Aurubis AG (NDA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning to the U.S., and good morning here in Europe. A warm welcome from my side to the Aurubis Capital Market Day 2023 here from London. Last time we saw each other, it was in 2021, and we did a recap of our strategy. And a lot of things have happened during that time, also on Aurubis. I think, geopolitically, the war of the Ukraine had, of course, also an impact on Aurubis. We were faced with disrupting supply chains. We had a major energy crisis in Germany, especially, and we are facing a cyber-attack on our systems, just to name a few of them. Aurubis has managed all of these crises and challenges in a very successful way. We were even able to show a record year earning last fiscal year. And more than that, during that time, we were working on our strategy. Our strategy we presented to you last December Metals for Progress, Driving Sustainability Growth. And we are now delivering. And that is exactly what today's agenda is about. Our CEO, Roland Harings will start with a brief recap. Then Inge Hofkens, our COO, Multimetal Recycling, will explain our strategy, implementation and achievement and how that fits into our smelter network. David Schultheis from the 1st of July onwards, our President Aurubis Richmond, will report on the progress we have achieved in Augusta in Georgia, which is the biggest growth project for Aurubis. And after then, Jürgen Jestrabek, our Project Manager, Complex Recycling Hamburg, will show you how CRH will fill the gap in our smelter network and what that means to our earnings and sustainability. And finally, our colleague, Thomas Sturm, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, will report on the tankhouse expansion in Pirdop, our answer to the growing demand of copper in Europe. After a Q&A session and the short break, my colleague -- our colleague, Christian Hein, Head of Sustainability at Aurubis, will report our industry leadership in sustainability and the progress we have made so far. Roland Harings after then will report on our major decarbonization projects. And then Ken Nagayama, Head of Business Development, Battery Recycling, will present our innovative process for battery recycling and how the future Aurubis is going to position in that market. And last but not least, our CFO, Rainer Verhoeven, will summarize the profitability of all these growth projects, the impact on the balance sheet and, of course, how we're going to finance it. And finally, we can look forward to an outlook of Roland Harings, a tight program, which will lead around 5:30. And just a short technical note for all our virtual participants, you will find a Q&A function and you can enter your questions at any time. Yes. And now I would like to give the stage to Roland.

Okay. Thank you, Angela. So also from me, a warm welcome here to London to our Capital Market Day. It's -- it was December '21 when we had our last meeting and updated and informed you about our strategy. And the 3 pillars that we have shared at this point in time, securing and strengthening the core business, pursue growth opportunities, specifically in the recycling area and continue and expand our industry leadership in sustainability have remained firm and have been confirmed. Despite a real challenging environment that we have been faced with, we all have been faced with since '21, we have really worked hard and successfully executed these 3 pillars of our strategy. And as Angela mentioned, we will have some more deep dives in some specific and probably the most important projects that are in execution today. [ Clearly ], our mission is clear and we are delivering on this mission to deliver sustainable growth with our metals. What we are doing is, and you have seen also Angela mentioned our financials, and you are very familiar with our financials, we can build and have built this strategy on a very, very solid foundation. Financially, for sure, but also based on our integrated smelter network, as we always called it, which is with no, I think, question mark, the most sustainable and efficient smelter network in our industry around the world. And it's also quite amazing just now after we have more personal meetings again. I have been in the CESCO Week in Chile. And as a CEO and as a manager, also my board colleagues, we always have probably, like you in your jobs, you have always this to-do list, things which are not perfect, things you still have to accomplish. So therefore, it was very rewarding to have an exchange with most of the players in the copper industry during this 1 week in Chile and just received some feedback, some reflection on how the industry sees our company and how we are, I would say, appreciated for the progress and the direction we have taken since a couple of years. So we have come a long way since the last -- in the last 2 years, many projects, and I hope you will be impressed by the progress that we can witness in videos and also in documents during this afternoon. And we will also talk about the even more exciting opportunities. Besides the very impressive projects we have already launched, also about the very exciting opportunities that we have in front of us in Europe, for sure, but also and very much focused in North America, in the United States, but not excluding other regions because circular economy, recycling and the technology that we bring to close loops to bring very important raw materials back into the industry is of increasing importance in the whole framework of decarbonization. Talking now about the challenging environment. I think I have to press this. So the global -- the global environment and also geopolitical environment has really changed rapidly and in my view, not to the better. It's much more difficult to do business, what's happening in the -- between the big economic regions, Europe, Asia and North America. And inflation has been extremely strong and frightening in many regions. And interest rates moved up and so on. However, despite this difficult environment we are operating in, we have seen very strong trends supporting our industry. We talked -- in many of our meetings, we talked about the decarbonization. And you heard me saying several times, decarbonization means electrification. If you want to use less fuel energy, you probably need other forms of energy, which is typically electricity. And electricity means due to the excellent properties of the metal copper, means the use and intensive use of copper. I will show later some slides how we project the demand in the different regions for copper, and the trend is clearly set to move up. This is the one side. The other side is that we see also a strong push to regionalize recycling, that nations like North America, but also within Europe, there is more and more the notion that these important raw materials, which are already in the countries, in the regions, they should stay in the regions by closing the loops by establishing really a circular economy. So what we have seen in U.S. was an extreme positive reception with our decision to go there with the recycling plant and also today, an even more encouraging support to even go further. And you saw, you heard that after the decision on the Phase 1 investment, we already, last year in December, decided to pull the Phase 2 enrichment already forward because the feedback from the markets in the U.S., the feedback from the regulators, from the politicians from every stakeholder was so overwhelmingly positive that we said, let's really accelerate and go already the second step. What's also changing is regulatory framework. Shipments and exports to Asia, which had been for many years, specifically for the U.S. the outlet for many recycling materials and also for low metal containing or more difficult complex recycling materials. This outlet is more and more limited with regulation that countries like China, but also other countries like Malaysia, like Indonesia, they are limiting the quality of material, which can be imported, which leads to the fact that this material is not leaving regions anymore, like the U.S., and as the material is there, it's sadly ends in many cases, on landfill. So there's also now an even more accelerated need for recycling for closing the loop in regions like U.S. Also the decarbonization, looking here specifically from a European perspective, but what's happening in the U.S. with IRA and the move and the huge increase of industrial activity in U.S. of plants being built, of e-mobility being raised, we also see here significant additional demand for our metals. Even if we are not directly impacted or supported by the IRA incentive scheme, I always say it's a bit of a secondary effect because the industrial activity, the electrification, the new energy activity is significantly rising in the U.S., which means more metal, more industrial activity, which really falls again in our can. So really secondary effects that we see there. If I go on to the next slide, what does it mean in numbers? In Europe, we see a supply-demand gap growing to close to 1 million tonnes of copper demand in the next 10 years. Hence, the expansion of cathode production in Europe to support the transformation, the energy and mobility transformation is really relevant and really led us to the decision to expand our tankhouse capacity in the plant in Bulgaria, which Thomas will talk about in a minute. With this activity, moving our capacity of cathode production by adding 120,000 tonnes of capacity, we are contributing significantly to this additional demand in Europe, and the market is just here asking for more of Aurubis cathodes. Looking at the time line of -- and by the way, the same as you see in the graph and it's in your documents, the same is for the U.S. There is copper deficit in all regions going forward. The time line and the key projects we have listed here is for many of you well known, and we will dive into some of the key projects today. And 8 key strategic projects are in execution. And by the end of this calendar year '23, all of them will be in construction. They will be all -- we will be building equipment, buildings, infrastructure and so on. So we are really in full execution after we have announced 1.5 years ago, our strategy and these projects. The remaining projects, we will talk about later, what we have in the pipeline. These will be step-by-step credibly according to governance and a very strict regime that we have put in place to execute the projects will be put and will be decided until '26. What does it mean financially? And what is the overall scheme, cash flow and KPIs, where you are also, I think, interested in detail. This will be covered by Rainer later about EBITDA and contributions coming from there. There was certainly, and we have been -- I have been asked and our management team has been asked is Aurubis with the history that we have, which is not building greenfield plants, which is not doing large growth investments, being excellent in maintenance and keeping our asset base at a very, very good standard, very high-performing assets. But the question was rightly asked, do you have the capabilities, the strength, also the governance to execute projects of this magnitude and also of this number? Therefore, as we knew we don't have it really completely in place. We have defined a real management governance system for transforming this company to a different level. It's very refined, very precise and also very detailed. If you look at this kind of agenda here, that's how we run our company. So we have, for example, I don't go into all the details, but we have a Strategy Committee. This includes the responsible leaders from the strategy function, from the legal function, from financial, from technology, from the business, so all key people who are working on the progress and on the future of the company. This Strategy Committee is meeting frequently. There is a so-called, we call it [ StratCo ], which is more the operational part of the strategy deployment. This means frequently to check in detail single projects and have an in-depth discussion with the responsible project leader with people who are the sponsors, the drivers for these projects in order to make the overall portfolio fit, inform everybody about what's going on given our integrated smelter network is also very important that we really see all the dependencies and how things are connected. And they are in charge to prepare the decision-making that's being taken place first in the Executive Board and then secondly, in the Supervisory Board. So a very clear governance and structure and very important what I always see also the right rhythm so that we have really kind of fixed agenda, everybody has these meetings in its agenda. There are clear participants. There are clear tasks to be conducted. So this is now something, I would say, a well-oiled machine that we have installed in the governance, which is working since we launched the strategy. And then for sure, very important are the Project Steering Committees, that's then where project management, key stakeholders, the project team itself comes together and depending on the project, regularly reviews in-depth in detail what's going on the project. So this has really been the enabler for first launching all these very demanding projects, 8 are already in execution, growth projects beside the project that we do as a company as large maintenance projects anyway. It has really enabled us to launch these projects and also to steer, manage and also counteract in case of deviation. And today, I can say all projects, and I hope we can convince you today, and we have some key people here, that all projects, despite the environment we are dealing in with inflation, with supply chain issues with it, you know all what's going on, that we can prove and show that all our key projects, all the 8 strategic projects are well on track, and we are going to deliver our promise. And also with this Executive Board meeting, strategy board meeting that we have on a regular basis, also my fellow, the 2 of them, Inger and Rainer, but also Heiko, who is not here today, we are, and I can just ensure you, we are very close to the business. We know exactly what's going on in the project. We are working with the teams, and we see ourselves as a strong element and partner in the project to help the teams in this challenging environment to move projects forward, quick decision-making, sound quick decision-making in order to ensure that projects keep on track, keep on working. So that's very important. Looking now, and I think that's just a summary slide here. Looking now at the early warning. So that's one thing how we execute, govern our project landscape and more projects to come. What we also do, as we are living in a changing world, we have established what we call an early warning radar. You see here some of the points. What are we doing there? It's not just you see some signposts, but it's just as the signpost, but we are looking really holistically in the environment, in the markets, in the -- in everything, which is important for our business and our forward decision-making. And it's not about short-term data. It's just have trends, have assumptions that we have built the foundation for our strategy work. Have they really changed? Has there something developed in a different direction, significant different direction than before? And this is something that we do on an annual basis and review holistically everything, which is important for our business. And if something changes, we have 2 kind of escalation. One is, what we say, a yellow flag, which means let's watch out, something we need to put a special focus on and check if something is deteriorating or we have also a red alert. There's an imminent risk, something is very different to what we took as an assumption that we thought is really needed. And to give you one practical example, let's say, geopolitical. Angela mentioned the attack of Russia on Ukraine. This clearly in the geopolitical dimension was something we really looked at. Does it change something for our strategy? Is this an event that really brings us back to the drawing board, we have to think about? Is there a change in our direction and our strategy? And clearly, conclusion was, no, we were not dependent or involved in any -- of any significance in business dealings with Russia, nor with Ukraine. There was no really impact on the immediate effect and also our strategy, the expansion, the 3 pillars, which I explained, they are rather, let's say, strengthened and supported by what's happening now in the geopolitical world than being challenged. So -- but just to show you the idea that we are permanently looking into this area by this early warning system. And it's part of our planning process. And again, I'm a big fan of a rhythm in the company, that people have really this kind of structure with the business planning, with the governance of the projects, then with how I review market. So to have a very solid and strong fact base, everything looked there and then from there, take decisions, move forward and execute. And we -- I'm at the company since now 4 years, and I can really say we have come a long way. We have really established a very different organization and governance and also a management team with a different mindset than what I have, let's say, experienced when I joined the company. So clearly, this is how we operate, how we do. And I'm sure in the Q&A and also perhaps at the dinner discussion, I hope most of you have the time to join, we can elaborate a bit on how we are doing this on a day-to-day business. So with our strategy and through the realization of our growth projects, we're aiming for 2 main goals. We will increase our earnings by optimizing our smelter network. And you will see today, it's for non-metallurgists, it will be, I would say, a bit challenging today because my colleagues will really try to explain this technology that we own. This is really kind of network and how many different metallurgical hydro [ pyramid ] metallurgical streams are being connected one to each other and everything. It's quite fascinating. I have to admit, I don't understand it, but I have -- I know we have the experts who are really fully in line there, and they are very convincing and excellent in what they are doing. And what we also put in our main goal is that all of our processes across the network are generating even more value. It's a bit like no surprise, the statement. But what does it really mean? It means that we are extracting, that we are expanding our already excellent extraction capabilities that we take all the important ingredients out of the different input streams that we receive in recycling, but also in primary and that we take, I'll always say, all the [ PPMs ] out, all the metals out, everything out, which is of relevance for the industry. And so therefore, I much more say we are a multi-metal company because we are producing more than 20 -- or exactly 20 different metals today, some other site products. And to enhance this to get even more out of the streams, that is also one of our pillars and important for the earnings. But also here, Rainer will have some say about -- some statements about this later. And then, let's say, what's the other important geopolitical, I mentioned that reduce the exposure or other formulated differently, have more pillars on which Aurubis stands. With this expansion in the North American market, in the U.S. market, as you know, today, we are still a very much European play with this expansion in North America. This is already a significant step. And we will also talk later, and David will give you some idea. But this is, as we always said, the first step that we do [ in Richmond ]. Our technology, our scalability, our standardization that we have established with this first step in Richmond and also with the quick addition of a Phase 2 without significant additional engineering because we copy, paste, the technology that we have launched in the Phase 1. This is just the starting point. Markets are there, demands are there, and this will lead to an important North American business for the company, which means we are not just dependent on the well-being of one region that we have more, let's say, support from other regions there. So coming to this page here, also something that we are going to elaborate in more detail during today. We have launched, decided and in execution growth projects in the magnitude of EUR 1.1 billion, with this 8 large projects. This is unprecedented for Aurubis. This is a journey we have not had in our history. We were very successful with M&A. Metallo is one of the last very successful examples of acquisitions that we did and integration that we did even more successfully. But really organic growth, adding significant capacity in this space and in this, let's say, broadness is not part of our history so far. This EUR 1.1 billion of CapEx will deliver EUR 260 million of EBITDA by '26, '27. This is -- and Rainer again will talk later about what's the return, what's in it for our stakeholders, for our investors, what's the return on this capital invested. And our investments are highly attractive. They are very much demanded and needed by the markets. And hence, we are very confident that these numbers we delivered. And those who are working with Aurubis since many years, they know that we tend to be a bit conservative in our estimation and without hinting anything. But this is something a number that we will definitely deliver. And then also today, we will just briefly touched on the other investment projects, what we have here in the medium pillar, EUR 280 million, which are in final feasibility or basic engineering phase, so things which will come on the table for decision in the coming quarters. Nothing decided yet. Everything has to go through a very, as I explained with the governance, everything has to go through a very rigorous approval process. These projects are not there yet, but majority is already at a good stage. So we will review them relatively quickly. And then I'm very pleased today to have Ken here, Ken Nagayama, who will give you some more insights in our very good progress in black mass battery recycling. I know a topic we had received a lot of questions, a lot of requests to explain where are we going, where do we stand. So I'm sure we will have a very, very interesting exchange and Q&A about this here today. So to sum up, we are in full execution. We deliver our promise. We explained 1.5 years ago, the 3 pillars. What are we doing? Today, we are standing here, and we are showing -- we are in full swing. Large growth projects are in execution and are progressing as we speak. And with this, I would like to hand back to Angela, and you will see later then on stage. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Roland. Next, I would like to welcome Inge. Inge is the expert in recycling. She is responsible in the Board for recycling since 1st of January. And she will explain you, maybe the first time at Aurubis, we are talking a lot about the efficiency of our smelter network, and she is now explaining you what that really means for us and what's that and how that makes a difference compared to the other players in the market.

