Next up, we have BCI Minerals. Now, BCI are the world's most significant new industrial salt producer, operating Australia's largest salt project based in WA, set to deliver 5.35 million tonnes of premium industrial grade salt to power the modern world. Here to tell us all the good news about BCI is their CFO, Mr. Steve Fewster. Come on down.
Yeah, look, thanks, thanks very much for hosting us today. I'm really excited to talk about our business and what we're currently constructing. Slightly different to a lot of the companies that are presented, we're in the great position where we've got an infinite resource. We don't have a depleting asset. We use the ocean. The ocean is what supplies us. If we do run out of the ocean, we're in a hell of a lot of strife. That means we've got an extremely low sustaining CapEx, which ultimately means we've got very strong free cash flow running in through our business. We do have all of our environmental approvals, and anybody that's been following us will have noticed in April this year, we received the final approvals to be able to go into full operations.
Between here and December next year, we're running full bore at delivering first salt on ship. We've also been able to sell the first two-thirds of our production for the first three years. We've got a green light for our operations. We've sold the first two-thirds of our production. Lastly, all of our funding is in place. Tigo, I wish you all the best. A quick plug for some of our debt providers. NAIF has been fantastic to deal with. EFA has been fantastic to deal with. We've got OCBC, we've got Westpac, and Export Development Canada. Really great partners that we've had. Probably most importantly, 70% of the way through, we're on track. In terms of our schedule, we remain on track and we remain on budget. Just quickly, in terms of who we are, our market cap recently tipped over to AUD 1 billion.
Our major shareholders, Australian Capital Equity, Kerry Stokes, they've been a long holder in the project, AustralianSuper there, and a bunch of other people. We've spent AUD 1.1 billion on a project that's 70% complete, on track, on budget, but we still trade at a discount to what we've invested. We obviously think, like everyone else, that we're worth a hell of a lot more than what the market is putting us at. In terms of free cash flow, and I think the reason AustralianSuper are there and the reason Australian Capital Equity or Roxby are there is the nature of the returns. This is a long-term annuity-style return. There's two components to what we're building. Firstly, salt, and that's the first part we're working on and delivering upon.
Once it's up at full production and 5.3 million tonnes is what we've spoken about before, we'll deliver about AUD 0.068 per share as a dividend. We're currently AUD 0.35. If we then go to the next stage and we're in not pre-feasibility, into the FEED stage of producing sulfate of potash, if we go ahead and make that final decision to go ahead with that, that then lifts our dividend to around 8.8%. We own all of our assets, all of the infrastructure, so we're also building a port. The port's pretty much complete. There's about a month's worth of work left to do on our 2.4-kilometer jetty, but that's a multi-user port. We'll use about 5.5 million tonnes of that port, and there's about 20 million tonnes capacity. Anybody that knows the Pilbara, and particularly the West Pilbara, there's definitely a shortage of access to port facilities.
We don't factor any of that into that return profile at this stage. It's something we're actively exploring and working closely with the Pilbara Ports Authority. Hopefully some other people that are in this room that may need any access to port, feel free to reach out. Why do we think salt is great to be added to your portfolio? The dynamics that are occurring in the salt market are really driven by what's happening in the chemical industry. If you go back to your primary school chemistry, salt is two components. It's sodium and it's chloride. High-grade industrial salt is purchased exclusively by chemical companies. What we're seeing globally is a lot of those chemical manufacturers that were based in Europe have now been priced out of the market. The cost of power in Europe has gone through the roof. The cost of labor through the roof.
What we're seeing in the Asian markets is there's a lot of chlor-alkali plants being constructed at the moment, a lot of caustic soda plants being constructed at the moment, soda ash plants all being constructed in the region because it's lower energy costs, greater access to people at a lower cost. Whilst global demand isn't changing significantly and it runs pretty much in line with global GDP, regionally what's happening is there's a shift in terms of where those chemicals are being produced and it's coming into Asia. That's great for us because the timing of when a number of those plants come online, and myself and David Boshoff, who's down the front here, our M D, we visited a number of these sites. As they come online, it's about the same time as our revenue, our first salt, starts to come online.
It does match our ramp-up over the couple of years following that. The dynamics in the market are very positive for an Australian producer. We're two to three days away from our major trading partners. Indonesia is going to be a significant consumer of salt. We've got off-take agreements going into China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia. The dynamics for the market are very, very attractive. Again, going back to your sort of school, your school chemistry, sodium, and chloride. Almost anything in your daily life relies on either a sodium molecule or a chlorine molecule. PVC, plastic, polyvinyl chloride, you've got your chlorine. If you're cleaning your pool, you've got chlorine. You want clean drinking water, there's chlorine. Chlorine is used very, very widely. Sodium is also used, manufacturer of glass, aluminium.
The sodium and chloride elements are sitting in a wide range: ceramics, paints, the laminates that's sitting on your kitchen bench. It is very, very widely used. Even if we start to worry about the transition away from plastics, and we see this when we go to our shopping centre now, you don't have a plastic bag anymore. You've got a paper bag. Even the production of paper relies on salt for its manufacture. Pretty soon, and we've seen this now, there's actually washable paper bags, but again, we'll consume salt. The outlook for us, the outlook for us and our market, we believe, is extremely positive. As I said before, we are very focused on producing salt and SOP. To be able to do that and to be very successful, our shareholders have made sure that we do not stray away from what needs to be delivered.
