Welcome to the 2021 Mineral Resources Limited annual general meeting. While today I'm speaking with you from Sydney, this year we are again fortunate to be able to host our meeting in person in Perth, as well as virtually for our shareholders not able to attend in person. I thank you for those who are in attendance today. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, and I pay my respects to elders past and present. At last year's annual general meeting, I spoke about 2020 as having been an extraordinary year, mainly due to the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19. In 2021, these challenges have continued, but so too has the perseverance and resilience of our company and our people.
During the past 12 months, we've not wavered in our efforts to keep over 5,000 Mineral Resources employees safe and our operations running across Western Australia. It's been another remarkable effort of which we can all be proud. Today, it is my pleasure to introduce the Mineral Resources board and management team with us today. Our Managing Director, Chris Ellison, is joined in Perth by his fellow directors, Kelvin Flynn and James McClements. Director Zizi joins us from Hong Kong, while Director Susie Corlett joins us from Sydney as well. Also in Perth are Mark Wilson, Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary; Paul Brown, Chief Executive Commodities; Mike Gray, Chief Executive Mining Services; and Derek Oelofse, Group Financial Controller and Company Secretary. Additionally, this morning, we welcome Thu Phuong Tu from our auditors, RSM, and Nicole Lewis from Computershare, who will oversee today's polling process.
Local representatives from the Australian Shareholders' Association to provide a valuable sounding board for investor feedback. Before we begin the meeting, for those of you attending in person in Perth, please ensure your mobile devices are silent. Now, join me in welcoming Whadjuk Ballardong Noongar Elder, Freda Ogilvie to deliver our Welcome to Country.
Kaya. I'm very pleased to be back here again 'cause I was here last year with you. I'm sure we've got a few more faces in our audience. Kaya. Hello. From the past, the present, and the future, I acknowledge the elders, teachers, leaders of the Whadjuk people. They are the archives, the libraries, and keepers of the language, culture, and stories which they taught to me. Listen, and that's the most important part. Listen to what we say. Sit, laugh, and learn about our language and culture that's been passed on for 60,000 years. Country is inherent in our identity. It sustains our lives in every aspect, spiritually, physically, emotionally, socially, and culturally. It's more than a place. When we talk about country, it is spoken of like a person.
Most of the time, that person is our mother because she is the center of our universe, the same as the sun. We use the same word as our ngangk. Country is family, kin, law, lore, ceremony, traditions, and language. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, it's been this way since the dawn of time. Through our languages and songs, we speak to country. Through our ceremonies and traditions, we sing to and celebrate country, and the country speaks to us. To heal country, we must properly work towards redressing historical injustice. While we can't change history, through telling the truth about our nation's past, we certainly can change the way history is viewed. People's personal stories, as idiosyncratic as they may be, are woven within a cultural context and act to encapsulate and represent a broader community narrative.
This is achieved by reiterating stories handed down to them of places of cultural significance. Dreamtime stories regarding spiritual beings and creation are community narratives people have given voice to, which in turn sustains their own personal life story in positive ways. Thus, Swan and Canning Rivers and their tributaries on the banks where we stand hold great significance, especially specific sites which represent areas thought to be resting places for the Waugal or home to its eggs. Although a number of these places have undergone substantial change, the memories and meanings associated remain. I want you to help me with this. I'll say it first, then if you repeat. This is my land. This is your land. This is our land. Let's walk together side by side in reconciliation and in harmony until the end of time. Just [audio distortion] CEO.
Chris, I wanted to say I recognize a whole number of those faces in the annual report, all those artists. I actually taught a couple. I'm starting to think that really starts to show how old I am. From Fitzroy Crossing, Wyndham, Halls Creek, Kununurra, right down to Albany, I've had contact with people. Clinton and Aaron, not Aaron, but Clinton is one of my students from Fitzroy Crossing over many years. I actually had a photo taken with his mom not so long ago at my seventieth birthday party. Good luck and enjoy today, and have a lovely time together. Thank you.
Working with all of our people. Thank you. In terms of formalities, I can advise that a quorum exists, and I declare the meeting open. The notice of the meeting is taken as read. In terms of the agenda for today, I will address the formal proceedings of this meeting and then invite our Managing Director, Chris Ellison, to provide an overview and review of the 2021 financial year performance and outline our growth strategy for the next decade and beyond. As always, Chris will welcome questions from shareholders at the end of his presentation. Today's meeting is what we term a hybrid AGM, meaning it is being held in person and online via the Lumi platform. This allows shareholders' proxies, and guests to attend the meeting virtually by webcast. In addition, shareholders and proxies can ask questions and submit votes online.
We've provided a copy of the annual report, which includes the directors' report, financial report, and the auditors' report to the ASX and to our shareholders. The company secretaries advise me that we have not received any questions on the directors' report and financial report, so I now lay these reports before the meeting. Shareholders are welcome to ask questions during the meeting. If you are in the room, you can ask the question by raising your white attendance card. If you have joined us online, you can submit questions at any time. Any other questions I receive prior to the meeting will be answered at the appropriate time. Slide one shows how to ask a written question via Lumi. To submit a written question, select the Messaging tab at the top of Lumi platform.
At the top of the tab, there is a section for you to type your question. Once you have finished typing, please hit the arrow symbol to send. Slide two is how to ask a verbal question via Lumi. To ask a verbal question, you'll need to pause the broadcast on the Lumi platform and then click on the link under Asking Audio Questions. A new page will open where you'll be prompted to enter your name and the topic of your question before you are connected. You'll listen to the meeting on this page while waiting to ask your question. If you have any issues using this system, please return to the Lumi platform. Please note, although you can submit questions at any time, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting.
Your questions may be moderated, or if we receive multiple questions on one topic, they may be amalgamated. Due to time constraints, we may not be able to answer all your questions. If this happens, we will answer them via email or post responses on our website after the meeting. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. To provide you with enough time to vote, I will shortly open voting for all resolutions. Shareholders who have joined us in person should have received a voting paper at registration. If you did not receive a voting paper and believe you should have, please raise your hand now. Computershare representative will assist you. As we go through the resolutions, please mark the box next to which resolution to cast your vote.
Once you have completed your preferences for all resolutions, please sign and write your name at the bottom of the page. Computershare will collect your voting papers at the end of the official business. Now, slide three is how to vote online. Once voting is open, if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new polling icon will appear on the Lumi platform. Selecting this icon will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of these options. There is no need to hit a submit or enter button as the vote is automatically recorded. You can, however, change your vote up until the time I declare voting closed. Accordingly, I now declare voting open on all my items of business. If you are voting online, the polling icon will soon appear.
Please submit your votes at any time. As a reminder, this is a meeting of Mineral Resources shareholders, and as such, only shareholders, their appointed proxies, or corporate representatives are entitled to make comments, ask questions, or vote. All other attendees are very welcome as observers. I will leave the polling open while we discuss the resolutions. We'll provide you with a warning before we close voting. If we put resolution one up on the resolution one slide. Resolution one is the adoption of the remuneration report. The first motion for consideration today is the adoption of that report. The Corporations Act requires a resolution to adopt the remuneration report be put to a vote. However, the resolution is advisory and only non-binding. All key management personnel and their closely related parties are excluded from voting on this motion.
The remuneration committee this year was pleased with the overwhelming shareholder support for the 2020 financial year remuneration report, and has sought to build on that support in financial year 2021. The changes implemented in financial year 2020 to the remuneration strategy and structures have assisted in the retention of the senior leadership group. During a period of considerable change within the mining and mining services industries, this stability has enabled positive cultural changes to be effected. This change, in turn, has provided a platform to attract outstanding talent to strengthen the company's capability. This is essential to the foundation of our business to support the substantial growth ahead of us in a highly competitive market. Financial year 2021 remuneration outcomes were driven by the significant growth in our business.
