I can see our Bathurst Resources for the quarter 3 FY 2016 update. I hope everyone can see that screen. Standard disclaimers. Look, anyone that doesn't know Bathurst, and I realize, probably a lot of you are existing shareholders or know something about the company. In case you don't, we are an operating company. All of our operations are in New Zealand. We've got Takitimu in the deep south, which is 100% owned by Bathurst. We've got Stockton on the West Coast of the South Island. We've got Rotowaro and Maramarua, which operations in the North Island. Stockton, Rotowaro and Maramarua are owned through a joint venture. We own 65% of that with a New Zealand-based family company through a entity called BT Mining. We'll look at those operations. We've been in that joint venture since 2017.
We've also got, though, a number of growth projects that, again, we'll cover in today's presentation. The Buller Project, which is associated with the Stockton infrastructure and will supplement the Stockton mine going ahead for another 20 years. The Tenas Project, which is a greenfield project in middle B.C. on the west coast. Crown Mountain, which we own 23% of with Jameson Resources, which again, is in British Columbia. They're our development growth projects all in coking coal. Look, no real change to the board structure. Peter Westerhuis is still our Chairman. Russell and myself, Executive Directors. Francois Tumahai, Non-executive director.
Russell's been spending a quite a lot of time in Vancouver and up on the, on the project site up at Smithers, which is about 11 hours drive north of Vancouver as we move further forward into that final stages of the permitting for that project. Unfortunately, our share price has taken a bit of a hit lately. We're down below NZD 0.60, which puts our market cap at around NZD 142 million at the end of March. We had NZD 117 million consolidated cash between the joint venture and our own books, giving us an enterprise value of NZD 25 million. You know, the implication there, we've got no debt, apart from some yellow goods finance of a pretty minor nature with the Takitimu mine. You know, the company's been built around stable operations.
We generate cash. We've got a good mix of customers across the New Zealand base. We've got coal going into process heat with major customers. We've also got coal going into steelmaking and electricity generation. You know, that, pretty much that group's been together since 2016, 2017, and you know, we will show in a graph in a minute how we've been profitable through all those years. Associated with each of those projects and also with our Canadian assets, we've got some growth projects which again, the intention here is to build in a, you know, a portfolio of assets that are generating cash, then we can then start returning cash back to our shareholders.
The director focus at the present time though is very much on growth, and I'll sort of cover that in the next slide. We have paid dividend, and we have done share buybacks in the past. And as we know with the joint venture, we haven't got an automatic right of getting cash flowed out of the joint venture. At the present time, we actually want that cash to be maintained within those various businesses, including Bathurst, to bring forward these growth projects, and that's really been our focus over the last two years. You know, in New Zealand, we've got the Buller Project.
We've been investing with BT in the development of that, the overall project, and obviously the key thing there is to bring forward a project that can go into the Fast-track in the near future and then out of that towards the end of this year, early next year, with a, all of the project, approvals that are gonna be required. You know, the growth CapEx at the present time has been really on that near term and potential long-term coal projects because we've been investing money as well with our joint venture partners on a equity basis into Crown Mountain. Then recently, well, since 2022, into the Tenas Project, which again is a very exciting development for Bathurst in that we get full control of those cash flows. The same with the Buller Project.
We get full control of those cash flows. We've got a strong balance sheet. As I said, no debt. You know, we actively manage some of our forward sales. We've got hedging in place really to try and lock in super profits because we haven't got debt. We're not trying to protect on the downside, but we are trying to lock in whenever we see, like the situation now with the forward curve going over $250 odd U.S. dollars in 12 months out. We're trying to lock in tonnage at, for our sales out of Stockton. Across New Zealand, I've already said, you know, we've got those four operating mines scattered across the, from the length and breadth of New Zealand.
Rotowaro and Maramarua principally supplies steelmaking, a little bit of coal going into the last remaining thermal power station as well. Down the bottom of that, Takitimu, all of that coal goes into process heat, which is value-add to New Zealand prime production. Stockton, 100% of that gets exported into customer base in India, Japan, South Korea, and a little bit into China. You know, we've got long-established markets. Some of these customers have been customers of Stockton for 50 years. We've been into the Indian market for well over 20 years, and we've got some business development into South Korea that's only in the last couple of years. You know, we are still maintaining that customer base even though we only maintain about 1.2 million tons of export.
