Mineral Resources Limited (MIN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome. I'm Chris Ellison, Managing Director of MinRes, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about our first half. Mark's going to join me in -- for the financials, and then I'll come back and give you a rundown on where we're taking the business over the next couple of years, actually, the next 2 to 5 years. What you just saw is something we're awfully proud of our biggest project that we've done to date. We're only about -- so we're in late February now. In March, we start haulage. We're only a couple of months away from first ore-on-ship. That project and today's values is going to turn out about $2.5 billion EBITDA a year for us for the next 50 or 60 years. So great project. We'll talk about the first half overview. At the AGM, I said, this year, '24 is all about project delivery, and that's what we're focused on, working hard obviously on getting the lithium mines in the shape. We've had a pretty strong first half revenue, $2.5 billion. So we're up a touch on that. EBITDA at $675 million, that where we thought we'd landed and we've got a one-off capital gain of $333 million, which sits a bit more cash in the bank. Dividend, we're going to be fairly subdued on the dividend this year. So we're trying to be under the feedback we're getting on the balance sheet. I mean, believe it or not, we get the balance sheet still after 33 years. We've done them well. But we're trying to show that we've got extra discipline, so $0.20 dividend for the first half. We always pay and I don't know why look for the last 20-something years, our first half is always much lesser than the second half. And that's on everything. It's on tonnes produced, it's on EBITDA, it's on dividend. So we're not going to disappoint this year. So since 2019, we produced a ROIC of around 19%. That's a little bit behind where we'd like it to be. But its behind because we've got a huge amount of cash that's packed and not producing [indiscernible], and we're still ramping up the 2 mines. Total shareholder returns, which we listed in 2006, it's sitting around about 33%. Mining Services in the first half reduced about almost 140 million tonnes. Contract book is growing. We've got 3 new contracts -- sorry, 5 new contracts and 3 contracts renewed. And typically, what happens in our business is we'll go out and we'll get 20, 25-year contract stake. We've been out of the [ granites ] for 20-something years, they give us 2-year contract. Generally, what happens is you get somewhere around 3, 3- to 5-year contracts because the guys that are running the WI division or whatever don't have the authority to go any further. So don't always measure by the length, we contract how long it's actually going to last. So in CY '24, we're adding 8 million tonnes in JV projects. A lot of people like [indiscernible] but they're actually JVs and we have got 9 million tonnes of external. So we're up about 13% year-on-year. Engineering Construction is going like a train. That's our latest pillar that was added to the business. We sort of pulled that out of the -- there's mining service area, and I've got that reporting directly to me. It's standalone, but it's a powerhouse of a pillar. And it literally builds our future -- it's the only. I think we're probably the only mining group in Australia that has the sort of horsepower. We've got into -- it's got all design engineering construction. Those guys have played out of the mine were winding up on some -- expansion we've done on the lithium and ended building on so on. We've got a lot of people out there. Iron ore average price 111 tonnes discounts come up on the iron ore. Underlying EBITDA in the iron ore business, $266 million compared to $37 million going about 12 months ago. Focus on the iron ore. As you know, we're running shorter life, high cost type operations in our iron ore business. Hence, the reason we're growing into Onslow Iron, which is exactly the opposite, that focused on cost control. Lithium, the shipments across the board were up, 186 million tonnes of SC6. So we're up 38% on the lithium year-on-year. While the prices were elevated, we put about 100 pieces of yellow kit into Wodgina and into Mt Marion, elevated our costs substantially, but we went in there and done a once in a lifetime mine pre-strip. So we basically in English, we took the top off the mountains and really hacked into that and got it back to a life of mine that's much more manageable and more cost efficient. We've just pulled a heap of the gear out of Marion and that pretty strip will run through until -- about June, July up at Wodgina. But we took advantage of the higher prices to get that done. Closed the Albemarle deal again. Some would say for that fourth, fifth or sixth time to close that. We now own 50% of Wodgina. We have no other JVs with Albemarle and we banked about $600 million. And we took control of the Bald Hill lithium mine. And we've been really focused now in the first 3 months. We're really tiering the costs out of that and getting it sorted into a MinRes condition. Energy, we drilled Lockyer-3 during the half, another very successful appraisal well, and we continue to find a lot of gas up in the Perth Basin. People and safety. Overlying the most critical part of our business, we're very people focused, we're very people orientated and we are all over the well-being of our people, and I'll talk about that a little bit more. But it's all about getting the best people in the industry and being able to keep them for a long, long time, people retention in our industry are critical. You read about it regularly that people -- good people are hard to get. Any people are hard to get. We're sort of at the forefront of the mining industry, the way we've gone about it. Our safety and the safety that we produced at 1.9 TRIFR, I mean, that's like a jewelry shop. I believe I got 7,500 people out there throwing around rocks all day. So our total recordable injury frequency rate at 1.9%. I mean, it's better than the mines department. That's supported by a huge amount of in-house training that we're continuously doing, and it's also coupled to the culture that we have in the business. We've had an incredibly strong work ethic, but looking after yourself and your mates is really prevalent. Workforce at the moment, say 7,250. We're going to be around 10,000 people by the end of '25. As I've said, really focused on the well-being of our people and the environment we put them in and say, get office platinum well rated, it's probably the best office in Australia. But the productivity we're getting out of it, the results we've had since we moved into have been second to none. We have no work from home policy because we provide a really great environment. Food, gym, baby sitting, day care -- and about in May, I'm going to open a day care. I bought the building next door, and we're going to have another -- we've got about 20 kids we can accommodate at the moment. That's going to grow out to 130 by May of this year. And people are paying around $180 a day after tax cash out of their pocket. We're going to bring that down to $20 a day for them. So we just continue to add benefits so that we can just get good people and keep them and make sure that we care about them a lot on site. We restored -- start accommodation you saw on the screen. Every room that we're installing from now on is capable of housing capital, so we're looking for a really different culture in the mining industry, safer, friendly for females. Great facilities, and we're giving them a home away from home. So in other words, they can go back to their -- instead of living in their little ship [indiscernible], they go back to a 31 square meter room with a beautiful on-suite laundry, all the trimmings -- they will get a barbecue on the balcony. And it's like a home for them. So they have their own alcohol in the room and it's a bit like going home if you're living in the city. But again, just really growing that culture. Turnover in MinRes over the last 2 years is literally just over halved. So we're getting the results we're looking for. We're building a diverse workforce. We've got over 200 apprentices grads and trainees in the business that grows as the number of people on the payroll grow. We've just had our little ceremony for our apprentices down in Kwinana, signed on 23 apprentices this year. 37% of those were female. So really [ signing kids and girls ], just over 3.5% of our workforce is Indigenous and 23% are female. And that's a better number than it sounds because we've grown this business over the last 5 to 6 years. We've multiplied this thing by about 5x. So we're adding a lot of people, and we're really getting the balance of our female participation up. Big focus on mental health. We were the first in the industry to recognize that FIFO and taking people away from their family does call mental health issues. We've been addressing that for the last 3 years, and we're really doing stronger on that, brought in a psychologist 3 years ago. We're growing that department, added a number of psychologists over the last 12 months. We're just moving off our external help, and we're bringing 7 more psychologists on board to do rotational work on the whitespace, really going to count on that. And we've extended our medical services. So we've got medical services in head office. We do all our own medical testing and making sure that everyone is fit for work and safe and healthy. And we've recently opened a GP Center and nurse aid. If you're not feeling good, you can back down and see the local doctor. We've got how many 5 doctors and 4 nurses on the payroll now addressing mental health, physical health right across the board. Sustainability. Something we're really, really paying a huge amount of attention to and over the next 12 months you'll see this area grow an awful lot. We're fortunate in WA. We're in probably the world's most ethical jurisdictions. So the way we think about our people, the way we look after them and care for them, we don't have slave labor, obviously. Working conditions for our people, we're sort of at the top of the charts. Environmental management and capability around managing and operating mines were the best in the world. That is WA, the WA industry. We're focused over the next 10 years on natural gas, solar and wind. Those are the things that we control. Those are affordable. We're putting them in. We're really aiming to get down to 50% of our emissions gone by 2035. We're going to do what everyone does. We're aiming for 0 emissions by 2050. But to get there, we need someone on the external like a Chevron or a VP to produce some green juice for us. In the meantime, we're looking at a whole range of things in one manner. The solar farm we've got out there now it's in full gear. It produces all of our power on day shift, so enough power to fire up about 670 homes. The entire site on day shifts, good night time, we're going to turn the gensets on. We've taken delivery of an electric hybrid front-end loaded recently. First in WA, and that's reduced our emissions by about 45%. So these are the sort of things that we're going to grow into the business over the next 2 or 3 or 4 years. We've got studies running right now on battery-powered jumbo road trains. So we're running a couple of hundred on-highway road trains. We get out to -- I think we get out to about 180 -- 330 tonne road trains by the end of this year -- by this calendar year. So we're out there is one of, if not the biggest in the world, I'm running these on and off-highway road trains, so got a joint venture with Ganfeng. Ganfeng, on the top 4 battery manufacturers in China. We got a JV with them, and we're trying to figure out that we're not trying to do any new technology here. I mean, as you know, cars run on batteries. I'm just trying to figure out how to get the bank of batteries, getting out of these trucks in about 10 to 15 minutes, so that we can keep them cycling. And look, we're hoping to have all of our trucks battery operated within the next sort of 3 years. We're looking at a lot of solar power on the Onslow Iron project, and we're looking at electrifying our diggers and dump trucks. All of these things are highly possible. Around our traditional land owners. We're looking out there at growing partnerships we've recently put in. I mentioned it a while ago, we're putting up a facility for $25 million where we guarantee them they go out and borrow money by -- using by yellow goods, and we're out there awarding contracts $20 million, $30 million contract. So what we're trying to do is get the traditional land owners in all the regions. We live up to our standard of living. We've got to get there, and we've got to do that sooner rather than later say we're really focused on making sure that our traditional land owners have got long-term sustainable jobs. They got guaranteed income and they can live the same standard life as the rest of us. I mean, they're not doing that at the moment. We really haven't done a good job on that over the last 30 or 40 years. So we're picking up the pace on that. First half '24 performance. Mining Services, almost 140 million tonnes were produced. EBITDA of $254 million. Five new contracts, I said earlier, at 65 million tonnes. What we're producing those tonnes spread across crushing ore sorting, a couple of whole of mine operations, so running mines. And we've got our first fairly major contract. We're moving into Queensland -- so with one of the Tier 1 miners. And we've had 3 contracts that have been renewed, 2 of them are crushing and 1 is crushing and haulage. So probably never been in mining service, has never been in a better time than we are right now. So the mining service is always the powerhouse of the business. I mean iron ore and lithium have their ups and downs, and they produce some pretty good money consistently, but the mining services is just a powerhouse. Iron ore basically production in line with guidance, yield-on 3.8 million tonnes, where FOB, as I've said, high-cost shorter life operations we're running at the moment until we get into Onslow. FOB at 109 down in the Yilgarn was spread out over about 200,000 and multiple pits. Two sites where crushing and producing, 2 sites were relating trains. Pilbara, there are 5 million tonnes, FOB at $74 a ton. But look, those costs are sort of at the upper end of guidance. Within lithium, we use, as I said, the elevated prices to get that pre-strip done at Mt Marion, 150,000 tonnes of SC4, so up 33%. We doubled our reserves down there. Probably need to explain when we drilled out both the big deposits that we got at Marion and Wodgina. When we're done at Marion, I think we had to spend $5 million to $7 million to earn 30% of Mt Marion back in 2010. When I got to that number, we just said the drill rigs off. So Mt Marion is, I think the floor we've drilled down to about 400 meters. It's open in all 4 directions. There's probably 85% of the tenements, they got pigmentation on them, they just have drill rod to them. And we've gone down -- geos figured out there's a couple of probably multiple feed units. So we put some drill rods down about 9 months ago, and we hit 3D unit. We went down 1,200. So there's a lot of lithium down there. We've done the same in another area where they thought it was the same. So we have got a lot -- both these deposits, Wodgina open in all 4 directions and never had a drill rod go beyond 500 meters. We know it goes over 850 meters. We've had one drill rod down there. So there is a lot more than what we're actually saying in our resource and reserves. So we've just recently awarded a contract to Billie Beaumont in Develop. So we're going underground at Mt Marion. And we've just let the first shot off on that recently. It's an 18-month deal to get down about 350 meters. And it's about $45 million. We're going to spend doing that. So eventually, what we'll do once we get down there, will go about 80% open cut for the next 30 years and about 20% underground, and that might vary a little bit, but it keeps our cost balance. A lot of the areas in Mt Marion were running 10, 12, 14 to 1 strip ratio. This going underground really pulls that strip ratio back because when you're pulling those tonnes out, you only bring ore out, you don't go near the waste. So Wodgina we shipped around 90,000 tonnes to 5.8%. And we were up about 41% year-on-year. We sold about 10,500 tonnes of battery-grade chemicals. Reserves are up at Wodgina. Bald Hill, we took control of that on the 1st November. The plant is performing well. We shipped about 20,000 tonnes. Energy in the past 2 years, we've had 2 significant gas discoveries up there. We've got Lockyer and North Erregulla, 2 really big gas discoveries. So when we're drilling up there, we're doing a combination of exploration and development holes. So to bring Lockyer online, we need 10 development wells. So far we're just about to finish our fourth development well. And July of this year. We drilled Lockyer-3 appraisal well. The project is going to happen around August this year. It takes a long time when you're dealing with gas. But we've got -- we've also drilled -- we started drilling Lockyer-5 right now. We're nearly done. So that will be the fourth of the 10 production wells. We've also and I don't think we've announced this before, we've got a lot of oil in that basin. So we've got one small oil well. That's capable of producing really high-quality gas. We've got a very, very large well up there. It's got somewhere between 25 million barrels plus whatever. So the whole we're putting down now, we've just gone through that -- we went through the oil again at about 3,700 meters. So there's an awful lot of oil out there. We're trying to figure out what to do with that, but we're going to try and partnership up with that. And we're going to -- we'll be selling oil for the next 20 years. I mean, I know it's not a great thing, but I just said it 20 years ago, everyone would be very pretty happy, but it's a money machine. Carnarvon Basin, we took Buru Energy up to 25%, and we're finalizing approvals out there so we can get in later this year and start doing seismic and then next year we're going to be up there with the drill rig and take a few holes down. I'll just pause for a while and let Mark come up and run through the financials.