It's great to see some familiar faces here. I'd like to welcome, in particular, those new friends that we've got, who are spending the time with us today. Not forgetting all the folks who are online, so thank you for making the effort to do that, too. The team are here today.
What we're gonna do is concentrate on two particular areas of our business, where we've got some new developments to run through with you, and where we feel strongly we can grow and develop shareholder value, which is what we're all about. Those of you who are familiar with the group will not need a reminder that we're organized effectively into three really clear pillars.
We have a services business, we have a land business, and we're deliberately not talking about the land business today. We have no sort of particular surprises there. The land business continues to develop positively. And then we've got the HRMS business, which is our activity in Germany, where we do have some new news.
So this structure's been in place for a number of years, and is really clear-cut, and is the basis on which we operate. We want to and will continue to grow the services business, we'll talk a little about that, through the accumulation of some high quality, robust contractual positions in our target markets. And we do have a little bit of a tailwind in that area, which we'll talk to.
As I've said, the land business is in good shape, and the game plan there over a period of time is to realize capital from that land portfolio, including, and we've recently announced one disposal, the renewable energy land assets. The game plan in Germany is to maximize the returns from our German joint venture, and create a valuable, and dare I say, unique asset. More of that later.
So we're making good progress on those three strategic aims, including, not to, just make two final points of it, our presence at Sizewell, and the recent sale of the first tranche of the energy and assets that I've just referred to, and continuing cash receipts from our German business, HRMS, which support, in no small measure, the group dividend.
Today, we're gonna focus, as I've said, on the services business unit, and a very interesting opportunity emerging within the world of steel waste recycling. I know it's hard to believe there are exciting things emerging in the steel waste recycling world, but believe me, there are. The last five years, we've seen substantial growth in our services offering, with profit growing at an annual rate of 30% over that period.
Simon and the team will be building on that forward momentum, highlighting the business model that's allowed us to be successful, as well as the scale of the opportunities that lie in front of us, and why we're well positioned. As I did say, we have a little bit of a tailwind in that area. Gordon will present on two key areas.
Firstly, he's gonna give a more in-depth understanding of the steel waste recycling process at DK Recycling in Duisburg, and then he's going to present a new opportunity to recover and recycle zinc oxide that's been developed in-house, building on the group's expertise, innovation, and commitment to minimizing industrial waste. There's gonna be opportunities for questions, as my colleague has just said, at the end of each section, so just hold your questions until the end of each section. We're also taking questions online, I think, obviously. Are we gonna manage them at the end of each section as well?
[audio distortion] We'll manage them at the end, if we've got sufficient time.
Okay. So, so that's the game plan today. I'm gonna introduce Simon, who's gonna take over at this point, and, I forgot to press the button. So there it is. Thank you.
Thank you, Roger, and good, good morning to everybody. Services strategy. So first of all, really pleased to be presenting to you all here today. First time I've presented to you as a, as an audience, six months in the business so far. So, just want to introduce, who's gonna be presenting today. Myself, Chief Operations Officer of Hargreaves Services PLC. Neil Fraser, who's joining us, he's the MD of our Blackwells business.
He's been working through Lower Thames Crossing, Sizewell, and HS2, and he's a very busy gentleman, so glad he's with us today. And Sean Hager, who looks after the business that services a number of our core customers in a number of the sectors that we operate in: energy, waste, water, environmental, and industrials.
As you can see by our photos, lots of experience between the three of us. About a century of experience collectively that we have. We've all been in this sector from very early in our lives. And we've been working through what, for me, personally, and for other colleagues, has been a decarbonization ourselves.
When I started in the industry, I started building gas plants and operating oil and gas assets, and we've been on that journey with our customers over the last 30 years. In front of us, we see, in my mind, a really exciting future. It's the first time in a generation, I think, for the infrastructure sector, we've had some certainty. So I'm gonna take you, as our investors, through how we're approaching those opportunities in front of us, and how we're looking to deliver value as we go forward.
A reminder first of what the services model within Hargreaves is about. That long-term set of relationships that we've built over many years. 70-plus customers we tipped over last year. That gives us a really strong base to think about the future. Without that certainty and that resilience, it would be difficult for us to look forward into the opportunities coming. This business delivers really strong fundamentals.
6% margin is very good in the sector, it's a good, strong performance. We tipped over that last year. Really strong free cash flows. We're converting the work in progress in line with our contract commitments, and it's an excellent return on capital employed. GBP 36 million of our EBITDA last year, and most importantly, that firm base gives us that ability to select. We've built the business, it's inflation-resistant.
You saw that during the times of high inflation. It's resistant in its revenues, and it's resistant to credit exposure. The sorts of customers we deal with, large blue chip organizations, and we're very careful about how we contract with those customers. So with all these factors working together, we've now got an opportunity to grow. The question for us going forward is: where do we now grow, and where do we take that growth?
Those of you may have seen in June this year, the government published, for the first time in a long time, a robust industrial strategy for infrastructure. The ten-year infrastructure plan and the aligning of NISTA, the National Infrastructure Service Transformation Authority, now has given us a clear, and if you choose to look at it online, a portal that shows us what the ten years looks forward for the UK's investment in infrastructure.
Lots of people, you know, when I talk to folk, they say, "Are we sure we're gonna get this done?" I start to look at some of the signs of what's happening and where we're seeing that activity starting to come towards us. GBP 725 billion is the publicly announced number the government says is gonna be spent, and that's a 20% to 25% uptick on what's spent in previous years over the next 10.
All of the industry bodies that represent skills are saying that's gonna increase, too. I sit on the Engineering Construction Training Board, and we're seeing the volume of apprenticeship starts and people going on the sites already ticking up. We're partly way through Hinkley, as a country, and we're now looking forwards to other large infrastructures.
So if I just take it in the three columns that Hargreaves operates in. Connectivity, which in, in our minds, is connecting people to all the things that bring people together, that large infrastructure of roads, rail, airports, and indeed now data, large rollouts of infrastructure investment in data. And what does that mean to Hargreaves? Well, we've been on HS2 for some time now. Neil's team have been there delivering for a long time.
When it gets finished, it's in the public domain, probably, as we always say, another two years to run. But, so HS2, we're there. East West Rail is coming. Lower Thames Crossing, we've done some preliminary work on that already in this year, and we're looking forward into next year. So if we get the timing right, it moves our fleet from one contract onto another contract. Lower Thames Crossing, already engaged.
Enhanced regional transport and Heathrow, which is now called Expanding Heathrow, on the Heathrow expansion project. We've worked on the preliminary work for that, and we've done some of the scheme work already. So again, well positioned to take advantage of that. As I touched on there, data centers. Data centers for Hargreaves could mean a number of things.
It could mean on our land, it could mean we provide services to prepare the land, or it could mean we provide services to build those assets and operate them. In our minds, a data center is a small refinery. It needs large amounts of electricity and large amounts of clean water, so it fits neatly with the services that we would provide. The second column we're interested in is, of course, clean energy. And in clean energy, we're already supporting Sizewell with the temporary construction area.
