Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Dyno Nobel's Investor Showcase. I'd like to give a special welcome to those that have had to travel to get here. I know it's a big time commitment, and we do appreciate you making the effort. Similarly, for those joining online, I imagine it's probably an ungodly hour for you, so, we thank you for that commitment. Before we go too far, I'll draw your attention to our disclaimers, which you'll be able to read in the materials we've posted online, and there's another second page of them. All right, and here's who you'll be hearing from today. We have IPL's Chairman, Mr. Greg Robinson, and our CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Mauro Neves.
You'll be hearing from the majority of the executive leadership team, and I'm really pleased to say that we have several of our key customers attending who've agreed to speak with you, which is, we're very fortunate to have that, as well as one of our key distributors. So here's the agenda for the day. We've got a big couple of days planned for you, starting today with what I hope will be an informative and engaging day of presentations and videos, and the schedule's there on the screen for you. Tomorrow, we'll get you out and about. We'll be taking you to our new research center, where we'll provide some demonstrations of our products.
From there, we head to Rio's massive copper mine, where we may be lucky enough to witness a blast, which just depends on the mine activity for the day. And then to end the day, we'll give you a quick tour of our truck assembly plant. But I won't take up any more of your time. I'll hand you over to our President of Sales and Commercial, Mr. Russell Lamont, who'll give an acknowledgement of land and then discuss our number one priority, being safety. Enjoy the day. Over to you, Russell.
Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate that introduction. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you today to talk about safety, which is Dyno Nobel's number one priority. Before I do that, I want to recognize the rich history of where we are gathered today. The Salt Lake Valley, which includes Salt Lake City, where we are now, has always been a gathering place for indigenous peoples. We acknowledge that this land is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Shoshone, the Paiute, the Goshute, and Ute tribes, and as a crossroad for indigenous peoples. Dyno Nobel respects Utah's indigenous peoples and recognizes the enduring relationships they have with their traditional homelands. We are grateful for the territory upon which we gather today, and we value the sovereign relationships that exist between tribal governments, state governments, and the federal government. So now, moving on to safety.
I want to start with the statement that Dyno Nobel is a safety company. We happen to be in the business of manufacturing explosives, but fundamentally, we represent a continuous endeavor to provide the world with ever-safer capabilities to shape the Earth around us. This endeavor has, since the inception of this company, represented the core strategic lever for delivering operational excellence, sustainability, and commercial outcomes. Our values can only be successfully delivered within the context of safety. Our customers value safety, reliability of supply and performance, and of course, the resulting value creation that can be achieved for their operations. The practical application of these fundamentals is supported by a passionate and diverse team of expert professionals who culturally prioritize the ideal of thinking customer, everyone, every day. The technology these professionals bring to bear through equipment, product, and digital platforms is recognized by our customers as industry-leading.
As an organization, we are comprised of individuals who both live and work in the communities we service. Dyno Nobel seeks to attract and develop individuals who embrace the business mentality of nurturing both the peoples and the environments in which we operate, and to support them to achieve their full potential as part of the larger team. Ultimately, our success as a business rests on the shoulders of each of the individuals within this team. Our ability to deliver the safe and reliable technology to drive customer outcomes is dependent on the culture and dedication of our people. People truly are our most valuable resource, and we seek to occupy the role as a company of choice for high performers.
We strive to attract the highest talent with a broad scope of diversity, as we believe this to be one of the most effective means of ensuring a comprehensive passion for safety. And once we have those people, we work hard to protect them in order to ensure the safety culture investment that we have made remains secure to deliver returns for years to come. So how do we guarantee the best-in-class safety culture? Well, we provide challenges to our talent, both to filter out those who don't contribute to our strategic objectives, but also to engage the minds of the dedicated professionals who achieve our success. Our teams challenge the status quo and continually strive to find more efficient and effective ways to deliver on our promises.
Disciplined leadership that develops safeG round provides the environment for our teams to feel confident in challenging themselves, their peers, and leadership to do better.... Some of the toughest situations our employees encounter occur when they must contradict the desires of customers in order to truly ensure the safety of all parties. The pressure to deliver on customer desires is immense, and I am encouraged every time that I learn one of our frontline employees felt empowered to hit the stop button, escalated the issue, and received support from leadership. I'm proud to be part of an organization that encourages and supports our people to take this action, no matter the commercial implications, as I can tell you, this is not universal in the world and should not be taken for granted.
Another example of how we build safe ground through a culture of learning is by how we approach learning from significant events. Significant events are incidents, near misses, or hazards that have the potential for fatalities in our operations. In August of this year, we commemorated the thirtieth anniversary of the Porgera mine incident, where eleven Dyno Nobel employees were killed because of an explosion within an emulsion plant. We use this incident to reinforce the controls that are now common across the industry to ensure that incidents like this never happen again, and that the people who were impacted by these events are never forgotten. The history of this incident personally affects me on a daily basis, as I hold responsibility for the safe operation of nineteen emulsion plants in our North American business.
I'd like to share a video with you describing the incident, which I hope will emphasize the value of the safety culture that I have discussed.
The Porgera Gold Mine is located in the Enga Province, in the West Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Dyno Wesfarmers Limited, DWL, operated an explosives facility on the Porgera Gold Mine. On the morning of second August, nineteen ninety-four, there were a total of 13 workers in the explosives plant. At approximately 9:45 A.M., an explosion occurred. Eyewitnesses reported a large fireball, 100 meters in the air, immediately following the explosion. It's understood that 11 fatalities occurred as a result of the initial explosion. A second, much larger explosion, occurred at approximately 11:01 A.M., leaving a crater 40 meters across and 15 meters deep. The plant was manufacturing sensitized packaged emulsion. The packaged emulsion is manufactured by blending ammonium nitrate oxidizer solution with fuel, oil, and emulsifiers through a continuous process under controlled conditions.
The emulsion is then fed into another blender, where glass micro-balloons are added. The emulsion at this point becomes Class 1.1 cap sensitive. The sensitized packaged emulsion process was supported by the bulk storage of liquid oxidizers and fuels, which were co-located with a bulk emulsion storage tank adjacent to the process building. A detailed investigation, in collaboration with multiple local and international authorities, supported by forensic analysis, determined that the first explosion most likely started in the hopper progressive cavity pump of the emulsion packaging line. Eyewitness reports and photographs taken between the first and second explosions indicate that there were several fires burning fiercely in the vicinity of the bulk emulsion storage, oxidizer storage, and mobile processing unit.
It is likely that the force of the first explosion ruptured the process oil and fuel storage tanks and pipework in the compound, as well as the diesel tanks on the mobile processing unit, releasing oil that would have fueled these fires. The investigation determined that the fires heated the emulsion until all the water had been driven off, at which point an exothermic reaction commenced, leading to the second explosion, 76 minutes after the first.
Within eighteen months of the incident, we'd published what we call our global engineering standards. So they apply to all Dyno Nobel operations everywhere in the world.
Because of events such as Porgera and the wide-spanning impacts and learnings from the explosives industry, safety bodies such as SAFEX, AEISG, and IME were formed. These bodies have led to the establishment of shared safety standards for many aspects of ammonium nitrate-based explosive safety.
Now, safety is never done. That's the fundamental message that people should take away. Yes, you can have practices and procedures in place. Yes, you can have engineering standards and the risks engineered out. Yes, you can have behavioral programs in place, but if you want to get to world-class safety performance, you've got to continually push on all three of those areas.
Ask questions, and don't just ask them from your ordinary peers. Reach out to others in the business. Understand what the safety is, because if we can get standards across the business, it makes it so much safer.
Based on the Porgera investigation and analysis of other related industry events, a suite of safety and operational standards and controls have been established and are widely adopted across industry for safe operation. The BowTie Methodology has been generally accepted for visually communicating the causal pathways and layers of protection required for safe operation. These lessons have shaped the 18 Dyno Nobel Global Explosive Standards. In summary, these standards can be simplified down to five key principles. One, separation: how we separate our operations and storage of explosive precursors from our neighbors. Two, segregation: ensures safe separation of dissimilar chemicals and activities. Three, equipment standards: only approved equipment is used to produce and deliver explosive products. Four, control of formulations: mixing Class Five and explosives to the prescribed standard at all points in the process.
Five, emergency response: the planning and constant vigilance required to ensure you are prepared for an emergency. The lessons of the past show that we must maintain vigilance in monitoring and reporting any drift away from these principles.
For people that were not part of the company at the time of Porgera, who are watching this video, I hope that they come away understanding that Dyno Nobel is a company that cares deeply about its people. It's a company that learns from its mistakes, and it's a company that commits to keeping its people and our stakeholders safe every day.
Thank you. It's obviously a very sobering story, but one that we as Dyno Nobel feel that we need to continue to remember so that we never lose the lessons it teaches us. Now, it's my great pleasure to introduce to you the Chairman of Incitec Pivot's board, Mr. Greg Robinson, to provide some opening remarks.
Good morning. It's a somber way to start, but I think it's a really important message. Safety culture within an organization is absolutely critical. Our people are what make our business great, and their safety is absolutely paramount. So I think it's an important message. It's an important message for investors to understand the way we tick, the way we think. So good morning to everyone, investors, customers, partners, research analysts, and advisors, and a very warm welcome to our two-day Dyno Nobel investor presentations and site visits. You'll have to excuse my voice. It's Murphy's Law, isn't it, that my voice goes as I'm starting my presentation? But anyway, it's a real pleasure to be with you here in Salt Lake City. It is a beautiful city, and it is the head office location of our Dyno Nobel Americas Explosives business.
As Russell said, my name is Greg Robinson. I am the Chair of Incitec Pivot. We very much appreciate your commitment and effort to attend today and tomorrow, and for those online, the significant effort to get up and watch this. I'd like to give a special acknowledgement to our valued Dyno Nobel customers and joint venture partners in the room with us today. I'm really delighted to say they've been gracious enough to agree to speak with us and take questions. Never easy, but that's very much appreciated. We're looking forward to the next two days, and trust it will be informative, educational, enjoyable. As you know, historically, IPL aggregated a combination of regionally strong explosives businesses and a dominant Australian Eastern Seaboard fertilizer distribution business.
These businesses were centered around large nitrogen production facilities, producing ammonia, urea, ammonium nitrate, and ammonium phosphate, supplying two principal customer bases with explosives and fertilizers. Today, we will focus mainly on the explosives business, our choice as the future direction for our company. Accordingly, we will progress to rebranding our company as Dyno Nobel in the future, and you'll hear more about that rebranding later today. We're really fortunate to have a dominant explosives business in Australia and the U.S. It's coupled to leading technology, and it has opportunistically good growth opportunities in Latin America, Europe, and Africa. We believe we have an opportunity to turn Dyno Nobel into a great company, and more on this later. So after four years as a non-executive director, I stepped into the chair role around 10 months ago when my colleague and predecessor, Brian Kruger, stepped away for personal reasons.
I again want to acknowledge Brian's thoughtful leadership that he provided the company through what was a really rapidly changing world. As background, for those of you that don't know me, I am actually a geologist. Left that a long time ago, but I am actually a geologist with a very deep experience in the resources industry. It's an industry that I love. The Drill to Mill that you'll hear a lot about today is core to our purpose and something I have a very keen interest in. Again, as background, my prior roles were CEO of Newcrest Mining. I had senior roles at BHP, and for a period of time, I ran Merrill Lynch's Southeast Asian resources business, so pretty much involved with the resource industry through my career.
When I took the chair role on, we had three core strategic objectives: internally separate the explosives and fertilizer businesses, improve the performance of both businesses and ultimately divest the fertilizer business. We're largely complete with the first task. We're working very hard on this second objective, and we've had some disappointment with the third, which you've all seen over the last six months. December last year, I told you that we believe there is significant value that can be unlocked by separating our explosive and fertilizer businesses. We still believe this to be the case, and we are continuing to investigate options for formally separating the two businesses in the most value-accretive way possible.
The Australian Fertilizers business is made up of the Australian Eastern Seaboard Fertilizer distribution assets in very strong positions, and after the closure of the manufacturing at Gibson Island, the remaining large ammonium phosphate production asset, Phosphate Hill. With the recent cessation of the business sale process, we're focusing on optimizing the fertilizer business, selling non-core land positions, and assessing the longer-term direction for Phosphate Hill. Mauro will have more to say during the day on both how we're managing the fertilizer business and the approach we're taking to progress options for exiting the business in a value-accretive and methodical manner. Pleasingly, and with focus on commercial and operational improvement, we've seen our business performance improve. The underlying earnings results we announced at the half year in May showed that we are making very solid progress.
At last year's AGM, I discussed the search for and ultimately the appointment of our new CEO, Mauro Neves. Since joining the company in January, Mauro has with the executive leadership team refined our objectives, refocused our strategy, and particularly looked at what's possible for our different business streams. As he will outline, he has made some adjustments to the executive team, their responsibilities, and commenced a very significant transformation project that has some ambitious targets, combined with structure, discipline, and a clearly identified pathway to deliver. Our performance remuneration structure matches these targets. I know we've heard a lot about safety, but from a board point of view, I just want to also emphasize that your board and management are passionate about safety and sustainability. Each meeting at IPL starts with safety, as we've done today.
Safety for our employees, our communities, and anyone linked to the IPL business remains absolutely paramount. It's good business for us. It's the only way to become a great company. Our performance has been strong, but we also strive to improve. Sustainability, particularly carbon emissions, remains an important focus for IPL. Carbon-challenged industries have a long road ahead to reach the zero carbon emissions target that society has set us. At IPL, we have projects that will materially reduce our current emissions, projects that are in design, and longer-term projects that will take us a long way to our objective to achieve zero carbon emissions. These will be explained later in the presentations today. I'd like to make a couple of comments about capital returns to investors.
Firstly, we are committed to the AUD 400 million buyback in 2023, and then after the completion of the sale of our ammonia plant in Louisiana in December 2023, we pledged a further AUD 1 billion return to shareholders. With the ongoing fertilizer sale process, we've been restricted in commencing our buyback program. We did complete the first part of this program in February 2024, with a AUD 500 million capital return to shareholders, and as you'll be aware, we've now commenced our on-market share buyback program. To date, we've bought back around AUD 100 million, I think slightly more, representing about 10% of the remaining AUD 900 million commitment, and we'll continue to buy back shares during available windows. We've also maintained our dividend payouts at about 50% of net profit.
We will remain focused on capital discipline and efficiency as we complete the task of separating our two businesses and delivering the very important internal transformation project underway. So I hope you enjoy the next two days. I know the team have put an absolutely enormous amount of effort into the presentations for today and tomorrow. We think we have a very compelling investment proposition, and I hope that we can achieve our goal of making you as excited about our future as we are. I'll be around for the remainder of the day, and so if I didn't already get a chance to meet people, then, look forward to meeting you during the day or at the reception tonight. I'll now hand over to Mauro, our CEO, and wish you, the best for the next two days. Thank you.
Thanks, Greg, and good to see so many familiar faces again. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I met many of you, but as a quick introduction, my name is Mauro Neves, and after a few decades in the resources industry, I have the privilege of leading Dyno Nobel in its future journey of transformation. I want to share with you today is our strategy that will guide your company into an exciting future. Our clear vision for Dyno Nobel is to be the leading global explosives business that provides superior products and services to our customers. We'll talk about our proud history of innovation that shaped the industry as we know it. And I have to say, I invite you to spend some time in the very good work that we have to bring some of the memory of Dyno Nobel into here.
So I invite you, in the breaks to go and spend some time with our teams. I hope the next two days will give you an appreciation of the how we will achieve that vision. During the first session, we'll go over four key areas. First, who we are and what's our strategic intent? Second, our unique position in the value chain and how we're leveraging it. Then, why our markets have such attractive fundamentals. And finally, how we are strategically controlling our destiny, seeking to maximize shareholder value. I'll start by sharing who we are as a company and what we aim to achieve over the next coming years. Our ambition is to be the leading global player in explosives by doubling our earnings, delivering returns above our cost of capital, and achieve market-leading TSR.
We will achieve this by leveraging our unique competitive position, our customer-centric technology, superior products, deep customer partnerships, and privileged assets and distribution networks. I truly believe that we need to be in control of our destiny. We can capture existing demand and new demand through strong customer connections and the advanced technology we have. The transformation program is about increasing profitability, eliminating wasting, and fostering innovation. As you'll hear from Paul later today, capital prudence is paramount in ensuring attractive returns with a focus on reducing working capital, funding only high-returning projects. With regards to Fert, our strategy remains absolutely unchanged. We remain committed to separating those two businesses. It will enable Dyno Nobel greater strategic focus. We'll also reduce volatility and capital intensity. We will explore these benefits in more detail later. Let me first give you a brief intro into our explosives business.
I'll then touch on IPF and the separation plans. Let me start with something that I'm really excited about, and I have to second Greg's word, such a gracious amount of time that our customers are spending with us. As a company, one of our greatest assets is our customers. Our customers' base is truly global, with partnerships cutting across many regions of the world. Here in our home base in North America and also in Australia, we proudly serve a wide range of industries, from metals mining to quarries and construction, with solutions that are tailored to each of these sectors. Some of the world's biggest names, Rio, Fortescue, BHP, Vale, Peabody, Anglo, Glencore, trust us to deliver reliable, high-performing explosive solutions. These long-standing relationships are testament of consistent and safe results and innovation.
As the world progresses to decarbonization and increases demand for future-facing commodities, especially copper, LATAM and EMEA become natural growth regions for us. We're very confident we can leverage those existing relationships to target growth in new markets. Having been myself a customer in places like Brazil, in Chile, in Mozambique, in Australia, I appreciate how relevant it is to have trusted global partners. We'll have more to say about growth in these regions later in the presentation. But as we always do, let me start with the most important things: keeping our people safe. Goes without saying that caring for our people and the environment remain fundamental values for our team. Safety is the core of everything we do.
This industry has been shaped by preventing loss of life since the days of Alfred Nobel, and I would take a minute to say the book that you have in your hands, Igniting Progress, tells the history of how this industry has been shaped by invention, trying to prevent loss of life. Every step along the way, every invention that is outside, is absolutely designed to keep people safe. On sustainability, we are proud to be acknowledged as a leader, with external recognition from the likes of S&P Global and FTSE4Good Index. These recognitions reflect our strong commitment to sustainable business practices. Our long history drives us to think in the long term, ensuring that our operations are in harmony with our neighbors. This commitment to community is a core part of our values. Now, how are we going to deliver to these plans?
You heard me saying before, our strategic plan is structured in three distinct phases: separation, transformation, and then consolidation. Each one of those stages should build on the previous one. We will first discuss separation phase, the improvement of IPF, evaluating our asset portfolio to inform future divestments, and taking decisive action to separate the business. The separation of our explosive and fertilizer business presents a great opportunity to unlock additional value to shareholders. By separating, we allow Dyno Nobel to fully focus on delivering to our ambitious goals. We truly believe that under different ownership, IPF should benefit from greater synergies and operational efficiencies. This strategic move will reduce earnings volatility, will lower capital intensity, and monetize our non-core assets, allowing us to return more value to you....
In the short term, we are focused on delivering the full potential of the Fertilizers' business, and Scott and team have been doing a great job to stabilize the business and extract as much value as we possibly can. We are undertaking a full review of the assets and considering all the options available to us. We will leave no stone unturned. This includes a full sale of the business or the selling of the business in its parts. I can confirm that no other merger is not being considered at the moment. Delivering shareholder value will drive the outcome, but we also acknowledge that speed is key, and we are looking to deliver this as soon as practicable. We expect to provide an update on the Fertilizers separation at the full year results in November. So how are we thinking about the Fertilizers assets?
We start with identifying assets that are not contributing and real estate that can be monetized. Meanwhile, our operational focus will be delivering on safe operations and continuous improvements of asset performance. We will conduct an asset strategic review within the next six to twelve months. Finally, our distribution business will continue to pursue its strategy of growing market share and preparing for the permanent tons, seeking productivity improvements. We will be considering also separation opportunities for this business over the next six to twelve months. Let's now talk about the next two stages of our transformation of our strategy: transformation and consolidation. I'm glad to report that in fiscal year 2024, we are already seeing the early results of our transformation program. We targeting to achieve 40%-50% of the full expected earnings by the end of fiscal year 2025.
Throughout my career, success has been about making the complex simple. Great teams are those that execute strongly on the strategy. Following the successful implementation of the transformation initiatives, we will enter the consolidation phase, where we will focus on pursuing growth that align with strict Return on Invested Capital criteria. We'll come back to transformation consolidation shortly. I'll next talk about what we do and where we play in the supply chain. Dyno Nobel has a critical role across the entire drill and blast value chain, providing value-add products and services that are essential to our customers, as I hope you will hear directly from them today.
According to the study, Break It Better, from the International Mining Magazine, optimizing fragmentation through blasting is significantly cheaper than addressing size reduction through milling in a factor of two to three times, as Michael was teaching me earlier today. This is very consistent with my own lived experience as a customer leading Escondida, the largest copper mine in the world. Finally, we got to my favorite slide. We provide products and services across the full drill and blast value chain, from manufacturing to comminution and liberation. Our solutions, including commodity products like bulk explosives, emulsion, and packaged explosives, catering to industry standard needs. But we also offer differentiated products such as DigiShot, ViewShot, wireless detonators, adding advanced technology and precision to the process.
Key stages in our value chain, like manufacturing, drilling, and blasting, are supported by specialized services such as Dyno Consulting and NobelFire, and you have the opportunity to meet some of our various talented Dyno Consulting people outside today. We create value at each step along the way, optimizing the process from bulk explosives to electronic detonation systems. What I call the white space in the chart is about the value opportunity we have and highlights areas for growth, especially in comminution and liberation, allowing us to further expand our offering, as shown in stage nine to 11 in the value chain. We're strategically positioned to capitalize on opportunities in the value chain, particularly in areas where we can leverage our technology advantage to generate value and savings to our customers. Let's start talking about manufacturing.
Our capabilities are a significant strength, providing us with a landed cost advantage in our core markets. Key assets like Moranbah, LOMO, Cheyenne, provide stable and reliable AN supply, ensuring consistent operations. Greg, who is now taking over as President of Dyno Nobel, who is transitioning from President of Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific to take over North American business, will talk more about Moranbah in his presentation. Even with regional supply and demand differences, our privileged position allows us to navigate the market quite effectively. Access to critical inputs, such as ammonia and gas, ensures we remain resilient in times of supply constraints. Moving to drill and blast, this is the next key margin opportunity for us because they will align directly with the customer priorities in improving efficiency and safety.
Customers typically engage one supplier for the whole entire supply chain, ensuring streamlined operations and reliable services. Electronic and non-el detonators provide healthy margins for us, offering a wide and segmented range of products to customers. Emerging demand for wireless detonators and digital innovations will generate further opportunities that our talent team of engineers make tangible every day. Advanced technologies, including automated loading, digital direct blasting, drive both productivity and sustainability. Dyno's proprietary detonators and advanced delivery system translating to stable long-term contracts. We also provide expertise in post-blast analysis, helping quantify cost savings and efficient improvements for our customers, and I truly hope that you have the opportunity to see that firsthand from the customers themselves. Finally, what I believe to be the most important part, the white space: comminution and liberation. It has a great untapped potential.
Dyno is very, very well positioned to unlock this. This is even more important when miners are facing lower mineral grades and escalating costs, including waste flow to tailings. We have the knowledge and the products, such as Differential Energy, that can substantially provide cost savings and operational efficiencies. Our ability to provide this fragmentation analysis, environmental monitoring, further enhances this value offering. Now, I would like to show you a short video that outlines the role Dyno Nobel plays across the full end-to-end mining process and describes the various ways we add value and reduce costs for our customers.
Dyno Nobel's Drill to Mill process is focused on optimizing drilling and blasting activities and measuring the impact of those changes as the blasted material moves downstream through the remaining mining and processing operation. The optimization extends beyond the bench to unlock unmatched production and profitability through the entire mining and processing value chain. Drill to Mill projects start with a baseline evaluation of current operations to ensure all areas for improvement are identified and best practices are being followed. Next, our experts analyze the data gathered to fully understand how different operational variables interact to discover additional opportunities for optimization. Once all the information has been analyzed, the team optimizes the drilling and blasting processes, focusing on changes that enhance efficiency and productivity downstream, along with adding value and boosting the operation's bottom line.
Finally, as changes are made, we control and monitor the optimized processes to ensure the improvements achieve the desired outcome and are sustainable to maximize gains long-term. Drill to Mill projects look at every part of the mining process to find areas for improvement, starting with drilling. Optimizing the drilling process improves pattern designs and can reduce drilling requirements and overall drilling costs. Blasting is a major factor in an operation's success. The drilling optimization, coupled with an optimized blast design, helps operations improve their fragmentation, reduce oversize, control vibration, improve slope stability and floor conditions, and reduce blasting costs overall. After a successfully optimized blast, changes in material fragmentation can significantly impact the loading process. Excavator bucket fill factors and loading times improve, while ground-engaging tool costs are reduced. Improved blasting fragmentation also leads to hauling process improvements.
Truck fill factors increase for improved payload per truck, and floor conditions improve, leading to improved truck cycle times and more tons moved per shift. Improved fragmentation also helps optimization at the crusher by increasing throughput, reducing power costs, and extending the life of crusher wear items. And finally, the fragmentation optimization leads to improvements in mill throughput and reduced milling power costs. The Drill to Mill process targets an outcome that extends beyond the bench and throughout the entire mining process. All the value-added improvements compound as the optimized material moves downstream through the remaining mining processes and processing circuit, resulting in streamlined operations, reduced unit costs, and increased productivity.
It's a great video, isn't it? Now, it remembers my old days. We'll next talk about why our markets have such attractive fundamentals. Our revenue and earnings are driven by a balanced mix of some commodity products with some more differentiated products, with the latter materially contributing to our profitability. While ammonium nitrate and emulsion account for a large share of our revenue, our differentiated services and products, such as boosters and initiation systems, generate much more than half of our EBIT. This strategic focus on high-value products is key to our long-term growth and value creation. Obviously, not all mines are made the same, but typically, a coal mine will use more of the ANFO/Nonel combination, whilst a hard rock metal mine tends to rely more strongly on the high-end drill to mill solutions that we're seeing today.
