Thanks, Dannika. I know we've got a lot of registered participants in the webinar, and some already received some really good questions from the broker analysts who are covering Fenix now. So I'll be pretty brief in the summary of the quarter. We're on track for our target of four million tons a year of production. That's tripling our run rate. Over the last couple of years, Fenix have proven that we can make really good money and good profitability out of our Iron Ridge operation, which is on the screen behind me. The really pleasing part of the quarter was the successful commissioning of our second iron ore mine at Shine. That allowed us to continue to set new records of Fenix production.
We're currently at a run rate of around 2.5 million tons per annum, on track for 4 million tons per annum during 2025. We shipped just under 600,000 tons of ore during the December quarter. Very pleasingly, we were able to restrain C1 cash costs at Iron Ridge just below AUD 80, FOB Geraldton, and the initial numbers for Shine were really spectacular. C1 cash costs there of AUD 87 FOB, which was significantly below the budget at startup given the significant pre-strip that we were intending to do there. And that's been completed. And we've accelerated shipments from Shine, and we've got real confidence that that's going to be a winner for Fenix going forward. And so that was a great result for Reece Olney and his team. We added to the Iron Ridge mineral resource estimate, almost doubling that.
And also during the quarter, we recorded our 6 million ton milestone of what was originally a 10 million ton resource. We're now back to having more than that in resources. Obviously, we're now going to take the steps of seeing how much of that we're going to add to our future mine plan and continue that very profitable operation. Iron Ridge returned a cash flow margin of just under AUD 50 a ton. And including the small positive margin that we were able to generate at Shine, that meant our consolidated numbers across that 600,000 tons generated just around AUD 30 a ton. So a really good result, very pleasing numbers. Hedge books looking good out to December. Iron ore prices bouncing around above $100 a ton. That's a great price for us.
Beebyn-W11, we're ready to go and looking forward to commissioning that during this half year. Look forward to some questions, Dan.
Perfect. Thank you, John. We will now invite shareholders and investors to ask a question via the Q&A feature down the bottom of the screen. The first question we have received is from Analyst Matthew Fryba from MST Access, who asks, "Fenix aims to triple annual production to 4 million tons per annum in 2025. What are the critical steps needed to achieve this, particularly in regard to Beebyn-W11?
Obviously, the 4 million ton per annum run rate is made up of our very consistent production from Iron Ridge of 1.3 million tons per annum. We've successfully commissioned Shine as a 100,000 ton per annum month operation or 1.2 million tons per annum, which is our current 2.5 million tons per annum. We have the potential to actually accelerate production at Shine, which is something we're looking at. Then our plans for Beebyn-W11, and that is the focus to get to 4 million tons, obviously, and commission that at the initial rate of 1.5 million tons per annum. 1.3 plus 1.2 plus 1.5 is 4 million tons per annum. That's tripling our production rate. The key step is obviously the commissioning of Beebyn-W11 from here.
We announced in the quarterly that we received some important approvals during the December quarter, including the Works Approval. But we're really working on achieving the Mining Proposal approval. And the key step there is final Heritage Clearance. And obviously, we need Heritage Clearance at the mine, but also for the proposed haul road. And so then that throws through onto timing. We've chosen MACA as our preferred mining contractor for Beebyn-W11. And there's a lot of logic there. They're obviously our mining contractor at Iron Ridge, which is within 20 kilometers of that mine. So the key steps from here are to secure that final mining approval process. And for that point, we will immediately and we're preparing for the prep, the mobilization of the mining fleet and most importantly, the construction of the haul road.
That will drive the production timing, which at this stage we intend to commence mining in the second quarter, so in the June quarter of this year. The haulage and therefore production and sales will happen very shortly after that, so around the middle of the year. That's the timeline from here. Goran Sajatovic and the team across our business, including obviously Scott Pileggi, our general manager at Iron Ridge, are working with huge enthusiasm on that timeline. We will be looking forward to delivering that. That's the key focus for this half year.
Okay. And moving to Shine, the second question is from analyst James Williamson from Bell Potter, who has asked, how much residual low grade stockpiles remain at Shine and when do you expect mining to progress to higher grade areas closer to the reserve grade of 58.5% iron?