Thank you so much, Angela. And as Angela said, I'm very new to the Board only since January this year. But I am having just -- or just past 3 decades of experience in metal recycling. As Metallo was acquired, I kind of was acquired alongside and also onboarded at the group -- Aurubis Group 2 years ago, which has been really, really a nice journey because I think there was great opportunity for integration and a great opportunity for sharing know-how and knowledge in the field. For today, as Roland already mentioned, I try to walk you through a bit to what we are actually doing in our smelter network. I will not explain you everything what we do in terms of each and every detail because that would lead us, I think, for another week or so to kind of understand. But we are using our flow sheet to help you guide through where we are having these 8 projects, which Roland talked about, where they are in our landscape and how they fit all together in that integrated smelter network. I'm not sure whether this works or whether I was too fast. Viola. Okay. So we start with just a brief overview. It is really a very simplified view of our total operations and everything we do. But at least it gives you a bit of a framework and some guidance to where we are. I start with the status quo and with 2 of our projects, which are in this pipeline of 8 projects. And then we have 3 of our colleagues deep diving in some of those that we are actually taking on these exciting routes. So what we are doing in the integrated smelter network, we're actually leveraging on our existing assets, on M&A assets, like the Metallo acquisition was an -- on newly to be built assets. And all of that's, of course, following or supporting our driving sustainable growth strategy. What is so interesting on the fact that we are interconnected, and we are even doing that more and more going forward, is that it gives us a chance to really leverage on the core expertise and the metallurgical know-how we have in each of our operational sites. As we come from a long history of separate sites with a lot of know-how in there, both from a technological perspective, but also from a market and business perspective. When you get all that interesting expertise together, you can create really, really nice things. And we have done so by choosing also forward for our projects in the strategic pipeline. And we have not explored all of them yet. What we are doing there in not only using the expertise, but it's really all about how to understand where our profitability can be really tapped into at a max. We cover the metal where we can. You know that we are, in principle, seen mostly as a copper processor and producer. But as Roland said, there are so many more metals that are hosted by our entry materials, both from a primary as well as from a secondary perspective, that we want to get them all out wherever we can. And that is what we are doing with our projects in there. As you may see, and maybe I start first with quickly taking you through to how the process really works. So we have really 3 big important steps in the value chain, which is smelting, refining and multimetal recovery. The first one and the second one or maybe the most obvious one. The last one is the most complex and have to make that one in a wrap-up because that is otherwise would lead us really, as I said, too far. So the smelting and converting stage, the first stage is really there where we extract the copper from our raw materials, whether it's concentrates in our primary sites or whether it is a secondary raw materials. And the extraction, we do up to a level where we get into what we call copper blister or copper anodes, where the copper content is about 98%, 99% of copper. We don't forget about the rest of the metals and the elements in there, but that's the first step where we take the copper out of the raw materials. Then in the second step, which is the refining stage, refining, we do that by electrolysis in a tankhouse that's basically bus, filled with sulfuric acid and you run electricity through them, which makes that the copper ions can go from the anode to stainless steel blank and where they then create a copper cathode, which is the raw material copper again, as we know in the commodity world, the copper cathodes. And that has a purity of 99.999%. Why not 100%? Because that's just metallurgically not possible, which makes that in the tankhouse, moment in the refining stage, we actually separate 98%, 99% of copper away from the 1%, which is still there. And that 1% is actually a very valuable part of the 1% because that entails everything that is more precious than copper, like precious metals, gold and silver, but also platinum group metals and other metals. That's what we take out in that second step. And then the last part, and it's not one single step because that's really an entire part of activities where we recover all the rest of the bits and the pieces, the PPMs, like Roland said, or the percentages of all the other base metals, like tin, zinc, nickel and lead, and where we also do the further refining stages for precious metals, platinum group metals. And of course, what we try to do in the whole system is recover everything that is there, as I said before. So we also recover sulfuric acid, which then becomes a valuable product for selling. But we also recover iron silicates, which we bring into the construction industry mainly. And everything that is there, we are really focusing in minimizing waste to the fullest potential. We have, in our operations, 2 major pillars, let's say, which I indicated before, we have 2 major primary plants, 1 in Hamburg and 1 in Pirdop in Bulgaria that treats, clean and complex copper concentrates. And they go through the chain, smelting and converting, refining the copper into the copper cathodes. Everything that contains the precious metals, which is basically the bottom layer in the tankhouses where the precious metals and platinum group metals find themselves back. They are all treated in our Hamburg plant. So we concentrate all the material there in order to have an optimal and the best recovery of those precious metals in the operational activities there. Five of our plants are taking secondary raw materials, and that's really across our Lünen plants in Germany, the Beerse in Belgium, Olen in Belgium. We have Berango in Spain. And of course, we will soon have -- well, not soon have, we are building it. We also have our Richmond plant in the U.S. there. But also in Hamburg, we are dealing with secondary raw materials, materials that have -- that are relatively high in precious metal content or any material that can be also treated in our processes there. Our main focus in the recycling part, and I think really we have an advantage to the market as a whole is that we are actually very good in treating low-grade materials, and low grade means low in metal contents in those materials. Typically, you could say that if you have a concentrate running at average at 25% of copper, we can even go a bit lower on the recycling raw materials, having copper contents of only 10% to 15% or having a mix. Low grade also because we are not only treating metallic materials, like basically scrap coming from demolition or recovery or the collection chain, as you have seen in the film in the beginning, but also a lot of oxidic materials from, let's say, all kinds of core products or products generated during the manufacturing process when metal contained material is being manufactured. And of course, we are also dealing with a huge amount of complex materials. And when we say complex materials, then we talk about materials where all these base elements or these base metals and precious metals and platinum group metals, everything comes together in one single material because the extraction of all of that one, that's exactly what we can do very well in our integrated smelter network. And, of course, also electronic waste materials. We have -- just to highlight a bit maybe where our focus is in our Lünen plant in Germany. We mainly treat these electronic waste materials, our print -- mainly focus on printed circuit boards what -- that we all know from all our electronic devices. We deal there also with a lot of shredder materials, what we call shredder materials is mainly coming from the preprocessing, mechanical preprocessing of cars and electronic waste, but all types of household devices and so on, and it's coming also quite a lot from the treatment of household and industrial waste in general. In Lünen, we would, therefore, not only recover copper, but also focus there on the recovery of mainly nickel as a base metal hosted in our raw materials. And some of our materials or all of those materials also contain some [indiscernible] on net, which we then also treat further in our plant in Belgium in Beerse. On our Olen sites, and then I can also connect that to our Project BOB. In Olen, in Belgium, we focus rather on high-grade scrap materials, which is typically coming from the waste collection through the traders or collectors like we call them. And here, we saw really a nice opportunity when Metallo was acquired. There is actually a lot of nickel in our flows. And in Olen, we have the second biggest tankhouse that we have in our smelter network today, where nickel actually is also recovered in our tankhouse. So set aside of the precious metals contained in the bottom, which is typically called the anode slime. The nickel in that process will be dissolved in the solution, and we can recover that nickel again, over a process where actually we do crystallization and we come to a nickel sulfate. We have studied that opportunity, and we came to the conclusion that there was a big opportunity to combine all the flows from the Belgium plants into one. And that is how we came to the BOB project, which stands for bleed Olen Beerse and bleed treatment. Bleed is actually this nickel solution that comes from the tankhouse. We have -- the project has kicked off last year. We started demolition -- or demolishing a building, which we needed to take away before we could build a new building. And the new building is fully in -- or started to be fully in erection now. Then we have our Beerse plant. Beerse in Belgium connected also very much to the Berango plant in Spain because they came from the former Metallo acquisition. And they were tied in as an integrated smelter -- small smelter network already beforehand. There we have really a big focus on everything that is related to tin and [ lead ]. So where we try to -- not try to, where we actually manage very well to recover the tin and the lead from our copper raw materials. We produce there a pure tin and also pure leads for selling it to the markets again. We have also in Belgium, some zinc recovery through the fuming process that we operate there. But coming back to the tin side, and that is actually how our ASPA project came to life. We have in Beerse -- as we treat a lot of complexity of the 5 base metals together, we have -- we don't have really a very pure copper anode, which we are producing there. Well, we have a pure copper anode, sorry, which we produce there, which is being treated further in the tankhouse in Olen. That has always been the case. But we have also a production of a copper anode, which is much more impure than a classical copper anodes. And with such a kind of anodes, you cannot make really the highest rate of quality of copper [ cathodes ]. It is a process where we manage really these impurities that are in our systems. And actually, one of the elements that we have in that material is tin. We didn't want really to lose the tin. This material was always sought in the past. And we saw here a really nice opportunity together also with the materials that we produce in our other recycling plant in Germany and Lünen to bring materials together and to actually set up a process where we are capable of extracting the tin at the fullest and then also recover tin at 100% in our own flows. And that has turned into project ASPA, which also was decided in '21, I think, at the end of '21. And there, we are also in full construction. The building is erected, and we are now, I think, about to bring the walls around the building. So as you can see, everywhere where we can leverage on understanding what is a potential to add profitability into the network, we will use each and every opportunity. Of course, this is not a static thing because our raw materials in the entry point and surely those from the recycling part, they are constantly changing the composition in terms of all the elements together is never the same. Even though on the film you saw some variety of the raw materials we are having. We can put them into groups like we can see shredder materials or we can call them copper ferrous materials or we can call them [ alloys ] materials. But the presence of all the elements in these materials will always change. And that is, of course, a consequence of product design changes constantly. Any change in the market you think of a car, the car is maybe composed out of similar elements today than in the past, but the proportions are of all the metals in there are changing. And hence, also our raw materials are constantly changing. And that is actually one of the real benefits of our smelter network. We can react very agile to those market dynamics and use the materials at best, optimizing them in the logistics to where we are closest by with our plants and getting the full material recovered out of these raw materials. As said, today, we will also present where we are with 3 of our other projects, our Richmond projects in the states, the complex recycling in Hamburg and also the tank sales expansion, which Thomas will talk about later on. Let's talk first about where we find our U.S. project in Richmond in there. As Roland said, really, really, really good market response, a very strong market response. Our suppliers are really waiting until we start and also in line with our ambition to grow the recycling part. So in response to that one, as we decided in late '21 for the first phase, we did approve already in December '22 to go for the second Phase 2 because we strongly believe that we have synergies in the construction phase for both together, but also can respond faster to the market and be there where the market needs us to be. And it gives us also this great advantage of being locally present in a market that is also searching more for getting locally sourced material. The impact of where it is, you can see on the left-hand side, this is really a recycling site, like we have also our European recycling sites. That is also where really our core competencies in treating these materials and extracting the copper from it, but also being capable of leveraging on all the other elements and all the other metals throughout our whole smelter network. So the whole project is [ sort ] through for -- set aside from the material we are going to produce there. It's a copper blister and the copper blister will, of course, have not only copper, but also all the other elements, base metals, precious metals and platinum group metals. And we are, of course, capable of just processing them in our smelter network in Europe. Whether we will do a full force or whether we decide to do it differently, we can just use all the opportunities we have, and we will do it also in function of profitability where we think the profitability will bring us most. And I think the rest follows just the rest of the network there. David Schultheis will then, of course, deep dive in there to explain you more. Then we will have the CRH project or the complex recycling Hamburg. This you will find in the flow sheet rather at the bottom here on the slide. We will there be in the capability to actually treat a very complex combination of copper, lead and sulfur and are able to better process intermediates throughout the smelter network and also use the opportunity to open up for other intermediates in the market, where others are stuck with this combination of materials. I will speed up a bit so that my colleagues can tell you more about that one. Jürgen Jestrabek will do so in a minute. And then we will have the last one, which is the tankhouse in Pirdop, needless to say, where you can find it back on the flow sheet. And of course, this will bring also more capability to the smelter network to put even more metals through, not even copper, of course, because we always start with copper-bearing materials, but copper-bearing materials, hosting a lot of other base metals and precious and platinum group metals as mentioned. So you see, I think a lot of these materials wherever they go into our metal flow sheet, we will bring them in there where they are best placed, there where we have the capacities, there where we can bring them best to life in terms of profitability. I think Roland has mentioned it already. We are not carrying so much always about volume, but we do care about the profitability and bringing our business model into a very robust and a very resilient model, which we have been proving over the past and which we continue to prove by the projects we are up to deliver. With that, I hand over to David giving you more details about our Richmond project.

