certainly come a long way under Nomad ownership. Our journey has really been centered around three key phases. Firstly, integration, essentially building and expanding our business across the first three years. Secondly, setting solid foundations for growth, embedding strong operational practices, a standardized operation model, and creating high-performing teams across all areas of our supply chain. Last but not least, enabling and empowering positive transformation through the disciplined execution and leveraging of our scale.
We believe our supply chain has and will continue to create value for our organization, and through our transformation journey, have a productivity program that we expect to drive 2% plus annual cost out. This program is based around four key pillars. Firstly, our Fuel for Growth Pillar, an enterprise approach to consistently and constantly improve the way that we source our raw materials and services across our enterprise. Secondly, the Operational Excellence Pillar, challenging every aspect of loss, waste, and inefficiency within our European factory network. Thirdly, Logistics Excellence, which entails optimizing the cost of shipping, storage, and general logistics costs whilst driving more efficient routes to market. Finally, our Network Design, where we constantly assess our operational footprint to ensure we have the right scale and processing capabilities in the right location.
In summary, Nomad's supply chain is an integral enabler of our growth ambitions and will play a critical role in ensuring that the growth comes with the right margins. We have a clear productivity plan in place and know which levers to pull to achieve our ambition of 2% cost out on an annual basis. We also have a good and solid track record behind us, but of course, there's more to come. I'd like to conclude by playing a quick video of our recent U.K. Birds Eye pea harvest, which should provide you with some additional perspectives on the scale and complexity of our operation and our passion for food. Welcome to the Birds Eye pea harvest, the largest in the U.K., one of the most unique globally.
Over the course of the next few minutes, we'll aim to show you the fantastic journey of our peas from picked to frozen in two and a half hours. Birds Eye have been growing unique varieties of peas since 1946. Having unique varieties is what makes our Birds Eye peas taste so sweet. We plant our peas from late March until early June. This ensures that we can harvest them in the region of 50 days from late June until early August. We've worked with our growers for over 60 years to enhance biodiversity as well as sustainable farming practices. Into the future, we'll help them lock carbon from the atmosphere into our soils to ensure a sustainable future for our planet. Once drilling is done, we monitor our peas' growth rates.
Starting with field analysis, we monitor the impact of the weather, determining when our peas are going to be ready. We sample multiple fields on a daily basis and taste our peas every single morning to ensure consistent quality, taste, and texture. This helps us determine exactly when our peas are ready. Our field team are using the most modern technology as they plan their harvest to optimize the peas within a 12-hour window. When they've made their decisions, it's time to start the harvest. We aim to harvest 500 acres per day to deliver our peas into the factory. Every single Birds Eye pea is picked to frozen within two and a half hours. The clock starts as our crops are combed into the viners. In the bodies of these machines, the pods are split from the peas.
The pods are returned back to the land to make a fantastic fertilizer for our farmers' fields. From trailer to truck, our peas continue their journey against the clock to the factory. As our peas enter the factory, we're still against the clock. Through quality control and onto the line, once they're released, they go through primary cleaning over the pod and stick deck and up and away into the blancher. The blancher is a crucial part in the process as we take the peas up to 92 degrees for 80 seconds. This stops the enzymes breaking down the sugars, which are keeping our peas so sweet. From here, our peas enter a series of flumes before entering the freezer tunnel. On entering the freezer, our peas dance around for eight minutes at -25 degrees. Our peas drop out of the tunnel at -18 degrees.
We box them up, place them in the cold store to ensure that we can supply you the freshest peas all year round.
Hi, everyone, and thanks for being here with us today. Before we jump into the financials, I'd like to go back to one of today's primary objective, which was for you to get to know us better. We are a company that is committed to delivering great financial results and generating strong shareholder value. Beneath that layer, Nomad Foods is a dynamic organization with highly engaged employees, expansive pan-European reach, and profitable growth mindset. I hope that came across throughout today's presentations. As you already heard, we are on a journey. This year marked our five-year anniversary, and it has indeed been a fulfilling first chapter in our story with strong financial performance. Based on our latest guidance, we expect to have achieved revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS CAGRs of 7%, 9%, and 11% respectively since 2016.
As you will see momentarily, we expect to maintain strong momentum into the future. Strong free cash flow generation has been a defining characteristic of our company, and our ability to sustain strong cash flow conversion, even as we fuel growth, has been a key enabler of our success. One of our measures of success is our ability to convert over 100% of our profit into free cash. You can see here that we've been in this range every single year since Nomad Foods was created in 2015 and plan to exceed it this year. We are committed to driving top quartile TSR versus our peers, and we are pleased to see that our performance has allowed us to achieve that goal thus far with three-year share appreciation ahead of both the S&P 500 and the food index. That was the past. Let's now shift our attention to the future.
Throughout the day, you heard us talk about our ambition to sustain elevated organic revenue growth and drive strong cash flow. What I'd like to do now is translate all of that into numbers. Today, we are introducing the following long-term targets. First is our goal of exceeding EUR 3 billion in revenues by 2025. This will be underpinned by our goal of sustaining strong organic revenue growth at the high end of our low single-digit growth algorithm. Second, we expect to generate at least EUR 600 million in adjusted EBITDA by 2025, driven by a modest level of margin expansion in our existing business. Third, we plan to generate over EUR 1.5 billion of adjusted free cash flow over the next five years. We plan to achieve these targets through a combination of organic growth and bolt-on acquisition consistent with our stated M&A strategy.
From a profit standpoint, we expect gross margin to benefit from supply chain productivity and favorable mix. SG&A to be relatively unchanged as expense discipline in indirect will help fund investments in A&P. A goal of more than EUR 1.5 billion cumulative free cash flow is built on our expectation of 100% cash flow conversion each and every year. This will be underpinned by disciplined working capital management, CapEx in the 2%-3% range, a relatively low cost of borrowing, and a tax cash rate of 21%. Translating these long-term targets into EPS, we plan to achieve adjusted EPS of EUR 2.30 by 2025, which equates to double-digit compounded EPS growth over the next five years. This target assumes the aforementioned organic growth expectation and our plan to allocate cash in a manner that is accretive and enhancing for our shareholders.
This brings me to capital allocation, where we have three key priorities. First is to invest in the business. As I had mentioned earlier, our annual CapEx spend is expected to run in the range of 2%-3% of revenues. Second, M&A, which I'll return to momentarily, will continue to be a key area of focus as we look to further consolidate frozen food across Europe. Third, finally, with the significant excess cash that we expect to generate, we will likely continue to return capital with share repurchases as the most likely means. Going further into M&A, you may recall that we refined our strategy earlier this summer by sharpening our scope to European frozen food consolidation. This continues to be the case.