Given both the success and continued shareholder support for the remuneration strategy and structures that became effective in last year, in financial year 2020, there have been no changes to our overall executive remuneration structure in financial year 2021. The year has again been a very successful year for the company, with considerable operational success achieved and a record operating result for shareholders despite COVID-19 constraints. The remuneration framework is structured to promote long-term sustainable growth of the company through delivery of a significant portion of remuneration in equity. This aligns the senior leadership team with shareholders. The outcomes of the remuneration framework help achieve the company's vision to be a leading provider of innovative and sustainable mining services, provide innovative and low-cost solutions across the mining infrastructure supply chain.
Operate with integrity and respect, and work in partnership with clients, our customers, our people, and our community to achieve these objectives. The remuneration committee is pleased that the incentive program in place has assisted in delivering outstanding results to shareholders. The details of the proxy votes cast on Resolution 1 are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments on this item that you'd like to discuss? I haven't seen any questions, so if there are no further questions, we'll move on to the next resolution. Resolution 2 is the re-election of Director Mr. Kelvin Flynn. It is to consider, if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment, the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purposes of clause 13.2 of the Constitution, ASX Listing Rule 14.5, and for all other purposes, Mr. Kelvin Flynn be a director of the company, retires by rotation, and being eligible, be re-elected as a director. Mr. Kelvin Flynn has served as a director since March 22, 2010, and was last re-elected on N ovember 20th, 2019. He's a qualified chartered accountant with over 30 years experience in investment banking and corporate advisory roles, including private equity and special situations investments in the mining and resources sector. Kelvin has also held various leadership positions throughout Australia and Asia, including Executive Director and Vice President with Goldman Sachs and Managing Director of Alvarez & Marsal in Asia. He has also worked in complex financial workouts, turnaround advisory, and interim management. Currently, he is the managing director of specialist alternative funds manager Harvest, which focuses on investments in the real estate and real asset sector.
Kelvin is also a non-executive director of Silver Lake Resources Limited. At the present time, Kelvin is also the Chair of the Mineral Resources Audit and Risk Committee. The board supports the reelection of Kelvin Flynn and recommends shareholders vote in favor of Resolution 2. The details of the proxy votes cast on Resolution 2 are now displayed on the screen. That's a very overwhelming positive vote. Are there any questions on this item? No? As there are no further questions, we'll move on to the next resolution. Resolution 3 is the reelection of director Ms. Zizi. The resolution reads: To consider and if thought fit to pass, with or without amendment, the following resolution as an ordinary resolution.
That for the purpose of clause 13.2 of the Constitution, ASX Listing Rule 14.5, and for all other purposes, Ms. Zizi being a director of the company, retires by rotation, and being eligible, be reelected as a director. Ms. Zizi has served as a director since September 11th, 2017 and was last reelected on November 20, 2019. She has over 20 years of experience in the global natural resources sector, having served as a director of Sailing Capital, the U.S. $2 billion private equity fund founded by the Shanghai International Group in 2012. Zizi has also worked with numerous Chinese state-owned and privately-owned enterprises advising on international acquisitions and investments overseas. She has also previously served as an analyst and portfolio manager for the Tigris Financial Group, The Electrum Group in New York, focused in the oil and gas and mining sector.
Zizi currently serves as non-executive director of [Zici] Resources, a closed-end investment company with a broad portfolio of oil and gas, as well as mining investments. Zizi is also the chair of the nomination committee of Mineral Resources. The board supports the reelection of Ms. Zizi and recommends shareholders vote in favor of resolution. The details of proxy votes cast on resolution 3 are now displayed on the screen. Again, it's an outstanding proxy vote for Zizi. Congratulations. Are there any questions on this item? No questions. With no further questions, we'll move on to the next resolution. Resolution number 4 is the approval for grant of securities to the managing director. The resolution reads, "To consider and if thought fit to pass, with or without amendment, the following resolution as an ordinary resolution.
That for the purpose of ASX Listing Rule 10.14, and for all other purposes, approval is given for the grant of share rights to Managing Director Chris Ellison and the company's long-term incentive plan on the terms set out in the explanatory statement. At last year's annual general meeting, we committed to provide a resolution addressing the Managing Director's financial year 2021 long-term incentive equity award to address comments that we had received in financial year 2020 from proxy advisors that the company should seek approval for the Managing Director's long-term incentive equity grant, despite the equity award being settled by way of MRL shares purchased on market rather than by way of a fresh issue of shares. In response, we have tabled Resolution 4.
Following further feedback from proxy advisors this year, however, we will adjust this approval at future annual general meetings so that shareholder approval for the managing director's long-term incentive equity grant is sought prospectively. As a result, the equity resolution at the 2022 annual general meeting will encompass the managing director's long-term incentive equity award for both the financial year ending June 2022 as well as June 2023, with prospective approval for each of the following financial years' long-term incentive grants being sought at each subsequent annual general meeting. The board supports the grant of equities, securities to the managing director and recommends that shareholders vote in favor of resolution 4.
The details of the proxy votes cast on Resolution 4 are now displayed on the screen, and if there are any questions, please raise them now. Thank you. We will move on to the next resolution. Resolution 5, which is the last resolution of the meeting, is the adoption of the new constitution. The resolution reads, "To consider, and if thought fit, pass the following resolution as a special resolution. That pursuant to, and in accordance with Section 136 of the Corporations Act, and for all other purposes, the constitution of the company be repealed in its entirety, and the company adopt as its new constitution the document described in the explanatory memorandum and tabled at the meeting and signed by the chair for identification purposes with immediate effect from closing of the meeting." The company's existing constitution was first adopted in 2006.
Since this time, there have been changes to the Corporations Act, the ASX Listing Rules, and other regulatory requirements. There have also been developments in corporate governance and market practices. The board believes it preferable in the circumstances to replace the existing constitution with a new constitution rather than to amend a multitude of specific provisions. The new constitution is broadly consistent with provisions of the existing constitution, and many of the changes are administrative or minor in nature. The details of the proxy votes cast on Resolution 5 are now displayed on the screen. If there are any questions on this item, please raise them. Thank you. As there are no questions, this concludes our discussion on the items of business. In a few minutes, I will close the voting system. Please ensure you have cast your vote on all resolutions.
Shareholders in the room need to lodge their voting card in the ballot boxes being brought around the room by Computershare staff. I'll now pause it to allow you time to finalize these votes for approximately 90 seconds. Can you please raise your hand if you are yet to lodge your voting paper? I think all the voting papers have been collected. Voting is now closed and results will be released to the Australian Securities Exchange later today. Thank you all for your patience. Now, before I hand over to our Managing Director, Chris Ellison, on behalf of the board, I would like to acknowledge Chris and his team for their extraordinary results through what has been another challenging year in the face of a global pandemic. To keep our people safe, our operations running, and deliver record financial year performance is an incredible achievement.
I'd particularly like to thank the entire Mineral Resources workforce of over 5,000 people for their unwavering support and cooperation as we continue to adapt to keep our sites safe and our mines operating. This was not always easy, but the board is grateful to each and every member of the Mineral Resources team. My final commitment is to pay tribute to the skill, commitment, and wisdom of all the board of directors in reviewing, questioning, and adding value to all board discussions. It's my pleasure to be the chair of such a strong, cohesive, and value-adding group of directors. With no further business to address, I'll conclude formal proceedings for this year's annual general meeting and invite Chris to talk through what has been an exceptional year for your company and outline our strategy for growth, for the future.
Thank you for your support of Mineral Resources. We look forward to continuing this journey with you. Thank you.
First, I'd like to acknowledge that our AGM today is being held on Noongar traditional land. I'd like to acknowledge they're the traditional custodians, and I'd like all of yous to join with me and pay our respects to elders past and present. I'd like to extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that are here today or online listening. Welcome, everybody. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. It's our MinRes 2021 AGM. I'm Chris Ellison. I've been with the business from the beginning, and it's good to see some familiar faces in the crowd. Welcome to all our shareholders, and especially welcome to all of the private little investors that have supported MinRes over a long, long time.
