Good morning, welcome. I'm Chris Ellison, Managing Director of MinRes, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about our first half. Mark's going to join me and fill you in on the financials, and then I'll come back and give you a rundown on where we're taking the business over the next couple of years, actually, the next two to five years. What you just saw, something we're awfully proud of, our biggest project that we've done to date. We're only about so we're in late February now. In March we start haulage. We're only a couple of months away from first ore on ship. That project, on today's values, is going to turn out about AUD 2.5 billion EBITDA a year for us for the next 50 or 60 years, so great project. Okay, we'll get we'll talk about the first half overview.
At the AGM I said this year 2024 is all about project delivery, and that's what we're focused on, working hard obviously on getting the lithium mines into shape. We've had a pretty strong first half, revenue AUD 2.5 billion, so we're up a touch on that. EBITDA at AUD 675 million, about where we thought we'd landed, and we've got a one-off capital gain of AUD 333 million, which tips a bit more cash in the bank. Dividend, we're going to be fairly subdued on the dividend this year, so we're trying to be under the feedback we're getting on the balance sheet. I mean, believe it or not, we've got the balance sheet still after 33 years. We've got it under control, but we're trying to show that we've got extra discipline, so AUD 0.20 dividend for the first half.
We always pay—and I don't know why, look, for the last 20-something years our first half is always much or lesser than the second half, and that's on everything. It's on tonnes produced, it's on EBITDA, it's on dividend, so we're not going to disappoint this year. So since 2019 we've produced a ROIC around 19%. That's a little bit behind where we'd like it to be, but it's behind because we've got a huge amount of cash that's parked and not producing in Onslow Iron, and we're still ramping up the two lithium mines. Total shareholder returns since we listed in 2006 we're sitting around about 33%. Mining services in the first half produced about almost 140 million tons. Contract book's growing. We've got three new contracts, sorry, five new contracts and three contracts renewed.
Typically what happens in our business is, well, we'll go out and we'll get 20-25-year contracts. Like, we've been out at The Granites for 20+ years, and they give us a two-year contract. Generally what happens is you get somewhere around two to five year contracts because the guys that are running the WA division or the whatever don't have the authority to go any further, so don't always measure by the length of the contract how long it's actually going to last. So in CY 2024 we're adding 8 million tons in JV projects. A lot of people like to call them internal, but they're actually JVs, and we've got 9 million tons of external, so we're up about 13% year-on-year. Engineering and construction is going like a train. That's our latest pillar that we've added to the business.
We've sort of pulled that out of the, the mining service area, and I've got that reporting directly to me. It's, it's standalone, but it's a powerhouse of a, of, of a pillar, and it literally, it builds our future. It's the only I think we're probably the only mining group in Australia that has this sort of horsepower. We've got in-house. It's got full design engineering construction. Those guys are flat out at the moment winding up on some, expansion we've done on the lithium, and, and they're building Onslow Iron. They've got a lot of people out there. Iron ore average price around 111 tonnes. Discounts have come off on the, on the iron ore. Underlying EBITDA on the iron ore business, AUD 266 million compared to AUD 37 million, going back 12 months ago. Focused on the iron ore.
As you know, we're running shorter life, higher cost type operations in our iron ore business, hence the reason we're growing into Onslow Iron, which is exactly the opposite, but focused on cost control. Lithium, the shipments across the board were up 186 million tonnes of SC6, so we're up 38% on the lithium year on year. While the prices were elevated, we put about 100 pieces of yellow kit into Wodgina into Mount Marion, elevated our costs substantially, but we went in there and done a once-in-a-lifetime mine pre-strip, so we basically in English, we took the top off the mountains and really hacked into that and got it back to a life of mine that's much more manageable and more cost efficient.
We've just pulled a heap of the gear out of Mt Marion, and that pre-strip will run through till about June, July, up at Wodgina, but we took advantage of the higher prices to get that done. Closed the Albemarle deal again, someone, some would say for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time, but closed that. We now own 50% of Wodgina. We have no other JVs with Albemarle, and we banked about AUD 600 million, and we took control of the Bald Hill Lithium Mine, and we've been really focused now in the first three months. We're really tearing the costs out of that and getting it sort of into a MinRes condition. Energy, we drilled Lockyer three during the half, another very successful appraiser well, and we continue to find a lot of gas up in the Perth Basin. People and safety.