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everybody. It's great to be here to walk you through the first half results. As Chris mentioned, we've had a very busy and very productive half and we remain on target to produce a strong result for the year. Starting with P&L, I think this result demonstrates as well as any the strength of the MinRes business model that has strong underlying performance spread across each of the business units despite significant weakening in lithium prices. In terms of the key highlights, as Chris said, lithium contributed $270 million in underlying EBITDA in the half, and that's off higher volumes and focus on costs. Iron ore $266 million, higher prices, lower discounts and mining services, yet another strong performance of $254 million. In the period, as Chris said, we completed both the MARBL restructure and the Bald Hill acquisition. Each of those transactions set us up very well for the future. And as Chris called out, sitting in the statutory results, not the underlying results is an operating profit of $333 million on that MARBL transaction, and Chris referenced the declaration of the $0.20 dividend, which is fully franked. Next slide shows the strength of the underlying performance with respect to volume and costs. You can see their performance is very good. It also calls out the impact of lithium prices to the extent of $755 million over the half for -- offset in part by iron ore at $349 million. In terms of cash flow, I've made this point over a number of years now. MinRes has a great ability to convert its profits to cash. In this half, you can see that, again, a very strong operating cash flow performance. In the half, we continued to invest in strategically in lithium, obviously, in the development of Onslow. As Chris called out, we've released cash from the MARBL transaction, and we've also increased our borrowings. The net result of all that was that cash was pretty much flat period-on-period. In terms of CapEx for the half came in at about $1.5 billion, as we foreshadowed majority of that's Onslow, some increase of spend in lithium. Just again, I've said this a number of times. The CapEx that we're undertaking is investing in assets that will last for decades, and they're going to be very, very high quality. In terms of the balance sheet, this is my favorite topic and those in the room I'm sure. You can see on this slide the growth in the capital employed in the business as we continue to invest. We're currently sitting with over $4 billion invested in assets under development and yet to generate cash. That's for the future. The investments we're taking, they are the decisions we're taking to position the business in the next 20 to 30 years. Sitting within the balance sheet. And again, I've said this before, we've got plenty of opportunity to recycle capital. You would have seen we took advantage of one of those opportunities last night, opportunity presented itself with respect to Azure. I've said previously that we would transact on Azure. We did -- we saw an opportunity. We made a decision. We executed. That's what we do. Nothing more than that. We just executed for certainty. In terms of the road process that we've talked about previously, that's progressing well. I'm very pleased with the level of interest that we're seeing. I think what we're seeing when I talk to the parties that we're engaging with, they see a real opportunity around the strategic nature of that asset. This is a unique asset in a region that has 6 billion tonnes of stranded iron ore. So I'm very confident that transaction will complete this half. We're going to continue to explore other options for recycling capital. We'll continue to do that. And as Chris said also, when you think about the future, we will consider other ways of using capital when we start to develop assets. Chris referenced in the context of energy, for example, how we might go about developing some of our energy assets. We've moved from a position of having to absolutely own every single asset on the balance sheet. But at the risk of laboring the point, incredible strategic value tied up in the balance sheet that we're looking to release. Next slide. Just gives you the bridge to the net debt position at the half, which we guided to recently, pretty straightforward. I just want to spend a few minutes on the credit metrics because I think it's really important that this has understood well. In 2019, we made a decision to pivot our funding strategy away from the Aussie Bank market. We're a business that likes to develop assets, long-life assets take sometimes a number of years to develop those assets. We operate in a commodity environment, obviously. The beauty of the U.S. market is we can access long-dated capital. Our first maturity is 2027. It's more than 3 years away for our first maturity. Azure will have been operating for a number of years. The lithium business will have grown out. Chris will talk through all the other growth that we're going to see in the business. That market is great for our business. We have fixed interest rates. We have very light touch covenants, no financial maintenance covenants. It's very different of the Australian bank market. We've got good credit metrics at 31 December, 2.4x net debt to EBITDA. That will grow. It will peak around June. The cash that we're going to see produced by that Onslow project, we'll see rapid deleveraging. The last time we invested heavily for growth was through the development of Wodgina. We took the gearing up for Wodgina and then you saw rapid deleveraging after that with the transaction. Our intention is to bring the debt back down, which will happen through the natural deleveraging from operations. In terms of guidance, I think this talks to the strength of the performance. Guidance is pretty much unchanged from the guidance we gave at the start of the year. In terms of Yilgan, a slight increase in the lump weighting, but volumes and costs unchanged. In terms of lithium, we're going to sell more spots, so less battery chemicals, cost down a little bit at Marion, but otherwise in line. As Chris said, we've taken over the Bald Hill operations. We're still working through development of the mine plan there. So we're not providing any guidance at this time. We'll do so when we're in a position to -- and mining services just kept ticking along. It's just the powerhouse of this business continues to be very predictable for Mt Marion volumes. And finally, in terms of the outlook, in terms of the CapEx $3.2 billion for the full year, up a little bit, partly because of the lithium and the strip and so on that we've talked about. But I just want to call out a couple of things there. So there's about $100 million that we've also added to support the new contracts and mining services, the great new contracts. As Chris said, these are contracts that can run for years and years. And we're also investing in the underground mining development at Marion. And for context, that development could see us pull 300 million to 400 million tonnes of waste out of that operation over time. So the payoff for that investment is going to be significant. So to close, the strong performance over the half financially, cash pretty much in line with where we started the period $1.8 billion of cash and liquidity at the end of the -- $1.8 billion of cash and liquidity at the end of the period. Plenty of opportunity to release more cash. We're in great shape. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark. This part here, I'm going to run you through where we're taking the business over the next 2 to 5 years. As I said at the beginning, I mean, this is a year we focused on deliveries, so we've got to get first iron ore on ship, and we're going to do that in June this year. I've got a site plan bearing down on us out there at the moment, but like I said, it looks like it's heading out to sea and it's not going to bother us too much. We've moved a few people I've said over the last 24 hours, but those are the sort of hiccups we get operating in the Pilbara. But I mean, delivery is critical to us. We will get this project, and I keep saying it. I mean, I think everybody is expecting us to come out and say it's going to run over time. It's going to run out of the budget. It's not going to happen. We have not run over budget in over 20 years on a project, and this is not going to be the first. These are world-class projects that we're building. But this 12-month period is going to set us up for the next 50-plus years. So if you have a look at what we're building, we're actually building infrastructure and money comes out of earning infrastructure over a long, long term. Mt Marion without drilling too much more, we got more than 30 years, at Wodgina we got more than 50 years, where we're setting up an on-site. In 50 years from now, we're probably going to be spitting out somewhere around 80 million tonnes a year. So I mean, the powerhouse projects, we've got mining service that equate to all of them. If we choose to sell out some of the commodities we're in, at some point in time, we still retain those contracts for life of mine. So we've got each of those business pillars set up awfully well. This next slide, we've got just shows you a little bit about how we think about ourselves and we want to get your thinking in this way. As I said, we have more of an infrastructure organization. So we've had a lot of growth over the last 5 years. They come about fundamentally because I started the business $10,600 cash. And forgive me if I get a bit short when I keep hearing this the ramblings about the balance sheet. But seriously, I started with $10,600 in the bank and a credit card with a $50,000 limit and you think we're running a $12 billion company. You think I don't know how to manage the balance sheet. It drives me insane. I mean we got so many frigging levers we can pull [ the job ]. The vast majority of people in the world are very happy at the way things go. So I think there's about 2% of the population that are just weirdoes. They go get locked up and jail, they break the rules. I mean, don't take this to heart, but there's a few of the -- our investors out there, not so much investors, but there's a few cowboys out there that throw it shouldn't mean it drives me insane, but every now and then, I call them out and everyone goes stop picking on them. You go come on, give me a freaking break. You think we don't know what we're doing. We have got -- I mean, I can go sell half or all road off. But I mean that thing here is going to generate for us about $240 million EBITDA a year. When I get to -- did I say that right, Mark? So when we get out to 50 million tonnes, this thing going to be printing cash, like $400 million a year. And if I said here, let me give you that haul road. It's going to be around for 50 years. I'll give you that haul road, it's going to print a $400 million a year in cash. There's no cost associated, but there's 0 risk. Go and start a business, what can you do with that, start some sort of business off. I mean you got to say that thing. It's got to be 12 times multiple and now under the pressure, at the mind of everyone, whining and bitching, I'm going to go and sell off half of it. Just put the money in the bank and go like f***. So anyway, I've had my thing. Past 5 years, we discovered the high-yield bond market over in New York. We have done 3 bonds. We went over there in 2018. From 2018 through to '22, we grew the business 4.25x. From beginning of '23 to end of '24, we're going to double the business in size. The ROIC that we're pulling out of the business is substantial. I'll talk about that. But anyway, what we're saying here is that if you have a look at it on a global shareholder growth, we've had over the last 4 years, we've grown the share price over 400%, watch the spot. I just said we're going to double this business, double it in volume, double it in EBITDA and long, long-term -- earnings that are going to go on for more than 50 years. I reckon our earnings and our infrastructure will outlast the iPhone. So we've got a really strong customer focus. We started as a contracting business. We're focused on customers. We're focused on delivery. We're developing long-life infrastructure. The boot model that we have, the build-own-operate model and the equipment we have, it's -- we can get it on site fast, but lower cost than our competitors or our clients. We're more efficient. We've got a much lower capital intensity and the safety wrap around what we do, I mean we are the whole package. We're the most enduring, we got all the good ship going on. And we're the partner of choice for all the majors sitting out there. I mean BHP, Baowu, Rio Tinto, we deliver, and we deliver tonnes for them every 24 hours. So in innovation, it's the forefront of everything we do. We've got equipment that our competitors don't have. We've developed in house. We make it. We put down our own mine touch. We test that we get out there in the market. I mean, at the moment, these 330 tonne trucks, we've got $0.04 a tonne kilometer they're moving dirt for and we're making really good margin of them. These things are going ballistic. We're going to have probably 60 of them out in the market by the time we get to the end of this calendar year. Returns focus. So always aiming for a minimum of 20% ROIC. We're going to be at 25% for the time we get to the middle of next calendar year, with average 22% ROIC since 2019. But as said earlier, we've got a lot of capital parked at the moment with those earnings start coming in, they go beyond 25%. And we'll do better than that. The money we're investing in '23, '24 is all going to deliver better than 30% ROIC. So when we get into the energy side of the business, we're up at plus 50% ROIC. Mining Services. As I said, it's the powerhouse of the business. It's a mining infrastructure company. The innovation just drives the business. And we're building assets that are going to be around for 50, 60, 70 years. So some of the key things we've got, you can see on the slide, that's our next-gen modular crushing plants, we can do 5 million, 10 million, 15 million tonnes. We're putting 350 million tonne modules on site at Ken's Bore. It's about just under -- we're about $190 million, give us 40 million tonnes of capacity. If I was out there building that under the normal large mining company strategy and the way they like them, is that they're about $800 million to build the same capacity. If they're doing it themselves with the EPCM contractor where