So the decarbonization trend will drive greater uptake of technologies as grades get lowers and mines get deeper. The global supply and demand for ammonium nitrate is relatively balanced, but there are important regional variations that impact market dynamics. Australia, for instance, presents a more attractive market, while North America is expected to see some oversupply, especially due to swinging capacity from the agricultural markets. Understanding these dynamics allows us to strategically position our operations and take advantage of some favorable market conditions, particularly in regions like LATAM, which remains supply constrained and reliant on imports.... Rob Rounsley will further explore these trends in his growth session later today. We have a deep understanding of the global markets, allowing us to identify specific growth opportunities in key regions and minerals.
While some sectors, like thermal coal, are seeing a decline, we are focusing on growth areas such as metallurgical coal in Australia and copper in Latin America. The forecast points to three growth pockets: African minerals, Latin America's copper and iron ore, and Australian iron ore. We see potential in these energy transition metals and rare minerals, which will be critical for the future economy. Our strategy focus is on sectors with positive long-term growth, ensuring we are well-positioned to meet rising demand in key minerals like copper and iron ore. This nuanced market insight allows us to stay ahead of the game, ensuring that we can align our operations with future opportunities. The global market for AN is expected to have modest growth, driven primarily by increasing demand for metals like copper and the transition to future-facing minerals.
An electric vehicle consumes almost ten times as much copper as a conventional car. Mines like Kennecott, that will host us tomorrow, will benefit from this growing demand. While there is predicted decline in thermal coal demand, particularly in North America, we expect this to be offset by growth in met coal, iron ore, and other minerals in regions like Australia and LatAm. We are very well positioned to capitalize in these growth areas. We're directing our energy, particularly to these segments of the market where we see most potential. However, this is not the future only. This, this change has started. We are confident that we can manage an orderly transition into metals and quarry and construction markets. Greg, Braden, and Rob will go into more detail on their respective markets later today.
Let me now focus on how we can bring this all together and deliver to our ambition. Before that, please let me take stock of what we covered so far. We started by describing who we are and the three stages of our strategic plan. Then, we explored our products and services and how they fit into Drill to Mill value chain, how we create value to our customers and to Dyno Nobel. Finally, how through very deliberate commercial and capital allocation discipline, we should benefit from our globally balanced AN market. The credibility of our ambition to double earnings is linked directly to our competitive advantage, which I'll talk about next. So what's our valuable, difficult-to-replicate advantage? We leverage unique IP that enhances safety and delivers precision on fragmentation, vibration, and mineral separation, consistently delivering lower processing costs.
Dyno Nobel has been imagining the future of mining for more than a hundred and sixty years, and we intend to keep doing so for many years more to come. Our superior bundled offering combines a reliable supply of bulk explosives with a wide suite of high-quality initiation systems, emulsions, and services. AN security of supply leverage premium emulsions, which leverage differential energy, which leverage NobelFire and data analytics, so the whole product suite comes together. Our long-term partnerships with some of the leading global mining houses enables continuous collaboration, ensuring that we evolve needs and follow customers in new jurisdictions. We are the staple brand for every shot fired in the coal face. Our distribution networks, especially here in North America, gives us a unique reach over a very fragmented market.
More to come on Braden's and Dan's sessions today when we cover our relationship with our JVs. I'm very excited with the opportunity of leveraging these strengths to transform our business, expand margins, and ultimately become the leading global player in explosives. Our talented team of engineers and scientists work on four integrated global innovation pipelines: bulk explosives, where we develop solutions like emulsions for reactive ground that deliver consistent performance even in the toughest terrains. This program is also home of our unique differential energy product, or Delta E. Electronic initiation systems provide safe, precise blasting solutions optimized for a range of applications and enabling a digital world. Automated delivery systems, like DynoBulk, help reduce manual intervention during the blasting process. And finally, blasting services and digital enable more accurate, efficient, and sustainable operations through connected digital tools like NobelFire. A word on NobelFire.
We very deliberately designed NobelFire to allow easy interface to whatever technology our customers choose to use for their IT. Our tech team is winning. In the last four years, premium emulsions and electronic detonators had respectively grown by 22% and 11%. But we are not resting on our laurels. Our home-grown inventors are imagining the future of mining every day. You'll hear more about that with Rob. We only win when we create value to our customers. One of the building blocks of our transformation is the customer perspective and their needs. BCG, who is helping us with our broader transformation journey, done some surveys assessing how we compare to our direct competitors. We lead in market satisfaction, customer satisfaction, consistently outpacing our competition where it matters the most. Our reputation for safety and reliability is unmatched.
Customers trust us to deliver on what's critical to their success. When it comes to basic products, our leadership is visible, solidifying our position as the go-to partner in the industry. But we want more than that, more than just maintaining the status quo. There's a great opportunity to unlock even greater value by educating our customers on the advanced solutions we offer. That's where our technology and innovation truly excels. By leveraging our leadership in advanced explosives and sustainability, we have the obsession to drive down total cost for our clients, help them stay competitive in a market that changes every day. We are trusted by some of the most respected players in the industry. The vast majority of revenue comes from contracts, providing revenue stability over the medium term.
We partnered with Rio Tinto on the Drill to Mill initiative at Kennecott, achieving major productivity gains through optimized fragmentation and enhanced pattern loading. You'll hear more about that from Braden himself later today. As we visit tomorrow Kennecott, you'll have appreciation for the scale of their operation and the impact that Dyno Nobel have in that very important customer. We're also very thankful for having Michael representing Cliffs here, that will address some of the issues they have with gases and how they managed to solve that with premium emulsions. White Rock, one of the most prominent quarries in the US, operated under very stringent regulations in a populated area, and using cutting-edge blasting controls, optimized their environmental impact.
I'm very, very pleased to announce today that we're establishing a global partnership with AngloGold Ashanti, building on a very successful story of relationship we had in WA. Well, this is supposed to be just a teaser, as we designed these two days so that you can really hear directly from our customers. As an example of the value we bring to our customers, here's a video of one of them talking about the various ways we partner to drive better outcomes together.
As a world-class mining company, there are many aspects of exploration, mining, and processing in PT Agincourt Resources Martabe Gold Mine, which are capital and technology-intensive. In terms of technology, Agincourt continues to strive for applying the latest technology, which will give significant impact in safety as well as operational effectiveness of our operations. This make the role of contractors are very important, and Dyno Nobel's commitment to the technology applications and innovation is crucial to make these objectives reachable. We believe technology innovations will have a very important role for companies to survive in the business and deliver optimum contribution for all stakeholders. Specifically, in terms of innovation in blasting, the application of Dyno's Differential Energy will provide better blasting results, which increase productivity while still accommodating the use of less water.
All the improvement projects will have clear KPIs, which will be regularly monitored by PTAR and Dyno on a monthly and quarterly bases to keep it on track. To achieve the best result from these technology applications, PTAR and Dyno team should have an active, productive, and constructive communication to form a solid and sustainable collaboration. Dyno team has proven to be an effective team in Martabe and backed up by a very good support from the regional team.
Now, how do we intend to leverage technology, customer relationships, and integration solutions in our unique supply chain? First, we're growing and improving the margins of our core business. In established markets like North America and Australia, we continue to leverage our AN plants, distribution capability, and cost advantage, ensuring a steady and disciplined margin growth. In markets like Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, we see tremendous opportunities. We're moving swiftly to capitalize on these margins, on these emerging markets, bringing our expertise to follow existing customers and develop new ones. We're applying a capital-light approach to expanding these areas, which is based on a proven success model, which we'll touch on shortly. Finally, we are offering more services and solutions across the entire drill and blast process. We're not just offering products; we are in the business of creating value.
This allows us to differentiate, grow, and embed ourselves with the customers. Let's now bring the spotlight on our core markets. We are market leaders in our core regions, with a strong and growing presence in both North America and Australia, two of the world's most critical markets for mining. Here in North America, we are the number one player, and we expect a steady growth with a project CAGR of about 1.2% from 2023 to 2028. In the Asia-Pacific region, we are strong number two in Australia and Indonesia, with even higher project growth of 2.5% CAGR over the same period. So what gives us an edge? The long-term partnership with customers allow us to continuously collaborate and optimize costs together.
We also have a clear landed cost advantage, driven by our local AN plants, allowing us to deliver cost-effective solutions. Security of supply in underserved markets is another competitive advantage. Australia is expected to face a supply shortage before 2028, and we are well positioned with our Moranbah plant to capitalize on this shift. With a strong presence in growing markets, we will continue leveraging our capacity and operational excellence to drive value through commercial discipline. La próxima parte de la presentación la haremos puramente en español. I said that the next part of the presentation I'll do in Spanish, which was obviously a joke, but we may need to do some simultaneous translation on a future investor day.
Having met our teams in Santiago, La Serena, and Lima, I can testify to the talent and passion of the people rebuilding Dyno Nobel business in LATAM. The market remains short in supply and reliant on traded tons, giving us a powerful opportunity to step in. Delta E is proving to be very successful in the Andes. Our focus in LATAM stomping grounds is to prioritize the key countries, operating on trading AN, building strong, lasting relationships with our high potential customers, solidifying our presence and creating local capability before committing to any large capital investments. In EMEA, the market is heavily fragmented, but that presents a worthwhile opportunity for growth through consolidation. Our strategy is clear: gain market share by converting European customers to electronic detonators, leveraging our very recognized brands. We are also accelerating growth in Africa.
The many existing relationships give us a strong foundation to expand further and unlock new growth markets. That's why the AngloGold Ashanti case is so important. You'll hear more about that today, which proves the case that we always had internally, that we could leverage our relationships in North America and in places like South America and Africa. The acquisition of Titanobel has also given this critical access to establish platform in Western Africa. Across both regions, our strategy focus on aligning our strengths with market gaps where there is filling supply shortages in LATAM or expanding our footprint in a fragmented EMEA market. This is how we will unlock earnings growth, with disciplined deployment of capital. This is not a theoretical approach.
Our success in Indonesia is a powerful example of how we can enter new markets with a capital-light approach, growing the business while managing risk. We pioneered the use of small, modular emulsion plants to quickly add value to the market, adapting our strategy to local needs. By addressing local AN shortage with strategic agreements with domestic suppliers and importer solutions, we've ensured a steady supply and operational efficiency. What about the outcomes? Our strategy allows us to secure high market share, both in emulsions and initiation systems, maintaining dominance in this critical market. This case study proves the model is replicable, showcasing our ability to thrive in challenging environments and setting the stage for future expansion into other high-potential markets.
To help illustrate the success we've had with our entry into the Indonesia market, I would like to play a short video that was recorded with one of our customers, with BUMA.
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So we talked about growth in our core markets in terms of how we use commercial discipline to our advantage. We talk about growth in some new markets, but the other growth opportunity is in high-segment markets through technology-enabled blasting fragmentation solutions. We are focused on moving up and to the right of the value chain, transitioning from commodity chemical products to highly differentiated offerings, delivering optimal fragmentation and mineral liberation. Our proprietary technologies, such as DigiShot, ViewShot, and Delta E Squared, provides us positions as well to capture this wide space of value. This strategy targets new markets with fewer players, offering highly differentiated products that enable value creation. Our right to play and win is underpinned by our intellectual property, deep expertise, and strong, trusted relationship with our customers.
Now, we will move on to our transformation program and give you a clear understanding of what this program is, what we believe it can deliver, and outline the many ways we can extract additional value from the business. Our journey from good to great translating to two ambitions: EBIT and ROIC improvements. We're targeting to double EBIT over the next three to four years, with 80% of such benefits coming from improving the core business performance. We are moving at pace. Our initiatives so far have delivered circa AUD 50 million in EBIT this financial year. For fiscal year twenty-five, we are planning to achieve an exit run rate of 40%-50% of the total program benefits. We're also aiming for a sustainable increase in ROIC above our cost of capital through a comprehensive capital improvement program, working capital, capital reduction, and selective investments.
ROIC and safety are key drivers for every dollar we will spend. Now, I would like to hand over to Paul, who is the executive teams program sponsor of our transformation. Paul will take you through some detail to give you a picture of what this program is about, and more importantly, how we will deliver to our ambition. Over to you, Paul.
Thanks, Mauro, and that was really well done and well delivered. Good morning to all of you today. It's really a great pleasure to be here with you to take you through what is a very exciting program of initiatives that will drive our business forward into a successful future. We expect to deliver significant benefits from optimizing operations in our core businesses, with several initiatives underway to drive efficiencies at Moranbah, Lomo, Cheyenne, and other manufacturing facilities. We're also seeing a sizable opportunity to improve our procurement and supply chain processes and practices by establishing efficient relationships and also streamlining our sourcing practices and to eliminate waste. We aim to achieve a substantial cost saving by looking at this specific area across the globe for our business.
Moving on to our commercial levers, over the past year, we have made real progress on the successful recontracting of our existing customer base, with future benefits expected from current and new customers. We're also looking at opportunities to increase our market share through our technology and digital advancements, as well as disciplined value pricing across the core growth markets of our business. Finally, we are committed to expanding our presence and in capturing new opportunities in EMEA and LATAM, as Mauro explained. We have many opportunities to leverage our existing relationships and to increase our global presence. We also have exciting plans to offer our leading products and technology solutions to our new customers across EMEA and LATAM.
On the technology front, we also are focused very much on maintaining our competitive edge by continuing to adopt new technologies that will drive safety, productivity, and sustainability for our customers. We have many exciting projects in the pipeline, such as automated loading, digitally directed blasting, sustainable bulk products, and advanced detonators, only to name a few. You will hear me more talking about these later today, and also my colleagues, and you will experience live demonstration, which is the exciting bit, of some of these technologies tomorrow. I must say, always on a lighter note, when you pass through customs and you say, they ask you what company you work for, you say you work for a explosive company, and you go like: "Okay, it's good explosives." So hopefully, you can see a lot of good explosion happening over the next two days.
Hopefully now you have a good understanding of really what our transformation programs are all about. We're also focusing on a very disciplined execution to ensure that we deliver on this ambition. As Greg says, this is a very high bar that we set for ourselves. We've already executed some key decisions, and these really include the following: firstly, the implementation of a fit-for-purpose operating model, which we will officially implement from October first; realigning the executive leadership team to simplify our organization, and a lot of value lies in that. We're also establishing a growth business unit to support the new market entry, as Mauro explained. We're developing a multi-year transformation plan that is based on concrete and quantified initiatives. We have a very, very robust governance process in place to ensure that we identify, we track, and we measure these initiatives through the lifecycle.
The first results are coming in and clearly show that we're really on the right track. Financial year 2023 EBIT serves as our baseline and is a normalized baseline, and I'm sure you're going to ask me a lot of questions about how do we normalize the baseline, but it really serves as the basis. As in, we're also pleased to report that we have delivered approximately AUD 50 million of EBIT benefits in financial year 2024, and we are also focused on delivering a targeted financial year 2025 initiatives that will support the achievement of a run rate equivalent to 40%-50% of the earnings uplift as we exit the year. So exit run rate, so to say. Also noteworthy is that all initiatives are integrated as part of our 2025 business unit budget, and that's quite, quite essential.
The next steps on our journey will now to include incentivizing our our people appropriately to deliver on our objectives and to prioritize our resources to execute these initiatives. We really look forward to updating you on the progress as we meet again in November when we release our final year results. I would like now to take you through some case studies of what support our run rate, and hopefully that puts some meat on the bone on how we will really deliver this ambition. The first case, as I spoke to, really looks at what we've done in terms of our global operating model. We have really designed this fit-for-purpose organization that's really mean and agile, and that is reflected in our operating model.
The executive leadership has been realigned to deliver our ambition, and we have created a new role of Chief Growth Officer, as I said, to really drive our growth agenda. That's so important to us. This role will be filled by my esteemed colleague, Rob Rounsley, who you will hear from later today. The organization structure has really been greatly simplified, with from nine layers to seven layers deep. We will continue to invest in our people, in our culture, and in our capability to support the ambition to drive a high-performing culture, where our people are empowered to collaborate and to deliver on this very high bar that we set for ourselves. Focus was placed on ensuring a single point of accountability in our decision-making as far as possible.
Moving on to the next one, at Helidon in Queensland, we have installed automated machinery to enhance the manufacturing of our initiation systems. This really reduced our cost per unit across our electronic detonator assembly, as well as improved capacity, quality, reliability, and most importantly, the safety in how we're doing things. The next slide provides some detail of what we've been doing to reduce our overall supply chain cost. Earlier this year, we were able to renegotiate, at significantly reduced rates, a major freight contract to deliver products across our Australian customer base. We are meticulously working through all of our supplier contracts and identified a number of areas with major suppliers, with the aim of reducing our cost base and improving our service delivery.
Longer term, we are investigating if we can drive further benefits from optimizing our road and rail networks and international shipping routes, and we believe that there's a lot of value for us to go after. Earlier this year, we successfully also delivered the AUD 20 million nitrous oxide abatement program at Moranbah. This project has delivered significant benefits by reducing the plant's greenhouse gas emissions, increasing production, and reducing the amount of natural gas used across the site. In our core DNAP and DNA businesses, we are driving further commercial excellence. Let me focus on DNAP. We have successfully recontracted key customers and secured new customer wins that have increased earnings in financial year 2024, with further benefits expected in future years, and this was really a mammoth task taken up by Greg and the team.
We'll continue to explore ways in which we might leverage our technology advantage and our position in Indonesia, as Mauro explained, as we want to expand our presence in Southeast Asia. In North America, the DNA business is improving its pricing and sales mix, and you've been asking us about that, and implementing a true cost-to-serve model consistently across a very large customer base. The business has also identified accretive growth opportunities to further optimize the return on our assets. This slide shows you the drill-to-mill strategy that Mauro kind of reflected on, that provides customers with our premium technology bundle and our superior blasting expertise. You will hear more later today about this approach and what it has delivered in terms of significant value for the North American copper customers recently. The focus is on driving value for our customers and being more efficient ourselves.
Really a win-win. Finally, I'm pleased that Dyno Nobel is establishing a new long-term growth supply agreement with AngloGold Ashanti, beginning with West Africa, and very true to my South African roots, this is a great celebration. This agreement leverages Dyno Nobel's strong relationship with AngloGold Ashanti in Australia, which has been developed over many years of successfully serving this quality miner. This contract will demonstrate our ability to grow successfully into new and attractive markets. Let's turn our attention to capital prudence, I'm sure you're gonna have a lot of questions there, driving our sustainable returns within the context of our capital allocation framework. Capital prudence is a core element of our strategy, ensuring that we maintain a very strong balance sheet while marketing selective, high-value investments.
Our disciplined approach to capital allocation means that we'll only pursue investments that meet our strict criteria for returns, and if those criteria is not met, we will return the funds rather to shareholders. Having said that, we have focused on reducing trade working capital requirements by optimizing inventory across the value chain and improving our AR and AP processes. In this section, I will take you through our capital allocation framework, which informs our decision-making process when we make capital decisions. I'll take you through the update of our capital investments and working capital, followed by an update of our capital management program. Finally, I will touch on the business outlook for the remainder of financial year 2024. As we all know, successful capital allocation will be a key differentiator in the transitioning of the company from good to great.
We believe our capital allocation framework is an important enabler of our strategy. The capital allocation framework we applied for IPL will continue to be applied for Dyno Nobel. Allow me to step you through this. Most of you will know that, but I think it's important that we just reflect on a couple of key aspects. In the first order of allocation, we need to ensure that we deliver on two key components. Firstly, the framework ensures that we have a very well-invested base that is fit for the future and a very strong balance sheet that is able to deliver the strategy and absorb any volatility that we may encounter along the way. In order to ensure a well-invested asset base, funding the capital expenditure required to maintain and transform the business really comes first as part of this section of the allocation.
We estimate an annual sustenance capital will be in the range of $120 million-$130 million, and this will be for Dyno Nobel. The estimated total sustainability spend up to 2030 for IPL, and we're not separating this number, really remains in that range of $120 million-$150 million. This spend will allow us to meet our emissions reductions. It is also important to note that the sustainability capital portfolio still exceeds our cost of capital requirements and do not negatively weigh in on shareholder returns, and few companies really can say that. We're really proud about that. As usual, we plan for selective growth and improvement capital as part of the first order of capital allocation.
I really want to be clear here that for this capital category, the amounts involved are really modest, and the returns have very short payback cycles. These are very strategy-led, capital-light solutions, and the IRRs are really accretive. Now, moving on to the balance sheet in terms of the first order, we really want to jealously protect our investment-grade, and it's so important these days. This means that we will aim to manage the leverage to below one point five times net debt to EBITDA. This really allows us to maintain a strong liquidity position and ensure that we pursue our strategy without needing to change direction when unexpected developments adversely impact the earnings or our cash flows. Protecting our investment-grade metrics remains key as we enter the next phase of business growth, as Mauro highlighted.
We believe that the Dyno Nobel business is a sustainable growth company, which is significantly less exposed to commodity swings, allowing it to pay competitive dividends to shareholders from a sustainable, recurring earnings stream. We want to make sure that dividends paid from the earnings baseline are in line also with our shareholders' expectations. After careful consideration and benchmarking with our peer group, we will target a payout range of between 30% and 60% of NPAT. We'll always aim to pay out at the mid to the high point during times when the balance sheet gearing really remains below one point five times net debt to EBITDA. Now, let's turn to the second order of allocation. Here we plan to ensure competitive tension between all potential users of discretionary capital.
The potential users of excess capital will be assessed against the baseline of returning cash to shareholders, either through a structured buyback program, as well as or considering declaring a special dividend. Using excess cash for sensible long-term growth opportunities will be assessed against this baseline on a risk-adjusted returns basis. Second-order growth projects will be evaluated against a very specific risk and return criteria, as Greg alluded to. Risk may be introduced, or risk may be reduced by the fit-for-purpose partnering structures, contractual arrangements, and/or certain funding arrangements, all of which may contribute to mitigate our investment risk. So we're pretty much open to looking at structure and structuring the risk. The bars really set high for qualifying products, projects, and investments can only be considered if the IRR is at least at one point three times WACC on a risk-adjusted cash flow basis.
Preference will be given to high-returning projects with a low capital requirement, so really driving that capital-light investment philosophy. This investment criteria really underpins Dyno Nobel's ROIC above WACC going forward. We are driven to ensure that our earnings that we really earn our way back to spending our growth capital, and we will be very thoughtful, we will be very disciplined, and if you watch TikTok, we will be very demure about the way that we go about allocating our capital. We are committed to maintaining a strong balance sheet and improving our ROIC through a proactive improvement measures and disciplined investment. This also includes reducing trade working capital investments by optimizing inventory levels, improving AR and AP processes across the value chain.
Our plan is to be highly selective with new investments, ensuring that they meet our strict, strict return criteria, which I spoke about. If those criteria are not met, we are committed to returning the funds back to shareholders. While we already have a strong program of capital returns in place, it's also worth remembering that any separation of the Fert s business is likely to provide us with further opportunity to unlock additional value for shareholders. Any proceeds from a sale could be used to deleverage the balance sheet, fund additional value accretive growth, or be returned to shareholders. This is something that would be evaluated at that point in time. The next slide really outlines the investments we are making to drive growth and quality earnings into the future.
The allocation of capital expenditures continuously being reviewed and to ensure that it delivers the best ROIC across all of our assets. We've made significant progress in better managing our asset maintenance strategies over the past few years, which is really helping us in optimizing spend while delivering reliable operations. We do acknowledge that we have more room to improve, and Stef will also talk later about all our efforts in that space. Our forecasted level of sustaining expenditure in financial year 2024 for IPL is AUD 180-200 million, which still remains in line with our previous expectations. We expect our turnaround capital to be in the range of AUD 30-40 million for financial year 2024, down from our previous guideline of 50-60 for financial year 2024.
This reduction is really due to changes in timing and scope of some of our pre-turnaround spend as we head into financial year 2025. Very important to note is that our total sustainability capital is to be approximately around about $25 million for financial year 2024, and this is supporting our pathway to delivering our 2030 emissions reductions, and largely relates to the installation of tertiary abatement N2 at Moranbah, which you heard about earlier today when Mauro spoke about it. Our capital plans for financial year 2025 include several turnarounds, most notably a 56-day turnaround at Moranbah, but also turnarounds at Cheyenne and Lomo, and Greg, as well as Braden, will speak more about that. Overall, our sustaining capital is aligned to our asset maintenance plans, which aim to balance returns, as well as ensuring sustainable production throughout all of our manufacturing facilities.
Now, let's turn to working capital. The wind-down of overall working capital really reflects lower commodity prices, and several business improvements across the business that has delivered many various benefits in optimizing our working capital investments. We have to accept that in line with our growth areas of business or in areas where we have exposure to strategic stock issues, we may be deliberate in making decisions to increase our working capital on a temporary basis. Our Dyno Nobel transformation project will be very instrumental in delivering better working capital outcomes and improving returns. Some examples of actions we have already progressed is really the following: firstly, optimizing the minimum and maximum levels of inventory across our sites. Reviewing and reducing overstock spares to align with current plant conditions, lead times, and the criticality of those spares to plant reliability.
Where we can, renegotiating better receivables, payment terms aligned to industry norms and benchmarks, and a lot of effort has gone into that. We expect to deliver an improvement in our working capital to sales ratio, in the order for the base explosive business of approximately 2% over the next two to three years, and this will exclude any impact from new business growth. As a reminder, any new business growth opportunities will be assessed after factoring, in the impact of working capital and then determining whether there's adequate return being achieved on those investments. The next slides provide a great outline of how we are prioritizing the delivery of sustainable returns to shareholders of, in terms of our capital allocation framework.
As you would know now, in February, we delivered the AUD 500 million pro rata capital return and special dividend, which was the equivalent or represented the equivalent of around about AUD 0.26 per share. Now that we've ended the fertilizer sales process of PKT, we have been able to commence our AUD 900 million on-market buyback, and I'm pleased to say that as of last Friday, so Greg was, like, a little bit later than me, but, as of last Friday, we were over 12% through the program, having bought back approximately AUD 112 million of shares. So really great progress that we're making in that space. The AUD 900 million buyback program is really equivalent to AUD 0.46 per share.
Using an assumed share price of AUD 3 per share, the combined returns of the AUD 1.4 billion really equates to 25% of our issued share capital. We are committed to prioritizing returns to our shareholders. We've said that before, and we're still committed to that. All capital investment decisions are made with reference to our capital allocation framework, which required us to evaluate investments against what generates the best risk return for our shareholders. Before I hand back to Mauro, let me take you through... Before Mauro talks about consolidation, which is the third part of our strategy, I'd really like to take you through our outlook for financial year 2024. Overall, there's very little change to what we've outlined to you before, when we spoke to our results at half year.
