Mineral Resources Limited (MIN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everyone. Your formal AGM will be starting very shortly. I'm Russell James. I am the Brand Director at Mineral Resources. However, my underlying passion is photography. It's the way I see the world, and it's a driving force for everything that I do. Over the course of my career, I've been so fortunate to photograph people from all over the world, from community leaders to celebrities, supermodels, heads of state. When I'm taking anyone's photograph, what I'm trying to capture is a glimpse of the real person beyond their title and their name. The most intriguing part I found of being at MinRes is the extraordinary collection of people, and I've met them from -- on the most remote sites, all the way into the executive boardroom. It's been an astonishing journey. This year, I've been part of creating a photographic series that we call, I Am MinRes. The goal is to share some insights about some of our people and their often unknown superpowers, as I like to call them. It's the real story of some of the people I've met: generational upholsterers, singer-songwriters, triathletes, such a range of unique qualities, and that had been shared with us is truly incredible. My wife, Ali Franco, is also the Creative Director for Mineral Resources, and she's here today. With that in mind, the most important [ fact I'm going to share ], in the interest of self-preservation, is that I Am MinRes was actually her idea. Her unique superpower is getting me to do whatever she wants, including taking photographs as the ones that you'll be seeing shortly. It's my pleasure to share with you a very short presentation on the video of this concept that has underscored our reporting season this year, and your official proceedings will start shortly. Thank you very much. [Presentation]

It actually doesn't matter how often I see that video clip. I just love it, and hopefully you enjoyed it, too. So MinRes Board, executive, shareholders, distinguished guests, all. This morning as we gather for this Annual General Meeting, it is my pleasure to welcome you to Noongar Country. Welcomes to country are a way of paying respect to people and to place as well as to our collective past. They join us in common purpose and set the context of us being here together. In doing so, I pay my respects to Noongar Elders past and present, and I especially note that the Noongar clan for the metropolitan area is the Whadjuk clan. This is not the first time I've welcomed people for a MinRes event or function. The fact of that is one of the things that defines MinRes not just in this sector but as a corporate citizen. It signifies respect for Aboriginal people with whom MinRes has an association, whether that be staff, visitors, families and indeed, traditional owners of the areas where MinRes operates. The leadership demonstrated by this support goes even further. It speaks of an openness that facilitates nonindigenous people to also get to learn, to help them to connect to and truly belong so that Australia really is home rather than simply a place to live. Often when I welcome people, I talk about the bounds of Noongar Country, our clan system, our 6 seasons, the fact that we are freshwater people and that we are the largest language and cultural block of Aboriginal people across Australia. Of course, I'll be pleased to share more of that detail with you when we next have that opportunity. But today, I want to talk about something a little different, with my thinking here having been born from the current MinRes focus on I am MinRes in which employees were encouraged to show another side of their lives to demonstrate some of the richness everyone brings to the work they do. This was captured, as we just heard from the wonderful Russell James and his team, most especially Ali, shout out, with the images and stories presented in the annual report and displayed in the MinRes offices in Osborne Park. I was honored to be part of that process with my picture showing me holding a stylized feather depicting my totem, the white cockatoo. Our totems, or baronga, tell us a lot about who we are. They select us based on our characters. And part of the significance of sharing the story of the white cockatoo with you is that I think MinRes has many of the characteristics they depict. We call the white cockatoo, manatj. It is 1 of only 2 Noongar moieties, so it's indeed important in our culture. It holds high status because of that importance. Now especially, if you've spent time in the wheat field areas of Western Australia, you will have seen them in action. They are the ones who insist on being heard, who, and I'll remind you, this is my totem, sometimes appear to be a bit determined in getting their point across. While my family might joke about that in my regard, I'm not shy in telling them it's about insistence and confidence. The white cockatoo knows what it wants and goes for it. I'd have to be seriously convinced [ that's not ] MinRes in a nutshell: insistent, confident, knowing what it wants, knowing how to go forward and knowing how to take others with it. But the manatj is more, and so is MinRes. It represents friendship and community. It symbolizes change and light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes surviving harsh conditions and great challenges. Its gift is communication, making itself understood, understanding others and being able to hear and be heard in that process. I don't know if MinRes has a totem, but I reckon the white cockatoo would come pretty close. Aboriginal people have walked this country for more than 3,000 generations, and their spirits love to hear the language of the land. So on behalf of my forebears and on behalf of you, [Foreign Language]. Translated, that means I am happy to see you. I acknowledge people, family and the Elders of the past and present of this land. [Foreign Language], I see you. [Foreign Language], welcome. And because we don't have a word for goodbye, I say [Foreign Language], until we meet again. Thank you. Good fortune and all the best for your meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Colleen, for that very wonderful welcome to country as always. MinRes is committed to reconciliation and recognizes and respects the significance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' communities, cultures and histories. I'd like to start this meeting by paying my respects to the Whadjuk Noongar people as the first and continuing custodians of the land we meet on today and pay my respects to Elders past and present. Welcome to the MinRes 2022 Annual General Meeting. My name is James McClements, and this is my first meeting as independent Nonexecutive Chair of MinRes. I'm honored to follow on from Peter Wade, who retired as Chair in March of this year after 23 years with the business. Peter played a pivotal role in growing MinRes into the market leader we are today. I look forward to building on his proud legacy. I really do hope he's listening in today and watching and following. I also hope you enjoyed the opening video, I am MinRes. This video pays tribute to some of the 5,000 talented and committed people who have helped make MinRes an outstanding success story that it is today. As we celebrate 30 years in business, we're also celebrating the people from all walks of life who contribute to our success. Thank you to all of you. This brings me to some very important people sitting to my right and left. On my right, we have our Board members: Chris Ellison, who needs little introduction, MinRes Founder and Managing Director and independent Nonexecutive. Other Nonexecutive Directors: Xi Xi; Susie Corlett; Zimi Meka; and Kelvin Flynn, who should be on the screen on the far right there. Unfortunately, Kelvin has COVID and is joining us remotely today. Also at the table is our Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary, Mark Wilson. On my left, we have our executive team: Mike Grey, Chief Executive, Mining Services; Shelley Robertson, Executive General Manager, Energy; Josh Thurlow, Chief Executive Officer, Lithium; Chris Soccio, Chief Executive, Iron Ore; and Bronwyn Grieve, Chief People and Shared Services Officer. We're delighted to be able to have them sit up front here because I think we're very keen to demonstrate that there's a very deep bench here at Mineral Resources, and we're very proud to show them off. Standing by to assist with questions submitted online is Derek Oelofse, over the -- far corner there, Group Financial Controller and Company Secretary. Fiscal year '22 was another outstanding year for MinRes. Our financial performance was the second best in our history despite some tough market conditions, and we kept our people safe with no lost time injuries. Importantly, we built the foundations for growth. We progressed our game-changing Onslow Iron ore and South West Creek iron ore projects, restructured our Lithium business and made one of Australia's largest ever onshore gas discoveries. We did this while continuing to grow our Mining Services business with an innovative pit-to-port model that is the core of our success. You'll hear more about our outstanding year and our vision for growth from our Managing Director, Chris Ellison, later in the meeting. I'd like to take some time now to talk about how your Board will support transformational growth at MinRes over the next 5 years. Our challenge is to set up for growth by developing governance, structures, systems and leadership capable for a significantly larger company. At the same time, we must maintain the adaptive and agile culture that has made MinRes a success. We have a great Board of industry leaders that bring diverse thinking to the table. I encourage you to watch the living bios that have been created for the Board on our website. Again, another Russell James innovation, stretched some of our -- from out of our comfort zone. As the company grows, we are focused on building more depth in the Board, and we are delighted to appoint Zimi Meka as an independent Nonexecutive Director in May this year. Zimi is up for reelection today, so I'd like to take a moment to speak to his credentials. Zimi brings over 35 years' experience in the design, construction and operations of mineral processing plants and infrastructure. He is the Chief Executive Officer and a founding Director of consulting and engineering firm Ausenco. Under his leadership, Ausenco has grown into an international company operating across 14 countries and employing over 3,000 people. Also up for reelection today is Susie Corlett. Susie was appointed to the Board in January 2021 and has made a significant contribution to how we operate. Susie is a geologist with over 25 years' experience in exploration, mining operations, mining finance and investment. She's been the Investment Director for a mining private equity fund, Pacific Road Capital. She has also worked in mining credit risk management and project finance for Standard Chartered Bank Limited (sic) [ Standard Bank Limited ], Deutsche Bank and Macquarie Bank. Susie also has experience on the front line of mining, including working as a geologist for RGC Goldfields Limited. Susie is the Chair of our Sustainability Committee, which was established in fiscal year '22. The committee holds bimonthly meetings to monitor performance on MinRes' sustainability targets. And I'm pleased to announce that over 80% of these targets were exceeded, achieved or demonstrated positive progress throughout the year. I encourage you to reelect Zimi and Susie during this morning's proceedings. I am also up for reelection today, and Susie will speak on my behalf during the meeting. Your Board has also commenced a process to add at least 2 new positions. We are currently speaking to candidates that enhance Board diversity and have specialist skills that reflect the growing needs of the business. We hope to be able to make announcements on these new Board appointments in the near future. I'll now move to the formal business. Today's meeting is what's called a hybrid AGM, meaning it is being held in person and online via the Computershare virtual platform. This allows shareholders, proxies and guests to attend the meeting virtually via webcast. In addition, shareholders and proxies can submit votes and ask questions online. Our annual report, which includes the directors' report, the financial report and the auditor's report, was lodged on the ASX and mailed to our shareholders who requested it. The Company Secretary has advised me that we have not received any questions on the directors' report and the financial report. I now lay these reports before the meeting. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. This year, all voting will be completed online. To provide you with enough time to vote, I now declare voting open on all items of business. Voting shareholders who have joined us in person should receive a white attendance card at registration. It should look like something like this. If you did not receive a white attendance card and you believe you should have, please raise your hand now and a Computershare representative will assist you. Now that voting is open, shareholders in the room can scan the QR code on your white attendance card by using the camera function on your smartphone. This will open the voting app. You will need to accept the terms and conditions. You can then vote by selecting either for, against or abstain. If you need help with the voting process, please raise your hand at any time and a Computershare staff member will assist you. For our virtual attendees who are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new vote icon will appear on the virtual platform. Selecting this icon will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit or enter button as the vote is automatically recorded. You can change your vote up until the time I declare voting closed. If you are voting online, a voting icon will be visible. Please submit your votes at any time. Again, if you're having difficulties with the online platform, please call the Computershare number on the screen. This is also visible when you log into the platform. Shareholders are welcome to ask questions during the meeting. [Operator Instructions] After I present each resolution, I will take questions from those in the room first before taking online questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, although you can submit questions at any time, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. Your questions may be moderated or if we receive multiple questions on one topic, they may be amalgamated together. Due to time constraints, we may not be able to answer all your questions. If this happens, we will answer them via e-mail or by publishing responses on our website following the meeting. I'll now commence the formal part of the meeting. As a reminder, the polling has been opened, and if eligible, you can now vote. If you require help with the voting system or QR code, please raise your hand and a Computershare representative will assist you. Thank you. This is a meeting of Mineral Resources shareholders. Only shareholders, their appointed proxies or corporate representatives are entitled to make comments, ask questions or vote. All other attendees are very welcome as observers. I will leave the polling open while we discuss the resolutions, and we'll provide you with a warning before we close voting. The first motion for consideration today is adoption of the remuneration report. The resolution is on the screen before you. The Remuneration Committee was pleased with the overwhelming shareholder support we received for fiscal year '21 remuneration report and has sought to build on that support in fiscal year '22. MinRes remuneration strategy and structures have been designed to be commensurate with other ASX comparator companies to ensure we continue to attract and retain top talent as we grow. Given the success and continued shareholder support for the remuneration strategy and structures that became effective in FY '21, there has been no changes to our overall remuneration strategy in fiscal year '22. Key management personnel-based salaries remain unchanged for the third consecutive year, and no changes were made to Nonexecutive Director fees. The details of the proxy votes cast on resolution 1 are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments on this item? I'll take questions from the floor before receiving online questions. There's always a slight delay in terms of receiving from online, so pregnant pause while we wait to see if we get any. Thank you, Derek. As there are no further questions, we'll move on to the next resolution. Resolution 2 relates to the election of Director, Mr. Zimi Meka. Details of this resolution are on the screen before you. Zimi joined our Board in May this year and has already made an outstanding contribution to our operations. I spoke on Zimi's impressive qualifications and experience in my introduction. The Board supports the election of Zimi Meka and recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. The details of the proxy votes cast on resolution 2 are now displayed on the screen. Congratulations, Zimi. Are there any questions on this item? I'll take questions from the floor first. Are there any questions online?