If you go down to Sizewell, the moonscape that we've created has been done over the past two or three years. We've been very involved very early on in the project, and we've been transitioning our fleet to one that's ready and prepared to do the major works down there. We're in a very good place at Sizewell. If we look at SMRs and nuclear fusion, government have just announced the rollout of Wylfa, which is gonna be multiple SMRs.
They've announced the investment in the Hartlepool, which is gonna be a third nuclear, new build nuclear, using American technology. And we are at West Burton, clearing the site of old ash, and that prepares that site for the Atomic Energy Authority to come into there to start thinking about the first, fission and fusion project. So we're well placed there.
Energy from waste, colleagues in the room who operate our haulage and waste management businesses, energy from waste presents us with an opportunity that we're already in. We move the waste around on our vehicles, we operate some of their assets, and we're maintaining some of their assets. That sector has now stabilized for us. It's a good position for long-term contracts, and we have some really good customers in there.
Renewables, developing wind farms and solar on our land, and energy storage, battery storage that we have up at Broken Cross. So that segment, clearly available to Hargreaves to target and lots of investment going in there. Onto the environment and the environmental sector. We just completed some trial pits at the Lincolnshire Reservoir, and we're doing the Fens Reservoir trial pits in the spring.
We are going to be, in the UK, investing in a series of large reservoirs that we haven't done for 40 to 45 years. Significant investment on the same scale to that we're seeing at HS2 and Sizewell. SESRO, the strategic reservoir for Thames, we've already been engaged in the pre-contractual conversations with Thames.
AMP8, Sean's business in it, has a business we acquired a few years ago, which operates within the existing water treatment businesses, and that's providing us mechanical, electrical services into the water treatment business, water processing, and we're doing small EPC-type projects for them in upgrading their plants. AMP8's coming towards us, which gives us another opportunity there. Not only do we operate and assist them in the operation, and we build reservoirs, we're also dealing with a waste product from waste.
Our land remediation takes the waste sludges from a number of water companies, Scottish Water, Yorkshire, Northumbrian, and Thames, and we use that to remediate land in Scotland. That material will keep coming towards us. We have to think about a different solution for that as we run out of land bank to put it onto the land, and there's quite a lot of energy and conversation going in as to what do we do next?
How do we upgrade the facilities to deal with that waste? Large scale investment there, too. Sustainable resources. We're looking at bringing in all these clean energy projects and infrastructure projects, all need sustainable types of resources. There's no, no point building clean energy assets from materials that aren't sustainable.
So I'll talk about a case study later on, which talks about how we're finding sustainable materials to bring into the construction of these infrastructure projects. So hopefully, you can see our enthusiasm for large markets ahead of us. We've got a strong business that's delivering strong returns. The question for me is: How do we make sure we maximize the opportunity and take those opportunities ahead of us? A simple operating model.
I like simplicity, and I like to keep things so that we can convert that message into all of our people, and it's built under three pillars: Inspire people. Get the best people into our business, train them well, look after them, and engage them, and they'll do great work for us and for our customers.
That's the first pillar of our workstream, and Neil will talk about a live example of how we're doing that within the earthmoving business. Once we've got those people, deliver excellence. Hargreaves has got a really strong reputation in the sector. I've known Hargreaves all of my life, and we've always seen Hargreaves as a really strong deliverer. We've got to maintain that reputation.
Maintaining that reputation and that standard of excellence is what delivers in these large infrastructure projects, and what keeps our customers coming back to us. Sean's gonna talk about how we do that within a specific project within our business. And if we have the greatest people delivering on those standards, we win more work. And win is not just about winning more work, for us, it's winning for our people.
Winning for them by winning more work, gives them more employment prospects, more opportunities to develop and grows our business. So this is a circular model: Understand our business, understand our customers, and follow them with great people who are inspired to deliver excellence. Now, I'd like to hand over to Neil, who's gonna talk about how we're inspiring some of our people on the ground.
Thank you very much, Simon. As Simon says, I'm going to pick up the first step in the operating model, the inspire step. I'm gonna look at that through the lens of Blackwell Earthmoving and how Blackwell Earthmoving, as a part of Hargreaves Services, these very large earthmoving projects, which in the infrastructure sector, which Simon has described.
By way of context, we've been doing it next year for 70 years. Next year is our platinum anniversary, so this isn't new to Blackwell, it's what we do as a business. Obviously, we've been doing it as part of the Hargreaves Group for the last 10 years and have benefited enormously from the support and the backing of the PLC. So thank you to Simon.
In terms of how we inspire our resources, you can see I split in three here. We have a workforce which currently actually is it's over 400, is nearly 500. We have quite a lot of subcontract staff working for us as well. We have a professional managerial and supervisory staff of about 100, and then we have the earthmoving fleet.
The earthmoving fleet is amongst the largest, it's amongst the newest in the UK, and it includes over 250 items, heavy earthmoving equipment. But, I'm gonna focus in the inspire space on the people, because however hard I try, I do find it quite difficult to inspire a bulldozer. So how do we inspire our people?
What does inspiration mean to me? It means, and this really is reiterating what Simon has said, it's how we recruit and retain the best people for the business, the best people in the industry. So I believe our team, right the way from workforce through to leadership, contains the strongest earthmoving proponents within the U.K.
So how do we do that? Let me give you some examples, and as I stress, we've been doing this for a long, long time. By way of a recent illustration, since Hargreaves acquired us 10 years ago, we've grown the business about threefold. So we went from a headcount on the A14, which was our largest highways earthmoving project ever undertaken. We've grown the business since we moved from A14 into HS2 and Sizewell about threefold.
So it shows how we can do it. How do we do it in that, in the people space? What makes people want to come and work for Blackwells? I'm gonna refer here, so, to a few of the pictures on the slides. One is for heritage. Blackwells are a very, very well-regarded name in U.K. civil engineering. As part of the Hargreaves group, with that backing of the PLC and the might and the credibility that that gives us, I do believe it makes us a very, very attractive proposition for those seeking a career in civil engineering.
The opportunity which Blackwell present, because we only work on the very largest projects which are in the national consciousness, Simon's mentioned Sizewell, HS2, HS1. I worked on HS1, I've worked on Heathrow Terminal Five.
These are projects which people are keen to work on from a career development perspective. If you come to work for Blackwells as part of Hargreaves, you are going to work on career-defining projects, and that, I think, makes us very attractive. The opportunities within the group for our people to gain, because the danger and we are a very specialist business, so we do one thing and one thing only, and it's earthmoving.
That can be seen as pigeonholing, but as part of Hargreaves, we offer our people training and other experiences, whether it's as part of a division in Hong Kong, which our people wouldn't have if we weren't part of the broader group. And those projects extend not just into the construction phase, the construction cycle of a project.
