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I remember the days, ten years ago when we celebrated our first turnkey machine as a small start-up. It was a ski manufacturing machine priced at around two million Czech crowns, complete with mechanical design and manufacturing. When we secured this project, we celebrated it thoroughly.
The size of the projects gradually increased, and we responsibly celebrated each boundary shift in our project sizes. Projects followed for eight, sixteen, and nineteen million Czech crowns, until we finally reached the milestone of a project worth twenty million Czech crowns. Crossing this boundary called for a celebration.
The growth in project sizes did not stop, and after five years in business, we encountered a large production line project for armrests, setting our highest project value of over seventy million Czech crowns. At that moment, projects worth twenty million Czech crowns started to seem like smaller orders and two million Czech crowns projects began to be seen as minor adjustments.
However, we approach small projects with the same care as large ones. They have their agile management, a team of product owners, an account manager, financial control, and project coordination. It may seem redundant, but we have found that this is the only way to maintain the quality of service that our customers expect, even on small projects. No project is too small or less important for us, and small projects often open doors to the big ones.
2023 was a year of big projects. We raised the bar for our largest project twice. First, we secured a project for a production and testing line for electronic printed circuit boards worth 87 million Czech crowns, and then a forging line for 106 million Czech crowns. Thanks to this, we surpassed the milestone of 400 million Czech crowns in net annual turnover for the first time.
At the same time, we offered a series of large automation projects scheduled for 2024. One of them, the most promising, exceeded 200 million Czech crowns alone and was supposed to constitute a third of our planned turnover of 600 million Czech crowns for 2024. Unfortunately, we did not secure this project, and we subsequently faced a difficult period finding work for our available capacities.
That is the game with big projects as the path to securing them is fraught with uncertainties. Complex negotiations over tough business conditions, shifting major investments, approving budgets of global companies, and several months of invoice delays. This is the nightmare of every financial director, especially when a payment, equivalent to a fifth of the annual turnover, is delayed by several months.
A major milestone for us in 2023 was the completion of developing a concrete 3D printing project. With an accounting value of 85 million Czech crowns, it ranks among the most significant projects in ICE history. After two and a half years of intensive development, testing, and patenting, our products have positioned us among the world's unique technologies for manufacturing concrete structures.
Managing and planning so many large projects meant that my team and I had to further intensify our already intense focus on cash flow because, with the size of the projects, the degree of fluctuations also increased. And here, another interesting correlation became evident – the importance of strong customer-supplier relationships.
The year 2023 clearly showed who is what kind of partner and with whom we can mutually support and rely on each other. It also revealed who negotiates solely from a position of monopoly power and strength.
Barbora Stupková, CFO