No questions, James.

Thank you, Derek. As there are no further questions, we'll move on to the next resolution. As resolution 3 relates to my own reelection, I'll now hand over to our Nonexecutive Director, Susie Corlett, to table this resolution.

Thank you, James. The details of this resolution are on the screen before you. I'd like to take a moment to speak about the value that James brings with his experience to the chairmanship of MinRes. James has over 35 years' experience in the mining industry as a banker and fund manager financing projects globally. He was raised and educated in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and began his professional career with BHP before joining Standard Chartered Bank in Perth and then Rothschild in Sydney then Denver. James spent 11 years in the U.S. and cofounded Resource Capital Funds, or RCF, during that time. He's currently the Managing Partner of RCF and has extensive Board experience having served as a Director of 12 RCF portfolio companies. James was appointed Chair of the Board on the 2nd of March 2022 following the retirement of Peter Wade. You can hear more about James' career journey on the MinRes website. The Board unanimously supports the election of James McClements, and recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. The details of the proxy votes cast on resolution 3 are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this item? I'll first take questions from the floor. Are there any questions online?

No online questions. Thanks, Susie.

Thank you, Derek. As there are no questions, I will hand back to James McClements, who will move to the next resolution. Congratulations, James.

Thanks, Susie. Okay. Resolution 4 relates to the election of Susie as a Director. Details of this resolution are on the screen before you. Susie has served on the Board since the 4th of January 2021 and makes an outstanding contribution to the Board operations. As mentioned, she is Chair of the Sustainability Committee and is also a member of the Audit and Risk Committee and Nomination Committees. I spoke about Susie's outstanding credentials at the start of the meeting. The Board supports the election of Susie Corlett and recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. The details of the proxy votes cast on resolution 4 are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this item, starting with those from the floor? Are there any questions online?

No online questions. Thanks, James.