Hello, everyone, and also a warm welcome from my side. My name is David Schultheis, I'm the incoming Managing Director and President of Aurubis Richmond LLC. And today, I have the honor and pleasure to present you through one of the current status of the project as well as share an outlook on the larger vision of Aurubis for the North American market. Thank you. So Inge explained how the project fits into the overall flow sheet. I think for our ambition for the North American market, it's clear that the project is the cornerstone of our growth plan, well positioned here on the smelting side. The project itself is conceived as a modular concept, a repeatable model. And with the recent approval in December of Module 2, we have -- we're already in the process of implementing 2 instances of this model. When we look at the overall flow sheet, I think it's very important to take away that the overall combination of plants is very flexible and is indeed capable of sustaining more and additional instances of this repeatable model, be it in the U.S. or in Europe for future growth. The North American market, which we'll also touch on later today, also has the potential for further growth well beyond the current plans and activities that we have initiated with the 2 instances that are already work in progress. So consequently, we are engaging on a growth plan that may easily convert into something significantly larger. All the more important that we keep strong focus and exert reliable controls to convert this first project into a success for us as Aurubis as well as for our investors. Before we start out into the extended presentation, I would like to start with some visual impressions that are very recent in the form of a video that we have shot together with -- from the project as well as with the team on the ground, so you can get a first-hand impression of where we're at, at the moment. [Presentation]

So let's first turn to the market and have a look at its expected development. It's very clear the North American market is large, and it holds great potential for what we have in mind and for us as Aurubis. As a front-runner in our industry, we are the first to build significant capacity for these relevant recycling markets on the U.S. ground, which is currently estimated at slightly over 6 million tons of relevant materials every year that are available to us for our recycling plans. These materials generally fall into 3 categories. So we can see there is the precious metal materials. We have the complex recycling and the copper scrap and alloys. Our new recycling plant in Georgia, Aurubis Richmond will have target all 3 of these market segments. Its target feed is composed of printed circuit boards, which fall into the PM Materials segment, metal shredder or heavies as they're called in the U.S., from complex recycling and insulated copper wire from copper scrap and alloys. Well noted, the technical setup of the plant in Augusta is designed for flexibility. As Inge highlighted, we know that recycling markets and the materials that we will process going forward will change over time. So hence, the setup that we have are putting in place is also flexible. So in case the markets evolve, we will be able to process other materials as well. On average, the recycling market is expected to grow by 5% over the next, so to speak, 10 years until 2030. When we look at the individual segments, growth varies between 4% to 7%. One aspect that we would like to highlight in this context is for the future growth, we have indicated light blue boxes, which indicate the required feed for each segment for 1 instance of our repeatable model. So this is the feet that 1 module of Aurubis Richmond will require, which indicate clearly shows that the growth that we expect for the years to come holds plenty of potential for our instances and further instances in the U.S. market. The growth continues to be driven by strong growth drivers. On the one hand, we have the collection rates. Roland Harings mentioned a few regulatory changes both on the European as well as on the North American side. I think it's a very clear wider adoption of legislation that introduces recycling requirements and that try to avoid landfills going forward will drive collection rates of these relevant materials to us going forward. Taking one key statistic out as an example, we see that the e-waste and PCB collection rates right now in the U.S. are roughly at around 30%. When we contrast that to where we are already today in Europe at 40% to 45%, that by itself already shows the potential that lies in this driver for our markets. Declining exports. Also mentioned by Roland earlier. The steady decline in the offtake from China and Southeast Asia, the regionalization is driving availabilities of such materials in the markets of origin, in our case, in North America. This ties in very well with the increasing strong endeavors to be better able to process such end-of-life materials. In this regard, it's very clear, our solution is a very important puzzle piece to enable the circular economy that everyone is striving for. And ultimately, incremental growth. Industrial growth continues to drive the availabilities of the materials, either in the form of production scrap, so right at the beginning of the journey or with a certain delay in the availability of end-of-life materials, hence, the continuous growth of industrial activity and consumption of electronics lead to a solid growth base, which is here really -- and is really supporting the growth that we see. In brief, the market is attractive, it is large, and it will continue to grow. Consequently, we have ideal prerequisites for our growth ambitions on the American soil. So let's have a look at the progress made. The initial investment decision was taken in November 2021. And since then, we have come a long way. We already poured over 24,700 square meters of concrete, directed over 17,500 square meters of pre-engineered metal buildings. We contracted EUR 290 million and spent EUR 87 million in CapEx just for module 1 alone. For Module 2, we have signed contracts with the original equipment manufacturer and the crane manufacturer and intend to sign the construction and equipment installation contracts in due course very shortly. The construction started about 1 year ago with the groundbreaking, which took place in June 2022. And Aurubis used the opportunity to invite strong supporters of our project. So we had Governor, Brian Kemp, of the State of Georgia; the Georgia Commission of Economic Development, Pat Wilson; Congressman Rick Allen, Jasjit Singh from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Hardy Boeckle from the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Calgary, we just saw on the video from the Augusta Economic Development Authority to join our Executive Board and our project team on site to celebrate what was only the beginning of an exciting journey. Since then, the pulse of the construction site has been strong and steady. In fact, when you come to the site, and I've had the pleasure to do that since February, the change is actually visible day to day, which just shows this pulse. The status today and we have here also a visual impression of that has clearly shown the advancement of the project. The preprocessing and sampling preparation buildings, which are up here in the front are already fully clouded, the bunker and furnace pay, which are further towards the back, we can see the metal structure is taking shape nicely. All in all, the project as it stands is in according to time, and we have reached another very important milestone in May 2023 when we received the first equipment from our OEM on-site. Also, this shipment arrived fully according to schedule and well in time for the planned commissioning of that area, the preprocessing and sampling preparation area, which is scheduled for September 2023. Shifting the attention to the team, we have grown significantly over time. At this point in time, we have roughly 60 people on the ground running, including the senior management of the future operations, which is now fully staffed and quickly setting up the extended organization that we will ultimately need to run the operations successfully. Over the past couple of months, we have made significant progress in the details and the robustness of our planning. And as it stands today, we can confirm that the forecast of roughly EUR 390 million in CapEx and the project schedule have been substantiated and will hold. Furthermore, it's a clear priority and ongoing focus of us as the project team to proactively engage in value engineering and other means of risk mitigation and pursue cost savings opportunities to ensure project completion in time, scope and budget. Now join me for a short glimpse into the future. Aurubis Richmond is intended to be just the first step in what can become the extended North American success story. Our ambition is to become the largest fully integrated copper producer from recycling materials for the North American market. The current investment in Georgia enables us to grow beyond copper recycling. By adding an anode furnace, and a tank house in the U.S. processes just described by Inge, that we will be able to produce copper cathodes for the U.S. market. Thereby, we will be able to retain the recycled copper locally and make them available to the industry in the U.S., an important step again for the circular economy within the United States. A further downstream expansion into copper products would allow us to convert the copper cathodes into a product, wire rod. Wire rod is strongly demanded by many industries that are currently in the center of many major trends such as the electric mobility, renewable energies and electrification in general. Thereby, Aurubis would contribute to making the U.S. economy significantly less dependent on foreign copper supply, support the realization of these critical trends with local and low-carbon copper for a more sustainable future. All in all, we're clearly on track for profitable growth in North America. Our strategy, as conceived in 2021, the focus on growth in the North American recycling market as well as the underlying considerations. The reasons for our investment decisions are right and accurate. The U.S. market, which we're targeting is growing rapidly and attractively, launching the second module as we decided in December of last year was the right decision. It allows us to capture synergies in the construction process and target the additional growth that we see in the market. Aurubis Richmond is well on track. We have a strong team on the ground, dedicated to delivering the project in time, in scope and within budget. The facility will be state-of-the-art. It will be competitive, and this provides a strong foundation to build on. In fact, we want to convert Aurubis Richmond as just shown as the home base for further expansions along the copper value chain for the U.S. Aurubis Richmond is thus a strong foundation for a profitable future and sustainable growth in North America. With that, I would like to hand over to Dr. Jurgen Jestrabek for more details on the Complex Recycling Hamburg project. Thank you very much.

Thank you, David. I have the great pleasure and honor of being able to present the CRH project to you today. First, you see a recap slide from Inge with the Aurubis smelter network supplemented by the CRH project. The CRH project retains much more value creation in-house. We are supplementing or expanding our flow sheet with an additional furnace in the multi-metal area to drive our growth strategy. It also impressively highlights our research and development expertise. No other project is as closely integrated into our smelter network and optimizes so many value streams at the same time. With this unit, we will be able to separate copper-lead sulfur compounds in the future and recover the valuable materials contained in them such as copper, lead and precious metals. In addition, the lab refining capacity can be increased due to the additional intake of lead bearing material into the network. This slide shows the current metal flow sheet of the lower branch of the previous slide without CRH. About 135,000 tons per year of recycling material, containing intermediates from primary and secondary smelting are melted in the electric furnace treated metallurgically and separated into 3 metal phases during final casting. One of the 3 metal phases, lead bullion a kind of raw lead is refined into fine lead and rich bullion for precious metal recovery in the existing production in unit in Hamburg. 2 out of 3 valuable intermediates speiss and CuPb lead matte currently being leveraged in the existing smelter network. And this is exactly where the CRH project comes in. Here, in contrast is the metal flow sheet optimized with CRH as follows: with the new CRH converter, all internally produced CuPb lead matte can be further processed and well arised into salable products. The CuPb lead matte is processed into blister copper and sulfur dioxide captured during off-gas treatment, which is part of the project. The high precious metal bearing blister copper is then further processed in the existing production assets into copper cathodes at the primary side, while the sulfur dioxide is further processed into sulfuric acid in the existing sulfite acid plant. This technical concept sustainably implements and underlines our zero-waste approach. Clearly, underscoring our ambition to strengthen and maintain our position as the most sustainable smelter network worldwide. In addition, 25% more valuable intermediates can be processed. With CRH, our flow sheet can be optimized so that depending on metal content, the input material is either charged into the electric furnace as usual or directly into the CRH furnace. This saves processing steps and make the entire recycling process more efficient. The still unleveraged speiss metal phase is one of the potential follow-up projects. CRH leveraged our unique strengths. The separation of the 3 elements, copper, lead and sulfur is another prime example of metallurgical know-how of Aurubis and expertise. While the separation of 2 of the 3 elements is being done in the competitive landscape, the separation of complex copper, lead, sulfur component is unique in the market environment. Aurubis offers an efficient solution for recycling material from both our own primary and secondary copper smelters as well as from external lead smelters in Europe and globally, reducing global waste treatments, with global waste streams. While primary copper smelters are strong in copper and lead separation, and lead smelters in lead and sulfur, respectively, copper secondary smelters are strong in copper and lead separation. Aurubis has a [ metallurgical ] expertise to combine the combination and processing of copper, lead and sulfur and with CRH will offer the missing solution for all elements from a single source in the future. Third-party input materials. Let's dive into the availability of the relevant third-party input materials. The efficient CRH process opens significant market opportunities and provides a solution for different intermediate products arising from the zinc and lead industry as well as for internal intermediate products. Examples for 3 input materials for this project are shown here. Lead sulfate as an intermediate of the zinc industry, copper lead dross and copper lead matte as intermediates of the lead industry. The availability of materials from the market analysis shown here clearly indicates an abundant availability of materials for intake into the CRH production assets. The large gap between the anticipated CRH intake and the quantities available on the market illustrates the project conservative approach to input and hence, profitability. Summary with the most important KPIs. Along with the technical concept, the financial implication are most likely one of the key points of interest to you as the investor community. This slide is not new to you, but it summarizes and highlights the profitability of the CRH project again. The key profitability drivers of the CRH project come from the cheap treatment and refining start for input material. Additionally, we expect to generate additional metal yield, especially for precious metals with shorter processing times via CRH. As of March 31, so according to our half year figures, we have invested approximately EUR 5 million in the project, with an additional EUR 32 million already committed for additional equipment for the project. The project is moving forward well, and major construction steps are progressing as we speak. And last but not least, CRH creates a foundation for additional important strategic projects. I want to thank you for your attention. And with this, I'll hand over to Dr. Thomas Sturm who will explain the Tankhouse expansion in more detail.

Hello to everybody on screen and here in the audience. My name is Thomas. I'm responsible for corporate development. That includes an Aurubis strategy development, strategy deployment and also business development like entering into battery materials. So I'm sure you can all imagine how happy I am to be here today. So following up on what Inge has explained before, I would like to highlight some additional relevant facts. First of all, just came to my mind when watching the presentation. Up to now, I think you have seen that all of these boxes have been highlighted minimum once, which means that the excess of projects that we are presenting here are embedded in the full flow sheet, leveraging the strength of the individual sites, consistent and fitting very well together in the setup in flow, process and time. Very happy to see that. So the blue box highlighted here, capacity increase in Pirdop is a little bit in the middle of the flow sheet. And let me show you a little bit more what happens outside and inside of that blue box. So first of all, and obvious, it's expanding the capacity and the output of the Tankhouse in Pirdop. And that means that also in the following frames and maybe [indiscernible] you can go show from the capacity increase in Pirdop not only cathodes are coming out, but also anode slime from the additional refining capacity that goes down further into the precious metals refining in Hamburg and therefore, also increases the output and the profitability of our process step in Hamburg. You also see that we are better using our copper nickel capacity in Pirdop. That's the direct box next to it. And using the optimization potential that is opened up by that, we also have impact on the other flows. So first of all, it's contributing to a better flow of anodes within the group, speak about more of that in the next slide. And finally, it's opening up further opportunities at the other sites. So let me explain again quickly the rationale and the input and the impact. The rationale is very easy. We are not optimizing for the sake of optimization. We are, first and for all, fulfilling on our purpose on Roland and value chain and answering to market demand. And what we see in Europe, Roland has already touched upon it, is an increasing demand for high-quality refined copper and a widening supply gap. So one very easy conclusion is out of that, Europe needs more cathode, more refined copper. And who if not us, that this flow sheet capabilities should deliver it. So our capacity increase responds to a market demand. And I think it further shows the role that we play and want to play into securing critical raw material supply to the European industry, but there is more than the market logic to that project. I think the key financial numbers you can read here and also the key elements and impacts. So with this project, we are fully utilizing the anode capacity and we produce additional cathodes in Bulgaria on-site without additional transport, increasing also the local nickel throughput. We are fully leveraging the asset base. And it goes without saying that we are installing new equipment. So we are using the opportunity to install technical upgrades, for example, related to automation or robotics. Secondly, optimizing flows. We are eliminating structural transport of high volumes of anodes to, Olen and Lunen that have been or are currently transported from Pirdop on a regular basis in order to feed the tankhouses over there and also because we didn't have enough capacity. So that, in turn, allows us to make better use of the specific strength in Olen, Lunen and Beerse, taking in additional raw materials or intermediates there, where we can leverage the specific capabilities in terms of metal recovery of critical elements in the feed than before because Pirdop anodes are reasonably playing easy to treat, not fully needing or leveraging these capabilities. So in other words, we are producing additional cathodes for the market, leveraging the asset in Pirdop and strengthening our multimetal business in the other sites. So let me summarize in the next slide. In a nutshell, it's a highly attractive project. It's totally in line with market needs. It's further strengthening our core business in the best sense still having an impact of expansion and growth and also performance improvement of our powerhouse in Southeastern Europe and Pirdop. And it's effectively embedded in our smelter network opening up even more opportunities in the other sites, altogether, enabling us even better to drive sustainable growth. And with this, I would end here, and I'm happy to hand back to Angela for the next session.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Inge, David, Jurgen and Thomas. I think this was a technical part of the Capital Market Day. I think impressive projects where we hopefully convinced all of you that we are delivering on our strategy. And now I would like to ask David, Roland, Jurgen, Thomas on stage for first Q&A. Inge, yes, please. And I would again encourage all the virtual participants. Please use your tool to type your questions, we will take them in a minute. And I would love to ask first the audience here in London to raise your hands. Jason, please say your name, and where your coming from your company for the virtual participants as well. Thank you.