Yes, it's a really good answer. Sorry, good question, and it's been a key success for us at Shine is the ability to market and produce the low grade. The mine plan, as we indicated across stage one, we focused on producing a 60% lump and fines product average. It actually will start a little bit below 60% and towards the end, it gets up above 60%, but those products will average around 60%. When Mount Gibson put the project on care and maintenance, they were facing a significant low grade strip requirement, and so in our mine plan, we didn't initially include any of that low grade in the production sales, and so this early stage of Shine, it's been really pleasing that our marketing team, led by Adrian Third, has been able to find good pricing for that low grade material.
The specific answer to the question is there was around 60,000 tons of crushed, very low grade fines material on the product stockpile at Shine when we took over the mine. There was a couple of hundred thousand tons of low grade material on the ROM pad, which was uncrushed. We have sold the 60,000 tons of low grade fines. During the December quarter, two of the shipments from Shine were crushed low grade material. So there's you know a bit more than 100,000 tons of that initial material left. So during the current quarter, we would expect to move two shipments of low grade material. Interestingly, if you look at that stage one mine plan, there's more than a million tons of that low grade material that is part of our cost structure and was intended in the mine plan to go to waste.
And in a similar way, we could now, and we are now looking at actually crushing that material and turning into profit. That will be significant extra upside for Shine. So that's really exciting. You know, if you people who are looking at the $87 C1 cash costs are saying, you said that it was going to be 67, we'd just remind or explain that the $67 a ton C1 cash cost for Shine is an average over stage one. We always knew that costs were going to be much higher at the start. And in fact, in our budget, they were $20 or $30 at various stages higher than that initial stage. And we expected it to be cash consumptive, perhaps, over the first six months of its operation.
It is, you know, we've got used to obviously Iron Ridge, very consistent production, and we're able to get Iron Ridge into a very profitable position very early. Shine's a little bit more of a traditional mine where you have to invest upfront and then you make a lot of money at the back end of the operation, so the actual results from Shine in this quarter, for us are incredibly pleasing. The ability to market the low grade material, what that means to the mine plan going forward at Shine, and the fact that we will now look to market our high grade products, so those fines, at or around 60% iron ore, but also low grade products from Shine is really going to boost the overall profitability of that.
It means that yes, as we've indicated in the quarterly, we have really strong confidence that we will achieve the average $67 a ton. In fact, because we're so far ahead of our budget today, you know, technically, obviously, if we hit budget from here on in, we should get lower than that. With those additional low grade sales, we're confident that Shine will be a great project for Fenix and will also obviously bring down our overall consolidated C1 cash costs across the company.
Another question from Bell Potter, how, when we're thinking about the longer term consolidated C1 cash costs, well, how should investors think about it as you ramp up to 4 million tons of annual production?
Yeah, look, I'll share. We obviously are really focused to try and keep our consolidated cash costs below AUD 80. I think we've done, I've mentioned before the remarkable job our teams are doing to maintain that. I think we are down more than 20% over the last two and a half years on a C1 cash cost, which was at that stage above AUD 90 FOB Geraldton. We know that there's cost inflation across the industry. And so, we're implementing efficiencies in the three key pillars of our business, mining, road haulage, and at the port to be able to achieve that. The successful implementation of Shine will assist with bringing down that consolidated number, when and if we get the Shine cost down, which we expect.
And also, as you would expect, increasing our denominator up to 4 million tons will allow us to spread the fixed cost over those tons more effectively. So, we think it's reasonable to target and to think that that Fenix can maintain our C1 cash costs at or below AUD 80.
Okay. And a question from, you mentioned, inflationary pressures. And Sam has asked a question on if you're still seeing inflationary pressures, where are they most significant?
Look, we're not immune to the inflationary pressures that across the mining industry, in labor and consumables. But I would encourage people to understand that the biggest drivers in our cost is really things like strip ratio, rather than the incremental inflationary impacts, and in our haulage business, it's diesel costs and labor costs that, you know, our drivers and then consumable tires and also the efficiency and asset utilization numbers. So, you know, our best hedge is to control our costs. There are lots of things we can't control or at least we could manage perhaps with hedging and other things, but the real control of our business is not managing the diesel price or managing the iron ore price.