Thank you, Derek. As there are no further questions, we move to the next resolution, resolution 5. Resolution 5 relates to the approval for the grant of FY '22 securities to Managing Director, Chris Ellison. Details of this resolution are on the screen before you. At the 2021 AGM, MinRes committed to seeking shareholder approval for grants of securities to the Managing Director. Consistent with this commitment and following good corporate governance, shareholder approval is being sought for share rights that have been granted to the Managing Director in respect of the FY '21 and FY '22 deferred short-term incentive, or STI, plan; and the FY '22 long-term incentive, or LTI, plan. An overview of the company's FY '22 STI and LTI plans are set out in the remuneration report, which has already received your support today. Full details of these grants are contained in the explanatory statements of the 2022 Notice of Annual General Meeting. Other than Chris Ellison, who, given his interest in the outcome, declines to make a recommendation, the directors unanimously recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. The details of the proxy votes cast on resolution 5 are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this item, starting from those on the floor? Any questions online?

No online questions. Thanks, James.

Thanks, Derek. As there are no further questions, we move to the next resolution. Resolution 6 relates to the approval for grant of FY '23 securities to Managing Director, Chris Ellison. Details of this resolution are on the screen before you. At the 2021 AGM, MinRes also committed to seeking shareholder approval for the prospective grant of share rights for Chris Ellison in FY '23. This is comprised of the FY '23 LTI share rights and the deferred component of the FY '23 STI that Chris Ellison may be entitled to receive based on FY '23 to FY '26 long-term performance and FY '23 annual performance. An overview of the company's FY '23 STI and LTI plans is set out in the remuneration report, which has already received your support today. No changes to the FY '22 LTI plan have been made for FY '23. Full details of this grant are contained in the explanatory statements of the 2022 Notice of Annual General Meeting. Other than Chris Ellison, who, given his interest in the outcome, declines to make a recommendation, the directors unanimously recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. The details of the proxy votes cast on resolution 6 are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this item, starting with those from the floor? Please, sir. Just in the middle where the microphone just -- on the stand.

We're supporting this, this year. But what we'd like to see in future years is more than just one parameter for the long-term one. So at the moment, it's on total return on invested capital, right? We'd like to see more things in there that reflect on the shareholders like EPS or total shareholder return and possibly something to do with GHG, greenhouse gas, emissions because over the long term, we can probably measure that. But for the short term, it's very hard to see what's going on there. So it's just a suggestion really for next year. Thank you.

Thank you very much, [ Alan ], and thank you. We always welcome the engagement with the Australian Shareholders' Association. So I'm sure we'll have further discussions on those topics. Thank you. Are there any questions online?

No questions online. Thanks, James.

As there are no further questions, we'll move on to the next resolution. Resolution 7 relates to the approval of potential termination benefits for key management personnel. Details of this resolution are on the screen before you. MinRes' policy in relation to leaving entitlements is to treat departing employees and key management personnel appropriately and in accordance with applicable laws, market practice and company policy. This approval seeks to preserve the discretion of the Board and the Remuneration Committee to determine the most appropriate leaving package under the relevant employment agreements, incentive plans and retirement plans. The remuneration policy for key management personnel, including an explanation of potential leaving entitlements, has been included in the remuneration report, which has received your support today. The details of the proxy votes cast on resolution 7 are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this item, starting from the floor? Are there any questions online?

No questions on resolution 7. Thanks, James.

Thank you, Derek. As there are no further questions, we'll move to the next resolution, resolution 8. Resolution 8 relates to the appointment of a new auditor. Details of this resolution are on the screen before you. Given the length of tenure of our previous auditor, RSM Australia, the Board considered it good corporate governance to rotate the audit appointment and sought proposals from leading audit service providers. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank RSM Australia for their outstanding services to MinRes over the last 16 years. I'm going to see if they're in the room. Wonderful. Thank you. In particular, I'd like to acknowledge James Komninos, Tutu Phong and Alasdair Whyte and Principal, [ Alex ], who have supported the MinRes audit over the years. Moving forward, the Board is seeking approval for the appointment of Ernst & Young as company auditor. Ernst & Young partners are here, along with some of their colleagues, and we appreciate you being here today. The Board recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. The details of the proxy votes cast on resolution 8 are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this item, starting with the floor? Are there any questions online?

No questions on resolution 8. Thanks, James.

Thank you. As there are no further questions, that concludes the formal part of the meeting. Voting will close in 1 minute. If you have not already done so, please cast your votes now. I'll pause to allow final votes to be submitted. Again, if you're having -- if you're in the room and you're having any problems with your voting, please raise your hand now and a Computershare representative will come to you. We're going to wait 30 seconds or so here, just allow this to conclude. [Voting]

Okay. I'll now declare the poll closed. Results will be published on the ASX as soon as practical. Sorry. Okay. We'll just pause a little longer. We still have somebody looking to vote. [Voting]

Very good. Thank you. Okay. Voting is now closed. Okay. Before I hand over to our Managing Director, Chris Ellison, on behalf of the Board, I would like to acknowledge Chris and the MinRes leadership team for their outstanding management of the business. MinRes is on the cusp of transformational growth with game-changing commodity projects in various stages of development. This has not happened overnight. Many of these projects have been years in the making and only made possible by the vision, hard work and dedication of your Managing Director, Chris Ellison, and his leadership team. I'd also like to thank the 5,000 MinRes team members who dedicate their working lives to making MinRes the outstanding success story that it is today. Finally, I would like to thank you, our shareholders, for your continued support of MinRes. I will now hand over to your Managing Director, Chris Ellison, to take you through the exciting future ahead. A short video will play before Chris takes the stage. Thank you all very much. [Presentation]

