Thanks, Emma, good morning to everybody to our interim results for 2021 presentation. If you just start turning through the slides, there's a disclaimer first of all, read that at your leisure, please. Then if we turn to slide two, which is just a summary of our results for the first half of 2021. We've had a really good performance in the first half, a strong financial performance based on strong commodity prices, as you can see on the page there. On the back of that strong financial performance, which is driven by strong commodity prices, we're delighted to announce an increase in our dividend to GBX 8 for the first half of this year. We'll also be paying back early a $10 million of our corporate debt facility.
$10 million back to the banks and GBX 8, which is $19.5 million back to shareholders. If we were to pay the similar kind of dividend at the final, that would be a yield of about 6.8%. That's driven off the back of strong revenues. Our revenues increased to $106.3 million from $75.4 million in the comparable period last year. The EBITDA on the back of that at a 61% margin was $64.4 million. A key number for us is our free cash flow, and that's increased 131% in the six-month period to $48.9 million from $21.2 million. All of us will remember the first six months in 2020, the comparable period, was a particularly tough period for all businesses. Still, 131% improvement is a good performance on the back of those strong metal prices.
That's the number, the free cash flow, that we paid that dividend against, and we're around the 40% of that number for the GBX 8 dividend that we've announced this morning. On the back of those strong cash flows over the period, we are de-leveraging the balance sheet. We've now got just under $61 million of gross debt on the books and cash of $54.3 million. Outside of the financial numbers on sustainability issues, we've had a good response to COVID-19. We currently only have about three employees at Sasa with COVID-19 and none at Kounrad. Our procedures are proving to be robust to prevent much disruption on site from the pandemic. We have unfortunately suffered three LTIs, and I'll talk about those later in the presentation, which gives us an LTIFR at the half year of 2.5.
We reported our second sustainability report to GRI standards in April of this year. One thing which we negotiated one day after the 1st of July with our electricity supplier in Macedonia, was the supply of 94% renewable energy to the site. We have to purchase a percentage from the government, which is claimed to be renewable. In essence, we're looking at 100% renewable energy at the Sasa mine. That should reduce our CO2 footprint for the group, not just Sasa, but for the group, by about 35%. We are still working on other projects at Kounrad and also at Sasa to further improve that, and we'll be coming out with targets later in the year as part of our climate change strategy. Last but by no means least, before I hand over to Gavin, the cut-and-fill project at Sasa is underway.
It's progressing well, and we're on track to deliver on that in Q4 of 2022. On that point, I'll now hand over to Gavin to give some more information on the financial numbers.
Thanks, Nigel. If we could turn to slide four, please, which just gives a background to the market that we operated within through the last half. COVID is still prevalent, unfortunately, and we are seeing sort of varied vaccination programs. We continue to be sort of wary ourselves and operating within this environment. What that has impacted is metal prices. You can see in the charts on the right-hand side of the slide, the average prices that we've received for copper, lead, and zinc over the past three periods with appreciable increases in those prices due to sort of squeezed supply, robust demand given the sort of stimulus that we've seen coming through from governments. Also, the sort of build back better mantra that governments are selling us with the transition to green economy, very supportive of copper prices and also zinc prices.
We did see some supplier disruptions throughout the industry, but weak demand from the auto industry due to the semiconductor shortage has capped some of the demand there. Treatment Charges we mention here because those feed through to our lead and zinc revenues. We did see an increase period on period. That's because those prices sort of kick in from the 1st of April every year, and we do expect them to reduce as of 1st of April this year. We do continue to see spot TCs being suppressed, mainly due to continuing COVID impacts on supply and sea freights. If we turn to slide five, please. There's a summary of the income statement. As Nigel mentioned, the highlights there. Gross revenue and EBITDA really responding to those increased commodity prices with increases of 41% in the gross revenue line there.
What I'll draw your attention to here is some increase in the cost of sales. That does include $14.8 million of depreciation which we report in that line. We also have an unrealized hedging loss, which is $4.9 million in that cost of sales as well, which hence we're reporting an adjusted EPS at the bottom of the table there, which strips out that unrealized loss to allow you period-on-period comparable. You can see the EPS has gone up by almost double. Again, the chart on the bottom right-hand side of the slide probably tells the story best, where we're seeing increases in the commodity prices and their impacts on revenue.