they just -- you get the EPCM contract on your checkbook and it's say, like, go to down, go shopping. It's about $1.5 billion to put 40 million tonnes on site. So our advantage is quite significant. So we can build a 15 million tonne module. We build them offshore about 4 months, 4 to 5 months build. We get them on site, and it's about 12 weeks to put them together. We're about, like I said, we're less in quarter the capital cost for weigh-down on operating costs. That's how we make our margin. There's no real secret to it. Less energy, much more efficient environmentally in terms of noise and dust control. And we can bank them up to make any size that we want. Our supply chain, we're running over 250 on-highway quad road trains. Right now, we've got about 75 of the big 330 tonne Jumbos and we get out to 176 by December. Similar costs of running medium gauge rail, but just a fraction of the capital cost to put a haul rate in and bring these things online. We're going to be autonomous within the next 12 months. That means no drivers. So we pull the drivers out of those trucks and on Onslow Iron at 35 million tonne run rate. So about $100 million a year saving. That goes into our mining services pocket. In the next 2 to 3 years, we want those trucks to be all battery operated. So this is going to be our mission. I mean that will make them really highly sought after. Transhippers, as you can see there, quite a beast that we had been built in the COSCO yard in China. They say they're the best trainshippers they've ever seen and they're unique in their design. Standard materials, handling gear. This whole project, by the way, is dust-free. The first one in Australia to be built completely dust-free. So in terms of looking after the environment, we're right out there. These things here are fully in place. Single point entry with ore going inside them, take about 20,000 tonnes. Don't have to go and spend billions dredging channels and where we are at onsite. Thanks to Chevron. They've already done a channel up there. We only need 7 meters, that've got a 14-meter channel. We only need 7 meters. So these things are mobile, we can put them around the world and an incredibly great piece here. And we're creating a better vital experience in our mining services for all of the industry. Right now, we operate 3 airports of our own, but the time we get towards the back end of this year, we're going to have airports some pretty much every sites. So we can get our own people to site. We are starting our own airline. We've already started bringing charters in. We'll end up owning about 4 A319 jets by the end of this year. But basically we're the only mining company that are flying right now. We're direct out of Brisbane straight into Greensborough, Wodgina, Lawson. Shortly, we'll be coming into Boulder down to Kalgoorlie. So typically, a FIFO worker on the East Coast has to pay their own fears to Perth overnight at their own cost and then they go up to Pilbara the next day. So 1.5 days each way and they got to write money out of their own pocket. We are 5.5 hours from Brisbane direct on to our mine sites at our cost. We're tapping a whole brand-new workforce. We will encourage more people to live on the East Coast because we've got these services, but we are the go-to place for that whole labor pool coming off the East Coast right now. By the end of this year, as I said, all of our 5 will be run by MinRes. And we're doing that because we're going to save tens of -- not hundreds of millions of dollars where we can put our people. Typically what happens, we fly someone up to a Wodgina or Kingsford, they get up there tonight. All overnight, then the next morning, the night shift comes up and they will go on R&R. We're going to reduce our camp sizes. We're going to be able to land our people on site at 5:30 in the morning and they do a shift change at 6 and the night shift hops on the plane and goes home. So we're going to be the go-to place. I mean this thing is going to save us millions of dollars. And I can see a smart one when I said we're starting our own airline, you go, of course, why wouldn't you, never needs an airline and it's not going to be called virgin. I mean we're not -- I am not that good. We got the resort. So within 4 years, every room that we've got on site will be a couples room. So we're going to encourage that female workforce. We're really working hard on making sure that it's a really safe go-to place. And it will be like you're going back to your own little luxury apartment at night when you knock off and we've got all the good stuff there. And by the way, I mean, you might have read in the paper some of the food that's getting around the mining industry, we are serving and have been for years. We serve the best food in the mining industry. We've recently just gone to à la carte on every mine site. I mean, every single mine site we've got a little guy out of Perth, he sets up all of the beams, all the machines, trains them how to be baristas, so we've got [ filter ] coffee on every site. We've got [indiscernible] happening with all of the great food that we're serving. Mining services growth, a little snapshot in here just to let you know how good we are in terms of time. Mining services averages about 20% growth a year. We've done that since 2006. Some years are a bit more. So this year we're in now is going to be a bit -- quite a bit more than 20%. We're really sort of growing out this year. From 2018 to '22, we grew at 19% but we increased our margins by 18%. So I remember I was road showing in 2018 -- 2019 on the bonds in New York. And I told them how much we're going to grow, and they went here, but typically, any business that grows a wash off margin. Next time, I went back and said, guys, we're 18% up on where we were. We've got over $35 billion on our order book, and that's not accounting for work that we've got in hand, but we haven't yet built quite a powerhouse. The business, as I said from beginning of '23 to the end of this calendar year is doubling. So there's a hint in there. If you want to get on board, you want to do it sooner rather than later. This is the strongest growth period -- strongest growth period I've seen in 30 years. It's quite phenomenal, and I don't see any end. And again, in our earnings at the moment, I mean we're going to grow the order book. We're going to grow our revenue. We're going to grow our margin again. Our margin is going to increase. And the world-class assets we're putting in place on our lithium sites on these iron ore sites, I mean and the mix that we're getting out there with the likes of BHP and Rio and all of them, I mean, they're taking a lot of gear offers. The pie chart shows us that 91% of our contracts are in excess of 20 years in duration. That's better than Apple. Engineering & Construction. I broke this off recently and turned it into our fifth pillar. It is our secret weapon. As I said, we're the only ones that can actually go out there and we can go and design and build and operate a plant. I mean, we're recognized for that right across the country. That's why we go to organization, we can control costs. I mean we're building on so on a fixed price. I put that price in place 3 years ago. I'm going to come in with surplus, surplus. I'm not going to run over. I'm going to have change, and you won't be used to that over the last 4 years because everyone that's built a project is all. They've all run over on their budget. I mean it's been tricky to control the supply chain, no doubt about that, and they've all run over time. But we have absolute control. And that's just engineering construction division. I've got people in there that have been with me more than 20 years. I mean we know how to build a plant. We've been building lots of plants for a long, long time. We're running about 2,500 people in the workforce, and they're everything, they're engineers and they're drafters and they're geos and they're mets. So we've got a center of excellence. We're looking at recovery. We're looking at how we can make these plants better, on how we can get more product out of them. At the moment, I don't want to squeeze, but at the moment, we're probably studying somewhere around about $10 billion worth of projects that not all of them, but a lot of them are going to get legs over the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years, and they'll be added. Our focus -- in terms of going forward in the future, our focus is sitting within our core business. I mean, I'm going to grade the iron ore. I'm going to grow gas downstream on gas. I mean, I like the add-ons that go with it. We're just making sure that we're not going to go start exporting LNG through Woodside, where we can get a better, longer return if we're doing methanol or if we're doing urea, so we're having a bit of a quick look at that. I may change direction on, am I definitely going to do LNG? No, I'm definitely not. I'm going to get the best bang for our buck we can out of that gas. I mean, when we get gas out of the ground and through our plant, it's about $0.70 a gigajoule that cost us. I mean, we're at the very bottom of the industry. We're 400,000 north of Perth. We're onshore. We've got a lot of gas. So iron ore, gas, lithium, that's our core business. That's where we're going to be expanded. We're expanding on what we've got. Not a lot of greenfield stuff out there. I'll tell you where we're going shortly on so on. We're unlocking that West Pilbara region. So there's a couple of main regions sitting up in that Pilbara. You've got the Port Hedland region that runs in land, that's got Hancock and FMG and BHP. You come down to the next level, you've got Hamersley Iron, Rio Tinto. So they've got all of that area from dumpy, which runs right through in the top price. This area here, if you have a look down at onsite, this whole region has been locked up. And we're opening that region up. There's over 5 billion tonnes of iron ore sitting in there. It's a great region. We're starting at -- originally got a deal. I mean the government didn't want anyone to export anything out of bonds, so except gas. And we talk them into letting us do it because of our track record and our reputation, and that's only got to do 5 million tonnes a year. So as I've been building, I've gone from 5 to 15 to 20 to 30 and we've changed government. So they've all forgotten we've changed the prime area, it has gone now. So they've forgotten what the original deal is. I've now got them sitting in there going how much am I going to earn? How much of the royalty is coming off? How many people and they completely forgot the petrochem area. That's the reason why I built a big share to make sure that it looks like it's going to be a real clean up. And it will be, it will be a great operation. But so great partners in this thing. So don't underestimate. I got Baowu, they want to do an offtake on all the ore. They've got 3/4 of ours and all of this. They'd like to have 100% of ours. They're the biggest steel maker in the world by 2.5x. We got POSCO in there from Korea and then AMCI from the U.S. But the relationship we got with these joint venture partners is unbelievable, particularly around Baowu. I mean, they are just an absolute powerhouse and great people. How it works? We've got on so on. And we've got a joint venture on the mine site. MinRes is building and operating that JV and the mine site is owned and proportioned by each of the shareholders. MinRes has got about 60.3%. The other 3 have got the balance from the mine gate, well from the crusher and the mine gate, the highway, the tracks, the port, the transhippers 100% owned by MinRes. But the cash that flows out of that. We're going to have first ore on ship in June this year. We're starting haulage in March, as I said. So by June of '25, so first-ore '24, June of '25, we're going to be 100%, 35 million tonnes run rate. By December of '25, we're going to be at 40 million tonnes. And then by December of '26, we're going to be at 50 million tonnes run rate. We've got -- in terms of the mine site, everything is well advanced out there. We're currently in the month of January, we moved 3 million tonnes out there of total material movement. So we're doing pre-strip. We're building stuff and we're getting ore into stockpile ready in front of the crushers. We've got the first of the 3 next-gen crushing plants is in operation. We've got the first big stacker out there, second one, you still one on the track going out. Second one is in Sichuan and the big reclaimer is all in Sichuan heading out there. The haul road, we were late getting the approval on that. We've got multiple fronts running on that. It's going pretty well so far. Fingers crossed that cyclone stays away and it doesn't fringe us. But that's progressing incredibly well. So when we do first ore on ship, we won't be coming all the way up that haul rate, it will still be getting built. It will take sort of around about September, but we will be ramping up. We've got alternate ways around that road that regardless of that we'll have first ore on ship in June, and then we'll be putting more on ship every month from July, August, September, all the way through to June of '25. By the end of this year, those big jumbo road trains will be autonomous. The port, as I said, 100% owned by MinRes. We've got the big share that's almost finished in there, the unloading system, the reclaim system. The ports built the ship leaders on board. So all of that is sort of there and ready. I mean, we're in pretty good shape. In terms of money, how much is things is going to make. FOB costs, so cost -- total cost including capital USD 29 a tonne FOB. So that's pre-onboardship. That's gone up a little bit. We were 26% at the beginning of the project. That's speeded up about $3 a tonne. So the fuel cost has incrementally moved a bit. When we start producing our own oil, we'll be doing deals there. So when we got our own oil, we'll be bringing that deep that oil, it will come back from Asia into our tanks in on-site and in Port Hedland and we'll be bringing that back at an extremely low cost. So for the next couple of years, elevated fuel prices, but eventually, we're going to more than halve those fuel prices. So end of this year, we're running at about $0.5 billion spend on diesel. So we're working towards getting out of diesel, but I'm going to cut my costs more than cut it in half as we go forward. And there's also been inflation. So in that $3, little bit of fuel, but it's mainly inflation in the mining services contracts that pushed that up USD 3 a tonne. So that inflation comes to MinRes. So I don't know it sounds pretty silly, but I mean we've got rise and fall on all the contracts with CPI, so amazing. On to cash flow. As I said, 35 million tonnes per annum. We start at 2 years down the track, we get to 50%. On day 1, the earnings around $2.5 billion a year for MinRes. The CFR cost to China, landed in China, USD 47 a tonne in China, and that includes about $9 per shipping and about $9 for royalties and they're all in U.S. funds. At today's market at $128 a tonne, we will be receiving a sale price of about $107, and that's after it's freight-adjusted and moisture has moved. We're running at about 8% moisture. So actual sale price about $107 a tonne in round numbers, about USD 60 a tonne goes in our pocket. So about $1.9 billion to $2 billion hits the MinRes bank account. As I've said before, we got 4 life of mining services contracts. They produce about $280 million a year of EBITDA and then the toll road has got about $8 a bit a tonne times 35, about $280 million a year income. We get out to 50 million tonnes, we're about $400 million a year that thing will be producing. So when we're running at 50 million tonnes, on today's numbers, about $3.3 billion a year comes into the MinRes office. So if anyone is concerned, they might be stretching the balance sheet a little bit, that's the price. I mean, that thing will be going for more than 50 years. So no matter what happens, I mean, it's just a brilliant project. We've checked a couple of other projects out here for you to compare. We've got these -- the same price has been extracted from Wood Mac, but it just highlights the capability that we have in-house and what we're able to achieve. So Onslow Iron is being built at about 1/3 of the capital cost. So about USD 56 a tonne per capital tonne, it's about 1/3 of what happens out there in the industry. We're doing