I got to say, standing here watching that, it makes me incredibly proud. When we started the business 30 years ago, I never had a vision where we're going to land, and I don't think we're even halfway there. So good morning. Welcome. Thanks, everyone, for joining. Thanks if you are here on Perth, here online. Let me also acknowledge, this meeting is being held on the traditional lands of the Noongar people. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders that are here at the meeting today. So I'm Chris Ellison. I'm the MD, as James said, the founder of the business. I've got an amazing support team around me now: great Board of Directors; the bench strength we've got in our management team, not just sitting on my left, but some of them are out in the crowd and some of them are actually back at the business running the show. So we have got the best lineup in the business. This year, we've chosen to really try harder to honor our people. At the beginning of COVID, we sort of had a long hard look at how we thought about our people and how we look after them. And we really worked hard to make sure we kept them safe through COVID, and we're probably the largest testing organization in Australia. We set up some fairly state-of-the-art equipment, and we were actually testing for about 60 mining and oil and gas companies so we could keep our people safe on site. So from that, we've sort of really taken more steps. And thanks to the vision of Russell James and Ali Franco, they've come up with this concept that we're running, this I am MinRes concept. And it extends right across the business, and it really highlights a lot of the people. We're getting to know our people a lot better, and we're getting to understand what drives them and motivates them. But our business is all about people. I mean the only thing that we've got that we can't replace tomorrow is the people that we have in the business. All the other things, we can go by. So this year, it's all about celebrating our people. They're our lifeblood. They've built this amazing business, and they're going to see this well forward into the future for many decades to come. I'd like to acknowledge [ David Bowden. David Bowden ] is a foundation shareholder of the [ Chairman list ], and he's attended every AGM we've had for 16 years. [ Joe Dido's ] been to a fair number of them as well. So welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us. So July 1 this year was our 30th birthday, 14 years as a private company, 16 years in the public arena. Started the business back in '92. 2 of us in my front lounge, $10,600 in the bank and a credit card back in those days. I mean we were very conscious of female participation. So we had a 50-50 female participation back then, and we've been chasing that score ever since. But 5,000 people is a lot harder to deal with than 2. I've got to say I never set out to build a business this size. It was all about the quality and some ideas that I had on how I could do things a little different, a little bit better than the mining companies can. And we set out and we've achieved that. And I'm really proud of everything that this business has achieved. It's a collection of great people that have got it there. Really excited about what's ahead, and we've got a lot of good things coming at us. So a few highlights this year. We were admitted into the ASX 50, so the top 50 companies in Australia, public companies. And yesterday, we were in about 28th position. Market cap of about $16 billion, and we are well diversified in terms of the types of activities we do. We've got strong foundations right across the mining industry. We're a leading pit-to-port mining services provider. We're the largest crushing contractor on the planet. We're growing a world-class portfolio of iron ore and lithium. And we're developing some really good energy assets that are going to see us through for the next 30 or 40 years. And those assets in the Perth basin are going to enable us to be able to get out of the nasty fuels that we're burning at the moment, and we see that gas is, obviously, it's a transitional business. But we've got about 50 years of work ahead of us that we've got locked in. If we stop now and do nothing and we just mine out the deposits we've got, then 50 years from now, there's probably 3 or 4 of them will still be running and it's a good position to be in. Going back 30 years ago, I had contracts that lasted 1 week and 2 weeks. So we're getting to an exceptionally good place. Results-driven. We have been from day 1. When you start with no money and undercapitalized, you've got to spend a dollar and you got to get at least $1.20 back. And I've always had that thing in my mind that if we don't get 20% return on that capital we're investing, we can't afford to do it. We'll probably -- we'll end up going broke if we had to do that to survive. And it's in our DNA now, and I think it's turned out to be something quite exceptional. We've delivered record consistent results, strong growth over the years. We get things done in a way that others can't find the endgame. We've been able to take a lot of smaller deposits and contracts and turn them into something quite special. And our reputation for delivery and cost control in the market is second to none in the industry. I mean we're probably one of the last companies that can actually go out on site and build a large plant for a fixed number in a defined period of time. It's a dying art. But that's part of our foundation because if you can't get it done for the right number in the right time, you don't get the return on it. So our growth record, we got a very, very tough balance sheet where we're sitting now. We've never raised capital by diluting our shareholders and issuing our shares. It's not part of our DNA either. Our average return on invested capital, 21% for the life of the company so far, and we average about 20% dividend growth. So dividends total from when we listed, $9.56. So if you invested $1,000, as David did, many thousands, back in 2006 on the float at $0.90, if you collected all the dividends and you've just gone along for the ride, that $1,000 today is worth $92,310. So well done to David. We're sitting as #2 on the ASX as the total shareholder return. We've got probably the best balance sheet, without doubt, that we've ever had, and we're looking to grow the returns. We've done better than 20% for the life of the public company. We're looking to grow those substantially over the next 5 years. So I think we can probably do 40% or 50% better on that where we're going because we can take on bigger, lower-cost projects, and we've got a number of them in hand. '22, it was a good performance. It wasn't our best, but it was up there with the best. Revenue and EBITDA was down. But when you're contending with iron ore price that went from $220 to $80 in 69 days, I mean, we were chasing our tail and it was tough. We were shutting down parts of the operations that were not profitable. But we managed. We've been through those cycles a number of times. Back in my earlier days, I ran a public company that was in administration and got it out. So we're pretty much used to dealing with the cycle. So I think you got to go through these cycles to make you tougher. It makes our business more profitable going through those. We were a little ambush from that. But we had some challenges, and we've worked through them. So for BD, business development, by far and away our best year ever, and we've locked away some pretty amazing projects I'll talk to you about. We went over to the U.S., and we did a bond raising. We were probably the last ones to get through New York, and we scooped up USD 1.25 billion, which I'm very happy to have done. When you consider where we're sitting now, the interest rates have all moved up, and we're pretty much self-banking ourselves. We got about $2.5 billion cash in the bank, so we're not wasting it. And we have moved into the beginning of a new era for MinRes where we're changing the way that we house our people, accommodate them, look after them, manage them and think about them. So we moved into our new headquarters up at MinRes Park in Osborne Park and had some pretty amazing results in terms of productivity and the way people collaborate and work now. This year, being a transitional year, I've spent most of it, among other things, restructuring the business into 4 key pillars. I did that because 2 reasons. The businesses were getting so big inside that for one unit to be able to try and manage those properly was getting more and more difficult and they weren't getting as much attention as they deserve. And the second reason I did it was for succession planning. Not that I intend to go anywhere. But what I do intend to do is these 4 business pillars, I'm giving those to our people to be able to manage them. They've got their own management teams sitting around them, and it's going to be a much better return for everyone. So with each business having its own leadership team, we have MinRes sitting in the center, the public vehicle, and we're basically going to provide the shared services to them. We're going to give them guidance, of course, and help to grow funding, all of those sort of things. So we've done some very strategic key appointments over the last 6 or 9 months to make sure that we've got the right bench strength sitting in those businesses. So our Mining Services, Mike Grey. He's been around the MinRes business for a long time and around the Mining Services business for even longer. Josh, who's moved into the role of heading up our Lithium. A lot of growth ahead and a lot of work for Josh over the next year or 2 to try and get the business where we want it. Chris Soccio. Probably the only good thing that came out of the Ukraine war was Chris. He was in there running an iron ore mine and couldn't go back. Otherwise, we wouldn't have him. But very pleased to have him with his experience. Shelley Robinson. She joined me some years back. She sat down to negotiate. We had an asset that got an administration owned by others and we took it over, and she read me the riot act and told me she had the right to take over the management of the 20% shareholding. So she did take it over eventually but from this side of the seat. She drilled a hole last year and found a huge amount of gas that I'll talk about. Mark Wilson, [ sort of my ] #2 in MinRes, looking after the finance and occasionally, me. And Bronwyn Grieve has recently joined us. We're really happy to have Bronwyn on board, and she's looking after a lot of things around people and shared services. So a great team I've got sitting running the business. So people. People, it's our success. It's what got us where we are. We've had a range of different people over the years that have been fit for purpose. And as the business has grown, we've got better people coming on board, more professional people, because our business is growing. We've got bigger mines. We've got more sophisticated. We're building lithium plants for separating spod and moving into hydroxide. So the key to what we've done is the company we keep, and there's nothing -- no better way of saying it. I mean we're in the right company, surrounded by the right people. And that's one thing that I've always been very conscious of, whether that be our clients, friends or especially, people that are running the business. And this group of people, we've got probably responsible for the livelihood of more than 20,000 mouths to feed. So really important, and important that we have a shared vision. The mining industry over the last year or 2 years, it's faced some fairly significant challenges. We've been addressing them for a number of years. But the sorts of things that are happening out there you're reading about in the paper in the FIFO industry, the culture, diversity, trying to make sure that we've got all the equal opportunities, not just to bring people into our business, but equal opportunities to grow them to the top of it, harassment and bullying, mental health and well-being, all of those things that have been in the news, we've been working on them for a number of years. There are no new issues there to MinRes. I'm not saying that we're isolated from them or that we're perfect. We do have issues out there, but we've got ways and ways of addressing them and keeping our people safe. I feel in a lot of parts of what we're doing, we're really leading the industry. So we've got a very strong focus on safe, respectful environments and the well-being of our people. And I'll talk about that a little bit shortly on how we achieved that. But one of the things that we've started to think about is what environment we put our people in. So we've changed that work environment here in Perth, and we've got a Platinum-rated building that we operate at now. MinRes owns the building. We've got a café that does about 700 lunch covers every day. It's probably got about 30 different offerings on the menu. You can also have takeaway meals for about $8 a meal. Our people get to take them home so they can feed their families and have more free time available. A lot of our female moms are loving it. They get more time with the family at night rather than going home and doing the cooking and cleaning. And it's a lifestyle that we're trying to create. We're trying to change the way people live. And especially, during their working hours, we got a gym with more than 600 members in it. It's probably about $5 a week to join the gym. But we got trainers at it, and we're really encouraging people to try and be a lot healthier. We got a health care clinic on the ground floor. We've got 4 doctors in it, nurses to take care of all of the new people we've got coming in the business and to take care of any medical issues that any of our people have, and that's been building. We've got a crèche in the building. We look after the kids. The partners can come in and use the gym once we get to work and put the kids in the crèche. We got 700 car bays for our people, 700. No one has that in Perth, but it's the offering we're doing. So we're going to take that out on the site. I can -- the best way I can see for us to address the well-being of our people, particularly our women on-site, is to make sure that we've got a very, very safe environment for them. And that doesn't mean that we're going to lock them in rooms. So what we're doing is we're going from a 12-square-meter room to a 30-square-meter room, queen-size beds in it, big-screen TV, lounge. We're probably going to be about 4x the cost, so $40,000 for a standard donga. I don't know if any of you has ever stayed in the old