David Bowden, one of our inaugural chairman's list shareholders, been with us from day one. It's always really pleasing to see that we're delivering some good stuff for our families. I mean, it's probably the most important thing our business stands for is to care about our people, care about the families of our people and try and care about the wider community. It's been another tough year for us, a very challenging twelve months that we've been through, and I think not just for business or Mineral Resources. I think it's been for the whole world, the whole country. For WA, I think, we're all pretty much COVID fatigued.
We just wanna get over it, and we wanna get rid of this thing and, we'd like our borders to open up, go see family or hop on an airplane or go do something a little bit different and, it's kinda getting a little bit tiresome. Look, I think we're gonna get there. The tough thing as a business is when we open up the floodgates, we're not just letting people out. We're gonna let the virus in, so we've spent an awful lot of time trying to work out how we can continue to keep all of our people safe, and our extended families around WA, extended to thousands of people. They rely on our business for the normal bread and butter that goes on their table and pay their mortgages.
It's something we've gotta take pretty serious over the next six and nine months. It's gonna be a very, very challenging time. Thanks to the board. Welcome for our board members that can't be here again. I'm sure that next year we'll all be back together. Thanks for the support during the year. They've been pretty amazing board. They're not a walk in the park. They're tough customers to deal with, but they deliver an awfully good result for us. We've been through another cycle again. Last year, I was standing here, and if you're in iron ore you're a hero, and if you're in lithium you're a loser. That's not the first rodeo that I've had like that. Here we are again. Iron ore's declined.
Lithium's at prices never heard of or seen of before and seems unstoppable. Lucky we got both. The Mining Services business has been performing extremely well. Today, I'm gonna try and give you a bit of a snapshot of the past 12 months. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the strategy and direction of the business. We've done some work around a lot of our institutional shareholders and got a fairly mixed reaction. A lot of them didn't really understand our strategy, where we're going or what the glue is in the business. I'm gonna try and deliver a bit more on that.
Then I'm gonna talk a little bit about our major projects and try and see if I can get yous a little more savvy on how that works in our world. I mean, we are, as you know, we're a mining services company. That's where we started our life. We're one of the premier and largest mining services groups in Australia. We think that over the next three years, and proceeding to beyond that, the mining services business is gonna be incredibly significant. It's gonna be large, but it'll still maintain a reasonable margin and a return to our shareholders. The thing that drives us, it's that mining services, that contractor mentality that we have. It's the heartbeat of our business that makes us those can-do people. We don't see problems, we see solutions.
We attract a lot of very, very high caliber people to our business. A lot of people wanna be with us nowadays. The other parts of our business, commodities, we're into iron ore, we're into lithium. We have also found ourselves lucky enough to be in gas. We've been sitting on that land for a couple of years up in the Perth Basin. We just recently drilled a hole up there, and who would have guessed? We found gas, and we found a lot of gas, so we're working on that. We've got a solid track record. We've delivered a very, very consistent growth story over the years. It doesn't always follow that one year is always bigger than the next. We always have our challenges.
We're facing a few now, but we've got a fairly big growth story in the business. We've got a good track record on being able to build and operate large-scale projects. We've got a good track record on delivering them on budget. We get them done on time. We often beat that, and we generally get a consistent return for our shareholders. Every time we think of something new, I mean, I face a little bit of criticism and a lot of different questions coming at me, but we rely on our track record to tell us that we're gonna continue to run the company the way we have over thirty years, and we're gonna try and make sure that we get those same results.
The next phase of our growth is gonna be quite significant, much more than we've ever seen before. We've got a balance sheet that can deal with it. We've got capability out there, and we've got timing on our side where we can strategically time the development of where we're going on the projects. We're gonna multiply our mining services business over the next three years. I'll lay that out, how I'm gonna achieve that, shortly. We're transitioning our iron ore business from small, high-cost operations to long, low-cost operations. That's a three-to-five-year plan again. We're gonna maximize our lithium production. I mean, our lithium business is one of the premier lithium businesses in the world.
We're in the top five, and we're gonna do an awful lot better, as we go through the next one, two, and three years. It's gonna become incredibly substantial. Our gas business, we're gonna develop an energy business, and we're gonna be very focused on how we do that. But I'll give you a bit more color around that shortly. I'll talk a little bit about where we've been over the last 12 months in brief. I think you've all got all the information that's available. There's not a lot more I can tell you. Probably in a lot of terms, I mean, it shouldn't have been, but it was our best year so far. Who would have thought that if you go back to March 2000?
I would have thought the business was gonna halve, and it just wouldn't stop growing. Safety performance, thanks to our management team. I mean, we're in a really good place with that and just outstanding results. The mining services over the last 12 months, Next Gen 2 commissioned, incredibly successful. It's sitting up on one of our tier one client sites producing a lot of iron ore. We've started another substantial mining contract out there with one of the tier one blue chip companies. A lot of yellow goods on site. Productivity levels we're getting out there it's exceeding expectations. Carbon fiber. I spoke to you some years ago about carbon fiber, and I was gonna do this amazing dump truck driver. It was a flop. It really didn't go anywhere.
We couldn't cure that problem. Everything worked on it except when you drop a 15- or 20-ton rock out of a digger. It eventually laminates the carbon fiber. We've got a carbon fiber factory, and there's a lot of things that we're producing out of that factory now that have just game changers in our business. We've developed the first screens in the world, all carbon fiber. We've got them running up at Mount Marion, and we're building some awfully large ones at the moment. We just take the weight out of it. We take the corrosion out of it. We get longevity. There's other products we've done. They got involved with a company that is based over in Germany.
They've developed a wheelchair wheel so that instead of trying to skull drag yourself out of your wheelchair, you can pull it up beside the bed, you lift the top third of the carbon fiber piece of the wheel off, and they can simply slide onto their beds. It's a bit of a game changer, but who would have thought a mining company would come up with that? Where else are we going? Wonmuna. We turned Wonmuna on. Five months after we turned it on, we had the first iron ore coming out of it. I mean, close on a world record. A great story. Turned it on at 5 million tonne. We're ramping it up towards 10 million tonne over the coming months. Been running reasonably well.
I mean, we've had a lot of water in the ore body out there, but had a lot of rain this winter, as you know. We've done a lot of work around the Pilbara and the Ashburton Hub, so I'll talk a bit more about them towards the end. Of course, the energy, we doubled our land holding in the Perth Basin. We were lucky enough to win a tender up there with the government. We also took on a huge amount of land on the Carnarvon onshore basin. That's adjacent Chevron, but we're onshore, and we've gone into that with our friends from Buru Energy. Financials, you can see very, very strong. Return on investment capital in a good place. Revenue up.
Pretty much everything was up for the year, so pretty tough year to beat. Safety and well-being, as I said earlier, critical to us. It's something that we work on every day in our business. We care about our people an awful lot, and we do that. It's a total package to make sure that we can get our people to work and get them back home in the right condition that we want them home. LTI 0.12. It was zero for a number of years. We've had one small accident that's given us that TRIFR. Again, in our industry, unbelievably unheard of. I mean, we're down there at 2.31.
I mean, I was talking to the Minister for Mines the other day, and I reminded him that our TRIFR is much lower than his own people at desk-bound. Another outstanding result from the team. Labor market's been tough. We're all fishing out of the same pool. We're trying to think of different ways of getting people into our workforce. We're being very innovative around the way we've done that. We've got 130 pre-apprentices and graduates sitting inside the business at the moment. Had a huge success with bringing young women into the business. We've been bringing them in and training them to be operators.
If there are any hairdressers or waitresses or banking people, anything out there, and they wanna go from AUD 40,000 to AUD 120,000 a year, give me a ring. We'll have them on site within about 10 weeks, and it will change their lives. Good story with the apprentices have been going well. About 50% of these people that we bring in the business, we call them next-gen people, and that means that they've got a mum or a dad or someone that's been working in the business, and they know our culture. And again, I mean, extremely successful. They say you should never employ relations. We favor them. They understand how we work. Mental and physical health with our people is critical.