We have specific criteria that we consider when evaluating acquisition candidates, and we'll remain prudent in our approach in order to generate strong shareholder value. As you have seen, we are pleased to announce our intention to acquire Findus Switzerland from Froneri for a purchase price of approximately EUR 110 million. We are thrilled to announce this deal, which squarely meets our M&A criteria. Strategically and operationally, this acquisition makes sense for us in many ways. First, it expands our reach into one of Europe's most attractive countries, Switzerland, through the market-leading frozen brand, Findus, which is already present in many Nomad's existing countries. Second, Findus Switzerland operates a range of value-add frozen food categories, including fish, ready meals, and vegetable, which are highly complementary to our existing portfolio.
Third, this acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to EPS upon closing, which we expect to be in early 2021, with multiple opportunities to create value across commercial, supply chain, and indirect. We will continue to manage our balance sheet appropriately. We have historically maintained leverage consistently between two and four times and are likely to stay within this range given our strong free cash flow generation and our capital allocation strategy. In summary, we are proud of the model that we have built and believe we have the strategy and resources to sustain strong performance in the near and long term. Our goal from day one has been to build a sustainable growth model by acting as owners and maximizing long-term value creation.
To repeat what we stated in our Q3 earnings call last week, we intend to achieve growth across organic revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS metrics in 2021. This is based on our latest 2020 guidance. When reflecting these figures on top of our extraordinary performance in 2020, growth in 2021 would imply a significant acceleration on a two-year basis. As we stated throughout the day, we intend to maintain the momentum over the next five years by converting organic revenue growth of 2%-3% at the high end of our long-term growth algorithm into double-digit adjusted EPS growth. When taking all of this into account, we believe Nomad will be one of the few companies who will demonstrate growth before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and after the pandemic.
I'd like to conclude our Investor Day by coming back to the same key messages which Stéfan led with earlier today. First, we have a portfolio of iconic market-leading brands. They leverage the benefits of our large pan-European infrastructure and have a local touch. Second, we have the portfolio, strategy, and category tailwinds to sustain strong organic revenue growth over the next five years. Third, our business generates a significant amount of cash, and we expect to generate over €1.5 billion of cumulative free cash flow over the next five years. This equates to approximately 30% of our market cap today. Fourth, when taking our organic growth and capital allocation strategy into consideration, we expect to achieve €2.30 in adjusted EPS by 2025.
With that, I'd like to once again thank you all for your participation and attention, and we will now turn to the question-and-answer session, which will be moderated by Taposh. If you haven't yet, please submit your question using the link below. Thank you. Good morning to all of you. I hope you liked this presentation and you learned one thing or two. Before starting the Q&A, let me say a quick word on behalf of the whole Nomad Foods. The people you have in front of you are the exec, and we're collectively very proud of what we have achieved over the last five years, and I can tell you, very excited what we can see and what we're going to do over the next five years and beyond.
This being said, I can tell you, we're all aware that nothing would be possible without the collaboration with the 5,000 employees of Nomad, white collars, blue collars, working in all the countries, especially during these very testing times during COVID. I hope you understand that, you appreciate that. These are not empty words. This is really something where that has been put to test. The people you see on the screen, as I said, are the exec. Obviously, with the special times, we're all speaking from different places, some from the U.S., others from London, others from Belgium, France, or Germany, but I hope also it's very clear that what we have achieved and we're going to achieve over time wouldn't be possible without operating as one single team. We would have loved to be together.
We can't today, definitely, what you need to understand, it's really a collaborative work. With that, I think also what's important to understand is we all have, not only are we working collectively, but we're working with the same goals in terms of value creation, in terms of purpose. With that, I will leave it to you, Taposh, and obviously to the Q&A that is coming.
Okay. Thanks so much, Stéfan, for that opener. Thank you all for your participation. We're now going to get into the Q&A part of the program. Again, if you have a question, please do click on the link below, and we'll be happy to take your questions as time allows. We have about an hour of Q&A, and we have a number of questions that have come in throughout the course of the presentations. We're gonna take the first one, which comes from John Tanwanteng at CJS. I'm gonna read the question verbatim, which is, "Does the announcement of an effective vaccine, excuse me, change your outlook or the calculus for your near-term or long-term planning at all?" Stéfan, I think that's a question for you, please.
Thank you, John. Before answering, by the way, I would say more globally, it's a very good news. It's a very good news that the vaccine is coming. The sooner the better, by the way, not only for the whole world, but also for us, by the way. I think someone said that we've been growing without COVID, we're growing with COVID, obviously, it's created retention, and we're going to grow without COVID, post-COVID. Back to your question, the clear answer is no. We don't need it's not going to change our algorithm, neither the algorithm short-term nor the algorithm long-term. You remember that what we said two days ago is we're planning to grow in 2021
It's going to be based on a "normal" 2021, which is probably the definition of a vaccine for all of us starting day one in January. That's very much in line with the vaccine coming in. What's probably going to happen, John, is what we see right now is we're off to a very strong start in Q4. There will be probably momentum starting Q1, and then at some stage, God knows when, the vaccine will come. All in, it's going to be an offset, so we're not changing anything. I would just remind people that after a fantastic year in 2020, growing in 2021 is, what can I say, not bad, and probably it's a European understatement.
Okay. Thanks, Stéfan, and thanks, John, for your question. The next question that we're going to take is from John Baumgartner at Wells Fargo. The question is about the topic of product mix and I think broadly, innovation. The question, aside from Green Cuisine, which when we think about the core frozen fish and veg business, what are the opportunities or potential to launch innovation/renovation at higher price per pound or margin per pound at this point? We're already seeing some of the gluten-free and flavored coatings out there. How do you assess the opportunities for mix accretion from here? I think, Albert, that's probably a good question for you.
Thanks, Taposh, and hi, John. Thanks for the question. Yes, as we have said in the presentation, we have a whole pipeline of innovation beyond Green Cuisine. We count on Green Cuisine, we have other initiatives. Yes, they do provide an opportunity of mix accretion. In the past, every single innovation has been gross margin accretive and net sales per ton accretive. Just to give you some stats, the innovations that you have seen in the presentation for next year on fish will be priced 10% higher per ton, and on veg, close to 40% and 50%, because they're comparing with lower price natural veg. Yes, they drive net sales per ton increase, and they all deliver accretion at gross margin level. It's a key driver for our gross margin expansion roadmap.
Okay. Thank you, Albert. Thank you, John. Next question we're going to take is from Andrew Lazar at Barclays. This question is pertaining to our long-term EPS target of EUR 2 or EUR 2.30. This question, which I think is probably for Samy, is the EUR 2.30 EPS target organic or does it factor in M&A? This target in 2025 reflects over 11% of EPS CAGR over that five-year period. If you do mid-single digit EBITDA growth compounded, this means 5% annual reduction in share base each year in lieu of M&A. Does that sound correct? Again, Samy, I'm going to turn that one over to you.
