It's fantastic following Andrew up here. I've got some M&Ms. I've got a beer under here, so that'll keep me going. Thanks for coming along to listen to the Deterra story today. I've got something different for you. We're not explorers. We're not operators. What we do do is scour the globe for world-class assets, world-class operations, and we look to take a royalty over those assets and operations by either acquiring existing royalties or writing new royalties that might come about through a mine financing or even balance sheet repair. Firstly, I'll just contrast why you might invest in a royalty company as opposed to a mining company. Firstly, both are going to give you commodity price exposure and mine growth exposure. With a royalty company, what you're getting is only top-line exposure. We take a percentage of the revenue of that operation.
What that does is protect us against OpEx, and particularly inflation in that OpEx, or if the grades drop in that operation, the mining costs will increase. We are protected against that cost increase. Secondly, and this is the real beauty of a royalty, is we get free option value under that financial instrument. What that means is that as a mine expands or extends, we do not have to contribute any further CapEx to that operation. I am going to talk about our two principal investments in our portfolio that are just going to show you how valuable that optionality is if you get hold of the right royalties. In terms of the royalty sector and where Deterra plays and what our competitive advantage is, the royalty sector as a whole has a market cap of over $80 billion.
Now, over 95% of that is listed either on the Toronto Stock Exchange or on NASDAQ. Over 90% of that market cap is purely focused on precious metals and particularly gold. We very specifically focus our time on looking at potential investments in bulk, base, and battery commodities. It's not that we don't like gold particularly. It's simply that when you look at the amount of market cap and the amount of players that are looking for gold royalties, it is a super competitive sector, and we believe that we can add far greater value to our shareholders by focusing on the bulks, base, and batteries. We prospect in tier-one jurisdictions, Australia, Europe, North America, South America selectively. When you look at our market cap, we have an AUD 2 billion market cap.
We're the only royalty company of international significance that is traded on the Australian Securities Exchange. In FY 2025, we generated AUD 156 million worth of NPAT. Importantly, we have a payout ratio of 75% of our NPAT. Last year, we delivered AUD 0.22 a share dividend for our shareholders, and that represented over a 5% yield, and that's before the franking credits. I'm just going to talk about our foundational asset, and this is a 1.232% revenue royalty of BHP's Mining Area C operation in the Pilbara. To give you a sense of the scale of that, Mining Area C represents about half of BHP's Pilbara iron ore operations, and just that component of it represents 9% of the global seaborne iron ore trade. We have a 1.232% revenue royalty over 9% of the global seaborne iron ore trade.
What we've also got, and this is something that we particularly look for in our royalty investments, is super long-life assets. BHP talk about a greater than 45-year mine life at Mining Area C. What you get with those long-life assets is you generally get tier-one operators, which clearly BHP is. You get their ability to actually provide the CapEx, and that plays into the ability to extend and expand the mine. I'll show you exactly how that's happened on the next slide. Importantly, you can also see that BHP have a cost per mining of less than $20 a tonne. They're in the Q1 of the cost curve. On the left-hand side here, it just shows you how a textbook royalty grows over time.
On the left, you can see the bars represent the production at Mining Area C over time, and that blue line there represents the iron ore price over time. Now, this royalty was created in 1994, and in that time, and just in the time that Deterra has been listed, it's generated over $1 billion of revenue for Deterra. Now, back in 1994, when that royalty was written, it was written to replace what was a deferred payment obligation that BHP had of just over AUD 20 million. You can see back then, there was just no inkling of the potential of Pilbara iron ore. It was not until 2004 that BHP actually started mining up there, and that was North Flank. North Flank initially had a nameplate capacity of 15 million tonnes per annum.
Over the subsequent decade and a half, they grew that to 65 million tonnes per annum. In the early 2020s, BHP commissioned and started producing at South Flank. That was a $3.6 billion CapEx investment to which Deterra had to contribute nothing. You can see there that has spiked production rates. South Flank has an 80 million tonne per annum nameplate capacity, and it reached that last year. You can see that Mining Area C is generating about 145 million tonnes per annum of iron ore. On the right-hand side, you can see, depending on which iron ore price you like to choose, the revenues that that generates for Deterra annually. As I say, that's been over $200 million per year for the last five years. The second principal asset that we have in our portfolio is something we're really excited about.
