Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Dyno Nobel's 2026 Investor Day. I am Tom Dixon, and I look after investor relations for Dyno Nobel. We do have a full day ahead of us, so let's kick things off. If you have not seen it already, the presentation materials for today have been lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange, and they can be found on the ASX and Dyno Nobel websites. I will just as usual, draw your attention to the disclaimers found on slide one and slide two of this presentation, and our presenters from Dyno Nobel are here on slide three. Moving on to the agenda for today. Just a few of the usual housekeeping matters before we get underway. Bathrooms are located near the elevators. Just letting people know they are all-gender bathrooms.
If you get a shock and you see someone from the opposite sex washing their hands in there, you are in the right room. In the event of an emergency, please follow the directions of event staff. You can see here our lineup of speakers for the day. We also have a couple of Q&A sessions scheduled to invite discussion on the materials that have been covered. You will also see that we have a showcase and lunch at around 1:00 P.M. This is going to be held downstairs on level two after our panel discussion. The showcase is going to be a great opportunity for you to interact with our subject matter experts, and experience some of Dyno Nobel's leading technology and innovations we have in progress, and also learn more about our entry into the global energetic sector.
I know we do have a number of people here today that have to leave slightly early this afternoon to get to airports and so on. If you do miss anything late in the day, a recording of the presentation will be available on the company's website following the event. With that, let's kick it off. Let's get underway. I am going to invite Kevin McNeill from the Dyno Nobel Americas team to come up for a safety share. Thanks, Kevin.
Thanks, Tom. Welcome, everyone. Good morning. When you think about an explosives company, one of the things or one of the first questions that come to mind is: how do you actually do this safely? It is a fair question. The materials that we manufacture are designed to be inherently sensitive in that they will release a great amount of energy in a very short period of time. That is what allows our products to do their job. To accomplish this safely requires very high standards, and the expectations that we place on our leaders and our employees are extremely high, and they should be. This morning, I do not want to talk about safety as a statistic. I want to talk about safety as a core capability in our business. Safety is not separate from operational performance in what we do.
It is a direct reflection on how well we design, how well we build, how well we maintain, and how we continuously improve all of our high explosives operations. That kind of brings me to a very simple principle that Edwards Deming famously said, "A bad system will beat a good person every time." Let me say that one more time. A bad system will beat a good person every single time. I've kind of always liked that observation because it basically applies to everything that we all do every day. Recently, I was flying into St. Louis, Missouri. We have a plant called Wolf Lake, Illinois there, where we make high explosives. I was going to the rental car agency, and when I got there, I'd been upgraded. Super. Normally, I get a Toyota Tercel.
This time it was, I'll just call it a German manufacturer. I get in the car and I follow all my procedures. I'm head of health and safety there in Dyno Nobel Americas. I get my seat adjusted, I get my two side mirrors adjusted, I get my rear view mirror adjusted, and I reach down. Everyone knows where. Unless you're an Aussie, everyone knows where I was just reaching, right? Right above my right knee. Since the 1990s, there's been a key there, and now there's buttons, right? That's what I was expecting to see. There was nothing there. It was just a blank wall of plastic. For the first five minutes, as any good engineer, I started pressing every button in that car. I was like, air conditioning. At one point, the windshield wipers were going on a perfectly clear day.
By minute 10, and I'm not exaggerating, I was looking in the rear view mirror going, "Do I need to make eye contact with this thing?" Fortunately for me, at some point, I see a guy in a green shirt, and they give you an indication for the rental car agency. He was 19 years old if he was a day. He looked like he'd been invented by an iPhone. He comes walking up and he gently taps on the window, and at that point, I was so frustrated I didn't even try to roll the window down because I wasn't sure I could do it.
I just opened the door and he goes, "Can I help you, sir?" I said, "Look, I can't make it go." He, without even looking at me, reaches across the steering wheel into the car, and on the very end of the stalk for the turn signal, he presses the button, and the car started. Now look, I'm an engineer. I don't know what engineer thought that left, right, and engine start should be all on the same item, but Germans did. I literally was so embarrassed, I just gently closed the door and didn't say anything to him, and I rolled off. That's an example of a bad operating system when I spend 10 minutes trying to get through that. In our world, that's an important lesson. Look, expertise matters, experience matters.
But we can never rely on the individual heroics to keep people safe. The system has to do the heavy lifting. Over the past year, there have been several serious incidents in our industry involving energetic materials that have resulted in fatalities, and they caused us to ask an important question. Not do we have a problem, but instead, how do we know that our systems are as strong as we think we are? We launched which we call a FISH review. FISH stands for Friction, Impact, Static, and Heat, and these are the four forms of energy that, if allowed to couple with our products, could result in an unintended initiation or detonation. That sounds simple, but when you step into one of our operating sites, that question becomes much more complex.
You are not just evaluating a machine, you are not just looking at a standard operating procedure, you are going to be looking at our entire operating systems, how materials move and how equipment is designed, how our electrical systems are maintained, how process control responds, how our inspections are performed, how operating standards are applied, how our leaders assure that our critical controls are working. Look, think about it this way. Imagine if you walked into one of our plants with a clipboard. You could spend all day in one of our plants and you would probably find some hazards, and we would take those, and we would make them as a continuous improvement process. But world-class organizations do not simply look for hazards. We are looking for the pathways, we are looking for the hazards that could overcome our layers of protection.
We are looking for the weak signals before they become an incident, and that is what the FISH review was designed to do. Our team went to our plants in Australia, Mexico, and the U.S. That is where we have high explosive operations. We completed over 630 hours of field reviews across all of these sites, and it involved operations, engineering, our technology group, health and safety, line employees, and leaders. They observed how the work was done, they spoke with operations, they reviewed process hazard analysis, they verified controls, and they tested all of our assumptions. Not because something bad had already gone wrong, but because disciplined organizations actively challenge the conditions that allow things to keep going right. What did we learn? The most important finding may have been what we did not find. We did not find a broken operating system, the button.
We did not find that the way that we manufacture required any fundamental redesign or transformational change. What we found was a strong operating system supported by deep technical expertise and experienced people. We also found opportunities to make this system even stronger. The review identified 23 enterprise improvement opportunities spanning our engineering, spanning our standards, governance, learning, critical controls, leading and lagging indicators. That is what you would expect from us. Not perfection, but learning. Not complacency, but continuous improvement. Not assumptions, but verification. Why does this matter from an investment perspective? Because the same disciplines that reduce safety risk also reduce our operational risk. The systems that prevent unwanted energy release also support plant reliability. Engineering rigor improves operational predictability. Assurance processes strengthen our regulatory confidence, and our leadership discipline reduces surprises.
Look, that's good for our employees, it's good for our customers, and it's good for our shareholders. Manufacturing high explosives safely is hard, and it should be hard. The consequences of getting it wrong are catastrophic. What the FISH review demonstrated is that we understand that reality. It also reflects the trust placed in us by our employees, by our customers, and by the communities that we serve, and in our shareholders. Look, we didn't conduct a review because we believed we had a broken system. We conducted it because world-class organizations challenge our assumptions. We do not take success for granted. We continuously learn, verify, and improve. The review confirmed the strength of our operating system. It identified opportunities to further strengthen our critical controls and reinforce principles that guide everything that we do.
Safety is not something we inspect into our system. Safety is the capability we design into our system. That capability keeps our people safe, it keeps our plants reliable, it keeps our customers confident, and our business resilient. Our willingness to challenge assumptions, learn from weak signals, and continuously improve the system is not separate from our competitive advantage. It is our competitive advantage. Thank you very much. With that, I would like to introduce Greg Robinson, our chairman of the board.
Right. Well, safety is good business. I think you've had a peek into the soul of the machine, so to speak. Competitive advantage, it's true for all these primary industries, but absolutely for us that we've got to get this right. The FISH study that we did through the group was on the back of some really significant industry issues. I think the pleasing thing from where I sit at the board level is, number one, the strength of our operational team. Secondly, the seriousness with which we take safety for our employees, for our communities, and of course, for our customers. With that, I just want to say good morning to everyone. Welcome. I know people have come from a long way away for our Investor Day here in 2026. For those online, a big welcome.
It's two years since we did the last investor meeting. We've obviously done a lot in those years. We appreciate the support of our shareholders, the interest of the analyst community, and the opportunity to spend some time with you today, with our customers, partners, and stakeholders. It's a bit of a unique opportunity for us to be able to get customers up here and let them tell you what we do and why they value our relationship. Big part of the competitive advantage for the company. It's usually the reporting cycle, but today we can really sort of open the books and give you a really good look at each of our businesses and where we're going for the future. We were together in, I think it was Salt Lake City in 2024.
At that event, we outlined a pretty clear path on what we wanted to do. We had some very significant issues. We wanted to divest the fertilizer business, simplify the portfolio, improve the operating performance, and create a more focused explosives company. At the time, we really spoke about what needed to be done. Today, I am really proud that we can talk about what has been achieved. Most notably, we have completed the separation of the fertilizer business. I am sure most of the people in the room have followed that journey with us. We finished that process with the sale of Phosphate Hill, the large asset there in July this year. That actually followed quite a few transactions. We divested the St. Helens plant in Oregon. We sold the fertilizer distribution business on the eastern seaboard of Australia.
We had shut the Gibson Island ammonium nitrate urea plant, and we sold off the large real estate transaction there. Then we sold the commitment with the Perdaman plant, the big offtake urea contract. So that sort of tied that up and finished in June this year. So now we are a focused, pure-play explosives company, which is really three years ago where we wanted to end up. We have made very good progress on our financial objectives that we outlined in 2024. You will hear a lot about that today and about where we want to go in the future. We were starting with an EBIT base of about AUD 300 million in 2023, and today we stay on track for the target that we set, which is AUD 600 million by 2028. We have got a very clear pathway to get there.
Our objective, besides just the EBIT objective, is to drive well above our cost of capital requirements. So it is not just about spending capital. Equally important, we continue to pursue our ambition to be a leading global explosives business with discipline and a clear focus on creating value for our shareholders. We have got lots of good examples of that over the last few years. North America at the moment is performing extremely well. We continue to see a really healthy demand across all the markets that we serve.
We are doing a lot of debottlenecking, great debottlenecking across our major process plants. We have got Moranbah, Cheyenne, LOMO, and that is all going to support our growth here in the U.S. and Australia. We have had good customer wins in places in Latin America and Africa, and that really demonstrates many of the long-term relationships that we have got.
It is supported by our technology. The larger companies in the world want to be with where the great technology, where the best safety, the best reliability is. They are all attributes that we think open new doors and that we exemplify. Energetics. You will hear more about energetics today. We have not been talking about that a lot, but you will hear a lot more about that today. It is an emerging area of opportunity for us. Mauro and the team will discuss that in a lot more detail. But it is a market where I think our capabilities, experience, and assets give us a real, genuine right to compete. As a board, there are several reasons we are optimistic about Dyno's future. The first is the quality of the markets we serve.
The world, as we know, will continue to need copper, iron ore, metallurgical coal, other minerals that support economic development infrastructure and the energy conversion. These trends, for us, are going to underpin demand for our customers' products and importantly, for the products and services that we provide. The second is the strength of our customer relationships. Nothing more important than our relationships. Many of these relationships with our business have been built over decades. They're based on trust, reliability and a long track record of delivering value. We maintain that position through operational performance, technical expertise, and technologies that help customers improve safety, productivity and their outcomes. These capabilities in our industry are really difficult to replicate, and I think you've probably got a feel from Kevin's presentation just how important it is to have that right. Very difficult to replicate and they remain a very important competitive advantage.
The third is the quality of our manufacturing, logistics and distribution network, which has been built up over. This business has been in business for about 160 years, so it's a very long-term set of assets. Together with our strategic partners, those assets provide the security of supply and flexibility that our customers increasingly value. As a board, we spend a lot of time thinking about the company's long-term position. When we compare Dyno Nobel today with the business we presented in 2024, we see a much more focused company, a stronger operating performance and a broadening and widening range of growth opportunities. Today's Investor Day is about really what comes next. Mauro and the leadership team will talk about how they intend to build on the progress already made and pursue the opportunities in front of our business.
Importantly, future growth, I think this is really important for us, future growth is not dependent on any one single project, region or initiatives. Recent wins in Latin America and Africa, our strong performance in our North American business and our joint ventures attached to that business, increasing technology adaption and adoption, and the development of energetics are all opportunities that point to a broad set of growth options that I think a couple of years ago didn't really exist. As chairman of the company and on behalf of the board, one of the most important responsibilities for us is the enduring company leadership and having the right leadership. I have to say from a board point of view, we have absolute confidence in where Mauro and the leadership team have taken the company in the last two years.
They've led the company through a period of really significant change, and we shouldn't underestimate that. It's very hard to do major transactions, operate safely and redirect the company. They've done it safely. They've kept the customers. They've kept the operational performance and I think demonstrated a really good shareholder value. So from a board point of view, we're pretty proud of that performance. The progress discussed today also reflects the effort, of course, of thousands of people across the Dyno Nobel business, and I'd just like to make a quick comment to acknowledge their absolutely substantial and dedicated contributions to our business. Let me finish with just a simple observation. Two years ago, we outlined a plan. Today, I think we can point to the results of where that journey's been. Dyno is a much more focused company with a stronger competitive position and a very clear path forward.
There's still a lot of work to do, but the board believes the business is in better position than it was two years ago, and we're really well-placed to execute against these opportunities. Thank you for your continued support and interest in Dyno Nobel. I'm now going to hand it over to the main act and introduce our Chief Executive Officer, Mauro Neves. Thanks everyone.
Full room. It's a dream come true, so thank you for everyone for making it. Good morning and thank you for joining us here today in New York. We appreciate you taking the time to be with us and look forward to share how Dyno Nobel has evolved since our last time in Investor Day. More importantly, where we see the opportunities ahead. Dyno is a very different business from one year ago, from when we discussed the business two years ago. We can say now we are a pure play explosives company with a resilient earnings base, a focused portfolio and a clear path for each great long-term shareholder value. The work of the past several years has strengthened the business and creates a platform to what comes next.
We continue to see attractive fundamentals across the markets where we serve. We have opportunities to create more value through technology, premium products, and technical services. We have meaningful opportunities to deepen our presence in existing markets and extending to new ones. We see a compelling adjacency in defense energetics where many of our existing capabilities are directly transferable. What gives me the confidence is that opportunities are supported by strengths we already possess today, trusted customer relationships, many of which you have the opportunity to meet today, strategic assets, technical expertise, disciplined capital allocation, and a culture of execution. Today, I'll provide an update on the business, explain why we are confident in the opportunities ahead, and outline how we intend to get there, translating those opportunities into quality earnings, stronger returns, and long-term shareholder value.
Today, we have announced our new ambition, AUD 800 million EBIT by fiscal year 2031. For an expected AUD 480 million- AUD 490 million this year, we see a clean pathway to higher earnings and improved ROIC in our company. Our rolling five-year planning cycle gives us a line of sight to how we get there, which we'll cover later in the presentation. Growth will come from continued momentum across our business and priority markets, defense energetics as a new growth platform, and the structural benefits of furthering that industry consolidation. Today, we'll take you through the pathway and the actions already underway to deliver it. Firstly, let me reflect on a quick update on fiscal year 2026. We remain on track for our fiscal year 2026 explosives EBIT guidance, which we have now narrowed to AUD 480 million- AUD 490 million.
Our interest expense is expected to be lower than previously expected, at approximately AUD 85 million-AUD 90 million. The FY 2026 effective tax rate is expected to be at the bottom of the previously guided range, and we will exit the year on track to achieve the AUD 600 million ambition in FY 2028, which stays on foot. Group NPAT is expected to be in the range of AUD 325 million-AUD 340 million. The Fertilizers separation is now totally complete following the successful transaction of Phosphate Hill. That allows our full attention as a team to be direct towards our explosives business and the opportunity immediately in front of us. The North American business continued to exceed expectations after the strong first half we reported in May, with broad growth across end-user markets and distribution channels. You will hear more about that from our customers later tonight.
Asia Pacific has also delivered a very strong second half, with robust demand in hard rock and strong electronic sales. The Moranbah debottlenecking is now completed quite successfully and safely. In EMEA and LatAm, progress has been a bit slower than we would have liked. However, the strategies related to cornerstone contract wins, with Vale having signed a contract in Brazil with us recently and the AngloGold Ashanti contract in Ghana commencing later this calendar year. We will remain disciplined on how we price, how we deploy capital, and focus on technology. Ultimately, generate value for our customers. On the defense energetics front, we have secured around $1 billion from government-funded contracts, including the most recent IMX contract which we announced last week through our Nitradyn joint venture. The second major project at Graham in Kentucky represents another meaningful step in establishing that platform.
We are building momentum across the business. We are strengthening our cooperation, expanding our presence in attractive markets, and continuing to advance our position in energetics. Together, these initiatives position us well for the next phase of the strategy. Our compelling investment proposition highlights the unique competitive advantages in attractive end markets Dyno Nobel will leverage to drive shareholder value. It begins with safety and reliability, both are fundamental requirements in our industry and essential to maintaining customer trust, as Kevin reminded us.
We are now a pure-play explosives company with strong positions in two of the largest regions and more opportunity to grow elsewhere. Earnings are supported by long-term customer arrangements, contractual protections, and a diversified exposure across commodities, customers, and geographies. The markets we serve also have attractive long-term demand drivers. Mining activity is expected to grow across the commodities and regions where we are positioned across the globe.
While defense energetics provide the adjacent opportunity supported by increasing investment in sovereign capability. We also have advantages that are very difficult to reproduce. Many of our customer relationships have been built over decades. Our technology and technical expertise help customers improve safety, productivity, and performance. Our manufacturing distribution networks provide reliable supply in a world of increased geopolitical and supply chain challenges. Vertical integration allows us to control important parts of the value chain. We intend to increase the value created from the core business, apply our modeling in regions where we are underrepresented, and develop new opportunities. Execution will depend on our people and, again, to Kevin's point, our operating systems. We spent lots of time strengthening both, and the work remains central to deliver the ambitions we are discussing today. It is all about the people. Let me start with the most important thing.
None of what we are going to discuss today is more important than having every Dyno Nobel employee and customer going home safe. Safety is closely linked to reliability, customer confidence, and the quality of the execution of the business. We need to set the highest standards and operate with discipline. Over the past few years, we have reduced process safety events and continue to strengthen risk management and critical controls across the organization. That work matters because it is our duty of care to our people and the community where we operate. It also matters commercially. Mining defense customers need that confidence that their suppliers can manufacture, transport, and handle materials safely and reliably. They need partners with proven systems, experienced people, and a record of consistent execution.