We've got laser focus on making sure we've got salt on the ship at the end of next year. Our values underpin how we deliver that. There are two values I really want to call out at the moment. The first one is we do what we say we're going to do. Two years ago, we said we would deliver salt on a ship at the back end of 2026. Between now and then, we've had constant delays in terms of environmental approvals, and anybody that's going through that process understands the pain that's involved in that. Ultimately, we received all those approvals in April. A lot of people have said to us, "Hang on a sec. How can you continue to maintain that SOS date, first salt and ship date of December 2026? That's where our second value, find a way, becomes really, really important.
During the course of those delays in receiving our timing of our approvals, what we've been able to do is build what we call our secondary seawater intake. I'll show you a slide shortly about why that becomes important. What we did is we adjusted our fill strategy. We found a way to be able to maintain that deadline that we promised everybody that we will hit in December next year by finding a different way to achieve it. Just quickly, where are we? We're 80 kilometers south of Karratha, in the Pilbara, right in the heart of salt-producing territory. It's been happening there now for over 60 years. There's nothing particularly new, nothing particularly complex that we're doing. Salt's been produced for thousands and thousands of years using evaporative techniques.
Our footprint's 115 square kilometers, and at full production will be Australia's largest salt operation and the third largest globally. We'll be in the lowest quartile of salt producers. I know someone else said everybody here is in the lowest quartile. Trust me, we will be. So 115 square kilometers, to give you a context of how big that is, that's us overlaying our project over Brisbane. It's significant. It's 38 kilometers long. At its widest point, it's about 4 kilometers wide. It's a big, a big sizable area. The reason that's important? Huge barrier to entry. As I said before, simple to make salt, but your barrier to entry is the amount of land you need and the environmental approvals you require.
Whilst there's plenty of land in the Pilbara, not all of it's suitable, it needs to be flat with a gentle gradient so that gravity can help you move that water around. The biggest barrier is to be able to get those approvals. Pretty simple process. Water in one end. We fill nine ponds. As that water gets more and more, as the salinity levels rise, salt will drop out. We then harvest that salt, put it through a salt wash plant, which again is a very simple process. We use seawater to wash the crystals, take off the last of the impurities. It's not a chemical process. It's a simple wash. Then out it goes through our jetty, out to our customer's vessel, and off to our customers. Very, very straightforward, very simple process.
When we're at full operation, salt, AUD 286 million per annum of EBITDA, and SOP is expected to deliver around AUD 99 million of EBITDA. As I said, very low sustaining CapEx, strong free cash flow. In terms of where we are since April, when we received those approvals, we've been pumping furiously. We've been pumping from the north. Right up the top there, you might see SSWI, secondary seawater intake. We've been pumping furiously from there into pond eight. We've been pumping furiously down from the south. From the north and the south, those two lots of water will meet. Where do we want to be? We want to be in August to have 90% of our surface area inundated. Really, really important because that sets us up for that hot summer that's coming up to maximize the opportunity for evaporation. As we promised, we do what we say we'll do.
Come hell or high water, and I think, David, we're pretty much at the 90% mark as we're rolling into August. We're beautifully set up for the summer coming up. Really important for us to be able to deliver first salt and ship in December 2026. From a CapEx perspective, like I said, about 70% complete. The biggest risk we had through the construction process has been building out that jetty. 2.4 kilometers, arguably the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere. We'll claim it. Someone can fact-check it. It's the longest jetty, we think. In a month's time, that's complete. The jetty's at full length, ship loader on the end. If you take a copy of our presentation, there's some beautiful photos of it in the back of that. What's left? The last 30%. We've got to finish off the crystallizers. There's about 20% or 30% left of that.
Some bulk earthworks. Given we've done almost 115 square kilometers of bulk earthworks, we know what we're doing in that space. We've got the salt wash plant, which is a relatively low complex design. It's about 12-1 5 meters high. That starts construction over in October. Long lead items arrive shortly, and we expect to have that completed in July. The other last piece of that puzzle is the dredging. In April next year, we've got a short campaign to be able to dredge the final channel out. Not much dredging required there, and then a pocket at where the end of the jetty where the ship loader is. Relatively low risk project execution between now and completion, particularly compared with what we've had to go through in the project today. Market outlook, and I spoke before about the change in market dynamics.
We feel very, very positive and very bullish about where the price of salt is heading. We use Wood Mackenzie to help determine where that's at. Our confidence comes because of the off-takes we've been able to have put in place. We've sold salt without even having water in our ponds. I might just quickly, given I've only got a minute to go, just recap. Why do we think we're different to a lot of the others that have been presenting? All great companies. We're 70% of the way through. We're on budget. We're on track. We've got strong free cash flow, low sustaining CapEx, delivering a project that's been done for a product that's been produced for thousands and thousands of years. If anyone wants to pick up this conversation a little more, we're just outside, myself and David, our MD. Please, please come and say good day.
Thank you very much.