I'm pleased to welcome you all to Sydney for the 2022 annual general meeting of Emeco Holdings. My name is Peter Richards, and I'm the Chairman of our company. Penny, a quorum is present?
Yes.
Hence I declare the meeting open. I'd like to introduce you to our front table and our board. Obviously next to me on my left, your right, is Ian Testrow, our CEO and Managing Director. Keith Skinner over on the end there is our Chair of the Audit Committee. Peter Frank, who has flown all the way from well, the last day and a half from New York. We appreciate your time here, Peter, and thanks for making the effort. He's a representative of our major shareholder, Black Diamond. You might also look up and there's a little TV screen over there, and he's absent, but he's here in on the screen, Peter Kane.
Peter had back surgery last week, would love to have been here, but he's made the effort to attend via video link.
Thank you and welcome Peter. Also we've got Penny. Penny Young's our Company Secretary and General Counsel. On my left, we have Thao Pham, who's our Chief Financial Officer. Ladies and gentlemen, it's fair to say that FY 2022 was a continuation of another challenging year for our employees, our customers, in fact, for all Australians. As the impacts of the global pandemic worked its way through the financial year. It does seem like a long time ago now that it sort of started to ease off, but it was there for the majority of our financial year.
Of course, we all forget that the WA borders were closed up until February this year, which obviously had a big impact on particularly our business. As a result, your board commends the entire Emeco team for their unrelenting focus on serving our customers and operating particularly safely, despite these significant disruptions faced throughout the year. Obviously, a value that is very dear to us is that our people are our family, and we're passionate about maintaining our industry-leading safety culture and ensuring all our employees return home every night. Our strong safety performance continued in FY 2022 with our total recordable injury frequency rate improving to 1.9, down from 2.1.
It's particularly pleasing and very proud for the organization to say that we've remained injury-free, lost time injury-free, at zero for the sixth consecutive year. Given that we now have 1,400 employees, it's an outstanding performance of the whole organization, just had lunch, sorry, led by Ian.
Notwithstanding this excellent outcome, we continue to focus on further improvements in all facets of our health, safety, environment, and training strategic plan, which is aimed at strengthening our capability and commitment to industry-leading practices. This is terrible. Remaining on the safety culture theme, it's even more critical in the current extremely tight labor market. Our ability to attract and retain staff is essential to support the ongoing growth and success of our business.
This is particularly the case, as I said, in FY 2022, as we grew our workforce to over 1,400 employees. Our commitment to being an employer of choice is also fundamental to our success in building the capabilities we need to deliver on our growth ambitions. There are many elements to this, and supporting and developing our people and giving them opportunities to develop their careers is a priority, as is our support to the communities in which they live and work. This year, we continued to build on the foundations on Project Align, which Ian has outlined over the past year. This project aims to lift engagement and to empower our people as we drive to deliver on our shared vision and values.
This has been particularly important as our business has grown from our core rental business, to one that embraces both Pit N Portal and the Force Workshops, which are both more labor-intensive businesses. We pride ourselves on being part of our communities and supporting our team in their interests, whether through our support of local sporting organizations, our commitment to charitable causes such as mental health, or our work in local communities. During the year, we made progress with each of these programs. For example, community grants were allocated to 27 community groups nominated by our employees. We also partnered with Kuuwa to support Indigenous businesses and communities while also providing additional solutions to our customers. Diversity remains an important to our culture and our ability to attract and retain people.
This year, we increased female participation in our workforce by 11%. Likewise, developing our people plays a big role, and during the year, we increased the number of apprenticeships by 37%. That's fundamental to our continuing growth in our skill sets as we move forward. We also conducted over 70 leadership training and development courses. I'd now like to turn to another important strategic imperative. During 2022, we developed our inaugural ESG strategy. Significant work was undertaken on benchmarking and stakeholder engagement to identify material themes that are critical to Emeco's right to operate within our sector. Following this important work, metrics, targets, and actions are being finalized across eight key themes, and these will be implemented across our business in FY 2023 and beyond.