Dyno Nobel has more than 160 years of explosives manufacturing experience, more than 40 manufacturing facilities, and a substantial board of technical knowledge across the company. Ammonia manufacturing assets have also delivered improved levels of reliability at 93% over the last five years. That reliability supports security of supply and allows our customers to plan with confidence. Such capabilities are relevant across both industrial explosives and energetics. The product applications may differ, but the disciplines required to manufacture and handle energetics materials are closely aligned. We will continue investing in our assets, our people, the operating system, because maintaining this capability is fundamental for the business to grow. This next slide shows an important characteristic of our business. Our earnings performance is not driven by movements in any single commodity prices. Between fiscal year 2023 and 2026, we delivered 17% annual growth in underlying EBIT despite ongoing commodity volatility.
Such growth has been delivered through customer recontracting, improved operational performance, the transformation initiatives, and growth across the portfolio. As any business, we are not immune to market conditions, but its structure provides a high degree of resilience. We operate across multiple regions in multiple end markets, often characterized by long-term contracts and pricing mechanisms that adjust to changing input costs. Commodity prices influence activity levels across our markets, but our performance is not tied to any single commodity cycle. The diversity of our earnings streams, customer relationships, and end market exposure provides resilience and supports more consistent performance over time. That gives us a more stable base from which to pursue growth. It also places greater emphasis on the things that are under our control: reliable supply, customer service, technology adoption, productivity, and cost discipline.
Those are areas where the transformation program has been laser-focused and will remain central to our strategy now through to 2031. One of the reasons our earnings profile is more resilient than many appreciate is the quality of our contract book. We expect that about 80%-90% of our fiscal year 2026 revenue will be generated under customer contracts. More importantly, the forward value of the contract revenue is around 2x this year's revenue. That level of contract coverage provides a degree of earnings visibility that is uncommon in many industrial businesses. The quality of those contracts also matters. Many include rise and fall mechanisms that help manage input cost volatility and support margin resilience through the cycle. These are long-term relationships with large, well-established customers.
Over time, those relationships create opportunity to deploy technology, introduce premium products and services, become a more integrated partner in improving site performance. As trust builds, so does our ability to create value together. We move beyond supplying products to helping customers improve productivity, optimize outcomes, adopt new technologies across their operations. While the contract book provides strong earnings visibility, it also provides a solid platform for long-term growth. We believe we are entering a gold age of great opportunity, with powerful market trends creating a strong foundation for long-term growth across the business. Electrification and energy transition continue to drive demand for critical minerals. Copper material moved is expected to increase by around 50% from FY 2021 to FY 2031, supporting ongoing investments in mining capacity and production. Governments are placing greater emphasis on supply chain security and critical minerals.
Here in the U.S. alone, about $30 billion has been mobilized to support critical minerals reshoring and domestic capability. Our talented commercial teams with boots on the ground are converting these opportunities into growth. Investment in AI, data centers, and supporting infrastructure continues to accelerate. More than $1 trillion of AI-related infrastructure investment is projected over the five-year planning cycle, creating demand for the commodities, materials, and energy required to build and power that infrastructure. Productivity is becoming increasingly important across the mining industry. Global ore grades are estimated to have declined by 6%-8% over the last decade, meaning operators must move and process more material to produce the same amount of metal. That increases even more the importance of technology and technical expertise that improves fragmentation, recovery, and overall performance. Defense energetics represents a compelling adjacency growth opportunity.
Independent market analysis said that the market could double by 2035, supported by the replenishment programs and growing investment in sovereign manufacturing capability. These mega trends support demand for the commodities our customers produce. They reinforce the value of secure regional supply chains and trusted partnerships, but they also increase the need for the technology and operational reliability that differentiates ourselves. Each of these trends aligns closely with the capability we already have today, which is why we're confident in the long-term outlook for the markets and our business. Growth in mine activity is expected to grow across the board. Copper, gold, iron ore, and construction material, creating attractive opportunities across both established and emerging mining regions. The regional pattern is particularly relevant for us in Dyno Nobel.
North America and Asia-Pacific provide scale with strong established market positions, longstanding customer relationships, while in Africa and LatAm, it offers attractive growth opportunities from a lower baseline. That gives us a somewhat balanced growth portfolio. We can continue strengthening our core business while expanding selectively in regions and commodities where activity levels are growing the fastest. As mining operations become larger and more complex, customers are increasingly focused on productivity, recovery, and overall mine performance. As many of you heard me say before, we generate the most value to customers when mining gets tougher, deeper, and more selective. This is where the connection between the commodity demand and our business becomes very clear. I'm somewhat familiar with this hole in the ground. I spent much of my life scooping it around. Copper total material movement is expected to increase by around 38% over the next several years.
Meeting that demand means moving more material, and moving more material starts with blasting. When you work through the numbers, that growth in copper alone translates to roughly 700,000 tons of additional ammonium nitrate equivalent demand. Just for the reference, that is two Moranbahs. That is a brilliant opportunity for Dyno Nobel. As our customers expand production to meet growing demand for critical minerals, we will be there to help them do it safely, productively, and efficiently. The second growth market we want to cover today is defense. Market analysis indicates that the NATO and Australian defense energetics market is expected to grow from approximately AUD 5 billion-AUD 7 billion today to AUD 10.5 billion-AUD 13.5 billion by 2035. In short, the market is expected to double over the next decade. Importantly, this is not being driven by short-term geopolitical event only.
It reflects a structural increase in defense spend, replenishment programs, and investment in sovereign manufacturing across NATO-aligned countries. NATO members have committed to increasing defense expenditure towards 5% of their GDP, including 3.5% on core defense spending, well above historic levels in most countries. The opportunity spans a range of energetic materials, including main charge explosives, propellants, detonators, and boosters. For those of you that wonder, "What the hell is that?" Braden will be explaining for us downstairs in a few hours. However, the largest area of energetic growth is expected to come from main charge explosives, which represent about 6% of incremental market growth, aligning closely with Dyno Nobel's existing manufacturing expertise and technology capabilities. This demand growth is expected to be driven primarily by increased volume growth, with government looking to establish secure domestic and allied supply chains.
This requires significant new manufacturing capacity, and building that capacity is not straightforward. These products require specialized chemistry, complex approvals, rigorous process safety standards, and experienced people, and those capabilities may take years to develop. That creates for us first-mover advantage. Companies with existing experience in energetic materials establish manufacturing capabilities and a proven operating track record. Our approach remains disciplined and focused on areas our chemistry expertise provides a genuine competitive advantage. The capabilities we have built over decades gives us a strong foundation to serve the evolving needs of energetics market. Whether we are nitrating nitroglycerin in Carthage, pentolite in Graham, handling HMX and TNT as raw materials in Wolf Lake, or manufacturing black powder in Vonges, our teams are relying on process safety, product traceability, and engineering controls compared to the most strict defense standards.
We have an integrated chemical supply chain, established operating footprints across two regions, making significant investment in sovereign capability. Obviously, this does not remove the need for careful project evaluation. Defense projects have particular customer regulatory, contracting, and execution requirements, and obviously, we will assess those requirements closely and only pursue opportunities with partners where that provides the right capability or risk allocation. We are not starting from zero. We are building from assets, expertise, and operating systems already present today in Dyno Nobel. We are making tangible progress in building our defense energetics position. In North America, the recently established Nitradyn secured U.S. government support for the first new TNT facility since the 1980s at Graham, Kentucky. We are now finalizing the project scope and commercial framework with first production expected in 2028.
With the IMX project, Graham, Kentucky is being transformed into a world-class energetics facility by 2031, with around 25 million pounds of flexible capability to produce TNT, IMX, RDX, DNAN, NTO, and HMX. They love acronyms. When complete, Graham will be the second-largest energetics complex in the U.S. Nitradyn is pursuing further opportunities with the U.S. government in areas like energetics research and propellant. Watch this space. The fiscal year 2031 ambition of AUD 800 million includes AUD 30 million-AUD 40 million in EBIT from the Graham energetics project. In Europe, we are leaning on more than a century of explosives experience in Vonges, supplying products in defense applications like black powder, while assessing longer term opportunities and early-stage entry in NATO Europe. No incremental contribution from this opportunity in Europe is included in our AUD 800 million ambition, giving us further upside where projects meet our rigorous investment criteria.
North America is particularly exciting for our energetics business. Independent analysis indicates that defense energetics volumes could almost double by 2035, driven by increased demand across TNT, propellants, and advanced energetic materials. We are already converting that opportunity in real contracts. Graham, Kentucky facility have now secured two awards, 6.8 kilotons equivalent of TNT and approximately 3.6 million tons of IMX, with earnings through government tolling fee or offtake product margins. These awards demonstrate the strategic value of our manufacturing footprint, the strength of our technical capability, and the growing role Dyno Nobel can play in supporting North America's future energetic requirements. Our confidence reflects the breadth of opportunities we have to grow earnings across the portfolio, both within our core business and through emerging opportunities. In North America, we are the clear leader in a market comprising a AUD 900 million of EBITDA pool.
Our priority here is to continue strengthening that leadership position through technology, service, and operational execution. In DNAP, we also have a significant market share in an addressable profit pool of around AUD 1.4 billion EBITDA. This remains a highly attractive market, supported by long-term demand from the commodities and infrastructures we serve today. In middle and long-term, our growth markets represent a different opportunity. While our market share today is very small, the available EBIT pool is approximately AUD 1.6 billion, providing a major runway for disciplined growth. I have to say, discipline in capital allocation, discipline in pricing, and pursuit of value with the customers. Beyond our existing markets, we see an emerging energetics market with an estimated pool of AUD 1 billion-AUD 2 billion. We are optimistic about our ability to win across these markets, driven by the pillars underlying our strategy.
Our position has been built over decades of consistent investment in the people, assets, technology, and customer relationships. In a world with increased geopolitical and supply chain challenges, customers increasingly value reliability and technical expertise, strengths that have served us well in industrial explosives and provide a credible foundation to expanding to defense. Delivering value to our customers is one of our core values and is the heart of everything we do when we think about innovation. Having spent myself much of my career on the other side of the table, I know operators are not looking for technology for technology's sake. They are looking for safer operations, more tons moved, better recovery, and lower costs. That's why our approach to innovation is deliberately practical. We invest where we believe we can solve a real operational challenge and deliver the measure of outcome.
Safety is our bread and butter core business since Alfred Nobel's days. Whether it is wireless initiation, remote blasting, or the industry transformative Autonomous Bench that we are proud to announce today, the objective is simple: remove people from high-risk activities, improve controls, and create a safer operating environment. You have an opportunity later today to see some of these capabilities in more details. The same principle applies to productivity. Premium products, advanced solutions, and the expertise of our DynoConsult team will help customers improve throughput, recovery, and overall operational performance. So it is with sustainability. Whether it is electric MPUs, lower carbon product offerings, we are helping customer progress their decarbonization journey while maintaining high levels of performance. What we learned over the years is that customers really talk about individual technologies. They care about outcomes.
What differentiates Dyno Nobel is our ability to bring these capabilities together, combining technology, technical expertise, and operations to help customers achieve better results. DynoConsult's teams curiosity, cold face exposure, and humility to listen is the secret sauce. We proudly wear hard hats and T-shirts with a lot of explosives, and we mean it, despite getting in trouble from time to time in security checks in airports. One of the advantages of our industry is that customers are very clear about what matters the most. Customer wants safe operation, reliable partners, improved productivity, strong technical expertise, and security of supply. Customer feedback shapes how we run this company. From improving response time and service standards to developing technology, strengthening operational performance, it is all about the customers. Across Australia and North America, our net promoter score is around 20.
The number is a reflection of the value we help create. When we do that, relationships deepen, we become more embedded in customers' operations, they place greater trust in our expertise, and that creates opportunity to support them across a broader range of needs. That is one of the core strengths of this company. Trust, performance, and customer outcomes reinforce one another with time, creating a strong relationship and a stronger business. It is when customers' colleagues see us in a FIFO flight in an orange shirt, sharing the finds of a safety investigation, training the next generation of shot firers, or stopping unsafe work, they know they can rely on our team. Our vertically integrated network is a key competitive advantage to this business. Following the debottlenecking activities, we will have more than 1 million tons of gas-backed ammonium nitrate capacity.
Dyno Nobel holds top three position in traded ammonium nitrate globally and assembles our initiation systems in-house. Scale matters. The real strength of this network is where it sits. We have premium assets positioned alongside key demand centers, close to customer operations, and embedded in some of the world's most important mining regions. That gives us competitive advantage that is becoming more and more valuable over time. As supply chain becomes more complex, geopolitical tensions increase, customers are placing greater premium on reliability, security of supply, and trusted local partners. The network is built around these priorities. Again, the Kentucky Energetics Complex in Graham will further strengthen both capacity and vertical integration, as we will be fully integrating our booster manufacturing back to TNT. This is a unique network, very hard to replicate, and it is becoming precious in a volatile world.
Valuing these assets and making sure that the capital deployed over years is remunerated fairly is a mantra for this management team. Our new ambition of AUD 800 million by FY 2031 builds on momentum we have in the business today. It is a continuation of the journey we are on. Since FY 2023, we have grown underlying explosive EBIT from around AUD 300 million to now an expected range of AUD 480 million-AUD 490 million this year. We remain on track to achieve our AUD 600 million ambition by FY 2028. We have completed much of the heavy lifting, simplified the portfolio, strengthened contracts, improved pricing, and created a more scalable business. That gives us confidence in the horizon ahead. Just as importantly, we can give a line of sight on how we will get there.
Our incremental earnings are expected to come from greater adoption of premium products, bundled solutions, and growth in our core markets. We also expect improvements from productivity measures in embedding the Nobel Way that Kevin referred about across the business with further contributions for our markets, including Africa, LatAm, metals and critical minerals, and defense. This ambition is built on scaling proven strengths across the portfolio, not relying on any single project or outcome. We created a platform and learned along the way. I am confident on our teams and the passion they bring to work every day. In fact, about 20% of our workforce have recently elected to join you as Dyno Nobel shareholders. Separate to the FY 2031 ambition is the potential for more substantive M&A.
I continue to believe we are in a unique position in this industry to drive substantial shareholder value through further consolidation, and we will continue to assess potential opportunities against our very strict investment criteria as we move forward. Before I hand over to Nitesh, I would like to finish on a personal note. I couldn't be prouder of what this team has achieved over these last few years. We have strengthened the leadership team, transformed the way we operate, and built a business that is better positioned for growth than any point in our history. I want to thank my executive team, our leaders across the organization. Their commitment, capacity, and focus on execution have been critical to get us there.
You will hear from many of them today. I invite you to engage with them and hopefully share the same level of confidence and passion that we have for the business. They are the people driving this business forward every day. I am sure you enjoyed engagement as you talk to them. Ultimately, our confidence in the future comes down to execution. We have the people, we have the capabilities, and the operating discipline to deliver on our ambitions. With that, let me hand over to Nitesh to show us some of the numbers. Thank you.
Thank you. Mauro's talked to you about how he likes to be in orange and his I Love Explosives merchandise. He was up here yesterday in his maroon Queensland shirt. I've already told him we're not sponsoring the Brisbane Lions. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. In my section, I will focus on the financial architecture behind our strategy, our path to high-quality earnings growth, and how disciplined capital allocation translates that performance into shareholder value. Over the next 30 minutes, I will connect our strategic priorities to the drivers of growth, margins, and returns, whilst demonstrating how we maintain our balance sheet resilience. Let me start with the momentum we've established and the forward indicators supporting our confidence. At Dyno Nobel, we believe through our people we deliver for our customers, which drives shareholder value.
Putting customers first, delivering value, and building trusted relationships is what drives a very healthy forward contract book. This is an important metric for us, and you can see it stands at 2x our current revenues. Our earnings are more resilient than many investors appreciate. Recontracting at fair prices, long-term contracts, are supported the growth despite commodity price volatility that Mauro talked about in his section. Diversification across customers, commodities, and regions provides further protection. Underlying EBIT has increased approximately 17% per annum from FY 2023 to FY 2026 to our FY 2026 guided expectation. FY 2025 reflects the effects of major plant turnarounds, but the broader trajectory shows that our portfolio simplification and transformation are converting our customer focus into consistent underlying earnings growth. ROIC improves by approximately 0.7 percentage points over the same period. As CFO, this is a critical measure.
Growth must generate returns that justify the capital that we employ. Delivering an appropriate ROIC is vital for the essential service we provide to the mining ecosystem and for the sustainability and the investment in innovation that you'll see here today. This investment in innovation is particularly important in the context of those declining ore grades that Mauro just spoke about. ROIC has improved since the start of the transformation, but there's a lot more that we have to do to achieve our target, which is above 8.5%. Underlying EPS rose approximately 38%, demonstrating that our earnings growth and capital discipline are improving outcomes per share on an underlying basis. Overall, we have very strong momentum through execution. This gives us the confidence to outline the next horizon while maintaining the delivery discipline required to achieve our AUD 600 million ambition.
Our financial framework governs how we convert that momentum into sustainable value. Our financial management framework balances growth, resilience, and shareholder returns. Quality earnings growth is a core principle of our growth mindset, while continuous improvement through the Nobel Way supports operating leverage by embedded productivity and cost discipline. We deploy capital selectively in our HALO assets and growth opportunities whilst maintaining balance sheet strength, liquidity, and cash conversion. These disciplines preserve stability and resilience through volatile economic conditions. The final plank is value creation and shareholder returns. Our focus is to deliver ROIC above WACC, together with appropriate shareholder returns through dividends and surplus cash programs. These are not independent objectives. Earnings generate cash and balance sheet capacity to fund disciplined growth opportunities that support sustainable shareholder returns. My role is to keep these trade-offs explicit and ensure capital flows to the highest value uses.
The operating system supporting this framework is our transformation program, now embedded as the Nobel Way. Transformation has delivered approximately AUD 183 million in benefits to date, with most significant contribution coming from commercial initiatives, followed by operational and growth. We remain focused on this AUD 300 million FY 2028 and are on track. FY 2027 is a critical year for us, and in the next slide, I'll explain how we deliver that uplift and reach the AUD 600 million exit run rate that we have committed to. Why stop here? The Nobel Way is now an operating system.
The five Nobel Way disciplines make delivery repeatable, clear accountability, rigorous idea validation and execution, disciplined cost and capital management, standardized ways of working, and continuous improvement through structured operating rhythms. The next horizon of growth beyond FY 2028 is underway, supporting the growth ambition of AUD 500 million exit run rate by FY 2031.
Both the 2028 and 2031 ambitions build on the FY 2023 Dyno Nobel Explosives EBIT baseline, which you heard about in the last Investor Day, of AUD 300 million. This would deliver an AUD 800 million exit run rate ambition. This transformation is morphing into the Nobel Way, evidence of delivery, a repeatable operating model, and managed opportunity pipeline. Firstly, let's look at the earnings growth to our AUD 600 million commitment.