Thanks very much for those opening presentations. I like the flow sheets as well. The -- just in terms of the flow sheets, like is there anything proprietary there? Should we think about -- how should we think about intellectual property, something that uniquely belongs to Aurubis?

Inge, is that question for you?

We do have. We do have some, and we might have more. But I think even with whatever you could have as a propriety, it's really understanding how to work those assets through. Even though you have the best assets, which is the best, let's say, covered, it's really about understanding how we have the materials going through our assets and how to get the metal out. And that depends really on the type of materials we are getting from the market as well as what we have in our stocks and as well of what is available.

As I've add Jason to what Inge said, this is a very high-level view. So with this chart, we're not disclosing anything. If you would have seen the first version, which our people have prepared, we would have lost you immediately. So it's really -- it's a very complex flow of all kind of intermediates and products and different processes connected to each other. And that's really the proprietary technology that we have that we know exactly how to leverage and how to run this kind of, let's say, spaghetti bowl system of metallurgy in the most efficient way. And as I mentioned in my short introduction, extracting all the values, all the attractive ingredients metals out of this and the most efficient and cost-efficient way.

So just a follow-up, though. Is there any kind of an opportunity here for licensing. I know that's probably a little bit of a dirty work because we've seen people try to license technologies and never make any money. Or is it more about it's worth what it's worth because you have a new running it?

Now clearly, licensing is not on our agenda because it's so much proprietary also knowledge, something which is in various systems. So it would be very difficult to license because in the end, we would have to run really something. And we are there to grow. So we see growth potential in many areas, not excluding any region, just focusing on some region at this point in time. So we want to leverage our technology ourselves.

Questions, please.

Bastian Synagowitz, Deutsche Bank. So my question is just on your flow sheet. So clearly, you're basically filling a couple of gaps there. And how balanced will your flow should be once you have actually completed those projects, or will there be any further excess material somewhere in your system, I think you mentioned speiss, which is still selling somewhere outside your company. And maybe as an add-on to that, then what would be the next obvious steps once you've been completing those projects even those are quite many?

Yes. No, I think you've perfectly pointed to some gaps there. And I think we highlighted too, that we are working on this. And I mentioned that we have now 8 strategic projects in execution. You saw them here on the flow sheet. But there are others in the making, and they will be exactly addressing these kind of missing blocks where we see, again, based on steps that we have taken some additional opportunities to extract even more value in our flow sheet and de-bottleneck or kind of fill missing links in our flow sheet. So that's exactly what we're working on as we speak with these projects. Our ambition is clearly to, at the end, not every single product, but we go to the max, which makes economically sense and extract products that are sellable to the market. They don't need any other metallurgical processing thereafter, but we are dealing with another customer base, with another buyer base than selling it to our peers in the metal processing industry. That's our clear ambition to become independent from that.

And maybe just again as a follow-up. So what is the -- what are the actual access products, which we still have which are -- which we basically can process, which would both those be a distinguish?

I think Inge can.

I don't know if we have to go into each of them, but I think it's clearly there where the complexity starts. And I think Roland said it very clearly. It comes always up to the point where economically it makes sense and for some materials, you just need also a certain baseload of quantity in order to make it valuable. I think that would answer most to your question.

Yes. If I add there, there are some, it depends a bit on what is the process step thereafter. If something, for example, is in solution like a PGM, Platinum Group Solution, that's a good starter stock for others. So it wouldn't make sense really to step into what others have to do anyway. But if it's something like a solid metal combination of different metals, then it probably makes sense for us to go in the next level. That's what we're exactly addressing here like the one speiss example that is shown here. Here it makes a lot of sense to really go into a continuation of the process to some more, I would say, clear product or metal that we are going to sell to the market.

Okay. And last quick one, a quick one for me, please. So just on the utilization rate. So if you once you're basically loading the material from -- I guess, from the -- expanded tankhouse over to Lunen, Olen and Beerse.What is the capacity you'll be running at those subsides because obviously, those are still existing businesses, now you're loading on more capacity. So how far basically have you exhausting the capabilities there?

I don't think that is a question of exhausting the capabilities. We will fill those capacities with materials that bring us the most profitability. There is still a huge way to go in collection rates, as David mentioned, even in Europe in a lot of our collection rates and recycling rates, there is still more to come, and that is where we will be there to take the materials when they are into market.

So we -- perhaps also to add here to Inge. We are running our system always at capacity. We are de-bottlenecking. We are adding certain elements. What we are doing is changing the input mix, optimizing the input mix. So for example, we mentioned that we are going to at least that's 1 option that we take blister from the Richmond plant into Europe, this would replace third-party blister that we are buying today from the market. So there, we have always flexibility. But clearly, our ambition and looking at the market dynamics is clearly to grow our capacity and add more metal units from the input side, but also then specifically also to the output side going in volume.

I'm not sure whether the question was referring to the copper tankers project in Pirdop. We are not planning to have a full capacity utilization in Pirdop at the expense of utilization rate of the other units in Lunen and then Olen, but they will -- the target is to keep, of course, that utilization rate at the same level with an even more optimized.

Exactly.

If that's maybe the question.

So tankhouse, of course, if you take today, our cathode production capacity is 1.1 million tons. We will add 120,000 tons, and it's really additional so we will take other metal units, let's say, blister of Richmond is 1 hint that could be 1 of the element, adding copper units into our flow sheet, but our total output of copper cathodes will grow to 1.2 million, 2 million tons of cathodes with the ramp-up of the Pirdop expansion.

Thank you. Thank you very much, especially for your questions on the integrated smelter network. I think it is really important to understand what really, we are doing with our growth projects here. So thank you for that. Ioannis?

Ioannis Masvoulas from Morgan Stanley. A couple of questions from my side. Again, thinking about closing any gaps in the smelter network, is there any scope for further M&A? Because clearly, Metallo has been very successful for the company? Or is it more all organic from now on given the strategic projects and more to come in the following years.

If there would be 3 Metallo's, we will go for it. But this was a very unique and the perfect opportunity and the integration and everything also now what you see here in the flow sheet, I think, has even more improved in our segments when we announced the acquisition. We are working on some M&A deals, but they are relatively small. In a moment, let's say within our regions. I take China or Asia out for a second. In North America, in Europe, in South America, we don't see really with our growth direction in recycling, we don't see really large or significant targets. But we are also looking at things where we're adjacent in line with our filling the gaps in some of our flow sheets in some of our metal. Here, we are looking at some additional but smaller size equity, not of the size of Metallo. Unfortunately, we would like to do it, but there is really, therefore, the focus on organic growth. That's why we have built up this governance, this capability in Aurubis to execute this project, as I always say, this drumbeat, that we really continue to execute this project and also the rigger to add additional projects to our pipeline because in the end, it's about organic growth. The world needs more processing capabilities and capacities of Aurubis.

That's very clear. And one more question from me on the Europe versus U.S. Clearly, the growth now is coming via Richmond. Even on the EV battery recycling plant, you haven't made up your mind whether it's going to be in Germany elsewhere. So interested to know if you think that Germany could present opportunities for greenfield projects, either matte recycling or EV battery recycling or policy or energy costs are not where they need to be?

Yes. That's a tough question. Thanks for that, Ioannis. Germany in a moment is a difficult case, but you could even enlarge this into Europe. Germany is a very difficult case for energy-intensive industry, full stop. You have to come up with a very good solution long-term, where we get affordable, available and sustainable green energy from. In the moment, there is no real conviction that this has been set up. And on the other side, I'm convinced it will come because solution will be possible, but certain political steps still have to be taken. So therefore, if I pick specifically on the battery recycling, we are very openly looking into what's the best location. We have clearly defined, and Ken will talk about this later. We have clearly defined our catalog of criteria and they are very clear, very precise. And with this, we are going now in the first step in all European countries and look what's the best location, which is offering the best conditions for an investment. U.S. is something which we will do in the second step and look also if and when U.S. could be on the agenda. But we are now open from our initial to be very open here. Initially, we said for first plant battery recycling, Hamburg is the prime location. With today's political and energy situation, we have to make here a question mark. We will -- we are in discussion with politicians and clearly give them our requirements, what it takes to make such an investment, profitable and sustainable in Germany, and we are -- the positive thing is they're really listening to us. They are really listening to us. They want this technology to happen in Germany, but we are not there yet. Therefore, we are looking in various areas of alternatives.

Any further questions. Christian Obst?

Christian Obst, Baader Bank. First, why haven't you directly started with the planning over tankhouse and the wire rod plant in Richmond in the U.S., it makes perfectly sense. And we will make it now or in the future, why not planning it at the fully integrated plant?

Yes. Have we said we haven't started. No, but seriously, let's also be realistic. It's a big move for Aurubis to make this investment in U.S. in the Phase I and then to accelerate Phase II, as David also explained. But trust us, we are working intensively on the next phase here. But nothing is decided at this point in time, but it's obvious. We are building such a strong base. The Richmond site has such a potential, let's say, first location, there is more than enough space to build everything. We have perfect utilities also to Ioannis question, if you look for the perfect location for expanding energy-intensive industry, it's U.S., it's Georgia, perhaps even more Georgia than the total U.S. And logistically, it's perfect. We will have a rail head. So we have also railway connection there, so far also shipping goods to some other regions. So it's the perfect site and Christian, trust us. It's around the corner, we are working with it, but nothing is decided until it decided.

Next one is on, so you are expecting more metal and more precious metals going forward. So how are the discussions with your suppliers are going on because I think they will also share of that kind of profit. You are showing some interesting profit increase going forward, what you expect. So how will the other players' discussions are working?

I think that is obvious that whatever material entails that the value expected from it from the supplier will be the start of the discussions. And clearly, when precious metals are there, then they also want to participate in or want to have a share in that rewarding.

But if you have -- if you are the only one able to extract as you do. So yes, then you can say, okay, you cannot give it to any other kind of smelter network and therefore, I take 100%. Is it -- do you have this kind of situation currently in certain metals?

I'm not 100% sure whether I understood the question really well. I think there is a competitive market out there anyhow, whatever we do, wherever we are. And I think it will -- the fact that we can take those decisions to continue investing means that we are right in our setting of our -- of the way and how we set our -- or how we come across to our suppliers, but there will always be competition. And I think that's also fair to have that competition. It's good. It keeps us on our toes.

Of course. But then what is the main competitor -- what are the main competitors for your enlarged smelter network?

The main competitors for the size of the smelter network, as we have it, I don't really know any of that one. And I think the competition goes a lot of times. Certainly, when you look at recycled materials on different levels, you have hydrometallurgical processes. You have pyrometallurgical process as you have very small operations as well. Sometimes just someone around the corner can be a competitor for a certain type of material. But I think in the sense of coping with all the metals in there together, and also bringing all the metals back to the market in terms of a raw material. I think there lies a difference. There are so many intermediate steps that can be done and so many small processes. But in the end, there will always be also some intermediate products stand still that needs further treatment. But that often also come to us.

Maybe I can add, I think overall, in the smelter network and also with the project that we have been shown, we are increasing our internal efficiency or recovery rates and what we can further process into different projects. But it's not a structural change as materials traded and market with our suppliers are still the same, and there is competition out there. So we are not saying that nobody else can treat that up, but we are working on that. We can treat it in the best possible way. And that maybe is also again, if I recur to the flow sheet because you have been asking, why didn't you build the whole thing in Richmond in the first place. I think we have the opportunity with this smelter network in the backbone in Europe that we can build it step-by-step without having an isolated asset, it's part of the network, and it can be further developed. So that's why we are saying you can maybe replicate or duplicate individual assets, but to rebuild this flow sheet is...

If I can make some addition there. I think something that you don't see in the flow sheet that we have presented, but a skill that is also very much needed and all this is a good sampling of raw material. And as a recycled material is not a fixed product with a very clear set of ingredients, but with a very volatile ingredient composition, the -- let's see, I really call it an art. The art of sampling these kind of materials in understanding what is in there before you actually introduce them also into the process. It's, I think, a really key benefit of the knowledge of the network.

I have the last one. As you are the only one in the U.S. able to make what you are doing there, can you dictate in some kind of way the refining charges then because there is no other smelter there?

Every material always finds its markets and whether it is inside the country, inside the region or outside of that region, it will find its way.

For a different price, of course.

Whatever the supplier except at the right price, I would say.

Yes. But I think we wouldn't officially state something in this direction. Antitrust is always a critical one. But clearly, to your point, there is limited competition. There is very limited competition in the local market in U.S., and we are more than competing with players outside of the U.S. But one thing is also there is a strong industry not exactly set up like Aurubis in Japan and also in Korea. And we are pretty hungry for raw materials too. They are also importing all the raw materials. So there is this kind of, I would say, the correcting element is more coming from Asia than from within U.S.

I think we got another question here in the audience.

This is Sylvia from UBS. And for me, I have a few questions relating to CapEx. The first one is within the EUR 1.1 billion gross CapEx plan; I know there is EUR 325 million spend in Richmond. Can I have the breakdown for the others? Like, what's the situation for all the other projects? That's my first question.

I think we come to that point in the presentation in the next slot.

So the financial conversation is going to come here.

And for the next one is more general, will there be an increase in sustaining CapEx going forward?

I think also due to that.

Yes, we will be -- after the financial slide.

Yes, we'll have the financial and then Q&A. Okay. Then I got a virtual question here. I'm going to read it, and I think it is for Jurgen. Let's talk about the competitive landscape of CRH. Is there already a competitor operating a similar site to your CRH, who is the competitor? And what is your competitive advantage?

Yes. As far as we are aware, our unique smelter network is unique, and that is our competitive edge.

There's 1 specialist. I think one thing that needs to be that was explained that we are able with our integrated site in Hamburg that we are able to connect this CRH with the sulfuric acid plant, so that we can treat sulfuric acid containing materials with the synergies of already running and operating large sulfuric acid plant. So therefore, if somebody doesn't have this and you know there are very few, there is hardly any site in Europe, at least, who can handle these kind of materials. So there is one site, yes, I think Canada. There is hardly any site in Europe, at least, who can handle these kind of materials. So there is one site -- yes, I think Canada on smelter would be probably one location we are aware of that is taking some of the materials comparable to what we're going to take.