We'll obviously report progress on this annually. Ian will provide a more detailed summary of our business and financial performance in his address. I am pleased to report that despite the challenges that we faced this year, Emeco delivered a solid operating and financial performance. Earnings growth of 5% was achieved across our operating segments, with the group delivering a growth in EBIT to AUD 250 million, and a 22% growth in operating net NPAT to AUD 69 million. Our cash flow generation supported continued investment in maintaining and replacing our assets, disciplined growth capital expenditure, and the board's capital management policy. For example, in FY 2022, we allocated AUD 24.1 million towards capital management, which was 35% of our operating NPAT.
This comprised fully franked dividends of AUD 0.025 a share, an on-market share buyback of 10.8 million, and an additional buyback of 7.4 million achieved during the second half of FY 2022. I obviously wanna take a moment to comment on the performance of Pit N Portal, which we acquired during FY 2020 as part of our strategic diversification plan. As you will recall, Pit N Portal met two strategic objectives. Firstly, to diversify our business and revenue exposure from thermal coal, and secondly, to increase our revenue through underground equipment rental, plus services to widen our customer value proposition. However, it's fair to say the earnings and returns of Pit N Portal to date have lagged behind what we believe is an acceptable level within the Emeco Group.
Ian will go into more detail in his address, but I'm pleased to announce that we have now. Well, we, Ian and his team, have now successfully renegotiated and expanded our major Pit N Portal contract with Mincor to generate more acceptable margins and returns. The board and management are obviously disappointed that we had to announce last month the potential issue regarding the full recoverability of outstanding amounts owing to Pit N Portal for contractual services provided during the second half of 2022, and obviously into the first half of this year in 2023. Management has been working with the customer to resolve the matter, which is not a contractual dispute. It is a matter of recovery of outstanding debts. I want to stress that our history of credit management has been strong, and this is a one-off situation.
We continue to adopt an active credit risk and management process throughout the organization. I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss Emeco's approach to risk as a result of this, and also take the opportunity to provide some color on how we manage and mitigate current and emerging risks. The board and management devote considerable attention and time to a broad range of risks, including strategic, operating, regulatory, financial, and credit risk in our business. We monitor and set frameworks and reporting structures in the management of these day-to-day business, as well as set strategies to manage these both current, medium, and longer term risks. We remain committed, importantly, to prudent capital management and disciplined capital allocation, and decision-making across our sustaining replacement and growth investment initiatives.
The continuing strength of our balance sheet and cash generation allows us to return funds to our shareholders, excuse me, while providing flexibility to sustain and grow our company. To our shareholders, I'd say thank you for your continued support of Emeco, and in particular today. The board remains enthusiastic about the future of our and your business. On behalf of the board and all shareholders, I also thank Ian and his management team on their continuing efforts in building sustainable shareholder value. Lastly, I'd like to express thanks from the board to our dedicated employees for your outstanding contribution throughout the year. Thank you, and I'd like to invite Ian to deliver an address.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll provide a summary of our 2022 financial year, followed by an operational update and outlook. I'll also update you on the progress of a number of significant matters related to the current performance of our Pit N Portal business, and the strategic and operational reset that we've implemented to get us back on track to deliver the results we know this business is capable of achieving. However, firstly, I'd like to take some time to build on the Chairman's reflection on several initiatives that Emeco have been pursuing for a number of years in relation to people and culture, and also to talk about our EOS offering, which I think the industry is industry leading and deserves some attention.
Emeco's vision of success states that we'll deliver value to our shareholders, employees, partners, and the commitments and the communities in which we participate. While it'd be easy to think about our most valuable assets as our trucks, digs and other equipment, we firmly believe that our people deliver the real value in our company. Our vision also states that we're preferred, trusted partner for all our mining-related equipment and services. We're invested in our partners and our customers' success, and our solutions and commercial focus deliver sustainable value. As I reflect on the work we commenced in Project Align, our board and senior leadership are committed to ensuring that we're employer of choice in our markets, that we support, train, and provide careers for our people, and that we empower them in the roles to deliver for our customers.