Very good. Thanks, Taposh, and hi, Andrew. Thanks for the question. Our plan, as we have said, over the next five years, is to grow organically our revenue, at the high end of our low single-digit algorithm. That will result into growing our EBITDA at mid-single digit, which will drive incremental margin as we have talked. That will enable us to turn all of that into cash, and we will be generating, we intend to generate EUR 1.5 billion in cash over the next five years. That significant amount of cash will be maximized in order to deliver the best possible return for our shareholders, and that will be focusing through M&A and share repurchase.
Maybe I could add something, Taposh?
That'd be great.
I think that in the classic tradition of Nomad, I think that what happens in five years' time is very much driven by how, not just the organic business evolves, which I think has been conservatively outlined, but also how EUR 1.5 billion will be spent. That, frankly, is something where if there is opportunity to create a higher return over five years than that, it'll be founded how opportunistic we are with capital allocation, and that's something where at least over time, I think we've had an historical advantage. I think that there's opportunity there, but it really depends on what happens in the world over the next five years.
Thank you for that. Thanks, Martin. Thanks, Samy. We're going to take the next question from Irfan Alvi at Deutsche Bank. The question is, "I would like to know more about the plant-based protein category. There's been so much focus on this category. Can you tell us more about the competitive landscape and what differentiates Green Cuisine in the market versus less about market share and more about category growth?" I think we're going to start that one with Stéfan, and perhaps Albert can elaborate. Stéfan?
Yes. Thank you very much, Taposh, and thank you for the question. Overall, as you know, we are extremely excited by Green Cuisine from the start, but also what we see with different countries. Probably the most obvious example is in the U.K., where from zero in a reasonably developed market like in the U.K., we've grown from zero to 7% market share, and still growing a lot. I think what we see is a real combination of a leadership in frozen food, and Green Cuisine obviously does very well with frozen food, combined with a great product. We're really in some sort of sweet spot between taste, health, and sustainability. I would invite you to test the product. This combined with the great, obviously, relationship with the trade.
Wayne mentioned, obviously, that Tesco, for example, with a stated objective of growing 300% within the next few years, and we're going to be part of this. That's a bit in a nutshell what we see in the U.K. In the other countries, where in the U.K., as I said, it's a bit of a market share game, but also growing the category. We are competitors, but we also all want to grow, let's say, structurally, this category. What we see in other countries, we're starting from scratch. In countries like Italy, for example, where Steven is leading. From day one, we are the category leader. It's much less the question of growing market share, much more the idea is obviously to make sure that we're going to grow the category. As a result, and vis-à-vis meat, but also vis-à-vis chilled.
That's the global approach we are taking right now. Different by country. That's why I think we're good. We are global and local. Some countries are different. Some countries, it's much more fighting against other players. In some of the countries, we have to build the category. Definitely with what we see, we have what it takes.
I can follow up just with a few data points. The category today is EUR 1.4 billion in RSV across Europe. We predict a growth of double digits. We see that category overall in frozen and chilled to be close to EUR 3 billion in 2025. Players, you have a mix of big, large players like Unilever and Nestlé, also a whole bunch of local players, big or small. Actually, I think the sweet spot where we are in is that we want to have, and we are having the agility of small players and the scale and the ability to really expand across Europe that the major players are having. It's a big opportunity.
The only piece of data that I find very encouraging to add to what Stéfan was saying, we have recruited more than 8% of the U.K. populate households in terms of penetration, and the repeat is close to 43%. In food, the repeat in % is basically the most strategic indicator that shows that consumers, as Stéfan has said, are delighted with the products we are offering. Big opportunity ahead.
Fantastic. Thank you, Albert. Thank you, Stéfan. We're going to take our next question from Mark Purdy at Ash Park Capital, excuse me. This question is for Noam and Martin. We're now halfway through a 10-year journey to the new targets you have set today. How does where you are now compare to your expectations when you created Nomad back in 2015? What do you see as the key risks and challenges in achieving the 2025 targets?
Noam, you want to start?
Sure. Thanks for the question. Listen, I think we're incredibly proud of the team that you see in front of you. Stéfan is terrific. The whole team is terrific. There's a great culture within the organization. It's cohesive, and it's executed brilliantly before COVID-19. It did an extraordinary job during COVID-19, and it frankly continues to do so. As we've seen, the company tends to underpromise and overdeliver serially, and we feel very good about that and feel very comfortable with all the forecasts that the company makes. When we first began this, we told the organization in a meeting with all the employees that we're not renters, we're owners, and that's how we look at a business.
Yeah.
That's exactly how we feel, and that's exactly how we are. I'm not sure we're halfway through. We could be quarter the way through. There's no rush and very excited to have the platform that we have and the opportunity that we have to be not only a consolidator in Europe, but also to create great shareholder value going forward.
Well said, Noam. I completely agree with everything Noam just said. I would say that having confidence in the future is looking at what you've done in the past. I think that the team have come together tremendously well. One of the great things about being a CEO is the people you bring around you. I think that, as Noam said, building a first-class team around Stéfan has been the strength. From the finance roles and the commercial roles to the regional operating roles, it's really been a very smooth, consistent improvement of the cadence and level of operation in the whole organization over the last few years. I don't see any reason that should stop either. As Noam said, owners, not renters.
We're building this for the long term, I will tell you that Jarden used to set goals and managed to find opportunistic ways of exceeding them in those five-year periods, and I think that the same kind of opportunity exists here because the team is there to be able to execute. We're very happy with where we are.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Noam. Thanks for the question, Mark. We're going to take our next question from Andrew Olsen, excuse me, at UBS. This question is about M&A, specifically about Findus Switzerland. I understand the strategic merit of adding Findus Switzerland to your portfolio, but this is a new geography for you, that being Switzerland. Can you provide some insight about the Swiss market and what makes it attractive? How can you leverage your scale in this geography and also neighboring regions to gain advantage in this new market? I'm going to pass that over to Stéfan to try to address.
Thanks for the question, and let me start with the new geography. I think it is great to have a new geography. It was one of the remaining Western European countries where we did not have a meaningful presence. And we are starting from scratch with a number one position, 20% market share, even further if including part of the private label. It is exactly in line with our plan. Actually, our average market share in Europe is around 14%, 15%, so we are even ahead of this, which is perfect. Great brand. Brand that it was a bit an orphan in the middle of a big giant, now we have fully focused. So we have everything that it takes to develop our must-win battle strategy, and you have seen that it works in all the countries.
