Good morning, everyone. My name is Peter Westerhuis. I'm the Chairman of Bathurst Resources. On behalf of the Bathurst Board, I welcome you all here. It's good to see we've got a reasonable turnout, substantially better than what we got last year. I'm advised we've also got a few people watching on the webcast. So thanks very much for tuning in and coming along today. As there is a quorum present, I'll declare this meeting open, introducing people that are here with me today in an official capacity. There's Fellow Director, Executive Director Richard Tacon, Fellow Directors Francois Tumahai and Russell Middleton, and Company Secretary Larissa Brown. Francois, can you make a few welcoming statements, please?
Now, we also have, thank you very much for that. Now, we also have Victor Zurich, who is representing our auditors from KPMG. Is that correct?
Peter Taylor.
Yeah. Why does it say Victor Zurich here?
He came last year.
He came last year. Okay. So Peter, sorry. So it's Peter Taylor. Yeah. So moving along, the votes will all be tallied via poll. We've got five resolutions today. ASX Guidance Note 35 requires that all resolutions subject to ASX listing rules be conducted by poll. Most of our resolutions today are subject to those listing rules, and for that reason, we're doing it by poll. I'll show the results of the voting we've had so far as we work our way through these resolutions. You'll have received the poll form when you registered for this meeting. Poll forms will be collected and will be given, and we will provide an update this afternoon after the meeting, and they'll be posted to the ASX. We haven't received any questions from shareholders in advance of this meeting. Is that correct? Yeah.
I strongly encourage you to ask any questions that you have, whether they be for directors or for our auditors. Any questions to our auditors will be answered by Peter. We will provide a summary Q&A on our website on the AGM page after this meeting has ended. We will now proceed to the formal part of the meeting to consider the resolutions put forward to shareholders. At the end of that, Richard Tacon, the CEO, will make a presentation in giving us a more detailed update on the company's progress. After that, we'll provide the total indicative poll results. We'll move to the formal part of the meeting. The business of today's meeting is outlined in the notice of annual general meeting, which was sent to shareholders earlier, and is also available on our website.
Please note that any discretionary proxy votes, which we received as Chairman, will be voted in favor of all resolutions. The annual report, which includes the director's report and the auditor's report, was dispatched to shareholders who requested a copy and has also been available on our website since the 31st of October. There's also a bunch of them on the table outside there. The annual report, as I said, includes the director's report and auditor's report for the period ending the 30th of June 2024 and is now laid before the meeting. As I also said before, Peter from our auditors is here to answer any questions. So far, we have not received any questions. If anyone has any questions for the auditors now, please ask that now. If there are no questions, we will proceed to consider the resolutions on today's agenda.
Resolution one is the re-election of Mr. Francois Tumahai as director. The slide shows the proxy summary. Francois is an independent, non-executive director, and if re-elected, he will remain so. The validity of the resolution is as it stands. Francois, is there anything you want to say in support of your re-election?
Yeah, I can't say. Francois Tumahai, Tēnā koutou. First and foremost, I just want to thank you all for coming today and the guys that are online. Thank you for your time. I had the privilege of being on Bathurst for a while now, and I'm really, really keen and excited to stay on. We've had some challenges, obviously, but the future is really exciting, so I'm really keen to stay on board. So hopefully I get the votes. Thanks, Pete.
Well, you have, mate. As you can see there, so it's been overwhelmingly voted in favor.
We're going to vote on it again.
You know, as a Chairman, I'm delighted with those results. I mean, these are a very important part of our government's framework and our board, that's good to see. Thanks for that. Any other questions about this resolution in general? Resolution two, appointment and remuneration of the auditor. This order of business is a standing item and allows the board to appoint and remunerate KPMG. You can see the result. That's on the basis of the proxies that's also been carried. Do we have any questions about this resolution? And again, if we've got any questions to Peter Taylor, let me know. Resolution three, performance rights for CEO Richard Tacon. These are conventional items that are typical for public companies such as ours, and we refresh these from time to time. This resolution relates to the issue of performance rights to Richard.