From our origins as a dry hire rental business, we've expanded with Force Workshops and Pit N Portal underground rental and mining services offering, and built our fully maintained rental offering to our customers. Our strategy is to add service to embed ourselves in our customers, grow our tenure, and drive the performance of assets at their sites. Our people are the enablers of that. As we've grown and diversified, we've put in place structures to support our people. We've worked hard to communicate our shared values of accountability, communication, growth, family, pride, and teamwork to ensure that the entire Emeco team feels part of the bigger family.
Our support of local communities and our commitment to charities provides our team with a connection to their interests and passions, as well as supporting them outside of their work lives. I'm proud of the way that our entire team has navigated the continued challenges of COVID, and have strived every day to service our customers and to work collaboratively. Since March 2020, Emeco has been proud to have been able to provide and support our workforce and their families with the allocation of over 25,000 hours of additional leave via our COVID leave policy. This policy was introduced by Emeco at the start of the pandemic to provide our employees with additional paid leave to support them through the difficulty at that time. As the Chairman noted, we progressed our ESG strategy during the year. Considerable resources have been applied to this important strategy.
Significant stakeholder engagement has been undertaken as we've identified, benchmarked, and set actions and metrics across several themes. We also made progress on a decarbonization strategy, which is an integral part of our ESG framework. We'll commence our ongoing reporting into ESG strategies throughout FY 2023. One exciting focus here in our ESG strategy is the new development of our proprietary EOS technology to provide customers with real-time information on fuel efficiency data and emissions, so we can show them how much carbon they're emitting per ton or per BCM. EOS is a performance system that we've built which allows our customers to monitor lifetime mid-shift performance data, such as volume material moved and efficiency against targets set by our customers and aligned to our equipment's capability.
We've rolled our EOS out, EOS, over the past few years as a value-added service and believe that the proposition to our customers of real-time data is industry-leading. The accurate reporting of emissions data is now required by law. Capturing that data, and managing machine usage is key to managing the carbon footprint of the mining industry, and through EOS, Emeco is playing a positive role. Onto our review of FY 2022. This was a year of continued challenges but significant achievements for Emeco. We positioned ourselves to manage through the current environment and to set up for significant future growth. Our business delivered solid earnings across all divisions while navigating the headwinds caused by COVID, labor shortages, inflationary pressure, supply chain interruptions, and underperforming contracts and multiple significant weather events along the East Coast.
As always, we are guided by a strategic goal of making Emeco a sustainable and resilient business that generates long-term value for our shareholders. We continue to deliver against our pillars of being the lowest cost, highest quality provider of mining equipment, broadening our customers' value proposition, and building a balanced and diversified portfolio of customers, commodities, and projects for Australia. Our balance sheet remains strong, and the cash we generated supports continued investment in sustaining and replacing our assets, some modest growth expenditure, and our ongoing capital management initiatives. The Chairman has talked to our continued safety performance. With a business of our size, we're obsessive about being industry-leading across all of our businesses. We grew our team by over 25% this year and despite the tight labor market, which is a significant achievement.
The opening of the Western Australian border in February provided no relief, and the continued impact of COVID-19 pandemic saw absenteeism levels increase. We took proactive measures to ensure our people could continue to work safely and with minimal disruption to our business. Compared to FY 2021, we delivered 5% growth in operating EBITDA to AUD 250 million and 22% growth in operating NPAT to AUD 69 million. We delivered growth across all divisions, Rental, Pit N Portal, and Force Workshops. Our rental business has returned to growth following a tough FY 2021 as COVID hit. Assets were put to work throughout Australia. Pleasingly, we increased the proportion of fully maintained projects, which is in line with our strategy of widening the value proposition for our customers and increase project tenure.
Continuing operator shortages due to the tight labor market and multiple significant weather events on the East Coast during the year dampened utilization. Margins were managed through tight cost controls and rate increases across our projects. Pit N Portal had a strong year of revenue growth as we secured rental and services work in underground and open cut projects. We've invested significantly to support growth since P&P's acquisition in FY 2020, and the business has significant potential to deliver strong earnings growth. The Pit N Portal business delivered flat earnings in FY 2022 versus FY 2021, which remained short of what is required in the Emeco group to achieve an acceptable return on capital. Force Workshops continues its strong performance as it grew both external and rental customer work and supported increasing internal rebuild and maintenance activity.