On top of that, I just will give you a bit of a few, one or two numbers. The portfolio is very similar. You have fish, you have vegetables, you have meats. Great opportunity, by the way. There is nothing like Green Cuisine. We're going to come from scratch with Findus Green Cuisine. Perfect. The second data is, 80% of the business is co-packed today. Co-packed. The average for us is 20%. Let me imagine what we can do with this. With our fish, for example, you've heard about Bremerhaven, the largest fish fingers plant in the world. You can imagine the kind of transfer price we can generate for all Swiss friends. Same thing with procurement. We are the biggest buyers in the world in terms of pollock. Same thing.
A lot of things we can do, coming from the different geographies around Switzerland. It's a What can I say? Even not including the fact that we are reunifying the brand, which is, at least for us brand people, it is absolutely fundamental. We love to fully control the brand. This brand was, and I understand the data from Steven, who is a Findus vegetarian. He told me that the brand was separated, I think, since 1998. After more than 20 years, the brand is back, as a worldwide brand. We all, brand people, we know the power of what a brand can be when it's under the same roof. This is a bit, in a nutshell, and I could spend hours and hours behind this, but it's, in a nutshell, how we see this combination with Switzerland.
Okay, thank you for that. We're going to move on. We're going to take another question that's come in from Faiza Alwy at Deutsche Bank. "I'd like to know more about e-commerce. Is the acceleration here mainly from click and collect? What are the implications of this growth? Why is Nomad market share higher in e-commerce than in store? Is e-commerce essentially cannibalizing in-store shopping? Is there more data you can share? What are the profitability implications? Are there investments that you need to make, or what do you need to do to fully capitalize on this strength?" Thank you for the question, Faiza. I think we're going to start that one with Albert, then maybe Wayne, and Steven can kind of elaborate further, given their market's high penetration in e-commerce.
It's a good idea to move on to Wayne and Steven, because actually, to the first question, the situation is different across the countries. Clearly in France, it's mainly drive, what we call pick and collect. In the U.K., it's mainly delivery at home delivery. To the question about the level of cannibalization, it's hard to know, but actually, before COVID, the assumption was between 90%-95%. The interesting insight is that since COVID, we have much less cannibalization. Actually, more than 75% of the new consumers we've been recruiting during the acute phase of COVID came through e-commerce. We see a strong retention, our expectation is that cannibalization will be lower in the future as we are implementing specific programs for retention. Quick question on the key drivers. First is getting the basics right.
We've been investing for a long time in capabilities to have the right level of information, the right product shots in every single site selling our products. There is an element of digital marketing and marketplace advertising as well that we've been implementing in the past, and we've been reinforcing, with retention. Lastly, it is clear that when it comes to e-commerce, there is an advantage of being top of mind and having built equity and awareness in the past. Maybe, Wayne, you can go more into the specifics on that question.
Thanks, Albert, and thanks, Faiza, for the question. Yeah, as Albert said, it does vary by market. The U.K. specifically has grown its click and collect offering, but every single retailer has significantly improved and increased the infrastructure for delivery to home. Every retailer, without exception, has more than doubled the number of deliveries to in-home during the period. That's a trend that will continue. A couple of other parts to the question, what about the profitability? Obviously, from a retailer perspective, it comes with more cost. From a retailer and a manufacturer perspective, delivering solutions is a lot easier, and promotional participation online is a lot less than in bricks and mortar. The opportunity to do bundle deals and specific meal occasions are a lot more appropriate and a lot easier to execute in the online channel.
Why does it over-index in terms of participation? Well, it's actually one of the only shopping experiences where frozen is absolutely competing on a level playing field with everything else in the store. Someone is shopping on screen, making selections from the information that's presented in front of them, and from a visual image, as opposed to having to move around the store where frozen quite often is at the end of the store because of the temperature regime. Those are some of the key reasons for the differentials. Steven, I don't know whether there's anything more that you want to add about your markets.
Thanks, Wayne. If I'm coming back to France is clearly a click and collect market, where we have a higher market share compared to our normal stores. If I take Italy, we have a mix of click and collect and also home delivery with the traditional retailers. We have applied the must-win battle strategy also in e-commerce, meaning that we have dedicated team who worked a lot on the assortment, the promotion, the visibility of our product, and it's delivering. The market is growing by three digit percentage, both in Italy and in France, and we are clearly beneficiating from the solid work that we have done dedicated to e-commerce.
Okay, fantastic. Thank you everyone for that comprehensive answer. We're going to go now to Jason English at Goldman Sachs, who's got a couple of questions. We're going to start with the first one, which is, I was surprised to hear you highlighted international expansion as one of your growth strategies. Can you elaborate more on this? Which markets are you already working with distributors to expand with, and how far from Europe, if at all, are you willing to go? Stéfan, why don't you pick that up, and we can hand it over if necessary.
Thank you, Jason. It's a very interesting question. When we start in 2015, we narrated a bit of a hotspot of many different businesses coming from Findus, coming from Birds Eye, coming from. We try to put it together, but quite frankly, in a bit of, let's say, opportunistic way more than anything else. Now this time we have decided to apply more specifically in some sort of a must-win battle concept. We know where we're very strong, and if you heard it loud and clear during the presentation, it's first and foremost in fish. We have fish superiority, I can tell you, very clearly in terms of product as such. Also, the coating is really something that is great, and we will see that, by the way, with our Green Cuisine poultry, the poultry less products, but that's on the side.
We're going to really focus our international mindset behind fish, maybe a bit of Green Cuisine on the side. We're going to focus on a limited number of countries. I will give the word to Albert, who's in charge of the international. He's going to give you more detail about where we're going right now. It's going to be more focused product-wise and more focused behind in terms of country with also A&P investments.
Yeah, thanks, Stéfan. I could speak hours on it. Let's be concise. Internationally represents today, the real international, so outside of our core geographies, represents 1% of our revenue. You can imagine that there are multiple opportunities. As Stéfan has said, is fish, we will prioritize our distribution model to start with. In terms of geographies, a vast array of geographies actually starts with Central Europe, which is close to our home and where our Captain, for example, has already some awareness. We are piloting the U.S., as you may have seen, hopefully. We have 650 stores. First rate of sales results are quite encouraging. We managed to deliver a superior product with still a great margin. Beyond the U.S., we have Asia as well. We have the Middle East where we are distributing in Dubai and Australia as well.
I think the key point here is to place the big bets. I think the U.S. is one of them, Asia as well. We have been building a team that is an expert in what we call export, expert in managing distributors and more to come. It's definitely an exciting growth avenue for us.
Great. Thank you for that answer. Hope that helps Jason. Jason has another question that we're going to ask now, which is, revenue growth in the 2-year period preceding COVID was driven in part by the pass-through of higher cost inflation. As such, your low single-digit organic revenue growth was accompanied by gross margin declines or pressure. What has changed looking forward that gives you confidence in your ability to surpass that prior organic revenue growth level while also expanding gross margins? Stéfan, why don't you start? Maybe we can hear from Samy as well then.