These have a service period of three years from the date of this AGM and are subject to the company achieving a rating or a performance achievement of 10% to 15% of total shareholder returns annual growth. We haven't received any questions up until this point. Does anybody want to raise any questions about that now, about this resolution? Please vote for this item of business if you haven't already. As you can see, that one based on the proxies will carry also. Thank you. Moving to resolution four, which is similar to three, which relates to Russell Middleton. Again, if you've got any questions about that, please put them forward now. As you can see on the proxies, that will carry substantially. No questions on that. Resolution five is shareholders' approval for a 10% placement capacity increase.
Again, this is pretty sort of standard resolutions that appears from time to time. This allows us to raise additional share capital without having this 10% without having to seek prior shareholder approval. Are there any questions about this resolution? Based on those proxies received, this will carry also. Completed poll forms will be, as I said before, will be collected in a moment, and we'll put any other changes to the results, we'll put those up. This now completes the formal business of the meeting. If you've got any other questions, please put them to us now. Otherwise, I'll sit down, I'll hand over to Richard, who can provide a company update. Okay? All good?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, Peter.
Thanks very much for everyone for attending. I'm Richard Tacon, CEO of Bathurst Resources. I think, again, it's nice to see some faces in the room and also thanks to the people that have come online. It's a really exciting time for Bathurst, and I've probably been saying that for the last couple of years, but we've got a number of projects that we're bringing forward. We are still generating cash. We've got some struggles within that business, so I'll take you through some of those as we go through. But where we are now compared to where we were two years ago in terms of the political sphere is chalk and cheese. We've got a government now that's listening to us. We've got a government that actually values the input that we put into particular regional areas.
I think we're starting to see that with some of the legislation, both unwinding some of the less-than-helpful legislation that was put in place by the last regime, but more importantly, looking ahead and wanting to actually grow the input of minerals into New Zealand's economy from around $1 billion now to $2 billion by the end of their term. This is the audacious goal they've set themselves. Obviously, we're an important part of the first part of that in terms of we're already sitting there as an important part of that billion-dollar underpinning, but also then continuing that on for the next 15, 20 years. Standard disclosures. I'd encourage you to actually buy shares based on what we're going to tell you today rather than not.
Any of the resource and reserves are covered by our recent announcements around the annual release of our resource and reserve compilation. As we stand today, we have got an enterprise value of about $10 million Australian. We've got a market cap of $140 million. We've got about $140 million cash sitting in the consolidated cash between BRL and BT mining. Really not a lot has changed in terms of our overall shareholder demographic. We've got still around about 50% sitting in Singapore or other Asian areas. We've actually had an increase in the amount of shareholding in New Zealand over the last 12 months, which is interesting, but it's still pretty much a retail-dominated share ownership.
Anyone that knows Bathurst knows where our major operations are, but I'll just use this as really just to run through and give you a very brief update on where we're up to on each of the mines. So Maramarua, Rotowaro, are 65% owned by Bathurst through the BT joint venture. They really supply the bulk of the coal into New Zealand Steel, a small amount going into lime production, and even a smaller amount now going into process heat for value add to New Zealand prime production. Both mines have been in growth phases. We've been doing the M1, which we recently consented, which is a cutback to the original KCQ pit. That's been hampered by weather, particularly during the winter months, but we are expecting that we're going to do a lot better during the drier summer months up there.
Rotowaro, again, is in growth phase. We're actually mining coal out of what we call the Waipuna Extension, which we put in place about five years ago, and we're now into the Waipuna West Extension, which is, again, a large cutback with a large strip ratio, but matched by pricing from our major customer. So it'll be very profitable, but at the present time, we are into a growth phase. We've actually put on a lot more people. We've got quite a large amount of overburn to remove in the next 12 months. We've got the equipment at the stage of doing it. We've got the manpower now on the ground to do it, and we're looking to achieve that over the next 12 months. Stockton, as a mining phase, has been performing okay, but we've obviously had logistics hassles, struggles, whichever way you want to call it.