it in about half the time. When I put first iron ore on ship in June, it will be only 10 months before that we actually got approval to mine the iron ore. So 10 months later, it's going on a ship. FOB $29, CFR $47 payback. So if I use consensus for payback, it's about 2 years, and I get all my money back. If I use the price of iron ore today, it's about a year, I get payback. So -- and that doesn't include anything smart that we're going to do around selling 49% of the haul rate, for example. So by sell part of the haul rate, the payback is ridiculous. We just a little slide up here. I've spoken often about consensus and my high opinion I have with them and how accurate they are at landing the numbers. So I just wanted to show here that they have been absolutely consistent for 10 years. They have never once predicted where the price of iron ore is going in 10 years, not once have they nailed it. So the breakeven out there for the marginal producer in China was around USD 100 a tonne. Iron ore is -- it's a great commodity to be in. I mean, every mining company out there that's got really big has got iron ore as the staple and we've seen some of the big guys out there really screw up their balance sheet, makes some really dumb decisions and all they do is stop and they just let that tie of iron ore, wash over the top of them and drown them in cash. So I mean we're going to be sort of sitting in that sort of position, not too far down the track. We're growing our lithium portfolio. You've read about it in the paper. Everyone is really happy. I've been out there and I've got some chunks of lithium companies and we've done some really good stuff over the last 12 months. We're the largest hard rock operator in the world, largest hard rock operator in lithium. We got 2 Tier 1 deposits to hit around that. We're the only company out there in the world that's operating 3 hard rock mines. We've got Wodgina, of course, 50-50 with our great partners in Albemarle. We got about 217 million tonnes in resource. It's one of the top 3 deposits on the planet. And as I said, it's open in all directions and it's open at depth. We know that we've only gone down about 500 meters. We know it goes beyond 850 meters. We suspect it goes beyond 1.25 case. It will eventually one day be an open pit underground mine. We're doing some work over the next couple of years on both of them on drilling them out. So right now, we've got train 1 and 2 basically running at full capacity. Train 3 runs well. So we automate will turn Train 3 on and turn 1 off and do maintenance on it. So all 3 trains are operational, 2 of them were feeding with fresh role to Train 3. We kind of pulled up on it, and we're really not in a hurry to turn that on. We're just going to park up and we'll sit and have a look and see where the price goes and when the price is okay when we'll be bringing that on stream. I did say a while ago that we're going to start bringing that online about now, but we're not. We're just going to sit and wait and when China decides they're going to pay us enough for it, we'll turn it on. So our FOB cost, what we're aiming for on these sites, you've got to remember, we've been in the thing. This is my third down cycle I've gone through in lithium. So it's not new. When we -- we're normally used to operating in an environment we're getting around USD 455 to USD 600 a tonne for our product. Where it's been has just been absolutely magic. It's like when iron ore goes to $200 a tonne, but we all know it's not going to last. I think in the long term, it's a $2,500 environment that we'll be sitting in. Right now, we're a bit under $1,000. I think that it's going to get a bit better over time, no doubt when we get through to. I think once we get through Chinese New Year, we'll see a bit of a lift in the price. I think incrementally it will grow over this year. Our aim is to be at Wodgina Mt Marion by around about middle of this year. So we get out of the prestrip. We've got out of the pre-strip at Mt Marion. We're going to be still running that through to about the end of June up at Wodgina. So -- about USD 320 to USD 330, USD 340 a tonne, that's where we want to be with both the sites, and that's where we will become June, July. We'll get there a bit quicker with Mt Marion. Train 4 is scheduled to come online around about mid-'26. But again, as I say, we're going to flex these with -- depending on market and supply -- the supply-demand chain certainly not going to turn it on and put more ore in the market than we can sell. Mt Marion, 50-50 JV with Ganfeng. Designed, built and operated as 100% mining services contract. So we run the whole thing. We make our margin off that. About 66 million tonnes down there in reserve. But as I said, there's about 85% of this thing that hasn't been drilled out. And we've hit 2 feeder zones. So feeder zone is this thing like if you can imagine the cyclone coming up in the [indiscernible], they generally -- and these nature of ore bodies, you get these feeder zones, we're down, 2 of them down at Mt Marion. We've got a lot of work to do around the drilling. But I expect these -- the reserves down there to double if not triple over the next sort of 18 months to 2 years. So I mean they're both long, long sites. We've got through the plant upgrades down at Mt Marion basically where we did a -- we went from 2.9 million to 3.8 million tonnes a year on the upgrade. We're going through the process of adding wins and flotation down there over the next 18 months. So it's going to scavenge a lot more recovery, and it's going to increase the final product. So about 700,000 tonnes of SC 4.5 by around July '25, by the time we get through to July '27, about 900,000 tonnes of SC 5. So some growth down there, but gradual. I mean, these plants are difficult to operate. So gradually growing that. FOB cost down there is going to be around about 325 by July. Pre-strip down at Marion is finishing as we speak. We're relocating about 130 people off-site. Most of them are gone there, and about 40 pieces of yellow gears all getting removed. And in fact, we moved a lot of that stuff over to Bald Hill. So Bald Hill, it's 100% win rates there. We took it over in November 1. I haven't told the market how much we pay for it and probably never going to, so stop asking. It does 150,000 tonnes of spot a year, great little plant. We've got about 270 people down there we've onboarded. They had a pretty good culture down there. We brought in a lot of minres here, and we put our management in there. We've got mine planning in there at the moment. We're drilling the crack out of the thing. And over the next 4 to 6 months, we'll come out with a mine plant and we'll come out with the resource. The resource for advertising down there is basically what we knew was there in 2018. So we haven't got anything more to go on. So there's no geo-compliant anything down. So any numbers you see on it, they just -- at the moment, it's purely guess. So I don't take them as read. And we're also -- so we got all the high gear off site. We put 8 dump trucks now a couple of minres diggers. We're commissioning a crushing plant and they had a contract, and you believe that flick-off contractor down there, it wasn't us. So they have got the flick-off site. So we've got a bunch of drill rigs down there, mine planning and resource upgrade is coming. Mt Marion, we are heading underground down there. Now we've got Billie Beaumont mobilizing the site. That will run at about an 80-20 split on underground versus open pit for the next 20 or so years. With those feeder zones, we're able to go out and announce the doubling of the reserve at depth. So we're saying that we've got about 19 million tonnes at depth. We've got an awful lot more than that, but it is what it is. So we're doing definition drilling down there. Over the next 18 months, we're targeting to get that underground reserve up. And about September this year, we're going to have a complete refresh on a reserve and resource across our lithium business. Underground study will be complete by April and we'll be mining in earnest by about mid-'25 down there beating the mill. With the lithium growth, just basically showing where we think we're heading over the next sort of 5 years, we're building 1 of the largest lithium businesses in the world. Recent investments that we've had across the board, setting us up for significant growth. I did have a slide in here showing how much land we've accumulated over the last 12 months, but then I pulled it at the last minute because I don't want to share that with our opposition, but look, come around June. I'll be able to show you just what we have accumulated in terms of land holdings and lithium rights with the gold miners then the like. So within the next 4 years, we're targeting 1 million tonnes attributable to MinRes. And on a longer-term -- we're also the only company in the world, believe it or not, that doesn't have any offtake. So we don't have our product where it's committed to anyone. So our business is sort of wide open up done that because I believe that the offtake is worth almost as much as owning the mine. I mean, I think they're going to wake up to that shortly because a lot of organizations out there, whether your OEMs or whether you're making cathodes and making energy storage equipment and assets, the most important thing you have to have is surety of supply. Price is secondary. So we're selling on the spot market. I mentioned a while ago that within the next couple of years, we're going to have a big flotation plant down in the gold fields. We're going to do it sooner than then we've advanced. Look, I think in the next month, we're able to make an announcement by heading down the path with a big float down in that region. The idea of that is all of these little shareholdings we gather out, I mean I'm going to go out to the juniors and we're going to be able to offer them a tolling service. And where we take some ownership of their deposit, and we told we did, and we'll be able to move that debt. And just to give you some context that I said earlier, processing spot is awfully tricky. It's not like doing copper or zinc or I mean, all of that stuff is really easy. This is really difficult. So there's a certain percentage of the debt that we put through dense media plants that just doesn't perform, and it goes straight to tail. So all the Galaxy plant, Bald Hill, Mt Marion, those tails got of full of product, you need flotation, you get that out. And then a lot of these smaller projects that are sitting out there 8 million, 10 million, 12 million, 15 million tonnes that will never be viable. You will never be able to support a plant. So we'll be able to offer that service. And that's what I'm heading on shortly. And finally, we're out looking around the world at a range of opportunities with these downstream, as I mentioned, so people that are out there making batteries and making stuff where they're committing to needing product for the next decade or 2 out, and they need a lot of it. We're looking to do a partnership with one of them. So I expect to be able to do something around that over the next 3 or 4 months. Natural gas. It's a transition field. We need it. It's going to be a moneymaker. It's going to be a cash cow. We are the largest onshore holders of land in both the Perth Basin and the Carnarvon Basin. So the 2 of the most significant areas in WA. Perth Basin 7,300 square meters. We've got 2 major gas discoveries up there, and we've got a major oil discovery. We're building a pathway to production. We're going to develop a gas plant, somewhere around 160 to 250 TJs a day. We're going to put $500 million into the plant. We're going to put about another $350 million into these production wells we're drilling right now and the connecting pipelines. We're looking at a whole range of ways of getting the best value out of the gas. As I said earlier, urea, methanol, LNG plants, all on the drawing board. We'll figure that out probably over the next 4 or 5 months. We're waiting on the government approval. We're fairly confident the government will approve to let us export LNG and we'll toll that through Woodside, highly confident that will happen, but we want to make sure we get best bang for our buck out of that. We expect in the Carnarvon Basin, we're going to start seismic this year, and we're going to be drilling some holes up there next year. We've also recently gone out and purchased our own drill rig. These rigs are fairly scares. So we bought our own drill rig. It's fully automatic. As things state-of-the-art can go down 5,000, we'll bring that online about the middle of this year. We're putting a crew together at the moment and building all the ancillary gear that goes with that. Okay, long-term business outlook. I'll try and pick up the pace even. Over the next 5 years, the mining services is more than tripling its volumes over the next 5 years. The EBITDA today is around $500 million. 5 years from now, we're going to be at about $1.75 billion. So we'll be one of the largest mining infrastructure organizations in the world. The lithium business, July '26, we're tripling volumes were up and around 1 million tonnes. Mt Marion will be around $730 of SC5 getting up to $900 beyond that. Wodgina about $1.2 million once we get it into full production. Train 4, as I said, comes online about '26, Train 5 and 6 are sitting out there in the background. We're doing all the work around the approvals and whatever on knows. Bald Hill, we're going to push that out to about 250,000 tonnes in the flotation plant, we do down in the Goldfield. It's going to be somewhere around 400,000, 450,000 tonnes of product coming out of that. Iron ore by '29, we're going to be about 92 million tonnes run rate, and that will be low-cost, long-life operations. Within 2 years, we'll be producing natural gas and probably doing some LNG within 5 years, expect us to be building or running a urea plant and certainly a methanol plant. So I'll just wrap up with a few comments. We've delivered an awful lot so far over the last sort of 6 or 8 months. We're on track for guidance. We made huge progress at Onslow and a lot of progress around our lithium business, discoveries around gas and of course, mining service is an absolute powerhouse. So over the next 6 months, we fully focused just on delivery, not doing anything clever delivery and continuing to do what we've done with our balance sheet over the last 3, 2.5 years. We will continue to manage that thing to the degree that we have. As I've said, iron ore in the short term, will be going from 20 million to 50 million tonnes. Onslow goes live in '24, full capacity by '25, and we're selling 49% of the haul road, it breaks my heart to do that, but I'm just out there showing the industry that we can keep raising capital without stressing our balance sheet. So we're going to do that. I mean I expect that they're happy a single-digit number, and I'll use that cash and recycle at a better than 30% growing. Mining Services, as I said, it's doubling by the end of '25 and the innovation we've got in that business is in huge demand. Engineering and construction, I mean, it builds these projects, it builds innovation. I mean, over the next 2 or 3 years, the innovation we bring into that is going to be second to them. We're getting into well and truly into stuff around carbon, fiber and a whole range of things. But it gives us low capital base, low operating costs, great business. We're developing a lithium. We're going to be one of the largest lithium business in the world within the next 5 years, but we're heading in that direction now. And we've got Tier 1 assets sitting inside that lithium business. The energy business is going to be a bit of a cash here. We're returns focused. So total shareholder return. We're a third best on the ASX over the last 17 years. We're going to improve that over the next 2 or 3, you can see that the EBITDA every year is just going to get more and more. The ROIC will be over 25% by around June '25, and we're all supported. I'll give the Board last year a commitment that I'm going to be around for at least the next 10 years. Sorry to say. And I've got the best management team in the country by now. So sorry about the length of time they talk, but we are a little passionate about where we're going. And I think it's important that we sort of get the message out there. So got any questions, more than happy to fill them.