All of our businesses have continued to deliver against the outlook provided during the release of these half year results. The Dyno Nobel business have both had very favorable second half earnings skews, with a $50 million transformation benefit being realized in financial 2024. Our expectations for production levels at Phosphate Hill remains unchanged from the outlook provided on July 10th, where we stated that the volumes would be towards the lower end of the 730- to 770-kiloton range. This means that the plant has really had a very good run throughout the second half of the year, and really recognition to Scott and Steve. They've done tremendous work there. Our expectations for gas costs at Phosphate Hill also remain unchanged, and the strong performance of the IPF distribution business has also continued during the second half of the year.
Important to note that corporate costs will be higher than previously expected as a result of a settlement of a legacy U.S. matter, that really relates to a twenty fifteen matter that was settled recently. It is important to note that in line with the current fertilizer separation strategy that we have discussed earlier in the session, and considering the risk profile of the fertilizer business as a whole, there is a possibility of further non-cash write downs of these assets. That brings me to the final phase of our strategy, which is consolidation, and on that note, I will hand back to Mauro, that will take you through this last section. Mauro, over to you.
Thank you, Paul. As Paul mentioned, the final phase of our strategy is consolidation. But let me be clear, we believe we will be a protagonist in the future industry consolidation. However, the fertilizers separation and executing transformation are our tickets to play this game. We want to grow our market leading position and seek to gain access to complementary technologies. It's about capturing synergies, like the introduction of our technology into expanded customer base, cost benefits from potentially removing duplicate systems and consolidating supply chains, potential manufacturing economies of scale and enhanced access to AN supplies, reduced exposure to thermal coal markets, increasing loading of our initiation systems technology facilities. Our business development team, led by Sunil, is continually scanning the market. Any opportunity must fit a very, very rigorous strategic fit and return on capital criteria.
Now, as we draw this session to a close, I would like you to think about leaving Salt Lake City with five key messages. We will leverage our competitive advantage to grow. The second one is the customer is key to everything we do. We think customer every time. Transformation will deliver double earnings to this business. We will be very disciplined in how we execute, we'll be very disciplined in our operations, we'll be very disciplined in commercial and how we allocate capital, to Paul's earlier presentation, and we will deliver on the third, separation. In summary, we have a very clear and compelling strategy to drive growth, improve profitability, and deliver long-term value to you, the owners of the company. We are in a privileged position to control our own destiny.
We have the right strategy, we have the right team, and the right competitive advantage. I hope you are as excited as we are as a team, and I'd like to open some Q&A, and I'm sure you have lots of questions for us. Paul, join me, please. If you don't mind, we'll take a seat.
Morning, folks. Reinhardt from Bank of America. Maybe just a first question on the LatAm and EMEA growth strategy. You know, I think you've made it pretty clear that it's gonna be capital light, which is obviously a positive, but how can you give us confidence that you're not gonna see a market share war if you're entering these new markets, where there are pretty sort of sticky competitors already?
Look, the markets, and if I just pick one, which is very key, and Rob will have more to say about that in Peru. Peru is growing double digits. It's all based on copper, on those end porphyries, and doesn't have, or have very little. I think 94% of the overall production in Peru, or blasting production in Peru, comes through imported tons. So everyone is trading ammonium nitrate anyway. That's where I think we come with the best of our technology and services to really build on what we do to some of those customers globally. If you think about the operation we have currently in Chile with Caserones, it's exactly that.
We import ammonium nitrate from Europe, and we put on top of that really Delta E and emulsions, the things that we do better, and that's the model we want to replicate. That's the model where we re-entered Indonesia. When I say re-entered, this is a market that traditionally was a market that Dyno Nobel used to play in the old days, and we've essentially grown from zero to now being operating eight mines, as you heard some of our customers talking about it, with exactly this model. Modular plants, capital light, imported ammonium nitrate, and really using the top side of our supply chain in terms of adding services, adding value, high-end technology rather than trying to win the market of chemical commodities.
Sorry, thank you. Sorry, one, maybe just one quick follow-up question. Your EBIT bridge and ROIC bridge that you've given us, very helpfully, I think, attributes it to different drivers, and it was only about a third coming from commercial discipline. If you can maybe just crack that open a little bit more and understand how much of that is an assumption about how your competitors are behaving in the market, and how much of it is an assumption about you basically just pricing to recover your cost of capital?
Look, I prefer not to comment on customers being with competitors, because that's up to them. What I can tell you is the structural balance of the market helps people to be disciplined. So what we're seeing in Australia, for instance, is a place where, you know, every ammonium nitrate gram will find its place. So we have to be rational on how we drive value to our customer, but also drive value to our business and make sure that our plants are remunerated the fair cost of capital, what it costs you to be investing in the business. So that's how we're thinking about it. I think the structurally balanced market helps us to be rational, and the way we incentivize our teams to chase value is really what is driving some of the benefits we've been seeing.
Morning. Andrew Scott from Morgan Stanley. Mauro.
Hey.
Just, and I know you want to speak mainly on the explosives, but I do want to just talk about the separation and in particular, obviously, we're going into a 2026 Phosphate Hill shutdown. Generally, there's a pretty long lead time for some of those items. So just when do you need to commit to that shutdown? What's an estimate of costs, and do you see yourself investing in a shutdown and turnaround of Phosphate Hill, if it's still in the fold, when that time comes around?
So we will have the decision towards the first quarter of next calendar year, so we have time to think, and that's part of the strategic review that we talked about today. So as I said, we'll leave no stone unturned, and it's all about return on capital. We'll have more to say when we have more to say, so it's a sensitive matter that we will be talking about when the time is right.
Okay, and then maybe if I can shift to tech. I mean, tech seems to be clearly a path to you winning, particularly in new markets. But we obviously hear the same from the competitors. They have an ability to monetize tech spend on a global basis. You're really only in two continents, growing, but currently only in two continents. Why do you win in that space?
It's about return on capital. So again, I won't comment on how our competitors and how much they spend on technology. We're very happy with the return on capital of our technology investment. We try to be very frugal and very directed. You see, you know, some of the inventors we have in the business outside the room. We design technology that serves customers in what we do better, which is blasting. So don't expect us to be going outside that real, real core of what we do well, and we couldn't be happier with the return on the investment that we had in our technology program.
G'day, Mauro and Paul. John Purtell here from Macquarie. Just had a couple of questions. Well, just firstly, look, typically with transformation programs, we do see some leakage in terms of sharing of savings with customers, and also, you know, offsetting inflation, which we know has been challenging. You know, what have you assumed in that regard?
Maybe Paul...
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the question, John. Yeah, it's quite important. I mean, inflation is a real issue that one always have to factor in. I think we've been quite deliberate and very, you know, conservative in the way that we actually looked at, you know, how will we develop the growth in our earnings ambition over over several years. And in that, we have taken, yeah, and considered various inflation impacts on, you know, on how it may weigh in on the earnings profile. I mean, if you just take a look on costs, and of course, the costs will be exposed to inflation, but we also have the top-line increase in terms of growth of revenue as one can expect.
So I think, you know, we feel quite comfortable that the balance between, you know, top-line growth, as well as the growth in costs, as well as the robustness of the initiatives to offset, you know, potential inflation or reduce the increase of inflation to some extent, has been properly factored into all the various initiatives, and that we feel that despite a, let's say, normalized inflation dispensation over the next few years, that we do believe that the doubling of earnings of the normalized baseline would actually be quite achievable. Now, the world is dynamic. I will say that, but we had to plan under this scenario of, you know, things would be kind of more, you know, equalized over the next two to three years.
We do anticipate GDP in a very, very specific band, inflation in a very specific band, and if that plays out, then of course, we feel quite comfortable that this is quite achievable. Is it a high ambition? Is it gonna be stretched? Does it require quite deliberate decisions? Yes, it does. But we do believe that we have factored all those assumptions into our ambition.
... Thank you. And just the second one, in terms of the cost to achieve the savings, and will those be taken above or below the line? Thank you.
Yeah, I think it's important, you know, that, when we talk about the doubling of earnings, it does relate to what will be recurring. What we will do is, separate the cost of separation, as well as the cost that we need to invest as once-off costs. Typically, in a way, we do get assistance to help us to implement some of these initiatives. That is once-off by their very nature. We'll do ring-fence those and show them below the line. But you will have clear visibility of that as part of our disclosure notes and, you know, kind of, get comfort that those items are real, really once-off items, and that the real recurring, items would be, above the line.
Morning, guys. It's James Wilson from Jarden Research here. Just a couple from me. Firstly, just on Phosphate Hill, are you able to talk to us, maybe give us a preview of your rough estimates of the closure and remediation costs of that asset, and then also how much of that is provisioned for on your balance sheet currently?
I think it's very hard to talk at this point in time, you know, in terms of what it is. I mean, if you look in terms of closure costs, there is a specific amount of provision that we have made for all of our assets in terms of the legislative requirements, in terms of what we are obligated to do. But, you know, there's once you do these asset evaluations, and let's assume in a scenario where you do come to that conclusion that you want to consider, you know, closing the business, there's also ways in doing that. You know, whether you put it on care and maintenance, or whether you just outright close it, or how you utilize other parts of the asset and still in a very productive manner.
So I think, you know, you really have to go through that process, and that's what we're doing at this point in time. For what we know in terms of today, looking at the asset and the way that we operate it and the way that we envisage, you know, when the end date would be, which is still kind of the current assumption, we've made the adequate provisions for what we consider the closure cost. But if the scenario changes, and of course, it becomes closer or earlier, it has an impact on the NPV in the way that you provide for it and how much you provide for it. I think, as Mauro says, you know, we've still got a couple of months ahead of us to really fundamentally evaluate and look at this very carefully.
If we do come to that conclusion, then obviously we need to update you on what our exposure is and factor that into our analysis. I think it would be premature at this point in time, you know, to kind of put numbers out there after we haven't done the work yet.
If I could add to that, just to give you a bit more color, and again, we're not in a position to disclose numbers yet, but it's very timely that the Queensland Government has moved into the PRCP, the Progressive Rehabilitation and Closure Programs, which allows us to work with the government with optimized ways to close the mines, how we think about voids, how we think about our gypsum piles. Just to give you some comfort that this is very high in the works, and the teams and the senior leaderships are doing fantastic work to collaborate with the Queensland Government to get the right number for that reason. It's underway, and we will have some more technical information by the end of this calendar year.
Great. And just a follow-up from me as well, guys. I mean, there's obviously been a lot on explosives and a bit on fertilizers, but can you talk to us as well about how you think your U.S. industrial chemicals business sort of fits into this transformation plan and maybe what your expectations are for the future of the St. Helens plant?
We said previously to you that we're currently evaluating the asset and that we don't really consider the asset as core to the strategy. You know, when we have made a final decision on, you know, what the future of that asset is, I will also update the market. But I think, safe to say, we have been quite clear to say that it's not a strategic asset in our portfolio, and at one stage, we will need to make that decision to say: how do we separate ourselves from it? I think in the US, we are unambiguously clear that we want to pursue explosives and not so much, you know, kind of being in the ag business, because it's not our core strength.
We know in Cheyenne there is a bit of, you know, a product, a mix that, you know, comes with the normal production configuration, and we'd be more than able to deal with that in future. But concerning St. Helens is we will consider all our options to really separate from that asset in due time and update you on that as well.
Great. And just one final one from me, guys. Just on the Aussie explosives market, you know, conscious you've pushed through good recontracting growth so far, particularly this year, but sort of heading into 2025 and 2026, how do you see, I guess, customers' willingness to continue to pay higher prices, particularly given that the East Coast gas market will mean that you're also passing through higher gas prices to customers as well going forward?
We think very, very carefully about making sure that first we're adding value, and then that we understand the next best alternative of every deal we do. So customers should always think that doing the deal with us will be their best choice. But again, we look at that from the standpoint of being a good deal to the customer, but also something that remunerates our capital. So we're seeing some growth, and as long as there is opportunity between, there's a bridge between what is the import parity equivalent and what we were trading locally, we will be pursuing the opportunity to close that gap and still deliver value to the customer, deliver... Customers understand security of supply. I was a customer.
I was the largest customer of our DNAP business in Australia, and, you know, as Greg used to deal with me, you know, we appreciated security of supply. So, you know, you don't want to be in a position where you're depending on imported supply chains, on a business that is very much predicated on stability and certainty. So all that to say that we will be respectful and collaborative and try and aggregate value, but at the same time, I think customers recognize that we need to remunerate our capital.
... Brook on Barrenjoey. Just a question around the benefits in FY 2025. You're talking about on a run rate basis, achieving 40%-50% of your target. Can you talk to what the in-period benefit will be in FY 2025, I guess equivalent to the $50 million you're gonna deliver in FY 2024?
I think you can, and you can also latch in if you want to, Mauro, but, let me go. I think as you can appreciate, Bro to , that we have a multitude or a multiple amount of initiatives that runs across the business, across different jurisdictions and regions. And especially where we the implementation is first of October of next year in terms of the operating model. A lot of initiatives are getting through the pipeline, and I must say that the business is doing exceptional work in terms of that.
It will mean that, you know, your initiatives, once they start to really come to fruition or start to kind of get to that full value of earnings delivery, it would probably be towards, you know, some part of the mid or the later part of financial twenty-five. And that's why we're kind of signaling to you to say, we're really looking at that exit run rate to say, you know, have the initiative delivered? Is it at that expected 40%-50% of the earnings development? And that ultimately will give you comfort there to say, if we say 40%-50%, we take the 300 baseline, we say that 40%-50% on top of that 300 $million baseline. That's the level at which we want to kind of leave.
So meaning June twenty-five's-
September. September.
Sorry, September's. Thank you very much for that. September's EBIT for the month should be representative of an EBIT already 40%-50% higher than what you will have on the $300 million baseline. If that... I know I'm very simplistic in saying that, but, and that when you start financial 2026, you already want to be at that level, and then obviously you want to kind of further accelerate it into financial 2026.
So if I may, Brooke, one thing that, you know, is one of the big advantages of partnering with someone like BCG, we have a very, very prescriptive process-
Mm.
of transformation that includes a system called Key, where each one of the literally coming to a hundred initiatives we have has a cash flow, has a business case, needs to be approved by finance. And what we do, and the numbers, the basis of the numbers we presented today, is a risk-adjusted view of what we have in the pipeline and how progressed they are through the gating process we have. So you will be all familiar with the keys or the waves or those transformation-
Mm
... tools that different companies use. And we are using Key and very happy to be able to have visibility of this whole pipeline. And as we speak, you know, every day I look at the pipeline-
Mm
... there's something new coming through the hopper. To be fair, there's some things that drop off because they don't, we don't see the merit.
Mm.
But this is a very live process. So that's why, you know, depending on how quickly we can ramp up that curve-
Mm
... we're more talking about the exit run rate than actually how much we will be able to deliver next year. Obviously, as we go through in every reporting period, we'll be able to talk more about that.
Yeah. I think the governance, as Mauro says, is so, so vital, and I think we're really comfortable in terms of, you know, the executive oversight. I think Mauro has been quite instrumental in really making sure that all the checks and balances are there, which I think is quite, quite important to see that ownership, from the CEO and the, in the organization. To the second part of your question, I will say that, what we achieved this year in terms of recontracting benefits, we, we do believe it has more legs to go in financial twenty-six. At this point in time, Brooke, I think, you know, we count it as part of the 40%-50%, you know, exit run rate.
But, obviously, the great work that Greg and the team has done, a lot of those contracts, 85% has already been renegotiated. But, you know, between your renegotiation and your actual implementation, there's some time for that to take place. So some of the contracts will only kick in at a point in time. So we do believe that, you know, whatever we communicated for financial 2024 to AUD 50 million, will definitely increase more, into financial year 2025.
And just with the three turnarounds that are planned for FY twenty-five, can you provide some sort of a range or framework for us to understand the impact? And I think the shutdown previously was meant to be FY twenty-seven.
Mm.
Correct me if I'm wrong, it looks like it's been pulled forward to-
Mm
... FY 2025. If that's correct, maybe you can provide the reasons for that.
Yeah. I think the AN has, you know, it has different components, and now as accountant speaking, so Braden, don't kill me. But, the way that Braden explained it to me in our visits to the plant, it is made up of various components, so, four sections. So ultimately, it does mean that every two years, that there's a part of the plant that does undergo a turnaround, albeit not the major turnaround as we've had last year. So there is a turnaround scheduled on one of the components for the AN. I think a very good question. So ultimately, the fact that we have the three turnarounds will bring about some negative impact on our earnings.
And hence, we do talk about the exit run rate, because it's not possible to actually, you know, make that up as well. So we will be able, in our EBIT, to show you, you know, kind of here is the EBIT exit run rate if you look at our results, but here is the impact of the turnarounds of next year. And if you normalize for that, you will get a different sense of where we are on our trajectory. Sorry, South Africans shouldn't speak about these hard words, but our kind of trend towards doubling the earnings. So you should be able to kind of do that math, you know, after normalizing the turnaround impact.
We usually disclose the impact of turnarounds in our EBIT analysis and our PVPY, so you would be able to kind of really track how we are progressing towards that exit run rate line for by the end of next year.
... Owen Birrell here from RBC. Just, drawing on your comment about being a protagonist in any future industry consolidation and understanding that any allocation of capital will be against your framework, what I'd like to understand is where, from a strategic perspective, do you see the greatest opportunity, in the market? Just firstly, do you think, or is that firstly across emerging markets or in your existing, backyard or where you currently have good dominant positions? And just secondly, do you see the opportunity presenting itself more in more commoditized, distribution platforms of, say, import ammonium nitrate? Or do you see it across the acquisition of technology partners and, and technology assets?
Let me clear about one thing, and I think I made that clear, but I just want to say that again. For a reason, we call it stage three, one and two come first. And we will win or not, and I would say we will win our ticket to play, and that's how confident we are on the basis of separation and transformation. And that needs to happen first, and if as a consequence of separation, there is any surplus cash, and if that's the case, we'll return it, and only when we think we have the ticket to play stage three, we will. Having said that, we are underrepresented in those markets that are growing faster. If you think about decarbonization, and I used that example about the copper shortage in the world.
If the world was to double the amount of electric vehicles, which seems to be quite reasonable assumption, we don't have enough copper to do that, even considering recycling in the next few years. And that's why every company that is mining in the world is looking very, very avidly for more copper. And if you look at where more copper is in Peru, in Chile, in Brazil, in the Copper Belt in Africa, and those are the places where we are trying to grow our presence. So it's not so much about whether it's emerging markets or not. It's a combination of places where we are very underrepresented, so we have close to no market share with relationships with customers that really know us well and like us.
I think case in point, the global deal that we've just done. So naturally, those would be the places where we think there's more opportunity. We will seek to do that, and I think someone asked me before about, you know, competitors' behaviors. We really think that some of that consolidation will help structurally the market to be more structurally disciplined, and that's why there's an opportunity for us when the time is right. That's not the time right now that we're really focused as a management team. There's too much on our plate. We really want to get through stage one and two, and naturally, will come a point in time that you come to us and say, "Where's the growth?" That's the right time to have this conversation.
Understanding that, and just, I guess as sort of a follow-up question, that you... When the time does come to make acquisitions, do acquisitions also fall under your capital light style strategy, or are buying physical supply assets within those markets part of the consideration?
We'll talk to that when we talk to that. I don't want to discard any opportunities for the future. As we think now, return on capital is the way we're thinking about it. So whether any acquisition in the future would come with ammonium nitrate plant or not, it's really about return on capital. So if you think we can return above WACC in any acquisition, that's what we're gonna do.
Mm-hmm.
But it will be driven by return on capital. So I don't want to single out we will do-
Mm-hmm
... asset light or asset heavy, acquisition. This is-
Mm
... a speculation in asteroids, so but I can tell you that we'll be guided by return on capital.
Mm.
I also just like to add on to that. You know, Mauro is 100% correct, that you know, the way that we think about developing the WACC, the opportunity, sorry, the return on assets, the opportunity that we have at this point in time, a very small capital investment, but with a really kick-up in earnings, is just you know, that's something that we really have to do, and I think we earn that to you know, owe that to the market and our shareholders to do that. However, as you know, with these things of investment, it's always a balance. You kind of never say it's the one thing or the other.
The way that we actually look at our hopper of initiatives, because of course, we will need to look at all the suite of opportunities that's strategy-led, that's capital light, or other opportunities, and really weigh it up and say: "What is the best balanced approach on a risk-adjusted basis to actually pursue our strategy going forward?" I never think the answer lies in one thing.
Mm.
However, Mauro is 100% right that, and I think that's the philosophy that he's driving, which I fully subscribe, is let's drive returns and values at the lowest possible risk for the organization, and even going forward, when you look at these opportunities, you have to consider it in that way, but I will say balanced, sustainable approach to growth and returns is really what we will always keep top of mind.
Hi, guys, it's Niraj over here at Goldman's. Just, can you just elaborate on how your incentives at various sort of levels within the organization will adjust to reflect the strategic settings and the targets you've now put out there?
Yeah. Let me start by saying that, we, I think the board, and you see some of more of that in the next REM report, has been very direct in incentivizing the executive team as shareholders. So I can tell we're very aligned. If we win, you win, and vice versa. So the thinking of the board was really to incentivize this group of leaders as shareholders of the company, so we have all the same incentives. When you think about the next levels down, to Paul's earlier comment, we make a great effort as we progress with the board in bringing the budget to life.
Everything we're talking about in terms of transformation to the lowest level of capillarity will be on people's to the manager level, will be on their STI scorecard. So again, if every one of our managers succeeds in what they're managing in terms of the capillary key initiatives that they are managing, that will flow through as benefits for everyone. So it's. We're really doing lots of work to wire and cascade metrics all the way through to the management teams. So the site leaders, the commercial leads, will all have their fair share of the doubling earnings targets that we're selling through. So that's already underway for that exit run rate that Paul commented on twenty-five. We're doing that as we speak.
Yeah, and, and Mauro, if I may just add the last bit is, we have a really, I think, a very robust, you know, design on the whole STI and LTI scheme, which is, I mean, quite evident for anybody to kind of see, I mean, because we have to disclose it. However, I think what is so important is that with the governance process with these initiatives is that we just completed actually our budget process or the management side of it. The board still needs to kind of give it the final go-ahead. But there we have been so meticulous to say, you know, kind of at profit center level or cash generating unit level, is to make sure that the initiatives that we believe that will come to fruition is actually in the budget.
So when you are being incentivized, you are being incentivized in achieving your budget or exceeding your budget, and all your initiatives is right there. So you don't kind of manage this parallel system of, you know, what is in and what is out. No. We want to keep it quite plain and simple and say, at an EBIT level or at a profit center level, where an individual is incentivized, or a team, it must be on that outcomes-based. So you can do all the efforts in the world, but we really want to see that kind of filtering down in your bottom line. And of course, for us as executives, ROIC or, you know, underlying headline earnings, I mean, those kind of things are, and safety, are the things that we are being measured upon.
Again, it's quite clear-cut in terms of, you know, you know, it's absolute numbers that we'll be measured on.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
That brings us to the end of this session. There may well be some more questions that people have. You'll have opportunities during the breaks. There'll be two more Q&A sessions during the day. Morning tea will be served where breakfast was, so help yourself there. I recommend you make sure you have something to eat because the next session's quite a long one. Lunch is planned for about one thirty. So use the restrooms, take a little bit of a break. We try to be back here at twenty past. Thank you.
... Okay, we'll be starting very soon. Please, if you could find a spot to sit.
Okay. Have we got that off mute? Yes. Great. Maybe I can channel our, the Australian former Prime Minister. How good is that when, your boss has stolen most of your thunder on the, technology, presentation? Thank you, Mara. All right. Good morning. My name is Rob Rounsley, and I'm the Chief Technology Officer for Dyno Nobel, and have been a member of the executive team for the past six and a half years in that role, part of the twenty-seven years that I've worked for the company in many different roles and in different regions. I'm also currently transitioning into the new role of Chief Growth Officer, which will comprise the EMEA and LatAm businesses that we've already spoken about today, and also looking after the corporate strategy function.
Today, I'll be speaking to you about both the Dyno Nobel technology portfolio and how it creates such a strong competitive advantage for Dyno Nobel, and then linking this into the new growth role, where I'll talk about how we are using our technology approach, along with our extensive and full range of products and services, to generate growth for Dyno Nobel. Also, I've got a bit of a croaky throat today, so maybe Greg and I are in the same boat. I'm not sure. So my apologies if I croak through it a little bit. Our technology and technical know-how does not just facilitate growth within the strongly growing mining regions of EMEA and LATAM. It is also critical to our competitiveness within the core business units of Asia Pacific and North America.
Greg and Braden will give you a better understanding of how this applies to our core markets in their presentations, and I'll talk with a specific focus on the growth regions. But first, I'd like to provide an overview of what technology means in the explosives context and with the associated mining services. Technology these days is often associated with IT and digital systems, and this is a critical part of any contemporary innovation program, and digital technologies are, of course, a part of the Dyno Nobel technology offering, and for explosives, mining services, chemicals manufacturing, and equipment manufacturing, technology is a very broad area, encompassing many different technical fields. You can see from this slide the breadth and depth of technology required to create a full product and service offering. At the foundation of the value bundle, you must have ammonium nitrate manufacturing technology and sourcing capabilities.
The technology is driven primarily by chemical and engineering skill sets. This is also combined with foundational field services activities, with operators working on customer sites, loading product into the ground. In this part of the bundle, you are differentiated by your physical footprint, cost base, and know-how, along with the practices and procedures developed through many years of experience. As we move up the value pyramid, we have greater and greater levels of technology requirements, from conventional products like non-electric shock tube detonators, boosters and cord, to basic bulk products like ANFO, which is simply porous ammonium nitrate prill combined with diesel fuel oil, and traditional emulsion solutions, including undifferentiated loading systems like ANFO trucks or heavy ANFO trucks, that create a simple mix of ANFO and emulsion.
Again, competitive advantage is generated by footprint and cost-based considerations, with technology efforts mostly focused on the efficient use of raw materials, along with manufacturing efficiency. These things are hygiene factors, part of the offer you must have as a ticket to play. As you get towards the top of the value pyramid, we utilize more complex technologies, where strong differentiation is achieved through advanced products and services. In this part of the offer, we're talking about things like digital products that collect and use data to drive blast design, blast outcomes, and loading efficiencies. Integrated circuit designs and manufacturing for our application-specific integrated circuits that work as the brain in our world-class electronic detonator products. Advanced control systems that facilitated automated communications between our blast design systems, our loading equipment, our data management systems, and our safety management systems.