We've had a tunnel out in the main logistics path with a Tunnel 21 that occurred on the 15th of June this year. We've put in a place of road bridge pretty much straight away, and we've been trucking up to about 3,500 tonnes of coal a day around that gap, then reloading trains at Ikamatua and then transporting through to Lyttelton from there. So it has been a large impact on our communities, particularly around Westport and Reefton, where the trucks have actually got to transport pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week through those communities. We do very much thank them for their patience and putting up with any inconvenience that might be occurring.
Again, we have had some complaints, which we've dealt with very quickly, but by and by, people have been very tolerant, and I think it does sort of say a lot to the standing that we've actually got in those communities that people understand why we've got to do it. KiwiRail's communications have been quite good as well. The tunnel is due now, according to their latest timeframes, to be able to be completely utilized on the 12th of January. They are looking to try and bring that in a week earlier, but that's the timing we've got at the moment. Takitimu, 100% owned by Bathurst, is performing very well. Unfortunately, it's feeding into a market that is shrinking. People are, for various reasons, moving away from the use of coal.
Some are part of decarbonization, some of it's part of they're just moving their business to elsewhere or closing down. So we've got a reserve base there that'll take us through to about 2027. We have got another project, New Brighton, but that needs really support from major customers, which we're not seeing at the moment. Probably going back to the Buller, back to the Westport, sorry, with the Buller project, we'll talk about it a lot more as we go further through, but with the change of government and the introduction of the fast track approval bill into their parliament in March, that now gives us really the pathway to bring that project forward, and that's a very important part of Bathurst's growth plan.
Moving to Canada, we've been in Canada, as most people will know, since 2018 with our joint venture with Jameson in the Crown Mountain project down in lower eastern BC. We then this year, or during FY24, took ownership, 100% ownership of the Tenas project, which is in northern or mid-BC, but very close to the coal port of Prince Rupert. That's a very important project for us. Again, it's potentially a million tonnes a year. It's quite far advanced through the BC consenting process. It's not costing a lot of money to keep that ticking over.
The major risks here are really getting comfort by the First Nation groups in the local community and the BC government that we can operate this project in a manner that's not going to destroy the environment, that's not going to leave a long-term legacy of damage, and probably more in particular with the First Nation that we're not going to take away food sources as valuable like caribou, fisheries that are heavily reliant on for food, but also tourism and that sort of dollars. Again, we're looking there to build up a potential for a couple of million tonnes of 100% owned Bathurst coal. We'll end up 50% partners in Crown Mountain if we go through to the final investment decision, which will probably be around about FY28. Obviously, with the Telkwa project, we're already on 100% of it.
There's been no change to the board in the last 12 months, and I'd like to thank the board for their support in all of my activities and particularly supporting the team that reports to me, the senior leadership team. Fiona's in the room here today. Everyone else is out actually doing some work. Sorry, Fiona. We actually knew to normally bring the senior leadership team in, but it's two days out of their lives and everyone's very busy. Again, thanks to my team. They support me very well and they support the company in all our activities. We're a medium-sized business in New Zealand. We employ directly about 675 people and then indirectly through contractors and other interactions on the mine sites, around about another 150 on top of that.
Particularly in terms of the monies that paid to wages, we are operating in regional centers, West Coast, Southland, middle of the North Island. In a lot of these areas, we are the major employer in those regional centers. Those sort of, they might seem like a small number of jobs compared to the whole of New Zealand, but they are very important to those regional economies. There's a significant amount of money that flows from the operations into other parts of the, whether it's buying diesel, whether it's explosives, repairs, parts, and that sort of thing. Just looking at a very quick snapshot of FY24, as I said, we've got about $140 million in consolidated cash. We've got zero debt on the balance sheet apart from some yellow goods, lease finance.