standard donga on site, but it's a little bit like a prison. It's got a little square window in it, and it's a bit of a s******* and that's the standard in the mining industry. We're changing that. So we're going to create it resort style. We want couples to go and work on our site. They can go and do 7 on, 7 off. If one of their peer can't -- doesn't have skills to be in the mining industry, we'll put them in a dump truck. We'll train them properly. We'll put them in as operators, and we'll give them a career path. But most importantly, we'll make sure that, that resort style that we're going to develop is going to develop communities, not the old SMQ, the single men's quarters. And I think that going forward, I want to have all of our camps with those facilities within 5 years. It's a big number. I mean the first order we're doing on rooms is 1,000. But really important to make sure that we have the right people on site. If I got the right people on site and they are well looked after, I only get more tonnes. Diversity, something that we're really paying a lot more attention to now in the last couple of years. And particularly, this year, we've got a real drive on it. We've had a growth in our female workforce from 2012. We were sitting around about 12% to 13%. Today, we're at 21%. And we've got a whole lot of different incentives and things happening in the background where we can really change that around a lot. We've got attractive facilities for people to work in, and we've got flexible time for moms, trying to attract that demographic to our business. We're offering fairly substantial money. There's not a lot of industries out there that compete with us. But we can take a young lady out of a beauty salon, which we do regularly. And if your hairdresser goes missing, it's probably because we've poached them and we've put them on the payroll. So in 8 weeks, we can take them to a $130,000 a year job doing 7 days on, 7 days off. Uni grads. We've got a program where we're putting kids through uni, and we're trying to do about 10 a year and we are doing that. We've got an Inspire program, which is basically for attracting and growing our women. Our ambassador in that is Julie Bishop. We had an event on Tuesday night, up in our head office, food and wine and a panel. And it was an incredibly proud moment to be standing there and having a look at the inspiration these people are bringing to the business. But a lot of people want to come and join MinRes, and we want to make sure that we get a fair share of women. [ NextGen ] is another thing that we do. We call it [ NextGen ] because if you're working in the business and you've been there for a few years, your kid is pretty much guaranteed a scholarship or an apprenticeship or a trainee program. We want to bring people in that understand our culture. Health and safety, incredibly important. It's always been important. I always say when you're analyzing an organization to invest in, particularly in our industry, you need to have a long hard look at the safety because if you can't keep your people say, if you can't send them home in a better condition than what you got them, it's not a good investment. We've been on this mission for a long, long time now. We're probably in the top 2% or 3% in our industry with the results that we get. The results aren't by telling people to be safe. I mean we've got a lot of in-house training programs that tell people how to act and behave on site and how to be skillful, all those sort of things. But we've got no lost time injury. So that means out of 5,000 people, we haven't had anyone for about 3 years that's had an accident that keeps them away from work for a full [ regular ] shift. And when you consider what we do out there, we're basically throwing rocks around all day, but we're doing it in a very safe way. Similarly on physical health, we've focused equally on mental health. It's been a subject that hasn't been spoken about a lot over the years and particularly for the big, tough blokes in the mining industry. We're finding out that all people in all walks of life have got a whole range of mental health issues, and they're simply issues that they need help with. I dare say, everyone at different times gets them. I know that -- I suffer badly when the price of iron ore goes to $80. So I probably should have been on the couch with our psychologist a few times, but I seem to have got over it. Look, we've got a full suite. We're providing health and well-being services right across the board to all our staff on site. About 7% of our workforce, interestingly enough, has spent time with our psychology. And we're driving acceptance to reach out. We're trying to make sure that people know it's okay to put your hand up and say you've got some issues you want help with. So I mean really important to us as a business because we've got to have all these building blocks in place before we go to work. We can't go to work with a team of people that aren't really up for the task. Supporting communities, we do a lot. We're committed to supporting local and indigenous communities. We play an active role across the regions and the towns that we operate in. About 3.5 years ago, I might have mentioned this before, we shut down all our procurement out of China. And we have as much as we can possibly make in Australia. We're building it in Australia. Making it -- the big road trains that we're doing are all being built in Australia. The Kenworth trucks aren't being built here, but they're being assembled in Melbourne. So we're spending a lot more cash in WA, and we're going to do that through, I'll talk to you about, where we're going with the lithium and downstreaming with the help of our gas. But we put almost $6 million into about 100 charities in FY '22. We've done a lot of work around strengthening our relationship with traditional owners in the regions that we work in. And we are looking at developing long-term joint ventures with the traditional owners where we can give them real assets and they can have long, long term, 20-, 30-year type contracts. Decarbonization. We know that's sort of a very hot topic. We're in a tough industry with that. We're burning a lot of diesel out there. There is no alternative at the moment. We have adopted all of the targets that have been suggested by the industry. So we want to be well and truly net by 2050. We want to be 50% of the way there by 2035. The world hasn't been overly serious on trying to decarbonize for very long. It's really, I think, COVID was kind of the turning point when everyone figured out that we can have a much cleaner planet and we can do a lot better. I mean in WA in the mining industry, we're probably the best in the world at mining, managing our environment, making sure our people are looked after. We'll probably be there with decarbonizing. We need some new products to come into the market that we don't have. I think the world is going to be incredibly careful about how they go about it. They don't seem to have a single plan at the moment. The security of supply is becoming a big issue. So we can go out there and tell everyone to stop drilling for gas, but you've also got to tell them to stop using it. We can turn off the coal power stations tonight, but we've got to have some other form of power. If you're in Europe this winter, it's going to be awfully tough. So a lot of our leaders around the world haven't really thought this through. If you're going to be out on the East Coast and you're going to tell everyone out there to stop drilling for gas, don't reach out to WA and go, "We're going to keep our country pristine." We haven't managed it very well. We've actually made decisions for votes rather than for the good of the country. We're not about that. So in WA, our aim here is immediately, as quick as we can, to get out of diesel and get out of any power that we're drawing from coal-fired power stations off the grid. We're doing that quickly. Gas is a transitional fuel. It's way, way cleaner than burning coal. It's an awful lot cleaner than burning diesel. So we're going to take it a step at a time. Our aim is to make sure that we reduce the carbon footprint that we have each year and the carbon that we put into the atmosphere per tonne of product that we put out. So we're looking at how we're going to reduce that year by year going forward. I mean they've only been serious on this 2 or 3 years. I mean I think someone -- I don't think any of us miners are going to come out with any secret fuel. But I think the world will develop a lot of good stuff going forward. I mean we are, you'll note, doing our part with lithium. So it's sort of a bit about the past. Sorry about the time it took on the people. But I mean, it's our year for people, and it's really important that everyone gets it. So where are we going over the next 2 years and 5 years? We sort of always chop it up like that so we know exactly where we're going over the next 2 years, and we're actually out there doing it. Over the next 5 years, we've got a wish list. We've got a beauty lineup of projects that we're doing a lot of work on, and we think most of them we'll land. So 2 years from now, the business will double. We'll go from 20 million to 55 million tonnes of iron ore. The Mining Services will increase by 50%. Interestingly enough, I mean, it grew. We doubled that from 2019 to 2022. So 2 years from now, it'll be 50% bigger. Our hydroxide production, it will probably be up around about 70,000 tonnes a year, if not better. And we would be thinking that we'd be well and truly advanced on building a plant up on the Lockyer gas deposit. 5 years from now, we'll be over 90 million tonnes. We'll be at least 120,000 tonnes of hydroxide. The mining services, again, will add another 50% from the 2-year to the 5-year out, and that's pretty much from projects that we've got locked away out there now. Gas will be well and truly running, and we'll be looking at several downstream type projects. So that's a snapshot of where we're going. We've got pretty much most of that in hand for the next 2 years. We've got the funding in place for the next 2 years out. For the next 5 years out, we've got to figure how to raise that, but we've always found the right way of being able to raise capital. Mining Services, I'll give you just a bit of detail around a few of those. The Mining Services, basically, it's the heartbeat of the business. It's what we started with. It's the foundation of MinRes. It's one of those annuity stream businesses, and it just has that margin that comes in. It rolls in every month. The cash inflow from that business is very reliable. Our reputation out there in the industry, as I said earlier, for delivery is probably the best in the market. We're well known for being able to get onto site and we can make things happen in the right way. We've got an exceptional workforce that's been with us a long time, that allows us still in a safe way. We've got some great innovation, which we'll have a look at in a minute. The relationship we got out there with our Tier 1 clients has been around for more than 20 years. When I said we doubled the business, the Mining Services business, from 2019 to '22, we also increased the margin by 14%, which is pretty much unheard of in our industry. I mean, if you're getting 14% in the first place, you're doing well, but we increased it by 14%. We've got 30-plus year contracts out there to underpin all of the development we're doing in the Mining Services. And coming at us, I mean, we're growing Wodgina. We're growing Marion, Onslow Iron, Central Pilbara, Yilgarn. All of those rely on the innovation out of our Mining Services, otherwise, they just don't work. So around the innovation we've got up on the board, you'll notice there's 4 great items that we got there. So those big road trains. They have 3 trailers. They carry the 345 tonne payload we're up to now. We're very close to having the drivers out of them and having them run autonomous. So from 150 kilometers out, we can get our product into port nowadays for about $4.50 a tonne, and we're going to do a little bit better than that. So the cost of running on site, generally, I mean, if you have a look at our accounts, you see the Iron Valley, those sort of places, they run about $8 to $12 a tonne on site. And then the transhippers down the bottom, developed in-house, done an amazing job. We got 5 of those on order now, we've just placed. They signed yesterday for the fifth one, all in the big shipyards up in China. We have to build them in China. We don't have the facilities down here in Australia. Without those 2 innovations, Ashburton would never happen. It can't afford a heavy haul rail line. It can't afford 22 miles of 19 meter deep trench in the bottom of the ocean. Some of the hardest rock in the world. So that's what Mining Services brings to our business and to the mining industry. It's unique. No one else has that equipment. The next gen crushing plant you see out there, those, we can put them on site for about 1/4 of the cost, capital cost of what others can do they perform better. Maintenance is brilliant on them. Gas. So as I said, gas is going to be a critical transitional fuel for MinRes. We are lucky that we have got more gas in the ground up there than most. I mean we own it. It appears that the Lockyer Deep hole that Shelley drilled appears that it is the largest onshore discovery in Australia. We're spending about another $98 million this financial year and boring some more exploration and development holes up there, and we're moving towards trying to start our approvals up for development of it. So about 4.5 kilometers down, we had to go to find the gas. So there are about $15 million holes. So far, our strike rate is 1 out of 1. It's going to provide really low-cost security. I mean, our cost of gas would be less than $2 a gigajoule going forward. So what we can do with that over the next 5, 10 years is we're going to look at a whole lot of down streaming, and we're going to do it way before 5 years. I mean, we're going to go mine some magnetite down in Yilgarn. So magnetite ends up being very fine particles, 30 to 40 microns. If we pelletize those, we're probably 2.5x greener than providing hematite out of the Pilbara. And those pellets, we can take them to Europe, we can take them to Japan, Korea. Most importantly, I mean I want to lessen the dependence that we have on China. I want to spread our risk out there a lot more. So those sort of things are helping me to do it. Having the combination of our innovation, the magnetite deposits that we've got and low cost energy, I mean it adds up to another great couple