Rockwool A/S (ROCKB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ESG investor call. Today, I am pleased to present CFO, Kim Junge Andersen; Marketing, Communication and Public Affairs, Mirella Vitale; and Group Sustainability Director, Anthony Abbotts. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the presentation to your hosts. Please begin your meeting.

Good morning, everybody. This is Mirella speaking. If we jump immediately to Slide 2. Thank you for joining us. Hopefully, you can hear us all well because we are in the office today but respecting a certain distance, but please let us know if there's problems with the audio. If we start with Slide 2, where we, as usual, go through our meeting calendar, you will see that we, alongside confirming that we will have the meeting on May 29, which is the social impact in governance looking forward. We've also added in now a Q3 presentation. Once again, I invite you all to give us your feedback on any topics that you would like us to cover in the future because we're totally flexible to adapting the schedule to what you would like to know more about. Today, as you all know, we launched our sustainability report this morning, so the focus of this particular meeting will be on the content of our 2019 sustainability report and an update on the progress of the goals. As we go to Slide 3, you will see the agenda for today. We will start with a very quick update on COVID-19, where Jens Birgersson, our CEO, who is also on the line this morning, will give you a quick update on how we are managing the situation in the ROCKWOOL Group. Then we will talk a little bit about our campaign of this future rocks, which also has the title of our sustainability report; a zoom in on the activities taking place in Denmark due to the new Danish climate partnership, so our commitment and response to action in that segment; as always, a quick update on how our products impact society in a positive way; the full update on our sustainability goals. And then we'll leave sufficient time for you with questions and answers. So if you go to Slide 4, I hand over the word to our CEO, Jens and he will give an update on the COVID-19 situation.

Good morning, everyone. I hear the line is breaking up. I hope it's not on my side and that you can hear me clearly. From ROCKWOOL side and I -- it's important that we do what we normally do in the business and that we utilize the extreme situation also to get some things done, but it's normally not done. For this reason, we issued a sustainability report because it was ready. And since we are still working, we are not only managing the corona crisis, we are also progressing with many of our normal tasks. Therefore, we decided to go ahead with this. Since the whole threats and the whole world is absolutely focused on the corona crisis, I thought I'd just spend a few words on it. And then I would like to close that discussion down and then get back to sustainability. So whatever is with corona, I will say now. So first of all, as you know, we are a company with a really healthy financial net positive cash. And we addressed this crisis in our local operations and our motto for our whole approach is to be the rock. That's how we want our leaders to behave. That's how I behave and my leadership team. It is a very, very difficult situation, but we are navigating through this crisis. And I have no doubt that we will come out on the other end, although it will cost efforts. There will be risks involved and there will be a lot of challenges. But we will get through this and we do it under our motto: to be the rock. In terms of production around the world, we have set us a goal to operate our factories and serve our customers as long as there is demand. So we will shut down factories if the demand disappears and that can happen short term in certain markets. It's a moving environment, but our goal is that everyone who wants stone wool, we should be able to deliver it. And then we adapt capacity and we are quite flexible on that. We have seen that after a tough start of the year in China, the operations are coming back to normal. It's normalizing. It's not normal yet, but we have already been producing for more than a month and we can see that China is starting to get back to normal in there. And we haven't had a single person during the whole crisis in China with the COVID-19 virus. So we have managed through that. We saw the consequences. And things are now gradually coming back and we are calling people back to the offices. In Europe, since last week and also the rest of Asia, we are -- we have gone into home office mode. We prepared our IT approach already 4 weeks before that. So when we needed to push the button and send people home -- and I'm not saying all the people, we have some people still in the offices. Since we have a lot of space, it could be that someone prefers to work in the office alone in a room if that's allowed in the local market. But fundamentally, the white-collar staff is now working from home, and so far, so good on that side. We have limited or we cut already travel before down to the bare bones minimum and at the moment, basically, no traveling except for people driving their cars and local transport. And with our setup with the customer structure where most of our business is local to local, that means that we still, in most product lines can serve our customers. We do some physical meetings for management, but again, since we have quite big facilities, we can do this with both 3 and 4 meters between people. And when you look at the factories, we don't have so many people per shift and these absolutely huge operations. So again, the hygiene, the cleaning, the hand cleaning and then large physical distance between people and separating shifts is the way to go. And that's what we are doing in the factories and we are adapting with the local legislation. So those are basically the steps we are taking and all the time focusing on the safety of our people and serving our customers. So with that, I would like to hand back to the sustainability.