We're going to generate, last year, sorry, we generated around $91 million EBITDA at Bathurst level, and we've got a net asset covering of around about $1.50. So we're 50% of that, and if you look at it in terms of most multiples, we're well and truly below where we should be. One area where we're not particularly proud of our last 12 months is around our safety journey. We've got a lost time injury frequency rate of 6.3 and a total recordable injury frequency rate of 22.4. They are not numbers to be proud of, and we're not proud of them. We're doing a lot of work in and around working with our people in a number of different areas. I won't go through all that now, but it is a source of constant review by our board and back to our senior leadership team.
We've done a lot of work with our managers and our senior site executives and our GMs in terms of trying to assess why we are having this large number of incidents. I've got to say from the onset, I'm not worried about hearing about incidents. One of the things we try very hard not to do is to drive this reporting underground. The easiest way for me to fix those stats is to actually not report them. I mean, the sites can not report them to me, and I'll never hear about it, but that's not what we want to do. Part of our system is that we want to hear about everything. We reward people for reporting near misses. We reward people for putting in hazard alerts, and we reward people for reporting every injury that they have, including the cut finger.
Our stats aren't perfect, but we're doing a lot of good underlying stuff, including working on field leadership program, which is really trying to get interactions going better where people who aren't normally a part of operations are then talking to people who are in operations and trying to work through what we call the four Ds, trying to work out whether there's something in their job that's daft, whether it's dangerous, or whether it can be done better, and have they got the support they need. We are pushing forward with all those programs, and then I'm hoping next year when I report this, we're going to see a lot of different sets of numbers.
Community, we do a lot of stuff in the community, but both in terms of donations, we've got a thing called the Buller Resilience Trust , which again, I think has gone a long way towards really highlighting the importance of BT mining in particular in the Bulla area. That is one of the reasons that we've had very little sort of issue over the trucking, even though some people will be quite heavily impacted with noise. Palmerston Street is not the busiest street in the world, and if you've got three or four trucks traveling down at once, then it'd be perceived as being a traffic jam, but we're not getting that negative impact. This was a program that was put together actually by a local iwi in the Waikato.
It was around trying to get young guys in particular who were at the age where they should have been going into apprenticeships or whatever else, but for whatever reason, hadn't had the opportunity. They put up and they introduced basically the young people to the employer and then set up a support mechanism for them. We took on four participants out of that to our two mines, Māmaroa and Rotowaro, and we ended up two of those guys have then gone into full-time employment. That's Francois Baker with the young guy at Rotowaro and Ben Biddle with the young guy at Māmaroa. Very proud of their interaction. These guys have got a lot out of it, and our guys have got a lot out of it, so we're looking to try and maintain that program.
In terms of results, we can't spell even though everyone's looked at that four million times. Obviously, we didn't have as good a year as last year, but we're still highly profitable. We were down on EBITDA, and it's all to do with price. You can see the price coming off and also the growth phase that I've highlighted earlier on. Each of the mines are actually in expansion phase. Stockton's moving into areas of high strip ratio for the same amount of coal, but the coal is highly valuable, so it's well worth spending the money. Same as Rotowara, we're in that Waipuna West cutback, which again has sucked up a lot of cash, but also taken a lot of EBITDA off the table. With Māmaroa and probably the only one that's actually moving forward, and that is Tacotemu.
Stockton, again, we've seen pretty consistent sales over the last few years, and we're going to maintain that, even though with the typhoid tunnel, we're going to be down a little bit in the first six months of this year. What we're looking to do is go to seven-day logistics. That's been signed off by KiwiRile, and we'll catch up all but about 50,000 tonnes for the year. Overburden, as you can see, is increasing. We've gone from 5 to 5.5, and then we're going to go to 6.2. Next year is probably going to be somewhere around 6.6. Again, we're seeing that increase as we get into areas that are getting to more extremity of the existing workings. Again, same sort of pattern we're looking at with the North Island.
You see the overburden build up, $6 million to $9.5 million last year, and then we're going to do $15.5 million this year. A significant build. That'll then go for another 12 months, and then we'll see a significant drop off. In fact, it drops off a cliff, and then we'll have a large amount of coal that's under very light cover that will then eke out until about 2029. This is looking at our guidance. We were looking at around somewhere between a range of $55 million to $65 million EBITDA for the year, again, at a Bathurst consolidated level. The major step down from last year is international pricing. We're sitting at a spot price at the present time, about $205 US per tonne. Obviously, down quite considerably where we were two years ago, but even last year. But the forward curve is in contango.