Blackwell also provides professional services, advisory services, at a very early stage of the project. Simon's mentioned HS2. We actually started working in a paid capacity, believe it or not, on HS2 in 2012. We didn't put our first bucket on the ground until 2019. So the opportunity for our people to gain experience at very early stages of the project, which most certainly most of our peers, most specialist contractors don't offer, I think also makes us very attractive. We're also a very progressive employer. The image on the bottom right here has a logo on it, 25 in 25.
We've been driving the recruitment of women in UK civil engineering for a number of years, resulting in our 25 in 25 campaign, where we set out during the course of 2025 to increase our headcount of women to 25%. We're very, very nearly there. I'm conscious there's not much of a year left, but given that national average in U.K. civil engineering is 13%, we're way ahead of the curve.
We're also very progressive, and Simon, again, touched upon this, and this plays back into the plant fleet, in our approach to carbon reduction in earthworks. We've been looking at carbon reduction initiatives in earthworks since 2011. We worked with the University of Cambridge into a research paper into the carbon impact of earthworks.
And back in 2011, and I think it was still called global warming, it wasn't climate change at that point. So we've been doing this long, long before others were thinking about it. We still lead the industry. We've an early adopter of battery electric equipment, 'cause simply speaking, we need to take diesel out of heavy earthmoving, which is a real challenge, but one of the ways we'll do it is using battery electric equipment.
With the support of Hargreaves, we've bought the first 2 battery electric earthmoving excavators in the U.K., which is really, really exciting. That inspires people to come and work for us because they see Blackwell as being an employer who's taking the challenges of sustainability very, very seriously.
We have to recruit and retain the best people to meet the challenges and to meet the opportunities which are in front of us. Simon, again, has alluded to many of these. The scale of the earthmoving required for the new fleet of reservoirs, for Anglian Water, who we're already engaged with in a consultancy and minor contracting capacity, and Thames Water, dwarfs anything that this country's seen.
Certainly, and I've been doing this 37 years, and it dwarfs anything that I've seen in 37 years, dwarfing even the scale of the earthmoving on HS2. That, coupled with airport expansion, earthmoving, particularly Heathrow Airport, means that there's huge opportunities ahead for Blackwell's and the broader group on these projects. We have to inspire our people in order to have the capacity to do it. With that, I'm gonna hand over to Sean for the next chain. There you go, Sean.
Thank you, Neil. Sean Hager, Managing Director of Hargreaves Industrial Services, but I also have responsibility at group level for Health and Safety and delivery of operational excellence. And as Neil's mentioned, Blackwell's have been around for 74 years, or almost 70 years. The Industrial Services division has been not quite 70 years, but it goes back to the mining industry, as the mine.
So we've been involved in this decarbonization of industry for many, many years now. The positive, and I hope you take some comfort from this, about Industrial Services, is that we never lose contracts. So the only time we lose a contract is when the contract comes to an end or the plant ceases to exist that we're working on.
Occasionally, we'll make a commercial decision to end a contract because it's not working for us or it's not working for the client. But predominantly, our contracts continue to roll over, they're inflation-proofed, and they provide good, steady, safe income. We put this down to our operating standards. Repeat business comes from having really, really good, really established, really safe operating standards.
Many of our operations take place in really high-risk environments: power stations, heavy earthmoving, significant large projects. These type of environments demand really high levels of health and safety. It's an expectation, and we build on this expectation with real high levels of operational delivery. Again, as I mentioned, that reinforces the brand and almost guarantees repeat business. There is an example on the slide.
So the example on the side, slide that behind me, sorry, is one of our activities where we handle sludge and biosolids on behalf of a number of water companies. This just is another example of where Hargreaves is involved in the repurposing of a waste and really turning it into a usable commodity.
Biosolids, just for a bit of background, biosolids really are a by-product of a sewage treatment works. The sludge is made as part of the sewage treatment works, it is cleaning the water, the sludge is treated, and what you get out of that treated sludge is basically a fertilizer that can be put to land. And it's soil quality, it's crop growth, all supporting the circular economy.
Some of the sludge, unfortunately, is unsuitable, can't be treated, so what we do with that sludge is that we take it to predominantly large industrial land banks in Scotland, where it's used as a soil enhancer and helps support landscaping activities. So very circular. We're currently working with two water companies on these projects, and we provide an absolute full end-to-end service.
So we take the sludge as it comes out of the sewage treatment works, all the way through to putting it out on land. So in these activities, we provide all the plant, we provide all the labor, we provide all the operating controls. Everything we do is provided and controlled by Hargreaves. Everything is safety critical, and our focus is on how we deliver safe, reliable operations.
What we can't do is take sludge to land which hasn't gone through a proper process and being released correctly, because that brings a health and safety risk, brings an environmental issue, brings a food safety issue, potentially. We've got some really robust, well-embedded control procedures that ensure that everything we do is managed tightly. We invest heavily in plant, we invest heavily in people.
The plant is the most up-to-date, most environmentally friendly, most efficient plant that you can get in the market. Our people are safe, are competent, are multi-skilled, are invested in. Having modern plant, competent workforce, and a can-do attitude of a business that is regarded as safe and has a great reputation, guarantees repeat business and makes sure that we can keep generating good, safe revenue. Okay. Thank you, Simon.
Thank you, Sean. So covering those first two points there, the next thing for me is to win, and to win more work and win for our people. Thank you, Neil. Thank you, Sean. Let's not forget that at the core of Hargreaves' history, we were a trading business. The origins can be traced all the way back to 1936, if you do the history and check back where the name came from.
And this is a business that has followed its customers for all that time. We provided solid fuels into the thermal energy business for many years, and i n that, we've started to build up the services you've seen today. So instead of using our equipment to mine mines, we're using it to prepare the ground for clean energy.
Instead of using our equipment to move solid fuel into thermal power generators, we're using that to move sludge. So we've transitioned as a business now from an old product that went into delivering energy for the country, into the services that provide future infrastructure and future energy for the U.K. We're well prepared and well-positioned for the future markets coming towards us.
The example that, for me, sums a lot of that up is a recent project that our minerals team worked on in conjunction with our earthmoving teams and industrial and haulage businesses. In building these assets, you have to make sure, as I said before, you have to have sustainable products and sustainable equipment that's going in there. It's no longer optional. A lot of the consent orders on these assets say suppliers will deliver sustainable products.
So our minerals trading team sourced the product to fulfill a need down at Sizewell. Sizewell need circa 6 to 9 million tons of aggregate to backfill the plant, the project. Minerals team sourced a secondary product. It was a waste product being put to waste, granite that was a waste product from digging a tunnel in Oslo.
So that product would have normally disappeared and been lost. And they sourced the product, tested it for quality and compliance so that it could go in the project, the right size, the right composition, the right hardness. And not only that, they took it upon themselves to work out that because it's a by-product, it can be certified as having 22.5% less CO2 in its production. And that's when you compare it to mining virgin materials out of a quarry.