We really have done a lot of work over the last couple of years on the mental health of our people. It's as prevalent as physical well-being of people. In fact, it's more prevalent than physical well-being of people. We can keep them safe. We can keep them away from the first aid cabinet, but the times that we go through add a lot of stress to people, and we recognize that. FIFO adds some to it. I mean, a whole range of things where people need help, and we're there to help them. We've got a great guy in Chris Harris, our psychologist, that has been around for a long time and does a great job. Health and well-being advisors, we've got a lot of them in the business. We've got 40 mental health first aiders in the business. We're growing that through training.
The work environment, we're setting new standards in the industry. We're developing a new office at the moment. It's running a little over time and a little over budget, but we're going to be able to provide people with a platinum standard working environment. For us to be successful as a business, we've gotta not only attract good people, but we've got to do that whole model that goes around it. We're gonna attract them, we're gonna retain them, we're gonna satisfy their egos. We've gotta be able to let them move through the management chain. We've gotta pay them properly. We've gotta keep them healthy, safe, and we gotta support them when they got issues through health or family. That's the total package we're working towards. Accommodation on site.
When we go to the Ashburton, we're gonna do resort-style accommodation, not the traditional old camps. We're gonna have a lot of good things in there. We're gonna have swimming pool, wellbeing centers for training, restaurants and taverns, not dry messes and wet messes. We're gonna make sure that when the people go in there, they've got a different feeling. We're gonna make sure that we've got even time rosters, and we're slowly changing the business to make sure we accommodate that where we can. We can't just do that overnight because we need to bring on more people. Very high focus throughout the business, and we always have on behavior and culture. I mean, the culture in our business is really solid. We've worked on that for probably the last four or five years.
We've really been focused on it. We've got people that just work on the culture and make sure that everyone understands how we all play together. The respect that people have to have for others. It's not just in our camps, it's right across the business, but we're very focused on that. Look, we care. In short, we care a lot about our people, their safety, their mental and physical well-being, and their families. We've made sure that we've been able to keep everyone pretty safe through the whole COVID deal. Coming through the other side, you know, we're starting to look at in our new office, we're gonna have some doctors engaged. We've got over 40 nurses on the payroll.
We're working towards being able to have vaccine available and be able to take care of our people directly and their families. Contribution to safety to society, sorry. AUD 1.3 billion spent in WA over the last year. AUD 700 million that were paid in a variety of different taxes. Over 70 charities that we've supported around health and wellbeing. Kids medical research, youth suicide prevention, domestic violence centers, and we provide substantial funding for scholarships into schools and universities so that we've got young people that come into the business. They get vocational experience. They understand what they're studying for. They fine-tune that, and we try and pick them up when they come out of uni, and we bring them into our workforce. They're the future of our business.
We've done a lot of work this year and it kinda reflects and you see at the pictures that we've got around in the backgrounds. We've done an awful lot of work around and not just Indigenous and traditional landowners, but local businesses out in the community, towns, engaging with the local councils, station owners, farms. I get on a plane regularly, go up and sit in front of them, tell them how we're gonna behave, tell them what our commitments are. I was up in Paraburdoo on Tuesday and put about an hour and a half presentation onto the Ashburton Council about how we wanna integrate with them in town. We got a little bit of a wild reaction on where we wanna locate our resort, but we're gonna work through that.
It's been a successful year in that sense. Our relationship with all of these communities has been quite exceptional. We've completed our modern slavery statement and 93% of our suppliers are Australian. Environmental performance is a real hot topic around at the moment, and it will be for a long time to come. We've grown our team internally to be able to deal with a whole lot of new issues we're faced with. We've increased our land rehabilitation this year. We're maximizing the way that we use our water around the plants. We're looking at trying to eliminate tailings dams, and we're going to dry stacking. We've been reasonably successful on that.
It's gonna be a project that takes us a few more years, but the new magnetite project we're looking at doing down the Yilgarn is gonna be completely without tailings. We've got everything kind of heading in the right direction. Decarbonization. Year-on-year emissions intensity is down by 5%. Diesel is our main enemy that we have sitting out there. It produces about 90% of our emissions. There's no secret recipe on how we can get rid of that at the moment, but we're working on it and we're going to use gas so we can try and move away from using as much diesel as we are.
All power generation, we're gonna try and mix it in with our diesel engines and reduce the diesel usage and bring up a bit more gas. We're using solar wherever we can, and we're gonna keep growing that through our business. When we build the big storage shed up at Ashburton, the whole roof's gonna be covered in panels. We'll have more power than we can use. We're gonna embrace green energy and new fuel sources whenever they come available. We're not capable of developing green fuel inside MinRes. We're focused on running the business, but we certainly will join with anything that comes out where we can incrementally reduce our carbon into the atmosphere. We've tried to put out a roadmap on where we're going with that over the next 20 and 30 years.
We're hoping that over the next five, seven years, we'll be able to completely eliminate diesel. If we can do that'll be the biggest game changer we can do in the next 30. Whatever we do, look, it's practical and achievable, the plan that we've got, and it's based on the technology that's basically around today. I said earlier, I'm gonna try and give you a little bit around our strategy. Am I boring the crap out of anyone yet? We're still hanging in. Who put their hand up? I just wanna talk a little bit about our strategy and for a lot of our institutional investors out there. Some of them aren't quite clear on where it is, but it's very simple. In our mining services, the strategy going forward over the next.
I'm gonna talk about the next five years, and you'll see why by the time I get to it. The growth plan on mining services is we wanna move further up the value chain. We are gonna add high quality infrastructure to our business going forward and supply chain assets. What do I mean by that? I'm gonna build off-highway haul roads that we own and operate. We've developed some awfully big gear, which I'll talk to you about shortly. In the iron ore, it's very simple. We started off with small second-rate iron ore deposits with high cost to get them to the coast. We're moving away from that over the next two years in the Ashburton, five years in the Pilbara, and the next one-four years down in the Yilgarn. Very simple. Much lower cost.
We're gonna get our iron ore delivered into China, in the low-cost quartile, and we're gonna make sure that two out of those three zones have got a six in front of it. 60.5% Fe in the Pilbara, about 65%-66% in Yilgarn. Lower grade in the Ashburton, but it's our lowest cost operation as well. I mean, it makes up for it. The lithium space, our immediate focus is to get to full production and to make sure that all of the rock that we turn out of these spodumene plants is gonna turn into hydroxide, and we get the full value of that. Look, at the moment, over the last few days, or for the last few weeks, hydroxide's up around $26,000 a ton US.
We are seeing a number of sales go through AUD 2,200-AUD 2,400 for spod. Going back in the last cycle we had, where there wasn't a lot of demand, and I think there's only one or two companies committed to electric cars. Back in those days, it got up to about $1,300, so it's double that now. It looks like there's a long-term sustainable demand chain sitting out there. My view is that there's gonna be more demand going forward than there is supply. So fairly simple on that. Gas, again, very simple. We've got a whopping resource sitting out there in the Perth Basin on our first drill hole. We're going to develop that Lockyer Deep field. We wanna be self-sufficient in gas.
Initially, we wanna be able to provide it to ourselves and our JV partners. Where we can't deliver it by pipe, we're gonna produce our own LNG. We'll build a LNG plant so we can transport it before we bring it down to a minus 161°C , and we can turn it into liquid and put it in a truck and haul it inland for about AUD 1.20 a GJ. We're gonna provide long-term energy solutions in the medium term to the mining industry through gas, power plants, pipelines, all of those sort of things. Again, we're looking to own 20- to 40-year tier one assets. Beyond that, we're gonna look at a whole range of downstream opportunities where we could possibly take magnetite, turn it into pig iron.