Getting from our FY 2026 AUD 480 million-AUD 490 million guidance to AUD 600 million, that means delivering just over AUD 100 million in additional EBIT over the next two years. FY 2027 is a turnaround year for Cheyenne and our QMP JV. This will result in lower headline earnings. However, it does not affect the transformation exit run rate as earnings rebound in FY 2028. It is not dependent on one initiative, as Greg mentioned in his part.
It is supported by a balanced portfolio across commercial, operational and growth levers. Commercial is expected to contribute approximately 30%-40% in the FY 2026 to 2028 uplift. The focus is converting the opportunities in front of us, metals and QMC wins across the U.S., more bundled customer sales using our premium technology solutions, and stronger performance across our JV networks. Operational initiatives are expected to contribute 20%-30%. The largest levers are unlocking additional ammonium nitrate tons through the debottlenecking activity at Moranbah, Cheyenne and LOMO. Expanding IS production in Türkiye and Indonesia, as well as delivering localization and cost savings at our major IS plants. Growth is expected to contribute approximately 35%-45%. We will use our global footprint and establish customer relationships to expand in these priority markets, particularly Africa and Latin America.
There's also planned expansion in Asia, Western Australia, Canada, through our capital light model. The contribution ranges are estimates, and the mix may move, but together these initiatives provide the pathway to reach the AUD 600 million of EBIT by FY 2028. I'll cover the next horizon of growth on the next slide. The next horizon of growth is to build on that AUD 600 million earnings base and deliver a further AUD 200 million uplift, taking EBIT ambition to AUD 800 million by FY 2031.
The same three levers, commercial, operational and growth, continue to drive the pathway, but the emphasis shifts from delivering current transformation pipeline to compounding that platform at scale. In commercial, we will deepen and expand our strategic customer relationships, increase the contribution from bundled products while capturing more value through premium product mix, which you'll hear a bit more from Dirk in the next session.
The aim is better customer outcomes and stronger margins, not volumes at any cost. Operational initiatives from embedding the Nobel Way includes continuous productivity improvement, AI enablement and digitalization, and process simplification. We will also use our scale to optimize procurement, supply chain, and manufacturing performance across our portfolio. Growth includes scaling new energetics platforms and expanding our presence in target growth markets of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Canada. These ranges are directional, and the initiatives reinforce one another. Technology supports premium mix and differentiation. Digitalization improves productivity for us as well as our customers, and the strategic relationships create routes into new markets. Together, they will provide the diversified and executable pathway to the next AUD 200 million of EBIT and the AUD 800 million FY 2031 ambition. Revenue growth is the foundation of this next horizon.
The following slide shows how volume, price mix, and new markets combine to support that ambition. Our ambition is high single-digit growth from FY 2026 compared to approximately 4%-5% since FY 2023. The forward ambition has three building blocks. Around 3%-4% comes from underlying volume growth, existing regions and commodity demand, particularly in metals and QMC. A further 1%-2% comes from price and mix. This reflects pricing for the value we deliver, greater adoption of premium technology and transformation initiatives. As mentioned by Mauro, these technologies are driving significant value to customers through mining efficiencies. The remaining 3%-4% comes from new markets. As I mentioned, primarily targeting expansion in Canada, Africa, Latin America for commercial explosives, but it also includes contracts that we have won in North American energetics. Composition of this revenue is equally important to quality of earnings.
Moving to the next slide. Our commodity exposure is shifting towards higher margin technology intensive end markets, aligned with our strategy. Mining activity continues to increase many of the commodities we serve, with particularly attractive outlooks in copper, gold, iron ore, and critical minerals. Metals increase from approximately 36% of our revenue contribution in FY 2023 to just over half by FY 2031. This gives us greater exposure to faster-growing markets, supports premium technology adoption, and reduces our relative exposure to energy transition risk. At the same time, Mauro mentioned declining ore grades make blasting performance more important. Customers need better fragmentation and productivity outcomes to move more material efficiently. The combination of more tons moved and lower ore grades creates increasing demand for our products, technology, and services. This is quality earnings growth through portfolio mix. High value revenue, deeper customer relationships, and more resilient earnings base.
Premium technology is the clearest example of how improved mix translates to financial value. Premium technology solutions support both growth and margin expansion because they link our economics to measurable value created for customers. Premium products are expected to increase from approximately 35% of our revenue to approximately 45% of our revenue in FY 2031. Standard products remain an important part of our base, but the mix shifts towards differentiated offerings. The margin comparison shows why this matters. Premium products margins are approximately 1.2x those of standard products. This reflects our investment in innovation and the development of differentiated technologies, which, as Mauro Neves mentioned, are focused on customers' needs. This is not simply a product growth initiative. It represents a deliberate movement, improvement in revenue quality through customer adoption from demonstrated outcomes. The second major earnings lever is operating leverage and capital efficiency.
As outlined earlier, operating leverage discipline is embedded in how we manage the business. The overheads and capital metrics illustrate the potential for more scalable capital efficient business. Overheads as a percentage of revenue improve from about 13% in FY 2025 to the range of 10%-12% target range in FY 2031. Revenue is expected to outpace overhead growth supported by the Nobel Way process simplification and AI enablement. Operating efficiencies will be delivered to be able to support investments required to grow into these new geographies for growth. Realizing these benefits also depends on our talent, culture, and our approach to change. We will configure our workforce to harness AI innovation with the skills and ways of working required to scale it effectively. Capital intensity also declines.
As you can see, we have stabilized spend excluding turnarounds in the last three years, balancing operating our assets consistently, improving throughput, and growth investment. The reducing trend in CapEx to EBITDA is reflective of the operating leverage with a bias to lower capital intensity. North American energetics benefits reflected in growth is low CapEx intensity and supports this curve. This is due to the $1 billion U.S. Graham, Kentucky investment being funded by the U.S. government. Noting, as Mauro mentioned, any European energetics benefits and investments are not included in the plan and would represent upside opportunity for us. Overall, the objective is to convert a greater share of earnings to cash while continuing to fund safe and reliable operations. These ranges will not be linear in every year. Planned turnarounds can create variation, but better cash conversion reinforces our financial resilience.
Combining revenue growth, operating leverage gives us the pathway to the FY 2031 earnings ambition. Earnings have stepped up materially since the transformation program began. Underlying EBIT growth was approximately 3% before the transformation. The program included material recontracting at more sustainable levels, reflecting the explosives industry's low ROIC, and the need for greater sustainability. This is evident in the past three years, where EBIT has grown approximately 17% per annum. Although ROIC in FY 2026 still remains below our cost of capital expectation. The next horizon of growth is driven by market demand and the adoption of premium technology, which delivers ultimately downstream mining efficiencies for our customers. These drivers are complemented by continuous improvement and scalable operating models in which revenue grows faster than overheads. The AUD 800 million FY 2031 exit run rate remains an ambition, but demonstrates to you the opportunity we see at Dyno Nobel.
The cash generated by the earnings must then be allocated through a clear, consistent framework. Our capital allocation framework is designed to balance resilience, growth, and shareholder returns. At its core, it does three things. It protects the foundations of the business by funding safe, reliable operations and maintaining financial strength. It directs capital selectively to opportunities that support our strategy and meet clear returns thresholds. It preserves the flexibility to return surplus capital to shareholders when that is the best use of funds. The framework is disciplined but not mechanical. Decisions are made with each use of capital assessed against the risk-adjusted return, strategic fit, and balance sheet capacity. This ensures growth does not come at the expense of resilience, and keeps capital allocation focused on sustainable value creation. That approach shapes the upside opportunities we see that are not included in this ambition.
I'll touch on this on the next slide. This slide brings together the two sides of disciplined capital allocation. First, returning surplus capital to shareholders and investing where we see compelling long-term value. We have returned significant surplus capital or cash to shareholders through special dividends and share buybacks executed at an attractive average price. This demonstrates our commitment to returning capital when we see it's the best use of funds. At the same time, we are seeing attractive opportunities in energetics. These opportunities offer strong returns and the potential to create long-term value for shareholders while supporting the next phase of Dyno Nobel's growth. With approximately two-thirds of the announced capital return now complete, Dyno Nobel will conclude that program. We will prioritize strengthening the balance sheet so that we can have the capacity and flexibility to invest in these opportunities.
This disciplined balance between returns, resilience, and investment is designed to support sustainable shareholder value. This slide here demonstrates how our plan is designed to create sustainable shareholder value. The value comes from bringing the elements of the strategy together, growing higher quality earnings, improving operating leverage, and allocating capital with discipline. As execution strengthens, we expect the business to generate better returns on capital employed and stronger earnings on a per share basis. Achieving ROIC at the levels is reflective of the importance of our people and assets to the mining ecosystem and underpins sustainable investment to unlock the resources the world needs. Let me close by bringing the financial outcomes together. Our long-term outlook brings the financial elements of the strategy together in one clear value creation pathway.
Growth in priority markets, pricing that reflects the value that we deliver, greater adoption of premium technology support the high single-digit revenue growth ambition. Improving revenue quality, operating leverage, and cost discipline then convert that growth into our FY 2031 ambition of AUD 800 million EBIT. The plan is designed to translate stronger earnings into economic returns. Achieving ROIC above WACC demonstrates that our growth and capital deployment are creating value while improving our cash conversion, provides the capacity to fund business and pursue attractive opportunities. Cash conversion is expected to be more stable following the fertilizer divestments and in the indicated range of 60%-75% post-interest and tax. Balance sheet strength remains central to this approach. Maintaining an investment-grade credit rating is a commitment. We've had positive feedback from ratings agencies as a pure-play explosives business.
Both agencies have indicated an appetite to increase leverage, headroom to reflect the improved credit profile of the business. This will give us flexibility to be at heightened leverage levels periodically, but our long-term setting remains at 1.75x-2.25x, which preserves resilience and flexibility. Taken together, Dyno Nobel offers a compelling, balanced, and accountable investment proposition. Quality revenue growth, operating leverage, expand earnings and cash generation. Disciplined capital allocation directs that cash to opportunities that clear our returns thresholds, and investment-grade balance sheet preserves resilience and flexibility. This combination supports returns above our cost of capital and sustainable shareholder value. This momentum is visible today. The Nobel Way supports execution. Our financial framework provides discipline to turn that execution into enduring value. Thank you. I'll pass on to Tom.
Thanks, Nitesh. Look, I'll get you actually. No. Stay on stage. Thanks. Invite Mauro onstage also. We will now do a Q&A session with both Mauro and Nitesh. We have some roving mics on the floor, so please raise a hand. We have a mic on each end. Yeah, we have about half an hour allocated for Q&A now. We look forward to that session.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking our questions. The first one, just on the role of bolt-ons. For the Horizon Two incremental AUD 200 million, how should we think about how much of that is from that bolt-on acquisition spend that you flagged?
Yeah, great question, and good morning. Look, the bolt-on, maybe the best way to do it, to define what we mean by bolt-on. Bolt-on typically means as we enter new markets or doing a new. It is about complementary capability that will accelerate the speed of growth, but it is not transformational in terms of changing materially the scale of the company. The bolt-ons is a means to growth, but in no way an attempt to accelerate the process just by buying earnings or buying revenues. We are really looking to do complementary capabilities. Typically, when you enter new markets and you want assets in the ground or make your ability to serve your customer easier, that is the type of thing we are talking about.
We gave you range to give you the order magnitude of what that could mean, so that when we start deploying and planning for capital, you have a sense. We haven't broken it down because it is not in itself a target or a level. We talk about that as a means to deliver on all the other things, whether it is the geography in LatAm or EMEA or even Defense. It is a means to deliver the plans that we outline.
Niraj, maybe I will add. You could probably see that it is included in the CapEx intensity that we outlined. So it is whatever is in that CapEx intensity, it will be minor CapEx.
Secondly, I guess the obvious follow-on is the more transformational M&A that you potentially flagged that sits outside of the AUD 800 million ambition. How should we be thinking about, I guess, the timing, the sequencing of that versus, I guess, Horizon One and Horizon Two?
Look, it is totally excluded, but everything we are doing is creating a platform that is better positioned for that. You heard me talking about that many times. I think this industry is ripe for more consolidation. It is happening. Dyno Nobel will be one of the technology winners in the end of this journey. But the plan we are presenting for you today hopefully gives you a sense that we are getting fit for the marathon and we really have enough fun in front of us to deliver, to strengthen the position of the company. Eventually, if the right opportunity pops up, we will be every time a bit better to do that. Our best currency to play this game is value we create every day and reflected by the share price.
We are not shy to say that we see that as a beacon of light in the future, but that is not the plan. This is not included in the AUD 800 million. We have line of sight to do our own self-help, but we remain curious in looking at what is happening around us.
Hey, guys. It's Ramoun from Jefferies. Just a couple from me. Maybe just starting on 2026. You've provided guidance at the upper end of your range. Just if you could maybe talk through some of the temporary impacts. I know it's been a volatile six months. Just given what's going on, any sort of impacts to think about around freight that have affected the half or pass-through of raw material costs, just given the volatility in nitrogen pricing and energy prices that we should then think about into 2027?
I think broadly, we outlined in the half one some of the headwinds we saw, and some of those were temporary. For example, we've seen FX, probably not as bad as we thought in terms of currency translations into the U.S. as we originally. But we had some offsetting effects in Indonesia and some other effects. Broadly, most of those items we called out in the half year, we're traveling there. Which is why when we've tightened the range, it's kind of a similar space of where we outlined previously. We were certainly beneficiaries, as we said in the half year results, in the first half for a tighter AN market. But in the second half, we also were trading in that market. Broadly, the effects of ups and downs in FY 2026, there's nothing significantly that you've got to carry forward in how you think about FY 2027.
Look, if I may add to that. If you think the story holds in terms of what would the exchange rate and Strait of Hormuz, if you want, inflationary pressures. But to your point, we expect as the rise and fall mechanism started to kick in, you will have some of that reversing on next year. But there would be other things that we haven't planned for, like those of you that follow any mining stocks, what happened in Chile, for instance.
We have one of our customers down for more than a month, 3 m and there's no. You cannot plan for those things. There's things happening. If you see the reporting of all the big mining houses, nobody planned what happened in Chile. With all that, we're still tracking well for that range. But in the balance of the ups and downs, we feel strong about this year.
Great. The second one, just around the commercial uplift in that horizon, too. How do you think about, I guess, the recontracting cycle? Maybe if you can touch on that and then, I guess, as part of that commercial-led growth, the contribution from North America versus Australia or APAC that you're assuming within that, I think it's AUD 80 million uplift through 2031.
Yeah, look, this part of the world in the U.S., given the energetics story, but also you hear firsthand from some of our customers, one of which very important new customer. Not a new customer, but new operator. One of the minds of, I have to say, how much longer will I hold? Rio Tinto will be here later today to talk about their Quebec operation. So, you have some underlying growth in this part of the world, which is the story playing to our advantage. What's happening in Canada, it's spectacular. It's our fastest-growing market anywhere. So, much of that is not only what you call the traditional U.S. business. It's also coming out of energetics, coming out of Canada. We have some ambitions about what we want to do in Mexico. So it's all very exciting here.
Notwithstanding that, Australia very likely will still be our biggest market. In terms of the recontracting cycle, the U.S. has been as tight as I've seen in my time. For the first time, I think this leadership team has been talking about import parity in the U.S., which is a very core, natural language in the Australian business. Now it is a thing here. Ammonia and nitrous has been consistently imported in the U.S. market, and that drives a whole different mindset on how people think about the product. Obviously, if I'm to finish the long answer, don't underestimate the risk profile that people are allocating to ammonia nitrous as part of their own supply chain resilience. I don't think people take post Strait of Hormuz as light, the opportunity to not have a domestic source of supply for anything that is ammonia related.
I've seen as tight as ever the ammonia nitrous market in the U.S. The import parity in Australia still remains pretty healthy at around AUD 1,000 delivered. So, all of those factors support yet another cycle of recontracting, where we remain positive that there is another opportunity for us to keep growing margins through the next cycle.
But it is fair to say, Ramoun, that Greg's had a great year here in the U.S., and it is a good reason why we are here, because he could afford to buy your dinner tonight.
Thanks. Is it in the forecast?
Well, yeah. Well, knowing Greg, no.
Thanks. It is Brooke from Barrenjoey. You provided a comment that contracted revenue is 80%-90%, I think, of FY 2026. How did that look a couple of years ago? You talked about how the earnings are more resilient, kind of suggesting the quality of those contracts have improved. So maybe give some examples of maybe how some of the conditions within the contracts are different to history, if that is what has played out. Thanks.
Look, we traditionally have had protections, but I think in a world where security of supply becomes more of an expectation from customers, at some point earlier this year, all but us, all of the global explosive suppliers but us had some customers some way in the global force majeure .
Obviously, that's helpful, and that creates a sense of the scarcity of the product, and hence gives us the opportunity to say, "Well, it's more than fair that you would expect us to get some protection on volume, some protection on margins, if you want us to give you some protections on security of supply." It's a two-way street. So the overall market condition was positive for us to leverage the fact that we had the product available to say, "Okay. We will be happy to give you some guarantees on our performance as long as that's now volume protected somehow." So it's a two-way street.
Second question, just around the additional AN demand. In that time, I think you called out 700,000 tons additional demand for AN, given the growth in copper. How do you think the market's going to serve and meet that demand? I presume, given your comments around CapEx, you're not going to be committing capital to new AN plants. I guess it's just debottlenecking, it sounds like, but correct me if I'm wrong. So how do you think the broader market's going to meet it?
Hasn't changed, Brooke. There's not one line of our capital plans that sees us bringing any new AN capacity. Our house view is that there is enough in the world. There will be some displacement of geography, displacement of even application of what goes into ferrets, what goes into market. But there's not one line in our capital plans that talks about new AN capacity being brought to life. Now, we like privileged assets, so if you ask me around the world, would there be any plans that would be nicely placed in with-- Yeah, that's okay, but we won't bring any new capacity in our plan. We will bring capacity through with debottlenecking, to your point. That marginal, typically turnaround related investment, but not any new plans.
I think the other part there in terms of context of that is our assets become more valuable, so our ability to reflect that value into how we see our ROIC is how we see that additional demand in the market.
Good morning. John Purtell from Macquarie. Thanks for the presentation. Just a question regarding the energetics market and how complementary it is. You have obviously touched on that, Mauro, in your presentation there, but does it have similar characteristics to your base explosives business, thinking about long-term contracting? Who are the current players that are serving that sort of main charge explosives market? Thank you.
Thanks, John. Look, 100%. Our estimation in. There is obviously the Dyno Nobel franchise, the credible operations that we have in the country. But in a practical sense, if the army had preferred to do a greenfield development for a new operation, it would have taken them at least two years, maybe three years longer between permits, the land. Land is particularly critical because you want to have land in terms of the size, but you want to have land in a place where those communities around us in Graham, Kentucky, are used to hearing bangs and bumps going from time to time as we test product. Having a community that accepts that industry, having the people trained, having the process safety, being able to trace product, which we do today.