[Operator Instructions]

Glyn Lawcock, Barrenjoey. A lot there to unpack, Chris, has a few minutes, I'm sure. But just firstly, just how -- why the different approach to Wodgina. I think back to the last downturn, you're very disappointed that Albemarle shut -- went to start it up. Now doing the opposite and prices are actually higher than what we had in the last down cycle still. So just your logical thoughts around that. Is it an issue with being able to price product and you gave us a price of $2,500, and clearly that's not the price you waiting for to restart it, maybe than you are, but just what your think -- thoughts are on restart price and finally, just on budgeted downstream? Are you thinking of putting capital back in the downstream again? Or how does the partnership work?

So partnership is we're just simply 50-50. I got out of downstreaming. I mean everyone has this vision, you make a lot of money in downstreaming. Let me tell you right really clearly. The ROIC on downstreaming, it's single-digit spend and if anyone tells you out, they're an expert in running these plants, I mean we've got 2 very large plants in Western Australia that have never made a ton of product. And I'm just not up for that. I mean, MinRes's value is being able to do primary. We can go in and we can dig dirt, we can crush it, we can process it, we beneficiated, we can float it. I have no desire to go and invest $1 billion in China or $400 million or $500 million down south of Perth for a single-digit return. First and foremost, MinRes is here to make money. And that's always our focus. I got to get better than 20% ROIC. Partnership by the way, the mode is brilliant. I mean they're great people but they chose, they wanted to go ahead and build in China. Once they got the smell of what the costs were in operating in China, the capital you tie up and the return you get on your money, I couldn't get out of their quick enough, and I did. I mean -- and we were a little naive to think that we should have went there in the first place. And I kind of got stuck with the Kemerton plant because we had a binding deal with Albemarle in 2019, and all of a sudden the world changed, they couldn't afford to write new check, so they gave me a check and part of Kemerton, but the return just wasn't there. I am never going to invest in downstream processing unless I give them a free carry. And we've been offered free carry plants in Germany and the U.K. The problem I have with that is that the organizations have offered us a free carry. Free carry of 30%. They've got no experience in building a hydroxide plant. So I just don't want to get tied up with that. I am looking at producers that have got the skill set and expertise. And I think and I look within the next 3 to 6 months, we will partner up with somebody, but I won't be putting capital into downstreaming. It's just -- I'm here to make money.