We've got other things out there we can do when we've got probably the lowest cost gas in the world. We'll own it, and it'll be a very, very small price. I think going forward, gas is gonna be one of those highly sought-after commodities. We've got to transition out of this diesel and coal somehow, and the easiest way to do that, I think, is at least use gas as a stepping stone. Under the mining services plan, the plan is to develop that pit-to-port infrastructure. We wanna be the best quality services provider in the country. We can do that with our JV partners, and we're gonna do that with our Tier 1 mining companies.
In the Ashburton, we're gonna have 30 million tons out there of contract crushing, 30 million tons of haulage on these big jumbo road trains we've developed, which have cut our off-highway haulage costs in half. We're down to a low number, almost equivalent to a medium gauge rail system. Very low cost. We're gonna own, operate our own transshipping business. We've been through a lot of design work on those over the last couple of years, and we're about to put some orders out on those transshippers. We're going to grow our organic growth as we have at 15%-20% a year with external customers, our tier one customers.
We've got a lot of innovation that we're gonna be marketing over the next five years or so with our next-gen plants. These jumbo haulage units and carbon fiber products. Dump truck trays failed, as I said, but the screens are a huge success. Other products we're making down there out of carbon fiber. We're restarting Wodgina, of course, so our crushing business owns the big crushing plant out there. That's a mining services part that we'll have with our JV. We're looking at 30 years of life on those projects, plus. As I said, the iron ore strategy, a bit more detail. We're gonna go to a high volume, low cost. We're gonna be in that low-cost quartile where we've got businesses that'll outlast or outride any of the down cycles.
We've got to spend some money to get there and do that. We're gonna have three mining hubs, as I said earlier. We're gonna have the Ashburton, we're gonna have the Pilbara, and we're gonna have the Yilgarn. Good quality dirt in two of those. A lower quality in the Ashburton, but a huge supply. There's several billion tons down there that are locked up and stranded, and we'll have a great supply chain. As I said before, too, we're gonna slowly work our way out of the hematite and move into the magnetite. The lithium strategy, I think I laid that out before.
What's interesting that comes out of that, over the next couple of years, we're gonna make sure we're running at full production on that, those two hard rock sites at Marion and Wodgina. They're two of the best deposits in the world. We're lucky enough to have them. I think it should be noted too that we did acquire the Wodgina site from one of our directors, James McClements. It's one of his companies. We have an arrangement in there where quite clever of them, where they retained the rights to tantalum. So we actually go out there and mine. All tantalum is a by-product of what we're doing. They own it. That'll come out. They'll be the lowest tantalum producer in the world.
Quite a clever deal from them. It was a good deal for both MinRes and our partners in that. Where we're heading. Mount Marion, we're gonna take back our offtake agreement. We've already been talking to Ganfeng about that. That equates to about 30,000 tons of hydroxide will come out of the Mount Marion. Well, downstream, we want all the benefit of that. Wodgina, our share of that when we're running at 750,000 tons with three trains is about 42,000 tons of hydroxide. Kemerton will produce about 20. We're kind of gonna be up there and a substantial producer of hydroxide. These deposits we've got have got decades of supply.
In fact, we've got a lot of drilling work to do at Wodgina to find out how deep that ore body goes. That's over the next three years, substantial business. We're gonna, beyond that, simply increase production where we can in line with, demand and make sure that we always get the benefit of the downstream lithium. The energy, of course, we wanna use that to reduce our emissions as quickly as we can and work towards, a decarbonized world. That's probably our biggest bang for our buck going forward, is trying to get as much as we can on a much cleaner burning fuel. The next two years, as I said, self-sufficient in gas. We're working with some joint venture partners in there.
Norwest Energy, it's got 20% of the field that we got in the Perth Basin. In the longer term, we've got a whole range of opportunities sitting with our gas. I mean, we're just gonna be staying focused on getting that well under production and making sure that we got gas coming out so we can pay the bills on and get some of the capital back. The operating environment today, I said, you know, we've had some. The last couple of years have been fairly tough. We've been in different conditions that we've never operated in before. We're kinda getting the hang of it now. I mean, it's all around people. It's certainly gonna get a lot tougher going forward than it has over the last 12 months. We've got a shift in the commodity prices.
We've had iron ore come off about 130 years ago, so challenge is out there. As I said earlier, it's not my first rodeo and it's not the second. I mean, we'll work through this and we'll grow the business and we'll keep developing where we're going with all of the commodities that we got in Mining Services. We are gonna carve out some of the high-cost tonnes down in the Yilgarn. We're doing that pretty much immediately, so we're gonna pull back down there 2 or 3 million tonnes. We'll just keep an eye on where the price goes, as we always do. Mining Services is gonna be pretty much unchanged. There's absolutely no job losses out of the adjustments that we're doing.
I mean, we're out looking for a fair number of people, and our people will all stay well employed. Just around the iron ore, the operating costs, we're moving pretty quick to do what we can, but we'll keep you posted on that. I don't think it's gonna be a disaster, but it just won't be a repeat of last year. The Ashburton Project, as I said earlier, 30 million tons run rate where we're heading. It's about a two-year build. We're not quite there with being able to get it in front of our board for approval. We've been going through getting a whole range of different approvals out there, and there's literally thousands to get, and we've got to thread our way through different land tenure and holdings. We've been very successful.
I mean, we're not far off that, but we're probably going to order a couple of the transshippers shortly. We have to do that because we've got to build slot. We want those things delivered in 2023. Bungaree South is probably where we're gonna start. It's sort of ready to go now. It's shovel-ready. We just need to get the haul road in. This is gonna be the first iron ore mine in Australia that's been designed and built dust-free. The iron ore won't see the light of day when it comes out of the crushing plant onto our haulage fleet. It'll stay undercover until it gets 22 miles offshore on the transshippers, and it goes into the big cape carriers.
We wanted to do that because I think that's where we need to be today. I mean, it's much easier to design that sort of a facility now than try and retrofit it down the track. It certainly costs a bit more money to do that, but, you know, we're developing this thing at AUD 80 a capital tonne. Very rare for this sort of size development to be done at that. The normal number, it's sitting up around AUD 150-AUD 180 a capital tonne. I've read a few notes earlier that someone said, shit, they thought the cost is a bit more than what they thought. Obviously they're not tuned into developing iron ore mines. We are.
Full pit to port infrastructure. We're gonna chop that up, as I said earlier. What we're gonna do, we're gonna have what we call MineCo. That's got the mining tenements in it there, and it's got the mining, the on-site mine itself. From the gateway into town, we call that InfraCo. That'll be owned 100% by MinRes. That's the supply chain to get the product all the way into town. Covered storage in town, covered unloading, transshipping berths. You can see there somewhere there's some pictures. If you have a look, the transshippers are designed by MinRes with the help of some great marine engineering experts out of Canada and out of Germany.
A couple of those oceangoing tugs, as you see, clip in the back of the transshipping barges there, the propulsion. We get alongside, the ship loader stands up and goes over the top of the cape carrier, and we load them at about 8,000 tonnes an hour per transshipper. About two at any time can be alongside loading. That'll be our cheapest port on the WA coast. The big jumbo road trains I've spoke about, you can see them there, the three trailers. We've been working with Kenworth over the last couple of years. We've literally cut our off-highway haulage costs in half with these big girls. They carry 320 tonnes of payload.
There's a picture there that's top middle, down at the Kwinana Speedway. Those trucks are running down around. They're driverless. We've been working for about a year on trying to get to driverless. I'm not sure when we're gonna get there, but these things here have been running driverless. Getting them on these private haul roads loaded with iron ore is a bit different. We think that worst-case scenario, we'd probably have one driver per five or six trucks, but we will get to driverless in the next couple of years. That's all about sort of Ashburton. I mean, the third part of that, of course, is we've got MineCo, which has got the ore, and that is allowing where there can be JV partners.