You can see that copper alone has contributed to a $20 million increase in revenues, with more modest increases from lead and zinc, but still significant to push up that gross revenue line on the income statement. Margins remain strong across the business. As Nigel said, 61% for the business as a whole, and segmentally, we're looking at an EBITDA margin of 80% at Kounrad, which is a stunning result for that operation, and 54% at Sasa, both significantly increased over the prior period. We turn to slide six, please. We're going to show you the development of EBITDA from H1 2020 to H1 2021. Obvious there are the huge increases in commodity prices that we've seen for each of copper, lead, and zinc. Where we've suffered some losses, we've got a fair value loss on the hedges of $1.9 million.
We hedged 30% of our metals for the year, beginning January. The other cost of sales, we are seeing some inflationary pressures, which I'll talk to you a little bit more in a later slide. That G&A cost of $1.9 million is non-cash and relates mainly to share-based payments. We turn to slide, what is this one? Seven, that'd be easier. I managed to scribble some notes. Cash costs at Kounrad, as I said, that EBITDA margin of 80% really being driven by extremely low costs. They have increased from $0.48 to $0.57. This is a consequence of increased electricity prices, primarily increased reagent consumption, and a slight decrease of 393 tonnes in terms of units produced.
If you look at the dollar amount at the bottom of the table, you can see almost a $1 million increase, which is related to, in the C1 costs, related primarily to some inflationary pressures and those reagents, which constitutes $26 million of that amount. If we look at the total cost of sales, we are looking around a 20% higher total cost of sales for Kounrad. Around half of that is actually related to MET, which is the royalty effectively which we pay to the government for copper extracted, and that is directly related to the increased copper prices. Can we switch to slide eight, please. Similar chart for Sasa, the C1 equivalent zinc cost. We have seen an increase there again of around $0.16.
That is attributable to a slight decrease in production, which Nigel spoke about earlier, $0.05 of which is cost inflation, again, around consumables and reagents. If you think about it, we consume things like steel in the ball mills and copper in the flotation plant as a reagent. All of that commodity complex increase of price is filtering through to miners right now. Also the way we calculate the zinc equivalents with the relative price moves in lead and zinc, plus the production increase relatively of zinc and lead, we're apportioning more cost towards that zinc than we did in the previous period, hence the higher C1 cash cost. If you look at the actual unit costs on-site, those are almost entirely down to inflationary pressures.
A lot of that is actually foreign exchange at Sasa, where we've seen the Macedonian denar, which is pegged to the euro, appreciate relative to the dollar, and 41% of our on-site costs are related to foreign exchange increases. We go to slide nine, balance sheet. As Nigel said, we continue to de-lever, and more aggressively with the additional prepayment that we announced this morning. I'll only draw your attention to a couple of items which may stand out on the balance sheet. One is your PPE number, which has decreased fairly significantly. There's two reasons for that. The primary one, again, is foreign exchange, where the local balance sheet in Macedonian denars is impacted by the relative weakening of the dollar there. Also, we've started depreciating our latest tailings facility, and this is the first full period that we'll be reporting the depreciation of that facility.
If we go down the table to other liabilities, that unrealized hedge loss of $4.9 million needs a balancing item somewhere in the accounts, and that's where it sits right now, within that $22.4 million, hence the higher increase there. Slide 10. Now, if you recall from our previous announcements, and we have been talking about a project to transition from the current sub-level caving mining method to cut and fill. We're starting to see some of that CapEx come through in H1 this year. $3.3 million of the total CapEx spent on a cash basis is relating to that project, alongside $2.9 million of sustaining CapEx at Sasa and $1.5 million of sustaining CapEx at Kounrad.
The sustaining CapEx relates to replacement of some mining fleet, mine development underground, and also the usual dripper pipes and implementation of what we call the ILS system, intermediate leach solution system, on the eastern and western dumps at Kounrad. Cut and fill, and you can see the little photograph there of some of the items that we bought. That's a new twin boom jumbo, which is gonna be excavating a decline. It's that sort of thing that we buy, so declining equipment, and we also receive certain items related to the paste fill plant that we are constructing and also some prepayments that we've made on equipment relating to that capital project as well. Final slide for me, slide 11. Cash flow, and this is important because it does drive that dividend.
We're very pleased to report that enormous increase in free cash flow period on period to $48.9 million. Again, if you look at the sort of development of that from the cash balance at the 1st of January this year, we generated $60.9 million of cash from operations. We have, in terms of investment and returns to shareholders, purchase of equipment, $7.7 million, repayments, borrowings, $19.2 million, dividends of $19.4 million, all value generated for shareholders there. Some other items, including income tax interest and some adjustment on our working capital facilities as well. Ending the period with a very healthy cash balance of $54.3 million. On that note, I'll hand back to Nigel.