Thanks, Jens. So if we turn to Slide 5, highlights for the year, 3 main highlights, one on decarbonization. So we're committed to decarbonization of our production globally and have plans for peak decarbonization currently in both Denmark and Norway. In Denmark, we're making public our aim to reduce absolute and relative CO2 emissions, so that's tonne CO2 per production unit, by 70% before 2030. And in addition, we are also accelerating investments in sustainability. The second key highlight from the report is the fact that our products are increasingly within the regulatory sweet spot. So our products have an enormous positive impact on society. And this is both recognized externally and it fits into the different regulatory measures that we can see are coming increasingly, for example, from the EU. Our products have been assessed as being 100% SDG positive by Trucost and S&P company, whilst MSCI has evaluated that over 90% of our revenue comes from products with a positive environmental impact. And of course, their assessments are based on different methodologies. We're seeing plans from the EU for strict requirements for more circular, sustainable construction products, which will provide favorable conditions for our products. And our insulation products are also classified in the EU taxonomy as low-carbon technology and thereby qualifying as sustainable investments. And then the third key highlight from the report is our progress on the sustainability goals. So we had a strong year in progressing in relation to the SDGs and in terms of our operational sustainability goals. Two of the improvements on the year are given here: 18% reduction in landfill waste compared to our 40% goal in 2022 and a 5% improvement in water efficiency during the year compared to our 10% goal in 2022. We'll share with you some more of the highlights later in the presentation. So if we move to Slide 6 and pass over to Mirella.

So Slide 6 -- actually, we move to Slide 7 where we talk about the SailGP platform that we have -- we signed late last year. The platform was established as a way -- a means of communicating to a much broader audience about the ROCKWOOL products and the positive impacts they have on society. The campaign is under the umbrella of this future rock because as I've mentioned in other calls, our optimism towards the future is that we know that the technology for more sustainability implemented in the cities exist. We know that we provide a big part of those solutions, especially in urban areas and we wanted to have a means to communicate that and find a new audience for ROCKWOOL. So we decided to go with the sponsorship on SailGP. As most of you will have heard, the next stop that was set up to take place in San Francisco has actually been canceled due to the COVID-19 situation, but we will and have decided that we continue to communicate around the platform and with the SailGP team and with the sailors themselves who are very much committed in using their time to help us spread more awareness on sustainability. So how we have set up the campaign, we -- you'll see on this slide, which, hopefully, you can read easily or will read a little bit later when you have more time. We've set up the campaign under various themes. Of course, the sailing itself is driven by the power of nature as our ROCKWOOL products. So we focus on the 7 Strengths of Stone and communicating the 7 Strengths of Stone and associating that with the efforts made by our team in the sailing races. Then SailGP visits some of the most iconic cities in the world. And like all big cities, they have climate challenges, so we talk about the unique challenges in each of the city and what we're actually doing is finding local influencers who are helping tell us local stories that are not necessarily related to ROCKWOOL products, but, again, using the platform to share more awareness about how we can do more to make cities exciting and fun places to live in despite the challenges. Again, the main reason for using this marketing platform was to communicate about sustainability in an optimistic and somewhat, sometimes fun way so that we're not always focused on the negative side, but looking at the positive side of what a better future can bring and to communicate that we can create better indoor spaces and better outdoor spaces for people to live in. The challenge, as I said, most of the cities that we visit are challenged by climate change or by rapid urbanization or heavy rainfall. So for each of the cities, we have a particular theme. And we focus on that theme and we use our communication around that. For example, when we were in Sydney, the sailing team spent a day cleaning the beaches in Sydney together with the SailGP broader team and the other teams participating because that is a major issue for Sydney right now. Technology, it is -- SailGP represents the latest and most updated technology in sailing in the world. And we, of course, focus and invest heavily in our technology and make sure that we move at a faster pace than the market just like the SailGP boats are the fastest racing boats around. And then there's a lot of discussion around how teamwork is essential to everybody. No matter how many talented individuals you have, whether it's in a corporate organization or in a sports organization, unless you're able to communicate and work together, then the success of the team can never be guaranteed. So as Jens was saying, we -- our strategy for COVID is under the umbrella be the rock. Similar to that approach we take in our SailGP that we're not going to change the campaign from this future rocks because we believe that more than ever, this is a time for us to communicate confidence and determination that we will make a brighter future, and we have the means to do it. So then I will pass over to Anthony again, who will give an update on the current situation in Denmark.