We're seeing uplifts back to about 250 tonnes by the end of the financial year. We're seeing that also in our forward sales. In our hedging programs, we are still locking in tonnes at around NZ$250 for small tonnages, but we build it up on a book-by-book basis. Around about 40% of our overall production is actually carried out at hedge price, and we're locking in most of that up to 12 months out. That forward curve being in contango really helps us out with that. Obviously, we've got a tail of that still flowing through into the business now. That's really just depicting that. The lighter blue on there is the forward curve. I think even since this was updated, it's now back up to around 250.
Bathurst as a business is really broken up into three main components. We've got the BT mining. Obviously, in terms of New Zealand, that's really important. We own 65% of that joint venture. And then with 100% of the Bathurst assets, we've got the Bulla project, and we've got the operating Tacotemu mine. And then in British Columbia, we've got the Tinasse project and Crown Mountain. Over the last few years, there's been a market step down. The yellow on this graph depicts the domestic coal mainly used in primary value-added prime production. That's dairy factories, abattoirs, and other sort of food-related, mainly processing type. Some lime production in there as well, both North Island and South Island. But the thing that's been reasonably consistent is the amount of coal going out through export.
That's the lighter blue and the supply into the only steel mill in New Zealand, which is the darker blue on there. That's looking to continue that pattern. We will not see, I don't believe, a larger increase in the yellow. We'll probably maintain some of that. Obviously, with Tacotemu falling out in 26, 27, that's going to reduce further. There is some small tonnage still going in the North Island, though. Looking ahead with projects, and then going back to my statement at the start, the fast track approval bill basically allows us to unlock, as in a one-stop shop process, all of the Bulla and potentially the North Island Rotowara asset to try and do what we're trying to do, what we're going to do through the fast track, through a conventional RMA process would be death by 1,000 cuts.
It's not just the RMA part of it. It's the dock access part. It's the wildlife permits and any heritage orders and things like that. The idea of the fast track is that we can put in one application. That'll be considered by the panel with consultation with the major regulators. So in our case, that'll be the local regional councils, district council, regional council, Department of Conservation, heritage, and Department of Conservation, again, with wildlife permits. But the main thing is it's not so much the fast part of that. It's actually the one track or the one stop. So one application goes through a single test, and then we end up with multiple approvals that will then be administered by the various groups. So the district council will look after land use. Water is done by regional council like it is now.
Air is done by regional council. DOC will have their input in terms of making sure that we're operating in the way we said we're going to operate and that we've got proper rehabilitation plans that are going to put the land back in as close to the present state as possible, but also preserving the ecosystems that we're actually affecting now as we go further forward. With the Bulla project, that's where that fits exactly. We are looking to do a number of things with the one application. Obviously, Stockton is covered bulk of it now by a coal mining license. That coal mining license expires in March 2027, and we need to undo that bundle of rights, which is what the coal mining license is. At the moment, it covers access arrangements.
It covers land use, and it covers most of the other areas where we may with building rights and things like that, for instance. In doing that unbundling, we then need to go and do each of the individual approval processes. With the one track, we can basically preserve access to that existing infrastructure base. The roads, the washery, the rail, the aerial, the rail load out, and ultimately, that allows us then to support our customers. That's an important first part. There's also four million tonnes or so remaining within the existing holding after 2027 that we can then blend with some of the Bulla coal and make sure we maximize the value out of the remaining asset.
We've got Cypress, which is tacked on the side of that, which has got a resource consent that goes through to 2040 and an access arrangement with LINZ through to the same period. So we then bolt the Bulla project onto it as an additional source of coal going into that existing market. That then allows us really then to maximize the value out of the BT mining proportion while also bringing in progressively coal out of the Bulla project. With the North Island extension, it's really about preserving, again, the washery, the rail load out, the rail unloader, which Genesis is using at the present time, and the haul road through to the conveyor belt that supplies Genesis and also all of the rail load out facilities that allows us to take coal through to New Zealand Steel.