It's managing the efficiency of our equipment across our fleets, managing the labor force and how we use it and looking for efficiencies in our business. You know, we know that we've seen, you know, 20% or 30% cost inflation over the four years that we've been operating in Iron Ridge. We've been able to bring our costs down by looking really hard at those drivers and capturing efficiencies, some of which we've identified in this quarterly, and some of which obviously are part of our growth investment in capital, the improvements we've made at the port, and, you know, cutting our unloading time from, in some cases, more than 11 minutes to now six minutes or less.
You know, when you look at how many truck movements we have through Geraldton Port and the flow through impact, that, you know, that's going to save us millions of dollars over the forward outlook. And so that's how it's things like that that allow us to save money. AUD 0.50 a ton here, AUD 1 a ton there. Yes, we're seeing escalation of AUD 1, AUD 2, AUD 3 a ton every quarter. So we've got to continue to capture those efficiencies.
Okay. And a question from David Brennan from Petra Capital. He's asked, with bringing Beebyn-W11 online, would that signal the end of the sort of the CapEx cycle for Fenix?
It's a good point. I mean, obviously we still have a very strong cash balance as at 31 December, more than AUD 50 million. I'm surprised we haven't got to questions about the dividend yet, Dannika.
That's the next one.
Obviously talking about the work we need to do to commission Beebyn-W11 from here, a lot of that capital expenditure that we identified of around AUD 25 million is in front of us. The construction of the haul road, the mobilization of the mining fleet, the expansion of our camp in the Weld Range. Obviously we were preparing to accelerate that expenditure if we could get those approvals earlier. And so, again, we kept our powder dry in terms of being able to invest in growth. Once we've invested, so that question is, you know, in if we're sitting here in June, and we've invested all of that capital and we're running at four million tons per annum, there will continue to be OpEx to CapEx trade-offs. We are obviously looking at the exploration potential of our portfolio.
We've had a very successful start in our exploration program, most obviously at Iron Ridge, looking at our cash generating flagship asset. The acquisitions of Beebyn-Gardner and Beebyn North are really exciting. The most obvious areas to mine though are the existing resources. So I've often described the right to mine agreement for 10 million tons we have at Beebyn-W11. You know, we see, and we hope that Sinosteel and Baosteel see is that is a key hole to unlocking the roughly 300 million tons of known resources that are in the Weld Range. But we also have the opportunity to explore and discover our own 100% tons, both at Iron Ridge at the ground that we own the iron ore rights on at Scorpion and now at Beebyn-Gardner and Beebyn North.
So in terms of capital spend, we are looking at an exploration budget. And then obviously we will look at what's beyond four.
Yeah.
To add to the discussion around maintaining our current cash flow margins and maintaining our profitability as an iron ore company with an $80 or less FOB Geraldton, we have ambitions to be a much lower cost operator. We think that our port assets can do 10 million tons a year or more. If we work back from that, the great thing about our Newhaul road transport business, as well as the rail sidings we have at Rivedara and Perenjori, is that also gives us the opportunity to do beyond 10 million tons a year, both on the road and potentially, transferring to rail, and there's been some recent news here in Western Australia about the state government investigating steps from our perspective to effectively lower the cost of that rail.
Our road transport and Newhaul currently move tons cheaper than the Mid West rail network. If that changed, then we could augment and increase tons. So I'm working backwards from the port to our haulage business. And then, you know, I'm looking at our mining business, if you're thinking about the forward capital, one of the reasons, you know, again, about our conservative balance sheet is that yes, there are other investments we could make in growth beyond 4 million tons per annum. If we've got a port that can do 10 or more and we've got an incredible transport logistics business that can do 10 or more, and in doing so will significantly reduce our per ton costs, then it shouldn't be a surprise that we are looking for opportunities as to where those tons are coming from.