Thanks, Gavin. Hopefully, you can see there a strong financial performance, strong balance sheet, and some good returns back to shareholders as well as early repayment of the debt. Just a few slides now on our progress in improving our sustainability and our ESG credentials. Health and safety, first of all, slide 13, if you don't mind. At Sasa we have disappointingly had three LTIs in the first six months of this year. We're working to understand what went wrong and improve the procedures on site there. At Kounrad, we've had no LTI. Overall, at group level, we're reporting three for the period. As I said before, that gives an LTIFR which we measure ourselves against of 2.5 for the six-month period. COVID, we have had cases of COVID on site, 77 at Sasa and 58, these are cumulative numbers, at Kounrad.
Currently, we have no cases at Kounrad and we have, I think it's three or four people now currently with COVID-19 on site. I think overall, as I said before, I think we are controlling that reasonably well. The vaccination programs, given quite a lot of government initiatives and government pressure, effectively, in Kounrad, we've got nearly 100% of our employees now double vaccinated, which is really encouraging in terms of moving forward with this pandemic. Slightly worse at Sasa, where I think it's 36% at the moment that we've had vaccinated. There was a little bit of resistance to vaccination within the country. That kind of percentage vaccinated mirrors what the general population is. We are trying as best we can through a program of education to try and educate people about the benefits of being vaccinated.
Slowly but surely, the government are clamping down on things that you can't do without a vaccination. I think that's helping us on site as well, but that's work in progress a little bit. Moving on to a more broader update on sustainability. We published our sustainability report, our second one to GRI standards in April this year. That incorporates four of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. No poverty, good health and well-being of all our staff, quality education, decent work and economic growth. I think all the work that we're doing on there is pushing us forward in terms of how we report on sustainability matters, and we're quite proud of where we've got to for the size of company that we are.
At both operations, both Sasa and Kounrad, we now have an independent legal entity that we call a foundation which does charitable works for the community. We put money into those separate legal entities, and all that money is ring-fenced for community projects to improve education, welfare, and just move things forward from a sustainability point of view. The outlook, we continue to work on our climate change strategy, as I mentioned before. We're looking to come out later this year or early next year with some greenhouse gas emissions target. We've made a good start with this 35% reduction at group level from the renewable energy at Sasa. We're also working on solar farm at Kounrad and other initiatives, tree planting, et c., at Kounrad and Sasa, and we'll come out with more details on that later in the year. Couple of other points.
Asset retirement obligation, which is something any mature and a responsible company will do for closure responsibilities, what's expected of us. We've engaged with a company called Golder to actually do some work on that, We'll be reporting on that later in the year as to what our plans are in that regard. The last one is the Global Industry Tailings Standard , which we're making good progress in terms of compliance with that on the suggested three-year guideline from August of last year. We're quite well advanced on that in terms of meeting the compliance against that particular standard. We turn to slide 15. I won't talk much to this, but just to reemphasize the point that we are setting targets for sustainability, and against those targets, executive remuneration will be benchmarked.
We will be set targets, and rewards and remuneration will be against how we perform against those targets. For example, in governance, we're looking this year for zero human rights abuses. Health and safety, ones that we've always set ourselves, really, zero fatalities and improvements in LTIFR. People targets in terms of collective agreements at Sasa and also developing plans to train and develop and improve the knowledge of the workforce at Sasa and at Kounrad. Environment, zero severe or major environmental incidents is a target for this year. Unfortunately, as everybody on the call probably knows, we did fail on that one with our TSF4 incident last year, almost a year ago to the date. I think we've recovered from that, and I'll touch on that a little bit later.
On the community, working closely with the community, really, and putting money into the community to develop it and be a responsible citizen. A little bit more on the greenhouse gas emissions. You can see the chart there on slide 16. We did manage to reduce our CO2 footprint, because we use less coal at Kounrad primarily between 2019 and 2020. We're now reporting for 2020 about 98,000 tonnes of CO2. As I said before, the 35% reduction in that number on an annual basis from this renewable energy supply that we've negotiated at Sasa. A few facts and figures there of our electricity consumption at both sites. I won't reemphasize the point about the 35% reduction because I think I've probably said that enough. In terms of slide 17, a little bit on where we spend money within the communities.
The picture on slide 18, which I’ll come to in a minute, is where we primarily spend our money at Sasa. At Kounrad, we have purchased an ambulance to help out with not just the pandemic, but moving forward with all kinds of health issues in the local town of Balkhash, near to us. We’re constantly putting money into the community there to help out. Just moving to slide 18. There’s a few pictures there really. Not a lot of words, just a lot of pictures of something which we spent just the north of $100,000 on as a kind of goodwill gesture back to the community in Kamenica following the TSF4 incident. Something I think as a management team we’re particularly proud of.