That's where we go out and use third-party ore if we choose to. InfraCo is what we own and control. We're gonna have mining services, which is three 30-million-ton contracts that are gonna go for 30+ years. A couple of the best mining services contracts in the country. Look, the accommodation, we're gonna go to a much more resort-style accommodation. Lots of facilities in the camp, so when people come back into it, they have got a good feeling. They're in a place where they are comfortable. We're gonna have queen-size beds in every room. The rooms will be twice as big as they ordinarily are. We're gonna encourage couples to go and work on site. There'll be, they'll have a small laundry in their rooms, their own en suite, of course, and minor cooking facilities.
We're gonna make it like a little bit of a home. We're really hopeful that we're gonna get a large percentage of females into the Ashburton region. We can do that with our training program. We're looking to try and soften our camps down, get away from the camps, and get into a more of a family lifestyle facility. We're gonna start in Onslow with 25 houses and the people in those houses are couples. We're hoping that we're gonna be able to at least employ the wives on a part-time basis and add all that value to us around these facilities. We've got a plan there. I'll let you know in about a year or so if it all works. Project economics. I tried to give you a few numbers around where we're looking at.
As I said, about AUD 80 a capital ton to build this thing. We're sort of out at the moment with about AUD 2.4 billion. I think my construction and projects team are just making sure that they can always deliver on time and on budget because we always aim to be able to trim those numbers back, and we're working on doing that. But that's about what the number is gonna land at. It's gonna give us iron ore FOB for around about AUD 30-AUD 35 a ton. Those costs include our mining services charges in there. We've got typical return on invested capital that we always have. We have a clear vision on what that is, and if we're not gonna get that, we don't start a project.
This project has also got the capability of going to a second stage. There's several billion tons of iron ore in that region, and it can probably go to on stage two, we've looked at around 55-60 million tons a year run rate. That again just brings our fixed costs down. Southwest Creek, it's been going on. It's probably consumed about seven or eight years of my life. I talk about it every year. We are close. We expect to have some sort of result. Look, we're waiting on the government to finalize the allocations around that Southwest Creek berth. If that happens in our favor, it'll unlock our Marillana development. We've got 20 years alone sitting in there at 60.5% Fe.
We've got a lot more ores sitting out there. That one there, if you wanna know how we're gonna fund all this, that's about a five-year horizon to get it developed. If we're successful in Perth, we've got about two years of getting approvals and getting agreements put in place. Beyond that, it's about another two in a half to three years to do the build. I think we're gonna come out with something quite outstanding out of that. We kind of know where we're gonna land, but we just can't say anything at the moment. Yilgarn project. Look down there, we're kind of spread out over about 200 km and we're mining an awful lot of pits.
We've got a lot of diggers spread out. It takes our GM down there a couple of days to be able to get around each operation. It's a high-cost operation. We have got a couple of fairly substantial magnetite deposits sitting down there. The original Cooley pit, there's 6, 8, 10 km of strike sitting under there. We've got a drill rig down there now. We've put about seven or eight holes in the ground. Our guys have got big smiles on their face. We've got a few results out of the lab we're happy with, but we've got a lot of work to do on the metallurgy. I think somewhere around about next March we'll have a good guide.
What we want to do is we want to find about 400 or 500 million tons, and that'll allow us to go and put a 5 million ton per annum plant in there. It'll produce 5 million ton of product. Once we do that, we're going to carve back on the hematite and we're going to come back to a much tighter circle of pits. If we can get it out around 1 billion tons, we'll put another 5 million ton module in. We've got the modules designed. We do know there's been a lot of unsuccessful magnetite mines developed. One thing that MinRes is very good at is we can turn little rocks from big rocks. We know how to crush and we know how to grind.
We're actually putting together a small scale plant that's gonna do about 60 or 70 tons an hour. We're gonna be able to use that not just for down the Yilgarn, but a whole range of all of these different hard rock deposits we tackle, lithium and iron ore. We'll be able to run that for six or so months and just make sure we understand what we're doing. We won't be putting any of your capital at risk on that. Good quality coming out of that. Gas development. Shelley Robinson over here on my right runs our energy. She told me pretty much within an hour of when we were gonna hit gas. We were actually watching the All Blacks beat the Wallabies, which was a nice sight.
About halfway through the game, as Shelley predicted, we hit the gas in the zone. Again, look, we've gotta wait. We've probably got four or five, six months to go through and understand what's there. The preliminary result from our third-party experts looks exceptionally good. We wanna get that into production. Shelley and I have got different points of view on the timing it'll take to get that done. She tells me I have to learn that gas is somewhat different to iron ore. We're also gonna have a crack at getting that Red Gully back in line. Shelley's looking at putting a hole down there and being able to tap back into that gas, bring it back online.
Then we've got a lot of exploration work we're gonna do on the Perth Basin and up in the Carnarvon Basin over the next few years. We're gonna go find some more gas. Look, that's pretty much it for me. That's sorta where we've been, where we're going. Gonna be happy to field any questions, as will our directors. I've got Paul Brown and Mike Gray sitting over there that operationally'd be happy to give you any information you need. Where's Diana? Thanks, Diana, for putting these words together for me. You done an amazing job. We all had a crack at it, but Diana got it. Thanks to Russell James, Aly Franco. I mean, all of this art that you see, what our Welcome to Country comments were, that's these guys that have been out there.
We've got a lot of art that we're bringing into our new office. Russ and Aly have been out there among all the communities. They have got a lot of experience in doing that. Over the last 20 years, they've been working with Hugh Jackman on a whole range of projects around caring for our Indigenous folk around the country, and they know what they're doing. We've had an amazing result out of being able to do that. What we're actually doing is we wanna bring those communities that we work in inside our office. We want to welcome them inside our business, and we want them to know how much we care about them. We're gonna do that through our actions, not through our words. Guys, thanks for doing that.
You can see the annual report that's been turned out, and a lot of the information that we handed out today. I mean, we're trying to make sure that we're culturally aware of what we're doing, and we're trying to do that in a whole range of different ways. We're gonna see a lot more of that in the future going forward. The borders are opening, so come on Emirates, we wanna get out of here. Make sure yous are all safe. I mean, we encourage this, not forcing any of our people to get vaccinated, but medical advice that we're getting says that you're probably six or seven or eight times less likely to catch the virus if you have been vaccinated.
If you do get it, you may not end up in intensive care. We're trying to get that message to our people loud and clear. We've gotta make sure that whatever decisions they take, we're gonna be there to support them in whatever way we can. We've got a video that we're gonna turn on. I mean, you're welcome to stay and watch it. It's been put together. It gives you a pretty good snapshot of the business. If yous wanna stay online, please make sure you do. Thanks to my management team. Thanks again to the board. Thanks to the shareholders. Happy birthday to Jenny Robinson. Her birthday today, sitting out there in the back. Jimmy, of course. If you've got no questions, we're done.
We can go and have coffee.
Chris, you're doing a great job with iWomen in Kwinana and training these dump truck drivers. Have you thought of training some road haulage drivers or women road haulage drivers? Because you're always saying you're short of those.
Yes, we are. These big train road trains you're looking at, we are, our intention is that we would like to mainly have women. I can't say that. I mean, you used to say you wanted to have all men. You're not allowed to. mainly women running those trucks. Look, the productivity that we get out of our dump trucks with the women behind, Paul Brown will tell you, if you like. Paul, tell him about the success that we've had with these ladies that we brought on board. It's quite amazing.
Am I on? Yep, great. Yeah, about two years ago, we embarked on a program. We've, you know, we're really quite short of operators. What we saw coming through was a really talented, diverse group of individuals who, quite frankly, were more or better productivity, probably more pleasant than a lot of males that we employ, and certainly look after the gear a lot. As Chris said, you know, I get to open the LO program. We run a program every three months. It's incredible to see the lives that we change. You know, people who have, you know, could be stacking supermarket shelves or have, you know, various other careers.
You know, to get an opportunity to come into the industry and really earn a good dollar, and change their lives is awesome for us. It's been great, and we look forward to continuing.