Force is crucial to our strategy of being the lowest cost and highest quality equipment provider and has significant mitigating impact in the current inflationary environment. During October, we advised the market of a potential issue regarding the full recoverability of approximately AUD 32 million owed by a long-standing customer of Pit N Portal's. It is important to understand that this is not a contractual dispute. We're very disappointed by this, given our historically low levels of credit losses. We have terminated the contract and removed our equipment and people from three sites and are in active dialogue with the customer. Whilst we're making progress, we're yet to resolve the issue. Let me stress that whilst this is disappointing, we are pursuing all means with the counterparty to recover the amounts owed. Management is very strong in our approach to working capital management and collecting cash.
While we do not believe there is a systemic credit risk in Pit N Portal, we took the opportunity to review the portfolio with a focus on contract governance and to ensure that we reduced our exposure to customers where their payment performance was not at a high level. Not the high level we expect from our counterparties across the group. On a more pleasing note, I can report that we have successfully renegotiated an expanded Pit N Portal's significant contract with Mincor. Commencing second half 2023, the renegotiated contract will generate acceptable margins, earnings, and returns and reduce execution risk for the remaining three years of the tenure. We've worked collaboratively with Mincor, and this outcome will strengthen our partnership and create value for both parties as the ramp-up of the project continues towards full production. The learnings from this will be invaluable in negotiating future contracts.
I'm also pleased to report that we've appointed a new CEO to the Pit N Portal business, Mr. Jim Gough. Jim will be commencing early in 2023 and brings over 20 years of experience in the mining industry. Jim has a background in mining engineering and mine management, contract governance, and operational excellence. He'll be focused on improving the operating and risk management capability within Pit N Portal. Jim's appointment will allow Pit N Portal's founder, Steven Versteegen, to focus on business development across the group. While the financial performance of Pit N Portal has been deeply disappointing, the measures taken this half to provide Jim with a very solid base from which to strengthen and grow the business. We expect to see the acceleration of earnings commencing second half with a more sustainable growth path.
Demand for our rental services remains strong across both the eastern and western regions. Our equipment is placed into quality projects and is well-placed for growth throughout calendar year 2023. In our eastern region rental business, our new projects, which started in the last quarter of FY 2022, have performed well. However, our business continues to be impacted by ongoing weather and flooding. While the strong pricing environment is positive for sentiment, our utilization suffers when wet ground conditions force mine suspensions. It's not only the downtime that causes and impacts production, but also ongoing ground conditions with saturated ground impacting overall run of mine volume performance you have seen from the listed coal companies in our ASX recent disclosures. Demand for our equipment remains strong, particularly with coal customers, and we feel well-placed to achieve growth in new and existing projects.
In the western region rental business, we've started seeing an uptick in utilization as tight labor market environment begins to ease. This has allowed our customers to work the equipment harder. This has been partially offset by the termination of Pit N Portal contracts, which were open cut projects utilizing the western region rental fleet. Although this impacts the western region's first half, we continue to see strong demand for our equipment and confident a lot of this fleet will be redeployed into new project in the second half, providing growth in earnings and margins. Force Workshops continue to be busy with good activity levels as we build our mix of internal and retail work from external customers.
The power the Force brings to leverage the cost and quality advantages of bringing more component rebuilds work in-house is central to our pillar of our strategy. We'll closely manage margins with a focus on pricing and cost recovery and continuous improvement initiatives. Looking ahead, we continue to expect earnings growth in FY 2023 across our rental and workshops divisions, weighted towards the second half. Taking all this into account, we now expect first-half 2023 operating EBITDA to be in the range of AUD 109 million-AUD 113 million. As noted earlier, we expect that the placement of idle equipment into new projects and revise the contractual arrangements at Pit N Portal and assuming we do not see the repeat of the adverse weather conditions experienced on the East Coast in the first half.