of business opportunities. Urea and ammonia, we're going to have a look at those as well. And I think if you're outside of WA, I mean, cost of gas out there nowadays, there can be anything from, on the East Coast, $10 or $12 a gigajoule to $70 or $80 when you head over to Europe. I mean it's almost totally unaffordable. So if we build a plant here, I mean, we would probably be the lowest cost producer of urea in the planet. So opportunities galore. Lithium. It's the most important mineral for decarbonization at the moment. We identified lithium as a key component that we wanted to get strong in about a decade ago. So about 2010, '11, I got involved in Mt Marion. We've turned into a world-leading hard rock miner. We've got a huge amount of experience now. And boy, we earned it. Building that Mt Marion plant and then following it up with Wodgina, we spent a lot of money. We designed them ourselves. There was nowhere in the world you could go to design these plants because they hadn't been done before, but we've designed them and built them. So they're going to be a huge part of our business going forward for the next 50 years. The market for lithium -- and I mean I know you read in the paper now and then, someone coughed up in China the other day, and the market dropped 5%, which is amazing. I hope all of you bought shares in it. We get the odd commentary out in the market. Goldman Sachs seem to have a thing about getting it right one day. And I'm sure in the next 30 years, one of the years, they'll be right. But I don't think we should -- please don't write that down. EVs, they're becoming standard. This is kind of the transition from the horse and cart to the combustion engine. We're going through that again now. Probably by about 2035, there probably won't be any countries in the world allowing combustion engines to be built. As I said, we've only just started on this journey in the last couple of years. A lot of countries haven't come out with their plans and what they're doing. You're going to see, over the next 12, 18 months, a multiple of countries come out and go, "We don't want combustion engines on the road," probably around '35 onwards. Some of them are coming out sooner than that, Volvo only a few years away. As this picks up momentum, there's going to be more and more demand for lithium product. At the moment, there's way more demand than there is supply. And to bring these mines online, I mean WA would be one of the better places to bring them online, but if we wanted to go from finding dirt to having a hydroxide plant running, it's about 6 or 7 years duration. So I mean, if we've got 7 years in the sun, we're going to have a lot of fun. We do like it. When you've been on the other end of it with iron ore, when there's more iron ore out there than they know what to do with and the price drops, but finally, we found a product that we're going to get a bit of payback with. Interestingly enough, the Mt Marion and Wodgina mine are forecast to produce about 29% of the world's supply at the moment. So we're significant. The Mt Marion mine, quite simply, it's a JV with our great partner, Ganfeng, out of China, currently doubling that capacity. We're taking it from 450,000 to 900,000 of mixed product grade. It's about 600,000 equivalent at 6%. The reason we do that is that when we have different grades, it means that we're really scavenging the tail, and we're pulling out an awful lot more lithium units than what's traditionally been done in the past. So land down there, about 90% of our land down there is unexplored, never had a drill rod in it. We know that there's more down there. We're going to do a bit of a focus over the next 12 months for trying to understand what more of the ore body looks like so we should have more good news coming. We've got an agreement with our friends at Ganfeng to toll treat our dirt. That runs through to the end of this year, and we're probably going to kick it out another year. We're still trying to figure out what the best way is in the long term to make sure that we can deliver our rock to end users. And that needs a little bit of work. I mean we want to make sure that we are involved in the whole supply chain. So Mt Marion's been going well. Wodgina, JV with Albemarle, they're the largest lithium producers on the planet. Another great partner. We restarted production earlier this year. We've got a huge resource up there. Again, it's open on 3 sides. We've only gone down about 500 meters with the drill rods. We're very confident there's a big feeder under the deposit, and there's a lot more to be had. So I mean, when we got to the largest deposit in the world, we kind of pulled up the drill rigs and decided that we'd just go build a plant. Train 1 and 2 up there, full production, performing exceptionally well. I mean I look at the report some days, and we're probably running about 130%, 140% of the nameplate capacity. So going strong. Negotiations with Albemarle. I've been restructuring that deal. It's taken a while. I mean, the deal was done months and months ago, and that's sort of locked away. Just going through the detail on -- we're operating in 3 different taxation jurisdictions. We've got different rules with where we're processing. So we have to put product over into China and out of China. It's extremely complicated, but we're close to having that into a binding agreement. We are operating as if the deal was done. So there's no -- there's been no rush for us to do it. We're producing, and we've got all of the production until the end of next year all locked away to be turned into hydroxide. So I mean, all that's running well. I mean at the end, when we get to binding, probably, I'm thinking about mid-December, it will be 50/50 Wodgina, 85/15 in their favor down at Kemerton, and then the marketing is basically going to stay with Albemarle, but we control the value of it. So all of our product is going to be marketed on the indices. We don't have any long-term contracts. We don't have any contracts that were locked in from the past. We pretty much take advantage of the spot price going forward. But that's the nature of MinRes. That's what we've always done. We don't go out and hedge the U.S. dollar, and we don't go and hedge products. So we just take the money on the day. And on a rising market, it's a good ride. So somewhere, I'm sure that we'll have to rethink that. So we're going to have joint ownership of that downstream production, and we haven't figured out where that's going to be yet, but there's no rush, again, because there's plenty of capacity out there where we can toll treat all the dirt we're producing. The reason there's a lot of capacity is most of us in the lithium business have decided that we don't just want to be spot sellers anymore. We want to be hydroxide producers. So we basically stop selling it to the open market. Again, we want to bring most of those benefits back home to WA. So hydroxide. This year, we produced about 11,500 tonnes so far. So it's going well. I think in our last quarterly we published, we averaged about 77,000 a tonne, which is a pretty good result. We're targeting 118,000 tonne minimum within 5 years from now of production. So that puts us sort of right up there on the stage. And there are other opportunities sitting out there. We are looking at them as they come along, and I have no doubt that we'll be able to secure a few more of those. My wish is that I want to build the next hydroxide plant up at Wodgina here in WA, and I want to make sure that the capital cost to be a little more, but having it operating here in WA, I mean, we're going to have a high-quality product. It's highly acceptable to the world. it's probably -- it would attract a premium because it's from WA, because it's a very, very ethical product. I think that we'll probably get that over the line, but we're probably 3 or 4 months away from knowing where that's going. We do have a really strong alignment with both the state and federal government. We're talking to them about what our plans are, and we are well and truly aligned about trying to keep everything we can here in Australia. Iron ore, critical to MinRes going forward. A lot of people say: "Why would you invest in iron ore when you can go invest in lithium?" I go, "Because I'm doing both." I mean I can't invest any more than what I'm doing right now in lithium. Another one come along, I'd grab it, but we are doing both. You may notice if you have a look back over the last 40 or 50 years, the foundation commodity that has created the world's top 3 or 4 mining companies on the planet are all heavily weighted towards iron ore. It's a cash generator. Once you get it operating, it's relatively simple. There's not a lot of technology in being an iron ore miner, so we're going to develop more deposits going forward. The long-term cash generation out of it's highly predictable. It's a little bit like Mining Services. You've just got to make sure that you've got your total cost FOB at the right level, so that in all cycles, you're going to make money. The new mines that we're doing are going to be that. So Onslow, I'll just run through that quickly. It's a world-class asset. We've started construction out there. There's about 3 billion tonnes. That's sort of the last region in the whole of Australia where you can put a supply chain into that area and unlock a whole bunch of tonnes. There's over 3 billion tonnes sitting in there locked up with no way of getting them out. The project we're developing out there, 35 million tonne for the first phase, totally dust free. So the ore doesn't see the light of day from when it goes in the big jumbo road trains until it's 22 miles offshore with the transhippers discharging into the big cape carriers. So we're very, very conscious of what sort of footprint that we leave behind. We're conscious about the communities that we work in. So going to be a great project. The road trains are going to be running on a dedicated haul road. There'll be nothing but our big trucks on the haul road. And by the time we get there, they'll be fully autonomous. So no drivers, which will give us a safer operation. Not having humans involved with those is a good thing, and consistency, so they don't have to stop for lunch breaks. We've got a 30-year life just on this Red Hill deposit alone. And then outside of that, between us and our partners, we've got a huge amount more ore. So somewhere down the track, we're probably going to be looking at a stage 2 up there, probably adding another 20 million to 25 million tonne. Strong partnership with Baowu out of China, a great partner, largest steel maker in the world; again, POSCO out of Korea, another very, very strong partner; and AMCI from the U.S. So the whole project, basically funded by MinRes, designed and built by MinRes and we'll operate it for the life of the mine. We'll also have -- so the joint venture only extends to the mine site. From the mine gate out, it's all Mining Services. So we'll own 100% of the infrastructure. We charge them nearly $8 a tonne for every tonne that runs over the infrastructure. We charge Mining Services for the big road trains, the transshippers, the port services and the big next-gen crushing plant. So that again all goes into Mining Services. So we've got the protection of having all those Mining Services in-house. Our joint venture partners have got the luxury of having the benefit of the low cost that all of those assets bring to the table. Pilbara Hub, we were awarded, finally, after 9 years, I think, of perseverance, the last cape carrier berth in the inner harbor in Port Hedland. It's known as South West Creek. We got the majority of that. Hancock got a minority share in it. We use that as a currency. We sat down with Hancock, who we've dealt with for many, many years, and we put together a really good 50/50 joint venture where we're sharing the rail and the port. It will be ran as one. So that will give us about 20 million tonnes of capacity for as long as we want it. Total capacity going out of Port Hedland after we do our build, about 660 million tonne, to give it some context. So a low-cost solution. We've got Marillana sitting out about 300 kilometers out. It's a really great ore deposit. We've done a lot of work around understanding the metallurgy on that. So it will come out of Marillana, down to the Mulga hub onto a train and then into Port Hedland on a cape carrier. So about as low a cost as we can get. So another good project. So that's sort of a roundup on our business. Sorry if I bored the hell out of you for a while, but I guess if you're going to come here, it's important to know what we're going to do moving forward. We've had some big achievements over the last 30 years, and in particular, as we've sort of -- we've changed the business, I've changed it a lot over the last 5 or 6 years, and we're sort of getting our time in the sun now. So we've got the balance sheet, we've got the cash. Most importantly, we've got the people. So we're going to continue delivering a lot of value in Mining Services to our Tier 1 clients. Interestingly, these big road trains, the off-highway road trains, we've put them into a couple of external clients, and huge benefits they're bringing to them already. So we can tie together with those our crushing and our ore haulage, and we can even do something around being able to put ore on ships for them. We'll continue to be focused on innovation going forward. Innovation's the thing that sets us aside from the rest of the industry. It helps us be market leaders, and it helps us deliver low-cost solutions to our clients. And if we can do that, then they allow us to have some margin. Balance sheet, as I said, we've got balance sheet strength at the moment. We have always been careful with it. We will always be careful with how we allocate our cash, what sort of return we want when we spend our cash income. As I said earlier, our return on invested capital, my expectation is we're going to be doing about 50% better than what we've done over the last 16 years, moving forward over the next 5. People will remain our single biggest focus, because if we've got the people and the bench strength, we can pretty much do anything we want. So pretty excited about where we're going over the next couple of years. I mean this time next year, I have to stand up here and tell you that I'm delivering on a lot of these things. So fingers crossed that everything keeps going in the same direction. So I appreciate the support from everyone, from all our shareholders. Thanks for coming along and welcome any questions if anyone wants any more detail around where we're going.