That's why we've invested capital in Beebyn-Gardner, in Beebyn North. It's why we may invest in exploration. And it's also obviously a key part of our foundation relationship with Sinosteel, and all of that, you know, if we look at the return on invested capital we have made from Iron Ridge, that I think investors should now see we will make and are making at Shine, then that's exactly why we have prioritized the ability to invest in growth. It's a very exciting outlook for Fenix in the Mid West.
Okay. And, moving forward, I guess, let's address the question. We've had multiple investors ask us about the dividends. So as you mentioned, with AUD 56.9 million in cash and strong cash flow, how's Fenix going to balance, expenditure for growth projects with returns to shareholders such as dividends in 2024?
I think it's really clear. We are, as a board, 100% committed to our dividend policy. It says that we will seek to pay an annual dividend based on the full year profitability of the company, subject to the availability of franking credits and subject to the capital requirements of the business looking forward. So, I'm very happy to explain this again. That means that where we have available excess cash, we will look to maximize the ability to pay that back to shareholders. We've been fully franked dividends, and we have a positive franking balance. We're adding to it all the time because we are a profitable company. That's really a strong outlook for future dividends. We'd like to pay dividends where we can.
Having just described our ambitions, I hope that shareholders can understand why we are investing in growth. You know, Iron Ridge, we wanted, we need to extend that operation to continue the cash flows and profitability, and there is a huge opportunity to build a much, much bigger cash flow business that can pay larger dividends. But there's not a magic act there. We need to have the capital available to invest. When we made the decision on the dividend for the FY24 year, we were in a very volatile iron ore position, and we're also looking at a forward budget, as I've explained, where we might be able to accelerate the AUD 25 million investment in Beebyn.
And we knew that there were going to be opportunities available, some of which we've taken advantage of in a small way, like Beebyn-Gardner Hills, like the investment in the port sheds. We're also expanding our Newhaul fleet from roughly 30 prime movers and trailer consists to ultimately more than 70. And when you think about the fact that those consists, each prime mover and trailer consists, is a capital cost of about AUD 1.7 million, you can see that at the end of that, we'll have around AUD 150 million invested in our rolling stock fleet. That will require a significant investment in upgrading the workshop. Anyone in Geraldton can see that we are expanding those facilities. So we're making capital investments in that business.
I think that's a really sensible move because it's going to generate huge future revenues and profitability for us that will flow through into that dividend policy, and the decision to pay dividends. Obviously what we want to get to is a position where we have a sustainable forward outlook. There's no point paying really big dividends if your mine life ends in two years. If we've got sustainable four, five, six, seven, eight, 10 million tons a year production with a 10-year mine life, as you've seen with FMG, we'll be in a position to pay huge dividends to shareholders. The board, all of ourselves are all shareholders. That would be the most appropriate way we see in delivering value to shareholders.
And if you could get out your crystal ball just for a second, and give us your expectations for the iron ore market in 2025, in terms of demand, supply, price forecast, those sort of things?
Right there. Thanks for that question. I think the best thing about spot prices, no matter what commodity is, to start to where it is at the moment. So, you know, sitting here today, it's actually ticked up a bit overnight. It's about $103.50 for the 62% index price. And we have seen, although I've mentioned volatility, we have seen it bounce around that 100. Hasn't dipped very long below that. Now that is a great price for our operations, you know, at Iron Ridge, at Shine, at W11, and for the Mid West and the infrastructure that we have at the port and our haulage fleet and our systems. Long may that continue because we'll do really well in that environment.
But we obviously also, and you can see that in our capital allocation decisions, you also see it in our urgency about capturing efficiencies in our business. We are prepared for and are preparing for lower iron ore prices. So, you know, I actually looking at, both analyst forecasts and my own view of the market and certainly the feedback we get from offtakers and steel mills, you know, I've actually more bullish today on the outlook for iron ore, as in its ability to stay around $100 than I have been for, for years. You know, a lot of the decisions we made at Fenix, both Craig Mitchell, myself, and the board have been around the urgency to manage our costs and that disagreement around what we think might happen to the iron ore price. Hasn't happened yet. We're ready if it does.
But it's very exciting to think about how much money we make at these iron ore prices, as they continue to maintain around $100 a ton.