Lachlan Shaw, UBS. Thanks, Chris and Mark for today. So 2 questions from me. So let's step up at Onslow Iron of 40 million and 50 million tonnes. Can you just help us understand, I mean, critical pathways or is there more CapEx to come and permitting around that? Are there more permits that you need to secure?

Pretty simple. Look, 35 million to 40 million tonnes is the first up step. And basically, all we're doing and there is sweating the assets. And it's a no-brainer. They go from 35 million to 40 million tonnes. I mean the transhippers will handle, the crushing plant will handle, we got there now, we just stretch them a bit. 40 million to 50 million tonnes means that we need to go from 5 to 7 transhippers. So transhipper #6 and #7 are on order there, have got them locked away in the COSCO yard after a fair bit of effort and help from Baowu. But they are being delivered in about June and October of '26. So by the end of '26 it will be a 50 million tonne run rate. We're probably going to put in between now and then another transhipping birth. And we kind of -- we want that as security anyway. And then when we go from the 40 million to 50 million tonne, we'll put a ship later on it. So we'll be able to lay out any 2 of this. But look, fundamentally, if I had to plug a number out of my head, and what are we going to spend up there to do it, maybe $300 million will take us from 40 million to 50 million tonne and do the math, I mean, EBITDA USD 60 a tonne. It's a pretty low upgrade. I mean the road will handle all the infrastructure we've got to handle it. I mean it will be awfully. I'll come out, but when I do the full year results or come out with a fairly good plan around that capital cost per tonne and all the bets. But yes, it's a bit of a no-brainer.