You have advanced bulk products, detonators, and control systems that give blast designers new tools with flexibility to change blast design, so that major improvements in blasting, excavation, and extraction processes can be achieved in new, more efficient, safe, and sustainable ways, and perhaps last but not least, blast design and mining technical skills. These skills we use to show our customers the best way to apply explosives to meet their particular challenges. Whether that be blast vibration, fragmentation, and targeted particle size distribution, mill constraints, or indeed mining equipment constraints, every mining operation is unique, and the technical ability to help customers solve their problem in their circumstance, utilizing the best of our technology, creates the opportunity for strong value add in the bundle.
It is these advanced technology fields that allow us to shift the contract conversations away from a simple price discussion and achieve greater value from the broad explosives and associated services offering. Our heritage in technology development is unmatched, and Dyno Nobel is perhaps the most widely recognized brand in the global explosives industry. With over a hundred and fifty years of brand equity, Dyno Nobel has been at the forefront of technology and innovation for over a century. This historical timeline shows that Dyno Nobel is the company that developed many of the fundamental technology breakthroughs that changed the mining industry. From blasting caps, safety fuse, dynamite, slurry explosives, non-electric detonators, Dyno Nobel has many firsts in our history, and it's a heritage we are really proud of.
In more recent history, we have accelerated that technology development, adding many more firsts with some of the most advanced and differentiated technologies in the industry. Many of these, our competitors simply cannot match... Just a few examples: the DynaMiner series of underground loading equipment, including our unique Uphole F5 gassing and loading capabilities for production blasting. The impressive Titan series of advanced emulsion products. We go from workhorse products for everyday blasting to advanced formulations that solve major mining challenges. The Titan series is a full product range for every mining condition. We have portable emulsion plants that can be fed with any AN supply chain, facilitating rapid deployment into remote locations with security of supply for our customers, while keeping the sunken capital cost in the ground at a bare minimum.
Differential Energy and Delta E Squared, it's a clear world-first breakthrough, providing the next generation of variable energy products. This technology has underpinned very strong growth in our advanced emulsion segment, and will be a key to our global growth ambitions. Our solution is simply better than anyone else's. Our competitors have tried to copy it because of our success, and due to our strong intellectual property position, they have vastly inferior offerings. During this period, we've also developed our third and fourth generation electronic detonators, where we have overcome the major constraints to broader adoption. And combined with the addition of advanced automated manufacturing, we've achieved impressive earnings growth, about 27% CAGR for the past 10 years, and I'll show you a little bit more on that later.
You'll see later in the presentation also the outstanding rate of technology, not just developed, but delivered to our customers, including our CyberDet wireless through-the-earth systems, our Ranger BCU for quarries, BlastWeb 2 for underground centralized blasting, and differential GPS and automated tagging, all underpinning our strong sales growth in this product line. And of course, our NobelFire digital system, tying together the full product and services bundle, providing data and quality control services in the cloud, communicating with our loading equipment in near real-time, providing blast design capabilities and advanced models to predict the important blast outcomes like vibration, fragmentation, and ground movement from a blast. And this software also underpins our full loading automation approach, which we are continuing to develop. So I hope you can see that Dyno Nobel really does have the best technology available across the full bundle.
But I think it's important to state clearly, we don't do technology for technology's sake. Everything that we develop is driven by our customers' needs, and this means we see quite high rates of uptake and conversion. In this slide, you can see the key requirements for success. The foundational hygiene factors include things like safety. You must have a safety record that meets customer expectations, or they simply won't let you work on their sites. Reliability and security of supply. You must provide that security of supply. Very few customers will put their multi-billion-dollar assets in the hands of an uncertain supply chain. That is why local plants always win over imports in a balanced market. The supply from these facilities is high quality, it's reliable, and with low transport costs. That's why our plants at Moranbah, Moura, Cheyenne, and Lomo are in demand.
For countries that do not have an AN that don't have those AN plants close to the mining regions, technology can provide security of supply by allowing AN from many different sources to feed the emulsion and bulk products operations. Our Delta E bulk products, scalable remote plants, and ammonium nitrate emulsion technologies allows Dyno Nobel to provide the security for these regions without having to build high-capital plants in regions with complicated geopolitical circumstances and the associated risks. And last, in the hygiene factors, it's price and basic product and services solutions. And without advanced technology solutions, which you can see on the right-hand side there, that can drive value and use at the mine site, you will have a simple contract discussion focused on price. It is the broad range of technology, product solutions, and blasting applications ability that shifts the conversation to value.
Our customers have been very clear: bring them solutions that drive down the overall cost of minerals extraction, and they are willing to engage in value-based contract discussions. Mining customers are also very no-nonsense and quite conservative. They're not going to believe your promises unless you can prove them. And the three things that are most important to that, firstly, a historical track record of having achieved the outcome for other customers, is the single biggest factor. This is followed by trials that demonstrate the value of their operations, and lastly, they want to use digital tools that collect the data they can use to justify their buying decisions.... In the next few slides, I've provided some images and videos to show you how Dyno Nobel has been able to meet this challenge and why our approach has achieved robust growth in both premium emulsions and electronic detonator sales.
You can see here a modular, scalable emulsion plant packed up on a series of trucks and being transported to a mine site. That's the whole plant on the back of those trucks. You can also see what it looks like in different configurations: one in a larger cold weather configuration and one in a smaller hot weather configuration. We have designed the plants in a way that allows them to be configured for the specific customer need. This approach allows rapid deployment of the capital without long construction periods and facilitates minimal sunk capital, so the plant can be relocated to another site if the mine closes. Coupled together with our advanced emulsion technology, this allows for stable, high-quality products using almost any AN source, and as you'll see later in the presentation, ammonium nitrate is not simply ammonium nitrate.
There are many different types, and the chemistry can limit the application to explosives. Our unique technology allows us to produce high-quality products in low capital cost plants with rapid mobilization. Our manufacturing approach feeds our unique Delta E product solution. This combines with jumbo trucks that deliver full 20 metric ton payloads and eliminates poorly balanced tank capacities inherent with blend trucks. This approach is unique to Dyno Nobel. Variable density or energy products, allowing for tailored energy in the blast hole and facilitating flexible and advantageous blast designs with low capital, scalable, and relocatable plants that can use many different sources of AN to ensure that security of supply. Truly a unique solution from Dyno Nobel.
While I'm talking about Delta E, it might be helpful to show you how this market-leading technology works and why it is such a valuable and innovative product, and we've got a video on that.
Every operation has unique geological conditions that can vary significantly within the rock formation. Soft and hard rock seams are often dispersed throughout the borehole, making traditional single-density explosive loading technology inefficient. That's why Dyno Nobel developed the revolutionary differential energy technology. Differential energy allows operations to ensure each rock segment receives the explosive energy needed for optimal fragmentation by varying the density of Titan bulk emulsion throughout the borehole. The Delta E Squared Preload software uses data from drills and other sources that characterize rock properties to target the ideal placement of energy, and blast plans can be sent directly to the loading equipment to ensure each hole is loaded as designed. In relatively simple geological conditions, differential energy can maximize explosive energy at the bottom of the borehole and minimize energy density at the top.
Differential Energy allows up to six explosive energy density profiles in a single borehole. The loading rate is the same as conventional loading methods for improved blasting results with no extra time and effort on the pattern. By placing the energy exactly where it's needed in the blast hole, Differential Energy improves fragmentation and blast results. It also increases safety by reducing flyrock and nitrogen oxide potential and decreases environmental impact through minimized groundwater contamination. Dyno Nobel is the only commercial explosives provider with Differential Energy technology, and we partner with our customers to ensure they achieve their desired results. For mines and quarries of all sizes, Differential Energy is the key to better blasting.
I hope that gives you a better understanding of the product and the numerous benefits it delivers. While I've spoken about bulk products, they're critical to any mine operation, but they're next to useless without high-quality initiation systems that facilitate further tailoring of the blast design through accurate timing of initiation for each blast hole. Again, at Dyno Nobel, we have developed manufacturing and product technology that allows us to take a different approach for different market segments. Advanced electronic detonator systems are comprised of two major components: the harness or wires that connect your control equipment to the detonator, and the detonator itself, which contains the brains of the unit, along with the explosives charges needed to initiate a blast hole.
I'm sure those of you who are joining us for the demonstrations out at Tooele Research Facility will have a lot of fun seeing that in practice. Transporting finished goods with the harness and the detonator assembled is very costly, and as the product has to be. That's because the product has to be transported as an explosive, so all of the material is transported as an explosive. Transporting the non-dangerous goods harness separately and assembly in the regions of use is a significantly lower-cost approach. On this slide, you can see we have a two-tier approach. For high-volume sites in high-cost labor countries like Australia and the U.S., we have developed fully automated manufacturing lines. You can see that on the left-hand side of the slide. This maintains our transport cost advantage and further drives down the cost of labor in the manufacturing.
For the smaller volume regions with lower cost of labor, like Chile, Indonesia, or Turkey, we implement manual lean cells, which you can see on the right-hand side of the slide. Again, ensuring our low cost of transport without having to invest higher capital levels, to achieve the high-quality supply. When you combine our bulk product technology and manufacturing approach with our detonator technology and manufacturing approach, I hope you can see how Dyno Nobel has achieved a unique competitive advantage, ensuring an economical supply chain, but delivering the most advanced bulk products and detonators our customers need for high-quality blasting. I've spoken about how existing products and technology, and how we've achieved such a strongly differentiated position. Now, I want to show you how we will maintain and extend our advantage.
I think you can see that we have a strong technology record of accomplishment, and also that our track record of technology development has been impressive. But we also have a very healthy technology development pipeline. We've adopted a proven process utilizing a tailored stage-gate approach that matches our types of technology development fields, and we utilize an executive-sponsored technology steering committee to ensure we make disciplined investment decisions for new technology initiatives. And this is guided by an external technology advisory board, where customers and key industry figures provide guidance on the industry needs now and into the future. And I'm sure you're all very impressed, and just like our customers, I know that you don't believe me, unless I give you proof.
This data shows you outstanding growth in our electronic detonators over the past ten years, with electronic detonator system volume growth showing a 16% cumulative average growth rate for a ten-year period, and the margins showing a 28% growth over that same period, driven by that manufacturing approach that I outlined for you. The reason we achieved this is because we got the product designs right with both reliability, advanced features, and functionality, and we got the manufacturing approach right, ensuring high quality and an appropriate cost base. The combination has underpinned that great success, and of course, for our advanced premium emulsions, supported by the plant and delivery system approach I've outlined, we've seen a 22% CAGR over the last four years. Now, I'll just come back to electronic detonator systems.
People often mistakenly believe that there is just one electronic detonator system in our portfolio. To achieve the kind of growth that I've shown you in an emerging technology field, you must deliver a very strong new product development pipeline, and this timeline further demonstrates why we have been so successful. Over the past fifteen years, we've delivered at least one major new product release just in this product area every year. It really is a credit to the innovation and discipline of the technology teams in Dyno Nobel. You can also see that we have three new product releases in 2024, including our second-generation BlastWeb system and two variations of our DigiShot XR series electronics, which creates the most robust detonator on the market.
Furthermore, we will soon be releasing our ViewShot Ultra software for electronic systems, along with our second generation of wireless detonators and our CyberShot product range aimed at facilitating the fully autonomous drill and blast loading process. I truly believe Dyno Nobel has the most advanced detonator technology in the world, and it has been broadly adopted by our global customer base. Now, let me switch gears a bit and provide some examples that show you how our product and service offerings combine to meet the needs of a few key market segments. We'll start with hard rock, and for surface hard rock mining, for example, copper mining, which has a very strong growth profile driven by the global energy transition, you can see on this slide how we combine our product suite to meet the industry needs.
In hard rock mining, crushing is critical, and mill throughput can be a large capital burden or a significant constraint on the operations output. In many regions that are dry, water usage can also be a critical factor. A combination of our Delta E variable energy bulk products with our fourth-generation DigiShot Plus electronic detonators allows our customers to dial up energy and timing to match the rock properties. Our advanced fracture density model provides high-fidelity simulation of fragmentation outcomes based on different designs, and our DynoBulk jumbo trucks ensure the bulk product blast design can be delivered to plan with a single pass and high discharge rates, achieving high productivity in the loading operation. Accurate and predictable fragmentation leads to enhanced mill throughput, reduced energy costs, and lower water usage in the process.
This can create major improvements in the overall mining operation, and Dyno Nobel is rewarded through the sale of our high-volume value products and services. It's a genuine win-win for the customer and Dyno Nobel. If we move to quarries, quarries are often located close to high-population areas where roads and infrastructure are being built. Sustainability concerns can be paramount, with strict regulatory requirements to report on blasting activities, concern for vibration damage to close-by properties, infrastructure, or buildings, issues with noise from the blasting activities, and other issues like excessive dust generation, dangerous flyrock outside the boundaries of the property, or leakage of nitrates into the groundwater that can break license conditions or cause excessive vegetation growth in nearby waterways. Our NobelFire Digital system is first and foremost a digital data management tool. The system was first designed for quarry blasting.
It creates tailored shot reports specific to the state-based requirements, ensuring our customers meet this regulatory burden in the most efficient way. Our Delta E bulk product solution, while minimizing waste in the form of excessive fines in a blast by allowing a heavy toe charge combined with a light top charge, also ensures overblast or noise and flyrock can be controlled without having to compromise on the overall blast outcomes. Additionally, our Delta E oil emulsion solution has the highest level of water resistance, ensuring no unwanted loss of nitrates into the local waterways. Our Ranger electronic detonator system provides a simple and appropriately featured product designed specifically for quarry blasting, coming with the simplified ViewShot Lite software and a tablet version suitable for these smaller blasts.
Our recent release of the advanced vibration management and simulation software allows our blasters and customers to make rapid design changes, knowing with confidence what the vibration outcome will be. Moving on to underground. Underground operations have become increasingly complex as miners go deeper and deal with more challenging ore body configurations. Our BlastWeb centralized blasting system is the only software and hardware system in the world that allows our customers to control all blasting areas in the underground complex, utilizing different electronic detonators from a single centralized software and hardware platform. All Dyno Nobel EDS products can be fired, allowing control of development and production blasts that may want to utilize different EDS technologies, such as CyberDet, DigiShot Plus 4G, DriftShot, or, through the use of DriftShot starters, we can fire non-electric dets for LPs used in development headings. It's truly a unique solution.
Add to that our Titan 7000 uphole pumped, homogenized, gassed, and with differential energy loading, it, which is an advanced system combining both specialized product and loading equipment. We are working on remote loading to further enhance the safety of this type of loading, moving people further away from the high-risk locations. Our first-generation CyberDet wireless through-the-earth system is solving blast designs, blast design problems, allowing our customers to extract more mineral resources from the same ore body and blast. Now, if I tie it all together, our technology approach has been systematic and methodical. You can see from the vast array of products and technologies we have delivered, we've deliberately pursued each of the building blocks for the connected bench.
This has allowed us to commercialize each element along the way, but always with a North Star, guiding us towards the goal of a fully connected drilling, loading, and blasting process, and the customers can choose the elements they want to implement, or they can choose to go all the way to a fully connected bench. The key components of this approach include a digital platform, NobelFire, that can take data from smart drills, giving us measure while drilling data about the ground we will be designing for and blasting. The advanced electronic detonator systems facilitate reduced human interaction or fully autonomous applications, including CyberDet and CyberShot. Variable density bulk products allow tailored energy profiles to be loaded with high discharge rates in a single pass on each hole and based on data collected from the measure while drilling or indeed from the block model.
Advanced digital models that simulate vibration, fragmentation, and ground movement, which are the key requirements for our customers, and allow for rapid redesign of a blast so that designers can adjust and simulate outcomes based on the data from the drilling and loading process. It also includes control systems for both loading equipment and detonator systems that are interfaced with NobelFire, ensuring accurate data collection and reporting, along with the ability to direct the equipment as the drill, loading, and blast process is executed. And last up for technology, I'll give you a brief case study that demonstrates how we have generated strong commercial outcomes from this technology approach. And this is an example with CyberDet ONE, our through-the-earth wireless electronic detonator system. We applied our CyberDet ONE through-the-earth system to our customer's flagship mine. The customer had multiple mines in their portfolio.
The mine, that particular mine, had a difficult ore body geometry with a caving operation that had previously failed. We were able to utilize CyberDet with a mining method that allowed the customer to mine areas that would otherwise be a safety concern. Without getting into the specific financial details, the customer recovered significantly more minerals without compromising safety, and we were able to sell our value-added system. Ultimately, we were rewarded with all the mines and the full product and services bundle for all the sites from this customer, as they could see our technology approach was successful and that we would be likely to bring other technical solutions for further problems they could encounter in their other operations. That's the end of the technology presentation. We'll move on to our growth.
As you've already heard today, Dyno Nobel has a strong share of the two large mining markets of Asia Pacific and North America, underpinned by our core manufacturing footprint and advanced customer base, and that base drives technology solutions in those attractive regions. The dynamics in these regions will be covered by Greg and Braden later today, and it is a fair summary to say that we are well-placed to grow our earnings in these home markets. As the world continues to demand mineral resources strongly underpinned by the global energy transition, our core customer base is expanding to new operations in other regions. Some of these regions are growing rapidly and do not have large-scale ammonium nitrate manufacturing close to the mines.
This creates a great opportunity for Dyno Nobel to grow these regions with a low-risk, low-capital approach, trading ammonium nitrate, leveraging our globally recognized brand, unique technology, know-how and skill sets, and simply applying our existing business model to new geographies as our existing customer base pulls us in, and I thought I'd give you a little bit of a flavor for each of the regions. In EMEA, it really is a highly diversified region, so I'm not going to attempt to give you a detailed evaluation of each market. However, there are some general points to make. Western Europe is characterized by some unique post-World War II explosives regulation and licensing requirements, restricting some activities. It's best considered as an aggregation of multiple countries with small, bulk product requirements, mostly focused on quarry and construction operations.
It is, however, a large detonator market, which is proportionally underrepresented with high-quality electronic detonator systems, and you can see that is perfectly suited for the electronic detonator approach you saw in that technology presentation. In South Africa, you have poor market conditions, a long AN position, and difficult geopolitical circumstances. Our strategy is to maximize the detonator-only approach in a high-volume, non-electric market, and the rest of Africa is highly variable, with some countries clear no-go zones, with major sovereign risk profiles and limited security and safety. Other countries have very acceptable risk profiles and are seeing strong growth, primarily driven by gold, copper, and iron ore. Our win with AngloGold Ashanti is a terrific first step, showing how this can be done.
The Middle East is always a challenge and perhaps never more so than today, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a bright spot, where the government is pushing ahead with an industry diversification strategy and expanding mining activities rapidly. This market is very keen for more advanced systems, and they, as they create a contemporary mining segment. For Eastern Europe and the Stans, each have their own set of geopolitical issues and nevertheless, some strong mining growth dynamics. But this area definitely requires a selective approach. So you can see there's no one-size-fits-all strategy for participation in this diverse region....
There are some very good market conditions, and it is clear that our approach is to select specific opportunities utilizing the critical mass of skills, storage, supply chain, technology, and manufacturing that has been established in France, Turkey, and the various African countries to meet the growth needs of the region. Turning to Latin America, we see parts of Latin America providing very strong growth prospects, and Mauro's already talked a little bit about this. This region has advanced large-scale mining activities and a diversity of Tier One and Tier Two mining houses requiring advanced products and systems to meet their needs. We already have strong relationships with many of these customers. Our global energy transition, or the global energy transition, is driving very strong demand for copper, and this region is characterized by enormous copper reserves.
Mining activity is growing rapidly, and we expect to see around two hundred thousand tons per annum of explosives growth in the next five years. Demand is constrained only by the rate of depletion of current mines and the rate of regulatory approvals for new mining. Chile has local AN supply and is the most stable market, and overall, the region is significantly short on AN, with well over five hundred thousand tons being imported. Dyno Nobel has a positive brand reputation in these regions and currently has only a modest business. We've established distributor accounts and a significant major long-term mining account already. With bulk product supply already built and operating, coupled together with both non-electric detonator and electronics manufacturing in the region, we're very bullish about our growth prospects. Additionally, our technology offering is very well suited to this market.
Scalable, rapid deployment emulsion plants, coupled with our advanced bulk product suite, including differential energy and the shot range of electronics, will perform very well in this market, and we've already developed a strong applications technology presence down there, so I think the obvious question you'll be asking, and indeed you already asked, is why Dyno Nobel can be successful in achieving our growth plans in these regions? Firstly, for the past ten years, we've been focused on core markets of North America and Asia Pacific, where we've made significant investments in plants and have managed portfolio changes in our footprint, bedding down these investments and ensuring they were optimized to achieve their potential, and I think you can see the benefits of these changes flowing through in DNAP and the DNA performance.
So now we can turn our attention to other regions, and that is why you see the new organizational design creating management focus on the potential growth in regions beyond Asia Pacific and North America. It's a simple, low-risk lift and shift of the core business model for explosives and associated mining services. Secondly, we have already established a critical mass of skills, the talent, magazining, supply chain, and manufacturing in the EMEA region, including our plants in South Africa, in Turkey and France, ensuring we have all the fundamental requirements in place. While we're still integrating it all together and optimizing the activities, we are very pleased to see the first new business wins coming through, creating that confidence in that strategy and approach.
For the Latin American region, we have a smaller operational footprint, but again, we've established all the fundamental requirements with non-electric dets, electronic dets, and bulk product manufacturing in place, along with a dedicated and capable team. I'm pleased to announce the appointment of Ricardo Porto to the new Vice President LatAm role, starting on October one. Third, as you have seen earlier in the technology presentation, we have the strongest possible brand recognition, together with our, our unique bulk product manufacturing, supply chain, and delivery system operations, creating significant competitive advantage. Add to this our world-class electronic detonator technology and portfolio of products, along with the decentralized in-country manufacturing approach, we're confident in our winning position. Next up, I have a video that provides a nice overview of our bulk product approach that we utilize for this region.
In mining, the era of easy excavation and extraction is a thing of the past. Today, the Earth's most valuable resources lie in harsh climates and remote regions. For many years, engineers at remote sites had no choice but to use packaged explosives in applications better suited to bulk products. Now, using Dyno Nobel's unique technology, we can move a portable modular emulsion plant onto your mine site and have it up and running in significantly less time than a fixed plant construction. Portable modular emulsion plants provide high-quality bulk emulsion in locations where raw materials are difficult to source... They can use melt-grade ammonium nitrate sourcing to create a bulk product supply chain in remote areas without a waste stream, and they allow for flexible raw material handling, including ammonium nitrate in standard liquid form or melted from industrial-grade prill.
Our portable modular emulsion plant allowed Dyno Nobel Chile to increase the range of products and services that we provide in our country, using less space than a standard emulsion plant. Because of the high emulsion freight costs in our region, portable modular emulsion plants are the best way for our customers to improve their drill and blast results using Dyno Nobel technology.
Cutting-edge computer control systems automatically manage emulsion production and quality, including Dyno Nobel's variable gassing techniques. Versatility is built into the modular system to deliver the global range of Titan bulk emulsion products to meet unique site-based needs, including applications in coal and metal mines, surface and underground operations, and hot and reactive ground conditions. Portable modular emulsion plants provide a safe work environment for mining professionals who work under the toughest conditions in the world. Each system element is engineered, assembled, and tested in compliance with Dyno Nobel's rigorous global engineering standards and local regulatory codes. Our engineers and technicians check and recheck every valve, pump, bolt, and weld before the plants are shipped, dramatically reducing the need for costly skilled labor at the mining camp.
Dyno Nobel has designed and installed many modular plants around the world, including sites in the Arctic, Indonesia, New Guinea, the USA, and Chile. They're designed for rapid deployment, and little permanent infrastructure is required. Plants can be pulled apart, packed up, and moved to the next location to be reassembled and ready to operate at a moment's notice. For the world's most remote mining locations, portable modular emulsion plants are the ultimate way to get the job done with the highest level of safety and efficiency in mind.
While you've seen and heard at various times today about the new partnership with AngloGold, I wanted to give you another video that goes over that. Anglo were very clear in their communication that a commitment to the region and an established footprint was a must-have for them. This video, I think, will drive that home.
There's an old African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go together." As a long-term business that has been around for over a century and will be around for a century more, we have a far way to go.
At AngloGold Ashanti, our primary focus has been to form a durable global partnership with industry-leading suppliers, including in the explosive sector, that will deliver world-class technical and commercial benefits. It goes without saying that these partnerships must include an ironclad assurance of reliable supply at consistent quality.
Our teams are working across our global footprint to find standardization opportunities that will facilitate this outcome. In doing so, we'll be able to achieve our goal of better leveraging our significant global spend across all categories as we look to buy better and spend better.
These sustainable relationships with leading providers to the mining sector will allow AngloGold Ashanti to build its internal operational capability and achieve continuous improvement in this vitally important part of the mining cycle.
As part of this process, we are proactively looking for global partners that will align closely with our operations, working alongside us to realize tangible improvements to the way we operate. We're committed to employing a transparent and robust process of contract management based on a clear set of mutually agreed critical performance indicators, scoped and defined by each site and consolidated on a global basis to ensure products and services deliver the intended benefit to our operations.
It's this alignment that will allow us to achieve measurable value by marrying our internal expertise and know-how with the capability and technologies of our partners, all while being single-minded in our determination to doing the basics right. As the global landscape evolves, the success of our partnership will also hinge on our ability to anticipate change and to adapt to new challenges and opportunities.
For us, the foundation of a successful partnership in any area of our business is a shared vision of common goals, trust, transparency, and effective communication, all underpinned by strong governance and a long-term commitment. That way, we'll go far together.
... Okay, so let me wrap it all up. We have a dedicated management focus on international growth in the major mining regions outside of Asia-Pacific and North America. We've executed on a strategic plan to establish a competitive supply for the fundamental raw materials and products needed for success. We have established an experienced leadership team and the broader operational skills and talent in the respective regions required for success, and we have the technology and products needed to meet the needs of the customers in these regions. Thank you for your time today. I hope the presentation was helpful, and I'll now hand you over to Braden, who will talk to you about the operations in North America.