So because it's a by-product, it's got less carbon intensity, which was appealing to our customer. We've then set about organizing the shipping, organizing the port handling, organizing the delivery of that stuff on our vehicles, and incorporating into that product. Customer's really pleased. We fulfilled one of their sustainability needs in a project by joining the services that Hargreaves does separately together on this project, maximizing the value into our business.
We will continue to drive forwards with our strategy, and hopefully you've seen today how focused we are as a leadership team on making sure that we're delivering for our customers and delivering for our shareholders.
I'd just like to now share with you. We've prepared a short video which gives you an insight into some of the things we're doing, and so you can have a look at what we think is a very exciting business. Hopefully, that gives you a flavor of what our teams are doing and how we're supporting the country in its infrastructure development.
We have great people, and we are building inspiration into those teams. We deliver excellent services, and we're always looking to drive greater efficiencies and winning more work. I hope you can see now we're positioned to take advantage of the pipeline of critical infrastructure projects ahead of us. Happy to take questions at this point.
Just gonna pass the mic around.
Hello, it's Ed Stacey from Cavendish. And just one question, and it's about the reservoirs, because Neil mentioned that the scale of the earthmoving contract would dwarf HS2. I know you're not going to give me a number for any of those reservoirs, but in terms of like, are we talking it would dwarf the total scale of HS2, but would be spread over 15 years or, you know, kind of annual run rates? Are we talking about contracts that might actually be bigger than what you've been doing on HS2?
Thank you. That's a really good question. There's more than one reservoir. There's a fleet of 10 new reservoirs to be built in the U.K. Pretty much starting construction-wise in four to five years' time, and then running for 10 to 15 years beyond that. Of those reservoirs, three of them have an enormous amount of earthmoving, and two of them have a modest amount of earthmoving, and the other five, less so.
The combined earthmoving required for all of those reservoirs, and there's no firm figures available for this, so some of it is my judgment, equals and is slightly greater than the earthmoving requirements for HS2. So in terms of the magnitude, slightly more than a nd in HS2 here, I'm talking HS2 Phase One, obviously, London to Birmingham, what's currently in construction. In terms of magnitude, slightly more. In terms of run rate, depending on the timing of the reservoirs, it's potentially over a slightly longer period. HS2 has been concentrated over five years. Here, we're looking at between five and 10 years.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ildar Davletshin, investor. I just wanted to ask maybe a broader question on the competitive landscape. Could you talk about your major competitors and maybe your market share and the way you win businesses? Is it more like, I'm simplifying it, but I hope you explain in more detail, like pricing or quality or timing. And then, if I may, on the contracts, like just for us to understand as investors, like what kind, how the contracts work? Is it like a 12-month, multi-year? And you mentioned the 6% margin, what gives you confidence in this? Like, how do you arrive at that? Like, is it a cost plus, or just the kind of a bit more on the contracts please, thank you.
Okay. In terms of competition, if you look at Hargreaves, we operate a number of services, so we would compete with potentially different people in those services. Clear example, as you saw on the videos, trucks. Lots of people own and use trucks, but we're actually quite niche in that. So we move certain specific projects which are associated with the sector we're in.
So you could arguably say we don't have thousands of competitors in that, we have a narrower space of competitors who have trucks. In earthmoving, large-scale earthmoving, there are maybe two or three in this country, two definitely on smaller, that do the type of work we do. So those large infrastructure projects that haven't been around for a long time, we're very well positioned, 'cause there isn't a great deal of competition in that in the U.K.
In our industrial business, there are probably more customers, 'cause we have a broad spread of what we do, but again, we're quite specific in what we do. We do handling of stuff rather than general mechanical, electrical. So what I'm trying to paint you is, we're quite niche in that infrastructure space, but there are lots of people who could claim they're, they're in that space, too.
So it's a very big market with lots of services. But if you want it, especially earthmoving, you would come to Blackwell's. In terms of the contract models we adapt, because we're selective and we have a strong base, we're not out there doing lump sum EPC type of work. The industrial business is very much a flow through of cost with a margin and management fee, de-risked.
We're providing the customers with efficiency gains by working with them, and they pay us broadly our costs. Same in earthmoving, 'cause there isn't a great deal of competition. We're not doing that big lump sum pieces of work. We tend to be fee-based. So I hope that answers the question. We're not in that area of lump sum, big construction.
All good. Stephen, did we get anything online?
Yeah. So if I stick to services related questions, first part is, which part of the Hargreaves services are you most hopeful of seeing good growth? What area of service?
I mean, the obvious in there is the volume of earthmoving Neil talked about, but that feeds. If we get the businesses, as we bring the businesses into those larger projects, and they communicate, work well together, which they do, it pulls through other things. So I guess all of it.
Yeah. We've got really good examples Sean's just reminded me of. We did significant amount of earthmoving for HS2, as everybody knows, and we also installed a large conveyor, which the industrial services did, big piece of work, and it takes stuff across a road and a highway, so that we don't have to have trucks coming in and out there. That's an example of pull-through. Good relationship with the customer, we bring you through the other services.
I think this question is a services-related question, although I think the genesis of it is in the land business. Whether or not the business has considered checking closed mines for the presence of rare earth metals, I suspect it means as there could be t his one might be for you.
No, we haven't done.
Thank you, Gordon. That's all I'm gonna cover on services. There's a few questions that are more generic, but we'll pick them up after.
One more, am I?
Absolutely.
Thanks. Simon Corfield, shareholder. How do you measure inspire, excellence? I guess winning is easier to measure, but how do you measure inspire, and excellence?
Tricky is the answer to that. But inspire is a people-based thing, so for me, i f I look at our people, I was up in Scotland looking at land remediation last week, and I was talking to a gentleman that's worked for us for many, many years. He's 62 years old, started with an apprentice. Started mining coal for us in an open cast coal mine in Scotland.
He's now operating a digger, which is taking the waste sludge Sean talked about, putting that back in the land and putting the land back on top, restoring it to nature. He's enormously proud about that activity, and he says to me, specifically, "You've allowed me to do that as a business." So you do it by talking to people.
You do it by the traditional people engagement studies, people engagement surveys, and say whether people are happy to work for us, whether they'd recommend us to a friend. Excellence is about keeping contracts. It's what Sean talked about. When we retain contracts and they renew them without negotiation, that's our hard measure for excellence. So we've delivered that service. Gordon. Is that easy? I'm gonna hand over to Gordon, if that's okay.
Good morning, everybody. I think most of you know me, Gordon Banham, CEO. I just wanna say thank you to the team for what they did on services. Simon's been a great addition to the group. And of course, the old faithfuls, Sean and Neil, continue to do a really great job for me. So let me just talk about Germany.