Okay. Thank you. Before we come to the last question of this Q&A, just one for David. Considering the upcoming changes in the U.S. regulation, the expected annual growth rate of only 5% in the U.S. market seems quite conservative. Shouldn't we expect double-digit growth at least until 2030?

So at the end of the day, if it's 5% or double-digit growth, we're going to be happy with the outcome. I think we're in a very good position. And I think our growth strategy is very clear and spot on. What would it change if it was 10%, 15%? I mean, this double-digit -- ultimately, what we're doing is we're implementing the first 2 instances, module 1 and 2 with our given time set. This is the first step to enter the North American market. At the same time, we told you today, we're working on extended plans for growth in North America, which means potential downstream expansion, but there are multiple vectors in which you can think this growth story. We will have a close look as -- at the developments Roland Harings presented the early warning radar, which is looking into market drivers and how they change since the point of strategy conception. Is it still the same view? And if we find that there are strong indications and we see changes, the inflation reduction act, et cetera, can potentially accelerate that growth. That's a very spot on comment, might be faster growing than we expect today. We are in a good position to make the required changes to address that growth. But -- as it stands today, we have our clear projects. We have our focus. We'll implement as planned. And if the future turns out slightly different from what we expect in a more positive way, we're very happy and we'll adjust accordingly.

Yes. And perhaps also to reiterate, when we announced the investment in Richmond, we said our first location is in the southeast of the states, as we detected this as a highly attractive area. Although logistically with the idea of also connecting the blister shipments with our European base. Thinking now in the next phase that we build up an integrated system in the U.S., this will be Richmond, but this will be then the new hub for the U.S. activities. And again, the idea of our modular recycling design is that we go them with our modules into the other regions in the U.S. And we have identified regions, which would be the second and the third region for us to go in with this scalable, repeatable model going forward. So that's clearly our ambition to not stop there, but really continue also with this growing market with additional investments and offering the capacity for recycling in the U.S.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your questions. Thank you all here on stage for your detailed answers. We will now have a break until 5 minutes past 4, U.K. time. So 15 minutes break, see you in 15 minutes. Thank you very much. [Break]

Hello again. The second part of our Capital Market Day is about Sustainability, Decarbonization projects and Battery Recycling. And last but not least, our financial strengths, 3 more important topics on our growth costs. Christian, what progress did we make to even improve our sustainability role? Here you go.

Thank you, Angela. Yes. And after this short break, also a warm welcome from my side. You have received today a full package of information. So I'm very happy to keep you now from waiting, and give you an overview of our sustainability initiatives and also our targets. So coming to the first slide. As a global leader in the multi-metal production industry, our commitment to efficiency and sustainability sets us apart. Our clear target is to minimize emissions and costs throughout our operation, placing sustainability at the forefront of our business strategy. We strive to maintain our position as a preferred choice for sustainable metal production through continuous improvement in our operations and processes. By integrating sustainability in our strategy, as we already heard today, we ensure a holistic approach that balance the 3 pillars of sustainability, economic growth, environmental stewardship and, for sure, social responsibility. We recognize the interconnectedness of these 3 pillars and work towards sustainable solutions that benefit to all stakeholders. Environmental stewardship is also a big driver for new business opportunities as it supports our circular economy and recycling business. A comprehensive framework of 9 environmental, social and governance action areas, targets and specific measures has been established to drive our sustainability efforts. You can see them all the action areas on the left side here on this slide. These actions ensure that we address the key sustainability challenges that make tangible progress towards our goals. I will show that later on by showing you our current status of the KPIs. Looking ahead, we have set ambitious targets for 2030, encompassing various sustainability targets. On this slide, you can see our main 6 KPIs dealing with sustainability. They demonstrate that we have progressed with our sustainability ambitions, and there is a clear momentum. The first of these KPIs are dealing with CO2 emissions. We have reduced our absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by almost 20% between our base year, 2018, and the year-end, 2022. And we are on a very good path towards our 2030 targets. Our Scope 3 emissions, so dealing with our CO2 emissions from our suppliers, show also a positive trend, decreasing to just under 6,200 kilotons in the year 2020 on our way to our target well below 5,000 kilotons of CO2. We've made a great progress in reducing also our air emissions, you can see that on the top on the right side, by making faster and more ambition progress that are generally expected. This is also due to our large investment in the air purification at the plant in Hamburg that we have set up in 2021, thereby already undercutting our 2030 target. Our goal is now to keep this very low level of emissions to further improve through technical measures. And in due course, we will review that target 2030. Our efforts to reduce metal emissions to water showing here on the bottom left side, are also showing very successful improvements coming from 0.87 in the year 2018, we are now at 0.76 in the year 2022. And we are looking ahead to further reduce that by 2030 to 0.65. Another important topic is our supply chain integrity. It is key, especially for our sector. We take this very seriously and have made significant progress over the past several years. However, we want to take our efforts even further. We now have a brand new and optimized business partner screening process and also due diligence tool, which we are currently systematically screening all our global business partners. As you can imagine, this process is very complex. So we are screening all business partners, commercial and also procurement alike. So this amounts to a few thousands of suppliers who have to undergo an exhaustive screening process. This takes time, for sure. But we are on a very good path. We fulfill all the legal requirements, especially coming from the German law, the so-called [indiscernible]. Currently, we can say that only a small percentage of our suppliers will be at a high risk. And our clear module is to stay and improve. That means for the ones we know are at high risk, especially in the raw material sector. We are in a very close contact with these suppliers and are defining together action plans for improvement. Now coming to the last but not least, KPI. We already talked today about our recycling investments. So our commitment to recycling is to demonstrate by the increasing recycling rate of copper cathodes, starting from 24% in the year 2018, we achieved already a cycling rate of 44% in the year 2022, and we are on a track to reach our target of 50% by 2030. How that will rework? So we already heard about, for example, for our project in Richmond, that will, for sure, hire up this percentage. So now coming to our carbon footprint. On the right side, you see that footprint dealing with our copper cathodes. In the area of sustainability, we have set the objective of achieving carbon neutral production well before 2050. Roland Harings will talk on that later on and showing you the main projects and ideas that are behind that. We are now well on track. In just 8 years, the carbon footprint of copper cathodes from Aurubis has decreased by more than 35%, while the industry average of the carbon footprint of copper cathodes has only been reduced by 5% from 2013 to 2019 based on global data. So how does it work? Aurubis evaluate the environmental profile of our core products, copper cathodes, by carrying out a life cycle assessment, which was just updated recently. The recent figures you can see here on this slide. Here, we are considering all activities involved in the production of the copper cathodes. From cradle to gate, meaning such as core extractions, smelting, refining, transportation, also energy consumption and auxiliary materials. In a worldwide comparison, the current footprint of our cathodes is a full 60% below the global average for all copper smelters and refiners. On the right side of this slide, you also see some carbon footprints for other metals. For example, in silver and gold. Our carbon footprints are substantially lower than the industry average. For instance, less than 1/4 of the average [ 14 ], you see at the bottom. Less than 1/2 of the average for silver in the middle, and less of 1/2 for the industry average for gold. Aurubis is thus making a real contribution to the global challenge of environmental and climate protection. And now I would like to highlight the Copper Mark initiatives. Most of you already know them. Since the launch in March 2022, the Copper Mark has become a significant endorsement for sustainable production processes for copper producers as it is based on the UN SDGs and specific risk readiness assessment. Our focus also on steady improvement, ensuring sustainability and responsible operations. As part of the Copper Mark certification process, [indiscernible] sustainability criteria are being reviewed. Our facilities in Bulgaria, Pirdop, Hamburg alone have already been certified, demonstrating their compliance with the standard. And I can give you some brand news. Last week, our [indiscernible] has already been successfully audited according to the standard. We are now expecting the formal confirmation of the Copper Mark in the next weeks. By actively promoting and driving the industry initiative Copper Mark, we are demonstrating our responsible and contributing to the growing momentum for a more sustainable copper value chain. We work, as you can imagine, with a number of global partners to achieve sustainability along the entire copper value chain. These 2 examples showing here on these slides. In November last year, Anglo American Aurubis announced closer cooperation on sustainability initiatives. Both companies show a very clear commitment in line with our, Aurubis, to our metals program and Anglo American with their sustainable mining plan. Anglo and Aurubis want to develop copper products that meet the increasing expectations for future enabling metals that are sustainably sourced and supplied. We have already established the first tangible results of this corporation. Anglo American has already committed to use the Copper Mark chain of custody standard. And in January this year, we signed an agreement to cooperate on more sustainable practices with Codelco. The MOU identified potential areas of cooperation with respect to smelter operations with the aim of reducing emissions, ensuring health and safety and strengthening decarbonization. At the same time, potential areas of cooperation regarding circular economy projects in Chile as well as training development initiatives will be evaluated. Our future cooperation with Codelco has the potential to make an immense contribution to advance the sustainability of the supply chain. Both agreements contain and accords that stipulates the concerted effort to promote the copper market, which we see as the gold standard for sustainability and supply chain integrity in the copper industry. So thanks a lot for your attention. And now I would like to hand over to Roland, who will provide you with details regarding our decarbonization projects.

Thank you, Christian. So perhaps one -- before we start with that one, one word regarding the MOU with Codelco and Anglo American, I think what's really changing in the copper industry is also very much initiated by Aurubis is thinking across the whole value chain from mining down to the final product going to the OEMs, to their customers. There is a high receptiveness and also requests from the final customer base to understand how raw materials are sourced, and what is the footprint they are coming with. And also in this context, very interesting to see that also the mining companies do care more and more about where their concentrate is going, who is dealing with their concentrate. So there was really something with these 2 large companies which Aurubis and Anglo and Codelco came together, and we are very successfully joining forces here to build this integrated sustainable and responsible supply chain for copper. In the same context, and Christian mentioned this, we have clearly stated -- repeatedly stated that our ambition is to be carbon neutral well before 2050. We are on the way. You saw the numbers that we have impressively reduced, Scope 1 and 2 in the -- compared to 2018. Again, significantly in percentage and also in absolute terms. And we are really on track to deliver this promise well before 2050. And if you look at our numbers, they were shown Scope 1 and 2 together, the majority of our emissions in Scope 1 and 2 comes from the electricity production. And here, we are putting huge efforts in. One, you have seen on the pictures before, also producing own renewable energy by investing into PV plants, Bulgaria is the perfect location to do so, but also other activities to decarbonize. One of them that's here, you see this nice container, we received last year in October. We have sourced and our intensive trials and discussion with Abu Dhabi with ADNOC to get -- receive blue ammonia. So ammonia, where we have CCS technology, the CO2 has been separated and has been used as pressure gas in the oil wells that they're having after a certain lifespan to put any way gas in and it's from a from a technical point of view, the CO2 has been carbonizing in these wells and is being captured forever. So I think it's a very robust and very needed technology to reduce our CO2 emission. What does it mean for us? We will expand renewable energies in Europe. That's for sure. This is set. But nevertheless, given the size of our economy, the size of our industry, we need molecules, we need energy to be imported into Europe. It's not foreseeable that we can generate all the energy demands ourselves given the, let's say, the land space, the resources that we have here. So therefore, we, as Aurubis, we are exploiting and developing and, let's say, ready try to get all the technologies ready. One of them is the use of blue ammonia. We are testing this hydrogen derivative today in our shaft furnace, so that's where we melt copper, copper cathodes and copper scrap to produce, in this case, wire rod. And we have successfully conducted these trials now, and we are working with ADNOC, but also ammonia is a worldwide commodity. There is also more blue ammonia to come, also important to have alternative sources and no dependencies. And we are now in discussion with other potential suppliers to see if we can build up this value chain, the supply chain into our plants in Europe. So here, we are doing some really good progress as we -- and I think we shared this already with you before, as we have also invested in industrial trials of using hydrogen in our anode furnaces. As a reduction agent -- oxygen reduction agent successfully. And also here, we will invest in our next standstill in Hamburg in replacing the existing anode furnace with 2 new anode furnaces which are, as we would call us today, H2-ready. So although here, we are preparing for the decarbonization going forward. So therefore, again, to what Christian said, we are very confident with our road map, which is very detailed that we will be well before 2050 on this target. There's one element, which is also new technology. So we're also open to something very different to our business. I don't know if anybody has heard about this technology of ultra-high temperature hydrolysis. It's a technology in which you can specifically from recycling materials, which come with organics where you can decarbonize in this process the material. So to a material, which is then more or less metal containing material and you produce synthetic gas and also carbon flakes, which can be stored. So you take the CO2, which you would otherwise have as an emission, you are taking this out in this pre-step here. We have built a pilot plant in Lünen. And with this technology, it's being commissioned as we speak. So it's a technology that we have developed jointly with a technology partner. We have secured the technology for our kind of processes with this partner. And we see if this could be one additional element to reduce CO2 footprint of PCBs or organic containing materials. So also here, we are doing more, and we will, with the first results are going to announce something to the market there. Something else, a very, very large project that we are executing since 2018 in Hamburg. It's district heating. And it's Interesting to see how beneficial it can be to be with a large production side, a large smelter close to a city because there is demand for heat. And interesting, not just heat in winter time, there is also demand for heat in summertime. And now with new air conditioning systems using absorption technology, you can also use the heat to cool in summer time. So there are some first buildings are being erected in Hamburg, which will provide them a demand for heat because our heat is available 365 days per year as our smelters are running. So also there will be an increasing demand for heat also during the summertime. The project, as stated, started in 2018, and we are heating now the HafenCity, which is -- those who have been to Hamburg, where the [ El Filemon ] is, so if you're sitting there, it's seated by Aurubis. Think about this when you listen to a concert there. This was the first phase, very successful. We have built the pipelines to the city, jointly with the city. And now we are adding a second phase, which is being installed next May. Preparation work is ongoing. Today, we're already saving 20,000 tonnes of CO2 on the Hamburg side because it's replacing fossil fuels for the heating purpose by sulfuric CO2-free produced heat from Aurubis. And in the second phase, we will add another 100,000 tonnes of reduction to this because we are more than doubling the capacity and we replace some coal-fired heat plants there. So a very, very interesting project, and it will represent another source of income for our plant in Hamburg. So beneficial -- we are doing good things, and we're also making some money with it, which always likes -- you see our CFO, is nodding, so he likes this, probably those. So we are doing these things and to put it in a perspective being so close with the city and doing this joint decarbonization projects, gives us also a very positive image and support from all stakeholders because it's really good, and it shows the importance and the benefits of having an industrial company like Aurubis close to the city. So 20,000 tonnes, I think I talked about this already. And here, referring to what Christian already showed, in 2018, we had 1,600 kilotons of CO2 emissions. And in '22, we reduced the Scope 2 emissions by new contracts, PPA contracts, especially in Belgium, where we embarked on a contract -- sorry, this is only starting this year, starting 1st of January. In '22, we had first contracts in Germany to replace fossil-based energy by water-based, so hydroelectric contracts. It's with the certificates of origin. But very clearly we find which plant is delivering to us the electricity with the clear CO2 footprint that we have. So also here, we are moving into PPAs and we have signed a contract last year. We also announced for the supply of electricity, our Belgium plant to own and this is based on a wind park, the Mermaid Wind Park in the North Sea, which will supply then 90% of the electricity demand of our Belgium plant, which has the second largest tank house in our company. So also here, we will have significant reduction again this year compared to the starting year of 2018. So that means we are on track. We are addressing Scope 1 with hydrogen, with ammonia, with reducing the CO2 emissions from the recycling process. And on Scope 2 by adding own PV and renewable energy to where it makes sense, where it's also economically reasonable to do so and by buying more and more green electricity from the grid going forward. So with this, again, we are on track to deliver our target of just 800 kilotons by 2030. And again, very confident that we will be carbon neutral well before 2015. And with this, I hand back to Angela.