Okay, and what's Fenix's thought process on its hedging strategy? David's asked a question around does the weaker Australian dollar provide an actual hedge against lower benchmark iron ore prices?
I don't think the weaker Australian dollar provides a hedge. The weaker Australian dollar provides a tailwind for our business because obviously it increases the effective Australian dollar value of our product. You know, the challenge we have is that our product is priced in US dollars, but almost all of our costs are Australian dollars. And that's why we have used this very simple but effective hedge product with Macquarie Bank, where we hedge against the 62% index in Australian dollars. So there are two drivers of that hedge outcome, which is the index price and the exchange rate. So in the quarter, we've obviously, and subsequent to the quarter end, we've now got 660,000 tons hedged out to December. That policy remains a price protection policy.
So we like to have a percentage of our production locked in at a very positive margin because notwithstanding my earlier comment about being bullish on the iron ore price, we prepare for it to be lower. So, you know, we're looking forward to sunshine, but we're ready with an umbrella if it starts to rain. And so at the moment, if you think around that, it's sort of 20 or 25% of our production out to December, hedged at a really good margin compared to our production costs. And we'll continue to look to do that where we can.
Okay. Moving to the recent, well, the exploration projects, I guess, can you outline your plan for exploration at Beebyn-Gardner and Beebyn North over the next 12 months?
Look, they're exciting projects. They're part of the package that Geraldton at one stage had a 50 million ton exploration target on. We've had some exploration geologists on site during January. So we're looking forward to their report. At that point, we'll allocate some capital for an exploration budget. There is some initial. We know there's some iron ore, there's some historic drilling on those projects. How contiguous it is and how minable it is is what we'll assess. You know, obviously, the market and shareholders will be aware that we haven't funded a lot of activity on the Scorpion ground we acquired a while ago.
You know, that acquisition was also about making sure that we could secure the appropriate ancillary licenses we would need for haul roads to access the other tons that we know are there in the Weld Range. There are some interesting targets on that Scorpion ground. We're going to step back and look at that package as a whole. We actually haven't finished the job of consolidating the Weld Range. We've only just started. Rather than sort of, you know, poking needles in a haystack, we're going to secure the whole haystack. There are really obvious and exciting opportunities around us. This is an area with a lot of iron ore. We have started the assessment. We will do some exploration and further drilling. We're interpreting the results at Iron Ridge.
But we also are still working on consolidating those opportunities and then we'll be able to allocate capital appropriately to exploration programs.
And update the market at that time, I suppose. Yep. Okay. And, so the analysts, the coverage analysts from Petra and MST, as well as others on Hot Copper, have asked how the recently constructed Rivedara Inland Port Terminal will improve operational performance and generate a profit for Fenix. Can you talk to that?
The most obvious thing is it will unlock the 3 million ton third party contract we have with Gold Valley, so that you know, obviously we didn't ship any third party tons during the December quarter. We prioritized the haulage from Iron Ridge and Shine. That's also pending the construction of a rail crossing we need in order to get access to the works we've completed at Rivedara. It's a really efficient radial stacker, and that creates the opportunity to stockpile material at Rivedara. In the long term, it also provides us the opportunity to potentially access rail. As I've mentioned at this stage, it's a lot cheaper for us to haul material from Rivedara on the road than it is using the rail network, and so that's what we'll do.
It means that third party customers can haul their product to Rivedara and then we can very efficiently and very cost effectively move their products from Rivedara into our storage shed at Geraldton and ultimately into a boat and into their customers. And that's going to provide additional revenue for us. It'll also spread our fixed costs in our transport business and our port business effectively. So we have a foundation customer in Gold Valley. There are a lot of projects. I mean, if you hang around the Mid West Ports Authority offices here in Perth or in Geraldton, there's a nonstop stream of project promoters and people doing feasibility studies in all sorts of commodities looking to get port access. And so we are very keen to unlock the value in those projects and we have the ability to provide a very high quality, very cost efficient service.