It's an asset that's in construction, and we have a 1.05% revenue royalty over the Thacker Pass lithium project in Nevada in the United States. Now, interesting story about how lithium was discovered in Nevada. One of the presenters yesterday was explaining how Nevada is one of the top mining jurisdictions for gold globally, and that's absolutely the case. Back in the 1980s, a botanist out of the U.S. realized that there was a particular plant that was growing in northern Nevada, and it did not grow anywhere else. He went out there and realized that it was the abundance of lithium in that area that was causing this particular plant to grow. That was the first inkling that there was lithium in this part of the world. Subsequently, what's happened is Lithium Americas has taken ownership of this particular deposit.
They own a 62% stake in the project, but very importantly, General Motors owns the other 38% of Thacker Pass. Now, General Motors has contributed $945 million to this project so far. They've purchased equity directly in Lithium Americas. They own about 7%, and they've committed funding for the project itself for their 38% interest. The other really important partner for Thacker Pass is the U.S. Department of Energy. They have committed a $2.2 billion loan. To give you a sense of the benefit of that loan, it is a 24-year tenor at long-term U.S. Treasury bond rates at a 0% spread. It is a fantastic financing for Lithium Americas. More recently, what's happened is the Trump administration has come in, and they now have an option to take 5% of the equity in Lithium Americas and 5% of the project itself.
That happened about four or five weeks ago, and it put an absolute rocket under Lithium Americas' share price as it has clearly de-risked the project and plays right into that U.S. thematic of developing a North America-U.S. specific supply chain, end-to-end supply chain for lithium in particular. Now, I talked about the power of royalties and extension and expansion. Since we have owned this, we bought this royalty last year in 2024. Since we have owned it, the resource size has doubled, and the economic mine life plan has doubled as well. When we bought it, the operation was contemplated to be an 80,000 tonne lithium carbonate equivalent per annum operation running for 40 years. That is now 160,000 tonne per annum operating for at least 85 years. The value of that royalty for Deterra has increased significantly.
On the left here, you can see lithium price over the last little while, obviously huge spike in the early 2020s. We acquired this particular royalty when lithium was less than AUD 10,000 a tonne. Production at Thacker Pass is expected to commence in 2028 and ramp up through that year. That is when general consensus forecasting is that the price is going to recover anywhere between AUD 15,000 and AUD 20,000 a tonne. You can see there on the right-hand side, different revenue outcomes depending on different lithium prices. If you take something in the middle there, that looks like about AUD 11 million to Deterra each year. Importantly, that is just for their first phase of operations, which is 40,000 tonnes per annum. As they build and expand and fill out those other phases, that number will quadruple.
What we do at Deterra is we are all about shareholder value. The way that we generate value for shareholders is we are very keen to keep getting a fully franked dividend back to our shareholders, and that's where the 75% payout ratio comes from. As I mentioned, that was AUD 0.22 per share last year. We also want to continue to develop our portfolio and continue to invest. That is going to look like continuing to see organic growth and organic value coming from Mining Area C and particularly Thacker Pass. We also have a number of smaller development assets in our portfolio. There is a copper asset that is out of Arizona and another lithium asset that is in Utah in the United States, which is via an Australian Securities Exchange-listed company.
Importantly, we're going to continue to patiently pursue new royalty investments and financing, and we only do that through the lens of shareholder value creation. We do not have any targets in terms of where we need to get to into a percentage of our portfolio for, say, copper or lithium. We are commodity agnostic within bulk, base, and batteries. We see opportunities often in iron ore. We see opportunities in rare earths, uranium, and copper, and we'll continue to evaluate those as we go forward. I have a booth out there. Please feel free to come and have a chat. We think that royalties is the best way to invest in mining. It is certainly a lower risk and has a much higher valuation multiple than what you will generally see in terms of the mining equity companies themselves. Thank you.