I think I'm going to come back to all our different building blocks. One is innovation, obviously, Green Cuisine. Green Cuisine is a good portion of our plans. As Albert mentions, Green Cuisine is going to be margin accretive. That's one example. All the other innovations, again, same thing. Again, the difference this time is, let's say, Green Cuisine is going to be much more material than any other innovation in the past. That's going to make a big difference. The second piece is to your point, I think in terms of and I'll come back to the P&L. After two years of highly, let's say, difficult COGS, I would put it that way, this year has proven to be better. Obviously that's going to generate less pressure with the retailers.
It doesn't mean that there won't be any pressure, you know this, Jason, we're in the middle of this right now. It's going to be at least a bit of less tense negotiation than we had in the past. The third piece is now, and you've heard from Jason, after 2015, 2016, 2017, that we're more in the 1% cost reduction in terms of COGS, now we're deliberately moving to 2% and potentially even further in the future. This together with less revenue management, that hasn't changed. All these elements make us quite confident in terms of organic growth, in terms of gross margin, and obviously the impact in terms of EBITDA. M&A is something else. We know that M&A, every time you have to come back and then obviously recreate the whole thing.
Organically, that's how we see the whole thing with obviously the building blocks in terms of sales. Maybe more for you now, Sammy.
Yes, Stéfan, thank you. You said it all. The only thing I would add is with the points that have been raised and the answer of Stéfan, there's one thing I would like to insist on, which is the fact that we are really gearing up on our cost-saving program and our productivity to really make it, if you want, more of a systemic approach, and that's where the 2% is coming. We have not done that in the past. Savings were coming in the best we could. Now we're really putting in place a highly structured program from a lean standpoint across the site. With a brand new organization around procurement, we'll be able to drive out effective and further efficiencies in there.
The balance between effectively the help coming from the top line, the mix, and the innovation that Stéfan was talking and the COGS is going to rebalance with a stronger contribution coming from the COGS productivity program we are putting in place.
Great, thank you. It's a good segue actually, to our next question from Andrew Lazar at Barclays, which is the 2% of cost-out annually from supply chain. Can you maybe talk about how you get there and how critical that is to the overall algorithm? Jason, why don't you maybe give us some more context around some of the key building blocks there? Sammy, if you can just maybe elaborate more on how important that is to the algorithm.
Thanks, Andrew. Great question. I think the 2% is key for me because, if you take out 2019, which was a highly inflationary year, outside of that, typically inflation has been 1.5% to 2.5%. Our 2% algorithm we have around cost out means that we can deliver total delivered costs flat into our organization. We're doing that through a number of ways, most predominantly leveraging the strategic relationships with our supply base. COVID-19's been a really challenging year, but it's the strength of those relationships with our key fish suppliers and veg suppliers, some of which date back 60 years actually, or 20 years within the fishery market, that have meant that we've taken pole position when it comes to those choices. That's really key and will set us in good stead.
Within our factory network, I think what is true that we've got a great lean program, our operational excellence program, across all of our manufacturing estates at the moment, and we serve our local markets well. The great thing for me is there is more opportunity and upside to come when we start to think how we serve Europe well as a continent, leveraging our scale, but also making sure we have centers of excellence and local ability to deliver those costs well. That'll also link into logistics. I think if you look back through my presentation, the typical 1% cost out has now become typically 2% cost out, and we plan to raise the bar for that in 2021, taking it to 2% plus.
Very much my mantra across the supply chain now is repeat and scale, locking what we've done, do more, do it quicker, better, faster.
Thanks, Jason. Our next question is coming from Robert Moskow at Credit Suisse. Are there any other markets where Findus operates separately from you, similar to what you just acquired in Switzerland? If so, how many of them would you consider as "attractive" for potential acquisition? Stéfan, why don't you go ahead and take that one, please?
I guess, Rob, you're not talking about Findus as a brand because it's over. With that, we have exhausted all the brand is ours. The brand is ours. Now, more fundamentally, what we said, and you remember during Q2, we said we have refocused our M&A strategy to a frozen food leadership in Europe. With that, complemented with the capital allocationThe combination between, let's say, buyback and this, we see a series of, let's say, add-on deals, not necessarily transformational, but that makes a lot of sense. Let me also add on to what Jason said, and I think it was very interesting to hear how he has developed, little by little, the plan. Organically, we are a better organization in terms of supply chain, as we have been better in terms of marketing, in terms of net revenue management.
As a result, we're also becoming better in terms of acquisitions. We've done three acquisitions before Switzerland. Switzerland, we're going to learn from all the things we've done and beyond. In the meantime, we're improving. It's becoming some sort of virtuous circle of we're improving the organic plan, we're implementing what we've learned to the add-on acquisitions in Europe, and on and on and on and on. That's how we want to do, and we believe that it's the best recipe for value creation in the coming years, this virtual relationship between organic and external growth in Europe.
Thanks, Stéfan. I would just add, Rob, many of those international markets that Albert mentioned earlier in the previous question are in fact Findus brands, including the one in the U.S. We do own the rights to that brand in many parts of the world. We're going to take our next question from Bill Chappell of Truist Securities. This question is around market share. You are implying share gains based on your top-line outlook and category growth expectations. Where would you expect these gains to be sourced from, other brands or private label? Can you talk more specifically about any recent changes in market share or around private label market share so far this year? Stéfan, Albert, I think that's for one of you guys.
Why don't you start, Albert, and then we'll complement it?
Well, it's a good question. The first key point is that we're expecting the frozen category to have growth acceleration post-COVID. Clearly, during the COVID acute crisis, the source of growth for the category was mainly out-of-home occasions because we've been all of a sudden adding close to 1.8 billion of in-home eating occasions. Having said that, in the future, we expect the growth of the category to come from a variety of food delivery systems. Chilled is definitely part of them, and we believe with the increasing concern about food waste, frozen will have a clear edge against chilled. Also, clearly, ambient will be also a source of growth. This is for the category.
When it comes to market shares, if you look at this year, and I think there was also a question about private labels evolution, the share of private label has been kind of rather flat. The sources of share growth will come, depending on the market and the segments, from both private labels or other branded competitors. There is no one single answer to that question, and it will come from both.
Thanks, Albert. Stéfan?
Maybe one final point. You may have seen in the presentation, I think, a very interesting data, which is when you see all our main brands, in average in their category, they represent 50% market share, 20% is coming from other brands, and then 30% from private label. You see that this 70%, which is our business, still growing faster than the rest of the organization. It is really as such, some sort of virtuous circle again, as the more we focus behind these categories, provided obviously that we're restoring them, we're coming with the right level of innovation. It's really something which is market share accretive, I would say, with the right growth margin. I'm coming back to the core because it is so important in terms of strategy.