Thanks, Rob, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I start my presentation, I'd really like to acknowledge a few special guests we have joining me today to help deliver what we're doing within North America. Brendan, Mike, Nick, Dan, thank you. Thank you for your business, thank you for your partnership, and thank you for taking the time to join us today to share your stories. Really, really do appreciate it. Today, I'm excited to share with you why Dyno Nobel Americas, or DNA, is not just participating in this market, but is positioned to lead and excel. Dyno Nobel Americas is the leading provider of explosives and blasting services across North America. Our operations are grounded in two key pillars: safety and innovation, which are deeply embedded in our DNA. You've already heard a lot about this from Mauro and others this morning.
These values make us reliable partners for our customers and ensure we remain at the forefront of industry advancements. Our extensive footprint and well-integrated supply chain enable us to consistently deliver reliable and efficient services across key locations. A prime example is the performance of our Louisiana, Missouri ammonium nitrate facility, which has achieved exceptional results in twenty twenty-four. To ensure continued reliability and sustainability, we are investing in a major turnaround in twenty twenty-five, including nitrogen abatement measures for sustainability. This operational strength allows us to meet and exceed customer expectations, reinforcing our position as the preferred provider in the quarry and construction and metal sectors, with a focus on iron ore, gold, and copper. Our long-term relationships with major industry players reflect the trust and confidence they place in us, built on our proven ability to deliver results in even the most challenging environments.
The outlook for our key end markets is promising, and DNA is well positioned to capture this growth. The metal sector, which accounts for approximately 37% of our revenue, is expected to grow at a rate of at least 3-3.5% per annum. Similarly, the QNC markets, representing about 43% of our revenues, are forecasted to grow between 2% and 3% annually. However, it's not just about being in the right markets; it's about how we operate within them. By strategically reallocating resources from the declining thermal coal sector to high-growth areas like metals and QNC, we are focused on the most promising opportunities. This approach is essential for delivering sustained growth. Moreover, our ability to leverage advanced technologies such as Delta E, Drill to Mill, DigiShot, CyberDet Wireless, and NobelFire provides us with a competitive edge.
These innovations are delivering superior outcomes for our customers, which in turn strengthens our market position. Our ambition is clear: to drive growth through strategic expansion and cutting-edge innovation while maintaining world-class safety standards. What truly sets us apart is our relentless focus on optimizing margins and expanding market share through technological leadership. We are also expanding our presence in underrepresented key deposit regions, particularly in the Western United States and Canada, where we see significant upside potential. By aligning our asset footprint with these growth opportunities, we're not just participating in market growth, we're actively driving it. We are confident in our ability to excel in this market because we are not simply reacting to industry trends, but helping to shape them.
Our investments in technology, our focus on high-growth sectors, and our strategic reallocation of resources all contribute to our strong market position and our ability to deliver superior returns to our shareholders. Now, let's focus on our customer value proposition, which is at the heart of why we believe in our future success. At DNA, we are committed to delivering the right energy at the right time with the right technology to achieve real and measurable results. This commitment is not just a promise; it's a proven approach that has earned us the trust of our customers across North America. On a more personal note, innovation has always been a driving passion for me. It's one of the key reasons I'm excited to step into the role of Chief Technology and Marketing Officer on October first. I'm truly excited about continuing what Rob has done with our technology portfolio.
By advancing our technologies and working closely with our customers to implement them, we can leverage our expertise on a global scale, expanding our influence and impact. Our customers rely on us not only for our products, but also for our expertise and support, which enable them to maximize returns and achieve their goals. This customer-centric approach is a key driver of our success and a significant reason why we believe we will continue to lead in this competitive market. But rather than just hearing this from me, I want you to listen to it directly from our customers. Their stories of partnership and success are the best evidence that we are not just surviving in this market, we are setting the pace. I'm pleased to introduce Brendan Murphy, General Manager of Minerals at Rio Tinto Kennecott, and a key customer.
Brendan has been instrumental in driving innovation and operational excellence within our industry. Today, he will share key insights into our strategic partnership, focusing on the continuous improvements and innovations that are shaping our collaboration. Please join me in welcoming Brendan Murphy. Thanks, Brendan.
Thanks, Bob. Appreciate it. It is afternoon, so good afternoon, everybody, and thank you very much for the invite today. I appreciate the time and look forward to talking about some of the things that we've been doing out at Kennecott. Appreciate the presentation earlier, Robert. It was interesting for me as a former underground shot firer. I remember first using the DynaMiner back in two thousand and seven. It said it came out in two thousand and one, and I thought it was, I thought we were one of the first sites. So there you go, you learn something every day. But, yeah, it was certainly interesting, going from ANFO to the snot, as we called it, back then.
But look, yeah, my name's Brendan Murphy. I'm the General Manager for Minerals here at Kennecott Utah Copper with Rio Tinto. You know, we've been here a hundred and twenty years, and a good portion of that has been a partnership with Dyno over the last few years. Rio Tinto, I suppose many of you will know we're a global mining company. We're based out of London, dual-listed in Australia as well, obviously, where all of our iron ore mines are. But a bit about Kennecott for those that don't know is, you know, we produce 15% of domestic copper here in the U.S. We have the largest and cleanest U.S. smelter.
We have about two thousand employees, but also support another nine thousand in the valley here and facilitate about $1.6 billion to the state GDP on an annual basis. We move about 180 million tons. Right next, we talk about quarries being next to places with people. We run one of the biggest mines in the world, and we have the people of Salt Lake City coming closer and closer to our operation every year. We move about 180 million tons with 97 ultra-class haul trucks, 8 electric shovels, 3 diesel shovels, 14 drills, 24 dozers.
We run quite a big operation right on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but you know, you can tell I'm not a local. I was sitting at a park with my kids when we first moved here, and I was... I'd like to say I was playing with them. It was more likely that I was yelling at them.
The gentleman next to me said, "Oh, where are you from?" I said, "I'm from Australia." And he said, "What are you doing here?" And I said, "I work at the mine." And he said, "What mine?" And I just sort of said, "That one." I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but we do manage to do what we do without disrupting the local people too much. We also have a fairly large sustainability commitment. So we have the lowest carbon footprint of any US copper producer. We shut down our coal-fired power plant in 2019 and transitioned to Rocky Mountain Power, which is largely hydroelectric. We have constructed a five-megawatt solar plant next to our concentrator with the capacity to increase to 25-megawatt.
This year, we transitioned to renewable diesel for our surface-heavy machinery. We are also starting our underground mine at the moment and trialing at the moment, we have two electric haul trucks, an electric loader with the plan to, when we ramp up to full production, that our primary fleet will be electric. So that's a little bit about Kennecott. I'm gonna talk about some of the, I suppose, successes of our partnership with Dyno.
Some of our safety performance improvements, some of the things that we've partnered on with around productivity and innovation, some of the things we've done around operational efficiency and unit cost reduction, and a little bit about how we've done that through, you know, a partnership of trust and mutual respect, which, like every relationship, has its ups and downs, but certainly is in a good place at the moment. So first of all, some of our safety performance improvements. The first one I would like to talk about is some of the work, more recent work around our final wall compliance.
You know, for those that don't know, the pit here at the Kennecott pit is, I mean, various measures of biggest, I suppose, around the world, but one of the biggest pits in the world. It's certainly the deepest. It's over a kilometer deep from the top to the bottom, three point five kilometers across. And, you know, geotechnical stability is one of our primary risks, not so much from a safety risk to people perspective, but certainly from a risk to production perspective. At any one time, we're monitoring around fifteen active areas in our pit. So how we mine now is very, very, very important to how our pit performs in the future.
I think the work that's been done around the final wall compliance is important because it's not through any single initiative. It's not a top-down, you know, from me saying, "Hey, what are we doing in this space?" I think it's come about, or some of the work has come about really through the monthly meetings that the teams have. They call it the BOT meetings or the Blast Optimization Team. And it brings together people from within Dyno and from our site in Rio, and they talk about some of the things that we could look at, some of the things that we could do better. And this was first brought up in 2022, and you know, we were doing some work around this.
Our geotechs had been to a couple of conferences and wanted to bring back some of the things that they'd heard. Dyno came to the party and evaluated some of our trim designs, brought in some of their senior consultants, and after multiple iterations and trials, not through any specific program, or we don't have to have a, you know, a task force that goes and looks at this, but just that mindset of continuous improvement.
And that led to some pretty, I suppose some improved wall compliance, in some of our areas, and certainly led to an increase in some of our bench widths, which is fantastic, 'cause when you're running, you know, pits that are over a kilometer deep, having some of those catch benches available to you over time becomes really important. One of the more recent ones that we're looking at with the team is around our flyrock modeling. This was something that came out of a Kaizen or a, or for specific, you know, action around productivity improvement, and has a safety component to it as well. That de-risking of blast clearances, but also improving productivity. If we can...
We run a standard 1,500-foot blast radius, you know, yet some of our ramps, you know, and that's, I suppose, in a plan view. Yet some of our ramps are, you know, 700 feet above where we might be blasting. And now, what can we do to keep those ramps open, and how could we do that safely and with confidence? And that's where this flyrock modeling has come in. So, you know, we did some work together, again, through that Blast Optimization Team meeting, having some discussions. You know, Dyno helped us out with some of that modeling and ran it through their own modeling systems, videoed some blasts to validate that data, and we're still working through that at the moment.
But where we sit at the moment, if we can keep parts of the mine open through those blast delays, that'll be a significant productivity improvement for us. Drill to Mill, I heard that talked about a couple of times already, but certainly our experience has been so far a positive one. And you can see some of the numbers there, and you know, that's through our, I suppose, our Momentum is an internal system that we use to track some of our productivity improvement projects. The numbers aren't always you know 100% there, but certainly for me, the big thing is, is it positive? Is it working? Is it value-adding or is it not?
Certainly, the Drill to Mill is one that we feel has been a value-adding, you know, effort for us. Using some of the smart drill data, you know, things like our penetration rate, getting that data back, and then using that information to change the blast densities, as Rob talked about earlier, has really helped, particularly in 2021 and 2022. You can see the differences in the dollars per ton used for the calculation there. That's really around, is our concentrator or is our mill the bottleneck or is it not? In 2021, 2022, it certainly was. Then last year and this year, it's shifted back to our mine, which in most cases is what you want.
You want to be shifting that bottleneck from one place to another as you solve problems. Unfortunately, in this case, it's really around the geotechnical concerns we have in our pit, which has shifted that bottleneck back and forth. But certainly, that was, I suppose, a dedicated effort, a dedicated project, with some of our team members and some of the Dyno team members, which has certainly helped getting that six-inch minus through our crusher, and led to some increased throughput at our concentrator, which has overall helped us produce more copper, which is funnily enough, what we're in the business of doing.
Lastly, again, some of the stuff you've already heard and some of the things that we're trying to do here, which is that Drill to Mill was really targeted at increasing the throughput through our crusher and through our concentrator, which meant that those trials were in the ore cuts, the areas where the copper is at. How do we expand that to optimize our explosive usage, potentially save on a little bit of cost, but also optimize our digability and our waste? You know, with such a large pit, we do have several different material types that we have to dig through. Some softer stuff, some really hard limestone, which we struggle with from time to time.
So how do we take some of those learnings from that Drill to Mill project, and then use that to optimize how we're mining some of our waste as well? We're still working through that at the moment. The drill sensors is certainly something we need to get better at. You know, it's $50,000 per drill, and then yeah, you need to maintain them. It's not just about installing those sensors, it's about maintaining them and making sure the data that you're actually getting is reliable. But I've got a good feeling about this one as well, and hopefully from...
We can see, not only that increased productivity through that, through that diggability, but ideally, if we're not trying to, to dig through unbroken rock in some of our harder areas, we see some of those savings in our shovel reliability as well. So just to finish up, as I said, the relationships are, are built on trust and mutual respect, and, and for me, that doesn't always mean that everyone always gets along and there's not arguments, but it's about how they're done, and are those arguments respectful, and how those, uh, disagreements are, are, are handled. And that in the, in the good times, you celebrate together. You know, I've always said that, you know, I like being in mining, I like being in teams.
As a kid, I preferred playing the team sports, AFL for the Australians in the room, you know, soccer or whatever else was going on, because when you win as a team, it's a lot more fun than, you know, winning a tennis match and sitting at the bar by yourself and giving yourself a little pat on the back. And I feel that's certainly the feedback I get from our team members is that's where the partnership is at the moment, that it's about working together to solve some of the problems. How do we bring different things to the table? We have lots of experience in our teams, particularly in the geotech space. And then how do we leverage, you know, our partners to solve some of those problems?
And we don't always know what the experience is in some of our partners. So having that come and be brought to us with suggestions and options and different things that we should be thinking about is certainly beneficial. So really, that's all I had. Thank you very much for the time, and Braden, I shall hand back to you. Thank you.
Thank you. Oh, questions.
I appreciate it. Oh, really? Okay. Question time.
Yeah, yeah. Brendan, thank you. It's always really nice to hear from our customers, and, you know, we have that same feeling of teamwork across the teams that are doing these endeavors, and it's really good to hear from you guys that you feel the same way. So, just a couple questions I wanted to ask you. You talked about some of the improvements and programs we have in place, but are there any, I don't know, specific or particular products or services that Dyno Nobel offers that you think have driven improvements in emissions and sustainability or productivity that you can think of?
So as I think the one that we went through just then was the Drill to Mill. Lots of people were very excited about, and certainly in twenty twenty-one, twenty twenty-two, the results we were seeing from that in terms of the throughput through our crusher, but it also, ahead of some of the other improvements we made at our concentrator, was certainly, you know, something that I know the teams felt a lot of excitement about and felt like delivered on the on what was promised. I think that's always important, also important as well as. You know, certainly we've I'm sure we've all been you're a supplier, I'm so sure you've also got your own suppliers.
And when, you know, there are things out over here in bright lights, and it doesn't always end up being as shiny and as fun to play with as was promised in the advert, that it can be disappointing. But in this case, I feel like that was certainly not one of those situations.
That's great to hear, and I can tell you from my own personal experience with that specific project, when we started to look at that initially, thinking, "Well, we really think we can deliver a lot of value here," it was exactly that was concerning to us.
Yeah.
Can we actually deliver this? We looked at it in on paper, we looked at it in models, but can we actually do it? And I think the key that turned that switch for me was the commitment from you guys to actually team and partner together to do it, so thank you, appreciate that. The last question I have for you is kind of specific to just suppliers in general. When you're choosing suppliers, what are the two or three most important things that you're gonna focus on? And I particularly wanna, you know, kind of know where in that order is that partnership and collaboration for you guys.
So the two or three thing, I'm not gonna lie, there's always price.
Yep.
So that's something that, you know, is always one of the things that comes out in the matrix. How, where does it fit in? I mean, to be honest, it's probably number two, right? Because if the... It's all well and good to having a good price, but if you haven't got the support behind it, you know, I heard, I said I haven't been here all day, but hear Rob talking about that supply chain, that's super important as well, right? So, how well do we have the confidence of, well, yeah, this is a great price, but is it gonna be reliable? Is it gonna be something that's sustainable? That's really important.
But then, some of the other things, I think, I don't know if they become really something they're thought about at the time. I don't know if always our commercial people understand the technicalities or the technical part of what suppliers can actually help bring to the table. So I think that's something actually we can think about a little bit, doing a little bit better when we are making these selections. But that's why I think, you know, when we look at the partnership that we have right now and where we've come from, it can be a really important thing. You know, once the... Maybe not for the first one, but certainly when the next one comes up, it's something that becomes really, really important.
Excellent.
Awesome.
Thank you so much, Brendan.
My pleasure.
I appreciate it.
Thanks very much, Brendan.
Thanks for coming today.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Appreciate it. Okay, our next customer that we want to share, it's my pleasure to introduce Michael Indihar, a recently retired senior mine engineer from Cleveland-Cliffs. With over 40 years of experience, Michael has been a driving force in advancing innovative blasting techniques. Today, he'll share valuable insights from his extensive career, focusing on the successful collaboration between Cleveland-Cliffs and Dyno Nobel and from a personal perspective, been around Mike for a long time. He's been a wonderful partner for us as a customer and he's helped us to drive that innovation. So thank you, Mike. Please join us.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Welcome. I'm really honored to talk at this investor conference today. Kind of flattered that they would open it up, you know, to a client like this, and I think it speaks volumes again for Dyno Nobel. You know, and I agree with all the benefits that have been talked about so far. You know, it's interesting on how many of those that I can really relate to when we talk about nitrates in the water. It's things I wasn't gonna talk about in the talk, but they're so important when you look at permission to operate a mine. You know, we got nitrates in the water, was talked about flyrock. The differential density, which really improves your mill performance, which really reduces your costs tremendously. I mean, there's nothing more expensive than the grinding process in a mine.
Environmental improvements, it's your permission to operate again, of dust and air and vibration. Tailored products to each mine. All of our mines are different. You know, Kennecott has hard rock. We have extremely hard rock. Ours is 600-700 megapascals in hardness, and there's variability in the bench, and we can tailor things, those products to our site. We're blasting near town also. We've expanded our reserves because we can now move closer to the town with our production blasts, effectively, cost-effectively. It probably added another 10 years to our mine life, which is a lot of money. And above everything else, almost improved safety. You know, the products are so consistent that it really improves the safety again, so we don't have to worry about it.
All of that comes about from being a customer-focused growth company, so I really appreciate that about Dyno. Today I'll discuss the successful collaborative relationship between Cleveland-Cliffs and Dyno, highlighting some of our key developments in our partnership and the benefits we've achieved together. Well, I know we've made significant blasting technology advancements in blasting techniques. Oh, I got to push a slide, I think. I think that's us, right? Am I missing one? Ah, there we go. There we were there. I wasn't paying attention. Come on, move! And we were. Oops. It is not going. There, now we're going forward. It was locked. Cleveland-Cliffs is a leading steel producer in the United States with recent expansions into Canada. I retired last year after a forty-four-year career as a senior mine engineer.
Not all of it as a senior mine engineer, in many different roles, but. And in that, it included 36 years with association with Dyno Nobel, starting with Ireco and Ensign-Bickford and everything else. And when you think about it, I kind of laugh. Sometimes I consider myself older than dirt, that I've been working with this stuff from some of the innovations you'll see, like in that book that they passed out. I can relate to the book that they passed out. And you know, I've really enjoyed my career with steel because it's indispensable in a commodity, an indispensable commodity, forming a backbone of our modern infrastructure, you know. Everyone loves gold, right? What do you do with gold? You buy steel, so you can build a building or have a car or some white goods.
So, without steel, many aspects of our modern society just wouldn't exist. Our partnership with Dyno Nobel has been pivotal in advancing our blasting techniques. Initially, we worked together to develop new explosive, specifically to address an NOx problem. When we're working with prills, the emulsion matrix, we call it grease, and the prills fight each other. One wants to go fast, one wants to go slow. It leads to inefficiencies, and you end up with nitrous oxide emission that goes off. It's kind of an orange cloud, very toxic. Well, we're surrounded by towns, so it was a great, great concern that we fought to work through, and Dyno introduced an XL 1000D straight emulsion. No more NOx, very efficient.
From there, we went into the Delta E stuff and the variable gassing, and that allowed us to then tailor the explosive to what the rock needed in the ground. The 1000D was a set density. You ordered it from the plant, and that's what you had. With the variable density, as they were showing in the other slides, you can adjust for the hardness in the ground, and that's where it improves your flyrock and your fragmentation and the rest of it. You know, none of that happened overnight, but was a result of multiple years of collaboration. And I think it's a testament to stability and growth. You know, Dyno's been there all along, and whenever we needed something, they were there to help us move forward.
Further innovations included the use of electronic detonators, such as DigiShot Plus, which significantly improved our control over blast vibrations. They helped us with signature hole analysis and other advanced predictive tools that would help us accurately predict what happened in the communities, you know, and people say, "Well, what do you care what happens in the community?" We're close to the community, and again, that's your permission to operate. When you have good vibration controls, you can now use more explosives within your blast to better do a better task for the mill, so to speak. When you don't have good controls, you have to drop the amount of explosives you're using, and it just makes things very costly.
It doesn't sound like much when we're working with the community like that or trying to lower these vibrations and dust and flyrock, but it's really important. It makes you a good neighbor. You know, contractors come in and do blasting for a road job or whatever else, then they're gone in six weeks. Our mine has been running since 1964, where we're at right now, you know, so that's... What do we got? Forty, sixty-odd years? I'm doing quick math in my head, probably shouldn't, but it's a long time, right? You want to be good to your neighbors. One of our notable achievements was the ability to tailor the emulsion density from the gassed emulsion on our rock hardness, a goal we achieved through the collaboration with Dyno Nobel and our drill supplier, Sandvik.
And what's really interesting on that story is Jeff Averitt, who's here somewhere. Do I see him? Oh, hiding way in the back by the door. Probably knew I was going to mention his name. Very talented programmer and technician for Dyno. He came to me a number of years ago in February and said: "Well, you know, we've done a lot of stuff and achieved a lot of stuff with Delta E." He said, "What would you like us to work on next?" And I said, "Well, I'm working with my drill manufacturers to identify the different rock hardness in the ground." And too many times with our hard rock benches, one hole is hard, one hole is soft.
You load up the soft hole too much. It blows rock and noise everywhere, so then the whole blast has to come down. Now, with drilling, when we can measure it, I can now load one hole heavier, one hole lighter, all by the drill data that comes back from the drill rig itself. He said, "Yeah, that sounds like a good project. I think we'd work on that." Two months... I told him, "It's going to be two years. I'm going to have all the-" because it goes slow. Nothing on these big equipment and dealing with other vendors goes fast. I said, "I think we'll be all set and ready in about two years for all this stuff." He came back in two months. He was ready to go.
I said, "Well, I'm not ready yet," but at the end of the days, we were able to make some adjustments, and adjustments, and work with some of the geologies we did understand, and then incorporate that in as Braden was showing in one of his slides, with the variable densities in the holes themselves. You know, by integrating GPS technology, refining our blasting techniques, we significantly reduced all of the environmental impacts of dust, vibration, and gases. We got no complaints in the community. We always had a few complaints every year. They went away. We didn't have any complaints in the community, and these complaints, we're blasting 1,000 feet away from the community. Not a house, but the whole community, and doing a production blast, so it's... It extended our reserves, which is really great.
So in conclusion, our partnership with Dyno Nobel has brought numerous long-term benefits, including enhanced stability, improved community relationships, and operational stability. By continuously innovating and collaborating, I mean, they're willing to change. When we need something adjusted, they're always asking: "What do you need next? What do you need next?" And when we ask for a change, they'll present a change. Maybe it doesn't work perfectly. Doesn't matter. We'll look at it, we'll revamp it a little bit, and I think that's one of their great testaments, is their ability to grow and adjust with new technology. You know, if you stay with what you're doing today, in five years, you're outdated. In two years, sometimes you're outdated.
You know, Dyno allows you to continually to grow and change, as we saw in that one slide, with all the changes every year that they're doing and products they're introducing. We've set new standards in the industry and shared our successes with our partner mines up there. Our story demonstrates the power of motivated people, and I will say that it takes motivated technical people in Dyno and motivated people in our end, and them, and them all communicating, and the transparent cooperation achieving result, remarkable progress. We basically grew, probably in the last 10, 15 years, from what I'd say, the Dark Ages of drilling and blasting, to a new science of drill to mill performance. It's just phenomenal, you know, and I'm not sure, Brendan, you, or Braden, you probably have autogenous mills in your circuits or not, for your plant, right?
Yeah, one of our mines up there is autogenous mills, and we see huge improvements by adjusting and tailoring the percentage of fragmentation of different groups within the, in the blast. And we can do that from our drill monitoring to the differential loading, going through the mill, and it can be a 25% improvement on a mill. That really controls the cost of your operation, so, so it's, it's really good. I, I can't emphasize enough of how good the collaboration has been, and that's what's made all the difference. Keeps, keeps our jobs fun and interesting. Oh, I think that was the end. I'll go back. So with that, I'll take any questions.
I didn't want to go into a lot of technical detail because, like, people can kind of glaze over, but if you have a technical question about what we did or what we achieved on things, you're welcome to ask on that.
I think we've got a panel for... Yeah.
We can do it then, too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mike, thank you. Appreciate it.
You bet.
Appreciate that. Yeah, Mike, appreciate the collaboration and, I'm gonna have to reflect on some of my new role in marketing. Why would we use names like Delta E when we have great names out there like Grease and Snot? We're gonna have to think about whether those are gonna be into our product suite. Our next guest, I'm happy to introduce, Nick Radovanovic, Operations Manager at White Rock Quarries. Nick has been instrumental in maintaining high standards in a very, very challenging environment. Today, he'll provide an overview of the operations at White Rock Quarries and the strategic partnership that drive their success. Let's give a warm welcome to Nick.
Thanks, Greg. Thank you. Good afternoon, and first off, I'd like to thank Dyno for giving myself and White Rock Quarries the opportunity to come here and speak with your investors, so. My name is Nick Radonovich. I'm the Operations Manager at White Rock Quarries. I want to kind of give you a brief overview, maybe a 30,000-foot view today, of the challenges and the partnerships with Dyno to maintain our high standards in a demanding regulatory environment that we have in South Florida, so. We are located in Miami-Dade, Florida. We were established in 1986, and we have approximately 5,000 acres that we're mining there. We have 18 different products that we simultaneously produce, and they're all approved by the FDOT, Florida Department of Transportation.
Our crushing capacity is right at about 6,000 tons per hour. We have two big aggregate plants that produce 3,200 tons per hour, and we have approximately five portable crushers for your road-based materials that produce the remaining to get us to the 6,000. Our aggregates are shipped two different ways, primarily by truck. We ship about 80- to 100-mile radius around the quarry, and then we have a rail facility that we ship material as far north as Daytona, Jacksonville, and Orlando areas. It's a very challenging environment that we're located in. To the west of us, we border the Everglades National Park. To the southwest of us, we border what's called the Miami-Dade Well Fields. That's where all the drinking water comes from for all of Miami-Dade.
We actually, part of our regulation is we had to place sampling wells around the whole entire perimeter of our property and internally. We have approximately 20 of those that are monitored monthly. There are different depths from 15 feet all the way down to 85 feet. To the east of us, and the north of us, and to the south of us, we are blasting within 1,500 feet of residential homes. To the east, we're blasting within 1,500 feet of big commercial properties, big storage warehouses. So move on to operational considerations. Like I said, we're blasting within 1,500 feet. Those homes to the north of us aren't little bitty homes. They're about $1 million to $2 million, so those people really want to protect their investment.