[ Greg Baker ]. There's a big comment in the press about splitting out the lithium division. Can you comment on that at all?

Yes, sure. Where do I start with that? So our friends in the media occasionally figure out how to run the business for me, and they come up with some amazing ideas. And we look, we certainly take them all on board. But look, I mean I think everyone will appreciate there's like every 6 months at the moment, the world is changing. I mean the place has never been in more turmoil than it is right now with what we've got happening right across the planet, and God help us. I mean we got Trump going to have another run for the White House. Every 6 months, it's different out there. So I know what I'm building right now. I know how much cash I need for it. I've got the cash. I know how much income we've got over the next 6, 12 months. What I don't know is what I'm going to be building in 3 and 4 years out. I've shown you some stuff that's in the beauty parade. But with us, it's not unusual for something else will just come around the corner and it's so much better. So when the time comes, I'll figure out how to raise the capital. I've got a lot of levers to pull, but at this point in time, I am not in a position to say that I'm floating off Mining Service or lithium or anything. I mean, our strength comes from where we kept all these beasts together. But -- and I'm not going to stand up here and say I'm not doing it either, by the way, because you just don't know what's going to happen. But I mean I'll have a look in the crystal ball after Christmas, and I can promise you this. If we go down the path of doing something other than what I've told you about today, we'll get it out to the public very quickly. Derek's got a few questions, have you?