If nobody else is, I'll carry on. The mining industry we know is going through this difficult time with sexual harassment and all the rest.
We hear more every day. Have you done a submission to the, this committee, the parliamentary committee at all?
Have we? No.
No.
No, we haven't. We're involved in it through the CME. Do we care about it? Immensely. Our camps, I consider, have always been a fairly safe zone. We've had a couple of minor issues over the last four or five years that and we deal with them fairly harshly. Look, generally speaking, I mean, the level of engagement that we have with our people all the way down, they have a very clear understanding of our culture. Our culture is respect for people and to make sure that everyone that comes to work deserves to have a good day every day. We don't put up with assholes that are gonna go and have inappropriate behavior and make their day a bit less than what it should. That's across the board, not just with women, but with everyone.
We've got a fair bit of security and surveillance around all our camps, so we can pretty much see if there's any footsteps in the snow. We go looking for that. But look, at the same time, we're trying to encourage a lot of relationships to move forward. I mean, we're encouraging boyfriend, girlfriend to go and work together on a site and give them accommodation together, and we're trying to get husband, wives, partners, whatever we can. We're expanding the camp so that we can get the rooms sort of into double configuration. All of those sort of things is softening the whole blokey construction, you know, and the style of the way that we're gonna build the camps. It's gonna be a much more respectful environment.
Look, we're focused not just on that. There's a whole range of different issues out there that we face today with different sexualities, different races, different everything, and I mean, we cater for all.
Thank you. Chris, we've got a couple of online questions as well.
Ah.
The first question is from Dr. Cullen, and he's asked what we're doing to get to net zero pollution by 2030.
Derek, I'd say to that everything we possibly can. Look, let's be real. I mean, we've only got the fuel that's available to us. We are trying to make sure, as I said earlier, I think I covered it. I mean, we're getting out of diesel wherever we can. That's our priority. We don't consume any power that comes from a coal source, with the exception, I'd guess, of our head office in Kwinana, probably comes from Collie. In saying that, we got lots and lots of panels on the roof of our office and down in our workshop. We're simply going to use any green fuel that comes available. I think, like I said, our trump card is that we're gonna be self-sufficient in gas. We're gonna have low-cost gas.
Wherever we can replace any of the dirty fuel that we're using, that's our key focus. That's about the only commitment I can make to between now and 2030. Of course, if BP or Shell come out with a different kind of fuel, we'll be onto it straight away.
The next question is from Howard Coleman of Teaminvest. He's asked: Thanks for holding a hybrid meeting, which is enabling many of our Teaminvest members in the eastern states to attend online. Congratulations to the board and Chris and his team for the outstanding past year and the impressive strategy for the future, also for the highly appropriate remuneration structure. My question is, what does Chris see as the biggest potential risk that could derail the strategy that's been outlined today? And how would Chris mitigate this risk, should it come to pass?
Okay. Well, look, thanks for the compliment. Thanks for that. It's for our MinRes team. It's not an easy question to answer because, I mean, we mitigate the risk across our business, depending on where we see. I mean, commodity price is always a big risk in our business. You can't control it. Shipping, you can't control it. The exchange rate, you cannot control it. But how we see our business going forward. By the time we build these infrastructure assets, and they're under our control. We're not out there tendering to the world to win those. We actually have those contracts, and we're gonna develop them. Two years from now, we'll have three 30-million ton, 30-, 40-year contracts running. So, our mining services business is pretty much bulletproof.
It works for all of the majors, and it works on these joint ventures that we're on. Our biggest risk we have in the business today is the iron ore business, and we know that's been a huge winner over the years, and it's been the poor cousin. We're dealing with that in the sense that we're gonna have three different zones with our ore that are all gonna be in the low-cost quartile. It's gonna take us two years to get the first one going. Probably, I would expect within two in a half years, we may have the first 5 million ton magnetite plant. We're four in half to five years out in the Pilbara. We'll just manage the deposits going forward on the iron ore.
The lithium, I don't wanna say too much about it, but I see the lithium as being a great business. It's in that green zone. I mean, if you wanna store power, you gotta have lithium. They're getting better and better at it. But if you have a look at the cars that are coming on stream in the lithium business, I'm not sure where the supply's coming from. But, I mean, I said a couple of years ago, there's nowhere near as much lithium on the planet as people think there is. The deposits have gotta be economic. You gotta be able to mine them, you gotta be able to get at 'em.
The brines over in South America have got a whole range of challenges over there, because when you go mine that stuff, you're sucking down the local water for all the local indigenous folk that are living in those regions. The water keeps going down as you keep pulling it out. I'm not sure if that answers your question. Look, we've got three main areas that we're managing. The iron ore is the risk, but we manage that. We've plenty of experience in dealing with that. Look, going forward on the bigger projects that we're talking about, I don't see any risk on them or whether they will or won't happen. Of course, the one up in the Pilbara is dependent on the government allocation around the berth.
The next questions come from [G&J Rogers Investments Pty Limited]. Can you comment on iron ore cost per ton compared to Rio, BHP, FMG, and others?
Probably not. Look, FMG and Rio Tinto and BHP were blessed back in the 1960s with the pick of the ore bodies. They took the risk. They gambled. They put their big supply chains in. Our cost base is way different. When we get down to two years down the track with Ashburton, we'll be in that same cost quartile. The Pilbara one will be very similar. It'll be. Those two projects will be down in the zone where they've got 30- or 40-year horizon. Right now, we're not.
Thank you, Chris. We'll go to the floor and then come back to some online later.
You mentioned your iron ore costs. They seem to be very competitive, but they include the services revenue from the services side. Do we perhaps have an element of double counting here?
That might be a question for Mike Gray. He seems to have his finger in every contract that we do. So.
Oh, look, I'd never say we double count. Certainly, the mining services provides that buffer that we require in our own business and our external business. As we see the iron ore price come down, the mining services opportunities go up. That's what historically happens. I can't answer your question directly, but what I can say, it's a good model and it's a great model.
I think the other thing, too, that's important on that is that we've always designed the business in a way that if we decide that we're going to sell off a mine, we would sell it off, but we'd retain the services side of that. That's sort of always been on the table, and it probably will stay on the table moving forward. That, in any of our projects that we got out there, most of them where we've got those services, we're sitting in there with joint venture partners. But it does give us the opportunity to go sell them off and retain the mining services.
Chris, you talked about the Wodgina agreement where the tantalum is available as a by-product. What about other by-products that may or may not become economic, like vanadium, et cetera, out of Wodgina? Are they part of that agreement as well?
No, they've just retained the tantalum. Look, so far there's nothing else there we've seen that's economic. It's just the tantalum there is very good. As I said, they were very clever the way they structured, and we went in there eyes wide open. It was a great deal for both of us. They become the lowest cost tantalum producer in the world. We have probably close on the largest ore body in the world.
David Newport. By some calculations, your market cap, you know, would equate to your lithium production. If you compare it with, for instance, Pilbara Minerals and several other like companies. Have you had any thoughts about demerging your lithium business and, perhaps, you know, giving it to the shareholders or?
Do you know how hard it is to run a lithium mine?
Oh.
That Wodgina is a very tricky beast. I mean, I'm not sure you'd wanna give up your weekends. Look, the answer, we've set it up in such a way that that's possible. At the moment, it's way too soon. If we're gonna do that, I mean, we wanna get full value out of where we're heading. Ideally, I mean, we want those mines in full production, and we want all of the downstream hydroxide coming off them. I read out before what our expectation is on that. You know, roughly, if you think about it, like, for every 7 tons of 6% spodumene, it'll turn into a ton of hydroxide. The businesses, as I said, are set up in such a way that that can happen.
Look, I have no doubt that history tells you that it probably will happen somewhere down the track. I'm just not sure that I'm the one that wants to break the family up.