Thanks, Mirella. So decarbonization, starting with our focus in Denmark. So if we move to Slide 9. Denmark's made a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2030 compared to 1990. And ROCKWOOL has participated in several of the public-private partnerships that the Danish government has established to identify how best the 70% goal can be achieved. We're eager to demonstrate that even as an energy-intensive manufacturer, we can live up to Denmark's 70% absolute greenhouse gas reduction commitment. Furthermore, by reducing the carbon intensity of our production, we are safeguarding Danish manufacturing jobs. We will, therefore, aim to reduce absolute carbon emissions and improve carbon intensity, so that's tonne CO2 per produced unit, by 70% compared to the baseline of 1990 for 2030. If we look backwards, then we've already done a lot in Denmark since 1990. We've increased the production output by more than 10% while not moving any production abroad, hereby pursuing the concept of made in Denmark for Denmark. In the last decade, we've invested EUR 100 million in the Danish production covering, amongst other things, the installation of new fuel-flexible melting technology, line upgrades and implementation of energy efficiency measures. And today, we provide 400 local manufacturing jobs at our 2 factories. If we look ahead, then going the distance in our decarbonization efforts will require accelerating technology innovations to convert to fossil-free fuel sources as well as continuing to increase the energy efficiency of our own operations. And a key element in this equation is the ability to convert more of our production to biogas. And here, we are encouraged by the debate in Denmark regarding the role that biogas can and must play to reach the country's climate goal. In addition, today, we supply surplus heat to approximately 1,500 homes and we are able to double this number with the right policy framework. If we move to Slide 10, then, of course, the other side of the coin relates to the role of buildings in this green transition. And one of the Danish government's public-private partnerships that ROCKWOOL participated in related to buildings. The decarbonization of the building stock is an important element in meeting the 70% reduction. The Danish Council on Climate Change confirmed last week that today's buildings in Denmark are responsible for almost 40% of the total energy consumption. The Danish energy consultancy house, Ea Energianalyse, has calculated that it is socially, economically optimal if we reduce the heating demand of buildings by 1% annually by 2030. If we do that, this would reduce energy consumption by approximately 5 terawatt-hours, which is equivalent to 3x the annual power capacity of Denmark's largest offshore wind farm Horns Rev 3, which has a power capacity of 1.7 terawatt-hours. This saved energy will reduce both CO2 emissions and speed up the transformation of the grid. In addition, according to another report by Energianalyse in 2019, this saved energy will save the Danish economy EUR 800 million by 2030. Mirella?