You may or may not know, but in many of the jurisdictions, we have absolute control where the product ends up. All of those things, to start from scratch, having a system to trace product, would have taken at least two years for a new greenfield operator to replicate. So there is a time to market. Now, the other thing we are learning is there will be some other difference between the U.S. The U.S. is the biggest military complex in the world, naturally has the economies of scale to do what the government done, which is decide to put the capital to work to do sovereign capacity in the country. The Europe story is somewhat different.
We expect that to be more, as Nitesh from his telecom experience keeps talking internally, more like a data center model where you will likely have. Hence why we allocated some capital in the plan to that reason. Not allocated in the plan, but we are giving you a sort of range of possibilities of what they could look like, where we would likely have a capital deployment and they are written by offtake arrangements with the primes. So all the primes there you know, all the BAEs, the Thales, the global ordnance materials.
So the procurement would go through likely a prime, and that prime would distribute to the different countries in NATO rather than the U.S., which is a very concentrated model. I am limited in what I can say and how progressed we are in that, but Richard will talk more about that later today. We have had some early indications that the Vonges footprint and what it can bring is very similar to what we have done with Graham.
Thank you. Lee from JP Morgan. If we just look at the revenue CAGRs that you gave us, 2023 to 2026, I think you talked about how obviously it is a more rational market. Conditions have been pretty good over that period. Then you have four to six in the next leg, 2026 to 2031. Do you think that is more the market doing better, or are you winning more? What is a sensible view of what the market actually does in that period?
Yeah. So, I think we have tried to break it out in terms of consumption. So, I think we have seen consumption very strong. As you have seen in our half-year results, some of the growth that we have seen and we have shown what the consumption element has been. So, we have shown consumption and what we see consumption growing, aligned to those growth in those commodities that we have also outlined. Then we have split out some of that growth in new markets in the growth category. So, I think that is the distinction between the two. So, where we are looking at new business, it is within the growth category.
Okay. But the 4-6 includes your new business wins in existing, doesn't it? Or am I thinking about it the wrong way?
The 4-6 is consumption growth with the existing.
Okay.
Anything that is new is sitting in the growth category.
Okay, thanks for that. The premiumization, like the margin, the 1.2x margin, do you think that holds as we go out, as we have that same 10 percentage point uplift out to 2031?
That's for two reasons because, as you'll see later today, we're launching a new product, and this product in itself is as premium as it gets, and you would expect that pricing for that would different from the equivalent standard product or a standard equipment. In that case, it's a piece of gear that we're doing. We'll talk about that later. As some of the products mature and probably that price spread becomes diluted, then new products will emerge and go to the next cycle. We're not standing still. We're progressing our technology portfolio, and Dirk will have more to say about that. You're right. If you were standing still and the technology was frozen over time, you would expect naturally that that would be worn down. As new products come to life, the comparable earnings opportunity stays true.
Okay. Oh, sorry. Yeah.
No, I was just going to add, just to reiterate, a lot of our contracts have got CPI included.
Yep
rise and fall mechanisms, and that does come into price and mix. I think the other component there is, we would want to see that grow more strongly as our differentiated products move into mix, which is generating those higher, more premium product lines. The last component, when I looked at it, I thought, "Wow, we should be growing more in that line, in terms of CPI, going forward." In my view, that is an opportunity for us to, as our assets become more valuable, price should be a consideration. Some of the suppression we're seeing in that space is FX in the time. When we look at the next five years, we've got sort of FX headwinds, which are compressing that.
Sure. Then just a final one on energetics. This business seems relatively large and Accurate Energetic Systems. That was a Tennessee producer that had a significant issue at their plant back in the last years. Is the assumption that that comes back, or does that just stay out of the market and your views on what that means?
It looks difficult to say, and I have to say our hearts go to the 14 lives that were claimed with that. Maybe Kevin has a better, on the break, Kevin can give you. But I think it's not, at least not in the short term. They're probably not coming back, given the size of the impact and literally the destruction that happened at site. Actually, the plant that they lost was literally one of our. It wasn't energetics. It was boosters manufacturing, very similar to what we have in Kamouraska and Wolf Lake. They essentially were using TNT filling canisters, which we do all the time. It's a process that we know very well to the point that Kevin and his team were invited to join the ATF to do some of the investigation. That is all under privilege, so obviously we cannot comment on that.
But the ATF came to us to ask help to go and watch what happened there. It's a very similar process to what we do. It wasn't so much in the energetics as it wasn't IMX or it was handling TNT to produce boosters. Very similar to what we do.
Okay.
I've just got a follow-up. Mauro, obviously miners are, as you know, a pretty fickle bunch, but.
They are. We love miners.
You've got a fair bit of your growth coming from, I guess, premium product mix, new products. How do you get confidence that those customers are willing to, firstly adopt those products, and then secondly, willing to pay up for those products?
Look, again, they will kill me, but I cannot talk about these without talking about what's coming after, which is like launching a new product. That product will release productivity in a mine that is unavailable today for safety. So with that technology, a drill and blast department typically will be doing drilling and blasting. There is a handover point between the drilling team and the blast team. So you drill, drill. When you're ready, you hand it over to the blasting team. I lived that through 30 years of my career, where you had a clear separation between drilling and blasting. Imagine a world which we have done, we imagine it, a world where you don't need to drill during the day and stop at night, which now with autonomous drills you do.
Imagine a world where there's no safety, you don't need any light, you don't need to see what's happening. You can just load the hole throughout 24 hours without stopping. So you're opening up eight, nine hours, depending on the place of the world, of productivity in the bench that would be otherwise not available. So really, the price of explosives and the price of it becomes irrelevant when you look at the utilization of the most valuable asset that miners have, which is time.
We are really trying to get out of the cycle of going for tenders of ammonium nitrate per ton, which from time to time we do, but really to go and say, "Look, we can make your bench 100% autonomous and no person in the bench, and you can run 24-hour loading explosives in your bench." It is really fundamentally. You will hear that from customers in a minute and themselves, how they feel and how they think about it. But the products we are developing, they try to take away the conversation about the dollar per ton or the dollar per initiation system or the dollar per booster to say, "This is how much more productive your mine will be if you work with us.
Got it. Then just one more on energetics. Help us understand the competitive landscape both here and in Europe, if you can.
Not enough. There is not enough in the world. Everyone is trying hard, and we learned that with TNT. As you heard me say before, the store energetic story for us, to be very honest, it is almost accidental because we stumbled into an opportunity when we were trying to make our supply chain a bit better with TNT. We are heavy users of TNT. We use about half of the TNT in the U.S. for industrial use. What we found is there is a huge shortage coming out of the recent tensions in Ukraine. There is a company, if you are wanting to understand a bit of the economics of the companies, there is actually a company that about 40 years ago was part of the Dyno Nobel family, a company called Chemring Nobel, listed in Europe, which is one of the traditional energetics players.
They essentially were part of Dyno Nobel back in the day and were split as a separate business are listed in Europe today. Maybe if you are interested to go and take a look what types of earnings and what type of margins they make, they are good comparative of what this business could be.
Just following up on, I think Ramoun's first question on sort of technology in the mining space. We've always sort of considered QMC to be kind of at the high end of the spectrum from a profitability perspective for you. But as you attach more premium products, more services in the mining space, which seems to be a key focus area, should we expect that sort of gap to converge and close metals versus QMC?
Unlikely. It's a good question because it's not so much qualitative, it's more geometric. It's really because of the boreholes and typically in a quarry, you're very compressed in space, so you don't have the geography as you are in the middle of the desert. You cannot do as big blasts as you typically would in the big end of town in mining. So the boreholes tend to be much smaller. So it's a mix issue. So you end up using more high explosives per ton of bulk explosives than you do in any other type of operation. So it's defined by the way they work. It's not so much about a willingness to take. It's not a behavioral thing. It's just geometric and how it plays out in their bench. The bench is fundamentally different from a big end BHP or Rio.
Hi, guys. Sam Sia from Citi here. Just on one of your slides where you outlined the AUD 1 billion- AUD 2 billion EBITDA opportunity, I think you had in the comments, EBITDA margins are 20% to 30%, but it looked like they referred to kind of NATO region margins. Is there any reason to think that North America would be different, higher or lower, and then similar again in your Europe opportunity, just relevant to that kind of note, that 20% or 30%?
Yeah. Likely Graham will be the highest ROIC in Dyno portfolio because not our capital. So very high ROIC, lower margins proportionately because obviously we're not remunerating capital with those margins. The Europe business will be more like what's in that benchmark. Again, I refer you to Chemring Nobel, not because we're going to replicate what they do, but they are somewhat well-established, mature business that's been in that market for quite some time.
Okay. If there's no more questions off the floor for this session, we've actually got time for a break now. Thank you, everyone. We'll have about 15, 20 minutes just to stretch the legs, bathroom. People are welcome to walk out on the balcony, et cetera. We'll kick off again with technology and customers at 11:40 A.M. Thanks.
[Break]
Okay. If we could get everyone to come back to their seats, we'll kick off the next session. That'd be much appreciated.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Dirk van Soelen, and I'm the Group Technology Officer for Dyno Nobel. During this session, I'll focus on how technology creates customer value and how, in turn, this drives higher-quality revenue for Dyno Nobel. I'll walk you through what's driving the industry's demand for technology and also look at our pipeline. Our pipeline has projects at various maturity levels, and it sets out some ambitious and very exciting initiatives. I'll distinguish between what it earns today, what is scaling, and what remains in development. The results speak for themselves, and I'm looking forward to share with you some real proof points from key customers in gold, copper, and iron ore. The result shows and quantifies just how much better blasting improves recovery and the cost of material liberation. Six forces are reshaping mining's pursuit to be safer and more productive.
AI is moving out of pilot programs and into decision-making stages. Haulage and drilling are already automating, with the safety bar being raised and skilled crews becoming harder to find. Data across the mining cycle, from drilling and blasting to the material that is recovered, is still siloed. This means that the processing plant must deal with significant variability in the feed material that it receives. Across our industry, ore grades are falling, and the geology is more challenging and complex to deal with. In addition to this, carbon and energy usage per ton is also under pressure, and security of supply matters again in a way it didn't five years ago. Together, all of these trends are pushing the industry towards solutions that improves outcomes, gives accurate data, and keep people out of harm's way. The blast is absolutely pivotal in addressing most of these challenges.
In the context of all of these factors happening around the world, our technology offering and pipeline is in a very strong position to respond to customers' demands. For example, our Nobel Fire digital platform improves blast decisions with AI and predictive modeling. Our new autonomous solutions and wireless initiation systems removes people from the bench, and our Drill to Mill programs links blast performance to plant outcomes. Our Differential Energy solution matches energy to the rock.
Underpinning all of this is security of supply, and this is achieved through our integrated chain and network of privileged manufacturing assets, which continue to support continuity. We continue to focus on adding technology and services to the drill and blast processes, where we already have a proven track record. That is why these global forces that I just mentioned works in our favor. They increase the value of a position that we already hold.
Dyno Nobel has a strong technology pipeline. Some of these solutions are already earning at scale today, others are emerging and seeing good results on the ground, and some are still in development. I want to give you a look at the pipeline and how this links to our strategy. Namely, to protect and grow the core by focusing on continuous improvements while we are also securing developments for the future. Globally, adoption of our premium offerings, including electronic detonators and emulsions, continues to grow. Our Differential Energy technology allows loading of up to six densities in a single blasthole rather than only one. This matches the explosives energy to the specific rock type, and this is what provides optimized and consistent fragmentation. Our electronic detonators continues to replace legacy systems with safer, more flexible, and accurate timing.
Combining this with DynoConsult, our technical teams work hand-in-hand with customers to unleash the value of these products and to solve real-world problems. This approach focuses on outcomes and value offerings rather than just product selling. Scaling into the base is Nobel Fire, with usage that has roughly tripled since FY 2022 as the needs for analytics and integrated workflows expands. Our world-class and first of world Electric Mobile Processing Unit is currently being site trialed, supporting transition to lower carbon emission mine fleets. For the underground market, we have a new strategic partnership with TesMan. This remote loader technology cleans, prepares, and loads all the holes without operators at the face, improving safety and access to high-risk resources. What is also nice about this product is it can be retrofitted to existing rigs, optimizing the asset utilization of our customers. Ensuring that we protect the future is critical.
Looking at our pipeline, the development of lower carbon emulsions, the next-generation wireless detonators, and a new complete autonomous process to inspect and load blastholes will ensure that the biggest challenges our customers are facing will be addressed. I am encouraging you to find out more about these capabilities during lunch at our tech showcase downstairs, where you can also chat with our SMEs, subject matter experts. I am going to take a minute to talk about AI. Dyno Nobel's Nobel Fire solution combines blast data, predictive models, and feedback to optimize the next blast design. AI is now used across all our development groups, increasing the delivery speed, as shown by the productivity measures on the slide. This results in faster and more cost-effective delivery of our digital product offering.
I want to be clear that we remain focused on the blast and its downstream impact, integrating with our customer systems rather than trying to own the entire data stack. This focus improves execution, interoperability, and customer retention. Now to something really exciting, the Autonomous Bench. We have a short video to play that explains this innovation, but I have included the slide for further reference after the video.
The mining sector has made some meaningful progress in automation, but despite these advancements, vast deposits of high-value minerals remain untouched around the world. Not because we do not know where they are, but because people have not been able to get them out of the ground safely. While the global mining sector continues to embrace automation, there has always been one part of the process deemed so complex that autonomy is yet to be introduced: the drill and blast bench.
Following five years of intense R&D, in a world first, Dyno Nobel has developed an end-to-end process to autonomously deploy initiating systems and bulk explosives at scale. We have teamed up with some of the world's leading tech and robotics companies to transform one of mining industry's most safety-critical processes into a more reliable, repeatable, intelligent, data-driven operation. At the beginning of the mining cycle, one of the things that has the biggest impact on processing outcomes is blasting. For a world in need of critical minerals, safer and more consistent blasts leads to more energy efficient and cost-effective extraction of minerals. All mines are looking for this, and automation provides it. It is that simple.
For the first time, Dyno Nobel is bringing automation to dipping, priming, explosives loading, and stemming. With advanced vehicle guidance and blast execution software, Dyno Nobel's fully Autonomous Bench solution delivers a safer and more consistent approach. Every step of the process is documented with sensors and other technologies that generate real-time data. This data creates a continuous feedback loop, allowing operations to refine and improve each blast, making it more predictable, reliable, and consistent than the one before.
The bench is one of the most hazardous areas of a surface mine, and until now, it has been a very manual process. The Autonomous Bench means that every part of the blasting process can be managed by people now from a safe distance. It also helps manage risk around fatigue that come with 24-hour mining operations. This technology is a giant step change in how people are kept away from risk.
Dyno Nobel's focus and strategy is centered around learning and meeting the needs of customers globally and ensuring we are best placed to deliver against the world's demand for resources as it grows. As the industry moves towards autonomous mining, Dyno Nobel is helping to define it. We are investing our efforts into making global operations more productive, consistent, and data-driven. Most importantly, we are focused on getting people home safely.
Thank you. I am incredibly proud that this Autonomous Bench is no longer a concept, but after five years of R&D, Dyno Nobel has built actual units, which has been trialed in controlled environments, as you just saw in the video. These units will soon be deployed to our first trial site here in the U.S.A. with our customer and partner, Mariana Minerals, who is here with us today. Mariana Minerals is building one of the first fully autonomous mining operations in the United States, and they are the right partner to move this technology forward with us. Our objective is reliable, autonomous loading, which integrates with the mine systems and other autonomous solutions that the customers have already deployed at their sites.
Through a staged pathway between now and mid-2027, the new system will autonomously measure, prime, load, stem, and record each hole accurately to the design parameters, thereby automating the full cycle without people on the bench, resulting in repeatable efficiencies and predictable results. This new technology improves safety and downstream efficiencies, as we mentioned, but it also unlocks other opportunities, like access to high-risk ground, greater night shift utilization, continuous operations, and zero entry mining. Strategically, this new technology protects our role, not only as mining operations automate into the future, but also as the forces we discussed earlier in the presentation are reshaping mining and as they intensify. In the future, this reliable, repeatable loading and blasting capability, supported by proprietary hole-by-hole data will create a distinctive and a value proposition for both Dyno Nobel and our customers.
As I mentioned before, more customers are using our premium products, and this is supporting Dyno Nobel's earnings growth. There are four drivers that is improving revenue quality. Firstly, continued conversion to electronic initiating systems, a higher value product mix, digital tools that is being embedded in customers' workflows, and lastly, services that expand our scope from product supply to supported outcomes. Electronic volumes are up roughly 1.25x- 1.5x , and Nobel Fire usage has increased about threefold since FY 2022. The mix is shifting towards higher value, more integrated, and higher retention revenue. This premium technology opportunity also compounds. Electronic detonators enable our customers to optimize blast results when they use this in conjunction with Differential Energy. The Differential Energy can be optimized further by data-driven decisions and our predictive models, which then drives the adoption of our Nobel Fire platform.
Because of the vast amount of data and analysis and insights that is gained from Nobel Fire, this then becomes an enabler for services and optimization via DynoConsult for supported and value-driven outcomes. This progression supports our customers to boost product productivity and value, and it leads to sustained earnings growth for Dyno Nobel. We are not just selling a product. We are providing customers with solutions that delivers real-world value. As you can see from this case study, our model of integrated product, digital and service offering is delivering results. From precise and repeatable blast execution to predictable fragmentation, our solution provides improved material flow. This leads to increased plant performance and higher recovery rates. I stress predictability as this is what really matters on site. Variability disrupts downstream performance and throughput.
In contrast, more consistent and predictable fragmentation improves dig rates, stabilizes the feed to the crusher and the mill, reduces the energy per ton, delivering higher throughput and recovery at a lower unit cost. This approach then expands our ability to work with our customers beyond just explosive supply. It opens the door to blasting services, design and performance outcomes, focus on the total cost of liberating the material, not just the single line item of explosives. We are committed to helping our customers and to quantify the value they are receiving with Dyno Nobel. This case study on the slide with a key copper customer demonstrates this.
As we went through the process, we found that the combination of Differential Energy and electronic detonators, coupled with our fragmentation density modeling and the meticulous data-driven services provided by our embedded DynoConsult people on site, delivered an increase of 27% in blasted rock. In addition to this, the SAG mill, which does the heavy grinding to break the rock down far enough to separate the metal, and which is traditionally the largest power user on site, recorded a 10% drop in energy usage due to this better fragmented rock, resulting in the mill having to work less hard. Together, this added an estimated AUD 20 million a year in value. Over the last year, we've worked with more than 30 of our customers to validate the impact of technology solutions on their operations. This slide highlights the headlines from four different case studies, operations, commodities, and technologies.