Thank you, Chris. There's a series of questions from Mr. Stephen Mayne. First question is for the chair. Did any of the five main proxy advisors in the Australian market, ACSI, ASA, Ownership Matters, Glass Lewis, and ISS, recommend a vote against any of today's resolutions? Which of the proxy advisors are covering us, and has there been a material proxy protest vote against any of today's resolutions?
We are followed by all of the main proxy advisors, ACSI, ASA, Ownership Matters, Glass Lewis, and ISS. As you expect, the proxy advisors have done a thorough review of all of our information that we put out in the marketplace. We have received no material proxy protest votes against any of the resolutions to date.
The next question is, Treasury Wine Estates has voluntarily moved to annual elections for directors in line with the best practice that occurs in both the U.S. and the U.K. Dual-listed companies like News Corp, BHP, and Rio Tinto all do this due to the laws in the U.S. and the U.K. Does the chairman think that Mineral Resources adopting this model at the 2022 AGM so that all directors can be more regularly accountable to shareholders?
I personally think that the directors are all accountable to shareholders in any sense of the word. I have great trouble in understanding or thinking that there should be annual elections for all the directors. I don't see that would add any real value and make the directors more accountable to the shareholders if that was the case.
Thank you. The next question is, given the interesting discussions across a range of topics today, could the chair undertake to make an archive copy of the webcast plus a full transcript of proceedings available on the company's website? Nine Entertainment Chairman Peter Costello, who appreciates the benefit of a parliamentary Hansard transcript where MPs don't have to scroll through old videos to find out what was said, made this change last week and has a full transcript of Nine AGM online before the end of the day.
The undertaking I will give is that we will have a look at what that means to us as a company. If we can achieve that sensibly, I'm more than happy to agree to it.
Thank you. Could the CEO please comment on how important this grant is to keeping him motivated, given that he already has such a large shareholding?
Back when I was a kid growing up, I never knew what my dad was getting paid. I mean, it seems that it's pretty public information. Does it motivate me? My passion for the business motivates me. Does money? No, it doesn't. Yeah, I do have a lot of shares, and I have more money than I know what to do with. I come to work 'cause I have a passion for this business and the people I'm with and the industry that we're in. I mean, why else would you do it?
Thank you. We'll pass to the floor.
Chris.
Last year, you mentioned that you were gonna be the owner of a Tesla. Is that the case?
No, no. For the last two years, let's be clear, I've been cornered about why don't I drive an electric car with all this lithium. I ordered an electric car earlier this year, and the deal was it's gonna be here before the AGM. Well, it didn't turn up. I've ordered it. I've paid for it. I didn't get a Tesla, I just got an SUV, not a Tesla. It's not quite here. But look, in my defense, I'd love to have a picture and put up of my wife that's been more committed than I have. She went out and bought an electric car only a few months ago. We are committed. Hers is a little bit more expensive than the average Joe Blow. She might wanna put a picture.
It's one of the first Ferrari electric. Probably in answer to that last question, I am motivated a little bit by money. I need to be able to pay for the car.
Yeah, my name's Gerry Bailey. I'm also a shareholder of FMG, and there's an awful lot of talk about hydrogen, green hydrogen, generation and use within the mine site. I'm just wondering where Mineral Resources is going with that.
Look, we work closely with FMG wherever we can. If they produce it, we will be buying it off them, and it's so that we don't have to run diesel. Look, anyone that can produce clean energy, I mean, will be up the front of the line with all the other miners. I mean, all of us, FMG, Rio, BHP, Roy Hill, all the iron ore miners are really serious about trying to get this carbon out of the atmosphere. They've been world leaders over the last, you know, the original iron ore miners in the Pilbara, BHP and Rio, I mean, world leaders in a whole range of practices. I mean, the fact that something happened recently with traditional landowners is no reflection on the quality of those companies.
I mean, look, the answer is when whoever brings it out, I mean, whether it be FMG or whoever, we'll be in line with them. Plenty to eat and drink outside if we're done. Derek, are we done?
One last question, I think. Two questions, sorry, Chris. Now this is from Eddie John Copp and Dr. Rainey and Sharon Copp. What is the single biggest opportunity facing Mineral Resources and the one that has you most excited?
Tough question. Again, I mean, you know, it's trying to separate, pick your favorite kid. The lithium business, no doubt. I mean, it's out there and it's not something that can be replicated. I mean, a lot of these deposits have been known about for 50 or 100 years. I mean, Wodgina was first started mining in 1901, I think, James, was it? So, these deposits have been around a long time, and I just don't think that anyone's gonna go out. I'm really excited about that lithium business and where we're gonna take it. We are incredibly well set with that. Probably not overly public knowledge, but I mean, you know, we got two great hard rock deposits that are one of them is running well, and the other one was just.
There's no better hard rock plant than what Wodgina's got when we built that. It's a big, robust plant, three big trains, self-sufficient, big natural gas power station with a pipeline that feeds it. Plenty of good facilities up there with tailings, and we're looking at trying to get rid of the tailings. Look, that's an exciting business. We've got two great partners, two of the best partners in the world, with Ganfeng and Albemarle, and they'll be working with us, particularly Albemarle on managing the hydroxide. Look, we don't have to do a lot. Our share of the deal there is to run Wodgina. That's what we're good at.
If you kind of fast-forward and have a look at where our share price is sitting and the value of that business sitting in there, it's quite significant. You know, look, again, iron ore. I mean, I love the iron ore because one of the greatest businesses in the world are the Rio Tinto and BHP iron ore businesses. I mean, tell me a business that's gonna go on for another 50 years and, you know, iPhones can change and, you know, Nokia comes along. But these are great long-term businesses. They employ people. They put money into the community. We're gonna grow people living in Onslow. We're gonna do a lot of really good things. We shave off a chunk of that money we earn every year.
As I said earlier, more than 70 charities we give it to because we have a social responsibility. That all comes by iron ore. Our mining services, I don't know a better mining services business in the country. I mean, we rate in the world as the biggest crushing contractor in the world. I mean, we aim to more than double that mining services business over the next three or four years. I think the answer is MinRes.
Okay. Good answer, Chris. The last question is, what is the single biggest misunderstanding the investing community has of Mineral Resources?
I think they probably take the rock star of the day and judge us on it. You know, right now, I mean, we're getting belted over iron ore. A few years ago, I think we got beaten up over lithium. They always pick the one that's falling, not the other two that are rising. I just think it's probably a lot of our response, but I'm trying to make sure that's why I went through a little bit of pain today. Thanks for sitting through that. Trying to explain what we've got inside our business and trying to lay it out in sort of simplistic terms. It is really simple.
I mean, we can control the growth of our mining services business like no other because we form joint ventures and we get connected to ore bodies, and we award ourselves multi-long-term mining services contracts at good rates. I mean, when I say good rates, I mean, no one else will be able to move that dirt in the Ashburton the way we can. No one can get to the cost base that we can get to, and it's a mining services contract. If you wanna crush rock, if you wanna do 10, 20, 30 million tons, we're the best at it and we're the lowest cost at it. We've got a lot of people that have been with us 10, 15, 20, 25 years running these plants, and we got their kids working on them. You know, we're the best damn in town.
You can tell everyone that. That's it, Derek. I'm done.
Thank you. Thank you, Chris.
Thanks everyone for coming. Thanks for joining. I hope that, look, we can keep up delivering for you as we will. I'll work as hard as I can, as does our board. Just to mention on that question that Peter fielded about how do you feel about having a director getting voted for every year. I mean, we've got a really great board of directors. It's an onerous role. I mean, they put a lot of time into it. I mean, we need to at least give them some sort of expectation and longevity. I mean, we've got our directors and most directors get judged every year, every quarter. I just don't think we need to be putting any more pressure on them. I mean, it's just not.
I mean, I took on a role as a non-executive director for a subsidiary we joined up to about six months ago, and it's the pits, I can tell you. I hate it. Directors, thank you for doing what you do. We've got a great board. I hope we can get yous in WAC. Look, thanks everyone. We're done. Go and enjoy the food and drinks outside. Thank you.