The Buller project is there to really take that Stockton infrastructure, set it up for the next 15 years past the mine life of Stockton. Over the last quarter, we're a little bit down on where we were in our subsequent quarter last year, mainly around coal price, but also around some of our movements now in the domestic market. We've seen customers moving out of the process heat market in the South Island, moving to alternative energy suppliers and/or getting out of the business. That's been a reasonable impact on our 100% owned Takitimu business, but also on our North Island domestic business as well. EBITDA's down a little bit again.
We have had a lower coal price in the first part of the year, which has now really bounced back to being a very consistent number. We're sitting at around about $230 U.S. dollars per ton for our export coal. We get about 80% of that on an average across our full portfolio of sales. We're down a little bit on cash. Again, we've been investing heavily in the Buller project and in Tenas. But we've still got healthy cash reserves, around NZD 141 at the end of March. We are at the moment sitting at a slight loss position, probably pull back to being even by the end of the year. In terms of EBITDA, we believe we're well and truly on target.
We've had a number of low-level incidents across the sites over the last quarter, which is really disappointing. It's caused us to go back and review particularly our field leadership program and try and address some of our behavioral safety aspects that have come out of those investigations into those incidents.
We have been working extensively on our training management systems, and we're now moving into the next part of that, which is e-learning, so it actually frees up some time for people to actually be more one-to-one on some of the higher risk stuff, which is then rolling into our critical risk program, which has been ongoing, but has also been reviewed in light of some of these recent incidents to make sure that we are picking up the key critical risks here to make sure we're not gonna end up with fatalities or multiple fatalities, as well as the risk of these minor injuries. Looking ahead, obviously we've only got a month or so left to go now.
We've had, you know, an increase in the export stuff, particularly over the last quarter, where, you know, we've seen consistent pricing, and also some of our shipments been in the higher grade. Our North Island operations are up a little bit, our South Island operations are down a little bit, including corporate costs. Again, a lot of that's to do with the shifting of the market, and also, you know, we did have only really this year remaining in our Takitimu mine. We've managed to extend that for another two years while we complete the rehabilitation as well. It has meant that we're down a little bit this year, we will see.
Next year we weren't gonna be having any cashflow at all from that business, but we will still have a couple million NZD flowing into the coffers. Obviously, [Talga], we're now moving into the sort of more pointy end of the permitting and environmental assessment work, we are expending more money there than what we had anticipated. We are still gonna come in, we believe, well and truly on the top end of the guidance. I think, you know, it's worthwhile reflecting when we, again, we formed the joint venture and we basically recapitalized Bathurst back in FY 2017, FY 2018. We took over the assets of the Solid Energy. You know, we have not been, we've made money every year. We're very dependent.
Our export business is a large part of our earnings, we're very dependent on international coal prices, as you can see from the red line bouncing around, and our EBITDA numbers bouncing around that. This is the lowest numbers we're going to have for the domestic business, we are in a growth phase. We have been, we've done the M1 development, which we're now starting to mine coal out of with Maramarua mine. We've done the Waipuna West cutback, which we're now starting to mine coal over the next three to four years out of there to supply into the market. You know, that's, we will see a return on that investment over the last two years, over the next couple of years.
International coal price, the forward curve is reasonably healthy and I think the key thing here is how flat it's been. We haven't seen, even though we've had the impact of the obviously the US-Iran war, we've seen some high pricing, in particular in terms of diesel costs and things like that, and that's spread into some of the economic development around the world. We are seeing still strong requests for coal out of India in particular, and that has really kept the market relatively flat. It is in contango. We're seeing projections out 12 months out to NZD 257 at the present time. The forward curve going out further past that is around that NZD 250 mark as well.
We'll be reviewing that obviously solidly now because we're moving into a budgeting phase. We'll be setting up for our next year's budget. After when we come back to, for quarter four, we will give you an indication of where we see the guidance being past that point. As I said, you know, a lot of this we've been investing over the last two years in particular is around these extension projects and the growth projects. You know, we really haven't had excess cash to be able to look at going into buybacks even though, you know, with a NZD 0.60 share price at the present time, it would be nice to have that cash into that.
I think it's more important at the present time that we invest in these growth projects 'cause as we see from that forward curve, you know, there is still a lot of buoyant and positive attitude around coking coal. There's limited supply, and there is still really no alternative to coking coal and steelmaking. That's where we are concentrating our business at the present time, on these both projects, but also on these extension projects within New Zealand. The Buller projects will be known to everyone. It's basically taking the existing infrastructure that's embedded within Stockton. Taking the remaining coal that will be mined within the Stockton coal mining license and mining permit areas. Adding to those with the Mount Frederick South and then ultimately the Denison Plateau area.