This strategy where we have more than the right to win makes all sense organically, obviously, let's say, in terms of external growth. We're going to apply this, for example, to Switzerland.
Great. Excellent. We're going to move on. Still have several questions that are coming in. Again, as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, there's a link below. Please click on it and we'll get to it if we have enough time. The next question we're going to take from Matthew Winton from Wells Fargo. Thank you for the comprehensive and well-executed Investor Day. What do your targets look like in the absence of M&A through 2025? We've had a couple of other questions similar to this. Samy, why don't you go ahead and maybe provide Matt some commentary around our organic growth assumptions and how we plan to get there.
Very good. Thank you, Taposh, and thank you, Matt, for the question. Actually, as we alluded to, the majority of the growth that led to the target that we have communicated is organic. We have planned for modest growth in M&A, simply to clearly highlight the fact that we will be active, we intend to be active, and we will be active. You have seen that in the recent announcement with the Findus Switzerland acquisition. Think of it as really the bulk coming from organic, the modest part coming from M&A. To your question about effectively what would it look like, very clearly, I think it's important that you understand we are managing the business as a portfolio. We have a lot of opportunities on this business, ranging from the innovation, ranging from Green Cuisine, ranging from category growth, huge opportunities.
If effective for whatever reason, the path would slow down, which is very unlikely from an M&A standpoint, then we would use other vectors to get there. Clearly think of it as us wanting to really go after these targets, and M&A will be clearly another add-on to get to a higher number than the numbers that we have displayed.
Okay. Thanks, Sammy. Thanks, Tom, for your question and your comment. Why don't we move on to John Baumgartner at Wells Fargo? Another one for the team. Can you speak a bit more to the comments about expanding to new fish species and the expectations for aquaculture? What sort of capital investment is required there, and what is the expectation for the impact on Nomad's supply chain? So I think that's probably a good question for Albert and Jason to take.
I can start. Thanks for the question, John, and then Jason, you can follow up. Basically, as I mentioned in my presentation, our targets, our ambition is to significantly increase the consumption of fish. This is something that we say will do good for the planet and good for people. As much as we believe there is still potential to increase our sourcing of our existing species in a sustainable way, with this outlook of accelerated growth of fish consumption, we are looking at new sourcings, species, because you have some species that are still more available. At the same time, aquaculture, that is growing big time on different industries, is something that we're working on. It starts with partnerships. We have some strategic partnerships that we are embarking on. We will do some pilots in a few countries shortly.
The idea is progressively to increase the share of aquaculture in our portfolio.
Just to build on that, actually, I think from a global procurement perspective, we fish all of the world's oceans, actually. Asia, Russia, and America being our big partners as well. I think that's why the partnership with the MSC is so key, because we constantly look at the biomass of fish in sea, and we stick to quotas as well to make sure that we get our fair share, and we can keep our business moving forward in the most profitable way. We're also members of the ASC as well, so I think at some point that will become a scalable opportunity. We're seeing more opportunity in the current regime at the moment of working with the MSC, having those strategic alliances and making sure that, again, we remain pole position with those strategic relationships with the suppliers.
Okay, great. Thank you. The next question comes from Alex Apostolides at Eaton Vance. He has two questions. One is, do you own the freezers at retail? I'll ask the second question as well, which is, what are the threats and risks that you see from chilled and ready-made meal categories across Europe? Why don't we take both of those questions separately. First is, do you own the freezers at retail? Secondly is, what are the threats or risks from other temperature regimes? Stéfan, why don't you start, and maybe Albert, you can comment as well.
Okay. Let me start with who owns the freezer as such. I would put it that way, we are the leader in savory frozen food. Overall, we obviously are, as Wayne mentioned, and especially in countries like in the U.K. where we're developing JBP together with the retailers, we are the category captain. That's absolutely what is fundamental to really, I would say, control. Obviously, we don't like the word control, but at least we have more than a big say in terms of who owns the freezer. I would say over the last five years, we were a bit passive to start with, five years ago, six years ago, and then definitely we've become much more aggressive coming with innovation, renovation and all these things.
I would say today, in most of the countries, as a leader and as an active leader, we are very important in terms of obviously who owns the freezer. Aside obviously from the kind of usual conversation we have when the season is changing between ice cream and frozen food, but that's normal. Overall, I think our control on the freezer door is improving qualitatively and quantitatively.
If I can add, Stéfan, the special case of Italy, we directly own 20,000 freezers directly in order to touch what we call the mamas and papa shops or the proximity shops. They are all branded Findus. It gives the power of the category management and to touch directly the consumers, even in the small shops. We own also the freezer that we are dedicating to end of gondolas for specific promotions. It's around, let's say 3,000 dedicated only to promotion in the what we call the modern trade. This is a specific case for Italy.
If I could just build on that as well. I think if it's a physical question, in the main, the retailers own the capital equipment. Other than, as Stéfan has just said, where in the convenience and impulse channels, we do own some equipment, more importantly, where we look to own equipment is where we can secure secondary siting. Additional display opportunities as opposed to mainstream fixture. We try to own our feature space in retailers' equipment, in the main, it's owned by retailers.
Okay, thanks everybody for that answer. We're going to move to Ryan Bell from Consumer Edge Research. Would you be able to touch upon your expectations for the role or reliance of Green Cuisine in meeting your 2021 preliminary growth expectations and also to hit your 2025 long-term targets? Why don't we start with Samy to answer that one?
Thank you, Taposh. As we stated, Green Cuisine's objective will be to deliver EUR 100 million sales by 2022. That will present roughly a one percentage point of growth, per year, if you think about annualizing that. We're not only relying on Green Cuisine. Green Cuisine is one that is starting and that is bound to deliver significant contribution to the overall portfolio, but we are effectively betting on other innovation, as you can think. There's a cycle of elements there that are effectively converging towards building the EUR 3 billion sales that we have in the rest of the financials. Green Cuisine is one element, but we do have other vectors over there. This is a forecast, I would say, overall, that we're giving you.
As I had mentioned earlier, very clearly, we are managing the portfolio as a whole, pushing the different component of it, according to the context and the circumstances. Today, effectively, it is Green Cuisine. There is a lot of focus on other areas in the food sector. We are very confident to deliver effectively the EUR 3 billion thanks to Green Cuisine and the rest of our innovation program.
Thanks, Sammy. I think we've got another one here for you, which is from Robert Hong at BlueDrive Global Investors. What type of gross margin benefit can we expect from, one, real pricing against COGS, and two, U.S. dollar depreciation? We're not going to itemize that for you, but I think Sammy, you should maybe give Robert some more color around how pricing and the FX implications factor into our expectations.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Thank you. I think this is not changing dramatically from what we have seen in the past. The only thing that we have is think of it effectively of a triangle between inflation on the one hand, our ability to drive NRM, and our ability effectively to generate productivity, around COGS. We're managing this depending on the context. Effectively, when the context is very favorable to driving some pricing when the inflation is over there, effectively, we will do that. If not, we will use effectively our lean productivity program to rebalance that. The US dollar weakness that we see here is helping us on the import of some of the product we buy, our fish in US dollar as an example. Clearly, this is something that we view temporary at this stage.