That hub will have to be preserved, and that's part of the coal mining license now. Again, we've got the same process to go through there. Then we've got about another 15 million tonnes potential resource that's sitting up the road that if those customers want that coal at the right price, then that will be available for them. In terms of the Bathurst profile in the Bulla project in particular, the shaded area there depicts the progressive build up from around about 2027 up to around about 1.2 million tonnes over a long period. That build up really coincides with the coal being depleted out of the remaining Stockton coal resource. It's all enabled by the fast track bill. I think I've already covered that. The bill was introduced in the Parliament in March, had its first reading.
It went in a select committee process. It was supposed to come out of there at the end of May. It actually didn't come out until the end of October. So it's had a lot of consultation. There's been a lot of change made to the act, and now it's come out and had the second reading. Now it's gone back into the main committee, which is the Parliament. There are some modifications that have been sort of worked through with various government departments, and they are looking to try and enact that either late this year or early next year. That's the best timing that I've got. Again, the critical part of it is not so much the fast in the name. It's the one-stop shop that actually gives its true value for us.
With the Bulla project, the lighter blue areas in the northern part of that plan, the top of the plan, are remaining coal within the Stockton CML and coal mining and the mining permit areas. The pink areas to the south and in the middle there are actually remaining coal within the Bulla project. There's some light gray there as well, which is the coal that sits outside of the Escarpment project, which is actually fully consented. That is the project there we're looking at. The yellow on the wriggly lines are the haul road connections that then allow us to bring that coal into the infrastructure and then ultimately to the market.
They're just as really important as the mining areas, particularly linking the Denniston, which is to the south of that picture, up through the yellow, and then joining in with the already constructed haul roads that service the existing mining areas within the Stockton holdings now. And then again, that allows us to get access to the washery, to the aerial, ultimately to the rail load out, and then FEED that coal combined with Stockton coal into the international market. We've got a life of mine of about 14 years in the Denniston. We're looking to try and commence production up there in FY27. And the logic there is that we'll have an application ready to go early next year. Hopefully, that coincides with a fully implemented act. We will get an early application in. It'll take us probably until Christmas to get that out.
Obviously, there'll be some planning and construction time after that with coal coming out in FY27. We're looking ultimately around about 12.5 million tonnes of saleable, and we're still working on that very much today. With the remaining coal within Stockton, the BT mining proportion, we've got a life of mine that runs out about seven years. There's about 4.3 million tonnes that'll be available for blending with that 12.5 million tonnes, and that takes us through to around about a 20-year mine life upon that point. That's what that looks like with the lighter blue on there was really that depiction that I showed you with the Bathurst coal coming out of Bulla and then the progressive sort of sale down and utilisation of the coal within the existing holdings within Stockton.
With the assets in Canada, really the strategy here has been to we got it in 2018. We didn't know the jurisdiction. We really didn't know the structural geology of the place, and we didn't know how the coal quality was being presented or how it would be presented. So we sponsored the exploration program. We did an earn-in. We put in about $8 million upfront. That got us to around about 10% of the project, and then we continued to sponsor the environmental assessment work, which then got us up to 22%. We're quite comfortable with that carrying capacity. That's about $1 million Canadian a year that costs us to keep that ticking over. That is now going through the first stages of the environmental assessment office process to go in towards getting resource consent.
We're not aiming that we're going to get out of that process until somewhere around FY28. So at some point in time, there will be a decision point. We've got the ability to go to 50% by paying CAD 106 million. That CAD 106 million forms the first capital for the project, and it's around about a CAD 350 million build. It'll produce 2 million tonnes a year, of which we will own 1 million tonnes. With the Tinasse project, though, it's quite deliberately a smaller project. It was sized to fit into a place within the consenting process. If you're less than a million tonnes a year, then you don't need federal sign-off. It really takes out one whole part of the consent process, whereas Crown Mountain goes through provincial and federal. The only aspect that's actually federal is fishery.