And then my second question, so you commented around mining services and expectations for margins to sort of expand again. Can you just perhaps give us a little more insight in terms of what you said the key levers are to achieve that? And then maybe just a quick comment. Do you have a view on impacts for you guys or no impact of the same job, same pay?

Look, let me start with the labor one first. I mean, we are really, really -- you can see we're people focused. We're making sure that we've got -- I mean, we've got, for example, no gender pay gap. And I think if you have a look at our reporting, the metrics on the way they do it says we got a gender pay gap, but we've been through, and we've got every single position gets paid on the position. But the way they measure am I saying is right, James, the way they measure the thing is really, really dumb and it depends on how many you've got at different levels. So I don't -- so the way we look after people, I've never had a strike or I've never had any industrial action over 32 years. I don't expect to have any. I think that if you pay people in the right way and you look after them in the right way, I mean, everything follows. So I don't see a big deal with it. I think that I don't think there's any doubt that the federal government has really, really disappointed a lot of business. There's no question about that. They're just doing it in a reckless way. But it's going to give some pain. When you start getting highly paid people like oil and gas or train drivers in the Northwest going on strike, I mean, it becomes a bit silly. But I think -- look, I think our business is going to be okay. I don't see any real issues with it, but we've been managing that situation as we move through it. So -- and the other one was, I think, around how do we keep increasing the margins in the Mining Services business, quality of the goods that we're putting in place. I mean, we're the only ones that transhippers, the big trucks that we're running. I mean, we're the only ones that are doing that, and we're delivering incredible value to our clients, and they're willing to pay a pretty reasonable return for it. So we can do it at a cost, they can't do it, and we share in the value.

Kate McCutcheon at Citi. Just if I look at the CapEx guidance, it looks like that's gone up about $480 million or so. Just some additional color there, particularly on the lithium. Is there some bucket for Bald Hill, has stripping being brought forward? Because I guess in part with this question, you reduce the cost, the OpEx guidance of Mt. Marion?

Look, basically, I mean, we just went to town on moving that rock while those prices were up. We moved as much of that as we can so we can get down to normal operating costs or where we want it to be. Do you want to add to that, Mark?

Yes. I think -- okay. The guidance increase includes, as I said, some additional investment in mining services and also the Mt Marion underground, that wasn't previously planned for. We've obviously got also higher strip numbers in Mt Marion and Wodgina over the full year and also a little bit more in the iron ore space. But there's no secret buckets for Bald Hill or anything like that.

And in terms of the lithium market [Technical Difficulty] just some comments that you're saying everybody wants to take your shipments, no issue selling those times into the spot market. Any comments about that?

Look, there's no issue selling it. But supply and demand rules the price. And I mean, if you want to be -- if we keep putting more and more and more tonnes into the market, we'll keep pushing the price down. I mean there's a balance to how much. So we want to make sure that supply is meeting demand. And you can sell a tonne at $1,200 a tonne or you can push it down to $600, I mean I like that one. And it just -- it's supply and demand. It's reasonably simple. And none of us know where the real price is. It feels like the price has bottomed. I feel like we're on the bottom of tin now. And I think there's going to be a slight improvement with -- as we come out of Chinese New Year, but wait and see.

And can I just take one more in. Did I hear you correctly that you were looking to bring in a partner possibly for your energy business?

No, no, not on the energy. We're looking at how we can do something around the lithium and we're looking for a formal partnership on that. So we want -- we're going to partner with someone that is into our storage business so that we can close that loop off, and I want to be focused on producing spot and making sure they got a partner that is going to use it in the right area. So look, I can't say a lot more on that, but over the next 3 or 4 months, I hope to be able to come back to the market and let us know exactly what we're doing with that.

Sorry, Kate, if I can. Not a partner in the sense of co-ownership of the business. What I was talking about was how we go about funding the development of some of those assets and how we source capital to basically build facilities, whether it be the gas plant or others.

Somewhat similar to what we're doing on the road.

Matt Frydman from MST. Can I firstly ask, I guess, on the some of the energy business. What's your thinking around time line around putting out a resource for that basin? I mean, obviously, we've seen some missteps from some of your neighbors recently. How do you think about the, I guess, putting out something with a degree of confidence behind it that you can then engage in some of those partnership discussions or an FID decision with the resource behind you?

Good question. You've got to be extremely careful with that because people can make assumptions on how big the field is and get it wrong. And I mean a couple of our neighbors have done just that. And it takes -- I mean it's not like we're putting rods in the ground. We send them off to get our side. It takes pretty month. It's frustrating. The time it takes to get a good understanding of where we're at, look, certainly, with the oil, we're getting a fairly clear understanding of this whole we're doing now, the rig passed back through the oil wells. So we know it's bigger than what we thought it was. The gas is about what we thought it was. But I think realistically, it's probably 18 months away. We know the minimum size that we've got. And based on that, we can go out and build a gas plant. But we're not going to know the maximum for 18 months to 2 years is the real answer. And whatever I do out there, I really want to do it stand-alone just MinRes because look, in terms of the capital when we're building any time -- we can build literally any kind of plant to build a gas plant, not hard, how many are there? 20,000 of them around the world. We just go out and we buy one off the shelf and then I get my construction crew to go and blow it to the ground. So -- but we could not do that. I'm going to say we're going to spend 50% less than what any of our competitors out there is spending. And I can guarantee you if we're going to do it in about half the time. So I really don't want to go and share with anything because I'm going to overpay to get involved with this. And then I'm going to have to put up with the frustration on someone else operating it. And we are really efficient at operating -- I don't have any gas operators in my business now, but not hard to get them. And also will be kind of remote. But highly confident. We're going to be conservative and we're not going to go out there and hope we got something that's really big and it's only a pillar of our business. It's not all of it. So we'll be conservative in what we do. And at the moment, I mean, we were looking at 250 TJs a day, and I'm thinking of peeling that back at the moment to something more like $150 million because I need to make sure I got plenty of gas for urea and for methanol and all those other things. And I think I'm going to get a bigger bang from the back out of doing that, and I think it will last a lot longer.