Slide 11. So as part of our assets, obviously, we are -- ROCKWOOL actively supports and engages in the EU ambition to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 by reviewing our CO2 goals with an eye on accelerating them. But we also are working with different groups now at a European level. Traditionally, we have been very focused of collaborating within the mineral wool or society or within the construction industry. You would have heard that a while ago, we joined the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to help and to support us accelerate the work that we do with circularity. And now we have also joined the Corporate Leaders Group, CLG Europe, formerly known as Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group, which worked in collaboration with Cambridge University. And this group represents leading businesses from around the world that work together in supporting a more ambitious climate policy in Europe. So some of -- to name a few, it represents some of the largest utilities in the world, Energie de France (sic) [ Électricité de France ], Iberdrola, ACCIONA, are all members of this group, but there are also fast-moving consumer goods such as Coca-Cola and Unilever. So that gives us a platform to share with other leading industries and understand how together we can collaborate and work towards achieving the climate goals set out by the European Union. With regards to our own production, as Anthony already mentioned, we are continuously reducing carbon emissions through a combination of energy efficiency that we are applying to our own factories and our own buildings And using less carbon-intensive fuels. In the coming years, we have plans to intensify or maybe, I should say, accelerate our R&D activities by placing more focus on developing new low-carbon technologies. This is something we have been doing and we continue to do. But of course, we now are zooming in and focusing in on this a lot more intensively. We continue to invest in our local markets. We do produce locally for the local markets. So while we are a global player, it's important for us to stay very close to our markets, and that means also providing local jobs and secure jobs to the local markets. Of course, decarbonization is not easy. So the pace at which we will accelerate this will differ on -- according to the geographies because we are moving faster in Denmark and Norway because we actually have the means and the grid and the infrastructure that allows us to take these very bold actions very quickly. But we will continue to focus on this all around the globe. But obviously, due to the investment and the time that is needed, it may move at a different pace from market to market. However, we're confident that our own technology will continue to evolve. Climate science will continue to evolve. So we continue to review our decarbonization ambitions and where possible, we, of course, apply every means in order to accelerate them. Then if we move over to Slide 13, where we focus more on the -- what is happening right now at the EU level, we actually believe that we are in a regulatory sweet spot, if you would like, for the ROCKWOOL product. There's more and more focus on sustainability, which we embrace and welcome from the European Commission. They have 8 pathways that have been highlighted for success and they have initiated a number of activities that actually we find will create market conditions that would be favorable to the ROCKWOOL product. Most recently, the circular action plan, which was actually just released last week, they have identified a number of focus areas, which include more stringent circularity requirements for construction products actually highlighting also on insulation, more specifically, which includes certain amounts of recycled content, recyclability and durability, all areas that are differentiators for the ROCKWOOL products. Circularity is, in fact, one of our key strengths, and we're driving an agenda right now internally to strengthen the circularity of our business. In 2019, we increased the volumes of the collected and recycled stone wool coming from customers by 23%, but we continue to focus on adding more into this and adding more markets where we make collection of wool waste more available. On top of this, there is the new renovation ways announced by the European Union where there is an increased focus on renovating the existing building stocks. Right now, our sales are still primarily focused on new builds, but we see a growing trend that renovation will increase, especially since this has been highlighted as one of the most cost-effective ways to help climate mitigation across the EU. In this year, in the sustainability report, you can read and see about the development that our SDG products have on the impact metrics that will -- Anthony will go into a little bit how we're performing on the SDG later. So right now, you'll see that we find that everything in the European Union -- and of course, I forgot to mention the work that he's been doing on fire safety where we actually continue to see growing awareness, growing demand and actually, some of the regulations going a step further than we would first have expected. More recently, the U.K. government has actually come out with additional funds for replacing combustible materials on the outside of high-rise buildings and where initially they had set the safety height of buildings at 18 meters, there are discussions already to say that, actually, buildings higher than 11 meters should potentially shift into noncombustible facade. So on a regulatory basis, we see that we have the right products and we are sitting in the right place. Anthony, back to you. Slide 14?

Thank you, Mirella. Yes. So Slide 14, as we've mentioned in previous SDG calls, we've made a commitment back in 2016 to work proactively with 10 of the 17 SDGs. And what's important for us is that we have a substantive conversation around our progress according to these SDGs. In 2019, we developed a new SDG impact metric. That's for SDG 8, decent work and economic growth. The metric's based on the methodology developed by Copenhagen Economics and is available on our website. Using the methodology, we've calculated that we have generated 40,000 jobs globally. That's direct and indirect jobs. These are predominantly local jobs as we produce close to our customers and hire from the communities where we operate. In addition, as much of our production is located in nonurban areas, we are able to offer employment opportunities in areas where employment opportunities are in generally -- in general, limited. Using the methodology, we've also calculated that our sold products in 2019 will generate energy savings equivalent to EUR 77 billion. That's equivalent to building close to 800,000 new European schools. Going forward, we are now able to measure our performance against this SDG on an annual basis. So if we move on now to the final section of the call relating to sustainability goals and our progress relating to them and we move to Slide 16. If I could ask Jens to mention and say a few words about our performance within safety.