Each has quantified outcomes and delivered real customer benefits. I want to point out that the same value creation model translates across different operating environments. Earlier, I spoke about the value that our copper customer obtained with Dyno Nobel. But as I look at iron ore, our Differential Energy product, along with moving to electronics and investing in pattern optimization, delivered product improvements of approximately AUD 20 million a year in cost savings. This is equal to roughly 2.5x-3x the amount spent on blasting. In gold, our drill to leach program increased gold recovery by 8 percentage points and crushing throughput by 15%. Recovery is really difficult to improve once the ore reaches the leaching pad. Fragmentation is one of the few upstream levers available and is critical to optimize and control.
Our customer's metallurgist valued the valued gained at an estimated AUD 215 million over 10 years. In smaller operations like quarries and aggregates, this technology model still holds, and again, delivered results by reducing oversize. This is the large rocks that slows down a quarry's production being reduced by 42%, and the fraction above 36 inches in size dropping below 1%. This initiative saved a potential AUD 700,000 a year in value for very little additional investment by the customer. As a benchmark across operations running the full Dyno Nobel technology service model instead of legacy methods, we see a 3x-5x increase in the value generated based on their blasting investment. In short, well-managed, controlled, reliable, and repeatable blasting delivers real cost savings and value for our customers. Our technology and service model helps them to deliver these benefits, which in turn builds trust.
Our investment in technology is also supporting our customers with their decarbonization objectives. We continue to focus on new world-first technologies and solutions, such as our Electric Mobile Processing Unit and lower carbon emulsions. These are important technology advancements and will be critical to the industry moving forward. I want to make the point that the largest source of emissions is often hauling, crushing, and milling energy.
We are able to influence these emission sources by providing reliable and repeatable blasting outcomes for our customers, as we've just shown by the 10% reduction in the SAG mill energy in the copper case, which delivered both carbon and cost benefit from the same intervention. If I can leave you with one message today, it is that Dyno Nobel's technology is transforming mining challenges into measurable safety, productivity, sustainability, and cost improvements for our customers. It is also creating scalable and profitable growth for our business and our shareholders. Thank you.
We are privileged today to have some of our customers here to provide their insights on the mining industry and the role that technology plays in their operations. Greg Hayne, President of our North American business, will assist me in moderating the panel. That includes customers across iron ore, aggregates, coal, and critical minerals, including a joint venture partner working and delivering products and services on the bench every day. Let me invite them up to the stage and welcome them.
Please welcome to the stage Jay Pumphrey, Vice President and Equity Partner, Buckley Powder Company. Jay brings more than 50 years experience working in the explosives industry and 25 years with Buckley Powder Company, one of our valued JV partners. Buckley Powder Company operates in roughly 28 locations across five regions, supplying explosives products and blasting services to the quarrying, mining, and construction industries. Mark Helm, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, Dolese Brothers. Mark has four decades in the construction materials industry and now leads Dolese, one of Oklahoma's largest construction materials producers with more than 1,000 employees. Dolese is a customer of Buckley Powder Company. Paul Wagner, Vice President, Global Supply Chain, Peabody Energy. Paul has held leadership roles spanning the Americas, Australia, and global supply chain functions, helping drive operational performance, cost optimization, and supply chain strategy across the enterprise.
Peabody Energy is a leading global coal producer, supplying high-quality thermal and metallurgical coal to customers in the electricity generation and steelmaking sectors. Willem Van Schalkwyk, Director of Mariana OS Product Management, Mariana Minerals. Mariana Minerals is a software-first, vertically integrated critical minerals project developer and operator. It owns and operates Copper One, a copper mine and refinery in San Juan County, Utah, which restarted mining operations in April 2026, incorporating the company's proprietary software stack, Mariana OS. Mark Arkell, General Manager, Mine and Ore Delivery System, Rio Tinto IOC. With more than 3,200 employees, Rio Tinto IOC is Canada's largest iron ore pellet producer. Mark has spent over 15 years with Rio Tinto, almost all of it in large open pits. He has run autonomous drill and semi-autonomous explosive loading fleets in large open-pit operations.
Okay. Good morning, everybody. My name is Greg Hayne. I'm the President of our Americas business, and I'm so excited to have assembled such a well-credentialed panel to talk to you here today. Up here on stage, we have over 100 years of executive leadership experience across all of our market segments, metals, coal, quarry construction, and we also have our largest joint venture distribution partner with us. With 100 years of experience on the panel, I think it's appropriate that we start with someone who's contributed generously to that 100 years of experience, Mark Helm. Mark, you've been the Executive Chairman of Dolese, and you've also chaired the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association for about nearly 40 years now. What's changed in your business and in the industry over, let's call it, the last few years?
Sure. To start, he says long-term because Dolese's been around 125 years. We're celebrating next year, so we're pretty excited about that. National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association really represents the aggregate industry and the products that are used there. If I look at the last, say, three to five years and think about the changes, I could talk about quite a few things. Some of it's the consolidation of the industry. Some of it's the difficulty in permitting new sites. That's getting harder and harder. There's a number of things, specifications that continue to get tightened up and the requirements that our customers have on our product. But in the end, it is the technology really that I'm seeing us really try to drive the most.
If you think about the aggregate industry, we have not really taken on the technology in the same way a lot of maybe my counterparts up here have, and that's really because the economics haven't really been driven as well as they could for us. We tend to be smaller operations, so the technology's expensive, and to get a return on it is difficult. Also, a lot of it is just the difficulty of sensors and those things that aren't as durable in our environment. We're seeing a lot of that happen right now, but the technology has really started to develop at a point where the economics are starting to work for us, and so we're really focused on it from an automation standpoint of our plants, our operations, data collection, and what we can do with that data in trying to control the plant.
Doing remote controls on plants, all those types of things are really starting to move into our industry and especially in our bigger aggregate operations. There's a lot of small operations, including some of ours, where I think it's still going to take some time for that economics to work out.
Nice one. Mark, just specific to AI, how is AI shaping your industry?
Yeah, I think for us, AI in the back office, we're starting to use that more for some of our processes. Of course, our IT folks, OT folks, operational technology folks, are using it for coding and those types of things. Where we're at really is being, even though we're 125 years, we probably haven't done as good a job because we haven't used the technology level. So our data is not as clean. It's siloed somewhat in different places, so it doesn't all agree. So that's where we're really focused on because we know that if we can get the data in from our plants reliable, and we get that data clean, now we can use AI really to control that operation and start to make adjustments on the fly. So that's where we're really trying to head.
Nice one. Nice one. I guess we should bookend this. So we've started with Mark. We should move to the relative upstart into the industry. Willem, we're all fascinated to understand what is the world's first software-first mining company all about?
Yeah, thanks. Mariana, we started about two years ago, and I think pretty early on, we got into business at Copper One. The goal there with Copper One really is for us to start mining in the way that we intend to mine and intend to scale the business. Autonomy is a really big piece of that picture. We've set ourselves a really ambitious goal of going after 10 projects in 10 years, and we know the only way that we're going to be able to do something as crazy as that, is to do it by leveraging technology to its fullest extent. I think that means really kind of end-to-end deployment of technology. That means going after all of the unit operations so that we can get to that sort of full no human in the pit operation.
Blasting is obviously a really big part of that. The other piece of the puzzle is the kind of data infrastructure and the kind of optimization layer that looks across the entire operation. We want to think about blasting, for example, in the context of the downstream recovery, and the full kind of operational optimization, not just an individual point solution. I think the other thing to call out is that is an incredibly ambitious vision. We are also very lucky, I think, in the mining industry, to have very good kind of point solutions, and we see our main challenge as being able to orchestrate and bring all of those solutions together, so that we can make the data flow and make the decisions flow across all of the different silos, rather than each unit operation solving for itself.
Thanks, Willem, and I'm sure Dirk is going to interrogate you a little bit more on that shortly. I just did want to bring in Paul Wagner. The thermal coal industry, people don't obviously always sort of associate that with the AI revolution, but how is it affecting Peabody Energy?
Well, for Peabody, AI, obviously, it's a technology story, but probably the more immediate impact for Peabody is the electricity and the infrastructure story. We're seeing, for the first time in this country in a number of decades, measurable increases in electricity and the demand for electricity. Many of the utilities are starting to look at their fleets and how do they supply that electricity in the future. The coal fleet that at some point may have had an expiration date on it, is getting pushed out, and that's good news for us. Helps our supply situation, definitely. I'd say the other piece of it is around the critical minerals and the rare earths. You hear a lot about that in the country, that we don't have enough of those.
We are starting to look at our resource base and how we can be a part of that supply chain as well. With the electricity, the infrastructure, and the minerals, I think Peabody's got a role to play in all of those.
I was reading about that. I am sure people are fascinated by Peabody's what you are seeing in regards to rare earths in Wyoming there. Can you just give us a bit more on that?
It is early days for us. We are starting to understand what do we have in our resources, and then it comes down to how are we going to extract that economically. We are definitely pursuing that, and it is one piece that we are going to be looking at pretty heavily.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe Mark, I will hand over to you. Look, with all your experience on a lot of sites that you have run, you understand the impact of blasts really well on downstream processes. At IOC, where do you see the greatest value from getting it right at blasting?
Yeah, thanks, Dirk. IOC, so Iron Ore Company of Canada, it all starts with the blast. We have a very intensive downstream processing. So we concentrate, and then we upgrade our iron ore into very high-grade quality. And if we do not get the blast right, it makes that downstream a lot more expensive, and we lose value at each step, especially the interfaces. So working with Dyno up there, really trying to get our blasting right at the front, because in terms of returns on investment, the more money you can spend on the blast, it really saves downstream. So that is where we are really trying to get it right at the front of the blasting there.
Yeah, that is good to hear. More blasting. Jay, if I can throw to you guys run a lot of sites as Buckley Powder, you support a lot of sites. Where has technology made the biggest difference to blast performance, and what can you achieve today that was not possible a few years ago?
Thanks. We like to call ourself boots on the ground for Dyno Nobel. We carry out the technology that they bring forth, along with the products, which the Differential Energy deal has made a huge difference to us in how we go about. We got 62 trucks that we run now with Differential Energy. We have taken it and run with it. But when you start talking about technology, what it has done for particularly the aggregate industry, so we have been able to go in and recover rock that we were not able to recover before. And the reason is technology, okay? And we can blast in with electronic detonators, we can blast a lot closer to structures than we could in the past. It has allowed us to educate the public more on what is going on.
We do a lot of regression studies, where we work with our seismograph operators to make sure that we are not shaking up the public, okay? And the main thing is we need to stay out of the newspaper. And so in our business, that is not always easy. And so technology has made a huge difference to us, and it will continue to do that.
Yeah, no, I think that is really great and that license to operate. Yeah.
Yeah, as I said, permitting is getting more and more difficult. In our state, Oklahoma, and most states, there are requirements on blasting levels, those vibrations, and air impacts that you have to meet. Definitely the electronic detonators and that whole process has really helped in that regard because a lot of our locations are getting built around, they are close to neighborhoods and so we have got to be really careful on how we are doing that. It is the license to operate as we go forward because it is not uncommon for us to be permitting new sites quite frequently. Yeah.
That is an issue not just for new sites, but it is an issue for the big coal mines, Paul. I know we work with you on community issues all the time. How does the technology flavor some of the work that we are doing with you on that?
Well, I think technology is definitely important for us. It helps with productivity improvement and the mining game, particularly the coal mining game, is all about cost and what does it cost to move a yard of dirt. So if you can help us do that efficiently, we are all about that. But coal mining, in addition to that, there are other pieces of it and safety is number one for us. We look to you for your products that they can meet the requirements.
Then as far as any services that you provide, that you can do that safely as well. Then once we get over that hurdle, it is the product supply. Can you deliver the products to us in our cyclical business up and down and continue to support us in that part of the business? Good technical support to help us implement those technologies, those are always very important to us. Really just executing on the bench for us.
Mark, I'll maybe back to you. Just with all the variables in the mining cycle, if you could improve the consistency of one aspect of each blast, what would it be and how would that impact your overall operation?
Sure. When you look at our operations, one of the things that I don't think people always realize about the aggregate industry is when we're producing products, one of our plants might produce anywhere from 15- 25 different products. At any one time, it might be three or four different products. When we've set up a plant, we know what our production needs to be for each of those products and we're trying to set up our crushers, our screens to really capture what the average material that we expect to come out of that quarry or out of that pit. Sometimes, with, say, Buckley's help, we'll have different shots. We might make anything from a riprap shot for large erosion control stone to smaller shots that are helping us produce some mineral filler.
What that means is because the average coming out of that muck pile is not always the same, it's not just the throughput of our plant, but it's also the distribution of products that we make at any one point in time, whether that might be a 1.5 inch stone to a 3/8 stone to 1/4 inch stone. We're trying to produce all of those for different construction projects. That variability really causes us some problems in the plan. If I could have one wish, it was that that muck pile, that rock that's been blasted down is consistent all the way through. That's a little bit difficult for us to really see and to do. But that's what I'd wish for the most.
Let me say something to that.
Yeah.
One thing on that, the communication with Dolese is excellent. What we do is as we get into this and we see a blast and we look for measurability on throughput numbers and so on and so forth, it is not all about how much you can produce, it is more about what Mark said, the products that you produce. The more feedback we get from them, we can change the blast on the next one, we can change the timing on the detonators, and we can create a much better muck pile that runs better for them. That is the goal.
That is excellent. I think automation has been a big theme of this morning, but we have actually got somewhat of an expert in automation here because Mark Arkell, before you were up at IOC braving the cold, you were in the Pilbara running a fairly large autonomous drilling fleet and a semi-autonomous loading fleet. The other big theme for this morning has been safety. Can you talk to us a little bit about the safety challenges as we are introducing large levels of automation and semi-automation into an operation like yours?
Thanks, Greg. I do not know if you ever become an expert with automation. So originally, I am originally a mining engineer, and spent a lot of time in the manual side of the mining game. Technology came in, especially in extreme environments like the Pilbara. It is like +40, 45 degrees Celsius. Then now where I am, it is like -40 degrees Celsius. So in safety, having people in those conditions is just not acceptable. We need to challenge ourselves to remove people from those type of conditions. That is where automation is really important.
I think some of the things that changes, and Willem touched on it becomes instead of managing separate parts of the mining operation, you now become a manager of a system and joining it all together and really helping people understand how to use that data and also managing the systems, the data network. Again, being a proper miner and then having to learn systems and automation network, that is probably the focus areas that it becomes. It also brings stability. I think as an operator, instead of firefighting, you now can become calm and you can now work on optimizing the system, so optimizing blast, optimizing the interfaces. Whereas without automation, you do become quite reactive and firefighting. That is what I saw. Safety, it is just amazing the amount of incidents that are reduced from autonomous.
Actually autonomous operations, you see safety a lot more, whereas without it, you would never have seen those incidents. So you are in like a false sense of security, whereas with autonomous you see what is happening and it shows what it is preventing. See a lot of benefits from that.
What do you think is the next major breakthrough that would help you in automation?
I think we have so much data at the moment, and especially with AI, it is even more data. We still have not quite nailed how to use that data and put it in people's fingertips as quick as possible, so then to take action. I think that would be the next key, is again, as we get all these systems to link and then the decisions are presented to people so they can just choose the best decision instead of wading through data.
Even better if that can all be done autonomously. Then I think capability. I think we focus a lot on people learning mining and people operating, but I do not know if we have focused enough on people learning the systems and how to be both a miner but also a good system operator. So I think those are the two areas we need to really focus on.
That's excellent. I know Buckley's investing very heavily in data, so Jay, I'll come to you in just a second. I just wanted to finish off a question on automation for Willem. Willem, you're saying you want end-to-end automation. What do you see is the most difficult part of achieving that?
Yeah. For me, I think our goal here is very explicitly the real end-to-end picture. I think the edge cases there are the thing that really stands out where the market will provide the technology solutions in the cases where you have the volumes where the economic case for automation speaks for itself, and then those solutions will come, and we're already seeing that happen in a couple of places. I think the pieces I'm worried about is the sort of operations that happen less frequently. Blasting is a great example of them. Less frequently, so there's a less clear kind of labor reduction automation value case.
But until you're able to fully automate those out, you're not able to get to the place where you can change your safety factors and change your design and get to a point where you can unlock all the value from truly zero entry mining. Going and figuring out how we get those kind of edge cases solved is a problem we're trying to pull forward because only once we get to that point do we think we can really start scaling.
I guess the edge cases, because you will be spending some time thinking about what do you consider to be Mariana's core business that you want to do and own yourself, your technology that you want to invest in and own, and where do you rely on bringing in a partner to help with an edge case. Talk us through your thinking around drill and blast, and why you decided to bring in a partner for drill and blast.
Yeah. I think the two questions I ask anyone first is, "What is your product?" and "Do you have an API?" I think the fundamental calculus is that if we can find good point solutions that solve the real technical complexity in that unit operation, and the technology provider is willing to open their systems and provide us a low-level integration pathway, then we have a case to work together. I think with you guys, that's exactly what we found. We are already integrated via APIs, and we've started developing with you guys on the Dyno Nobel FIRE interface. I think, with the trials we're going to be doing, there's going to be more and more of that, figuring out the data flows so that the operator experience has to be one unified system.
I don't want our operators to have to log into a different user interface for every technology solution that's on-site. That's just going to become untenable very, very quickly, especially as you bring more and more of these into one operation.
How much time do you put into evaluating this technology and this API versus that technology and that API? Talk us through your process.
I don't think it's a very binary discussion, honestly. I think if you're willing to integrate and you're willing to open it up, then it's a yes. If it's not, and frankly, for most providers it's not because everyone wants to build their one turnkey integrated solution. That's just a no-go for us. It's pretty black and white, at least to date.
I've got to say, that's a fairly common mentality and a philosophy across even the more established.
Yeah
Big miners. Let's go to Dyno. Jay, Buckley, I think for a very long time, has seen itself as a blasting company. But over the past, what, call it three years maybe? You've become a drilling and blasting company, and a lot of that's about data, right?
We really didn't want to get into drilling. We'd seen quite a few failures with the majors, where they had bought drilling companies, and it didn't work. They get in it, and they spend a little bit of time, and they go south pretty quick because you can lose a lot of money in drilling really quick. We decided we didn't want to get in it, but we had to get in it because we weren't getting holes drilled. Now we're three and a half years into it. First year, we took a real nice bath in it and learned a lot and decided that we can't keep doing this. We changed a lot of stuff, and now we have a drilling app that we've created, and it's real nice to be able to micromanage that real well.
But what has happened out of this is we have figured out that it is probably the most antiquated business that we have, that we deal with. The drills are 1982 models. They burn 40, 45 gallons of fuel an hour, and where we are on our new drills, we run around 13 gallons an hour, and our production levels are up substantially on drilling. Then once we saw the vertical integration of the drilling into the blasting, there is no excuse. The excuses go away. If we have control of that borehole from the beginning to the end, where we lay it out, we are using GPS drills on everything. We just go out, we walk the drill out on the bench, and we start drilling. We drill to exact footage, and we blast to that footage.