So resource is 18 months or potentially you could have an export permit or an FID decision?

Well, I recon FID is probably about 6 months away, but we can come out with a bulletproof resource within that time. But I think to understand how big it can get in terms of the oil and the outer reaches of the gas field, it's probably about 18 months to get to that sort.

And then secondly, if I can just ask on Wodgina again. Obviously, the decision to sort of slow down the pace of utilizing all 3 trains. If you sold on the market today, assuming you could get today's price, you're talking 60-plus percent EBITDA margins. Is it a bit of a -- that's if we believe your sort of directionality on costs and where you can get to cost at the end of the year? Is it a bit of a circular argument where if you're not utilizing that additional installed capacity. How can you achieve that unit cost reduction? So I guess I'm asking what's the impact of slowing down the ramp-up of Train 3 to the directionality of where you're saying you can get unit costs?

There's no real impact on it. I mean to run that third train, I mean, look, it does -- if you're running 3 trains, your total cost is incrementally better, your unit cost, a question about that. Running 2 trains is highly efficient. I mean it's just -- look, it might save us USD 30 to USD 40 a tonne. But I mean, I just want to make sure that if you keep putting more product into the market, doesn't matter it's iron ore anything. You often seeing someone has a mishap, somewhere in 5% of the iron ore disappears out of the market. The price goes like that. I mean all of a sudden, you're making 20% or 30% more margin. And so I just want to make sure if we put too much out there, we're just going to kill the margins a bit. So I'd be hoping that you go out and tell everyone that we're going to stay down production, the price will go up.

Operator, if we can just see if there are any questions online.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Lyndon Fagan from JPMorgan.

Look, my first question is just on the mining services outlook, some really impressive growth forecast there. Can you perhaps share some details on the CapEx that's associated to deliver all that growth over the medium term Exxon's load? And I've got a follow-up question.

Do you want to tackle that, Mark?

Hi, Lyndon. So the answer is, this half, we've allocated another $100 million or so for the contracts that we've secured over this period. We're extremely positive about the market outlook for the Mining Services business. We are seeing significant demand, not just within Western Australia, but in other states for those services and we're seeing limited capability in the competition. So we're getting a lot of inquiry. What we've guided there is in terms of our expectations of where we can think -- where we think we can take this business, the sort of some contracts that we're talking about, haulage, bulk movement, some crushing. So a combination of a -- a range of different opportunities. So I'm not going to give you a specific number, but give you a sense of the sorts of projects that are going to underpin that growth.

No worries. And then I guess just looking at the iron ore target on Page 32 of the deck, 92 million tonnes. Just wondering if we can unpack the other big project there at Port Hedland. Where are we up to in terms of trying to get that underway and when you'd be likely to share a bit more detail on the scope, et cetera.

Yes, sure. Look, the joint venture we got with Hancock is moving along. It's now pace at the moment, and it's really wrapped up around approvals. So rail access approval for -- to get that rail up to their project got a few issues wrapped around it. It's inevitable. We got the government behind us supporting. So it's inevitable that, that will happen. I don't see any spend happening of any significance on that thing over the next 12 months. It's really going to be -- it's a calendar year '25 where the action starts to pick up on that. That's a couple of years of work to get that rail upgrade and get the port installed. Yes. So I mean it's moving a bit slower than we would like. But from a balance sheet point of view, I'm not overly disappointed.

Our next question comes from Paul Young from Goldman Sachs.

A few questions on the lithium strategy and relating to the -- Chris, the decision on the -- to delay the train ramp-up of Wodgina, I can see in the presentation. So thanks for talking about that. But I'm just curious around the strategy there, first of all, decision to delay Wodgina arguably your lowest cost asset and not curtail production at Bald Hill and Mt Marion. Can you step through -- otherwise curtailing the low-cost asset not the high-cost assets?

So we're running Bald Hill and Mt Marion, we're sort of running them at capacity, and we're still ramping up down Mt Marion from the upgrade work, but it looked, Paul, simply, I just spoke about it a few minutes supply demand. I mean, if we're supplying more than the demand can take, I mean, we're going to push the price down. I mean that's just common sense to try and manage the amount of supply we're putting into the market.

Our next question comes Kaan Peker from RBC.

Thanks for the opportunity. Just a quick question around the big flotation plant that was referred to at the Goldfields. Maybe if you can give some conceptual around the size? Is it 200,000 to 500,000 tonnes on spot basis. I have got a follow up.

Look, at the moment, what we're planning on, I mean, it's conceptual, but what we're planning on down there is somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 tonnes of product of SC 5.5 per annum.

Secondly, just with additional CapEx at Mt Marion and Wodgina. When would they be needed? I assume that when we're on site last year, there was still the cutback at the northern pit required at Mt Marion. Is it sustainable or until the underground opens up? And yes, just the timing of subsequent CapEx would be great.

Yes. Look, pretty much. We think that we've sort of got a sustainable position down at Marion right now, 18 months is the time frame to get down underground with the -- that drive we're putting in. And we're going to be running at Wodgina and through to somewhere around late June, early July, and then we'll be pulling all the gear out of there. So about look, it's safe to say by the end of July. We're back to a steady save up at Wodgina.

Our next question comes from Robert Stein from Macquarie.

Interesting to hear on the call just now, the multiple of 12x EBITDA for the Haul Road. I'm just interested, is that particularly we discussing with potential infrastructure partners. How do they value the upside going forward in terms of production Onslow? And in terms of any kind of [ base in place ] in terms of infrastructure that is -- sorry, mining tenements that are around that infrastructure? How is that factored into any type of deal that you're looking to do with the road.

Look, that was a hypothetical. I simply saying the quality of that haul road, if I recall, at 50 million tonnes is going to turn out $400 million a year in EBITDA. So I was simply saying if one was to take that out as a separate vehicle and list it and you were starting a brand-new business, it's not a bad start. And I would suspect that you'd probably be getting 12x to 13x EBITDA, if you would through that. I'm not suggesting that I'm giving any guidance on what the value of that is as a partnership, that's a different arrangement.

Mitch Ryan from Jefferies. Just one question at the quarterly about a month ago you said you'd give us production guidance for Bald Hill. We haven't received that today. And I was just wondering what you're seeing or what's changed to delay that?

No, look, it's not delayed. I think at the quarterlies, I said that it will be during the course of this year coming because, look, we've only moved in there on November 1. We've got drill rigs down there. We got people down there. It's 4, 5, 6 months away before we actually get the data. So we're dredging through a lot of the old data. The most current staff from around 2018. We're doing reconciliations around what's happened from then through to now, and we've got drill rigs and the drilling is so far is going -- the signs are incredibly good. So we're happy with where it's going. But we just can't come out with anything that we can hang hats on. I'm thinking sensibly it's somewhere around late May, early June before we really hit anything that we can hit the market with. And even at the moment, we're a bit handy with the feed to the mill, they kind of high-graded the couple of the zones when they're exiting and really sort of hit it pretty hard. But in saying that, really happy to have it. It's a great little mine. And I mean, my expectation is that we're going to be able to lift that not too far down the track from about 150,000 to about 250,000 tonnes production. That's sort of, I think, where we're heading. And we can do that for a fairly low capital cost. I mean, I'm thinking somewhere in the order of $20 million to $30 million will get us another 100,000 tonnes.

Michael Orphanides from Tribeca Investment Partners. The Western Australian nickel industry is in a bit of disarray at the moment. And I was wondering if MinRes sees an opportunity to capitalize on others misfortune in any way, given the infrastructure?

Yes, working on it. I can't say anything, again, look, if we go and share what we're doing. But absolutely, yes. No, we're all over it. And look at the next 4 to 6 weeks, I'll come out let you know what we're doing. But yes -- no, and it's not capitalizing and then it's fortunate. I saw it more as being able to get in there and partner and help people sort of....

With that, we might leave it there. Any final comments?

Well, look, thanks, everyone, for coming along. I probably went a little bit longer than you would have liked, but important we try it. We're really trying to be as transparent as we can and get as much information into the market and let you know where we're going with the business and how it's going, but a lot for all those that support us. Thanks very much, and we'll be in touch. Thank you.