Jens, are you...

Jens, are you there? We sort of lost...

Can you hear me now? Can you hear me?

Yes, yes.

Okay. I'm sorry. So let's start thus with the definition. Lost time incident frequency rate, that is the number of incidents or accidents we have when some will stay away from work 1 or more days afterwards per 1 million man-hours, 1 million man-hours, that's a lot. So what you see here, this level we have of 3.5 where last year, we reached a record of 2.7. That is a very, very low number. It's world class. And it's important to us because we operate in quite a dangerous environment. We start the process with the volcano, 1,500 degrees, melting stone, lava spinning in big heavy machinery. So it's very important, we are good here. And we are good. It's going to be very difficult to keep improving this number. So what we tend to look at now is to Remove the risk of fatalities and remove the risk of very serious incidents. So while keeping this level -- and we're very serious about safety and if we can improve it. And if you look at the trend we have had the last couple of years, what are areas that we will spend some extra time on, for example, when we do the large CapEx projects, a few years back, it's not included in this statistics when we build a factory. Then we saw that some of the contractors on-site and also some of the fatalities we have had are subcontractors of a contractor where our way of doing things hasn't reached out. So we focus on that. And then we also have some operations that are outsourced, it could be removing waste from site or brick containing all of the waste materials. There could be some industrial operations on our side, so near us, it's running by other contractors. And there, we haven't been as happy with the progress on safety. So that -- those are focus areas. So just to sum up, the business continues to be dangerous. We are taking a very serious approach to this because we want all our worker to get home from work and now we are expanding our reach into subcontractors and others to make sure that we improve also on that front. If they are a subcontractor or supplier to us, they should do it safely -- as safely as we do it. Okay. Anthony, back to you.

Thanks, Jens. So if we move to Slide 17, our performance according to the goals on CO2 emissions and energy efficiency in our own unrenovated offices. There was a flat development last year in CO2 intensity goal, so an improvement of 4% compared to the baseline 2015. This was the same as last year. At the same time, there was an improvement in absolute emissions of 8%. We're still on track to meet the 22% intermediate goal of 10% improvement, and we'll achieve it through a combination of improved energy efficiency and conversions to less carbon-intensive fuels. It's, of course, important that we walk the talk and renovate our own unrenovated offices to high energy efficiency levels. And in 2019, we achieved an improvement of 6% compared to the baseline of 2015. We have a number of renovation products in the pipeline, including this one in the slide in Gladbeck, Germany, and we're on track to meet the 35% improvement goal by 2022. And we move to Slide 18, strengthening the circularity of our production. As Mirella has already mentioned, circularity is one of our key strengths. And in 2019, we further strengthened the circularity of our production and our products. So in relation to our water efficiency, intermediate goal of 10% improvement by 2022 compared to the baseline '15, we improved by 5% compared to '18 and 7% compared to the baseline. With regards to waste to landfill, we improved 18% compared to last year and we're on track to meet the 40% reduction goal in 2022 compared to the '15 baseline. This meant that we moved some of our factories even closer to 100% closed loops. One example is our factory in Troitsk in Russia where we reduced waste to landfill by 97%. Our products are inherently recyclable and we continue to exploit this by increasing the number of countries where we offer, reclaimed waste schemes. So in 2019, we added Switzerland to the list, bringing the total number of countries where we offer a comprehensive reclaimed waste scheme to 11, so 4 shy of the '22 goal of 15. That was, I think, the last words from our presentation.

I think we open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Kristian Johansen from Danske Bank.

First, Jens, thank you for the short update on COVID-19. Maybe if you can just add a bit of detail, I obviously acknowledge it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen going forward. But just reflecting on what you have seen so far, can you just confirm whether all your factories are currently operating? And then will we have any logistical challenges both on raw materials and then delivery of your own products? And then we have obviously seen that a lot of companies have withdrawn their guidance and you haven't done so. So is it fair to assume that you are roughly on budget so far?