I just wanna take some time because you can imagine on the roadshows, we don't have a lot of time to talk about Germany, and I have been fairly throw away with a lot of the shareholders by saying, "Well, if you're doing a sum of the parts calculation, just look at what the balance sheet is and put it in a balance sheet value." And that's very unfair on the German business.
So what I'm gonna do today is just take some time to try and give you the data to make your own decision on what that valuation should be in your sum of the parts play. So at the moment, the balance sheet's about GBP 58 million of our share of it. So let me just take you through and remind you. So the German business, forget DK Zinc Processing, it's a new announcement today.
Historically, you'll all be aware of, that the business is split into two parts. So you have the trading business, HRMS, which owns DK Recycling. DK Recycling, HRMS, and the zinc processing business are all ring-fenced, so you have to do a little bit of a sum of the parts of the three, but they are ring-fenced from each other, which is important to know.
When I've been on roadshow with a lot of you, and I've spoken about HRMS as a trading business, and I've said to you very simply, it makes about GBP 1 million a month. So if we eventually wanna recover value, very easy route is to close it down, liquidate the stocks. There's about three months of inventory in the books, so you've got GBP 3 million of profit, which we wouldn't take.
That would be a redundancy closure cost. So hopefully, you look at it and go, "Right, Gordon, I've got my head around that. That bit's secure, easy." That trading business is a bunch of people, and I always say, you know, I don't attribute a value to that, per se, because those people can leave. So I try to be realistic as that.
DK Recycling is a very specific business in the recycling sector, and I'm gonna explain that in a lot more detail for you, reminding some of you or explaining it to people. Just remember, voting rights are different from economic, so basically, the profits of this business, we get 86% of it. The little nuance, and it's really exciting, and it.
Please pay attention as we go through, 'cause you'll see how they all link very well. DK Zinc Processing is a new announcement today from a point of view of where we're developing the business, but if you look at it, it stands alone, and it is, we have purposely shown it as part of PLC, because we will be reporting on this as part of the group. So it sits as part of the group.
It's not a joint venture. So I just wanted to make that clear. So just reminding everybody today about the business at DK. So DK is a recycling business. Its technology is the only technology that deals with waste dust from glass furnaces. You really have only two options with the waste dust. You either put it to landfill, or you give it to us.
Traditionally, some have gone to landfill, some have gone to us. What the process does, and these are all our customers, so very big blue chips that you'll know the names of, we mix coke and coal with iron ore, and we put it into our blast furnace, and we get pig iron, zinc, and energy out. So we're recycling, it's very positive. We're also protected because we have our own power station on site.
So it's a big industrial complex, and does the job very well, and ticks along dealing with this. Like I said, the customers can either do it with us or landfill, but one of the key points that I'll pick up later is, it typically can only deal with a zinc content of about 3%. Now, it's a USP, because nobody else can deal with 3%, that's why it goes into landfill, but it can't deal with high zincs, which is what the new electric arc furnaces do.
So what I say here is, and this is just a correlation, in the old days, I would sit and say, "This business is gonna bob along, making between GBP 5 million and GBP 20 million profit." Why does it vary? Well, if there's operational problems at the plant, and then, of course, zinc is a commodity.
So, what tends to happen if zinc prices go up, and we have a good run and we're producing well, we could be up at closer to GBP 20. If zinc prices are down, and we have some problems at the plant, we could be down at GBP 5. But it's always worked in that range. We've always been very comfortable looking at it like that.
But I think everyone in this room knows there's a huge amount of change in the steel world. These are the three points that you've all heard of, people have mentioned over the last 12 months. I'll try and dig into them in a little bit of detail to explain what impact they're having, but you're all aware of Trump. Finally used that name today.
Trump and the tariffs and all that's going on, so it's creating some huge dynamics, and that's why DK's had some challenges over the last couple of years. So what are the market drivers in DK's world? Well, if you think about it, as I told you, coke and pig iron prices tend to be symbiotic, so that was okay, wasn't it? Well, tariffs are causing major disruption to the steel industry in Europe.
You're seeing plant closures or capacity reduction. That's meaning that steel prices are very, very low. Most of it's loss-making, which is driving pig iron prices really below cost of production. So that's hurting us. Construction sector, down in Europe, therefore, running at roughly 60% of normal levels. That's a negative to us.
A positive, and I mentioned this when I've been out on roadshow with, with some of you, that Russia was dumping 1 million tons a year of pig iron into Europe because it wasn't an embargoed product after the Ukrainian invasion. That has now been sanctioned, so by the end of 2025, 1 million tons of pig iron will come out of the European market, which should help drive prices up.
Then there's this thing called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Now, some people in this room will know all about it and go, "Oh, yeah, I understand that." Some of you may not. The scary thing, and I'll put it very easily for you, if you bring a ton of pig iron after 2035 into the U.K., into Europe, you will be paying 100 based on what the price was in November, you will be paying EUR 164 a ton more for that commodity.
Just a straight tax on the top, 164. So if you're involved in any businesses that are heavily involved in bringing in or using steel products, that is the green tax that is coming by 2035. It's called CBAM. It's just starting, and what it really means is that if you bring anything into Europe and you have done it with high global emissions, so pig iron is roughly 2 tons of CO2 for every ton produced. If you do that in Brazil or China or India, you will have to pay this on top of normal tariffs, 164.
So that shows you how much these prices are going to move up. In the, in Europe, you get what's called free allowances, and at the moment, DK gets about 500,000 free allowances to keep us in business, and then we give those 500,000 back. It's, it's a very circular process. In 2026, the EU has to make a decision, because what's going to happen if they carry on in their current trajectory, by 2035, we will get no more free allowances, so we'll have to buy them, but all of our competitors who are bringing it in outside of Europe are going to pay 164. What it really means is if you buy pig iron, whether it's from us or from these guys, you're going to pay EUR 164 a ton more based on that price.
So that's a significant cost to European economies. I think the governments are starting to panic in Europe at the moment, especially Germany. There's a lot of challenges. But if that trajectory carries on as it is, prices of pig iron will go up, and we will be in balance. What it will do is stop us exporting pig iron, because if you think about it, once you're outside of the carbon border adjustment, sales to Korea, Japan, Pakistan, places we do, Europe will be uncompetitive.
Won't be able to get a look in. So we're internalizing our sales, and with the move to electric arc furnaces, the demand for pig iron is increasing. So if you take Tata at Port Talbot, they're looking to buy European, about 100,000 tons of pig iron that they didn't.
So we think we can internalize inside Europe, which is a good thing, but the prices of everyone's pig iron is going to go up. It isn't going to improve our profitability, but at least it shows that we're protected. Everyone talks about carbon capture. It's got a long way to go. So if you hear all these stories about carbon capture, the first people that are going to put this on is going to be cement plants.
We'll let them have what I call bleeding edge technology, and then we'll look at it, but it's very, very expensive. We're protected by CBAM protecting us, taking things forward. So it's creating a lot of uncertainty and opportunities. The other thing that's happening is steel decarbonization. Now, a lot of you will have seen, if I take a UK perspective, closure of Port Talbot.