Thank you very much, Christian and Roland. Next presentation is about battery recycling. Last time in December 2021, can explain what the market looks like and what we -- what kind of role we want to play. And now we moved significant steps forward. And as you hopefully today learned, we have a certain metallurgical expertise. And well, we can say who, if not us. But I think can we start first with a video, right? Okay. Thank you.

Well, thanks a lot, Angela. And first of all, good afternoon to everyone here in London, and good afternoon to everyone on the screens. I'm very excited to, again, have the opportunity to give you an update about lithium-ion battery recycling. And as Angela just said, before we dive into the presentation, let's watch a short video. [Presentation]

Thank you. So as already shown on various occasions before, lithium-ion batteries are very complex products that consists of a wide range of different elements. The outer layers are made of aluminum and as you all know, this is a very limited interest to us. But everything that's between the aluminum. That's really our core interest. You've got copper wires, you've got bus bars that we can recycle already today. If you look at the battery management system, basically an electronic component that controls the performance of the battery. There we have precious metals, thin and also copper, something of great interest in the future. And inside the battery cells, we find copper foils and the so-called battery metals. From crushing the battery metals, we get 2 complex raw material streams. One is mixed foil scrap, and this basically contains the copper from the foils, and the black mass. The black mass content of a battery varies because it depends on the kind of battery you're getting. But on average, we can expect to have something around 40% of black mass in a lithium-ion battery. And now if we look at the right-hand side of the chart in the middle, you will see that the value of black mass with $12,000 a tonne is very high. And looking at now the distribution of these valuable metals, it draws a very, very clear picture, meaning that nickel, cobalt and in particular, lithium account for almost the whole value in the black mass. Now what does that mean? Lithium is the major driver of the black mass. And in light of the complexity of these products, you've seen it, the different components, and the high value of the metals like lithium, nickel and cobalt. It required great metallurgical capabilities to recover all these metals, and this will be key to success. In late 2019, we began investigating the recycling of black mass. We based our research on samples of black mass that we actually purchased on the market. So we didn't start with geological resources. We started with recycling raw materials. And this allowed us to tailor a process to black mass. During this period, we poured all the metallurgical know-how from our different hydrometallurgical plants in operation into the process development. And the result of this intensive work is a patent pending process that has been designed exactly for this material and which accounts for one of the biggest challenges in black mass processing and that is the recovery of lithium. By utilizing ozone, we're able to extract the lithium in the first process step. And this has multiple benefits. First, the avoidance of lithium losses further down the line. Lithium is not dragged through an entire process chain before it can be recovered, which bottom line means higher metal recoveries. Second, for this process step, we don't need any specialty chemicals that we need to purchase on the market, but we can make this reagent on our own by ourselves. And this reduces our dependence on external suppliers and their respective supply chains. We've heard about supply chain disruptions earlier today. Third, the production of ozone basically only requires electrical power. And this means that this process can be quickly decarbonized by using green energy. Our lithium-first process provides us with the ability to also process other kinds of black mass. For instance, look at black mass from lithium-ion phosphate batteries. Because we get to the lithium first and don't have to work around other metals, like, for instance, iron, we're able to process this and extract the value. Other recyclers don't really take a particular interest in this material because of the absence of nickel and cobalt. Furthermore, and we've also heard about this today, we've developed this process with a mindset of a metal recycler. We understand that no material is identical to the next. It comes, as it comes in. And this is why we need to be able to adapt our processes to the incoming feed. And accordingly, we will be able to adapt our process to the raw material we will get. And finally, we heard about modularity today as well. This process is set up in a modular fashion. After recovering lithium, we can embark on different product routes, and we can add further refining steps when we need to see the right framework conditions and the necessity to do so. So with the hydrometallurgical process, which we have developed, we continue to apply our recycling mindset as well as the modularity principle in order to integrate it well into our smelter network. The Aurubis smelter network, and you heard about it, I think, quite some time today already is the foundation of our battery recycling activities. In the previous presentations, which my colleagues have given you a glimpse into the additions, as one can see, we are optimizing the flows and thereby capturing additional value. And this is exactly the reason why the metallurgical extraction and recovery of metals also marks our sweet spot in the battery value chain. In this particular part of the value chain, we benefit not only from the vast know-how of a multitude of metallurgical concepts, which we employ in our group. We also draw from the expertise and the experience in starting up and operating these metallurgical facilities. These strengths will support us, in particular, in the process of achieving higher operational efficiencies as well as in further optimizing metallurgical processes. We understand well, where in this value chain we're able to add business -- sorry, add value in this business. However, we are also mindful that we need to integrate into this battery loop and have, therefore, acquired the stake of Librec, a Swiss battery pretreatment specialist with the aim to gain a deep understanding in the black mass production and the qualities of black mass to which we will then want to optimize our hydrometallurgical process because these processes need to be adapted to one another. In the long term and medium term, we do expect to get supply from Librec as well. However, in the near term, the focus lies on understanding and optimizing processes. And besides our own capabilities and our investment in the pretreatment, we also see partners in our environment who have great potential to add value in the adjacent upstream as well as downstream steps of this value chain. And we are convinced that it is important to bring all these capabilities together in order to efficiently close the loop in this business and to give you a very practical example. The business model and the set of capabilities of a collection and pretreatment company is completely different from the -- for instance, the capabilities, the metallurgical recycling needs. We, as metallurgical experts, we built facilities in a few spots, scale them up and create synergies by utilizing the infrastructure. At the same time, if you look at a pretreatment company, they need to build a network of facilities in order to optimize logistic costs because they can transport batteries over the whole continent. And similarly, this also is true for the production of specialty chemicals because there, you need another set of distinct capabilities. And this is exactly also the reason why we're in incentive discussions with potential partners, upstream as well as downstream to build an ecosystem that we'll be able to effectively close the loop in this fast-growing market. As discussed earlier, we started developing the process on black mass, meaning the actual raw material. However, that doesn't mean that we started at zero. As depicted in the chart, we based the process on our existing expertise and we were therefore able to design a solution for black mass within a rather short period of time. And to substantiate this process, we moved into a piloting phase, where in 2022, the chemistry of a process was confirmed with technical scale equipment, so meaning not any more lab-scale equipment, but equipment that is connected and with sensors, et cetera, et cetera. We will still operate this pilot plant this year, may need to do further test work to test other raw materials and to produce product samples, but the process was confirmed already last year. Now looking ahead, we are working on the engineering of the first commercial facility and are keeping an eye out for the technological risks that are associated with scaling of production processes. In order to address and counter these risks, we are currently designing a demo plant, as mentioned in the video before, which we plan to commission in Q1 of the next calendar year. And although the process and the chemistry has been confirmed, we are very mindful that this technology has only been built once before, and that is our pilot plant in Hamburg. So with the pilot plant, we're scaling up one more time before we build a commercial scale facility. But this demo plant will also mark our first commercial activities in the area of black mass recycling. Because with the demo plant, we will be able to process tonnages, not any more kilos, and we will, at the same time, generate operating data that will be helpful when we start commissioning a commercial scale plant in the second half of this decade. As illustrated in the chart, in every stage of the technology development, we draw on our expertise from our existing operations. And at the same time, we have also taken a very agile technology development approach. And this is reflected in the rather short period of time between the certain -- the different development steps. So -- and by combining this very rigorous technology development approach that we won't take any risks in terms of the technology and how it needs to operate and combining this with the agility we safeguard that what we built is also going to work when the time is there, when the market will need it. Now looking into the future, what are our next steps? What are the expectations? What is the outlook? Generally speaking, it is expected that the scrap quantities will increase in the second half of this decade, and this is mainly for 2 reasons. Number one, the SOP of more Gigafactories. Number two, because more end-of-life vehicles or end-of-life electric vehicles will come back to the market. Now we can certainly argue about the figures on the chart, and they will certainly change over the next months and years and so on and so forth. But the general picture remains the same, and we're convinced of that, that electric mobility will come and that in the second half of this decade, there will be a substantial demand for the recycling of lithium-ion batteries. And in line with these market expectations, we are also working towards implementing the first commercial recycling plant in the second half of this decade. This means also that we will be maturing such a project through our different stage gates, as Roland has said this morning, we're moving it through this governance system to ensure that the quality and the robustness of such an investment will be there when we take the decision. So as we speak, our team is working on the feasibility engineering of the first commercial plant, and this engineering is supposed to deliver more accurate cost estimates and layouts of such a plant. And in parallel, we're also running a site selection process, which takes into consideration different internal options, but is also open for the possibility of external brownfield and greenfield sites. We talked about it in the Q&A earlier. And to give you some idea of the relevant criteria which we apply in this process. First, we need secured availability of sustainable and affordable energy. In addition to this factor, we're also looking for favorable permitting environment and the regulatory framework conditions that allow us to operate a metallurgical facility that processes hazardous waste. And finally, we also require good infrastructure connectivity to move raw material in and products out. With this, we expect that by the end of the year, we have -- we will have a clear picture of a feasible site options and the path forward, so we can step into the market in 2026, 2027. So now at this point, I would like to wrap up and summarize the key takeaways. First, we expect that the need to secure battery metals and to sustainably close these loops will create a growing demand for efficient lithium-ion battery recycling in the second half of this decade. And this is -- this presents another relevant growth opportunity for Aurubis. Second, our metallurgical expertise in connection with the capabilities and capacities of our smelter network which we continue to expand and our understanding of multimetal recycling also the understanding of the raw materials we get in, the sampling mentioned earlier today. All this gives us a competitive edge and the right to play in this market. Battery recycling is not an isolated business, and it's strongly linked to other valuable raw material streams that emerge from battery scrap. And as mentioned before, cables, connectors, printed circuit boards from battery management systems, copper foils in the battery cells, they all need resource-efficient recycling solutions as well, just as much as the black mass does. And thereby, you see that our core business and the new business, they both amplify each other. And while we acknowledge that battery recycling is a really, really hot topic right now in the market, we are also maintaining our discipline when it comes to ensuring that technology is robust and the quality of the investment is actually going to be there. So in all cases, our decisions will at all times be based on the profitability of such a new business field. And with this, we're gearing ourselves up to make a valuable contribution in this emerging value chain and to capture the growth potential of this market. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you once again about this very exciting project and market. And with this, I would like to hand back over to Angela.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Ken. And I hope that we're all convinced you now that in battery recycling who, if not us. Ladies and gentlemen, Aurubis is financially strong. We have a very strong balance sheet. We have strong cash flows. I think you are all familiar with the fluctuation in cash flows we can see it, but at the end, we are very cash flow strong. We are financing our projects and the main projects we've presented here, our first 8, which are part of our strategic path. [indiscernible] stands for do it in a stakeholder-friendly way, paying dividends besides the fact that we are on a strong growth path here. But as we said, we earn money, so we are going to pay dividends as well. [indiscernible], the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Angela. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, also from my side. So yes, lots of technical details today, which I think that's what the capital market is for. But still, you probably want to know -- so what's in for us, what's in for the investors for the shareholders of the company. And I have brought with me, let's say, 4, 5 topics here that will, let's say, show the implications of what you've seen today. And give you a bit of an outline on where we stand and where we want to go. If we start on the first point here, due to our business model and let's say, you have heard about the governance, the prudent investment decisions that we have been taking in the past, Aurubis has been able to weather the crisis that we have seen quite well and shows a track record of converting our operating EBT also into cash flows. We'll see that in one side. Second, as a consequence, Aurubis has created quite a solid balance sheet, free of net financial debt still today and stable equity ratio which hovers around the 50%. This is a very strong starting point to embark on our strategic journey and a solid balance sheet gives the continuation of our profitability, the necessary, let's say, starting point and allows for the implementation of our strategy. We will be able to finance pretty much all of the projects that you've seen here, all of our own cash flows, all from our operating cash flows with of course, some dips here and there in financing the one or the other CapEx needs. Our framework of continuing to have an equity ratio of at least 40% and the maximum indebtedness of 3x EBITDA delivers the necessary freedom to finance this growth ambitions. The projects which are currently already in implementation will create EBITDA contributions over the coming years, which makes them pay back the initial invests by 2030. So we're talking the 8 investment projects will pay back the investments by 2030 at the latest. In addition, a significantly higher gross margin and the diversification into different regions, different products, as we have heard today, will make us more resilient to potential future crisis or negative external market factors. As a result, our shareholders will benefit from our strategic investments in profitable growth within ROCE of higher than 15%. That is clearly above our weighted average cost of capital and a balanced capital allocation. With our strategy, we create value for our shareholders. So let's have a closer look at some more details, starting with our ability to generate or to translate the operating EBT really into net cash flow. Since '17, '18, our operating EBT has grown with a growth rate of 13%. At last year's extraordinary results, we expect -- or after last year's extraordinary results, we expect the current financial year to achieve an operating EBT also in that range of EUR 450 million to EUR 550 million. The result of the first 6 months, which you can see on this slide here gives us quite some confidence in getting there. The net cash flow has continuously grown over the past years. We managed to repay the Metallo acquisition pretty much within less than 2 years. So the cash flows of 2021 and '21, '22 need to be viewed in conjunction. We discussed it already, Jason, outside while we had an extraordinary low inventory level in September '21 due to operational outages. We have rebuilt part of that net working capital now in September '22, which leads to an average net cash flow of EUR 550 million for those 2 years together. As discussed in several analyst calls and conferences, our 6 months net cash flow this year is still burdened by the temporary increase in our net working capital due to the standstill in Pirdop that we are currently undergoing. That schedule stands still. At the same time, we have built up quite some finished goods also to deliver the strong market demand that we see, especially in the rock business today. So over the summer months, this net working capital we will use, and we will be back at something like EUR 450 million to EUR 550 million net cash flow at the end of the current fiscal year. Going to the next slide, let's have a look at our main KPIs, the equity ratio and the debt coverage. On the back of our strong financials, we have been able to grow our equity by more than 40% over the last just 4 years. The equity ratio has been hovering around the 50% level and remains a solid foundation to finance our strategic growth path. Even the Metallo acquisition, as already mentioned, only led to a short dip in the equity ratio below the 50s, but was still well above the self-set target of 40%. Based on the current midterm plan, the debt -- so current midterm plan, the 8 projects included and the base CapEx that you will see in a moment, we will stay with a debt coverage ratio for sure, not at that level, but we will go something around 1 because currently, we are still negative, which means we are -- net having financial investment as banks. So we will go into debt logically. But we will hover around 1 and not go further up. At the same time, we expect our equity ratio to stay in the range of 45%. At the end of March '23, we were still holding an investment position. I already mentioned that earlier. So we are still -- despite -- I mean we have been investing already quite something enrichment for instance, in the project. We are still debt free. So now we have a specific look at these 8 projects that we have been talking about , the CapEx disbursements, probably that answers a bit of your question from earlier today. And what do we expect? So we embarked on our growth path last year with the projects BOB, ASPA. And we expect to pick our investments from those 8 projects next year and the year thereafter with about EUR 350 million for this strategic projects. Please, again, bear in mind, I'm just talking those 8 projects here on that slide. In total, we'll be investing something like EUR 1.1 billion and we will get back, as I said, by 2030, something around that, EUR 1.3 billion. In other words, we assume that our current strategy will pay off already in the fifth financial year after ramp-up. The good additional side note here and also for, let's say, introducing what Roland will tell you, contrary to the usual time lag that you would see between the investment and the expected returns, we'll be able to fund some of the projects with the returns of the other new strategic products, which we are -- which are already starting and creating funds. According to our current planning, we expect to continue with an operating ROCE on group level above our WACC, that's for sure. And after the implementation phase of those projects, we will be coming for sure, back to the 15%, but I'll come to that in a moment. So now to the strategic projects we have just mentioned, we add the baseline CapEx, and that's what you see here in dark blue, we have the baseline CapEx; in light blue on top, you have the strategic projects and the gray lines below is the depreciation. The chart provides a more detailed view on our expected investments in the baseline and the strategic projects, as already mentioned. Total CapEx, thus baseline and the strategic CapEx will peak in '23, '24. As a result, the free cash flow will, for sure, in this year be negative. Strategic CapEx only includes -- I cannot, let's say, repeat it often enough, only those 8 projects will continue on our strategic growth plan. And we will have more -- many more projects probably to come in the pipeline. So I have to say you need to take that with a bit care. We did not consider yet, for instance, the growth CapEx in the midterm of EUR 280 million that is not included here, which has been shown by Roland earlier today. Baseline CapEx is the running CapEx for our existing assets. And this is expected to come down after '25, '26, and that is, I would say, quite special thing that I would like to highlight a bit here because from then on, we will be able to extend the maintenance cycles in our primary smelters from every 2 years to every 3 years. So today and over the last -- over the past years, the smelters in Hamburg and smelters in Pirdop has always taken turns in shutdowns. So we had every year one primary smelter in shutdown. From '25, '26 onwards, we will always have years in between, whether it's neither Hamburg nor Pirdop in shutdown. Another, I would say, quite impressive number, by the end of '25, '26, we expect to have the total fixed assets to stand at around EUR 3.5 billion, up from around EUR 2 billion at the end of last fiscal year. We are increasing our asset base in that just 4 years by 75%. Let's come back to the equity ratio and the debt coverage. As mentioned earlier, we will finance the strategic growth from our own resources, mostly from operating cash flows, but for sure, with using existing credit facilities and financing options, being net-debt free, having an equity ratio of currently 54% and that's forming the basis for it. Even in an increasing interest environment, we have attractive financing opportunities. We have been talking also about the promissory notes, the so-called [ Schuldschein loan ] that are carrying interest rates of 1.3%, up to 2% currently. Possible net debt coverage by 3x the EBITDA creates the opportunity and the chance to go up to EUR 1.8 billion into [indiscernible]. We are not planning to do that, but there is plenty of headroom to finance our strategic growth. So whenever we talk about growth, we talk about profitable growth, of course, for Aurubis and for our shareholders. One of the KPIs is the operating ROCE where we clearly have the target to stay above 15% on the return of capital employed. It goes without saying that we select our strategic projects exactly on that basis. So you can be sure that each of that project that we have shown and that we are implementing now will create an ROCE, which is for sure higher than the 15% that I've been talking about. According to our current planning, we even expect the ROCE on the group level at least to stay above the target rate over the coming years, so over the implementation of the projects, we expect on a group level to stay above the 15%. You have seen that slide earlier, just going, let's say, to the actuals, but extend it a bit. I think it provides 2 key messages here. First of all, we have been able to increase our gross margin quite significantly over the past years. And our strategic projects will, for sure, make further significant contributions to increase this gross margin, mainly driven, of course, by, and you see that here on the further outside on the metal results or the metal gains, how we call it. Secondly, our business portfolio remains well balanced. So it's not only the metal gains. It's not one earnings component. It's a mixture of these components, which makes the Aurubis business model quite resilient towards any external effects, determine external effects that we could see in the market. So you could say our business model is quite waterproof and weatherproof to negative effects. Last not least, looking to the capital allocation over the past, but also going forward, on the left-hand side here, you see the buildup and the cash flow generation over the past 4 years since '18, '19 we were able to generate some EUR 1.8 billion in total of net cash flow over that period. About 55% -- over there on the right-hand side, 55% was reinvested into our existing businesses as baseline Invest, 15% was used to strengthen our balance sheet. So we reduced our financing and 17% was paid out to the shareholders of the company, while only a meager 3% was used for strategic growth. Well, it took some time to implement and to really prepare and implement the strategy. Going forward, that picture will look completely different. You see that the investment in strategic growth will increase until '25, '26. And our baseline investments will decline, especially by the effect that I have mentioned on the primary smelter side, we are pretty much through with the needed investments, I would say, for quite some years, so we can extend the maintenance or the standstill cycles in the primary smelters. We have informed you about the adjustment of our dividend policy in view of our strategic growth part. However, we'll continue to have our shareholders, of course, participating in the profitable growth of our company. And we will, as Angela said, already, we will for sure continue paying out dividends to our shareholders. Bottom line, we expect our strategic projects to make a significant contribution to our future profitability once the investment phase is completed. But even in the meantime, we will expect and we can expect to cover the cost of capital for the group. Just reiterating, this slide is known to pretty much all of you. So we continue to stay with our guidance for this fiscal year between the EUR 450 million and EUR 550 million. And last not least, a summary, we continue to be well positioned with our business model in this market and bank on a rock solid balance sheet. We'll use these benefits to sustainably grow the company into a considerable bigger company in the future, in the coming years. We are well on track with our strategic projects. I hope that this message could be conveyed and that was received positively today. We expect to amortize those strategic projects within just 5 years. We confirm for sure, our ROCE target to stay at 15% or be above, and we will continue to earn a premium on our weighted average cost of capital throughout the investment phase of the projects. Our earnings power measured by the gross margin, but also by our operating EBT will continue to increase as the projects come online. And it will make our company more robust and resilient going forward. So Roland will talk later on about let's say, the future further ideas. Thanks for your attention for the moment, and I'll hand back to Angela for the Q&A.