You know that we have a hedging program, a rolling program there in order effectively to manage our currency exposure from a transaction standpoint. All of that is factored in. If you think about how we've been building the target in that context, nothing has really changed there. Simply, we're rebalancing the different variables that I just mentioned.
Okay. We're going to keep going because the questions are still coming in. Thank you all for your interest and your participation. A question from Peter Saleh at BTIG. Can you elaborate more on your strategy to enter new markets outside of the core? I'm assuming that's referring to the international strategy. Do you plan to enter those markets with acquisitions or by leveraging your existing brands? Stéfan, why don't you kick that off, and we can go from there.
Let's put it that way. When you're talking about mature markets, and if you are fully in with a model, which is leadership in a category, you have to acquire something to go big. Exactly what we did with Switzerland, 20% market share, number one position, and then let's go for it. In most of the, let's say, mature markets, that's the way it's working. I think the way you could position, and we will see in the future, the international business, especially in Asia, beside the volumes, beside the profitability, it's some sort of beachhead. We're going to learn, we're going to see a new market, we're going to develop the brand as such, very focused behind fish to start with, and then we will see. We're going to learn the market.
If we see the market is getting attractive and there is really traction behind our brands, and if there is something to buy, we will go for it. We will further develop the country because the country is sufficiently emerging that it's not too difficult to create something from scratch. Really you have two different things. One is, most of the time you buy something because you're in a mature market, and that's the best way to go for it. Also, obviously with international, especially in Asia, you're going to test and learn, see the strength of your brand, and see what you can create out of this and create options.
Great. Thanks, Stéfan. We're going to go back actually to Alex Apostolidis at Eaton Vance because he did ask a second question that we didn't get to. His second question was around frozen food category competition regarding frozen versus chilled versus ready-made meals and how that market share has kind of varied relative to one another over the past several years. What we believe are the threats relative to both chilled and ready-made meals. Albert, do you want to take that one? The GM can comment as well.
Yeah, I can take that one. Actually, the chilled ready meals have been growing significantly in the past years and much more than frozen ready meals. We have a pretty small business as Nomad on ready meals. I take this as an opportunity, actually. The chilled ready meals have been creating the market, and what we have seen in countries like, let's take Netherlands, for example, when we start to be very active on frozen, we are tapping into this market that they've been creating, and we have some strong arguments that we are deploying with the trade and with the consumers. In terms of quality and organoleptic experience, it's matching definitely chilled, if not better. We are not using any preservatives because with frozen, we don't need any preservative inclusion.
Very importantly, in terms of waste, actually chilled is creating a lot of waste at the customer level and at the consumer level, where actually frozen doesn't. I think it's an opportunity. They've been opening the market for us, and it's one of those wide spaces in many countries when we'll have the right proposition, we can expect some additional growth with the arguments I have just mentioned. Hopefully, this answers the question.
Thank you, Albert. We're going to move on to Jeff Yen over at Cramer Rosenthal. I think this question is probably for Martin or Noam. The company had noted the possible initiation of a dividend at the onset of the Analyst Day. Given your expectations for 2021 growth across the business, what is your timeframe for a dividend initiation, and what level of payout do you feel is appropriate? I'll leave that one to Martin to comment on.
Maybe, Noam, you want me to start? Okay. I would simply say a couple of things. First of all, dividend policy is a decision, obviously, that gets taken at the board level. I think in the short term, there's no question that there are enough short-term opportunities, whether it be in terms of opportunistic buybacks or M&A to utilize our capital in a very advantageous way for shareholders. I think that as the M&A cycle slows down, that's obviously the time to start looking at dividends. I think in the short term, we think there are better ways to deploy capital to drive returns. As we said before, long-term owners, this is a company that generates a ton of cash, and has got low cost of capital, M&A opportunities in front of it.
While I'm at it, I want to say, one of the things that people should bear in mind, when we buy businesses, those businesses inside the portfolio become better than they were before. There's a lot of upside to continuing to grow and getting into new markets in frozen. When that matures, dividends is something which should definitely be on the table for us, which is why we said that.
Okay, great. Thank you, Martin. We're going to move on to Robert Moskow at Credit Suisse. Given the strong private label penetration in Europe, have retailers begun to introduce plant-based meat products in the freezer similar to your Green Cuisine? Why don't we maybe have Albert take that, and I think some of the other GMs, if there's anything more specific at the country level to answer that question.
Yes. Thanks for the question. The answer is yes. Definitely, they see the opportunity, and they are launching some reasonable ranges across all the countries. It's still definitely lower in terms of market share than in other more mature categories. Clearly here, consumers are looking for brands that they know and they trust. Maybe, Wayne and Antje, you can say a few words about the dynamics. Wayne, maybe you can start because your market is the one that is the most mature, and you can see those dynamics with a bit more years behind the depth of history.
Thanks, Albert. Just to build on what you said, I think yes is the answer particularly in frozen, but also in chilled, retailers have developed, in the U.K. and in the Nordics, where the plant protein category has been established longer, private label offerings. We do compete with private label, but we also compete with certain retailers in partnership. You heard from Stéfan earlier, and also myself, about the opportunities in this space with Tesco publicly declaring that they want to treble the size of that business in a very short period of time in the U.K., as an example. We're very well-aligned in all markets to take advantage of that. I think the other point that I would add is that for consumers and mass penetration, the categories are reliant on brand to communicate.
We've got a great job and a great opportunity to bring new people and new consumers into the category via brands. Then it's our job to make sure that we continue to delight them and to retain them. The short answer is yes, retailers are definitely operating in this space and will increasingly do so across all markets. Antje, I don't know whether there's anything that you want to add.
I think you mentioned almost everything, but it's a super exciting new category for all of us. In each market you see different developments, but with huge potential. Nobody is standing still. The consumer, what we have figured out in research over the past couple of months, was super intrigued and curious about this category. What they really were looking for is a brand they could trust for entering such new category. Despite of the curiosity, you seek trust in quality, and that is where they actually were super happy that a brand like Iglo Birds Eye or Findus actually entered into that category.
Martin.
I would add one thing, is ultimately, I think some of you on the table among the analysts have said that repeatedly, what's more important beyond private label or brand. Obviously we brand, so that's absolutely the fundamental piece for us. Competition is meat.