I was there on-site last week actually, and there was a lot of young children, a lot of parents using the facility. It was a lovely sunny day and it was really nice to see that we've actually built that and given that back to the community. I think the mayor is particularly grateful for that as an input. Just turning over to slide 19 now, and really to draw a line on the TSF4 incident, which has taken us a while to recover from. Hopefully we've managed it in a very professional and transparent manner. Obviously, there was the immediate remediation of the dam. There was the getting back into production. Some slight changes to our operating procedures there to improve things.
We had an audit from IXIS in late June, early July, which gave us a very good complimentary review independently of how we're managing that facility now, which is very pleasing for myself and Gavin to get that. There's just a few pictures there of something which has taken slightly longer to remediate, which is the pollution that we very unfortunately did to the river. We stated at the previous announcements that 95% of the tailings have been removed from the river by the end of December 2020. In this half that we're reporting now, we have continued that work, and the river is actually in a very good condition. Helped by Mother Nature as well a little bit with some strong rains that we've had over the period that have flushed things through. We've now removed all the silt traps.
We've planted 3,600 trees, 350 shrubs, and 320 kg of wildflower seeds and grasses to try and improve the environment there. Again, that's drawing a line under the TSF-4 incident in terms of the community park, the river remediation, and the work that we've done on-site to improve our procedures to prevent this happening. If we just move on to an operational update and move to slide 21. Very quickly, everybody knows the Kounrad operation, I'm sure. We're now reporting approximately, because as we know, this is not an exact science in many ways, that we have about 134,000 tonnes of recoverable copper still to produce at Kounrad. About 10,000 tonnes on the eastern dumps and about 124,000 tonnes on the western dumps. Slide 22 is just a diagram, standard one that we put every six months up to the investors of our production.
Everybody knows it is seasonal. We produce more in the summer months and the standard leach curve there in the bottom, and we are progressing well on all of our cells that are currently operating, in terms of the production. Moving over to slide 23 now. Something which Gavin mentioned before, which is some capital work that we're doing at Kounrad, to help through to the end of life of mining in 2034, is what we call an intermediate leach solution system. Phase 1 has been completed. That was the construction of a 14 km water pipeline from the east to the west and the associated pumps. Phase 2 will be completed next year with the irrigation pipeline onto the older western cells that we'll be irrigating to get some extra pickup.
Phase 3 will effectively be operating in 2023 during the summer months to increase the offtake from those western dumps and increase and maintain the production levels. There's a table there at the bottom of production. Just to reemphasize, for the first half of this year, we produced 6,214 tonnes of cathode copper, and we're on track for the upper end of our guidance at 12,500 - 13,500 tonnes of copper. Slide 24, just moving on to the Sasa Zinc and Lead Mine. We've now owned this operation for almost four years, and just a few statistics from it. We've now generated $214 million of EBITDA from it, so it is a highly profitable operation. We've repaid $135 million ahead of the announcement this morning for the early repayment of another $10 million off that debt repayment.
We have reserves and resources out to 2037, and as everybody knows, it's a mechanized underground mine. The production numbers there, slide 25. There's a table on the right-hand side just showing the first half of this year. We mined 414,000 tonnes of ore. We processed slightly more, 423,000 tonnes of ore. We had some on stockpiles at the surface at the beginning of the year. We have had a few issues with some of the grade issues as we were a bit behind on development, and we generally get higher levels of dilution when we're getting production from the stopes. We suffered that a little bit in the first half of this year. We are recovering from that.
We've had a couple of good months. We are maintaining as a consequence of that recovery program. Our guidance for the year is 23,000 - 25,000 tonnes of zinc and 30,000 - 32,000 tonnes of lead. Just to reemphasize, what we've actually done at the half year was nearly 11,300 tonnes of zinc and 13,800 tonnes of lead. Just to mention those points about the grade, we have a program to try and recover some of those grades by doing more production from the development channels, as opposed to the ore stopes. That's Sasa production. Big project at Sasa on slide 26. I won't talk much to that slide because it's just a picture of the portal for the new decline, which we've started. If you move over to slide 27.
We've now named this new decline, the Central Decline. In Macedonian, that's Niskop Central, for those of you who might be interested. Development has commenced. We've got a good team on site led by Phil Jackson and Tommy Purcell, who are managing that and training the guys in the new equipment that we bought to manage that new decline. We've done so far approximately 200 m. We took the decision to start the decline from the 910 Level, so start underground effectively, where we've done now 188 m. The picture you just saw a minute ago, which was the opening portal, we've now excavated in about approximately 10 - 12 m from that surface, and we're just getting to the point where we should hit hard rock and then start heading down to meet the 910 Level. We expect to do about 800 m of new decline this year.