Now we got on a lot of the loaders, and Dolese has got it on some of their loaders. They dig to exact footage. These floors are flat, and what does that create? It creates a deal where they know exactly what elevation they are at the whole time. They also are able to extract the data from the loaders to know exactly what is going on on a daily basis. It is pretty neat stuff.
Mate, you have talked about a lot of innovation there with drilling, but also Buckley is known for being an innovator. You are the earliest of early adopters with everything that we bring out and show you. What does it take to convince a customer to come with you on a journey of piloting something new on their site?
That is a really good question. Some are easier than others, obviously. What you have to do is it has to be a joint venture between us and them working together to analyze the data and bring the data forth. Then we can show them their savings on it. When I talk about savings, you can also get into sideline savings when you start talking about the loaders, and you start talking about the haul trucks and all that, and maintenance costs that the quarries go through, which are huge. We got one particular deal we have been doing where we are seeing about a 30% reduction in cost overall for that mine by using this technology.
Mark Helm is a customer of Jay. He must be trying to sell you something new all the time, and I guess others are too.
Yeah. In fact, today, yeah. Some of the things he's talking about are absolutely true. When you have more control in that quarry floor, your loaders run more efficient, your haul trucks run more efficient, you save costs on tires and maintenance on equipment. All of that can make a difference. One of the things that they've done because they're tracking so much data, that now with our automated plants, we're pulling their data right into our automation data at the site. Our guys then can start to look at, okay, here's what we see in the blast, how much it costs, what that looked like, and start to compare what's happening in the plant.
That's again, where we're starting to break down those silos to get the data all together so that in the future we're going to be able to make even better decisions. If we can get really consistent product throughout the muck pile, we'll really be able to do more. One of the things that you mentioned, new things. Right now, there are so many people coming to us with ideas on how we can do safety better, production better, efficiency, how we're going to save fuel, all those things. Even though there's a lot of opportunity, there's only so much you can do at any one time, and there's only so much change our folks can take on and so many projects they can do.
We've got to really spend some time with those folks that are coming to us with ideas and try to evaluate them. Is it a true savings? Do they have examples? Although we like to try to be somewhat of a leader, we don't like to be on the bleeding edge because we've experienced that process where something didn't work, and we've gotten down the road and had to back up, and we spent a bunch of money on it. We really try to evaluate all of those things. Is it something that has truly been done? Is it a supplier that we think can support us as we go forward? Then really pilot it at a location to see if we think it's going to work for us. It's a process that we go through.
We have strategies of the three or four or five things that we are really focused on right now with technology in improving our efficiency throughout the organization. If it does not meet one of those right now, we do not even really look at it because there are too many things available.
That is a great answer. Let us stay with thinking about how a mining company or a quarry construction company might go about evaluating a technology before they agree to introduce it. Mark, I will throw it to you about particular challenges at IOC. It is a very remote site.
Yeah.
The weather conditions are incredibly challenging. There must be a high bar for you about when you decide to trial something new because you know you are in for a fairly large challenging project.
Yeah, it is a good question. The main technology we have at the moment at IOC is, we have remote autonomous bulldozers. They operate in some very extreme areas, especially where there is dust and fibrous issues. Then extreme cold, so January, February, when it is touching minus 50 degrees Celsius, the ore will freeze. The way we evaluate if the technology will work is we send it in at that time. The dozers need to be able to push that frozen dirt around. Then all the wireless systems, and the bulldozer will have about seven cameras on it. If the camera bandwidth can work in that environment, then we know it has worked. I was there last week, and it is working really well at the moment. I think the other one is, again, is back to our people.
If the technology is easy for our people to just jump on and start operating. With that bulldozer example, they can go to the site and operate the dozer remotely, or they can go back to our operation center, which is about 20 mi or 10 mi away, and operate it from there. I think it is just that interchangeability. Can you move between the areas? Is it plug and play? If you are trained in the bulldozer in the operation, can you then just go jump on it on the remote control? That is what we are looking for when we are looking for technology.
Yeah, good. Even at a site like IOC,
Yeah
even just something like bringing a new supplier onto the site, can be challenging.
Yeah.
What do you look for in a supplier before you are going to decide for yourself that, yeah, I am confident that I can bring these people on?
I think we are always looking. The number one thing is an open mindset. You have to be open to every single challenge where we operate. So not just the weather. It is remote, very hard to get supplies in. To get quality people is hard. So if you are open to suggestions and working with us, that is probably the number one thing.
Dyno has been with us now for 12 months and definitely had that type of mindset, which has made it a lot easier. I think just within that challenge, if you do not have an open mindset, you quickly become very negative and end up failing. So that is probably one of the main things. Then I think that leads to technology, right? If you are open to new ideas and always challenging the norm, naturally you will find the best way, which is where technology comes in.
Yeah. Thanks, mate. Paul, I might just bring you in on that as well. We have been partners for a very long time with Peabody.
Right.
We are always trialing new things, are not we?
Right
You are forced, your business forces you to look for better ways to do things all the time. You've always got to balance that with the need to keep your community and your people safe. As the global commercial executive, what are the things that you think about when you're looking at a supplier trialing something new for you?
Yeah, I think first and foremost is can we do it safely? We'll do a risk assessment. We'll look for collaboration from you guys and what are the risks and how do we mitigate those. For that technology to make it into our business, it's kind of what Dirk was showing, real numbers, AUD 20 million saved here, AUD 700,000 saved there. We're looking for what is that value that technology can bring, and can it actually impact our bottom line?
Yeah, I think if we sort of shift a bit and look to the panel, what do we think is lying ahead? Willem, we all know that the demand for copper is skyrocketing with global electrification and data center establishment. From your perspective, what is needed to get these copper projects up and running quicker?
Yeah, I think for us, especially if you think about more greenfield development, I think there's sort of two challenges I'd call out. One is just the labor pool. Specifically, being able to secure labor for new projects in new jurisdictions where maybe there's not an established skilled labor force. That I think is a really big challenge. The other one kind of like very operationally, the way to then take this idea of a fully autonomous mine and then put it in practice. To me, the real big challenge there is actually figuring out the planning part. Being able to get our mining planning discipline to a completely different kind of paradigm of planning for machines versus planning for human operations because machines can execute very precisely, but they will do what you tell them to do.
That is its own challenge in terms of being able to adapt to circumstances on the ground, being able to get the right granularity in at the right point in time. That is something that we're spending a lot of time thinking about. I think frankly, is going to be the real operational roadblock to really getting to significant scale. Yeah.
Yeah, no, I think that is an excellent point, the planning part. They sometimes get overlooked in the development of new technologies. Look, I'm going to throw the next question maybe to Mark Helm and Paul, both of you. I'll start with you, Mark, but what changes in the industry are you most excited about that you think is coming up in the next five years?
Yeah, I would say it is really around the technology that we're working on. We're in what we're calling, a lot of companies will call it a digital transformation. We're calling it a digital evolution. We've been around too long, we like what we do in a lot of ways, but we need to evolve into some of this technology that we've got. I first see us already on some of our newer plants, we can remotely operate those without anybody there. Skilled labor is going to still be a huge issue as we go forward because you still got to have people who are working on that plant and on mobile equipment and finding those folks who can do that.
I think that that's really going to improve the efficiency for us as we go forward with the technology that's coming available and some autonomous things because the economics are continuing to get better for us.
Yeah. Paul, from your side, any thoughts on that?
I think it's the technology. It just has to provide value, but I think as it advances, I think it will provide that value, and it also drives a demand for our product, and I think that's where it'll end up going for us.
That's great. Look, as Jay is the most experienced member of our panel with over 50 years of business experience, I think we'll throw the last question to you. What is the one thing about our business that people outside of the industry don't really understand?
Oh, I would say number one is explosives are dangerous. I mean, do we really have to explain that? It's not that dangerous, okay? We do a really good job on safety, but we aren't really selling explosives. We're more selling rock on the ground for guys like this. Okay? So what we do is we work with them closely to figure out exactly what they need. As we move farther and farther into the drilling part and we're able to provide everything that's needed, we call it Drill to Mill. So we drill it, we shoot it, we bill it. So that's pretty simple stuff, but it's not that easy. It's all about people, it's about great customers, and it's about working together to create value.
Really like the bull part. Look, I think that brings us to the end of our panel discussion. I would just really like to thank all our customers for joining us today, for sharing your perspectives, your experiences, and the challenges that you see in the industry. I think for us as a supplier, your insights is extremely valuable. It helps us to think about technologies that we can develop to help you, but that actually delivers results in the fields. So, just a word of thanks for your. Really appreciate your partnership, your openness and your continued trust in our organizations. Thanks for joining the panel.
Thank you everyone on the panel, our customers, Dirk and Greg . We are now breaking for lunch downstairs, where you will have a chance to engage in some of the technology that you have heard about from Dirk and our customers. Just a couple of administrative notes. Obviously, we encourage you to stay downstairs. There is a lot to see, but if you do need to step out of the building, please keep your name badges on to avoid being held up with security. Please make your way to the elevators now. Our team is going to direct you down to level two, and we will be back here at 2:30 P.M for the remainder of the program.
[Break]
Thank you. Okay, everyone. If we could all grab a seat and we will kick off the final push of the day. Thanks very much. Just waiting for our largest shareholder to resume his seat. All right, welcome back, everybody. The best way to start into the Dyno Nobel Americas review, I think, is to thank our expert panel, Paul Wagner, the two Marks, Willem, and Jay, for coming to talk to us today.
I know that you have been dying to hear it from the horse's mouth. You have been hearing it from Dyno Nobel for a number of years now, but I know that all of you enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to hear it from our customers themselves, and I could see you at lunchtime bailing them up and asking them again if they really mean it. So it is really nice to have some really solid proof points for you.
Look, that panel collectively represents more than a third of the DNA earnings, sorry, revenue. More than a third of our total business was up here on the stage talking to you today. It is also a great cross-section of what our business is. What you had there was you had our largest coal customer, you had Rio Tinto, a very large metals customer, you had Dolese, a very large quarry house, and also the chair of the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, and you also had Buckley Powder, who is our largest distributor. So that is a very representative panel of what DNA does. One thing that all of those customers have in common with each other and with all of our other customers across the globe is that all of us are committed to the safety of our people and our communities as our first priority.
The industrial explosives industry has had a traumatic past couple of years, with a number of catastrophic incidents around the world, including multiple fatality events in India, in South America, and most recently in Tennessee in the U.S.A. Even when these incidents do not result in a loss of life, the economic and the reputational consequences can be profound. This morning, you heard from Kevin McNeill, our Dyno head of HS&E and Operational Excellence, about our program to protect Dyno Nobel from a major incident at one of our plants. That work is the most important work that we do, not only because around half of our 2,000 DNA employees work in our manufacturing operations, but also because we are the most vertically integrated, full-line explosives manufacturer in North America. Our manufacturing base is one of our most sustainable competitive advantages.
Outside of our seven major manufacturing plants, we also have an extensive footprint of downstream distribution assets, including more than 20 emulsion plants, seven joint venture distribution partnerships, five wholly owned distribution regions, and our own in-house transport company, Dyno Nobel Transportation. Our portfolio of joint ventures and wholly owned distributors is easily the best in the Americas, and we are also the only explosives company that maintains its own transport business. Very importantly, our end-user customer base is the cream of the crop. Across each of our segments, the largest and the most discerning customers invariably are working with Dyno Nobel. In combination, our customer base, our manufacturing base, and our distribution footprint are without peer in the North American market. That's why DNA is better placed than any of our competitors to take advantage of these end-market tailwinds that we're experiencing right now.
Perhaps the strongest tailwind is the desire of the U.S. to take a leading position in the AI economy. The U.S. presently hosts about 1,300 data centers, but there's more than 2,000 additional projects on the books. Data center construction is fueling end-user demand for explosives in three ways. Firstly, and this may surprise you, data centers themselves are massive construction projects which require drill and blast services, which can be quite meaningful. Frequently, these drill and blast services are provided by DNA and our joint ventures. The drill and blast scope for the projects, although it varies quite widely, you can have the smaller projects might be $1 million-$5 million drill and blast scopes, but the larger hyperscale projects can be very large drill and blast scopes.
In fact, our joint venture network is presently tendering on two such hyperscale projects, each with a drill and blast scope in excess of $40 million. Secondly, the energy draw from data centers is placing pressure on the U.S. energy grid, of which thermal coal is an important source. You heard from Paul this morning from Peabody about how that's impacting their business. For the first time in over a decade, U.S. coal production is firming, and it's facing the future with a renewed sense of optimism. Thirdly, these data centers require an enormous amount of copper. A single hyperscale data center can require up to 50,000 tons of copper. This surging demand for copper and other critical minerals is leading to an acceleration in greenfield mining projects, but also a renewed focus on productivity in existing operations.
As you heard from our expert panel today, drill and blast optimization is often the best answer to debottleneck an existing copper mine. That is why we are experiencing an ever-increasing interest in Differential Energy emulsion, in wireless initiation, in digital enablement through Nobel Fire. This global thirst for copper is already well-known to you. Developing copper mines is not simple, and often it is not quick.
However, both Canada and the U.S. are demonstrating the sovereign capability and the investment policy settings to give North American miners every encouragement to invest in this region. Next slide, please. To underline this point, I want to take a minute now to just spotlight the performance of the Dyno Metals business over the last 12 months. As you heard from Dirk and Willem and the technology panel, the Dyno Nobel technology suite is especially well-suited to metals mines seeking increased throughput.
That is a big reason why metals mining has accounted for over 60% of the demand growth that Dyno Nobel Americas has seen in the last 12 months. This growth is typically characterized by multi-year arrangements, and over the last year, we have developed new business or increased the scope of our existing business with a significant number of very high-quality customers, including Rio Tinto, Mariana Minerals, Agnico Eagle, Skeena Resources, Alamos Gold, New Found Gold, and Hecla Mining. We also continue to do very well in the iron range, including we have just been selected as the inaugural blasting partner for Mesabi Metallics, which is the first new U.S. iron producer in decades. I can just assure you that our technology offering features prominently across all of this new business.
Differential Energy, CyberDet, Nobel Fire, and as you heard from Willem with Mariana, automation have all played a role in this surge of new business for Dyno Nobel Americas. We are gearing up for continued multi-year growth in our metals business. In fact, just last week, we were notified of yet another significant multi-year tender award in Canada. That will put yet another Dyno Nobel modular emulsion plant on our map. I will move to the next slide, please. Another really important macro theme for us here to talk about in North America is supply chain volatility. Tariffs, global conflict, disruptions in component manufacture, and disruptions in shipping lanes, especially with regard to fertilizer and explosives, all have significant implications for the explosives industry here. In the short term, these implications have had quite a mixed impact on our business.
However, over the longer term, we believe that Dyno Nobel is far better placed to deal with these disruptions than any of our competitors. In simpler times, DNA's preeminence as the most vertically integrated full-line explosives manufacturer in North America was really easy for people to underappreciate and to undervalue. We have always taken great pride in our manufacturing capability. As the world becomes ever more complex, this capability is becoming more valuable for our customers and for our investors alike. We even have a new term, heavy assets with low obsolescence, or HALO. At our AN plants in LOMO and Cheyenne, we have been quietly working away on a couple of low-capital, high-return debottlenecking projects.
The first of these online will be Cheyenne, where a $25 million investment will allow us to simultaneously grow our DEF business, as well as liberating an additional 50,000 tons of ammonium nitrate for our mining customers. We expect that project to be online within the next six months. At LOMO, a $12 million investment in an auxiliary air compressor is expected to yield an additional 20,000 tons. Really importantly, the production profile of those LOMO tons is geared towards our peak demand summer months, thus reducing our annual need to procure third-party AN at higher spot prices in our peak season. That compressor will be installed and will be operational in time for our 2028 peak season.
Both of those projects have been in the planning stages for some time now. That means that the tightening outlook for AN in North America only improves the original business cases that we approved. Outside of AN, we also have opportunities to further vertically integrate in our initiation systems plants. For example, today, we import wire leads for the 4 million electronic detonators that we produce every year up the road in Simsbury. The import tariff on that wire is about 28%, which is about $4 million per annum. We've now kicked off a project to produce our own wire right here in the U.S. This project will further entrench our manufacturing scale advantage, as well as deliver on the overriding intent of the tariff regime in the first place, which is to grow the U.S. manufacturing base.
In fact, it was this macro theme of supply chain volatility, coupled with our strategy for vertical integration, that actually led us into our first foray into the defense segment in the first place. Dyno Nobel is the predominant producer of explosives boosters for mining application across North America. In fact, we believe that more than 80% of the boosters consumed in North America are produced by Dyno Nobel. The major raw material for booster production is TNT. Today, we import 100% of our TNT through an ever more challenging global supply chain, as does the U.S. Department of Defense. So this shared need for security of supply was the catalyst for the landmark award of $435 million to construct what will be America's only TNT facility on our Graham, Kentucky site.
Final contract definitization is planned in time for groundbreaking and construction to commence inside the next three months. As we've talked about this morning, just last week, we signed an agreement to construct a $581 million IMX manufacturing complex also in Graham, Kentucky. The constituents of IMX are raw materials that we use in non-el detonator manufacture and in detonating cord manufacture. They're also used in the production of specialist explosives for niche application in the oil and the gas industries. So together, that's over a billion dollars of capital investment at Graham. It's really important to understand that that scale of investment is not feasible for an industrial explosives company to make on its own without the support and the volume requirement of the U.S. government. That means that our Graham facility will be all but impossible for any of our competitors to ever replicate.
As you are aware, our path to market in defense is our joint venture Nitradyn, whose President, Braden Lusk, is with us today. I saw a number of you catching up with Braden at lunchtime who know Braden from his time leading the DNA business. There he is. Hey, mate. The Nitradyn joint venture combines Paladin's significant defense expertise, contracting experience with our explosives manufacturing experience. It is a powerful combination, and it could not have been formed at a more opportune time, as is clear from these two early wins. Whilst these wins are already very meaningful for our business, much more is on the horizon. Nitradyn has a clear pipeline of high-probability opportunities, ranging from some relatively niche opportunities through to further large capital tenders, potentially of a magnitude even greater than what we have seen with TNT and IMX.
It is still really early days for us in relation to energetics, but our early success gives us every confidence that we have the right business model and the right partner. Very importantly, our timing entering this market simply could not have been any better. Okay, to sum it all up, all of our market segments are experiencing a very strong, supportive macro environment. Over and above these normal levels of market growth, DNA is experiencing very strong demand growth, of which over 60% is coming from our metals business. We have the best explosives footprint in North America. We continue to invest in our HALO assets, and we have a number of low-capital, high-return projects coming online in 2027. This includes over 70,000 tons of additional ammonium nitrate in a tightening market.