We want to grow this category big time, first and foremost, even beyond frozen or chilled. The mistake for us would just to be to compare ourselves with frozen. We want to compare ourselves with the new category that is emerging, which is chilled and frozen, and obviously how much market share we can take away from the meat category. It's very much more, let's say, a market share in terms of stomach more than anything else that we are looking for right now. That's fundamental for the future if you want to look long-term. You don't want to limit yourself, to lock yourself into what is my market share in frozen. It's a bigger picture at this stage, and we want to be part of that.
Okay, thanks for building on that. We have a couple of more questions. We're at around 11:51 A.M. We're going to go Sorry, 10:51 A.M., and we have about five more minutes, so we're going to try to get through as many of your remaining questions as possible. Thank you all for your patience and for staying on. The next question is from Jason English, again, at Goldman. How do you see brick-and-mortar retailers responding to frozen's growth? Are they adding space and assortment? If so, can you give us any metrics to help give us some context there? I think that's more of a space and place question for Stéfan or Albert.
I can start, and please, Albert, complement what I'm going to say. I think even before thinking about expanding the primary distribution in the stores, which we know, Jason, it takes time. I was a retailer, it takes time because you have to do this every time you refurbish the store. It's going to take time. I think the biggest opportunity for us is, as we said, it's been explained by Albert, is space and place. Is how to make sure you're going to have more than your fair share, or you're going to make sure you're going to have a double phasing, or you're going to make sure you're going to have within the defined, let's say, space, more than a fair share in terms of Green Cuisine, for example. That's one thing that matters.
The second piece is obviously, can you go to secondary freezers, for example, exactly to the point of Wayne, of Steven? That's another piece, obviously, that we have to take into consideration. More to come from you, Albert.
I have nothing much to add. I think there is an opportunity for sure. The reality is that the level of the shelf development and the quality of the shopping experience in frozen is showing more opportunities than actually threats. Clearly, it takes time. You need to engage with customers one after the other through category vision, and we have some great examples in many countries, in the U.K. in particular. The only thing I can say is that the dynamics that the frozen category has been showing during COVID and post-COVID is a very strong accelerator for that type of dialogue.
As I speak now, we are engaging more and more with the trade, and we have programs to make the shopping experience more enjoyable, to protect our share of space, the quality and the quantity of our space, but also on a macro level, to expand the category. Maybe Wayne, I'm sure, Steven, you can give some examples.
I can-
A good question and very important for our growth.
I can add, Albert. I think that by bringing Green Cuisine into the cabinet, we really attracted also the retailers in order to give us more space to our range. It's had a very positive effect on all our range. With secondary placement, extra freezer that we are bringing, we have a lot of good example of frozen range, putting two great placement at the enter of the stores for big promotion event. We see that the retailer now is switching more and more, Green Cuisine was really one of our big bet that opened some door for the rest of our range, actually.
Just to build on what you said, Steven. I actually like to quote some of our retailers who are calling this extra space for Green Cuisine the Greta meter. Greta really left an impression, and it's really impressive to see how additional space is being generated in retail and with the super rigor category management that we are taking place and really annualizing in partnership with our retail partners how the shelves look like. We are improving constantly, and Green Cuisine is actually a brilliant example.
Thanks, everybody.
Maybe one final point for you, Jason. You mentioned freezers coming from the retailers, let's not forget the freezers coming from the consumers. I know if you've seen here during the pandemic, there is a big surge in terms of new freezers across Europe. People are just buying more freezers, more space. That's also good news.
Great. We have a few more questions, but I think we're going to leave it at this one, which is a good way to end the day, which is back to Mark Purdy from Ash Park Capital. It's a long one, but I think it's a good one to end on. The 2025 targets only imply quite modest market share gains, especially relative to the success that you've had so far in markets such as Germany and the U.K. As you take the learnings from those markets into other countries and focus on products wherever you have clear superiority, why are you not more optimistic on the scope to gain more share? As far as category growth is concerned, how supportive are retailers today in terms of shelf space, et cetera, against the initial conversations that you were having three to four years ago?
I think the last part of that was just answered, but Stéphane, why don't you give that one a try?
What can I say? I think Martin and Noam would say that we are European. How can I say? We're conservative. I'm not sure that we are that conservative, but fine. I think it's a conversation that we're going to have during the budget sessions anyway. It's going to be interesting. Mostly, there is market share increase in our algorithm, that's very clear. Technically, compared to the first part of the journey, the first five years, where the category was growing modestly, we think for a variety of reasons, obviously COVID is a catalyst, but it's not only COVID. There's obviously also this idea of sustainability. That's why we have insisted so much on sustainability and health, because we believe that frozen is going to help. I would say it's a combination.
We're less dependent on market share, but there is a market share increase in the algorithm. The good news, it's a combination compared to the first five years, it's a combination of market share, but also category that should grow faster. That's where we are. As I keep saying to Martin and Noam, you know what? I would be absolutely glad and pleased to be proven wrong in one year or two years.
As Stéfan mentioned, I'll take the opportunity. From our perspective, TIBCO, obviously it's an amazing company that in spite of being totally dominant, has clearly performed exceptionally well. From our perspective, it can and will continue to grow in product, both traditional and new plant-based. It's growing through market share. It's growing through innovations and other products. Geographically, of course, we're growing. Through the M&A we've seen to date and will continue to see, the procurement, the manufacturing, the marketing efficiencies have been exceptional for the company. This has all been during a period with truly excellent financial discipline and performance. I guess the most extraordinary thing that we see is after this growth that we've experienced throughout 2020, which is both organic and through, sadly, exogenous reasons, we're comfortable forecasting healthy growth in 2021 without taking into account any benefits from any ongoing pandemic.
This is with the conservatively guiding management. We feel very comfortable and are super proud of the team and the work they've done. This is not random, and it's not an accident. It's just unbelievably hard work with exceptionally good people.
Thanks, Noam. I think that's a great segue to bring it back to Stéfan. Thank you all for your participation. I'm going to hand the call back over to Stéfan to conclude the call.
Thanks first for that, Noam, for the nice words. I hope you will not forget that during our budget negotiations in a few weeks. That's something else. Again, thanks to all of you. I really hope that you like this presentation. We liked your questions. I think they were, quite frankly, well-grounded and demonstrated your real interest behind our company, which is great. I hope you now, for the newcomers, that you understand better what our path has been so far, and more importantly, from where we are, where we want to go, and why we think we can go there. As I said, the first five years have been very good. We think the next five years will be great. As Samy explained, it's going to be a combination of mostly organic growth, but there will also be acquisitions.
Obviously, the big piece will be organic. On top of that, it's very much in line with our strategy we can build an M&A playbook that's going to be even better. That's that. With that, I will not repeat what Noam said. That yes, we are planning to grow in 2021, hopefully with a vaccine, I will put it that way. Thanks a lot for your patience and your time.