So Rivedara enables a natural point. It removes the congestion of getting into Geraldton and removes the congestion of the port. We can stockpile, potentially even blend, products. So initially that facility will be used for third party tons. Thinking about what I've just described about our long term view and our confidence in more tons, more Fenix tons being originated out of the Weld Range, there is also the opportunity to use that to increase the efficiency of our haulage of Fenix material. And so there's a lot that we're investing in Rivedara.
A question from Frank has come through, in light of geopolitical risks that have been all over the news lately. Has Fenix explored alternative export markets beyond China?
Yes, we have. In fact, quite a lot of our product already goes to Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and is used by steel mills who don't have access to a port that can take a Capesize vessel. So although, as you see in our numbers, we are always managing shipping costs, which is in 60,000 dry weight ton Panamax boats and effectively you can see if our pricing, we're paying for a China freight rate. There is an advantage to our customers, obviously on shorter rates and to get those sort of ships to ports that are closer to those regional steel mills. So we have a really good network of steel mills and potential off takers in Southeast Asia. And certainly the products from Iron Ridge, 64% lump and 63% fines would be very easy to hit any market.
You know, you could market those products in Europe if we had to. However, I would point out that the notwithstanding geopolitical movements, and I assume he's referring to the Trump trade as everyone is looking at the moment. The reality is that China remains the driver of steel production and iron ore demand. Even when we're talking to other customers in other locations, that index pricing and certainly the huge demand across the industry comes from China. Fenix's advantage obviously is that we are part of a huge multi-billion ton market. So we can really be effective in choosing who we work with. I think to be really direct and back to the quarterly, you can see that in our ability to sell these low grade products from Shine effectively. We've got a good network.
We've got a good brand in the market, and we're not only exposed to the China trade, but China does drive the iron ore price.
Okay. And multiple investors have asked questions pertaining to where you see inorganic growth opportunities in the Mid West and whether these opportunities are limited to iron ore.
Look, I think I've described our exploration program so far in the Q & A and also our potential at the port and haulage. And therefore, we're very keen to unlock tons. We think we're showing that. We were very, very efficient in commissioning a greenfields project at Iron Ridge. We've recommissioned very successfully on budget and ahead of schedule a brownfields project at Shine. And we're in the process of demonstrating that we can efficiently deliver another greenfields project at Beebyn-W11. That sets us up for what comes next. Inorganic growth, you know, I've described what we're looking for. We can build a really big company here.
Obviously, the starting place is in the Mid West, but we're also looking elsewhere as to where our ability to mine these sequential relatively small pits really efficiently, our haulage capability, and our port services skills and our marketing business can unlock value. Most obviously, as you see, you know, with consolidated $30 a ton cash flow margins, the most immediate opportunities for us to increase our iron ore tons in the Mid West, but we are looking at other commodity opportunities both in the Mid West and elsewhere, so there are lots of potential applications for our skill set.
Perfect. And we've just gone a little bit over time. So I guess we'll wrap up there. John, was there any final, comments you'd like to leave investors with, regarding how they should think about Fenix and the growth opportunity ahead?
I think it's a really exciting time. The short-term outlook is to triple our iron ore production. That exposes us to the margins that we can generate and we demonstrated we can generate. Looking forward, we've got an infrastructure business in the Mid West and we're demonstrating that we've got capabilities in mining and haulage and port services that we could replicate elsewhere. If we haven't got to your question today, please send them through to either Dannika or myself. We really appreciate shareholder engagement. We think we've got a very exciting story. Like every other listed company director in the universe, I think the market's mispricing our stock.
I was talking to Craig this morning and he mentioned that in his assessment, the asset value that we have at the port and the haulage business is worth more than double our market cap currently. We're being patient. We're going to deliver cash flows. We're going to reward shareholders in future with dividends, and we're building a big exciting business and I hope we get reward for it soon.
Thank you, John, and thank you to all the investors who joined today and for sending through all your many questions, which we really appreciate receiving. As John said, please do feel free to reach out to us. We'll send around a replay of this webinar tomorrow, or actually tomorrow's Saturday with a public holiday. We'll get it to you as soon as possible. But that concludes today's webinar. Thank you.
Thanks everyone. Thanks, Dannika.