It is a three- to four-year program to do 3.8 km in total. Why are we doing it? Well, it's going to give increased ventilation and improve the ventilation. It'll make far easier access into some of the lower areas of the mine. It would effectively increase our ability to ultimately increase production up to 900,000 tonnes with greater access to the lower ore bodies. That's the central decline. There's a long section on slide 28, I think it is, which shows the mine. Again, won't talk to that. You can see the dashed line, though, just showing where that new decline is heading from the surface, from nearby the process plant down to the 910 Level, and subsequently down to below 750 Level on a three- to four-year program. Slide 29.
The paste backfill plant, which is a key part of this program, is well advanced in terms of design and choice of suppliers for most of the equipment. The equipment laydown area on site has been established for when those supplies are delivered. The new site offices have been delivered to site and will be marking out and segregating the area shortly. As I say, most of the major plant components have been ordered and over the next few months will be delivered to site ahead of construction starting in the first half of next year. We're on track to start installing the reticulation, which is basically the plumbing or the pipework that takes the paste from the backfill plant to the voids and the areas within the mine that we'll be putting that paste.
We're on track to start that pipework in October of this year. As I say, on track in total for construction of the paste backfill plant and the reticulation to be done by Q4 2022, then it'll go into operation shortly thereafter to transition into cut and fill mining. Probably the more difficult aspect of the project in some ways is dry stack tailings. We did have a while where we weren't 100% sure where we were going to place those tailings. Knight Piésold have done a conceptual study, given us confidence that we can place between 3.7 - 4.4 million tonnes in the older area of TSF2. We are now going to detailed engineering design, and we're expecting a report back from Knight Piésold at the end of October on the detailed costings and design of the dry stack tailings landform, as we call it.
The plant itself, which is a basic filtration plant to get the moisture levels down to 11.5%, is fairly well advanced with the team on site in terms of, as with the backfill plant, design, ordering of equipment, and that is also on track for finishing by Q4 of 2022. That's slides 29 and slide 30. Just moving over now to slide, jumping one minute, slide 32, if everybody would please just look at that. Our capital allocation priorities, just to reiterate this morning, obviously GBX 8 dividend, that's going to cost us about $19.5 million. On top of that, we're paying $10 million back to the bank in advance of the regular payments that we make, which is $3.2 million every month. We maintain our policy of 30%-50% free cash flow being paid back to shareholders.
This particular dividend, as I said before, is 40% of that. In total, since we started the dividend policy back in 2012, we've now paid back GBP 1.20 to the shareholders, $229 million in total. Something as a track record we're particularly proud of as a company. As Gavin said, and I won't reiterate the point, we are de-leveraging rapidly. In theory, with this advance payment of $10 million, we would have paid the debt off by the 4th of August 2022. Just continuing with capital allocation, slide 33. Clearly, the other leg of that is not just paying back dividends and paying back to debt holders, but it's also investing in the business, developing the business.
I've already touched on the cut and fill project at Sasa, and we are spending between $18 million-$19 million of CapEx by the end of 2022 at site to deliver on that. What will it give us? It gives a more efficient method of mining, maximize the extraction of our mineral resources, so more metal for the ore that we're actually mining, and it'll certainly improve the tailing storage in a more environmentally friendly way as we put 40%-45%, that kind of level of tailings back into the voids underground. It will be a lower CapEx than building another two TSF4s further down the valley, which has its problems and complications, if we were to have had to go down that path. This is a solution to that. Finally, on capital allocation, we're looking at growth opportunities. We continue to look.
It is opportunistic. We've looked at about 18 opportunities over the past six months, and various NDAs signed and site visits, but there's nothing much further than that at the moment. Clearly it's something we wish to do to actually enhance our portfolio of assets within the group. Just finishing off on slide 34, just on the outlook. I think we've announced some strong financial numbers this morning. We have got a good, strong, sustainable business with strong finances and good performance on the sustainability aspects. Strong operational performances. A few challenges in the first half of this year that we're working hard to overcome. Our basic mantra is to produce the basic metals that we need that are essential for modern-day living in terms of what society needs to actually move forward. Strong EBITDA and free cash flow generation.
A good dividend back to shareholders this morning announced of GBX 8 and $10 million back to the banks. Our outlook is really to continue on delivering to our shareholders the production work on our climate change strategy, which is work in progress and will deliver either later this year or early next year. Delighted with the reduction that we've so far managed to achieve on the CO2 footprint of 35%. Strong metal price environment is obviously a very favorable tailwind for us, and long may that last in terms of maintaining good financial performance for the group. On that note, I'll hand back to the operator, Emma, and we'll open it up to any questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you can do so now by pressing star one on your telephones. That's star one if you'd like to ask a question. We will now take our first question from Alexander Pearce from BMO. Please go ahead. The line is open.