Exactly. Thank you very much, Rainer the very detailed explanations. And for the next Q&A session, I want to have Roland, Ken and Christian on stage. So Jason, you were first.

Jason Fairclough from Bank of America. I've got a question for Ken, and then I've got a question for Rainer. So Ken, just in terms of the competitive environment for battery recycling, lots of people seem to be getting into this, right? I said Umicore is getting into it. Norsk Hydro is getting into it. Glencore is getting into it. There's some company in Morocco that's getting into it. So if not you, then who I get it, but everybody is getting into it. So I'm interested in your thoughts on that. Rainer, my question for you is you've got a very neat chart and it's very sort of symmetric where the CapEx goes out and then you've got this perfectly steady stream of future EBITDA from those investments. How do you assess how the volatility of the earnings of Aurubis changes as a result of those investments?

So we start with Ken.

All right. Good point. Maybe to start with the investment in Morocco. We do see that there are fair number of agent companies looking at the European market. When it comes to competition from there, we also see that there is a great deal of respect for European Environmental Legislation, which is a lot tougher than what they encounter in their home countries. So this actually leads to several conversations we're having with some market players on isn't there a potential to collaborate with each other because they just can't handle the environmental legislations in Europe. If you look at Umicore and Norsk Hydro, et cetera, et cetera, these companies, there are different technologies being employed and you have to look at the overall picture also in the context of the EU battery directive because this directive stipulates what needs to be achieved at a certain point of time. And if you look at the overall recycling efficiency, for example, of a lithium-ion battery, meaning 70% by 2030, you got to recover almost everything because parts of it is already difficult. If you look at plastics, et cetera, there is no way to recycle that. So you need to have robust technologies on that, and we think we're a very, very, very good way here to get also these recycling efficiencies in addition to the recoveries. If you look at our lithium first process, in the lab and pilot plant, we've demonstrated that we can recover 95% of a lithium. Currently, the battery directive only wanted to get 50% in the first step and 80% in the second step. So I think there is still some room to go beyond that. And these are the thoughts on competitors' technologies. And I wouldn't be surprised that the strategic positioning of even the majors in this market may shift over the next couple of years that there will be focus areas along this value chain where certain companies actually excel and where they put their focus on like, for example, the production of cathode active materials because if you look at the morphology of crystals, et cetera, et cetera, these are super complicated, you need to be very good in that. But at the same time, I do believe that some companies will also acknowledge that they may not want to try to solve the metallurgical conundrum just as much as the chemical production.

If I just add one, what's always interesting to get also the feedback from some of the companies you have mentioned, we have been not very outspoken about our technology in the media in public, but we have very intensive dialogue and exchange with many key players in the industry. And I think what we learned from all of them is a really appreciation and a kind of an eye opener about the technology and the key elements of the technology that we've developed. So we believe from today's view that we have really something need there, something which will deliver really sustainable competitive advantage going forward. And this market will be a competitive market because there are players entering, there is automotive behind and in the automotive industry, they don't take business. So if you have a better technology, if you have a better OpEx position, you probably will be aware. So therefore, we are really based on the technology. We are quite confident we have something. We have something to leverage.

Coming back on the second question, which was about the earnings volatility going forward with implementing those 8 projects that we are currently talking about. I would say we would even further flatten out the volatility. Why? Currently, and I hope that I could convince that message over the past years Aurubis has been moving like a train on rails. Going forward, these projects enable to benefit from intermediaries from complex materials. What creates volatility and what creates stability in our business model. The product side, wire rod, shapes a bit more, but wire rod is quite stable business at this point in time. So we are pretty fine there. Also on other products, they don't move too much the needle. On the input side, the concentrates are going towards in favor of Aurubis. On the complex recycling side, we have longer-term contracts, thus more stability also in the terms and conditions that we can achieve with our business partners. What creates volatility is scrap #2. So the clean scrap that we need for cooling, for instance, but also in the Olen plant, that creates quite some volatility. With the projects that we are just showing, we reduced that a bit. Well, we need some cooling scrap here and there. But in principle, the dependency on that is reduced, and sulfuric acid creates volatility as well. We can't take that off because with the primary smelters comes the sulfur and comes the volatility to sulfuric acid world mark prices. Nonetheless, all the projects that you have just seen are going into the direction more complex, more complex recycling, which should and will stabilize the profitability of Aurubis going forward.

Yes. Bastian, you first.

A few questions from me. The first one on the energy transition strategy around Scope 2. I think in the past and the last thing we talked about the Vattenfall contract and the prospect of you somehow over time exiting. I guess now with coal prices where they are, maybe it's a bit easier. So interested to hear your thoughts and also around captive renewable investments like the one you've done in Bulgaria. Is the Scope for more? Or are you going to lean more on PPAs, which are more capital efficient?

Yes. So first on the Vattenfall contract. So we have an electricity supply contract. So it is not -- it was -- the starting point was the investment of a coal-fired power plant in Hamburg. That's where it all started, but the contract itself is an energy supply contract. Nothing to do with the power plant, not connected to any kind of electricity production. The contract has pricing formulas, with 2 main components. One is the coal price. The second is CO2 price. Today, with coal prices and also the possibility to secure hedge by derivatives for coal, we are able to manage here a very, I would say, competitive -- very competitive electricity price for Germany because all the supply -- or let's say, the full supply of electricity in Germany is covered by the contract. Therefore, we have, in the moment, we have no pain, no kind of urgency to change this contract because as it's just a supply contract from the grid, we can mirror this with certificates of origin. So it's just a pricing formula. So we are buying now electricity from green renewable sources, like hydro. I mentioned this in my short speech, like hydro electric supply, and we will continue to look after attractive other, let's say, sources of electricity. But we are not going to do just by some, I would say, some disconnected certificates of origin which you can find the market. We want really to know and to be sure that electricity is produced and it's been made available for our plants, so that we are not being subject to any kind of green washing criticism there. But electricity needs to produce and Vattenfall is just a trader here. They are not producing the electricity that we consume. So that's the first point. So we are fine with the contract so far. If there is some willingness on the Vattenfall to move this to a different type of contract to a PPA based on renewables we are fine, too, but we are happy with what we have today. Your second question regarding PV. We have built the first PV plant in Bulgaria, and we are very positive about the results that we have seen. The output -- the electricity output is higher, 15% higher than we originally planned. So from a cost point of view, from a return point of view, it's a attractive investment, which triggered the next 2 investments. So we are adding to this 10-megawatt peak now 17-megawatt peak. So we are adding additional capacity and we are looking even in a further expansion, given the plot of land, the large plot of land and what we have there. That's one pillar. But given the size of our, I'd say, the amount of electricity that we need, we can -- and that's our plan in Bulgaria, we envisage to produce 20% by 2030 of our electricity by own resources, but it means we have 80% to purchase. And in other sites, we have some opportunities in Olen where we have some wind mills, but the majority of our electricity needs to be procured from the grid via PPAs or via this kind of supply contracts.

Great. And second question around, I guess, for Rainer, going back to this indeed a nice EBITDA chart. And what I'm trying to figure out -- you are always talking about individual EBITDA contribution by project. And today, you showed EUR 260 million. In the past, you talked about the normalized profitability of the existing footprint? Is there a case to be made that you can combine the 2 existing footprint and new projects to come up with overall EBITDA target by, I guess, 2025, 2026. I would guess the number would be somewhere in the order of EUR 800 million to EUR 900 million. But interested to hear your views on that.

I'm also interested to hear his views.