So they closed Port Talbot, highly polluting. You saw that they nationalized British Steel because they were going to close the blast furnaces. It's now lost the government GBP 260 million in the first six months since they've owned it. So everybody's looking to move away from the traditional blast furnace. And these people that are that we all are in, we as a company, are in detailed discussions with, at the highest levels, are all building big electric arc furnaces with subsidies.
For instance, Tata are getting EUR 2 billion at IJmuiden. Salzgitter's already got EUR 2 billion. Thyssen's got EUR 2 billion, so on and so on. These are big projects. They run to a size of about a 3 million-ton electric arc furnace. So they're big pieces of kit. They need huge investment.
But the really interesting thing is that they now create a very different dust, and I point you to the zinc content between 8 and 15. Now, as I told you, DK can't deal with anything much more than 3, 4%. So it's like, oh, that's a problem for us, but it's a problem for everybody because I'll talk about traditional method of treatment. That can't deal with it either. So somebody needs an answer to that.
Is it an opportunity or is it a risk for us? So this is why it's an opportunity for us. I don't know if they'll just stand up, Stefan and Robert. So Stefan and Robert have been leading the project for 3 years. They're in, they're in the front. Please catch up with them later. They're intimately involved. You're going to stand up so everyone knows who you are.
Otherwise, they'll not know who you are. So, if you want to catch them later to talk to them, they've been involved with this. Robert, Stefan, how long has it been? three years, I think? four, sorry. See, five for you. Right. See, at least I say it shorter. I must have enjoyed it. So look, this is a new technology that we've developed in-house. The cost of the build is GBP 18 million, so bear that in mind. We've set an internal ROIC, a minimum of 20%. Talk about that later. German government have looked at all of this and gone, "Absolutely great. GBP 2 million." It's agreed. We've got the GBP 2 million.
They've also said, "Tell you what, we will give you a loan of a minimum," so I want to say minimum because it could be slightly more, "but a minimum of GBP 4 million." So we're now getting GBP 6 million, which is ring-fenced to that business. So at the moment, the risk to you in shareholders with this crazy CEO is actually, you know, GBP 12 million, because I bet you've all sat through presentations and someone said, "Oh, this is going to be great," and then it's all exploded and it's caused a problem.
So the risk is GBP 12 million, because this is ring-fenced. And I always say to everyone, remember, 8.5% of the money is mine as well, so I am that's why I took three years to even talk to you about it.... The building will start in January 2026. So spade in the ground.
It will be fully operational in H2 2027. It's 86% owned by the PLC, and that's important because I will tell you what's happening every six months on this. So it isn't going to get hidden in the other numbers. It's going to be clear, it's going to be transparent and open for you all to understand. The really exciting thing is the first plant can do about 50,000 tons of dust.
On the site that we have, we can actually build two more. There's a patent pending, and there's an opportunity to deploy this technology elsewhere. So you sort of say, well, challenges. So I'll just explain. An electric arc furnace at the moment, so the normal electric arc furnace uses scrap, and that means it has a zinc content of anything from about 18% up to 40%.
So remember, there's this sweet spot. DK can deal with up to about 5, or it goes landfill. Anything above 18 up to 40% is dealt with technology that's called a Waelz kiln. And if you do your research, you'll see there's a dominant player in the market called Befesa. Market cap's about EUR 1 billion, and it deals with all of the electric arc furnace dusts on long-term contracts and makes a margin of about EUR 100 a ton on every ton it processes.
So the problem for the existing, relatively small electric arc furnaces, who use 100% scrap, is they can only go to landfill or these guys, and these guys make a significant profit. Now, the problem with the Waelz kiln is it uses petcoke or anthracite or coke. So it has a CO2 footprint.
The residual that comes out the back end goes into landfill, but they do extract the zinc. It's the only thing they take out. They take out the zinc. But they produce a zinc concentrate, which then has to go through a zinc smelter, which is again, energy intensive. And if you go down at 15%-18%, it doesn't work. The economics—'cause you do the math and go, well, if, if it breaks even, Gordon, at 15%, you go, well, actually, if you're down at 8%, I've lost 7%, and zinc at the moment is trading at, let's call it about EUR 2,500 a ton. So a Waelz kiln will have to charge you about EUR 175 a ton.
We've had that tested because we deal with a company called Huta Cynku Miasteczko Śląskie in Poland, who run Waelz kilns, run the numbers through, and they said, "Yeah, that's roughly what we would charge for that type of material." Landfill's cheaper, so it's like, oh, so you've got these big projects being built that are producing a waste, which is supposed to improve their footprint. And guess what? They're gonna put a big pile of dust in landfill.
So that doesn't work for them either. So what do we do? Well, interestingly, DK already supplies about 8,000 tons of material to Befesa, so we already deal with their contracts. I had a guided tour of their plant, which they'll regret doing that a few months ago. So we take DK's material, about 8,000, and material from electric arcs.
50,000 tons, it's chemically treated. We're not saying exactly what we do because we don't want the competition to know, because we've got a patent pending. At the far end comes zinc oxide and waste dust. Now, interesting there, we already have letters of intent to buy the oxide. We've run a pilot plant, and the customers have looked at it.
We've agreed a formula, so we know what the output price is gonna be. It, it is linked to zinc price. So the strategy will be, once the technology is proved, we'll hedge to this, because that's the right strategy. You can hedge zinc in the market. The waste dust is really interesting because you can, what I might call, polish it down to 2%, and then you can put the material into DK.
Now, if you didn't put it into DK, because they're ring-fenced, you would landfill it. So the transfer price to DK is at EUR 70, because that's exactly what they pay for landfill. So it's an arm's length transaction, but the quality of that dust with a EUR 70 gate fee is earnings enhancing for DK. So actually, there's a benefit over in DK because it gets a new customer that's paying a higher gate fee.
Typically, they, they're getting paid something like a EUR 30 on average gate fee. So this material's probably worth EUR 20 or EUR 30. The quality is not quite as good, but there's a definite uptick. What's the advantages of this process over a Waelz kiln? Well, it's electricity, really, so if you use green electricity, it has a minimal carbon footprint. The residual, if it goes to DK, you're recycling 99%.
Remember, a Waelz kiln, its waste goes into landfill. One of the big barriers to entry, why Befesa has been so dominant, to build a Waelz kiln, you have to get planning permission, you have to do all of that, but it roughly costs you EUR 100 million. So they have a dominant position controlling about 80% of the market in Europe. So you say to me, "Okay, I've listened to all that," and believe me, I have stress tested this. Robert and Stefan have the scars of, well, this, what's how does this work? How does that work? So we took it to Imperial and said, "Here's the chemistry, does it work?" They've signed off, and has Alan Williams, MBE.