Great. Morning, both. It's really good to see, obviously, the move to renewable energy at Sasa. I just wondered, could you give us any kind of indication of the cost impact of that going forward? Also, obviously moving to cut and fill, I wondered if you can give us an idea of how much of an impact to your overall energy consumption as well for the mine.
Dealing with the first question, Alex, and good morning to you. Yeah, there's not a major premium. We've been using EVN as the supplier of our electricity for some time now. It is quite complicated, the supply of electricity in North Macedonia, which is why we're really only claiming 94%, because they have put in place, in discussions with us, a process whereby they'll audit that and give us declarations of origin to prove that it is renewable energy from a company called EVN Elektron, which is a sister company of theirs and is 100% renewable energy.
In terms of the cost associated with it, we paid a slight premium for renewable energy, but electricity costs in general have increased at both of our operations, particularly at Sasa, where they've gone up from $0.065, I think it was, per kilowatt hour, closer to $0.10 per kilowatt hour. Across the world, people are experiencing an increase in electricity costs because of these issues. How much of that is factored into it, I certainly don't know. We paid a small premium above and beyond that price just to ensure that we got renewable energy from them with a, as I say, a certified process underlying it. In terms of our increased CO2 footprint because of the cut and fill, probably during the construction period, you're right to say that will happen.
I think it's probably a number of moving parts for us to assess what the actual footprint will be once we move into cut and fill. Obviously we've got a different operation then with different movements from how the ore is moved underground and through the decline. We are looking at using electric vehicles in the future, and that's why we've widened the actual decline itself from the original plan, such that we can accommodate, potentially in the future, electric vehicles. I think that will help. There's quite a few aspects we're looking at Sasa and at Kounrad, to bolster that initial starter pack, if you want to call it that, of 35% impact on our 2019 CO2 footprint. Does that help?
Okay, thanks. Then maybe if I could ask Sorry.
Hello?
Hello? Sorry, can you still hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you, Alex. Sorry, yeah.
Okay, good. Sorry, yeah. Maybe I can just ask a follow-up just on Kounrad. Obviously, you haven't completed the feasibility study yet, but do you have a rough idea about how much power potentially could come from solar in terms of a percentage of the total and how seasonal that could be?
Yeah, I think of the amount that we consume at Kounrad, we're looking at the solar farm will contribute, I think, 20%-25% of that power. It would be no more than that, really. It wouldn't be the full 100%. As things improve in Kazakhstan, we will look at other opportunities there. At the moment, that's where we're putting our focus as we move from scoping study to feasibility study. We've allocated the area, and we're dealing closely with people to actually get that delivered effectively.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Sam Catalano from Canaccord. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys. Two questions. Just firstly on unit costs in the second half. Obviously, you've already spoken a bit about some of the inflationary pressures that you dealt with in the first half. Just wondering how you're seeing that into the second half of the year. The second question, just to maybe push you a little bit more on capital allocation, which to be fair, you've been very clear on. I assume in the Board discussions you potentially could have gone to the top end of your payout range 50% and perhaps not paid as much back in debt. Just wondering how the decision process worked around balancing those two competing uses of capital. Thanks. Do you want to say that again?
Well, I'll take the first half, certainly. In terms of unit cost, Sam, I think the electricity increase that Nigel mentioned earlier, we're going to see more impact from that in the second half at Sasa. We think that all the other costs are reasonably under control, and you've probably seen what we presented today is probably going to continue into the second half. We may see some additional G&A at Kounrad as well relating to some salary increases there just as the sort of inflationary pressures hit. Other than that, not so much. On the positive side of things, as I mentioned earlier, we've got treatment charge contracts kicked in on 1st of April, so second half TCs will be lower than H1 TCs. We've reported earlier, we're looking at about a 30% decrease annually on those treatment charges. That's a good positive there.
I think, Sam, on the capital allocation, hopefully we covered it reasonably well. It's a fair question you asked, how did we arrive at that decision? It's one of these situations, you can never please all the people all the time, can you? We have different shareholder bases, and what we thought was a good balance was to pay a healthy dividend. There's also, we've got some shareholders who would prefer us to pay the debt off maybe earlier. We thought because of the strong cash flow generation we've experienced because of the high commodity prices, it seemed a good balance to pay back early without any penalty some of the debt, really. I think that strikes the right balance.