I'm actually also interested to know exactly where we would be going there. I mean we are embarking and initiating this strategic path, not because just we want to be a better citizen of the world, right? We want to earn money. And we have been several times talking about can we double? Can we double the profitability of the company? I mean, you have seen how -- in hopefully, only 4 years, we will grow our asset base. We will, let's say, we have grown our balance sheet quite substantially. And with that, still kept the 50% equity ratio. So -- and we also know that this comes from the profitability that this company has generated over the past. So if you ask me, where do you want to be in a couple of years from now? If you listen to what Roland will be talking about later, it is an equation with some unknown -- it's an equation with some unknowns. But for sure, we will considerably grow this company going forward.

Growth means also earnings growth.

Clearly.

Good. Bastian.

First question maybe also for Rainer actually, on one of the charts, I think it was Chart 72, which you've been showing as it's in the future CapEx profile, and I guess how you aim to amortize it. And one thing I think you said was that you're basically able to expand the -- so what's really allowing you to do so? And then generally, I mean, you're spending EUR 1.1 billion in CapEx, it's big number, I would maybe 20, 25 years on plant life time. So I would have put probably another EUR 50 million for maintenance, but it doesn't seem that you're basically reflecting that and maybe you don't need it, but that's my question.

Well, we have been putting quite some maintenance CapEx, let's call it this way, especially for the primary smelters, which is the big chunk of the CapEx of the baseline CapEx here every year over the past, I would say, several years. Why is that so? Because there -- we did undergo an intensive asset life cycle management to see what is the lifetime of the specific assets in that very primary smelter in that plant. There is cranes. There is -- I mean, the refractory things that are easy stuff. And from the sheer refractory position, we would be able to also extend maintenances. Also today or maybe also in the past. But there is certain things in the assets, in the primary smelters that had to be renewed because they were at the end of the lifetime or even exceeding the lifetime. So -- and we -- I would say we have catched up there quite good. And we have now with the asset life cycle management in place, a clear view on what do we need to do in order to really have those gaps in between where we don't have a standstill because that is a I would say, heavy burden on the profitability on the one side because if the smelter is not operating, it will not generate profitability. And on the other side, there is high CapEx involved, high investment involved. So it hurts 2 times, if you want to say so, if we have to stand, which is also normal for -- in the copper industry, you will see that in the competition also. So therefore, with the asset management -- asset life cycle management, we have been able to, I would say, really get a feeling on what do we need to do in order to extend that and to generate profitability, which then allows us also to invest into the strategic growth CapEx.

Thank you. thank you, Rainer.

So then to be very clear, there's no additional CapEx or maintenance CapEx which many comes on top. Then also, as you say, like these nice charts which Angela and the team always providing with the -- I guess, with the maintenance cost in your P&L, there's also going to be a saving on that? And then is this component included in EUR 260 million number.

Well -- is -- well, there is no additional CapEx going forward other than what we have been showing here that in '25, '26, the numbers will go down. The maintenance CapEx, for sure, will go up or not the maintenance CapEx. The maintenance costs will go up because the asset base is enlarged. So going forward, for sure, we will have more maintenance which are, of course, the costs included in the profitability analysis for the specific projects that we will be implementing.

And one more question actually on the CO2 side actually where you obviously have very clear targets out there. I've got to say, for your business model given the complexity, it's always very difficult to really work out what are the incremental costs for you to take out 1 ton of CO2. So I was wondering, can you give us maybe a number here? What does it take you? How much does it cost you to take out 1 ton of CO2, the last March [indiscernible], I would have thought you probably have looked at that. You see an important number. And then also, I was wondering is there any impact for you from the German concept of implementing carbon contracts for difference.

Yes. As the first question, there is not this one number as I tried to explain. We are looking at the moment in very different options. We haven't really taken a decision, if I take, for example, the replacement of natural gas, which would be the main reduction for our Scope 1 emissions, what is the right technology. We are enabling and we are developing the technology. I mentioned hydrogen, I mentioned ammonia. We're looking also in plasma burner. So we are trying to spend the whole technology to generate this large amount of energy, fossil free. In a moment, the ranking is not complete. And hence -- and also, if I ask you what's the price for blue ammonia in the future? That's a difficult one. And here, this carbon contracts for difference will kick in because this will now bring the producer or incentivize the producers of these kind of new energy sources and the industry who needs a certain price level to be competitive together, which is the idea of this double contract system. So as this has not been formulated yet, it's still, I would say, in the making. But important is we are preparing ourselves for various options. And when things settle, when things become clear, we will be able to pick the best solution that the market will offer. Hence, the lowest CO2 reduction price that will be doable for the industry.

And maybe if you allow me to add Roland here, there needs to be a couple of more components to the equation put in there. For instance, today, as energy-intensive industry, we get the reimbursement of the CO2 component in our electricity price. This doesn't go forever which means also we have to factor in going forward for our strategy at one point in time, this game will be over, let's call it this way, and we would have to fully fund the CO2 component in the electricity price. So therefore, we are doomed to really move forward here in this process. That is one part. Second part, of course, we have some free CO2 certificates available for the CO2 that we are emitting. This is the free contribution that we are getting is diminishing is going to zero. So there also the future CO2 that we are emitting comes at a cost. That is, let's say, the cost that we have to weigh and to balance when we embark and we clearly embark without any detailed calculations on it, on our free CO2 part, we have to.

And I think if I add what we are benefiting from is that we have been early decarbonizing our production. So that means we are better than the benchmark, which is applied in the ETS scheme in Europe. So we get more allocation, CO2 certificate allocation, then we have to hand in due to the emissions that we definitely do. So we have built up a nice buffer of certificates and it continued to build up. But you know ETS will be changed. There will be a new period after 2031. Things are still out there. But we are coming here at least for this decade from a very strong position. And as Rainer pointed, we are not exposed to CO2 certificate price. It's rather the opposite. We are benefiting from high CO2 certificate prices.

Thank you. Thank you very much. As the time is running, I would like to present one question from the virtual audience for Christian. Given the growth of your recycling business and big investments like Aurubis Richmond, why is your recycling target in 2030, not higher than 50%?

Yes. First of all, for sure, it's needed the Aurubis Richmond investment to higher up our recycling quota up to 50%, and we also will need some more ideas and projects to reach this target. And yes, as presented today, we have a very successful business model that covers also the primary and secondary sector, for sure. So -- and if you look at the whole copper demand, it's not possible to cover these copper -- sorry, copper demand by recycling material because there's not so much valuable for that. But also if I may add, it's also we are growing our throughput in the smelting side at the same point in time. So permanent productivity increases. So it's a bit of a, let's say, a catch-up that we are doing in recycling. And one comment, we are also working intensively for an even better supply chain on the primary side. You saw the examples about the Copper Mark, the examples about that we engage with mining companies. It needs both. It needs recycling and it needs primary copper. Otherwise, the demand that the world has for copper cannot be met. So therefore, we show this result because of this target value but it's not really something which we would take to an extreme. It's a reporting and we are improving recycling content, but primary has to grow too.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your questions. Thank you for your detailed answers. Before I hand over to you back...

Can we take this one question, I think it's interesting for you. Otherwise, you want to skip there.

No, not because the time is running. No, we can do it.

Yes, because that's an interesting one for you because I think on the battery cycling it's a good one.

Okay. So we take it. Otherwise, I can say if you have any further questions, please ask it to Ferdinand to Elke or myself. We will be happy to answer it. But now the last question. Can you define more clearly the site decision process criteria? Which are those? Given your ozone technology -- ozone technology, does that mean that the electricity price is the main criteria?

Yes.

One-word answer to make short. Well, look, yes, this ozone is basically electricity. So in order to produce ozone, you need electrical power. And if you look at the OEMs and the cell manufacturers who, in turn, have the requirements from the OEMs. Product carbon footprint plays a huge role in the material they get into their supply chain. So if you produce all your metals with high carbon intensive processes, then you will in the long run or medium term run have issues to get the material into the supply chain of the OEMs. So yes, electricity is one major topic. But we're also looking at sort of the price, the how green's being produced through those 2. But then again, as I outlined the regulatory framework conditions are also something. Of course, if you look at the subsidy landscape here in Europe as well as the U.S. and U.S. is certainly also a very interesting market. If you look at the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act, these are also factors that play into our site selection activities in order to find really the right place to build this first of its kind technology.

Thank you. Good. You move over.

Good. I move over. And do a bit of a wrap up. So now we are coming to the final, but I'm sure we will have some more discussion hopefully during dinner and -- or some drinks outside. So you have seen financial guidance, and I started this morning or this afternoon with talking about how we started our strategy, which key pillars in December announced the strategy in December '21. And I hope by now, we have really convinced you that we are in full execution of the strategy that we are able as a company within the very strong financial framework that we have to execute these very important growth projects in time, in full, in everything that is absolutely crucial here to supplement our flow sheet and the growth in the market. We have specifically brought some key members of our team, David and Jurgen and also Thomas to show from the horse mouth, how we are doing this project, shared the governance. And also I want to emphasize again the point it's really a transformation of whole Aurubis that we are going through. Let's say, announcing a strategy is one thing, seeing market opportunities is another. But really bringing a company to this kind of project culture, this kind of execution culture. With this, I will say, the [ beat Trump ] that we have now installed in the company that there is now a rhythm. There is now a clear sequence. There is now absolutely clear governance, responsibilities, documentation and so on. This is absolutely crucial to transform a company like Aurubis, which was and some know the company for quite a while, which was a bit like a sleeping beauty. We were doing okay but there was not really a growth agenda. There was -- let's phrase it, there was some complacency that we saw on Aurubis. This has completely changed. This is not what you will find today in Aurubis and the agenda, hopefully and this massive growth CapEx probably underpins what we are doing, what we are going for. And we think big. And also to Christian's comment about North America, we think big. Don't take any timing that we do because we don't have to rush. We have the strength and also the rigor to execute projects at the right point in time. That doesn't mean that we don't think big and that we don't put them rightly in sequence and one after the other, although always reflecting the secure and successful execution of the projects because nothing whom I'm telling this is worth. If you really -- if a project is jeopardized or something goes wrong because then all management attention goes there and the whole company is distracted. So therefore, absolutely let's say, maturity of projects, execution projects and also very important, built up the necessary resources. Also one thing that we did from the beginning, we said if we are going down this avenue of growth of running 8 large strategic projects, there has to be the right people, the talent and enough people in place to execute. Often the mistake is done -- key people, they have already a full daytime job. They get some additional responsibility on top to deal with some very important strategy. We didn't do this mistake. We really have dedicated teams, absolutely capable teams with the right number of people in place to execute these projects. Based on this, we will do more. We have other projects in the pipeline. And if I go to this list here, you get some idea. We are not disclosing the names and the subject of the project, but this is real number of projects. This is not just a chart. This is really what we are working on in our pipeline of projects. You see at the right side, the 8 ones that are in execution, strategic growth projects. And you see that there are 9 already marked as being part of our 4-year MTP, midterm planning, which we are just doing as we speak, starting then with the next fiscal year. So these are -- and you see basic engineering from our gateway process means they are very well advanced. They will come for a final decision in a few quarters. Basic engineering is already a well-advanced step in the project maturation process. We have 4 highly attractive projects in feasibility and we have one still a bit early in concept development, but we believe this will come into execution in the time frame of the MTP plan. So you see we have despite already 8, and we are already talking about growth projects here. We're not talking about normal, sustainable or kind of process improvement projects. This is all growth projects that we are dealing on. And what is also important, we are not running out of ideas. You see that the idea box. And again, these are real behind. It's not that we wrote in ideas, but we cannot disclose these projects to the public at this point in time. So we have a very attractive pipeline of high interesting projects in different regions, fully in line with our strategy that we have explained today and also in the bilateral meetings that we have. So if we take this today, then we will add about EUR 280 million of CapEx. That's what we discussed also Rainer also shared this and we will continue to deliver additional EBITDA in a relatively short time frame, given the high return projects that we have here in the pipeline. Again, I can reemphasize what Rainer said, we have a very sound financial balance sheet, and we will not kind of go completely different here. We have our guidance, will be 45% equity ratio. That's where we maximum see we are going to. We believe we still have potential to be even better, but that's the guidance. And also this debt ratio -- EBITDA-debt ratio of, let's say, 1 maximum is something that we are targeting for. And within this kind of framework, we are able to deliver this additional agenda going forward. So this is the business. And I hope you have heard today that it's not just about the 3 pillars but also we are talking potentially about you can say, a new pillar with battery recycling. This is something and with the feedback, with the discussions that we have had so far, we are pretty confident that this can be a next big business for Aurubis going forward. But again, as we do the other projects, we will do this from a position of strength. We will not make a hype or join the hype here about battery recycling. We are just executing. We are building a demo plant, which is [ Scale 50 ] compared to the pilot plant. We are working on the engineering. We are doing site selection, we are just executing according to our governance, the projects, and we don't let us be pushed or rushed into something, which we might regret or will not be the I would say, the necessary due diligence that you need for these significant investments. So this means we are up for even more. And I also hope that today, we shared this, I would say, relatively complex flow sheet relatively because the next level is much more, which shows that we are so much more in technology. And we would also, let's say, hint that some of you might rethink our metal and mining evaluation, if we are not more and more becoming a very different play as Aurubis with what we are investing, what we are growing in and also to your point, Jason, about cyclicality of our business. With what we are doing here in recycling is less and less exposed to the cycles of a primary business of a sulfuric acid business and so on. So we are building here not additional pillars with our investments, but we are building also very solid and less cyclical pillars in our business. So with this, summarizing, we are accelerating our sustainable growth. We have significant projects successfully in execution. And all the projects, also with our early warning system, all the projects and everything what we are doing have been more than confirmed. And our decision in '21, December '21 or November '21, to go into the U.S. Looking back, it was the absolute right decision to go there. And it was although the absolute right decision to accelerate Phase 2, and it will be the right decision to think about the next steps there earlier than you might think. So with this, I would like to close. I think the other points we have raised already. I don't think we need to repeat them. But Aurubis is a very strong player, a highly respected player in our field. We have the advantage, or call a disadvantage. We are a unique play. A company like Aurubis doesn't exist, not in Europe, not in North America and also not in Asia to our knowledge. So therefore, it's always very difficult to benchmark. But if I look at our performance, if I look at our growth agenda, if I look at the market opportunities that we have and also the political environment in which we are dealing with additional demand on the metals that we are producing with a strong push in circular economy with our sustainability record, leading in the CO2 footprint in the copper world, we are extremely well positioned, and we have a management team. You have seen only some of the colleagues here, and we have really a management team which is there and capable to execute. With this, thank you very much for participating today in the Capital Market Day also to people here being online and sitting there in front of the screen. Thanks for joining us today and happy to continue this dialogue with you any questions, please, you know the teams. You can also talk to me, directly to Rainer to [ Inge ], whomever you have a question for. Thanks for coming.