German government looked at it and said, "Yeah, we'll give you the grants, and we'll give you the state guarantee." So the German government are backing this project. We've run a pilot plant, which important thing for anyone who knows chemistry, the scalability is a factor of 50, so it isn't a big scale up from something to a, a factor of 1,000. It's only 50 times. It's a chemical process, not heat treatment, so it's all about surface interaction, mixing it correctly. As I said, we have the letters of intent. We're only looking to place about 6,000 tons in a market that's 239,000 in Europe, so we're not worried about driving prices down.
One of the things I say to everyone is DK is probably the most perfect place for this, because it's got rail connection, it's got road connection, it's got sea connection, river connection, right next to the waterways. We already have planning permissions to deal with dust. We have all of the infrastructure. So what this business has done, when I talk about the GBP 18 million spend, GBP 2.5 million of that is to buy land off DK as a standalone.
So we own the land. It's already got all the permits it needs. So we've had a very low barrier to entry. The other really great thing is we already deal with Befesa, so we already supplied dust. We've seen their contracts, we've visited their plants.
All of the people that supply Befesa take pig iron from us as well, so we're already a trusted partner with all of them. They're all talking to us and saying, "Great, you're an alternative." All of the big steel boys do not deal with Befesa because they've never produced this type of dust before, but we're a trusted partner because we already take their existing low-zinc dust.
I'll be a bit of an interrupt and quickly explain. If someone says to me, "Why is the zinc content different?" In the big electric arc furnaces, they use what's called HBI, which is effectively iron ore. So they use a blend of between 50% and 70% iron ore, 30% scrap. A typical electric arc furnace is 100% scrap. That's why you get a different zinc content. Zinc comes from galvanizing.
So again, I have stress tested this, like I hope all of you in the room would do, and I've gone, "Right, what can go wrong?" Well, could be cost overrun. So we have contractors tied up. It's been under R&D. Sean and Simon are helping me oversee all of that as well, because obviously it's an expertise that we have, to make sure that that doesn't go wrong. Okay, seen it happen on other companies.
What about the feedstock being inconsistent? Because it is a waste by-product. The answer is this plant can deal between 6% and 40% zinc in its process, so we have got a lot of flexibility. It's very adaptable. We've already trialed, in the pilot plant, all the different types of dust, so we already know the ways they react.
Zinc price could collapse, totally true, and the way we protect that is hedging, but I wouldn't be hedging until we've proved the technology for everybody. We obviously don't want to hedge position. But if you look at Befesa, they hedge about 85% of their output. And there's always the classic, never forget, some new technology could arise. So all of the customers I'm talking to at the moment, I'm talking about a five-year take-or-pay contract. So they're desperate. If you think about it, they're spending something like EUR 4 billion a plant, and the government's going, "Okay, we'll give you EUR 2 billion.
What are you doing with your waste dust?" So they actually need these contracts, and we've actually got more customers than we can deal with, and one of my conditions is it has to be a five-year take or pay. So what's happening in terms of next steps? So I have a meeting with four of the main steel companies in the summer.
Remember, the plant's starting to be built in January, so they want to come and see it being built. They all want to contract by the end of 2026, 'cause the first plant comes online in 2027. I'm hoping they get delayed a bit, because they may come on stream before we do, if we're not careful. They normally get delayed by six months. We're building stock of our own material to cover that gap.
So how we're gonna manage any slowdowns is we're gonna have our own stock on the ground that gives us six months' supply, so we can, we can flex around six months. At the moment, we, we can only handle 50,000 tons, and I have 200,000 tons banging on the door. Interesting, I had a phone call yesterday. Swedish Steel rang us and said, "We heard what you're doing. Can we come and talk to you about about doing a contract with you? 'Cause we're putting in a big 1.5 million ton electric arc furnace." So they're coming down to see us next week to, to chat it through. So that's a, a new one that I, I wasn't aware of till yesterday.
So in summary, if I've tried to take you through this properly, what I've tried to explain, and only you'll be able to tell me if I've got it right, is I've always very loosely said some of the parts. So I think you can see trading, great business, very happy with it, tick, consumer protected there. I hope you can see DK is going through a challenging period, but we see a way to the other side, and we also see that when we open this zinc project, it will further improve the profitability of DK and give it a long-term future. But finally, the really exciting thing for me is DK Zinc. It's at arm's length. The management team in Germany and us are very aligned. We think it's an industry disruptor. We're being very cautious.
We're talking about a 20% ROCE on the first plant. We will only build plants 2 and 3 there once we have contracts to underpin them and we've proved the technology, so I'm not gonna race ahead. My only issue is that we will trial it, and by the end of 2027 is likely where we'd make the next invest decision, because the customers are queuing up, and we need to be ready to react to that.
But I think you can see it's a really exciting development. I hope that this presentation has given you more in-depth understanding of the German business, and hopefully, you put your own number on what you think it's worth, but hopefully, you can see there's more intrinsic value than just a, a balance sheet recovery issue there. So if I could open it up to any questions, please.
Oh, well done, Simon.
I was that confusing or that precise? I'm not sure which.
A couple of questions. First of all, on page 24, your final bullet point, driving price is 8%, implies a 7% increase in the price.
Sorry?
I didn't understand that.
Which one, sorry?
Page 24, the final bullet point.
This one?
... No, 24.
Oh, sorry. Right. Let me take it back. Sorry. So they aren't numbered on here. Sorry, Simon.
Oh, okay.
This one?
Yes.
Okay. So-
Perhaps I'm being stupid, but I didn't understand that at all.
So, right. Biggest, biggest drawback of a Waelz kiln, it breaks even at 15%, okay? So it's at zero. It doesn't make any margin. The new dust from the new electric arc furnaces are coming out indicative at 8%, okay? So if you turn up to a Waelz kiln with an 8% dust, and I've took the worst case scenario, 15.
Yeah.
So it breaks even at 15, which is not likely, but we'll use 15. Then you turn up to a Waelz kiln and says, "I break even at 15, you're asking me to process 8, therefore, I'm not recovering 7% of zinc," which should today is EUR 2,500. So a Waelz kiln will have to charge you EUR 175. That's an important number because one of the discussions, I, I think it was with yourself I was having, is at the moment, the prices we're pitching to these new electric arc furnaces. I actually don't want to be too friendly, so I need to know what my competition is, and I need to try and be just under it. So that's the nuance I'm trying to deliver.
We've been very conservative in terms of what we expect to get as a gate fee, but we know what our competition is. We're close to what our competition is. Remember, I already supply Befesa, so I know what they charge. I've checked with Miasteczko, I've checked with my customers. I think getting the pricing right. Well, as I've said to the board many times, you know, I only get one go at getting it right, and I wouldn't like to leave any money on the table if I can help it.
Understood. Yeah. I think what confused me was that the 8% refers to the zinc content.
Yeah. Sorry.
Yeah. Got it.
No, thank you.
Second question is, could you talk a little bit about financing both the initial plant after the loans and, sorry, the grants, and also potentially subsequent plants?