Second half 2023 is expected to bounce back with a substantial improvement in margins and earnings. We're therefore providing full year guidance of between AUD 245 million and AUD 260 million. I should note at this stage, our first half and full year guidance does not reflect any accounting impact of the outstanding receivables, which will be guided by our progress over the coming months. I wanna thank each of our hardworking and dedicated Emeco family. I'm proud of the company and proud to develop our people and the culture as we set about capturing the market opportunities ahead of us. I would also like to thank our board for their ongoing stewardship and governance. Finally, thank you to all of our shareholders and note holders for your continued support.
We never lose sight of our vision to deliver sustainable growth, strong returns, and disciplined capital allocation.
Thank you, Ian. Now to the formal part of the meeting today. Ladies and gentlemen, the Emeco notice of meeting was sent out to shareholders on the October 18th, 2022. Copies are available at the front desk. I propose the notice of annual general meeting to be taken as read. I'd now like to note a couple of matters relating to this meeting procedure. This is a meeting of shareholders of Emeco Holdings Limited. As such, only shareholders, their appointed proxies or their corporate representatives are entitled to make comments, ask questions or vote. All other attendees are welcome as observers. If you're a voting shareholder, you'll have received a yellow voting card. You are entitled to vote and speak at this meeting.
If there are any persons who are entitled to vote who have not yet received their yellow card, please see a representative at the front desk, which is manned by Link Market Services. If you're a non-voting joint shareholder or shareholder who has already voted by proxy prior to the meeting, you will have received a blue non-voting card. You're entitled to speak at this meeting but not vote. Visitors holding a red card are not eligible to vote or speak at this meeting. Following consideration of the 2022 financial report, I'll give shareholders the opportunity to ask general questions of the board or the independent auditor, Deloitte, represented here today by Mr. David Newman and Mr. Tim Richards. Welcome, gents.
Anyone who has a general question or comment for the board or the auditor should raise it at that time. In addition, you'll be given the opportunity to make comments or ask questions in relation to each of the resolutions as they are considered by the meeting. If you have a question about a resolution when it is read, please either approach the microphone situated at the back of the center aisle, or make yourself known to one of our team members. After discussion is completed and before the vote is taken for a resolution, the proxy results will be shown on the screen. These figures will be as at the closing time for receipt of proxies, which was 1:00 P.M. Sydney time on Tuesday the fifteenth of November.
I intend to vote the open proxy votes I hold as a nominated proxy or proxy by default for shareholders in favor of all resolutions. Voting on each resolution shall be conducted as normal these days by poll. Only those people with yellow cards may vote on the resolutions. For those with yellow cards, on your card will be a series of boxes for voting. During the course of the meeting, you will be asked to indicate on your card how you wish to vote by ticking or marking the appropriate square. You must mark either for or against for your vote to count. You may cast some of your votes for and some of them against by writing the applicable number of votes in each box. The total votes cast must not exceed your voting entitlement.
If you're a proxy holder, a summary of the votes you may cast has been provided with the yellow voting card. If you only have directed votes, you need only submit the voting card. Votes at your discretion or open votes are shown in the column titled "Votes Open" on your proxy summary, and can be cast at your discretion by marking either the for or against. At the end of the meeting, once you have finished marking your card, you'll be asked to place this card in one of the ballot boxes. The meeting will be closed following collection of the voting cards, and the results of each poll will be announced to the ASX later today. If there are any aspects regarding the voting on which you are uncertain, please do not hesitate to approach Link, who will be circulating the ballot boxes later in the meeting.
Right, I'll now move to the business of the meeting. First of all, consideration of reports. The 2022 annual report contains the 2022 directors' report, financial report, and the independent auditor's report. A copy of the annual report is available at the registration desk. The financial statements have been approved by the directors and audited by Deloitte. As required by Section 317 of the Corporations Act, I now table the directors' report, the financial report, and the independent auditor's report for the financial year ended June 30th 2022. I'd like to now take any general questions or comments about these reports. Mr. David Newman, and if not David, Tim Richards, are also available to answer any questions in relation to the conduct of the audit. Are there any questions in relation to these accounts?