Supply chains into the U.S. are being tested by tariffs, global conflict, and disruptions at source. Whilst these challenges do create short-term volatility for us, over the long term, they make Dyno Nobel, with our unmatched manufacturing base and distributor network, an even more attractive choice for our customers. Finally, these macro factors are also combining to produce new horizons of growth for DNA with our fledgling energetics business, which has already developed a $1 billion relationship with the U.S. government. My closing point as your business unit host for today is this: It is really nice to be able to work in the business when it is open to such strong AI-driven tailwinds. It is really nice to have these HALO assets for us to deploy, and it is extremely nice to have access to this fantastic portfolio of customer-facing technology that we are developing and commercializing.
However, in order for our customers and ultimately you, our shareholders, to take advantage of these factors, it is absolutely essential that we maintain a strong and engaged team of employees. I want to express my deepest gratitude for the 2,000 employees of DNA who have supported such a strong result for you this year and paved the way for future growth well into the future. Several of our Americas leadership team are with us today in the room here, and also at dinner this evening. I encourage you to meet them and get to know them a little bit. They are as talented and as committed as any group that I have ever had the privilege to work with. Thanks, everybody. I am going to hand you over to Stuart now.
Well, I think I might want to join Dyno Nobel now after hearing Greg's speech. Hi, everyone. My name's Stuart Sneyd. I'm the President of Dyno Nobel's Asia Pacific business. I actually only joined the company about a bit under a year ago, and I'm thrilled today to talk to you about the business in the Asia Pacific region. I might just add, when I first interviewed with Mauro a bit over a year ago for this job, I think the vision and the strategy you heard talked about this morning was one of the things that attracted me to the business. Having been in the mining industry for over 25 years, I could understand what he was saying, and I think everything that you heard this morning, that convinced me to make quite a change in my career and direction.
I'm very happy to be able to talk a bit more about what we're going to do in Asia Pacific. What we have is a diverse tier one customer base, and it's in one of the world's leading mining jurisdictions, which is Australia. Coupled with the developing Asia business, our region still has clear value levers to pull, including new horizons for growth, which I will talk with you today. Let's have a look at some of these dynamics in the region. Asia Pacific is a top two player in the market, with an excellent footprint across key mining jurisdictions of Australia and Indonesia. Both Australia and Indonesia are benefiting from strong investment and demand in metallurgical coal, iron ore, and future-facing metals. The region I am leading is an exciting mix of both what I would call developed markets and developing markets.
Whilst Australia represents the world's largest mining jurisdiction, Asia has excellent growth opportunities as both suppliers and consumers of mining products and services. In line with Dyno Nobel's global offering, we have an extensive manufacturing network ensuring security of supply. We manufacture AN, emulsion, and electronic detonators. In some of these areas, we are not just part of the supply chain, we are the supply chain. The growth and resources segment in Australia continue to perform very well. As we serve all commodity segments in iron ore, met coal, gold, and you just heard about the importance of copper and critical minerals. Given this growth, and to ensure that we can deliver value, we have over 1,000 professionals who are highly experienced and strategically located close to all of our customers. What makes us stand out from our competitors?
Across the region, the sector is facing a number of challenges, which I believe we are in a unique position to solve. We're able to provide security of supply and a resilient supply chain, which really did show its effectiveness earlier this year. We can help our customers to unlock more value in their mining operations through productivity improvements, which are delivered safely and sustainably. The fundamentals in our region are attractive. With increasing metals demand, coupled with supply chain disruption, a tightening AN market, and customer productivity needs, all supporting this future opportunity. What sets us apart is a combination of reliable domestic supply, what we would call privileged assets, deep customer relationships, premium technology, of which you heard quite a lot about this morning, leading technical expertise, which are all embedded, and this is very important, close to our customers to provide that very face-to-face support.
We have a strong manufacturing footprint, significant AN production, and also, of course, local electronics manufacturing capability, and a longstanding customer relationship in the mining major regions. Byrnecut, as an example, has been a customer of ours for approximately 25 years now. Strategic growth priorities for us. We have identified four pillars that we think will drive profitable growth for the Asia Pacific region. Each pillar has a detailed five-year roadmap on how we intend to deliver these ambitious targets. This is where, which is very important, operational discipline will be critical to ensure what we prioritize and what matters for each of these areas that we are focusing on. Critical to our success is, and I would emphasize our people and the culture. I see that as core and foundational to how we will perform in the future.
Safe and reliable operations, premium technology solutions, and customer intimacy, which is absolutely foundational to our growth strategy. We have a number of clear advantages that will make Dyno Nobel the preferred partner in our industry. These advantages are, I think, excellent customer trust through strong account management practice, a reliable execution that provides an excellent customer experience, an ability to demonstrate leading customer value propositions, improved secure supply chains, and increased operational footprint through new growth in hard rock, metals, and selected Asian markets. Our strategy provides steady, disciplined growth through unlocking customer value, continued cost leadership, portfolio diversification, and regional expansion. I would like to talk a little bit more about deep customer relationships. I mentioned earlier that delivering a leading customer experience is key to making Dyno Nobel the preferred partner in our industry, and I really personally stand behind this.
We invest in our relationships with our customers. We work hard to build trust and to understand what they need from a full-service provider like us. Australia's mining industry is rapidly adopting advanced automation, AI, and green tech solutions to boost safety, productivity, and to enable decarbonization. Major customers are leading this transformation through large-scale technological integration, and we continue to see very high demand for our technology because it boosts productivity, operational efficiency, and safety and sustainability. It is very important that we continue to understand how our customers want to transform their business, so that customer intimacy is key to enabling that. Understanding what our customers need now and into the future underpinned investment, for example, in our Helidon detonator plant. in 2024, we opened a multimillion-dollar, fully automated detonator assembly wing, strengthening our electronics position and allowing us to meet growing demand.
Because of this investment, we can now manufacture DigiShot Plus 4G units. These units are used by some of Australia's largest mining companies to transform the safety and productivity of their operations through reduced misfire rates, improved blasting outcomes like fragmentation, and we heard how fragmentation is extremely important to mine to mill part of the business. Similarly, our electronic assembly machines delivers low failure rates, while AI and machine learning further improves quality and performance of our products. Our customers very much appreciate having this facility located close to their operations. We have now incorporated further product design evolution to enable additional flexibility in timing and improved detonator resilience under a range of conditions, even in Australia's variable mining conditions. Investing in domestic security of supply and sovereign capability has led to highly profitable new customer contracts and has unlocked further opportunities for automating the manufacturing process.
It is already driving significant safety and operational improvements, positioning Dyno Nobel at the forefront of automated electronic detonator production in the industry. We have seen record sales volumes, and we have now transitioned around 50% of our sites to DigiShot XR product. We supply approximately 4.5 million electronic detonators, which represents approximately 55% of the total market in DNAP. This year, we also deployed our first of its kind DynoMiner Profile 3, which responded to customer feedback needing lower density emulsions to support overbreak reduction. We have been working to integrate product development feedback from a major customer into our future product roadmap. We listen to our customers. We continue to work on de-costing this through best-cost manufacturing offshore to ensure we respond to the needs of our customers also to remain cost competitive through the mining cycle.
And of course, being able to provide technical support on the ground through our DynoConsult team continues to provide huge value and benefit. You heard my colleagues talk earlier about HALO assets, and we have some really impressive HALO assets in DNAP, which are key to our success in the market and support future growth. Our Moranbah plant in Queensland's Bowen Basin, for example, is a bulk explosive manufacturing facility with a back-to-gas advantage. We saw that advantage play out earlier this year with the Middle East crisis. It has been operating for around 20 years, with demand continuing to be at maximum levels.
Earlier this year, at the height of the global supply chain issues, and while other AN facilities run by our competitors went down and had some technical issues, our Moranbah plant was able to supply local mines with high-grade ammonium nitrate and emulsion for explosives. We even supported mines that were experiencing physical supply issues from other suppliers. Moranbah continues to be a very important asset for our customers and for our growth ambitions. To unlock extra value, we have invested in a loop purge gas debottlenecking project. Commissioned in July this year, this AUD 20 million project was jointly funded by the Australian government and improves capacity, cost position, and supply security. Debottlenecking and increasing efficiency delivers an annual uplift equivalent to approximately 5%, or circa 200 additional truckloads of AN to be available locally. This largely offset impacts from the closure of our Gibson Island facility.
A little bit about growth markets. Metals. As you have heard today, metals demand is growing globally. Sustained commodity demand is being driven by the energy transition as well as continued globalization and, most recently, investment in AI data centers. Achieving net zero emissions by 2050 requires substantial uplift in the quantities of many metals for electricity storage, renewable energy systems, and of course, electric vehicles. Ongoing urbanization needs steel and metallurgical coal. Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific is well-placed to benefit from these ongoing uplifts. The Minerals Council of Australia, of which we are a member, emphasizes that surging demand places acute pressure on expanding regional mining workforces and supply chain capabilities. Being a supplier that also manufactures and can offer local supply to customers is a very important source of competitive advantage.
Some great examples of how we are capturing that growth includes new hard rock sites in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. A new customer site included McArthur River, where we have leveraged our privileged asset network to be able to supply from both Western Australia and Queensland to ensure continuity of supply and mining operations during particularly challenged wet seasons. As our customers grow, their needs change, and we are able to quickly respond. For example, we have developed new underground product formulations to support rapid expansion of these sites. This includes existing operations with AngloGold Ashanti in Western Australia, where we have been able to validate product performance under different conditions to streamline the ramp-up of their operations in new locations. The growth in Australian metals revenue and electronic volumes shows that our model is working.
Our hard rock CAGR, for example, in West Australia in the last three years is about 12%. Target attractive mining corridors like the Bowen Basin, boost local supply, bring new technology support, and convert customer value into profitable growth. That will be our focus. Asia business, and how do we grow? Moving to Asia, the region is becoming an important supplier of many metals, including copper, gold, and critical minerals. We see attractive growth opportunities that align with our well-established capabilities and operating model in Australia and Indonesia. Dyno Nobel has had an operating presence in Indonesia since 2006 and provides an excellent platform to grow our business further. We see further opportunities to expand our footprint into PNG, Malaysia, the Philippines, and India.
Opportunities here to include both surface and underground mining operations, as well as large quarry and construction sector, which has been touched on today previously. We have commenced operation, for example, last year in Malaysia in that space. Our modular emulsion technology provides capacity, a capital-light way to enter selected markets and to scale with our customers in these areas. I'd like to share now with you an important customer of ours, PT Archi. They were happy to share their experience working with Dyno Nobel.
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By having the right team, customer focus, and proximity, we can deliver growth in the Asia region in line with the strategy that we've talked about today. This will be achieved through, again, developing deep customer relationships, but importantly, our proprietary technology and leveraging to our strategic assets. The goal is to really to continue to build a sustainable platform and expansion while maintaining that capital discipline that was also touched on earlier this morning. To sum up what I've touched on today, we have a strong foundation on which to deliver on our targets. Coupled with attractive growth pathways, a clear vision, strategy, we're excited to be able to present this to you today. Our existing customers are the foundation that supports our expansion into the Asia region. Our high-quality earnings are reliable, allowing for smart investment for growth.
From FY 2025 to FY 2031, we see growth in DNAP earnings of around 56%, supported by a combination of market share, market growth in Asia, and increased adoption of premium technology and service solutions. Yes, we have favorable market trends that support our growth ambition. Our strategic investments, resilient local manufacturing, and the privileged assets ensure that we are well-placed to continue to support customers in the sector. With that, I will hand over to our President of EMEA and LatAm business, Richard Brown.
Thanks. Before I set off, actually, I just want to just reflect on a few things there because they're hard acts to follow when I think about it. We're doing such a great job everywhere else. Why does DNEL exist? I'll maybe just reflect on that. I apologize for going off script. There's a teleprompter there for a start. Just so I don't throw you. We heard, I think, from Nitesh this morning that there's an accessible market of about AUD 1.6 billion of EBITDA to chase.
From a volume perspective, today we occupy something like 60,000 tons of business in DNEL out of a total of over 3.5 million tons. That might kind of give you some perspective in terms of the size of the market that is accessible to us and the ambition that we have out there. That ambition is only really enabled through our customer relationships that we have developed elsewhere in our business and the reputation that we have had over the last 30, 40, 50 years. If you look at, as I will talk to you a little bit more in the presentation, our entry points into these markets are driven by customer demand. We are there by popular demand. A customer saying, "You are doing such a great job for us in North America, in Australia. We want to see you elsewhere in the world.
We want to see you where we are growing." That is a key theme of our business model going forward. Back onto script. I apologize for that. As mentioned before, I am president of the geographical area of DNEL, which covers our operations Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. As I said, it is a huge footprint. Huge footprint. If I kind of pause for a second again and think about that as a concept. I mean, we are in New York, so-called city that never sleeps. My region never sleeps. The sun never sets on DNEL. It is from Santiago, Lima to the west of our region, through to Mongolia and New Caledonia in the Pacific in the east. It is a huge region, massive. That presents a lot of challenges, but a huge amount of opportunities as well at the same time.
Like in the other two regions, as I said, we have a very, very small market share in a huge geography, and I am excited to talk to you today about that expansion platform for our growth horizon. Here you can see the size. The scale is huge. Our portfolio spans a diverse range of markets and commodities across EMEA and Latin America. These markets are supported by the long-term demand for copper, gold, critical minerals, infrastructure like quarrying and construction, and a growing desire, as we have heard earlier today, and we will talk about a little bit more, for the sovereign capability of energetics within the European region. Our business combines strategically located, diverse manufacturing sites, some of those dating back to the 17th century. We have been producing black powder in France since the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
Outside of that, we have got an array of supply hubs, joint ventures, explosive services, and diverse customer relationships that is going to allow us to leverage and scale with discipline. We have got a highly skilled team, and importantly, this team is located in the region but supported by our global technical and manufacturing capability to grow. As it goes with establishing new markets, our approach has been steady. This approach is in line with our strategy. We want to scale with discipline and with confidence, and that is our key fundamentals as we provide a strong runway for growth. In particular, we have highlighted Latin America and West Africa as high growth and attractive markets for Dyno Nobel, and this is again supported by our technical manufacturing capability both within DNEL and our global businesses.
Our proven track record, which we've heard about earlier, and strong customer relationships around the world have created an attractive opportunity for us to grow in these markets. Back to major trends, let's just touch on that again, about how that's driving growth in the region where we operate. Like you've heard previously, energy transition metals continue to drive the target markets. Around the world, significant investment is being made to mobilize future-facing minerals like copper and iron ore in Peru, Brazil, and Chile. In Africa, we are focusing mainly on gold and copper initially, which are aligned to our new operations, which we are mobilizing in Ghana and Tanzania. In today's environment, reliable assets and secure supply chains are becoming increasingly valuable. In my discussions with our customers, all of them are driven by concerns with supply chain disruption. That's been a real critical theme, especially this year.
To have a high quality and security supply of our products and access, not just to the products, but leading technology and the services that go with that is key to our success in this strategic area. This also extends to other exciting sectors around the world, including Europe, where, as we mentioned before, governments are seeking to invest in building really sound, robust strategic sovereign capability in the defense sector. Regardless of the industry, the market in Dyno Nobel is looking for agility and responsiveness. That's our key to success. Our asset-light model, building modular plants like we're building and investing in Africa and Latin America, and the technology to support that is aligned to the needs of our market, which drives productivity and efficiency. This is all extremely important to our customers.
Our ability to win comes from our expanding global customer relationships, global technical expertise, premium technology, and flexible market entry models to deliver local solutions. Strategic partnerships are a real essential part of that. I mean, we heard from Buckley Powder this morning. These are the kind of partnerships we look to develop everywhere we go. We can't go everywhere as 100% Dyno Nobel. That's not possible. So finding strategic partners is really important. In terms of customers, our goal is to become the trusted partner of choice for key customers in our growth regions. So how do we continue to do this? Our strategy to deliver and drive growth in Dyno Nobel is based on four key deliverables.
Translating our existing relationships with major companies and embedding ourselves as their partner of choice within their increasing global footprint, entering new markets and winning new customers with our agile, flexible capital-light business model to establish resilient supply chains using our privileged assets and network of joint ventures, and finally building on our expertise and experience in the manufacturing energetics adjacency in Europe. We've heard about the two contract awards in the U.S. today, and the reputation that we're gaining on the back of that is significant. The amount of interest that we're generating in Europe on the back of these contract wins is huge. So let's delve into these growth markets a little bit further, starting with Dyno Nobel being a trusted partner. Our long-term relationships have always been a critical asset. Our strategy to support our customers as they grow is key.
Globally, mining investment is increasingly shifting towards both Africa and Latin America. We estimate that Africa holds more than a quarter of the world's known critical reserves of critical minerals, high-grade copper deposits, manganese, and bauxite, along with major lithium deposits. West Africa, in particular, has emerged as one of the most active and resilient mining corridors of the continent, underpinned by a mix of mature gold and fast-developing critical minerals opportunities. That means translating long-standing relationships with major miners such as AngloGold Ashanti, which Stuart mentioned earlier, into growth in their new jurisdictions and supporting them as they grow. I'm sure you all know AngloGold Ashanti as a global gold mining company with a diverse and expanding high-quality portfolio of operations. They operate in over 10 countries across four continents, and our ambition is to serve all of those operations.
We opened our office in Ghana in April this year to coincide with the plant mobilization in the country. We've already commenced this month with the supply of electronic detonators at the underground Obuasi operations in the country, and we'll start work on-site supplying emulsion and explosive services at their Edubiase site in November. As we set up local operations using our disciplined capital-light approach with a modular containerized emulsion plant, which was designed by our Indonesian operations, we bring our global capability and networks into the region. Leveraging our global supply chains, we've also received the first shipment of ammonium nitrate supported by a local distributor in Ghana, and we also have a fleet of new Dyno Nobel mobile processing units from our Tradestar operation in the U.S., which have also been assembled locally in Ghana. Our approach is more than just good business.
It's actually key to how we operate in these local markets. I've touched on this a little bit already around global capability and local execution, but moving to our second strategy for growth with support from our global capabilities. The work we're doing in Brazil right now is a great example of putting this strategy into practice. We opened our office in Brazil in March this year, and I'm thrilled to confirm we've now secured two foundation contracts with the tier one mining company, Vale.
Vale is the world's largest producer of iron ore and also produce nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum group metals. They're present in five states in Brazil, and it's a huge vote of confidence, and more importantly, delivers runs on the board for our new business in Brazil in this important growth area for us. It's a unique market, so rather than hear from myself describe the market in detail, I'm going to play a video from Vale themselves who will explain the selection process.