To mitigate some of those PPVs, we've actually had to reduce our hole counts to our blast counts to 10 holes to 100 holes. The state of Florida has put some regulations on us in Miami-Dade County that are probably the most stringent in the state and probably the country. We blast at 0.5 PPV. Other areas of the state are 2.0 PPV inches per second. So we monitor on a daily basis. We have 40 seismographs, as crazy as it may sound, around the whole entire perimeter of our property and internally. So we monitor and collect data for all of our future blasting. Dyno Consult, thank God that we have them, and thank God we have Dyno. Very, very smart guys, technologically advanced. So we take all those seismographs. They get sent that data for every single blast.
We shoot, believe it or not, two to three times minimum per day, up to 15 times per week. So you can only imagine how much effort that takes to take all of those seismographs and download it all and try to figure out what we're gonna do for the next shot. We're constantly shooting signature holes. We have a lot of property, that's five to six thousand acres that we have out there. So we're constantly shooting signature holes on that whole entire north area and on the east area, the right side of that, PowerPoint there. So the unique conditions that we're facing there is proximity to structures. We have unconsolidated formation. We have a lot of voids in our in our mineral deposit. We have sand deposits, and we have some hard rock areas.
So with all of our drilling and blasting, with Maine Drilling and Blasting here today, they data log all of our holes. Dyno Consult, Dyno comes back, and then we actually design how to load every single hole, if we deck it, if we don't deck it, where we're going to put the explosives, the density of the explosives, and that gives us the best opportunity to stay within the regulatory limits to point five. It's very, very hard. I'd like to thank Dyno and Dyno Consult for really helping us. We haven't broken outside of that point five limits, so... We've looked at some, a lot of unorthodox methods when it comes to drilling and blasting. Some people will say we're crazy, some people will say it's ingenious.
So around that whole entire east side of the property, Braden was very instrumental with John Silva. We came in, and we did a huge pre-split for that whole entire east side. We actually shot a prepackaged explosives, one-and-a-half-inch diameter. It reduced the PPVs, not by a whole bunch, but enough to keep us in compliance. So it was beneficial, very costly, but it was worth it to keep us going. We shoot multiple size holes on our property. We shoot a six-inch hole, a four-and-a-half-inch hole, a four-inch hole, and now we're actually testing on a three-and-a-half-inch hole so that we can move all the way to those northern boundaries and eastern boundaries. We've gone down to single row patterns, as crazy as that may sound, 10 holes to move us farther to the north.
The strategic partnership and the benefits, I think I pretty much hit on them all, but we can kind of hit them again. Proven reliability. We need reliability because and timeliness, efficiency. When you're shooting as many patterns as we are every single day and every single week, everybody has to be on the top of their game. But the most important thing that we receive from Dyno is the safety. We want everybody to come to the quarry with five fingers and five toes, or five fingers on each hand and five on each foot, and we want them to go home with the same amount. That's number one to us. The advanced technology, we're utilizing electronic detonators on the complete property, all the patterns that we do out there. It's a lot of detonators.
We put two in each hole just for safety and redundancy. We shoot anywhere from 1,800 holes to 2,400 holes per month. The Dyno Consult support, if it wasn't for them every day, downloading all that data and helping us work through every single blast pattern, we wouldn't be able to maintain these regulations. The tailored solutions and the future focus. So if you have any questions, I appreciate everything, and I want to thank Dyno and Dyno Consult for helping us on a daily basis. Thanks, Braden.
Yeah. Thanks, Nick. And I can tell you personally, while Nick is a very dear friend, there was a period of time in my life where I dreaded a call from him because I knew there was going to be quite a bit of work to do, but we did do some pretty amazing things there. It was a lot of fun. As we've discussed, Dyno Nobel's channel capabilities and joint ventures have been vital in delivering a competitive advantage in this market. Our targeted geographies, combined with a strong local presence and agility, have allowed us to effectively meet our customers' specific needs.
I want to stop here and talk about. Nick mentioned Dan, who I'm going to introduce you to in a moment, and his support in our drilling in Florida as a joint venture, supplying one of our customers in Florida with drilling services. You'll see that there's a complexity in these markets that we manage with these partners and how we can have that geographic separation. So Dan will explain a little more about his footprint later, but I wanted to call out that we really lean on our joint venture network for their expertise, and they help us in certain specific areas where we need them. By leveraging our distributor expertise and tailored solutions, we ensure that our technology and knowledge are seamlessly integrated into every project. Our partnership approach is central to how we deliver value, particularly through our joint ventures.
These partnerships allow us to expand our reach and enhance our service offerings, providing specialized assets and equipment that cater to the diverse needs of the construction and drilling sectors. To dive deeper into the benefits of our joint ventures, I'm pleased to introduce Dan Warner, President and CEO of Maine Drilling & Blasting. With a company legacy spanning fifty-eight years, MDNB has been at the forefront of drilling and blasting services. Dan will share how our collaboration has fueled growth and innovation across the industry. Let's hear from Dan. Thank you.
Thank you, Braden, and thank you for the opportunity to come here and speak a little bit about Maine Drilling and Blasting and what is a joint venture relationship. So to just profile, what is Maine Drilling and Blasting? We've been in business for 58 years, like Braden spoke about. We have 15 operating divisions, 12 internal support departments, and why that's important to kind of profile is the U.S. is a very fragmented market. So when you look at how we operate in New England or the Mid-Atlantic or the Southeast market, there's a lot of nuances, there's a lot of regulatory requirements, there's a lot of customer, you know, challenges that we have to work through. So we break that down into 15 operating divisions. The internal support departments are...
When we go to market and we try to deliver value to our customers, you know, we're taking drills to market, we're taking human assets to market, we're taking products to the market, and we're putting it all together, and we're delivering an end result to a customer. When we try to go to market to procure those resources needed to deliver what our customer expectations are, we don't always get the right quality, the right service, or reliability. Dyno is one of the suppliers that we partnered with over the years, where we get those attributes in our supplier relationship. We have nine regional offices, nine distribution facilities, more than 170 drills and 20 excavators, 165 operators and 95 blasters.
Why the operators and blasters don't always match the number of pieces of equipment, 'cause we have a lot of trainees in our system. We focus heavily on leadership development and cultivation of human resources to grow the business, but always deliver safe, reliable, and qualitative, you know, services to our customers. We have an accomplished risk and compliance department. We're heavy in the construction market, so you can imagine there's a lot of contract risk and a lot of complexities and scopes that we have to work through. Real-time integrated systems and teams, and currently, we're moving through an ERP conversion lay the foundation of information systems for the company going forward. We have in-house training and development programs.
This year, I'm happy to announce we're kicking off MDB University, which is an online suite with multiple trainers throughout our footprint that helps to make sure that we have the same reliable services that we take to our customers no matter where we operate. And then, we're strategically invested into the future with our leadership development programs. I was part of the inaugural class of our leadership development programs back in two thousand and four, and that was part of the transition and succession consideration for the company. This is just a profile of where we operate. Braden showed you where the JVs operate, and you can see a little bit different color coding here on this map.
The orange is a, I would say, a traditional JV platform, where, you know, we have the distribution rights, we do quarry, we do construction activities. When you look at the, the red, areas, that's where we partner with Dyno Nobel and their distribution network to go to market specific to construction. And then the blue area is opportunistic, construction work that we do with Dyno hand in hand. So we've been a, a joint venture relationship with Dyno since, twenty twelve, where, Dyno owns half the business, and then the other half is owned by the employees of the company. So we're an employee stock ownership program, and that has its, its own intricacies that we need to manage as well. The segments that we operate in is, commercial, transportation, residential, mine and quarry.
We have a regional presence in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and the Southeast, and we do quarry, construction, retail or resale business of Dyno Nobel products, and then we have a foundation services group that does supportive excavation for different customers. Just a profile of what we do as a full-service drilling and blasting provider. We're typically a subcontractor, but at times we are a general contractor. We are a all-in-one drilling and blasting provider. We don't typically drill for anyone besides ourselves. We like to maintain that quality control, but with Dyno Nobel, we drill for them in the Florida markets, as a strategic initiative to help both of us, you know, approach that market. We have on-site engineering teams, in-house technical services, extensive drilling and blasting training, remote access equipment.
We do a lot of unique projects. We're well suited to do very challenging, very resource-intensive projects, and we have the appropriate resources in place to do those things. 700 construction and quarry retail customers over the last 12 months. In 2023, our largest customer was only 4.4% of our revenue. I think that's an important position to understand. It's a very fragmented market in the U.S., and we diversify that risk from Dyno, where we go to market, and we provide the services to the customers with a very large customer base. And those customers, their demands are different in the different markets that we operate. And then, the top five customers are only 15 or 16% of our revenue.
Financial performance of MDNB, revenue growth from 2019 at $119, almost $120 million to $221 million, almost $222 million in 2023, with anticipation to go over the $230-$235 mark this year. Compounded annual growth rate of 16.6%. Some of the financial metrics that you guys, you know, would appreciate, return on equity of 24%, return on invested capital of 21.6%, and return on assets of 15.8%. Our business is very heavy capital intensive. It takes a lot of money to invest into the distribution networks. It takes a lot of money to invest into the drilling equipment, the training, development.
We go out every day, and we work safely at the highest quality that we can. Where we've been able to partner with Dyno Nobel is in that wholly owned market south of that orange section of the map, leveraging Dyno's distribution network, so we have the quality products, the reliability, and we can go out and deliver on customer expectations. What is the JV relationship? Risk mitigation, risk management. We are the end user. Maine Drilling and Blasting is the customer that actually goes out every day, and we deploy, you know, our drilling assets and the explosives to achieve a result every day. The benefit to Dyno in the joint venture relationship is real customer feedback, market diversity, four thousand customers.
85% of our customers are repeat business, which is something we're really proud of. Advanced technology, leveraging high-quality products. Dyno's been a great customer for us in the sense that there's always, whenever there's a challenge, they always have a technological solution that we can partner with and find out what the best path forward is, and then earnings. Earnings go beyond just the product sales through a service model. So Dyno participates in, you know, the equity position and the dividend position of Maine Drilling & Blasting. But at the end of the day, in the commercial relationship, there's obviously a benefit with the product sales. Just wanted to profile, you know, real quick, just high level, one of the projects that we've worked over here recently.
Greensboro, North Carolina, it was a 19-month duration project from April of 2022 to December of 2023, October of 2023. 1,800-acre lithium battery facility for Toyota. That size and scale, Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, is roughly 1,800 acres. Sydney Airport is 2,200 acres, so about 85% of that footprint was just this one site alone. There's not a lot of contractors that can go out and perform on a job like that with the liquidated damages, with the schedule demands, and then to do it safely as well. And this project was a lot of strict oversight, a lot of regulatory oversight.
North Carolina Department of Transportation actually oversaw the project as the owner's representative, and the project was so large that they actually split it up into two service providers on the job site. Initially started off with about a million yards of material for each contractor, but by the end of the project, we ended up shooting about two and a half million, and the other contractor didn't quite hit that million and had a lot of quality issues on there, and that's where I think the value with Dyno was, is they could spin up a distribution network. We had the right products at the right time to deliver on the customer expectations and, you know, through all the variable challenges on the project.
At the start of the job, we had eight drills, eight operators, three blasters. I think at one point we had 30-35 people on the job site. We were working seven days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, so a lot of fatigue, a lot of safety challenges on the job, but through a joint venture success, Dyno was able to ramp up their distribution assets and staff the project within two weeks. As a subcontractor, we typically don't get a lot of notice. We bid projects on the front end, we build backlogs, but then we're kind of beholden to when the owners start the work and they say, "Go," we have to mobilize the assets and get out there and go to work. We were able to secure all the necessary permits.
Dyno helped us with the on-site storage. They helped us with the increasing the production needs. And these one-off projects are large and opportunistic in nature, but as you can imagine, Dyno has built a... You know, they're forecasting how many caps they're gonna use, how many pounds of explosives they're gonna generate through the various sites that they operate. So when we ramp up the production needs to 20% in excess of what they forecasted, they were able to do that, which is a huge benefit to Maine Drilling & Blasting. And then I think that's it on that site. Then that's it. We're gonna do a panel later for any questions. Good. Appreciate it, man. Yeah.
That's, that's great. It's really nice to hear from our customers and our joint venture partners. As I said, it's one thing for me to say it, but it's completely another story to hear it from the people that we're servicing out there in the industry. So wrapping up here, I'd like to leave you with three key points that highlight Dyno Nobel Americas' strategy and vision for the future. First, we're proactively shifting our focus from declining thermal coal markets to high-growth sectors like metals and QMC, which now represent 80% of our revenue. Our well-established manufacturing and distribution footprint enables us to win across both the geography and mining sectors of North America, positioning us ahead of market trends and ready to capture significant growth opportunities.
Second, our advanced technologies, such as Delta E, Drill to Mill, DigiShot, CyberDet Wireless, they're driving significant value for our customers. More importantly, we have the expertise to apply this suite of technologies to deliver best-in-class outcomes tailored to our customers' specific optimum blasting requirements, and I think you can see from the customers that we shared with you today, there's a broad range of those outcomes that are required. By moving up the value chain from traditional products like AN to specialty solutions like emulsions and differential energy, we're enhancing blasting performance and creating more value both for our customers and shareholders. Finally, our strong partnerships with industry leaders like Rio Tinto, Cleveland-Cliffs, White Rock Quarries, and our joint ventures, including Maine Drilling and Blasting, are key to our success. These collaborations enable us to provide tailored, technology-driven solutions, expanding our market share and delivering strong returns for our shareholders.
We're not just responding to industry trends, we're shaping the future of explosives technology and its application in high-growth markets. Thank you, and now I'd like to turn it back to Jeff for an announcement.
Thanks.
Thanks, Braden. We are a little bit behind schedule, so rather than make you wait another half hour for lunch, we're gonna stop now. Then we'll have Greg come back and talk to you about DNAP, and then we'll have the Q&A session after lunch related to those business unit discussions. So lunch will be outside, where we've had the food previously. If I can ask that we get back in here to try and get us back sometime by 2:00 P.M.
...rather than 2:15 P.M. as the agenda says. So 2:00 P.M. back in here. Thank you!...
Sorry?
We're just gonna use-
Okay, if we can take our places, please, we'll get started in a sec.
Okay, I think we're ready to kick off. Thanks, everybody, for coming back on time, and thanks to Braden, and thanks so much to our special guests, to Brendan, Michael, Nick, and Dan for that really incredible insight into the mind of the customer. It really demonstrates the depth of the customer relationships we have here in North America, and we're so grateful to them for that. A quick story for those of you who've been following us for a while. You may remember back in 2020, DNAP announced a major new supply agreement with Fortescue Metals for their brand-new greenfield Iron Bridge operation. It was a magnetite operation, very, very hard ore.
In order to sort of, I guess, give Fortescue comfort that Delta E was the right product for their magnetite, we actually sent a delegation, including the mine manager from the Iron Bridge project, over to Michigan, where they met with Michael Indihar and his team, and they toured the Cliffs operations. As a result of that tour, very shortly after that tour, the Fortescue team came back to Australia just convinced that they knew that they had the right supplier with the right products and the right systems to blast their magnetite. Thank you again, Michael, for that. We owe you one for that. That was the first major Delta E contract in Australia, and you had a lot to do with it, Michael.
You heard it.
Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so look, and this week, tomorrow, when you do your investor tour of Dyno Nobel North America's assets, you're going to see some of our more strategic and enduring assets, but I think the impression you're gonna come away with after the two days is that there is no asset in our business anywhere that is more important than these types of customer relationships, and I know that firsthand because I actually did work in the DNA business back in 2017, immediately before I took up my role, my current role, leading the DNAP business, so it's an honor for me now to be transitioning back to America to take up a new appointment as president of the North American business from the first of October.
And my wife and I moved to our new home in Salt Lake City over the weekend, the weekend just gone. We're really excited to be living in Salt Lake City again, and I just can't wait to get to work and reacquaint myself with Michael and Dan and Nick and Brendan. And also reacquaint ourselves with our old neighbors because we're living in the same street. Before all of that, though, before North America, I have this one final opportunity to talk to you about DNAP. Now, the last time we were together talking about DNAP was in Sydney in 2022, and at that time, I laid out our strategic priorities and described the pathway we would take to return DNAP to record business unit earnings.
On that day in particular, we talked about, firstly, the fact that we were just about to enter into contract renewal discussions with a very large portion of our Australian customer base. We noted that with some optimism, because these discussions would be occurring against a backdrop of firming market conditions. Secondly, we described the need to undertake a suite of strategic projects at our flagship Moranbah plant to consolidate our strategic competitive advantage and drive an acceptable return on investment for you, our shareholders, from that billion-dollar facility. Thirdly, we discussed the need to automate and upgrade our Helidon electronic detonator plant to meet the continued strong demand growth, consolidate our product quality advantage, and maintain cost competitiveness. Finally, we discussed DNAP's role in integrating and incubating the newly acquired Titanobel business to create a platform for growth across Europe and Africa.
We've made fantastic progress on every single one of those objectives, and as we go through them in some more detail now, I do want to stress to you that despite this great progress, we are still a very long way from declaring victory in DNAP. We are working really hard to develop the next wave of growth opportunities because we believe DNAP still has significant upside potential in support of our overall growth ambition. Australia's Pilbara, Bowen Basin, and hard rock mining regions are some of the most attractive in the world. They're large, they're low cost, and they're growing, and our customers are rightly very demanding, and our success rests on our ability to continually deliver world-class safety, performance, security of supply, and practical innovation to help them meet their productivity and their sustainability goals.
As Mara said it this morning, we can only win when we create value for our customers. But our customers also understand that our unwavering delivery of these benefits requires us to make continued investment, and that is why we typically work on contract terms of between three and five years, sometimes longer. Our contract renewal cycle is perpetual. It's never finished. That said, the past two years has been a particularly heavy period in that cycle, where approximately 90% of our book was renegotiated. In May this year, we shared the news of our five-year extension with BMA at increased volumes, effective from July. BMA will continue to benefit from our market-leading DigiShot Plus detonators and our premium emulsion, including our Titan 9000 range, which helps mitigate post-blast fumes for safer blasting....
And now today, I'm absolutely thrilled to announce a five-year extension to our already decades-long relationship with Peabody across both Australia and in North America. The extension provides Peabody with domestic security of supply from our Moranbah and Cheyenne facilities. Peabody is one of the world's great mining companies, and we are very, very proud to extend our association with them. And while we're talking about long-term relationships with multinational customers, I want to share with you a message from another very important customer, Coronado Coal.
Coronado is one of the world's largest met coal producers. We have operations over in the U.S. and also here in Australia. We're a met coal asset, and when we talk about steel, steel starts here. We've had a relationship with Dyno since 2014. It's been a long-lasting relationship, and we've got further contracts locked in through to the end of 2028. For me, our journey with Dyno has been one of relentless support. A few years ago, this mine site still had non-electronic detonators. We've made a transition to electronic detonators, and it's been actually integral as our mine advances to critical infrastructure, where we need far better blast control around our vibration limits and impacts to other external factors in conjunction with the infrastructure. We've seen significant increases in our productivity.
When we look at our overarching load rates, we've increased in the order of 25-27%, which has been absolutely fantastic and beneficial for our operation. When considering who we want to partner with, as from a Coronado perspective and service provider, one of the key things that we look at is who has the right network connections, not just locally within Australia, but also from a global perspective. Dyno actually has a significant network in terms of suppliers and connections and expertise from a global perspective. We have had some circumstances on site where we've been able to leverage off that support network, which has been highly beneficial for Coronado Curragh. Safety is critical at any mine site.
The relationship with Dyno and alignment in terms of what are our safety principles, our care values that we have here at Coronado, is absolutely integral in executing the service. Pleasingly, I've had many presentations where Dyno has sat down and taken us through some of their safety initiatives, which is really about fundamentally engaging with their people, helping them to understand the journey that we're going on, and delivering the safety outcomes that we all need. The criticality of an effective and reliable supply chain is absolutely integral to any operation being able to maintain continuous operations. We've seen Dyno be able to flex up and down as required to meet Coronado's needs.
Our commercial teams work really hard to maintain these types of relationships and to ensure that our margins are protected from inflation and other uncontrollable cost drivers over the lives of these contracts. And also, that when it comes to renewing these contracts, we assess the prevailing market conditions before resetting pricing baselines. The financial outcome from this work has already started to show through. It will continue to build over the next several fiscal half years as these new prices come into effect. While raising prices is always a difficult conversation with our customers, on balance, they understand that their explosive supplier needs to make a level of return commensurate with the investments that we must make in order to guarantee safe and secure supply. This strong customer support allows us to continue to invest in our flagship Moranbah plant.
We've already spoken this morning about our AUD 20 million tertiary abatement investment, which was commissioned in March and is presently delivering ahead of its business case, both financially and in terms of the amount of carbon that we're abating. But there are a number of other strategic initiatives at Moranbah that I want to update you about. Firstly, I want to remind you about the long-term gas solution that we announced with Queensland Pacific Metals back in May of 2023. That agreement gives us supply continuity through to 2033, with options through to 2041. Crucially, the agreement gives us access to producer economics and insulates us from the volatile international gas commodity market. And as concern grows about the price and availability of gas for East Coast industrial users, the wisdom of this innovative agreement with QPM becomes more and more apparent.
The agreement allows for Dyno Nobel to work with customers and QPM to explore the use of waste mine gas in what is an extremely elegant example of the circular economy in action, and I really must acknowledge the outstanding work of our Chief Development and Sustainability Officer, Sunil Salhotra, who was the architect of this agreement. You'll hear more from Sunil later this afternoon. Another important project for us at Moranbah is to find a source of ammonia to replace the ammonia that we have historically imported to Moranbah from our Gibson Island facility prior to the closure of that facility last year. This imported ammonia allowed Moranbah to make an additional 40,000 tons of ammonium nitrate each year. I'm pleased to advise we've already found an opportunity to recover about half of this production via some minor debottlenecking of the Moranbah ammonia production plant.
This capacity will come online in two tranches, the first in 2025 and the second, the following year. And finally, and most importantly, despite all of these exciting projects, we remain absolutely committed to our core mission, which is to run that plant safely and reliably every day. Reliability at Moranbah has improved with every campaign, and I want to especially acknowledge the work of my colleague, Stephanie DeNicolo, and her operations excellence team in that regard. The plant continues to perform strongly, even in the final months, up until our next major turnaround, which commences in February. Next year is the twelfth year of operations at Moranbah, and therefore, next year's turnaround is scheduled at 56 days, which is quite a bit larger than our year four and our year eight programs. We will provide some more details on this in a future business update.
Turning to the west, Australia's West Coast is possibly the most technology-hungry segment we've got right across the group. You may recall our announcement last October that we've extended our agreement with Fortescue for a further five years, commencing in January twenty twenty-four. A significant feature of this new agreement is the implementation of a technology alliance, where we collaborate on a number of projects to decarbonize drilling and blasting operations as part of Fortescue's commitment to Real Zero. Fortescue have agreed to provide the following update for us.
Dyno Nobel has been Fortescue's explosive supplier since 2018, supplying explosive products, technology, and other services to our Pilbara mining operations. During this time, we've achieved a number of milestones, such as the introduction of DigiShot Plus 4G, an electronic initiating system that has enhanced timing accuracy for optimal energy distribution. We adopted DigiShot across our Pilbara sites using a train-the-trainer approach, which has enabled us to expand drill and blast patterns, delivering operational efficiencies by increased drill yield and bench turnover rate. We've also worked with Dyno Nobel on introducing an on-bench loading solution to maximize MPU effective utilization based on our daily loading requirements and pit locations. As part of a performance guarantee model, we've also adopted Delta emulsions and are continually working to optimize powder factors and operational costs below that of comparable solutions.
As we look to the future, at Fortescue, we're working rapidly to decarbonize, and as a key supplier, Dyno Nobel will be part of this journey as we work together to develop technologies that support our drill and blast work.
But our Western Australian business is not just about iron ore. We have a significant presence in the Kalgoorlie goldfields, supplying gold, copper, and other metals customers. Of course, you've already heard the great news this morning about how we're working with AngloGold Ashanti to export our successful Western Australian partnership to their other operations all over the world. And now I want you to hear from another of our very important Western Australian customers, Byrnecut Mining.
The Byrnecut Group has been using Dyno Nobel products for in excess of twenty years. We mine predominantly gold throughout the Goldfields region around Kalgoorlie, but we also have copper operations in WA and South Australia, and also a lithium operation in WA. So there's a range of different commodities that we mine, and Dyno Nobel either do or have the option to supply any number of those operations. The products range from everything under our supply only arrangement with from air phase, non-electric detonators, right through to a full MPU, where Dyno Nobel provide the people, the equipment, and the products at the site level. And in the middle of that, we also utilize a number of Dyno Nobel customer operator systems, so DynaMiner profile units.
The most important part of the Dyno Nobel supply arrangement is the personal management of our account and the ability to raise issues and work through them and have them rectified in a timely manner. We're a very dynamic-type business. We need to respond quickly to our clients' needs. But also at the supply side of things, with distribution in Kalgoorlie and the customer relations team based in Brisbane, we are able to respond to issues quickly, deal with them, and move forward. The quality of the products and the reliability of supply, maintaining safety level stocks in Kalgoorlie, all help ensure that the Byrnecut Group, and its clients, more importantly, have their products when they need them.
Okay, and interestingly, just like Anglo and Fortescue, Byrnecut also have significant interests in mining in West Africa. Our West Australian customers are generally very heavy users of our DigiShot Plus detonators, and their support is what's encouraged us to commit AUD 20 million to the automation of our Helidon plant, which Paul spoke about and Rob spoke about this morning. This has been a brilliant project for us, delivered under the approved capital budget and overachieving on our productivity assumptions, and therefore exceeding our business case. We've also been able to re-life some of the older modular equipment that was at Helidon previously and recommission it at our plant in Turkey, therefore, to accelerate the growth in our EMEA business.
We've already commissioned similar modular equipment in our DNAP business unit in Indonesia, and now that DNAP is no longer tasked with integrating and incubating EMEA, we're now turning our attention to using our mature Indonesian footprint as a base to grow more broadly across Southeast Asia. By way of wrapping up, I certainly hope you can share our excitement for the future of Dyno Nobel in the Asia Pacific. Our recontracting work is being delivered in a firming market. Our Moranbah facility is consolidating its position as one of the most valuable and sustainable AN facilities anywhere in the world. Our Western Australian metals customers continue to aggressively leverage from our technology pipeline, and our Titanobel acquisition is delivering strongly to its business case to become an integral part of our fledgling new growth business unit.