As we addressed, as there's no questions in relation to this, I'll now move to other formal parts of the meeting. Resolution one, the reelection of Mr. Peter Frank. As I said, Peter's come all the way from New York to be here with us today. Peter was appointed as a non-exec director on the first of April 2017. He was last reelected at the 2019 AGM, and accordingly retires by rotation at this AGM. With and without sounding rude, Peter, with decades of experience in investment banking and across many industries, including industries directly relevant to Emeco, Mr. Frank brings a wealth of experience to the role, benefiting the company, management, and shareholders as a whole. Further, Mr.
Frank has been instrumental in creating and maintaining a solid working relationship between the company and our largest shareholder, Black Diamond. Mr. Frank retired as Senior Managing Director at Black Diamond in December 2021, but has continued in an advisory capacity. Mr. Frank's current appointments include directorships at the Specialty Chemicals International Limited, Harvey Gulf International Marine, North Metro Harness Initiative, and Bakelite UK Topco, which takes Mr. Frank all around the world. The directors, with Mr. Frank abstaining, unanimously recommend that shareholders vote in favor of resolution 1. Are there any questions? No questions. I now put resolution 1 to the meeting that Mr. Peter Frank, who retires as a director by rotation in accordance with our constitution and being eligible for reelection, is elected as a director. I think the proxies are shown behind me. Do I need to turn my back, Penny?
No.
Okay. They're the proxies.
Sorry. Mm-hmm.
We good?
Next.
There we are. Sorry, they're the proxies. I don't intend to read out those results. Penny, is that okay? Shareholders with a yellow card, please indicate on your card how you'd wish to vote by ticking the appropriate box. All right. Well done, Mr. Frank. Resolution two, which is the adoption of the remuneration report. This is an advisory resolution regarding the adoption of the 2022 remuneration report. This report is set out on pages 22- 38 of our annual report and includes information regarding our remuneration policies and practices. This resolution is advisory only and does not bind directors. However, the board will take the outcome of the vote into consideration when reviewing the remuneration practices and policies of the companies in the future, which we have continued to do so over the past few years.
We recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? There's no further discussion on ordinary resolution two to the meeting, being the remuneration report for the financial year ended June 30th, 2022 be adopted. We got the proxies up while we're doing this? Yeah. Thank you. Are there any votes required to be submitted? No, I don't think so. Okay, moving on to resolution three. The next resolutions are in relation to our managing director. Resolution three is the approval of the issue of rights under the FY 2020 Emeco long-term incentive plan to Mr. Ian Testrow, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of our company.
This resolution seeks shareholder approval for the issue of 102,129 rights or two fully paid shares of Emeco to be issued to Ian under the terms of our FY 2020 long-term incentive plan. This proposed issue relates to the third and final tranche of the long-term incentive component of Ian's remuneration for FY 2020. ASX Listing Rule 10.14 requires shareholder approval be obtained prior to the issue of securities under an employee incentive scheme to a director. Accordingly, we are seeking approval for the issue of these rights to Mr. Testro under this listing rule. Shareholder approval is also being sought for potential future retirement benefit under sections 200B and 200E of the Corporations Act. Further details regarding FY 2020 plan and its operation are set out in the remuneration report.
The directors, other than Ian Testrow, who makes no recommendation due to his personal interest in the outcome of this resolution, recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? If there's no further discussion, I'll now put resolution three to the meeting that for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 10.14, Section 200B and Section 200E of the Corporations Act, and for all other purposes, approval is given for the issue of 102,129 rights to Mr. Testrow, who is our MD and CEO, pursuant to the terms of FY 2020 Emeco long term incentive plan, as described in the explanatory memorandum, which accompanies and forms part of the notice of annual general meeting. The proxy results for this resolution are shown on the screen now.
Shareholders with a yellow card, please indicate how you intend to vote. Moving on to resolution four, which is the approval of the issue of rights under the FY 2021 Emeco long-term incentive plan. This is a similar resolution to resolution three, so I'll try and summarize it. Essentially, we're seeking approval for the issue of 118,275 rights to fully paid shares to Ian under the terms of the FY 2021 long-term incentive plan. This proposed issue is in respect of the second of three tranches tested annually as part of the long-term incentive component of Ian's remuneration for FY 2021. As indicated previously, ASX Listing Rules require shareholder approval before we issue such shares. As such, we are seeking approval under Listing Rule 10.14.