We didn't want to get ahead of ourselves too much because it would maybe then create a problem for the final dividend where people expect it almost then. I think it's a good balance, really. We have historically paid around the 40% mark. I think GBX 8 and $10 million back to shareholders just strikes that balance from a capital allocation side correctly.
Yep. That's very clear. Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Sam.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Richard Hatch from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Morning, Nigel and Gavin and team. A few questions. First one is just on the move to the western dumps.
Yeah.
Are you comfortable on the recoverability there? You kind of talked through the challenges that you saw. You managed to mitigate it in this sort of first year of going wholly there, and this winter you'll kind of blend between the Eastern and the Western. Are you comfortable that you're able to get the recoverability that you're looking for, and is there going to be any impact on costs as a result of that if you need to sort of throw a bit more reagent at it or such like?
Yeah. No, on the cost side, first of all, Richard, and good morning to you. We don't expect a major incremental increase in costs as a consequence of doing any of this, really. Am I confident in the recovery? Well, we've now been leaching the western dump since 2017. Yes, we are confident, and we claim what, 35%-42%, which is quite a range for different cells. We're confident that we will get that recovery over the life of mine now to 2034. Clearly because it is lower and it's a longer leach time and everything else, we have to husband those cells, and that's all we're trying to do here by trying to get an extra little bit of take pickup from what effectively is acid rain, acid rock drainage, isn't it, in effect?
It's fresh water we're putting on, and that's what we will do and get a little bit of cock about because there's enough pyrite and pyritite in the cells to generate their own acid. If we have to add some acid to it, we will do. We don't suspect at the moment from what we've experienced in the west that we need to do that, then we'll put it onto the other dumps just to increase the tenure of the grade and just to help with the production side of it. Not a major increase in cost. Confident with the operation on the west, having done it now for 3.5 years and the kind of recoveries that we're getting and our program to rotate around those western cells to get the 124,000 tonnes that we require.
We may end up as we often say, it's not an exact science. We may end up recovering more than that, but our plans are based on those numbers and those recovery levels, and we're fairly confident that we can do it. Howard and the technical team, though, had planned this ILS system quite some time ago, actually, and we don't need it at the moment, but we feel it'll be a good beneficial supplement, if you like, to the operation in the future at pretty minimal CapEx cost, to be quite honest with you. One thing just to add onto it, which we did experience during the winter of last year, was we stopped for the first time since we started operating, we stopped the eastern dumps and just leached the western dumps. That did create a few concerns over the consumption of reagents.
That came through some of the costs. At first it was flummoxing even people like Howard and the rest of the technical team who are pretty knowledgeable about these things. We concluded there was either a physical leak, which we then concluded there wasn't because we inspected all the equipment, and we looked at viscosity levels and the different makeup between the east and the west. As a consequence of that experience last winter, what we've decided to do is continue leaching the eastern dumps throughout the winter period this winter. I think that will help as well with the kind of makeup. As with many things in life, Richard, you live and learn as you're going through it, but I think we're fairly confident how we manage and husband those dumps through to the end of the life.
Thanks, Nigel. That's very helpful. Can I switch over to Sasa? You talked a bit earlier in the presentation about the dilution challenges that you were seeing there. Would you just be able to kind of give us a bit of a flavor as to how you're seeing sort of the mine perform in the last couple of months since you provided that last update? Is it kind of more tracking in line with your expectations? Are you managing to kind of show some signs of improvement and get a handle and sort of address those challenges that you saw?
Yeah. Scott and the team on-site have put in place. We fell behind on development, is the honest answer, and we have got some poorer ground conditions down at 910 Level and 990 Level, which takes a bit of work. They put in place a recovery program. We are seeing more of the ore coming from the development as opposed to the stoping, which is development generally. It's got lower dilution, as I said before, because you're more in the core of the ore body. This recovery program is showing signs in July and August. We've had a couple of good months, I have to say, which is positive. I don't want to sit here and be disingenuous and say, "Well, definitely they will get back to the low end." That's what we keep maintaining guidance at.
We may be a couple of percentage short, and likewise, we may be a couple of percentage over on the copper, as I said before. We have a plan in place, and we're working hard to deliver on that. The past two months have shown signs of recovery from that. We've increased combined grades on daily basis for quite a number of days above 7%. That's all positive as far as we can see.
Yeah. Okay, cool. While we're still at Sasa, I noticed in the results there's some kind of commentary around technical work to look at the move to 900,000 tonnes a year, third ball mill, and maybe some additional float cells. Have you got a kind of rough sort of order of magnitude on what kind of CapEx that might be?
Well, we've got the order of magnitude on the main backfill plans and everything else. I think we put around $2 million or $3 million for the plan. If you're talking specifically, Richard, about the plant expansion, that's the kind of number.