Each of these areas have got similar coal qualities. They're similar seams, but they've got peculiarities that then allow us to actually maintain the existing blends and the existing market going forward by about another 20 years. We've identified about 90 million tons in the Buller coal project. That's a combination of the remaining coal in Stockton, Mount Frederick South and the Escarpment extension or the Denison part of that. And it's relatively high-cost coal. We are going into deeper reserves and reserves that have been partly mined by underground mining. You know, if we look at, again, look at the forward curve, we are still gonna be profitable at today's levels. It has got a good solid NPV, and it's got a relatively low start-up CapEx, you know, around about NZD 105 million.
I suppose the benefit for the Bathurst shareholders is, as the Stockton tonnage, which is depicted in orange on this graph, drops down, it's replaced by 100% owned coal coming in from particularly Escarpment and then from Mount Frederick South. Mount Frederick South is 60/40, so it's 60% owned by Bathurst in terms of the amount of coal that's in it and 40% owned by the joint venture. It'll be a smaller mining area, whereas Denison and Escarpment will be a larger mining area. Obviously one of the key pieces of infrastructure here for us is a haul road that joins the Denison area to the south, which is the Buller resource, up into the infrastructure which is contained within the Stockton.
That's where the CHPP, the processing plant and then the aerial conveyor going down to the rail loadout, which allows us to get that coal to market. We're looking and we're working very hard at the present time on getting this Fast-track application submitted. We've had a number of dates on this. I do realize that. What we're seeing with some of the applications that are either sitting with the panels and/or have been through the panels is that it's all about front-end loading. The more work we do up front, the more consultation we do, the more agreement we get with the various stakeholders.
For us, the key stakeholders here are the land holder, which is Department of Conservation, Regional Council, which controls water and air discharges, District Council, which controls land use and is really the proxy for a lot of the community concerns. You know, we've been working hard with all of those groups in particular, but also local land holders, our local communities, which are, you know, very dependent on the jobs that the Buller mine at the present time, Stockton provides to that area. You know, we employ about 350 people directly. And without the mine, the town is gonna suffer. You know, that has been our focus. Obviously, this is a project that is quite large, particularly on our scale, but also on New Zealand scale.
You know, 20 million tons may not be a lot in the middle of Queensland, it's, you know, 20 years' worth of production for us. You know, it has a large impact on the local area. You know, at the present time, we're injecting somewhere around about NZD 40 million a year just in wages alone into the local area. Plus then you've got all the sales and services that come from it. It's an important part of the local and regional economy, and that's really where the Fast-track comes into. It allows us to then put that application in. Again, the more we've got agreed up front, the quicker we'll go through that process and the more certainty we'll have. That's what we're working on now. That's why this timeline's been slipping.
As issues have come up, we've tried to deal with them up front with the people that are actually gonna be the decision-makers, so there's no surprises. You know, we're still aiming for that to be in this quarter four, and then we'll be out of that process by the end of the quarter four next year. Really it just depends on how, you know, it's viewed by the panel. Also, you know, what the assessment timeframes that we are given. The more we can get agreed and the more we can get negotiated up front, obviously that'll pull back those timeframes. With the Tenas Project, really similar sort of timelines, different process. In British Columbia, there's an office called the Environmental Assessment Office, which basically handles the environmental management part of it.
There's a mines department which handles the permitting, which then gives you the final permit to actually go forth and start doing all of the works you need to do and the mining process post that point. We're looking to submit within the same sort of timeframe, into June, for the environmental assessment. That takes about six months. We'll then start in with the permitting phase, which takes around about 12 months. Again, you know, this is a smaller project on world scale, both in terms of the output, but also in terms of the amount of capital that's going to be required. You know, it's a relatively compact mine site. There is other resources within the area, but we're concentrating at the moment on really on the Tenas block.
Again, it's quite a low strip ratio. We're looking at around about 4 to 1 over the whole block. Relatively simple logistics. We form a haul road across to the, a block of land we own, which then gives us access to rail, and that rail is the closest rail to coal port of Ridley, which allows us then to market the coal into the national market. You know, again, some of the specs you would, you would already be familiar with, but a similar sort of timeframe. You know, we're looking at about 22 million tons of production. 20-odd years of mine life. You know, around NZD 140 million set up on capital. It'll be a low-cost operation because of the strip ratio mainly.