The Department of Fishery is actually a federal agency. It's a semi-hard coking coal. There's around 22 million tonnes of resource. There's about a 25-year life at just under a million tonnes of production. It's 350 kilometres from the closest coal port, which is the closest coal to anywhere in BC. The coal port has got a 20 million tonne capacity doing about 10 at the moment. There are some developments which are about 1,500 kilometres away from us that are looking to try and increase, but there will always be a place for a million tonnes or so it's been indicated. We haven't signed up port and rail yet. Obviously, the indicators from both of those are they're keen to see us because we're only a day trip away from the port.
Again, most of these other are six-day trip from the mine to the port and return with the empty. We've got a lot of interest in that project because of that. Also, it's a low strip ratio project, about three to one strip ratio over the whole project. The initial start point's pretty much one to one. A low input cost and a low cost overall driven from that strip ratio. I won't go through all the metrics of this. These are all available, but we are updating the DFS on the Tinasse project as we speak. It was done in 2019 last, and obviously, costs have changed a lot since then, but also so has the coal price. It was based on $155 international coal price, still very positive NPV, $270 million at that time.
Obviously, we've seen a major shift in things like parts and diesel and explosives. Part of the process now is to update that DFS, and we'll get that back to the market as soon as we can. At the moment, we are really just working our way through the consent process on both of these. With Tinasse, we've got apologies for the... no, we can see it. This is the major mining area. The purple line in the middle of the blob there is actually the haul road where then it takes it to the planned load-out area. We own the block of land that that'll all sit on, and we've got all the land deals in place for that haul road. The initial mine phase will be up in this area.
The dirt from there will then form some entrapment dams, which will, number one, basically make sure that mine-affected water is not going off-site. But more importantly, any potential acid-forming rock will actually be deposited in behind these dam structures and then progressively flooded to stop any oxidation of the materials to form more acid. The idea is to lock the material that could form acid away from the air by flooding it or by making it saturated, and then we don't get an acid formed. Then we don't have a long-term treatment plan. We've got a plan, but we don't have to treat long-term. The idea is when we walk away, there'll be the usual five years or so of monitoring, and then we hand the site back to the province. This is all forestry block. It was last clearfelled about 25 years ago.
There's been some regrowth, but the growth rates here are about a tenth of what we get in New Zealand. It's similar species to what we see here, spruces and that sort of thing, and birch, but they're very slow-growing. So the closest town is Telkwa. Telkwa up here. Smithers is a slightly larger centre with most of the sort of community assets that you'd expect: hospital, two high schools. There's actually quite a base of forestry and forestry sort of base workers. Tourism is really only locally based. There are some international travellers coming in or province travellers, but it's mainly servicing what is really required or used by the locals. Forestry's going through a rough period. There's a big mill at Houston, which is about 80 km away from here, which is just shut, which is 400 employees.
There is a good base of skilled workforce that we can draw on. We're going to need about 150 people, particularly initially. And there are other coal resources within the area. In terms of where we're up to, the Crown Mountain project is about to go into the application or is in the application development review phase. That's really the iterative phase. That's where the background work and what your effects are going to be is then tested by each of the regulators. And there's also a community interaction at that point, which is either legislated and/or set up by the proponent. And also, probably just as importantly, is interaction with First Nations groups that have got either claim areas over here or have got traditional hereditary lands. That process has been long ongoing with Crown Mountain.
Obviously, for us since 2018, it's probably progressing a little bit quicker now post-COVID. With Tinasse, though, the Tinnas project's actually come out of this phase, out of the iterative phase. We've got a number of requests for information from the EAO and from First Nations, and we're working our way through those. We're looking to have that completed mid-next year. We then go into the final effects assessment, which then really gets down to the nuts and bolts of the effects that we're assessing versus the mitigations we're putting in place that isn't acceptable to community, to the regulator, and to First Nations. Part of that sort of consultation with First Nation, we brought 16 people from the various groups.