Yeah. So at the moment, we're in a position where, as I've said here, the minimum we're going to get from the German government is EUR 4 million, but they're looking at it to see whether they can increase it. We get the EUR 2 million, so it leaves EUR 12 million. Of that EUR 12 million, EUR 2 million is buying land, which we could always sell ultimately if we needed to.
So really, I look at it and go EUR 4 million to EUR 8 million. Our real risk money as shareholders is probably EUR 10 million. So that's how we're going to fund it. That's it, up and running. Okay? So Stephen and will be talking to the analysts, and you'll see that our debt number will go up - oh, sorry, the amount of cash we have will reduce, as we invest in this, and that's the first plant.
We are being conservative in terms of how we're managing people because we're saying: Look, let's get the first one built. Let's prove the concept, and then we'll have to move very quickly. So I think this is going to be really exciting to talk to shareholders about every stuff's really exciting as well, Heathrow and all the yellow Tonka Toys and all the stuff the guys do.
But I think this will be really interesting to talk about on roadshows every six months. I've set a very defined target, remember, for myself, starting in 2026, operational in 2027. Profits are transparent, so I'm not going to hide this anywhere. You can judge me, look me in the eye, just hang around for the next two years if you can, Simon, w e'll walk through it together.
Good man. Thanks.
Hi, cheers. Ollie Knott at Tyndall. Just on HMRC, HRMS, rather, GBP 3 million of working cap, what's the other GBP 15 million of balance sheet value?
In the HRMS.
I'll let the finance director do the finance numbers. So he hasn't done a lot today, so we, we said we'd give all finance questions to Stephen. Going off.
Let me just check that I'm on the right slide. So with an HRMS or the GBP 18.8 million in HRMS?
Yeah.
Yes. So that is all predominantly working capital through either funding, so the stock that they have is 80% funded through their borrowing-based facility. And then the remainder will be, I guess, the split of debtors and creditors. So it's predominantly the stock, the stock that they hold, and a small amount of cash. They don't hold a lot of cash into that balance sheet, but there's not really anything else in there.
Okay. So that all unwinds on a wind down summary?
Yeah. Correct. So when Gordon was talking about GBP 1 million a month, he was talking about, I guess, shut down additional costs, et cetera. That GBP 18 million is all asset backed.
Okay.
Sorry, if it again, some people might get the wrong idea. All I'm saying is, I tend to look at, you know, defend the ground. So the team are happy, they're going on. Hilmar, who's the lead trader, probably got another 5 years in him, but he is 65. I was asked by our bankers over in Germany, "You know, well, why don't you get some new traders in? Why don't you get some..." It's a very niche market that they live in, and I trust the team.
They've never lost money, and they're shareholders alongside us. So when the markets are down, they stop trading. Instead of chasing a big bonus at the risk of our balance sheet, they don't, so they've never lost money. Personally, you know, when I retire, someone might want to do something different.
But personally, my view is, they've done great, they've, they've looked after us. Let's not be greedy and risk putting someone else in there that might risk the balance sheet.
Anyone in the room or? Anybody online? Yeah.
We've got three online questions, two of them pre-submitted. First one is: Would it be financially viable for DK Recycling to build another recycling blast furnace?
No, it wouldn't. The cost of building one, we think, is about GBP 300 million. So you wouldn't, so the answer is no, it wouldn't be economic to do that.
One of the points is something that hasn't been covered today, but is related to the HRMS business: Is the company exploring any strategy to move the coal pulverization plant into profitability?
Yeah, so if people know that we own a coal pulverization plant, it grinds coal for cement plants, but at the moment, the German industry is still pumping out huge amounts of CO2 from the lignite brown coal power stations. If that closes, then we will fill it up quite quickly, but we're waiting to see what policy changes are in Germany.
Okay, thank you. And the final one is from Alan online. It's quite a long question, but the short answer is, he acknowledges there are a lot of, I guess, winds coming for pig iron prices in the future. But what he's been seeing over the last six months, pig iron prices look like they've been weak. Is that what you're seeing? And has that been having any negative impact?
Yeah, absolutely right, Alan. I know we chat about it from time to time, Alan, and the answer is yes, they're weak at the moment. They track scrap price. We're fine with, s hall I put it like this? We are fine with the brokers forecasts, so that there's nothing that particularly worries me. But no, it's challenging. You know, I think, Stephen, what's brokers forecasts for Germany? Well, it's not broken out, is it?
The German. So I would show the German result is about EUR 6.5 million our share.
Yeah.
What we expect to get from DK is pretty much break even-
Yeah
... Slight profit, and we're on track for that.
Yeah. So that's the point, Alan, you know, it's, it's, it's where we expect to be. And that's why I'm saying all of these changes will move it back to where it should be over the next few years. Anything else?
That is all the German-related questions. We do have a handful of other questions related to the rest of you, most of them pre-submitted, but what I intend to do, given this is focused on services in Germany, is respond directly to those questions via the portal.
Very good. All right. If everyone doesn't ask me anything, I will hand over to Roger and let him close the presentations. Thank you, Roger.
Trying to remember to press the green button this time, Gordon. That's not going well. Just go back. Just go back. Where are we? There we are. That's good. Well, again, let me reiterate, thank you very much for taking the time out today, with everything else that's going on. Hopefully, you found that, interesting.
There may be some questions that you feel free to ask afterwards, in the plenary session out there, where there's some refreshments and sandwiches that you're welcome to participate in. But if I were just sort of... What I'm looking for, emphasizing where we are in really simple terms. So we have a very strong land business that will throw off cash over the next few years.
Now, it's hard to predict quite when those cash incidents will fall, but there's a lot of cash to come out of that business. And it's a relatively simple business model. We've got a services business, which is world-class, in my humble opinion, and hopefully, the guys have convinced you of that, which has some fascinating opportunities in front of it.
And then we've got our German activity, which Gordon spends an inordinate amount of his time, and a lot of time in Germany, where I think this zinc project, in really simple terms, is what I'm looking for, disruptive, market-changing, and potentially, I think Gordon's underplaying it actually, has implications beyond simply what we do at DK.
If the technology works, and we're as confident as we can be, that it will, then you can imagine in the world zinc processing market, how this technology may play out, because it's massively more efficient and massively greener than the existing technologies. It almost seems too good to be true, but we believe that it is actually too good to be true. I don't mean that, obviously.
So, you know, I'm really proud of what the guys have done on this particular project. I'm certainly proud of what the guys have been doing in the business, that's the existing business. And I think we're very well placed to create some very meaningful shareholder value here, and hopefully, that will be recognized in our share price.
And by the way, we're gonna continue, certainly for as long as Gordon and I are shareholders in this enterprise, to pay a meaningful dividend. But thanks for coming. Thoroughly enjoyed it. And, please feel free to go through, help yourself to a drink and a sandwich or whatever else you want to do, and you, ask questions as well with that.