So I will not comment on the guidance on that in this call, Kristian, because we are in the middle of something now and we want to see what happens because it's governmental actions that impact now. And we are taking the full week to look how this develops. And yes, we have some factories where we shut down due to demand. So we have a goal to supply the customers if they need it, and if we have enough on stock, as always, we will stop the manufacturing. And there are factories that we are about to stop because demand is dropping during this complete lockdown time. It's not many factories. And I would also say that, for example, in China, we are up and down there since a month just to give a data point. What I -- it's hard to -- we have a crisis management team. We have strong local management. We have very big factories where it's quite easy to put big social distance between people. We're not saying exactly how many people we have per shift, but it's not so many and the factory is big. So those things are in place. So we can operate safely, but then there could be local regulation coming in. And that changes by the day, and we want to see a little bit more. Personally, my view on the situation is as follows. I think Europe and the political leaders, to sum it up, what they are doing, and many people understand this better than me, they manage the lockdown to the amount of intensive care with oxygen beds they have. As long as they do that, I think this will blow over. And so, therefore, for example, we see different strategies in Sweden, Denmark, Spain, France, but fundamentally, I think their role is to manage to the capacity of the intensive care beds. So we will live through that. And yes, when we look into April and May, I cannot predict today. It's a difficult situation. But again, we need to see a little bit more where it's going per country before we can make the prediction of what's happening. So that's as much as I can say now. And again, back to our motto. Are we worried about this? We worry about our people. We worry about customers at risk going bankrupt. We worry about suppliers, but fundamentally, until now, we have supplies to the factories and the customer that need product with few exceptions, have been a few cases in Italy, we have been able to deliver. And we monitor this daily. We have a crisis team that checked incoming production and outgoing and safety every day.

Okay. That's very helpful. Then a question for me on the ESG side. On your target for Denmark in terms of the 70% reduction, given that this is relative to 1990, can you just tell us how much have you reduced as of 2019? And then what will you do to get that level to the full 70%? And secondly, in terms of your 2022 and 2030 targets on Q2 emissions, what level of investments and what kind of investments will be needed to reach those tonnes.

So thanks for the question, Kristian. So if we take the first question first, so we've reduced emissions so far since 1990 to around 35%, which is very comparable to the overall reduction in Denmark, which I think is around 30 -- 38%. So our emissions in 2019 in Denmark, 87,000 CO2 emissions Scope 1 and 2. And I think that it's really important to emphasize that we've achieved that. We've decarbonized our operations at the same time as we have increased output and at the same time that we've kept jobs in Denmark. If you look at the Danish Council on Climate Change figures on CO2 reduction in Denmark since 1990, then there have been trends from a positive perspective in terms of reducing CO2 intensity and that's coming from technological changes. That's energy efficiency, that's renewable energy, but that's also structural changes. So that's, for example, industry moving out of Denmark. And then there has been negative impacts on that from a high standard of living and also from a population growth. But if we look at the positive impacts of where Denmark has reduced CO2 emissions, then actually 50% of that CO2 emission reduction is because of the structural changes. So there's been a movement towards a service, more service business rather than CO2 intensive business. And we have managed to decarbonize, keep jobs in Denmark and also increase output. When we look ahead to how we'll achieve the reduction of 70%, so aligned with the Danish commitment in 2030. Then we're going to do that in 2 main ways. One of them, of course, is to continually focus on improved energy efficiency in our production facilities, but also, we're dependent on a renewable energy supply. And here, our focus is on biogas. And of course, we're dependent on the infrastructure being available and that fuel source being available. And if it is, then it's definitely achievable. In terms of investments, then I think we have mentioned in previous ESG calls that we have relaxed our payback requirements to sustainability investments. So from a 3-year payback requirement, we've increased that to 8-year payback, and we will be accelerating those sustainability investments going forward and as we've also mentioned in the call, intensifying R&D efforts.

Our next question comes from the line of Brijesh Siya from HSBC.