We're now at the end of the DNAP session, so I'm gonna hand over to Jeff, in a minute, to facilitate a Q&A. But as I do that, Jeff, I just wanna leave you with one last statistic from DNAP that I think underscores our genuine claims to becoming the world's leading explosives company. Two years ago, when we first acquired Titanobel, the recordable injury rate in that business was above five. Today, it's running at about one point six. In just two short years, we've reduced the injury rate in that business by two-thirds. We genuinely believe that we can help make the world's great mining and quarrying regions more productive, more sustainable, and above all, safer. Thanks, everybody. We'll go to the Q&A now.
Do you want me to stay here? Thank you. Do you need your mic?
I'll probably... Yes.
Thank you.
Oh, yeah.
Hi, it's Andrew Scott from Morgan Stanley. Question for Rob, going back to the technology presentation. Historically, we've heard a lot about technology at these days, and to be honest, probably struggled to see it sort of coming through in the numbers. Just interested in how you think about it in terms of, is it a vehicle to win volume and share, or is it something we should be expecting to see an individual return on? And if that's the case, well, can you talk to the systems you have to ensure that you do get paid for it?
Is that working? Yep. Yeah, good question. Look, I actually think about it both ways. I think it is part of the bundle, and you're successful across the whole bundle if you've got the things that drive value for your customers. And I think some of the product lines very clearly, like the electronics, chart I showed you early in the presentation, have clear positive returns on the investment we make in developing them. So I think for sure, you do both things with your technology.
And Braden, if I could just ask you, can you talk to the current mix of manufactured versus third-party tons? I might ask that first, and then I've got a quick follow-up.
Yeah, are you talking about for AN in the North American market?
Yeah, correct.
Yeah, our strategy for a long time has been to oversell the capacity, and we generally target being oversold by 10% or 15%. That's typically where we sit.
Thanks. And then just on that manufacturing side, so it's been the case in North America for a long time, you can make really good money making ammonia. You've got cheap gas here. You make good money downstream, but the converting ammonia to AN has not particularly been profitable for a long period of time. Is there anything in your hands there, or are you just at the mercy of oversupply in the fertilizer market and that conversion margin there?
That's a great question. Look, there's a lot of what I would say is a complexity in the North American AN market and the nitrogen market. A lot of different alternatives that you spoke about, some of the agricultural markets. But what is in our hands is the ability to run our plants efficiently and safely, and to make sure that we've got an effective cost position on those plants. So we're able to manage that. And as far as profitability, that's where, in my view, it sort of plays on from Rob's answer about technology. Being able to deliver value to the customers allows you to leverage those cost positions in your ammonium nitrate production to actually deliver value to not only the customer, but to Dyno Nobel and its shareholders.
Hi there, folks. Reinhardt van der Walt from Bank of America, over here. Maybe, Braden, just on sticking on that theme of the nitric acid capacity, is it fair to say that some of your plants maybe have enough flexibility for you to actually close a few nitric acid plants? Do you think you could actually shut some capacity and still maintain a level of efficiency that makes you cost competitive?
... Well, certainly also a good question, and, I would say, from a nitric acid capacity standpoint, again, you know, if we're looking at finding demand that exceeds our capacity, right now, we're oversold. So if I were to tell you today that I wanted to take off nitric acid capacity, that's not what I would be looking to do. However, you can look at that suite of plants, and you can look at what you're doing with those nitrogen molecules, and there is flexibility in those plants and what you can and cannot do with those.
So, while I would say we're constantly evaluating what's the best situation and looking at what's the best use of that nitrogen molecule as we make it through the ammonia process, currently, the configuration for nitric acid, converting it to ammonium nitrate is what we'd want to do.
Got it. Understood. And Greg, maybe a question for yourself on your Australian ammonium nitrate supply-demand modeling. You've obviously got a decent amount of growth still over the next couple of years, but some of the guidance that we've gotten from the coal miners has been a bit lackluster, at least for ROM production. Maybe firstly, what are you actually hearing from your mining customers around volume outlooks? And then second, is ROM production really a concern if you are actually seeing an increase in overburden removal? So maybe a comment towards the actual AN material moved.
Yeah, thanks, Reinhardt. You will have seen that the way we've modeled demand, it's not really smooth, is it? It's the, you know, this. It's not a smooth curve. So we take a sort of a top-down and a bottom-up approach when we do our demand modeling. So we look at, you know, over the past couple of years, particularly in coal, there's been some new operations coming online, your Carmichael and Olive Downs and a few others, so we model the impact of those from the bottom up. And obviously, you know, being a very large player in Queensland, we've got really good first-hand information from our customers about what they're expecting. You know, they give us good faith, fairly long-range forecasts to help us with our planning.
I think, but your observation about ROM versus overburden, I think, yes, overburden is the better measure for us. And the other, the top-down view that we take is generally it's Wood Mackenzie. That's our normal sort of benchmark for top-down. And, we see reasonable growth in metallurgical coal through to at least 2030, and, we don't see a decline after that. We see sort of a leveling out and a slowing of the growth.
Hi, guys, James Wilson from Jarden Australia here, over in the corner. Just maybe by way of follow-up to Reinhardt's question about your AN supply-demand modeling. On the supply side, looks like you've got AN supply sort of steadily decreasing to 2030. I'm just wondering what the balance in your modeling is between sort of capacity additions that we know are coming online at Kwinana and de-bottlenecking, as well as rising imports again into Australia. Where is the decrease being driven by?
Yeah, we typically don't model imports as capacity. We typically model them as a balancing item. That's probably a simplifying assumption, but that's typically how we do it. There's Moranbah has had a decrease in effective capacity due to the fact that, you know, we've been unable to secure the imported ammonia from Gibson Island, which I talked about. There's another plant on the East Coast that has a similar issue. And the plants, particularly on the East Coast, they're getting older, and the turnarounds are getting a little longer and a little more meaningful, so we try to model those in as well.
And the West Coast, yes, I think you've probably accurately got the West Coast supply there.
Right. So that decrease is primarily being driven by you and your major competitor on the East Coast then, with the West Coast increase.
The joint venture, and our joint venture company as well. Yep.
And just secondly, on LatAm, I noticed that you guys mentioned that you were targeting regions where, you know, there are traded tons of AN as opposed to local manufacturing capacity, aka probably not Chile then. Given that your initiating systems plant is in Chile, and Orica obviously have acquired Exsa in Peru, where is the most logical place for you to actually expand your footprint within LatAm?
I'll have a go. Yeah, look, I think it really depends on the accounts that we, you know, we get into. The nice thing about the approach that you saw that I presented in the technology, actually in both the technology and the growth presentation, is that it's relatively low capital. It's able to be moved very quickly to locate those facilities where you need them. So there are some real logical areas that do make sense, and I don't want to call them out too much. There are also, because of our approach, we think we can do it very rapidly in a flexible way to meet the needs.
Brooa Campbell-Crawford-
Yeah.
From Barrenjoey. Just a question over here. Can you talk to your margin aspirations in LatAm and EMEA? I know you've given a dollar number of EBIT, but keen just to understand what you're assuming there for margins. I guess as a reference point, we can all see what Orica achieves out of those regions, which is sort of 5-6% EBIT margin.
Yeah, I don't know that I'll answer it too directly, but you are talking about trade AN in tons, so you're immediately talking about something that's not a manufacturing margin on your AN component. When you come to the rest of it, of course, that's going to be the sort of same margin aspiration that we have with those products anywhere in the world.
Just a second question. You talked about some of the hurdles to electronic detonator adoption, sort of-
Mm
Have been cleared now, which sort of sounds like quite exciting growth prospects going forward. Can you just talk about what those hurdles were, how you managed to sort of clear them, and what sort of growth we should be expecting?
Yeah, absolutely. So, probably first and foremost, when you deal with detonators, one of the biggest issues you face is the robustness of the leads as you put them into the ground. So let's not talk about wireless. Wireless is a different issue, and it deals with a different cost position. But if you're comparing a non-electric detonator to a electronic detonator, you're talking about shock tube, which is very robust. You can put it down the hole, people can throw stemming on it, do all sorts of stuff to it, and it just handles the conditions. When you move to electronics, you've now got a wired circuit running around on... You've seen those blasts going off on the videos.
Getting, let's call it, the robustness of that wire so that you don't get the number of lost holes or damaged leads in a blast is absolutely critical. And when we brought out our third generation units, they were good. They worked really well in environments that were not too bad, but the minute you got into more difficult conditions, you just had too high a number of lost holes. And that's like a hurdle you've got to get over. If you're losing one in you know a hundred thousand, that's too many. Customers won't accept that. If you're losing one in a million or one in five million, now you don't have those troubles. So that's what I'm talking about.
When we brought out what we call our mba wire, it's a really high, heavy-duty wire, handles those conditions very well, and all of a sudden, you just saw volume take off 'cause you could solve those problems.
Okay. Thank you, guys. That's it for the Q&A. What we're now going to move towards is a panel discussion with our customers and our joint venture partner. So if we can bring those guys up onto the stage now. You need to grab the microphones. As we're doing that, we do have a couple of videos from some of our French customers, part of our Titanobel business, that we can show you, also talking about how they get value from our relationships.
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Should we do the next session in French? So again, you'll hear from me again for another few minutes, but I promise I will say as little as I can and let those gentlemen talk about their businesses and the business we do together. So let me start with one that I think is in the mind of many of the people that I interacted today. There is here a real compelling case for technology and what I would call upscaling the product uptake from the basic commoditized product to the more sophisticated, pricier product choices.
But at the same time, you know, it's proven in so many of the cases that you've shared, and even Braden's earlier was very generous with his time to show how much value is driving for their business. How do you see that in your own businesses? Maybe, Dan, you can comment on your customers. How much that price sensitivity plays a role in product choice, and how much people are driving value? Maybe Michael, if I start with you, then Nick, and then, Dan, you can talk from almost your perspective as a customer and as well as a supplier of some of our direct customers in construction.
I think the part of price, basically, we're looking for a fair price. You know, it's not always a low price, although, you know, price in our businesses, we're there to make money. It's very important. But, you know, you learn early on that the overall service and the forest for the trees is the overall cost picture of what you're doing. And so when you have better flyrock control through the electronic detonators, which are considerably more pricey than the pyrotechnic ones, but you have better flyrock control, so you don't have to move equipment out of the way, so your shutdown duration is a lot less. You don't have flyrock and noise, and dust going out in the community.
You can now blast closer to the community, and you can increase your reserves that you have in there when we mine in our own town. You have stability. With the older systems, there was a lot of variability, so you didn't have stability or consistent performance. Now, it's all repeatable. So when you go into a new area or a site, you know what, you know exactly what's going to happen every time. There is no variation in the performance as long as you're following, you know, some rules. So price is definitely important, but it isn't the overriding consideration.
Thanks, Michael.
Now, price is very important, especially in the rock quarry business, or a big volume, you know, low commodity product. I think as long as you keep us competitive, obviously, we're willing to spend the money for the technology, like we did, well, like I spoke earlier about, we use 100% electronic detonators just because of the proximity of all the homes around us, commercial, residential areas. Even in our non-critical areas, we're using the non-electric or the electronics. So as long as you keep us competitive with the best technology, efficiency, we're willing to spend the money for that.
Yeah, I would just echo what you said. Maine Drilling and Blasting prides itself on being a value provider in the markets. It's a very competitive market in the US, and there's different nuances, whether it's in the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, or the Southeast markets. And what we will always do is pay for value. And as long as Dyno brings the value as a customer, we will always pay what is required, but with the caveat that we have to be competitive. You know, if we don't get the work because we're too cost ineffective, then we can't do the work, we can't take the products there. But what I would say with Maine Drilling and Blasting is we take the products that Dyno provides into a variety of different applications.
We do very small technical-type projects and very large-scale production-based operations, and Dyno's suite of products helps us to go into those different markets and attack those jobs, ultimately being successful. But again, price is key to us being competitive.
Great. I didn't expect anything different, but it's good to know that, how you're thinking about keeping you competitive, but at the same time recognizing value for the products. Thank you for that. Now, we pride ourselves to talk about practical innovation, and I think one point of differentiation that I like to believe our company have, is we're very driven in what we develop innovations. Not like we developed a new iPad and then we figure out whether customers will want the keyboard or not. We're trying to really do things that we believe will better serve the industry. So maybe starting with you, Nick, how much input and how much you get from either Dyno Consulting or through your engagement with Dyno in general?
How much do you think you have input in what we do in terms of the next generation products?
Yeah, I mean, I think you guys have a big say in what you guys are trying to produce the next best blasting caps. Our big thing in Miami, once again, with Dyno Consult, they are the leaders for us to make sure that we're staying within our regulations, and you guys have the correct people in those positions with Dyno Consult that really make us feel secure, you know, going forward, you know, with our mine out.
Sure. Our expectation is to continue to grow and advance what we're doing-
Mm.
every year. If you're not improving, you're falling behind. And as we all talk about price and, and stuff, we're in a competitive market in the steel industry, and we have to be low cost, and so we want to continue to innovate, to basically stay ahead. And I think the Dyno team has been so good to listen and find out what ideas we have that we need to improve on, and then bring forward new tools, new software, help us work through the problems with them, and show us how we can make our improvements that we need. And sometimes they make improvements that satisfy where we're at, and sometimes the improvements come in that are well above than what we expected, and they help us leapfrog forward.
So, it's, you know, that's a big part of it for us is the continued growth.
Yeah, I think innovation is key for both of our successes. And I think one of the, you know, the benefits of having a joint venture relationship, Maine Drilling & Blasting uses. I think I profiled it in my presentation, 1.8 million detonators and 85 million pounds annually. It's a lot of volume to move through. And if Dyno is always innovating, we can give you real-time feedback of whether it is or is not a benefit to us and what the value components are of the products that you provide.
But one of the things that I would say is has been a benefit to Maine Drilling and that we didn't have historically before the joint venture relationship was is a partner that's always innovating, and, and that's something that we find a lot of value in.
Excellent. So I'll start. I'll stay in the theme of JVs more generally, and invite the gentlemen to comment as well. Maybe start with you, Dan. We like to believe that our distribution model in the U.S. is quite unique and part of our competitive advantage, something that's very difficult to replicate. Not because it gives us a level of capillarity that is remarkable, but also because it gives us a finger in the pulse of the markets, of the different technologies and the agency with drilling, obviously, with the. I was surprised to learn when we first met, that you very proudly said that you were the biggest global customer of An prill on an annualized basis. So maybe you want to comment more on that.
But, but before going there, how do you see, maybe if you could describe to our investors the range... I, I still remember our very first conversation, we were talking, we're building a pool, and so what? And a, a swimming pool. So coming from some of the biggest mining mines in the world, to be involved in projects that are as small as potentially building a pool and all the range of customers that you guys... So if you could talk more about the JV model and how you think that brings value to Dyno in terms of our ability to serve different markets.
I think it goes back to what is the United States market, and the U.S. market is very fragmented in nature. The geologies, the regulatory requirements in every state we operate, there's a lot of variability that we have to deal with. And I think the benefit for us and Dyno is that we have intimacy with that market. We understand what all the rules and regulations are, what the customer demands are, and I think we can give feedback to Dyno of what is happening in the market. We, you know, we often collaborate, we talk about, you know, what we see in the market, what we're seeing for activity and backlogs and what we're seeing for trends in the market.
I think giving real-time feedback of what is actually happening in a very fragmented market. I think that's a real benefit to Dyno, and what I've seen is Dyno taking that feedback and taking that into the product applications and changing as needed to shift to whatever the market demands are going to be.
Right. Do you gents want to comment anything on the JV model to the extent you're involved with that?
... Yep, with Maine Drilling & Blasting, I mean, since they've come on board with us, we're very confident that we're gonna get the holes that we demand. Like I said earlier, we're shooting anywhere from 18-2400 holes per month. We always know that the holes are gonna be there, and we're gonna be supplied the emulsions and the blasting caps to set the shots off.
Yeah, and that was a quite innovative model because that was originally a hole-only market, but we've been very flexible, I think, under Braden's leadership to think about partnering much more broadly than just thinking about the geography and how we cut the country and how we think the country. I think our presentation was pretty good on that. If I could put you a bit in future mode, and I know that's what you do, as a BAU, thinking about the future in our own businesses. But if I could drive you to the technology, how do you see if you have to fast-forward our industry five or ten years from here?
What are the new products, the new systems, the new inventions that you think we should be busy trying to figure out? Anyone that wants to start.
From our standpoint, just going back into the wireless systems, so if somebody's not walking on the ground, one of the big safety conditions that we face in a mining environment, it's very rough. You know, and we always talk about slip, trip, slips and falls and, you know, for incident rates. So if the less time you have to go back to that hole to do something, you know, the better off you are. So if you load the hole and put the detonators in there, and you can walk away and not have to go back, you know, it's a good safety thing.
Yeah
... for all of us. And then expanding the drill to mill thing is so critical because, yes, explosives are expensive, the detonators are expensive, but the overall milling process of a mine is huge.
Yeah.
That's where really the money lies. So we can always afford to spend money in one area and probably save five times that amount somewhere else, maybe ten times that amount somewhere else.
So-
We're talking about-
So the-
... hundreds of millions of dollars a year operation.
Sorry to interrupt you. To the extent it's not commercial, so if it is commercially sensitive, I absolutely get. What proportion, roughly, of the overall cost of mining for, not necessarily for Cliffs, but if you think about an iron ore mine, what proportion of your cost goes in drill and blast in proportion to your milling? Can you give us a range of roughly?
Your milling of, say, one of the operations might be. I would say 75, no, $100 million a year.
Yeah.
The explosives we purchase would be eight.
Okay, so ten times the va-
Yes.
Yeah. Okay. So it gives you some more, if you think about value, it gives you some latitude-
Mm-hmm
... to play with different options-
Mm-hmm
... to get the ultimate outcome.
If you can save one or two %-
Yeah
... it's a huge, huge value.
Is it the difference for quarry?
In the quarry operation, I was just running the numbers, we're about five times on the crushing side versus one for the blasting.
Okay. And you add on top of that precision, right? Because you cannot afford to blast into one of those $2 million houses you were explaining to us, right? It would be a bit of an expensive exercise.
It would be a very expensive exercise.
In terms of our, and I appreciate that I'm going totally off script because I felt that you answered all the questions in your presentation, so, we're going a bit improvising here, but I really like where the conversation is going. When you think about the people in the business, and if you think about the shot firers and how comfortable they are with the product. So what do you get from the people using the product in terms of using, because many times you have shot firers, they're going from operation to operation to operation, and they eventually get to use all sorts of products. So how do you feel that, you know, how comfortable the shot firers, in the end, the people using the product, are with the products we do?
Yeah, so from a main drilling and blasting standpoint, I would say we've done a good job of every time there's been an advancement or a technology change, coming together as partners and implementing, training, and developing our people so they understand what the risks are with what they're working in and around. So I would say we've done a very good job of training and developing, but the skilled workforce is not what it historically had been. So that's why we've invested pretty heavily in an MD&B university, so that way we could make sure we have the appropriate training development in place for our teams.
Dyno's done a very good job of supporting us and getting all the right tools and materials, so our people can be operating safely out there.
Dyno comes out multiple times a year, minimum of twice a year, and actually trains all of our supervisors and a lot of our field personnel just about blasting practices, being on the bench when we're working on there, bringing stemming material, berming the shots. Dyno has taken that level of safety to the next level for us.
Yeah, I think I agree that, you know, Dyno's really good about holding training seminars periodically during the year where we can bring in some of our new employees, along with the other employees again. And, you know, you go through training once and you pick up a lot of stuff, but there's things you miss. And so having repetitive training and follow-ups, I think is really good that you're there to make sure we're using the tools correctly and safely and with a full understanding, 'cause, you know, inherently, dealing with explosives is a hazardous activity. So you wanna make sure your team knows how they're applying it.
Mm.
Then you don't get unexpected surprises.
Yeah.
It's a good thing.
On that theme of safety, we heard from Russ earlier today, one thing that we're really proud, and we have a bit of an Alfred Nobel Medal that we give to people. You would have seen one of those from time to time, and it's really about behaviors, how our teams behave at site, especially on your sites, to make sure that they're doing the right thing. And even more so when we're not, you know, privileged to have people like you that are conscious and doing the right thing.
Sometimes you end up to a bit of a cowboy site, where people are not doing the right thing, and we are, we are not only encouraging our people to do the right thing, but, you know, giving them recognition for doing so, even if it's to have a difficult conversations with, with, with the customers. How much of that is important in your decision-making in terms of that safety co...? First, you see that behavior, hope, but, you know, assuming that you see that behavior, how much it's important for your operation to have our people behaving like that?
Whenever we're looking for a contractor, that's number one. I think I said that in my little speech today. I mean, safety is paramount. Safety is number one for us, and then we start talking about reliability, efficiencies, and prices after that. So if a company isn't gonna act safe on our mine site, they don't belong there, and like I said, we appreciate everything Dyno does on the safety side. They're always doing all the training for our people, for their people, and they're very receptive to our, you know, safety procedures.
Yeah, from a Maine drilling and blasting perspective, contractually, when we go on to construction projects, there's a lot of requirements for us to perform and adhere to certain safety numbers. And then, as an employee-owned company, the other half of the company being an employee stock ownership program, safety is key and paramount to our success. So all of our suppliers, we have those same expectations. That was one of the challenges early on when we started to partner in the joint venture model, in the coal markets. Was is Dyno gonna come to our sites, and are they gonna put us at risk? And what I found is, whenever there's been an issue, we address it, leadership addresses it, we reconcile, we rectify it, and we move forward.
So safety has been key to our success, together as a partnership, but then, when we go put our name on the line with our customers, Dyno reinforces all the same expectations and safety standards that we have.
Yeah, I agree. You know, people make mistakes.
Mm.
We're human, right? And whenever that occurs, I feel really comfortable that Dyno addresses it in a right way. Many times there's maybe a misunderstanding or confusion or something like that, and, you know, we don't, you know, come down hard on an individual employee, but we'll go about it and talk about it and rectify the situation that... They're very few. I think Dyno trains their employees really well, and, you know, we at our operations don't really consider safety a top priority. It's a way of life. We don't like calling it a priority, 'cause people change priorities on how things go, but it's kinda like getting dressed in the morning. It's just something that's always there, and you always do, and there are no shortcuts. And I think Dyno has that same philosophy.
Has modified trucks and equipment, so people can get up on top of them when they check things with railings and tie-offs, and has really responded to any issues that were out there very well, and we expect that, require it.
Excellent. Look, I think that I'm getting the looks. I think it's a great way to finish such an important session. I should say, Dan, Mike, or Nick, it's such a privilege to have the relationship, the trust, the honesty, the robust conversation. I think to Braden's point earlier today, we don't need to agree on everything, but having the space to have a conversation, to build growth together is really a privilege for us in Dyno Nobel. And I know on behalf of the, of our investors, our board, and, and the executive team who are here presented, a big thank you for your generosity with your time and being so gracious in answering all those questions. So can you join me thanking those gentlemen?
Do your investors have any questions?
Um-
Do they have any questions?
Do you have any questions? I'm getting the looks from Jeff. Jeff-
I know we can maybe do it short-
But yes.
... but I don't know, sometimes it's surprising-
Do we have a question from the floor?
what they're thinking about, but...
How good am I as an interviewer? I try to represent you, so-
It's your chance to quiz the engineer.
Yes.
But that's fine.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you. All right, we're gonna have Steph DeNicolo come up shortly. She's gonna talk to you about manufacturing excellence or operational excellence, I should say. Just as we do that, there's another video we'd like to play for you.
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... Good afternoon, everyone. It's just so wonderful to hear, for someone who's more internally focused sometimes, how important safety and production and productivity is important to our customers. It's just been such a great experience to be involved today. Good afternoon. My name's Stephanie DeNicolo, and I'm the Chief Health, Safety, Environment, and Operations Excellence Officer of what I'm gonna call from now on HSEOE for short, 'cause otherwise it's a very big mouthful. I've been passionate about operations for over thirty years, and it's exciting to be presenting to the investor community for the first time. I want to share with you our progress on the journey towards operations excellence. I'm gonna start with outlining the importance we place on safety and operations in our business, and as you've heard today, in short, it's absolutely critical to what we do.
Over 70% of our global workforce, that's over 3,500 people, are each day working in our operations to make our products and deliver to our customers. Our ability to harness and build the capability of our people can differentiate us in our markets. The HSEOE function was established in 2022 when the accountability of our manufacturing assets transitioned to the business units. We really saw an opportunity to better support the business units to deliver safe, reliable, and cost-effective operations. And as we've developed and deployed the function, we've stayed very focused on the standards and technologies that build the capability of our people to deliver industry-leading safety and asset performance. A robust function working in partnership with our business units will ultimately benefit our customers with a reliable supply chain of quality products and services that enhance their safety and productivity outcomes.
We know that safe and efficient operations across our full supply chain will lead to increased profitability, reduced business risk, increased customer value, and enable sustainability and our global growth journey. Of course, a key plank to getting performance right is getting the culture right, and I'm not satisfied with the inconsistent performance across our facilities over the last five years. It has impacted our earnings, our sustainability spend, and our overall risk profile. We know this, and we're addressing it. This slide gives us an overview of how we're moving from a reactive to a proactive culture. And over the last two years, group and regional employees with operational and technical knowledge have supported asset managers of Waggaman, Louisiana, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and our Phosphate Hill fertilizer plant in Queensland. This task force approach has stabilized asset performance.
We're very proud of the work that the Dyno Nobel Americas team has done to deliver a significant uplift of performance at Waggaman Ammonia Plant, achieving a benchmark reliability performance of over 97% before the sale of the plant to CF Industries. I'm also pleased to say that the turnaround campaigns have now been completed across all of our manufacturing assets, where we took the opportunity to address key vulnerabilities and known plant issues. It is very important to me, from being an asset manager myself, quite some time ago now, that asset managers are empowered to take decisions to balance both short- and long-term asset objectives, while still pursuing stretch performance year-on-year. A key plank to empower them has really been to set realistic production targets of a P50 outcome, the medium expected production level under normal conditions.
In the past, our production targets were much more optimistic, where there may have been only a 10% or 20% chance of production meeting target. We want our people to be stretched, but it must also be meaningful to be motivating. We've also focused our attention on ensuring critical leadership and technical roles are filled, and that sites have operating discipline to their focused improvement plans. But ultimately, it's the organization-wide paradigm shift from reactive to proactive approach that will strengthen, focus, and deliver consistent outcomes across our operations. Moving to this year, we engaged DuPont Sustainable Solutions to perform a review against their industry-leading operations excellence framework, using assets in both Australia and North America.