There's band chiefs, there's hereditary chiefs, and then there's the office of the Wet'suwet'en, which is a group that was enacted really to allow the First Nations group in the area to actually have their interaction with the government. They've all got slightly different agendas. Really, the power base sits with hereditary, but then also the bands are very powerful. And if you don't have the sign-off from the OW or from the office of Wet'suwet'en, you've got no project. It's not a matter of ignoring one. You've got to basically bring them all on the journey. We brought a mix of people out. We showed them our Canterbury operations, which is in final stage of rehab. We showed them their Stockton mine. We had half a day's interaction with Francois' people with Ngāti Waewae at the Arahura marae. We were greeted onto the marae.
Probably a high-risk strategy in some ways, but I think in the end of the day, it built a lot of trust. What it really has done is it's opened their eyes to what the possibilities are in doing exactly what Francois has done and what other groups, particularly with Tainui and with Ngāi Tahu, what can be achieved with working with business. I think that was a good step. We've certainly built a lot of trust out of it. We've been back recently, and it's not like meeting that we did when we initially took this project over in the early new year. We're already further down the trust line. Obviously, it's hard to gain and easy to lose, but we are working our way quickly through it. Once we get into the fixed assessment, though, that's a fairly locked-down process.
That's about six months, and then the final decision's made. We're aiming to be out of there by the end of FY26. That's the timing or the intention at the present time. Being in construction in '27. What we're aiming to do is really build this picture. We've had a there's an underlying or underpinning domestic business, assuming that New Zealand Steel continues on at the same rate. There's the coal coming out of the Bulla project, which is the darker blue there. There's the coal remaining within the existing BT holdings, Stockton mine, Tinnas project, and then the Crown Mountain project coming in a little bit later. Building up to on a 100% basis, owned by Bathurst, around about 3 million tonnes of coal that's mainly going into steelmaking. By that time, it would be 99%.
Really to achieve that, again, looking at that sort of table that I put up before across the three main parts of the business, BT mining is fully funded. We've got a clear path in front of us as to what we're trying to achieve. We've got to maintain the infrastructure and then make sure that we've then got the infrastructure to feed in any additional coal, bring the Bulla project into that, and then allows us to then blend that remaining coal into the market. Bathurst, New Zealand, the key target there is Bulla. If we can get a customer for Takitimu, we'd obviously take that on. We're not walking away from the domestic market. It's walking away from us.
Our major attention is on getting that Bulla project to a state where we can put an application in early next year that's going to be sustainable again against the community expectations and expectations of the landholders, mainly DOC and LINZ. With Canada, again, it's a matter of prioritizing getting through those approval processes. There is no project without an approval, so we're not deliberately doing some of the other precursor work that a decade ago we would be doing feed studies for engineering, for instance. We've done enough engineering to give us rough pricing, plus or minus 25% type stuff at the moment. We know it's technically feasible, but we haven't dived down into the final stages of engineering, say, for a plant or for the road or for the rail load-out. Exactly the same with Crown Mountain.
Crown Mountain is all about meeting our requirements under the EAO, so the Environmental Assessment Office process, and also with First Nations to make sure we're bringing them along for the ride. Ultimately, what we're aiming to do is use that good, strong position we've got now, low debt. We have got large cash balances held up within the joint venture or held within the joint venture. We're looking to invest some of that in New Zealand, invest some of that in Canada, and then take basically our shareholders along for the ride through that to then ultimately lead to higher shareholder returns. We'll have cash flowing from each of those parts of the business leading out to ultimately FY40, where you've then got long-life projects with long-life returns and then feeding that back to shareholders in either future assets or dividends and/or both.
Look, thanks very much. As Peter said, more than happy to take questions from the floor. We're probably going to lose the live feed now, thanks very much for the people who are online. Again, anyone online that's got any questions, please put them in. What we'll look to do is compile a Q&A and put that in the next couple of three days. Thank you.
Thank you, Richard. As we've said, any questions, please put them to Richard now.