It is -- if I may come back to the COVID-19, I know you have said a few details. And I just wanted to check with you how had been your experience in China, if you can share, I mean, how long was the lockdown and how quickly that production recovered and how the demand is looking like in China probably after the couple of weeks of lockdown, how things -- logistics have improved and how the demand is coming back there. So that would be my first question. And I have a question for Anthony on CO2 emission. If I look at the sustainability of -- report of 2019, Page 33 talks about energy per tonne of stone wool, rising from 98% to 99%. I understand that's indexed one, but if you can help me understand that why it has increased. Is there any specific region what -- that leads to that increase? And probably on the third one is on your recycling content. You talk about the recycling content rising to around 26% recycled product in the total final product. But how much is that -- those are reclaimed -- from waste -- from other buildings? So I'm trying to -- out of the 26%, how big is that, the stone wool, which are being collected from buildings and being recycled again?

Yes.

Okay. I take the corona. So this is the last comment I make on corona. Okay? So we don't give individual country numbers. But I can only say, first of all, the lockdown in China happened during Chinese New Year. So you compared low to low, so that meant the financial impact, even though it -- obviously when you don't produce for a month, you don't have any money, but you will still compare it to a low month. So China had that -- maybe that benefit. That also led, of course, to that they had many people that had traveled to family, which delayed the coming back of people. My view on China, and here, I don't know, I feel that China has an ambition. I mean we are not back to full, but we are running the factory since more than a month and probably start to come up and transport are working. And this you can read out in the press. But I feel that the ambition in China, what people talk about is that, in April, they hope to be back quite close to normal in many industries. It won't happen in every industry, but that this should be up there. And if that is 20% down, 10% down or flat, I don't know. I cannot know. I just hear that the sentiment in the market is to really make an effort to try to start things up and get back to normal and that April -- that could happen in April. If it happens, yet to see, we don't have a backlog. We will deliver, we produce. We are ready to bounce back fully if that would happen. So -- but that is, please, the last question I do on corona. Back to you, Anthony, on the other question.

Thank you. So there were 2 questions, one relating to the energy intensity of our production and the second one on recycled content. So one on energy efficiency, I mean, one of the key reasons why that number has gone up is simply because we're doing more with the products. So we have a confectioning. We have products -- our System products, ROCKFON products, Grodan products, where once we're producing the wool from the line, we're taking that wool and then using a lot of other different machines to make and process those confectioning products. And that requires energy. And because of the increase in the volumes of those products, then that has a negative impact on the energy intensity of the production. Regarding the recycled content, then you've seen that the average annual recycled content for the group has gone up by 26%. What you need to understand there is that there are large variations across the group, so there will be some factories that have an annual average recycled content of up to 60% and we're actually able to offer products with a recycled content of up to 75%. When you look at the content, so the recycled content where that's coming from, then the vast majority of that is coming from secondary raw materials, so a lower proportion from -- of waste coming back from market. But as Mirella mentioned earlier, that is increasing. So we increased the amount of waste coming back from market by 23% in 2019, and of course, that has a positive impact on the annual average recycled content.

Okay. And if I may just dwell a little more into the CO2 part or the energy part, I see that the total greenhouse gas emission for 2019 is down almost 7%, 8% year-on-year. And how do that -- I mean what particularly drives that? Because insulation, if I recollect, the volumes were down probably low single-digit year-on-year basis. So any particular reason how that number has fallen more?

No particular reason. I mean there's, of course, a correlation between volumes and absolute CO2 emissions but the main reason has been the volumes.

Okay. And the last question is only on the recycling facility, which you provide across countries. If I recollect the last sustainability call, you had kind of said that kind of -- there are 2 countries where you have expanded in 2019, including Italy, but I see here, it's only Switzerland now. Is that something still in progress and probably that's coming in 2020?

Yes. So I was cautious in the last call about saying that we would get across the line with Italy. We didn't get across the line. One -- the main reason for not achieving it in 2019 was border issues, so it's to do with the classification of waste and being able to transport waste across borders. And this is actually one of the areas where we're lobbying actively in the EU to try to influence the circular action plan to make it more conducive to moving waste across borders. But we didn't get across the line with Italy in 2019. We're confident we'll get there in the course of 2020.