Yes. There's a couple that have come through online.

Have you vetted them, Derek? Give me the easy ones.

I'll try. The first one is, why shouldn't our existing iron ore mine -- sorry, this is from Noel Johnson in Queensland. Why shouldn't our existing iron ore mines be closed? Iron ore prices have fallen dramatically. MIN suffers large discounts against the Platts index. Prices have been as low as 50% of the index. Our existing mines are very high cost, while the lowest 3 cost major miners are all increasing reduction.

Yes, good question. We have, with our balance sheet years ago. I mean we started with tiny little s***** deposits because that's all we could get. As we've been able to grow and raise more money, we're getting bigger and bigger deposits. So we're currently now transitioning out of a very low production, high cost operating mines into long-life, low-cost mines. It takes time to transition. So I'm hoping I'm going to turn on Ashburton end of '24 (sic) [ '23 ], and I'm going to make sure -- and these mines, too, by the way, that the high-cost mines, I mean, they made us a lot of money over the years. I mean they've had their time in the sun, and they're still producing cash for us today. So if they got into a position where they were going to hurt the business, I do what I've always done, and we'd shut down parts of them or all of them. I'm not scared to shut them, but at the moment, there's no point in doing that. They're generating cash. And if everyone notices, I mean, you have a look why the price of iron ore has been a little bit low. I mean China is still in this shutdown mode. They -- every time something happens in Shanghai or somewhere, they shut the city down when COVID comes along. So they're predicting over the next couple of months, they're going to sort of move away from that. If they do move away from that, if you look at every economy that's come out of COVID, they all go out there and they just spend a lot of cash, cash that they can't repay. But I'm highly confident that we'll survive with the mines that we got now, and we'll transition under the big ones.

His second question is, why is MIN's return of dollar per tonne lithium so low compared to the auction prices being claimed by Pilbara Minerals?

Okay. So really simple. I mean, you might notice that Pilbara Minerals sell -- about once a quarter, they might sell 4,000 or 5,000 to 6,000 tonnes. And that's because generally in this industry, all of our production is spoken for in different ways. So they've got long-term contracts. They're probably getting a small amount away. Most of the other big guys out there have got long, long-term contracts. They got legacy contracts. We're the only ones that are sort of sitting out there that don't have them because we're always a spod seller. We've stopped selling spod. When we sell our spod now, I mean, put simply, we have to sell it to ourselves. So we sell it from Australia out to China, to ourselves, and then we have to go and get a downstream processed because that's the only place that you can get it done. So the price that you will see -- others out there have to sell it at a lower number because some of them might be selling the hydroxide for $40,000 a tonne because they've got legacy contracts. Some are selling for less than that. So that supply chain is kind of managed with those legacy contracts.

The third question is, MIN's being priced as a lithium miner. If the lithium arm is separated into a separate company, will the remainder of MIN be anywhere near as profitable?

Yes. Not going to elaborate on that, Derek. So we do have a lithium, by the way, and it's probably not going to separate from us. The iron ore, it will be -- by the time we get through to, look, 18 months out from now, the iron ore will be producing a lot of cash. We've got the gas business coming on. The Mining Services has always been an absolute bull terrier. So the answer is, yes, our balance sheet will keep growing. Our market cap, I expect, will keep growing. I'm not going to do anything that is going to reduce the value of the business. I'm going to continue to grow it.

And his last is just a comment. Congratulations on many years of hard work in developing MIN to its current size. My fellow investors at AIA have been discussing MIN and investing in the company for several years, and thank you for the large profits.

My pleasure. Derek, did you write that?

Last question. Sorry, the next question is from David Tobias. So he's saying -- he's asked, how will the Biden administration's legislation encouraging U.S.-sourced battery minerals effect MinRes?

Look, we're encouraging -- trying to encourage our Australian government to follow suit and put some incentives in to try and make sure that we keep our business here in Australia. Other than that, I don't see it having much of a role with us. But I think that generally speaking, I think our federal government and our labor government are very, very keen on being able to develop these assets into much longer stream assets here in Australia. So that's what our aim is.

Thank you. That's all we have from online, Chris.

We're done. Okay. There's food out in the foyer. If no one's got any other questions, thanks to everyone for coming. Thank you for my -- all the support I get from my Board over the year. Thanks for the times that my senior staff put up with me, and thanks to all the shareholders. But -- and to all our employees in the business, if any of you are listening, outstanding result to all of you. Well done, and we're going to do it again. Thanks, everyone.