No, the ball mill, third ball mill.
That's the kind of number we're talking about, $2 million-$3 million on the ball mill.
Okay.
For the plant expansion. It would be a few more flotation cells, a bit of an expansion maybe to the building itself, and then a ball mill, is what Barry O'Connell, who's running it, is thinking about at the moment.
Okay, understood. Sorry, I'm nearly done. Just on the labor renegotiations at Sasa, have you got a steer on what kind of inflation rate that kind of is a good order of magnitude to think about?
The actual official inflation, I think, is about 3.5% in North Macedonia at the moment, something of that magnitude. We will go through a collective bargaining agreement, which we expect to finish in this half of the year. I can't really say what percentage pay rise we may give next year, in terms of that will be pretty confidential information, I suppose. No, I can't. As I say, and as Gavin alluded to, we are, as most mining companies and people across the world, experiencing some cost inflation as a consequence of high oil prices and metal prices. We're not immune to any of that. I think the numbers are probably sub 10% overall, even though they look on the face of it higher than that.
If you strip out exchange and you strip out mineral extraction tax and those kind of things, we're probably looking at percentages in some consumables and some aspects that might be 10% and some that are less. Anything below the 10%, I suppose, is what we're looking at as a kind of cost inflation overall that we're experiencing across the patch here.
Yeah. Okay. Just on the M&A commentary, would you be able to give any more sort of Are you looking across the piece in terms of development assets or is it producing or can you just give it a little bit more flavor as to some of the broader kind of opportunities you're looking at? Should we be expecting maybe a producing mine or something that you can just step in and finish the development of?
There's not a lot more I can add, if I'm honest with you, Richard, and I always feel I give a woolly answer on this, so I do apologize. It is opportunistic, and we are increasing our focus on it and our energy on it really to see what we can pick up on top of our current assets, which is a great base to build from. It could be something ideally, it would be something in our own area, be it the Balkans or Central Asia, in copper. It's primary. Beggars can't be choosers sometimes. We have to look at other assets and be a bit more creative and look at the opportunities and look at every aspect of it. We continue to do that.
I think we're looking at having paid all our debt off next year at some stage and certainly turning into a net cash position soon. We become stronger by the day to actually acquire a decent asset. It is opportunistic still in terms of where we look.
It sounds obvious, but the key thing is the accretion metrics that we look at here.
Yeah.
Richard, of the 18 that we reviewed over the last six, seven months or so, that would have included producing assets, development assets.
Yeah.
And a larger sort of transformational-
Yeah.
M&A as well. Anyway.
Okay. Thank you very much for taking my question.
Question. I think that's. Apologies.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Peter Mallin-Jones from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Unfortunately, Hatch jumped in with my M&A question, so I will defer to the next questioner, please.
Oh, sorry about that, Peter.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, you can do so now by pressing star one on your telephone. We will now take a follow-up question from Richard Hatch from Berenberg. Please go ahead. The line is open.
Thanks. Sorry, I have got a last one. With the Traxys agreement kind of coming to a conclusion at the tail end of next year, how are you thinking about the sale of the products from Sasa in Kounrad when you haven't got to sell it into Traxys? Would you kind of extend? Are you happy with that? Or do you think you could get potentially a better agreement somewhere else?
Well, Richard, I think on Kounrad, we have been selling to Traxys since the outset there. We have, during that period, run at least one tender process where we've invited other parties.
Yeah.
To tender for the material. There's no obligation to stick with Traxys beyond October 2022 on Kounrad. I foresee us running a similar process again. On the lead zinc side, the products are far more complicated. The logistics are way more complicated as well. I don't see us doing that ourselves. We haven't decided anything yet in terms of running tender processes and the like. I think there's certainly benefit to having somebody with that deep market knowledge assisting us with those sort of sales.
There are no further questions in the queue at this time. I will turn the call back to your host.
Okay. Well, thank you very much for everybody attending this morning. Thank you to Louise for producing all of the literature for it. Thanks to Gavin. Thanks to the board for supporting us on announcing a very healthy dividend of GBX 8 and $10 million back to shareholders. We will work to improve our climate change strategy or develop our climate change strategy, as we've already announced. Work to improve on the production in the second half from the first half and deliver on that guidance for the year, continue to pay down our debt and look for other business opportunities.
I'd like to thank everybody for paying attention this morning and listening to us, and we look forward to meeting some of you, hopefully in person, physically, in the near future as we move, hopefully, out of the COVID-19 restrictions we've all suffered from for the past 18 months or so. Thank you very much, and goodbye.