Our next question comes from the line of Laurits Kjaergaard from ABG.

I don't have the question on corona, but perhaps we could talk a little bit about the Danish goals that you have of a reduction on this 40% -- or 70% that you have. And could you just talk about -- you did mention investments for the last 10 years of EUR 100 million. How much did this contribute to reducing CO2 in Denmark?

I mean, it's -- we don't have a precise figure on how much that reduced, but when you look at the reduction of around 35%, then, of course, that's due to a continuous focus on energy efficiency improvements, and that can require different kinds of investments. It has also been due to the new technology that we've introduced in our factories, which is the flexible fuel technology. And those 2 key investments or a number of investments in -- within energy efficiency has, of course, been a large part of that EUR 100 million.

So is it the same level for next 10 years until 2030? And also, just in that regards, I understand in your actual sustainability report you also write before 2030, and there, it seems -- Page 13 of the report, that this is around the year of 2025 that you will reach this goal, or maybe perhaps that's just illustrative on the report on Page 13.

So maybe I take that. There are improvements. Both the absolute emissions and the emissions per tonne per unit produced have gone down with the same percentage. So -- and the impact that by running the factories better and also some new technologies. Just because we got 35%, 40% with EUR 100 million investment doesn't mean there is a correlation with the EUR 100 million on X percent because there's a whole slate of actions. So going forward in Denmark, if you look at how would we get the remaining piece, putting more of the melting on gas is an important step that costs only small money because we have flexible melting technology that only we in the world know how to do, yes? And then another step would if the Danish government -- I mean biogas is already available. We can run on biogas. So if the government pushes through increasing the biogas capacity from 1 PKU to 3 PKU, then we can even go to biogas. And that will give a further step-down. So we have a whole slate of measures with a collection of things to get to 70%. And generally, I would say, without comment, is that we did the big investments in Denmark. We did the big investments. And the other is more dependent on a bit of science and pulling up some R&D tricks. But we have already proven most of this. So we are confident to get to 70%. Of course, we won't stop there, but again, the big bulk of the investments are done in Denmark.

Our next question comes from the line of Josefin Johansson from Handelsbanken Capital Markets.

And my question is -- my first question is regarding the EU taxonomy. As you said in the slides that you've been classified as a low-carbon technology. So my question is have you started to review on how you will report on this. And do you see any challenges, for example, in complying with the do no significant harm criteria? And then my second question is regarding the significantly intensifying the R&D developing of the new low-carbon technologies. Should you provide any details on -- are there any particular areas that you're focusing on in terms of that?

Yes, yes. So I take the innovation part, and Anthony, you take the rest. So just you know, on the innovation, we have on measuring -- sorry. On the innovation part, we have a whole team working on that as part of the technology development. In our core technologies, we don't stop developing them. We have permanent teams per technology area and CO2 is one parameter. Sustainability is a overriding parameter. So we just keep developing. And yes, there will be a step-up -- a gradual step-up as we grow in R&D investments, in the R&D itself, but we managed to the competence we have. And we keep adding people. But it's not a dramatic step-up to develop the technologies because we are already quite far. We're already -- we just keep every year pumping in R&D money along the pipe that we have been doing in the last 4, 5 years.

And then you had a question regarding taxonomy. I heard the first part of the question. You could maybe repeat the question because I didn't quite understand the second part of your question.

Yes, sure. So my question was you mentioned that you've been classified as a low-carbon technology, so I was just wondering, have you started to review on how you will report on this and also, if you see any challenges in, for example, complying with the do no significant harm criteria that you set up in the taxonomy?

I mean, it's early days. The rules regarding taxonomy are continuing to be matured. There's work planned in the course of the year in firming these requirements up. So we're obviously monitoring that and we will manage that accordingly. We don't see any challenges from our product perspective in meeting those criteria.

This now concludes our conference call. So I will hand back to the speakers for any closing remarks.

So thank you all for joining the call and we look forward to speaking to you again later in the year with hopefully some new and fresher topics. So thank you very much for joining. I understand that you're all terribly busy, so much appreciated. Have a good day.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Stay safe.