Relatively simple mining methods and good recoveries through the wash plant. We're looking at 70% plus recovery through the wash plant as well. The cost per product ton will be around $80 US delivered to Prince Rupert or the Ridley Port. Good NPV. $270 million US post-tax with a good internal rate of return as well. Permitting is the key here. We've got to get the environmental assessment application in, and then while we're doing that, we'll also be submitting the permit docs.
As I said, the permitting takes around 12 months on average by the time you get the permit docs in front of the regulator and then out of that process. We've released the results of the DFS, which is, you know, some of the key results we just had on the last page. We've also now started to look at some of the forward works for the access road and the civils and getting into mining. We are looking to try and bring forward some of the drilling work, particularly around the geotech work, going forward into the next phase, which then gives us a bit of a piggyback towards first coal in around FY 2029. Just looking at Bathurst, you know, how we sit today.
We've got, in terms of New Zealand dollars, NZD 141 million consolidated cash, zero debt. We're gonna earn, somewhere around about 45 million EBITDA for this year. You know, we've got a net asset backing in the New Zealand dollar terms again of NZD 1.50. You know, if we look at it in Australian terms in terms of where our share price is sitting now, you know, we've got a cash backing of AUD 0.49, we've got an asset backing of AUD 1.24 as we stand at the moment.
Now as you can see from the last couple of slides, you know, we've got a long tail of production sitting there that'll take us through to about 2.5 million tons a year, and that doesn't include the option that we've got with Crown Mountain, which is still a very good option. You know, we own -20% of that project. It's costing us a small amount of money each year at the moment to maintain that option. You know, that's a billion-dollar project looking at the forward curve pricing of around 250. You know, it is a great option for us going forward. It's a little bit further down the development timeline than the other two projects.
That's why we're not concentrating that in terms of these immediate sort of announcements, but it is still a good option for Bathurst. You know, just to try and sort of pull that together. We've got profitable operations in New Zealand, both across the joint venture and our Maramarua, 100% owned. We've got good cash reserves that will be applied to these projects. We've got the fast-track application nearly complete to go in, and that'll give us all the approvals that we need to then get going. That's the big difference that the fast-track brought us back in December 2024, was that ability to put 1 application in and then get all the approvals that we need, rather than death by a thousand cuts through every other regulator in the country.
We've backed that project up with a pre-feasibility study, and we're working on the DFS now. You know, we've got good backing from the New Zealand government, both in terms of the Fast-track Act's been passed under this present government, but also metallurgical coal's gone into the critical minerals list. You know, that gives us the basis that we need to then go out and seek further assistance from government, particularly around, you know, trying to bring on strategic minerals. The Tenas Project again is backed by confirmation reserves earlier this year, or financial year, I mean, you know, with the DFS results backing that, the investment. Why invest in Bathurst? You know, we've increased our weighting of sales into steel making. You know, it's well and truly above 90% now.
We've got a good portfolio of assets with British Columbia. You know, British Columbia's had a big turnaround in terms of where their attitude has been towards mining. They see it like New Zealand and a lot of other countries here. Australia has always seen this benefit that, you know, you either mine it or you grow it. You know, there's big benefits in utilizing your resources properly. You know, nothing that we're talking about with the Fast-track is gonna take away from any of our environmental management, any of our people management for that matter as well. You know, these aren't gonna end up with disastrous projects because they've been through a fast-track process.
They're gonna end up with a better project because it's had more consultation, and it's gonna come out and be a project that's actually more deliverable than if it went through the standard process. You know, we've got global recognition of metallurgical coal being a critical mineral, both in terms of Europe, U.S., and New Zealand. We've got a history of generating profits, as we've seen from the one of those earlier graphs, and also maintaining our guidance. You know, we have always been conservative, I suppose, but we've also met our guidance over the years. We've got a good balance sheet, no debt. We've got a strong cash position, which we will be applying to these various projects within the joint venture and outside of the joint venture.
You know, we've got really near-term potential for these longer term longer life projects, all in metallurgical coal in New Zealand and Canada, you know. We've seen the market reacting positively to even things like the U.S. tariff war where, you know, it's just indicative of the fact that there's no further large chunks of supply coming to the market, but there's still a real use for that coal in steel making. We believe that's the thematic that a lot of people are investing in Bathurst and other metallurgical coal companies. You know, and pretty much our total focus now is steel making.
Thanks for your attendance, and as usual, if there's any questions, you know, there's a link in the presentation that allows you to send them through, and we'll endeavor get back to them in the next couple of days. Thanks very much for your time. Look forward to catching up soon. Thanks.