We're also seeking shareholder approval under section 200B and 200E of the Corporations Act. Further details regarding the FY 2021 plan are set out in the remuneration report, and obviously, all directors, other than Ian, recommend that the shareholders vote in favor of the resolution. Are there any questions? If there's no further questions, I now put resolution four that for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 10.14, sections 200B and 200E of the Corporations Act, and for all other purposes, approval is given for the issue of 220,000? There's a typo here. It's actually 118,275. I almost gave you an extra 100,000 shares then. That's okay.
To Ian, pursuant to the terms of the FY 2021 Emeco long term incentive plan, as described in the explanatory memorandum, which accompanies a Notice of Annual General Meeting. Now, just confirming that, Penny, it is 118,275? I'm coming up to this, Jeff. Can we quickly check up on that before the end of the meeting? Oh, there you go. All best laid plans somewhere for that. The proxy votes are now up, Andre? 218,275. Ian, I'm gonna give you that extra 100,000 shares. Just confirming, shareholders that approval is being sought to issue 218,275 shares to Mr. Ian Testrow.
I'll just pause if you wish to query that, but we have had confirmed that that's 218,275. Nothing like a glitch to brighten things up in an AGM, isn't it? Okay, turning to resolution five. This is approval of issue of rights under the FY 2022, so similar to the previous two resolutions to Mr. Testrow. This resolution five seeks approval for the issue of 194,485 fully paid shares in Emeco under the terms of the FY 2022 long-term incentive plan. This proposed issue relates to the first of three tranches tested annually as part of Mr. Ian's remuneration for FY 2022. Again, approval is sought pursuant to ASX Listing Rule 10.14, and also pursuant to 200B and 200E of the Corporations Act.
Further details are outlined in the Remuneration Report. Directors again, with Ian abstaining, recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? Okay, if there's no further discussion, I'll now put Resolution 5 to the meeting, that for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 10.14, sections 200B and 200E of the Corporations Act. For all other purposes, approval is given for the issue of 194,485 rights to Ian, pursuant to the terms of the FY 2022 incentive plan, as described in the explanatory memorandum, which the company has included as part of the notice of annual general meeting. The proxies are up, Andre. Thank you. Again, if you can fill out the yellow card.
Finally, resolution six is the approval of the provision of a loan to Ian. This is seeking shareholder approval for the provision of a zero interest loan in the amount specified in the NOM. The purpose of this loan is to refinance an existing loan taken out by Ian to fund payment of a personal tax liability incurred on shares received under Emeco's 2017 Management Incentive Plan. The making of this loan to Ian constitutes a financial benefit to a related party, and as such, we're seeking approval for the loan under Chapter 2E of the Corporations Act. Again, all directors other than Ian recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution.
As pointed out in the explanatory memorandum, this is directly sought by us as directors to ensure that Ian remains actively involved and incentivized within the organization and not forced to sell shares to pay a tax liability. Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? Thank you. If there's no further discussion, I'll put resolution 6 to the meeting, that for the purposes of Section 208 of the Corporations Act and for all other purposes, approval is given for the provision of the loan by a subsidiary of the company for a principal amount of AUD 4,948,640.55, Sam, on the terms described in the explanatory memorandum, which the company has included as part of the notice of annual general meeting.
The proxies are again noted, Andre. Thank you. Any questions? No. Thank you. Okay, I think that's all the resolutions. As a reminder, please mark either for or against for each of the resolutions to count if you wish to cast some of your votes on a resolution for and some against. Obviously, the sum of the votes for and against must not exceed the total number of shares that you are entitled to vote. For those of you that are proxy holders, if you only have directed votes, you need to do nothing other than submit the voting card. Votes at your discretion are open as shown in the column titled "Votes Open" and can be cast by marking either for or against. As indicated previously, the open proxy votes I hold as a nominated proxy or proxy by default.
For shareholders, we vote in favor of all resolutions. Link, as I said, has been appointed to conduct the vote and they act as scrutineers for the poll. When you've completed your voting cards in respect of each of the resolutions, please raise them, and they'll be collected by representatives of Link.