The outcome of the review has been to refresh our operations excellence priorities and a number of initiatives that have been included in the transformation project for AN manufacturing. They've framed our operating model changes, including our ways of working, and have supported continuation of key initiatives already underway, which include the development of longer-term capital plans for our high sustenance spend assets and implementation of fit-for-purpose operations excellence standards. Let me bring our achievements to life with a few examples. This year, we've seen success coming from the delivery of our task force approach, with our explosives business improving the reliability performance at Cheyenne in Wyoming and at Moranbah in Queensland. In 2023, the execution of Cheyenne's turnaround has reset the ammonia plant's performance to exceed historic norms, and the team is achieving higher-than-expected reliability outcomes.
Importantly, this improvement has delivered more available ammonia, reducing our dependency on externally produced ammonia, equivalent to around AUD 6 million cost reduction. As we turn to Moranbah plant, I'm really pleased with the continued improvement the team has achieved year-on-year. We're now achieving industry-leading reliability performance. Compared to 2020, Moranbah has significantly reduced plant losses, which is equivalent to maintaining around a AUD 5 million increased margin year-on-year. The Moranbah team are now looking ahead to 2025 to complete a successful turnaround, as Greg showed us earlier today, and continue to leverage operations technologies and data analytics to drive efficiency and get the benefit from applying industry-leading solutions. Over the past two years, we've deployed a real-time data management and analysis software platform that has enhanced plant diagnostics and performance monitoring capabilities.
This has directly contributed to reliability improvements achieved in Moranbah, including the root cause analysis of equipment issues, which have historically limited plant production. On Phosphate Hill Fertilizer Plant, the ammonia plant performance is now stabilized. The emphasis here has been to engage original equipment manufacturers and our company discipline engineers to proactively identify vulnerabilities in our manufacturing processes and the equipment through technical reviews and reliability modeling. You'll see there've been really positive outcomes here. By addressing key vulnerabilities in our critical rotating equipment, such as the main air compressor and syngas compressors, ammonia plant average days online has increased from 20 in financial year 2023 to over 80 in 2024. This increases ammonia production with an opportunity equivalent to around AUD 30 million of ammonium phosphate production.
Achieving these improvements, combined with the team culture and focus, gives us increased levels of confidence for achieving financial year 2025 performance targets. A great example of initiative we've undertaken in the manufacturing space that is delivering on our operations excellence ambition is an automation project we've just commissioned at our initiating systems plant in Helidon, Queensland. This video outlines the project and the benefits it's delivering.
This machine represents the most significant change we've seen at Helidon since the site was established in 1988. We operate in a very competitive environment, and this gives us significantly increased capability to produce our DigiShot Plus range for our customers. Dyno Nobel has operated at Helidon here for very close to 40 years. So the people in the Lockyer Valley and surrounds are really part of our fabric, and we're part of their fabric, and we employ generations at this site. So we've got a responsibility, I think, in keeping this going, and so this is about set up for the future. So what will happen with our traditional employee base is they'll get exposed to different technologies, broadening their capability, and it's also bringing different types of roles to the site.
The harness assembly machine takes in bulk raw materials and organizes them into harnesses. A harness is the wire that supports a detonator as it goes on its journey from the top of the hole down to where it will explode at the mine site. The machine does multiple quality checks, including dimensional checks and functional testing of the electronic detonator prior to sending it off site. We have less raw material movements. We have improved ergonomic design throughout the machine. It's built to modern standards, so that means guarding and all those sorts of things that are engineered are safer. The benefit to the Dyno customer will be higher quality harnesses, as well as more secure supply. So the advantage of having the harness assembly machine on-site and directly connected to the EDAM has flow-on effects for the soldering quality as well.
EDAM stands for Electronic Detonator Assembling Machine. The electronic detonator assembling machine takes harnesses from the HAM and adds the electronic components and the explosive components to complete a detonator. The machine is capable of doing the processes we do in manual assembly, however, it also does it with a greater degree of quality assurance. The EDAM machine removes the operator from the most dangerous part of the process and overall improves the safe handling of explosive components. The benefits of EDAM are improved safety of our operators, improved quality assurance of our product, and improved surety of supply for our customers.
We'll have higher quality now with the harnesses, and we're making them closer to where we're going to supply them to. I'm really excited to be part of a manufacturing future in Australia.
I was lucky enough to see the HAM and EDAM in operation last week, and it was so fantastic to see, one, the team really proud of their new baby, as well as just the impact that it's having, on the site and I guess the board of the broader community as well. What I really love about that video is it not only shows how we've significantly improved the safety, quality, and efficiency of our operations, but it shows how integrated we are with the community. Now moving forward, our goal is to continuously improve our operations and achieve safe, inclusive, and high-performance culture. Our key, key enabler is our management operation system, or what is commonly called in industry the MOS.
Our MOS will be linked to our brand and our heritage, and embed our ways of working, and define the practices which will support the behaviors that enhance our culture. Alfred Nobel's way of working was a blend of relentless innovation and continuous improvement, operating disciplines to strategic business practices, a deep commitment to the safety of people in the construction and mining industry, and his broader contributions to society. Our management operating system will continue to emulate Alfred Nobel's principles. It will connect our people and activities to our purpose, ensure operational discipline to our defined practices, and enable continuous improvement through all levels of the organization. While we have many documented standards and processes, aligning them within the MOS will streamline workflows and eliminate inefficiencies, reducing cash fixed costs and reduction in variation in production.
Operating discipline to these systems will ensure standardization, enable organizational learning. For us, transformation will not only be a project with an end date, but the results achieved will be sustained and improved year-on-year, and our MOS is linking our people to our purpose, ensuring that operations are aligned with internal and external customers' needs and expectations. Operations excellence underpins everything we do, and achieving and maintaining this operational excellence is also a key pillar of our successful transformation strategy. We know it enables us to operate efficiently, to deliver high-quality products and services, and to achieve sustainable growth. By continuing to foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, our team will be ready to meet the challenges of the future and create lasting value for our customers and our investors.
As I've mentioned a number of times, sustainability is a vital aspect of our operations, so I'd now like to hand over to Sunil, who will take you through this in much more detail. Thank you.
Thanks, Steph, and hi, everyone. Look, it's great to be here with you to talk about a little bit more about our sustainability journey. You know, we've been at this journey for a number of years now, because our commitment to operating sustainably is one of our core values. As Mauro mentioned, ultimately, our strategy is to deliver sustainable growth and shareholder returns while caring for our people, our communities, and the environment. This means proactively managing those issues that are most material for the long-term sustainability of our business, our customers, and our stakeholders.
Actually, you heard all my colleagues speak about sustainability today and how it's integrated throughout our business, whether it's through the technology and product solutions that Rob mentioned, the major asset strategies that both Greg and Braden discussed, and as Paul discussed, how we integrate that and allocate that with sustainability capital. And we just heard from Steph on how sustainability is a vital aspect of our operations. And a bit like Steph, I was really encouraged to hear what the customers said, actually, and to hear how actually sustainability is a core part of what they do as well. So I'm pleased to say that our progress on sustainability continues to be recognized in our sustainability ratings across the major firms. So I'd just like to call out a couple of these ratings.
We were ranked in the top 15% of chemical industry peers in the 2023 S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook, and we are rated as strong by the Sustainalytics Low Carbon Transition Rating. Now, these ratings address a wide range of sustainability indicators across environmental, social, and governance areas. So what I'd like to do now is to turn to another core part of our sustainability progress, namely our net zero transition pathway. As you know, our operational greenhouse gas emissions, or GHGs for short, profile is dominated by the use of natural gas to make hydrogen for ammonia manufacture, with a significant percentage of greenhouse gases also arising from nitric acid manufacture as nitrous oxide.
A third source, emissions from electricity use, make up around 10% of Dyno Nobel's and about 11% of IPL's, or Incitec Pivot's, global Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. For Dyno, both the abatement of nitrous oxide process emissions and the investigation and implementation of new and emerging technologies will be required for the business to reach net zero by 2050. During 2024, we continued progress against key decarbonizations initiatives, which create a pathway to a reduction of 42% by 2030 against our 2020 baseline. As both Paul and Greg discussed, the first of these is, in Dyno Nobel, is the installation of tertiary abatement of our nitrous oxide at our Moranbah AN facility.
It's worth noting that the original Moranbah facility was built with secondary abatement, which has reduced greenhouse gases by an estimated 400,000 tons of CO2 equivalent per year since 2012. But the installation of tertiary abatement will further reduce Scope One greenhouse gases by approximately 200,000 tons of CO2, or approximately 11% of Dyno Nobel's and 7% of Incitec's operational greenhouse gases. This means we have completed the necessary work to achieve our short-term absolute reduction target of 5% by 2025. The second initiative is tertiary nitrous oxide abatement at Lomo in the US. This project has now been approved, and installation is expected actually in early 2025. Once it's installed, approximately 520,000 tons of CO2 equivalent will be abated annually at Lomo.
This equates to a further 19% reduction against the 2020 baseline for IPL, and significantly, a further 30% reduction for Dyno. The performance of existing abatement at our other nitric acid plants means that they do not contribute materially to our into our emissions. So just turning to the targets, you know, we have been watching closely with interest to see how the Science Based Targets Initiative, or SBTI for short, would release their chemicals sector methodology, and we recently saw the draft methodology got released for consultation just a few months ago. We are working through this and along with various stakeholders ahead of the release of the final methodology, which is expected early next year.
In 2023, we mapped our Scope 3 emissions throughout the value chain for each of our two customer-facing businesses. We heard throughout earlier today about how we are working with our customers. So when we turn to the supply side, in 2024, we engaged with our major suppliers on Scope 3, including some overseas suppliers, and we actually assisted them with some of their own calculations with greenhouse gases for the first time. We also onboarded a new global data management platform, which will include a Scope 3 management module.
So you can see, we continue to invest in understanding and managing our Scope three emissions, and we do look forward to updating you more on that as we progress the implementation of our management strategy. If I can just turn back to our Scope one and two pathway just for a moment. I just wanted to share a little bit more color on Moranbah and Lomo projects, and also just briefly touch on green ammonia. To put the 200,000 tons of abatement at Moranbah into some context, this is basically the same as taking almost 50,000 cars off the road or planting more than 3 million trees a year. The delivery of this project means that since its commissioning in March this year, we've been emitting significantly less greenhouse gases per day.
As I mentioned, this project underpins the achievement of our 5% by 2025 absolute reduction target, and we will see the full 5% reduction reported in our financial year 2025 report, once it's been running for a full year. In terms of Lomo, our tertiary abatement initiative there is the second significant project that contributes to Dyno's stand-alone greenhouse gas reduction. When this project comes online in 2025, it will abate approximately 500,000 tons of CO2 equivalent per year, which again, is comparable to taking about 125,000 cars off the road.
So with these two projects, I'm pleased to say that these two projects, when taken together, we are on track to meet an absolute reduction of at least 41% by 2030 in Dyno's global Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, which exceeds our medium-term target of 25% by 2030 and keeps Dyno on the pathway to a 42% reduction by 2030. Both Moranbah and Lomo are key assets in our respective business units, and integrating decarbonization plans into these assets does strengthen their competitive positions. As I mentioned, our operational greenhouse gas emissions profile is dominated by the use of natural gas to make hydrogen for ammonia manufacture.
As we progress beyond the 2030 timeline and go into the 2050, getting to our net zero by 2050 ambition requires continued attention to a pipeline of opportunities at varying stages of technical and economic development. To this end, we have been pursuing two projects, one at Gibson Island, in partnership with Fortescue Future Industries for our fertilizer business, and one more at our Gladstone facility to support our Moranbah plant in our explosives business. Both these projects look to utilize our ammonia expertise, and like all our sustainability projects, are being pursued in line with our capital allocation framework, which Paul mentioned earlier. We did complete front engineering design for GI repurposing, actually in December last year, and we do remain in dialogue with FFI about their investment choices.
At Moranbah, we will continue to rely on using natural gas at a competitive price until such time as developing renewable hydrogen becomes available at a cost-effective commercial scale. So with Moranbah and Lomo projects, you know, under our belt, so to speak, to meet our 2025 and 2030 targets, we'll increasingly focus on opportunities such as green ammonia in line with our ambition to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or as soon as practical before. So I'll just turn to our next steps. As I mentioned, options to support Moranbah green ammonia continue to progress well and include a Gladstone green ammonia project.
Our business units are each focused on continuing to build Scope 3 management into their procurement and supply chain processes, and so that they're in a position to be able to track and manage Scope 3 just as they manage other supply information by financial year twenty-five. As we implement our new global greenhouse gas management platform, this will, first of all, allow our business units to track their Scope 3 in real time. Second, assist with meeting customer demand for information about the carbon intensity of our products. And three, allow us to prepare for mandatory Australian standard reporting, sorry, the ESRS, auditing of the global Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. So we are well-placed to meet increasing reporting and disclosure requirements. Our 2024 reporting will include information on our updated double materiality assessment.
and updated climate-related scenario risk assessments, with our climate change report transitioning to adopt these new standards on ASRS, and our sustainability reporting adopting aspects of the latest International Sustainability Standards Board's standards, as issued by IFRS, the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation. So in summary, we remain on track in integrating our sustainability plans into our company, customer, regulatory, and business strategies. Look, I've only had a chance briefly to update you guys on the continued progress of our sustainability journey. I do encourage you to look at our sustainability and climate change reports. They're available on our website. And for now, I'll hand over to Tatiana, our Chief Legal and Corporate Affairs Officer, who's got some great news about the Dyno Nobel brand.
Thank you, Sunil, and good afternoon, everyone. It is my absolute privilege to be presenting on Dyno Nobel brand as we're closing this, the session today. Dyno Nobel brand is something we're very passionate about. Before I take you through this next section, we have a short video to share with you.
Founded on innovation and the indomitable spirit of Alfred Nobel, Dyno Nobel began its journey with a simple yet revolutionary idea: safer, more efficient explosives. Through the years, Dyno Nobel has always been at the forefront of technological advancements, transforming the mining and explosive industries with each groundbreaking innovation. Safety is not just our priority, but our core value. With innovations like our Commander and Ranger electronic initiation systems, we're making blasting operations safer and more precise than ever before. Our commitment to our communities and environment drives us forward. By reducing carbon emissions and electrifying our bulk delivery fleet, we're paving the way for a more sustainable future in mining and blasting operations. At Dyno Nobel, we're not just looking to the future, we're building it. With continuous research, development, and a focus on sustainable practices, we're shaping the next generation of mining and explosives technology.
From our humble beginnings to our position as a global leader in commercial explosives, Dyno Nobel continues to leave a lasting impact on the world. Proud of our heritage, committed to safety, and driven by innovation, we are Dyno Nobel. Join us in our journey towards a safer, more sustainable world.
Dyno Nobel's history is nothing short of extraordinary. It dates back to Alfred Nobel, William Bickford, and other legendary innovators in the industry, who have transformed the explosives industry into what it is today. You can read more about it in the book that we've shared with you, in your goody bag, how we've been leading explosives industry since early eighteen hundreds. Dyno Nobel has over one hundred and sixty years of excellence in innovation and safety, and has earned reputation, unique reputation with our customers. You have heard today from our customers, they too recognize the value of Dyno Nobel brand. This legacy and reputation of excellence is what underpins our belief in the future of Dyno Nobel as the global leader in explosives, products, and services.
We have the opportunity to harness this unique reputation and the values we have become known for, to accelerate the business forward in line with our strategy. As Dyno Nobel business undergoes its own transformation, the strength of our brand will allow the business to connect its legacy to our vision and our ambitions, and build on the trust our customers in the existing and new markets have in the Dyno Nobel brand. We have taken the opportunity to refresh the Dyno Nobel brand as part of the global transformation. As you can see on the slide and also around the room, we have elevated the prominence of Nobel in our brand, to capitalize on the legacy and the value in the Nobel name.
A name that's synonymous with innovation, commitment to safety, and excellence, all of which are still part of our DNA today. As part of the brand refresh, we will focus on increasing the prominence of Dyno Nobel brand globally. The use of the Dyno Nobel brand will be aligned consistently across our operations in different geographies, with the companies we invest in, and with our products and services. This will allow us to benefit from the cumulative impact of Dyno Nobel brand, to support the transformation of Dyno Nobel to the global leader in explosives, products, and services.
As you've heard from Greg today at the beginning of this of our presentation, consistent with our strategy and with our focus on the Dyno Nobel brand, we propose to change our corporate branding and the parent company name from Incitec Pivot Limited to Dyno Nobel Limited. Incitec Pivot will remain our brand of the fertilizers business in Australia. We intend to seek shareholders' approval for this proposal at our next annual general meeting in December this year. Should we be successful in gaining shareholders' approval, we expect to transition to the new corporate branding next year. As you can see, we have doubled down on the Dyno Nobel brand as we look forward to future growth. With that, I hand over to Mauro for closing remarks and before we head into our final Q&A section.
Thanks, Tatiana. What a day! We made it. We're almost there. We still have dinner and a few more ideas to share throughout the night. But I just want to come back to the five things that I asked you to leave Salt Lake City with. And I will have a quiz. No, it's not. It's a joke. Too late in the day for that. But I wanted to come back to the five ideas that I shared with you earlier today, that I really hope they came to life and you can leave back home with those ideas coming to life. Transformation is the first one. We will transform this business, double the earnings, and make that the global leaders in explosives in the world. We will separate the fertilizers business.
We are absolutely committed to do that in a way that is rapid, but at the same time, generate the most value to our shareholders. We have some unique competitive advantage. Customers coming first. I think you heard in spades today how much we value the customers and how much that is a reciprocal relationship. But equally, technology. We do technology not for the sake of doing technology, we do technology to serve the customers. And we're absolutely, absolutely committed to build on those competitive advantage to grow the business in new geographies, in our core markets, and to expand the white space that I described before. So thank you so much for bearing with us. It's always a bit of a death by PowerPoint. I hope that we managed to find the right balance between videos and speeches and customers.
It's never perfect, but really appreciate you bearing with us all the time, and thanks for your attendance today. We'll have another session where we'll have a Q&A, with Tatiana, Sunil, and Steph, they will join me on the stage. Thank you.
Good afternoon, guys. I think you can hear me now. Yep, awesome. So Mauro, maybe this one's firstly just for you, as a follow-up to the questions you were getting earlier this morning on the incentive structure around the plan. Are you able to talk us through whether the consultants that you used are also incentivized for successful completion of the transformation?
Yes. Obviously, there's limits to what I can comment about that, but they're absolutely incentivized to deliver, and not only deliver to the project, but to have the benefits flowing to the bottom line.
Great, and apologies if I've missed it somewhere in the presentation, but maybe just for the benefit of everyone in the room, can you sort of run us through what the actual ROIC was for both the explosives business and the fertilizers business in the first half of this year, so we have a base to assess the transformation of going forward?
I don't have those numbers on top of my head. Can we come back to that, Jeff? Can we take that on notice and come back with those numbers? I don't have those numbers-
Sure.
the top of my head.
No worries.
Apologies for that.
Mauro, I can comment on that. So basically on the explosive business, it's around about 5.1%, inclusive of goodwill, which we use as a measure. Usually, when you exclude goodwill, it's one and a half percentage points above that. And then on the fertilizer business, was substantially lower due to the impact of the phosphate deal performance over the first half of the year, so that was more closer towards 2.5-3%. But on an annualized average with phosphate yield running, you know, to an 850 type of level, you kind of expect that also to be closer to that 4-5%. Thank you.
Okay. Great. Thanks, guys.
Mauro, Andrew Scott, Morgan Stanley. As Sunil spoke to, green ammonia, we're clearly going that way in this part of the world. Blue ammonia is a big part of the equation. Can you talk more broadly what that means for your business? Not for what you'll do, but how you see that changing flows of nitrogen around the world and affecting supply positions for your business?
Can you...? I'm not sure if I get it.
Sure. So we're going to see an increased proliferation of blue and green ammonia. Arguably, that means a greater, more valuable ton of nitrogen there, a chance to really reset the dynamic around the supply and demand dynamics for ammonia. As you're sitting here and thinking about a five-year plan for your business, how do you see that impacting your business more broadly than what you're doing, but how it affects trade flows for nitrogen molecules?
Yeah. Look, this is a big question because obviously it depends on geography. So if I probably spend one minute in Australia, maybe, and Sunil, if you want to build in, we're really looking at the opportunity to through the investment that we are, or the- we haven't made any investment decisions, but the conversations we're having with the Gladstone project is really to try and build a future of green ammonia in Australia to potentially give us some marginal tons and build on our existing capacity in Moranbah, not replace the ammonium nitrate. I think it's still a long way before ammonia in Australia will be replaced by green ammonia.
We are participating in the project to understand the metrics, understand the drivers, of course, but we're not bullish about green ammonia being for the next ten years a replacement of the existing traditional ammonia in that market. So we're not really seeing the trade flows in Australia changing much in the next ten years. What we're building to 2030, to Sunil's earlier point, is really a position to allow us to start building the capacity.
I know, we'll just try one more time. Braden, maybe put you on the spot, but over here, the nitrogen guys are definitely pushing down the blue ammonia path with the IRA incentives. Do you see that changing supply and demand dynamics for your market in any way, positively or negatively?
Yeah, I'll come out of the corner here a little bit. Yeah, I appreciate the question. It's a really valid question to be asking right now. As we have discussed today, the ammonium nitrate position in any geography is very important. We do see a lot of projects being announced around blue ammonia. A few, I would say much less around green ammonia, but it will certainly impact what's available. But what I would say is, the interesting thing about putting labels on these, green ammonia, blue ammonia, it's still molecularly ammonia. So you're gonna have a supply of ammonia to produce ammonium nitrate or whatever other nitrogen products out of that. I think what remains to be seen is what is the value in the market of blue and green products.
One of the things that we're seeing from the customer side is, as there's more pressure on Scope 3 emissions, there may be some value downstream in some of those AN products if they are attached to a blue or green type of of product. You've heard from Sunil that we're engaged in these different mitigation sustainability projects. There will be some of that available, and I think for us, the trade flows are gonna come back to what makes economic sense for us. If we think we can get a premium for those products, and we can actually return on our investment for doing it, that's something we'll enter into, and we have all the preparations in place. We want to get into these markets and understand how you actually make these, how you can trade in those.
So I think we'll be ready and positioned to get into that market, but I think the value of that still remains to be seen. That's my answer.
That's helpful. Thank you.
Just to be clear, our investment criteria for Green Ammonia is exactly the same for everything else we do.
Yeah.
It needs to have a business case. So as we've done for the abatement projects, both in Lomo and Moranbah, those are projects that are evaluated on the economic merit. So we're embarking on these eyes wide open for returns, and that's why we take a very cautious view on yes, we want to participate, we want to understand this market, but we will do that on economic return basis.
Can I just add?
Yeah, please.
Can I just maybe just add one more comment? You know, I can tell you, I'm personally very attuned to this 'cause my background's gas. And so as Greg was mentioning, I was involved in the extension of our gas contract at Moranbah. And actually, if you look at the contract, Greg's already mentioned this, but it goes out to twenty thirty-three, but it's got two options to go to twenty forty-one. And so the design of that contract, to build on what Mara was saying, was, you know, we're gonna be competitive, you know, off the back of gas. And, you know, ammonia has to be in whatever color it is, has to be competitive, you know, while recognizing the decarbonization benefits you get from that.
So we see it as a complementary thing. And I think the great thing about where we are at the moment is that we've put ourselves in a position where from a Scope 1 and Scope 2 standpoint, we can actually, I'd say, relatively comfortably meet our targets for 2030. And we've been able to marry that with the asset strategy that Mara mentioned and Braden was mentioning as well, whether it's Lomo or Moranbah, and be actually in a very strong position to marry the investment criteria, you know, with the customer offering, but still be competitive from the source feedstock. So I think it sort of gels quite well.
Okay, I think we're done for questions. Thank you.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Now, just, before we go, I'll-
Can I just say one word before we finish, and I will do that with the risk of not saying all the names, but can I ask you to give a hand to Jeff, to Simone, to Inger, to Greg Trainer, to Ben and Eric on the audio/video? I know it's not the end of the two days, but that's probably the last time we'll be gathered together. There's so much work that goes behind the scenes for months to prepare for that. So I know therefore, those guys, when they go to sleep tonight, it will be a big relief. So thank you so much, guys, for putting in the work and for the people on the technical teams, making everything works perfect, the prompters, the screens, everything was perfect.
Thank you. Great, great work. Thank you so much.
Okay, a couple of housekeeping things. Dinner tonight will be at 6:00 P.M. There's some drinks at 6:00 P.M. We'll sit down at 6:30 P.M. It's on the sixth floor. There's the pool area. We'll have drinks just out on the terrace. There's a tapas restaurant where we'll be having dinner, and like I say, sitting down at 6:30 P.M. Tomorrow, we do have quite a tight timeframe, so we need people to help us, especially at the start of the day. We've arranged breakfast early, so between 6:00 A.M. and 7:00 A.M., breakfast will be available here, where we've had all the food today, so on this floor.
We do need to be on the bus and driving out of the driveway at 7:30 A.M., so please make sure you've checked out. Those people that are needing to go to the airport, make sure you have your luggage with you. We'll have three buses. There'll be one sort of van that will take all of the luggage that needs to go to the airport, and then there'll be one bus for those people that need to go to the airport, and another bus for the people that are coming back to the hotel. So we'll have that all signed, but we need you there and on the bus at 7:30 A.M. Just to remember, we'll need to be distributing the PPE to you before you get on the bus, so that will take a little bit of time.
So please get there at least by quarter past, so that we can get you on our way, and make sure none of you miss your flight at the end of the day. I think they're the main things. I mean, well, it's a... Just so that you're aware, there is a little bit of driving tomorrow, so charge your iPads, charge your phones. We'll be on the first trip out to our research center at Tooele. It's about an hour, and then there's a bit over an hour drive once we finish there, to the Kennecott Mine, and then not such a big drive to our truck assembly plant.
Then luckily, or maybe well-designed, the last little bit of that trip from the TradeStar site to the airport or even back here is quite a short trip. It's like 10 minutes. I think that was it. Have I forgotten anything, Ings? No. All right, I can let you all go. Thank you very much.