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You heard it directly from Mariana in that video. Winning in growth markets like Latin America and also Africa requires local execution and global capability. We can move at the speed of our customers need us to. With limited investment on our side, we hire locally and connect with the local communities, developing skills and capability. In Brazil, this local capability is already up and running. We set this up very rapidly over the last few months. We signed a tolling agreement with a local explosives manufacturer, Impex, to produce Dyno Nobel products under license. To carry our emulsion to site, we need mobile processing units, and we've now licensed our Dyno technology for assembly in Brazil. We've executed a partnership with leading safety automotive manufacturer, TRIE L-HT, to assemble the first of three new surface units at their Rio Grande do Sul facility.
The expertise and experience required for final assembly and commissioning of our trucks requires the same skill set as the ongoing maintenance support. This means that in Brazil now, we are able to provide local support for the life of the MPU from assembly through to servicing, and we're actively building and establishing those relationships and skills for the capability for the long term. This is a similar approach we're adopting in both Peru and Ghana. We're also in the final stages now of building our emulsion plant at the strategically important location of Ilo in Peru. This will be commissioned later this year, and Mauro and myself will actually be there in two weeks' time, as a formal opening ceremony. So this will come on stream, I think in November is the plan at this stage.
This will be one of the most modern emulsion capabilities in the whole of Dyno Nobel and also in Peru. It is located in the Moquegua region of southern Peru, and the port of Ilo is a major regional maritime hub specializing copper and mineral exports. Importantly, it provides our customers security, who we know are already incredibly conscious of global supply chain volatilities, and that Dyno Nobel is in the region and we are here to stay. I mentioned earlier that all our customers are focused on supply chain resilience and our emulsion plants around the world, including the new plant at Ilo in Peru, put us in front and center of that supply chain. Our manufacturing investments this year at Soma in Turkey and the Sasol Dyno Nobel joint venture in South Africa all play an important part in building that capability.
Turkey is strategically located for us because it opens up access to the Central Asian markets, but also puts us in close proximity to Europe, Middle East and Africa. Dyno Nobel has had a presence in manufacturing in Turkey since 1998, and we remain the only major global explosives manufacturer with production operations in that country, reinforcing our long-standing commitment to the region. From our two major manufacturing expansions in Soma in Turkey this year, we can now produce a shock tube and also assemble DigiShot electronic detonators in country. It is an example of us investing ahead of a customer growth and strengthening our ability to serve regional demand. Another example is our long-standing South African-based joint venture, Sasol Dyno Nobel. Sasol Dyno Nobel creates another strong base for us to manufacture, market, and distribute advanced commercial explosives and initiation systems in the African mining region.
With a key manufacturing facility at Ekandustria in Pretoria in South Africa, it is one of the world's largest integrated detonator initiation systems manufacturing plants, employing a further 800 people, producing in excess of 100 million detonator caps per year, and also, very importantly, over 2,000 tons of cast boosters, which is significant. These are substantial numbers for an explosives facility. It is also very important to our growth support for Africa. Moving on to energetics. We have got a lot of ambition for energetics in Europe. As you have heard already today, defense spending on weapons systems replenishment are creating a rapidly growing sovereign energetics market within Europe. Accessing this growth market is an exciting opportunity for us with our defense growth strategy within DNEL.
Speaking earlier to the NATO summit this year, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte brought that concern to the center of the alliance's agenda on unveiling a multinational project on defense critical raw materials. He stated at the time, "For our defense to remain steady and strong, we need our industrial base and our supply chains to be resilient and secure. This means we need a stable supply of materials and companies and components across critical sectors, regardless of potential shocks or disruptions." For Dyno Nobel, through our Vonges facility in the Burgundy region of France, as I mentioned before, we have been manufacturing black powder since the 17th century. For three centuries, this plant operated as a raw gunpowder factory and has continually supported the French government and defense sector ever since.
Today, Dyno Nobel is the only French manufacturer of black powder, and it's one of the last manufacturers of the product in Europe. This existing facility and experience in energetics located in the heart of Europe puts us in an extremely strong position to leverage a well-established licensed manufacturing facility and to participate in the growth of the growing demand. Our experience, relationships with regulators and the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, combined with these existing facilities, puts us in a unique position to develop the facility further and to produce high-demand materials such as RDX or HMX. We're already in discussions with a number of parties about operationalizing these opportunities. You've heard today about our growth horizons, and while we anticipate the defense market will broadly double in the next 10 years, we believe the real benefit of the energetics contribution is likely to be realized beyond 2030.
In line with our global approach, I want to reiterate that our objective is to leverage capability we already have and not to stretch in areas where we do not have a clear ability to win. We'll continue to evaluate opportunities aligned with our core strengths and pursue them with discipline. Getting the foundations right is the priority for us. To summarize today, Dyno Nobel is building a platform for growth in exciting new markets in Europe, Latin America and Africa. What you see here as the growth is our base business and does not include energetics. Positive demand trends and global customer relationships, premium technology, technical expertise, and recent customer wins like Vale in Brazil and AngloGold Ashanti in Ghana and Tanzania support the outlook.
There are multiple opportunities to expand our footprint, and the potential at Vonges is a key example of this as we harness the global demand for sovereign capability through new growth opportunities in energetics. In our newest locations, Dyno Nobel is in a strong position to be an important part of the supply chain as mining customers continue to grow their presence. If I can leave you with the one takeaway message today is that we are well-situated in laying the foundations of growth in these priority markets over the next planning horizon of the next five years. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Richard, you can probably stay on the stage. You've got to stay here. Look, we've got our final Q&A session now, so I'm going to get all the BU presidents up on stage. Mauro, Nitesh and Dirk, we can all squeeze up the front. This can be a wholly comprehensive Q&A session with everyone on board. As usual, the hand up microphone procedure that we're all well-versed in now. Thank you.
Nathan Reilly, UBS. Going back to Salt Lake City when you first outlined the 2028 EBIT target. If I am correct, I think the growth ambition for LatAm was a reasonably meaningful part of that bridge to the target. Mauro, maybe can you just give us an update just in terms of how you think you have tracked so far relative to that initial target? Maybe just give us an update in terms of how you are tracking on that progress.
Look, I think I said that in my early introduction, and obviously inviting Richard to give his perspective. But, with the benefit of hindsight, we had hopes that it would have grown faster than it done. I said that earlier today. We resisted temptation to not play the strategy. The strategy has always been about disciplined commercial approach, and that is something that we are not prepared to compromise. Very proud of what we achieved. Again, I remember leaving Carajás with Richard January this year. After having sold the dream, he turned to me, his very British style, and say, "Do you realize we do not have a company code in Brazil?" Now you hear Mariana saying the good things she was saying about us. So I think we have done some great work. We are growing. Ilo is going to come to life in a couple of weeks' time.
We will be in Peru cutting the ribbon with some local authorities and customers. But it is a tough market, a price-driven market. Our game is technology, customer relationships, value, and we are not compromising on that. So it will take the time it will take. The direction of travel is unchanged, and we have been able to It has not been as fast as we expected, but when I look at the portfolio, couldn't be prouder of what we achieved overall in transformation. But that is one element that probably, if I had to place a bet at that point, we would have been not as fast as what we expected, Nathan. You want to add anything?
Yeah. Sure. I think one thing which I hope you'll all be pleased to hear is that the explosives industry is highly regulated. That has positives and negatives. The positives are that you have a lot of market protection when you're in a market. But when you're trying to get into a new market with an organic greenfield approach, which is what we have taken in terms of our capitalized strategy, then it's a hell of a process to get yourself set up.
We've invested a lot over the last 12 - 18 months in getting ourselves set up. We've done that work now. If you look at our situation in Peru, we are situated in one of the most exciting, growing mining markets in the world, focused on copper, which is the commodity to be focused in on. We'll be going live in November. I think that's where I see us.
Just to follow up, do you see scope for consolidation of that market as something that's front of mind for you at the moment?
Yeah, I wouldn't say front of mind, but that's one of the obvious places in the world, Nathan, where we are underrepresented. If you pick a few criteria in terms of our current size compared to the size of the market and the growth prospects, that's a geography that we like a lot. But again, I don't have any more to say about consolidation than what I've said earlier. I still believe that as a value creation level for the industry is available and it's there. We need to play our game, and our game is the AUD 800 million ambition we laid out today.
It is Brooke here from Barrenjoey. Greg, a question for you on the U.S. AN market. Do you mind just providing a few comments on how you are seeing the supply-demand balance at the moment? You talked about it tightening, just add a bit more color there. Can you provide a bit of information around how it is rebalanced, I guess, over the last year, just given that large plant is out of the market? Maybe just bring to life a little bit how that is kind of benefited your business. That would be great. Thanks.
Thanks, Brooke. I guess, another thing we could not have foreseen two years ago in Salt Lake City is the U.S. being short of ammonium nitrate. I guess some swings and roundabouts, but on our way to AUD 600 million and AUD 800 million. Yeah, look, I think the U.S. has traditionally been long in ammonium nitrate for decades. Two fairly significant events coincided over the last 12 months that turned it from very long to very short quickly. The first one, obviously, was the Yazoo City explosion, which took out 800,000 tons of product overnight, which on paper, turned it from very long to balanced, I would say neatly balanced. But no AN market is ever balanced because customers do not work on an annual cycle. You do not store lots of AN. You are either a little bit long or a little bit short.
When we say it is neatly balanced, if something is neatly balanced in a 12-month period, it is basically short in the peak season. So it turned it from evenly balanced on an annual basis, which means short in the peak season, and then that corresponded with a major outage at a very large competitor facility, the Carseland facility. So that turned the market from long to balanced to short, for about two or three months. It turned it to short in the peak of the season. So, that is why you see, I think you have had some questions for us about the skew this year, and our results is a little different to a normal skew. Because in the traditional low period in the U.S., we did very, very well because we had to keep the plants on that normally would be off.
Not only did we keep them on, we were selling them at a premium into a very tight spot market, which we would never have expected. The flip side in the second half is that the peak of the market, where normally there's product floating around everywhere to manage through our peaks, it was very, very difficult for us to get product, and the product we did get was at very high prices. The high cost sort of, we didn't have time to really react to our, what's called our customer pricing profile, to react in a few-month period. That was a particular 2026 issue. Now 2027, I think it's, how is this going to rectify itself over time? Next year's going to be tight as well.
Yazoo City is supposed to come back in June, which is coming into the top of the market. That's a pretty big project to get right. We don't know if that'll come on in June. When it does come back, we don't know what the reliability of that plant's going to be for a period of time. This low season is going to be tight. The next high season, I think, is also going to be tight. Then let's play it forward to, let's call it, early 2028, when all the plants should be back online. What you'll see there is, notionally, there'll be enough ammonium nitrate molecules around, but CF are not bringing up the prill tower, which means that whilst there'll be enough ammonium nitrate molecule, there may not be enough prill.
That's going to be a tougher one to get over because they have the space for a prill tower. They've got a prill tower. They just don't see the investment is going to return to actually bring it back up. If they don't see that there's a return on investment, maybe no one else will either. We think the market will be tight through 2027. The solution market will probably rebalance in 2028, but the prill market will stay tight. There's something else that you should think about with ammonium nitrate, and that is the swing effect of fertilizers. The fertilizer price, as you've seen, is also elevated and looks to be something that's going to stay elevated while ever there's this global sort of conflict and uncertainty in trade lanes.
If the fertilizer prices stay firm, the explosives industry actually needs some of these swing suppliers, the companies that make AN, but they're not explosives companies. We need those companies to supply some AN to balance up the explosives market. They're going to be more reluctant to do that. They can only do that at a higher price, the way fertilizer prices are heading globally.
Thanks. That is great. And maybe just one for Nitesh. You talked about the two plant turnarounds in 2027. How should we be thinking about that in terms of the impact to EBITDA, or if there is another way you want to frame it for us, that is helpful too. Thanks.
Yeah. I think Cheyenne and QMP are the two turnarounds for next year. So, how you should think about it is, we will guide on an underlying basis, on the basis that those turnarounds occur. We will provide a little bit more details in the second half around the quantum of those effects are. So we will provide a little bit more on the second half for you.
One for Richard and/or Nitesh. Obviously, the Dyno strategy is capital light, which I do not think anyone in this room would have an issue with, but that probably changes the working capital intensity, dynamics of the business. If you could just sort of step us through what to expect there over time.
I think just in terms of the working capital, especially if you look at both Africa and Latin America. The supply chains are long for ammonium nitrate. As we grow, our trade working capital position will increase in those markets, and that is to reflect that supply chain. Not just the length of the supply chain, but if you also look at the volatility of the supply chain at the moment, we need to make sure that we are well catered for in terms of security of supply. Not only two weeks ago, we had a force majeure event in Chile.
We did not declare it, our supplier declared it based upon ammonium nitrate supply out of Russia. We were able to very quickly mobilize an alternative supply, which we have signed up with Agropolychim in Bulgaria for our African supply. We were able to switch those tons very quickly into Latin America. Yes, it is going to be a feature, but I think in a way that is part of our security of supply strategy, which is essential for that market.
No, perfect. Like it when Richard answers the CFO questions.
Maybe one for Greg, which Nitesh actually can take because you missed out on the last one. You referred to a kind of a normal first half, second half skew and how it is going to not quite be like that this year, probably maybe not next year. Just going forward, as the business becomes more sort of metals and/or probably less coal, over time, will that change the phasing and the skew of the business?
Yeah, I think it will actually. It is a good point. The seasonality is really around weather and most of the weather is U.S.-driven interruptions. The metals growth that we are seeing, it is in Canada, where you heard from Mark this morning, they mine through anything. That will level it out, yes.
Just to be clear, that will be the U.S. side. We still have impacts in Australia.
So it will not stop raining in Queensland?
Every year it is record rain, so I do not think so.
I can go again. Maybe, Greg, again, for you have given a good outlook there for the metals side of your business. Can you comment on coal? You had a really, really good first half. I think your volumes are up 21%, which was a great outcome. How did it go in the second half? Do you have any comments on the view into 2027 on how you are seeing the coal backdrop?
Yeah. Firstly, I think it is important to understand that the Americas business has always done well in metals and QMC, and we have always grown. Braden obviously had the business before me, and what we struggled with in the U.S. is that the coal, which was the biggest part of our portfolio, seemed to be on this, we always talk about a structural decline, and that was masking the great work that we have been doing in metals and QMC for some time.
To an extent, the growth that we are seeing now, some of it is due to coal stabilizing and allowing us to show the impact of our growth in metals on the business flowing through to the bottom line. Yeah, look, our ambition with coal is to make sure it is a balanced part of the portfolio and that we have got the best customers, and we do.
That gives us every confidence. Like I said in my remarks, Peabody, they are far more optimistic than they have ever been. So Wyoming coal, Powder River Basin coal, it is looking like it is quite a firm, I would call it firm, stable forecast. The thing to look out for there is, will there be any more structural investment downstream of the coal mine? So will there be more coal-fired generation or will there be more port access for Peabody to export? That is what Peabody is looking for. If they can find more export capacity on the West Coast, they believe that they can actually grow fairly meaningfully. But until one of those two things happen, I think what you are just going to see is them trying to optimize the current capacity with the current infrastructure they have. But looking, I would say, firm.
The other coal market is Appalachian coal, more east, and I think it is still true that the outlook for the Appalachian coal and the East Coast is a little less optimistic than Wyoming Powder River.
I've got a question for Stuart. Just on Australian coal, just obviously with the Queensland royalty system, what's the longer-term outlook for Queensland coal? You're already seeing some of the coal producers take lower nominations on their freight volumes.
We've been looking obviously closely around coal markets in general, and I think our view is that if you look at the global demand for met coal, for example, seaborne met coal is actually probably stable, growing over the coming years. Queensland's in a very good position to supply the best quality met coal in the world and continue to do so. We see that very much supporting how the business will operate over the next five years. We, in general, East Coast coal business, it's stable and definitely opportunity still to supply upside to met coal, mainly because steel production consumption in India is driving increased demand in steel, for example, urbanization effects that we talked about. I think our views, I see it as a good place to be where we are at the moment.
Apologies if I missed this earlier today, but you had that pie chart with revenue under contract being 80%-90%. I assume that's at a group level. I was just curious if that's kind of meaningfully different between the three businesses.
No, it's not. Probably the difference is really the tenure per segment. When you go on the high end of town with the global diversified miners, you tend to be on the three- to five-year range, whilst in Jay Pumphrey's world, in quarry and construction, you tend to have more yearly cycle of contracts in construction and everything in between. No, I think our contract coverage or our spot exposure at any point in time is quite consistent. Rarely, no, it doesn't vary. It's a consistent story, plus or minus 10%, but across the three regions, pretty consistent.
And maybe just following up on that, within the U.S. specifically, given the tight market in particular and the usual SKUs, was that wildly different in the first half?
The contract book?
Yeah, versus-
Not really, no. Not really. I think to your earlier question about, I think you asked, will metals flatten out the seasonality? Metals will probably, if we keep growing at this rate in metals, that tends to be multi-year arrangements, so that would probably sort of elongate the business under contract sort of outlook as well.
Going, I think, to the heart of your question, you remember we reported in the first half AUD 5 million opportunity one-off that had to do to the point that Greg was just making. When the market turns down naturally because of weather, we were long in AN, and we had very good spot prices, so we used that spot opportunity to have that one-off. But typically, it is really not about having more or less contracts. It is just how heavily the offtake of those contracts is being exercised by the customers, not so much a variation of the range of contracted revenues you have.
Okay, last call for any more questions while we have got the team on the stage. No? Okay. Thank you, guys. Mauro, we have got just some closing comments from you as the final session of the day.
Look, thank you all for the questions. It has been a long day. A lot of information shared. I hope you learned something new today. As we close, I hope you can see why we are confident in the future of this company. We are now a pure-play explosives company. We have a leadership position in attractive markets, deep customers relationship, as you hopefully witnessed today, and capabilities that are unique and very difficult to replicate. We operate in industries with very strong long-term demand, supported by resilient business model, diversified earnings streams, and lots of opportunity. But we are not standing still. We have a strategy to move value from our core business, expand opportunities to win, and build new avenues to grow. It is all based on capabilities and take advantage of years of experience in developing people and assets. None of these will happen without execution.
As you hopefully can see, this is a company that says what we are going to do and do what we are going to say. The investments we made in our people, in the systems, in operating discipline, give us confidence that we will deliver on the ambitions that we outlined today. We will create long-term value, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead. I promised the team that I would not go off script, but it would not be fun enough if I did not. I really wholehearted want to thank you for bearing with us for a very long day. We still have more in the cards for the dinner. But could I invite you to put your hand together for the teams that put that together? I could not be prouder of how professionally we showed up today.
The teams on the stands downstairs, you cannot imagine how much work and preparation to do each one of those booths. I know that the team gets excited, but without everyone that is working behind the scenes to make everything smooth for you, that would not be possible. So if I could ask you to thank our hosts and the people that make it possible. Thank you for your time, and I hope you leave here even a bit more prouder about your company, Dyno Nobel. Thank you. Have a great day.