Overlying the most critical part of our business, we are very people-focused. We're very people-oriented, and we are all over the well-being of our people, and I'll talk about that a little bit more, but it's all about getting the best people in the industry and being able to keep them for a long, long time. People retention in our industry are critical. You read about it regularly that people, good people, are hard to get. Any people are hard to get. We are sort of at the forefront of the mining industry, the way we've gone about it. Our safety and the safety that we produce, you know, 1.9 TRIFR, I mean, that's like a jewelry shop.
We've got 7,500 people out there throwing around rocks all day, so our total recordable injury frequency rate at 1.9%. I mean, it's better than the mines department. That's supported by a huge amount of in-house training that we're continuously doing, and it's also coupled to the culture that we have in the business. We're having an incredibly strong work ethic, but you know, looking after yourself and your mates is really prevalent. Workforce at the moment's over 7,200. We're going to be around 10,000 people by the end of 2025. As I said, really focused on the well-being of our people and the environment we put them in. So head office, Platinum well rated. It's probably the best office in Australia, but the productivity we're getting out of it, the results we've had since we moved into it have been second to none.
We have a no work from home policy because we provide a really great environment: food, gym, babysitting, daycare. I'm about in May. I'm going to open a daycare. I bought the building next door, and we're going to have another. We've got about 20 kids we can accommodate at the moment. That's going to grow out to 130 by May this year, and our people are paying around AUD 180 a day after tax cash out of their pocket. We're going to bring that down to AUD 20 a day for them, so we just keep continuing to add benefits so that we can just get good people and keep them and make sure that we care about them a lot. On-site resort-style accommodation, you saw on the screen.
Every room that we're installing from now on's capable of housing couples, so we're looking for a really different culture in the mining industry. Safer, friendly for females, great facilities, and we're giving them a home away from home, so in other words, they can go back to their, instead of living in their little shitbox donger, they go back to a 31 square meter room with a beautiful en-suite laundry, all the trimmings at the, they all get a barbecue on the balcony, and it's like a home for them, so we're allowing to have their own alcohol in the room, and it's a bit like going home if you're living in the city. But, again, just really growing that culture. Turnover in MinRes over the last two years has literally just over halved, so we're getting the results we're looking for.
We're building a diverse workforce. We've got over 200 apprentices, grads, and trainees, in the business. That grows as the number of people on the payroll grows. We've just had our little ceremony for our apprentices down in Kwinana, signed on 23 apprentices this year. 37% of those were female, so really starting to kick some goals. Just over 3.5% of our workforce is indigenous, and 23% are female, which and that's a better number than it sounds because we've grown this business over the last five or six years. We've multiplied this thing by about five times, so we're adding a lot of people, and we're really getting the balance of our female participation up. Big focus on mental health. We were the first in the industry to recognize that FIFO and taking people away from their family does cause mental health issues.
We've been addressing that for the last three years, and we're really getting stronger on that. Brought in a psychologist three years ago. We're growing that department, added a number of psychologists over the last 12 months. We're just moving off our external help, and we're bringing seven more psychologists on board to do rotational work on the FIFO, so really going to town on that. We've extended our medical services, so we've got medical services in head office. We do all our own medical testing and making sure that everyone's fit for work and safe and healthy, and we've recently opened a GP centre in there, so if you're not feeling good, you can duck down and see the local doctor. We've got how many five doctors and four nurses on the payroll now, so addressing mental health, physical health right across the board.
Sustainability, something we're really, really paying a huge amount of attention to, and over the next 12 months you'll see this area grow an awful lot. We, we're fortunate in WA. We're in probably the world's most ethical jurisdiction, so the way we think about our people, the way we look after them and care for them, you know, we don't have slave labor, obviously. Working conditions for our people, we're sort of at the top of the charts. Environmental management and capability around managing and operating mines, we're the best in the world. That is WA, the WA industry. We're focused over the next 10 years on natural gas, solar, and wind. Those are the things that we control. Those are affordable. We're putting them in. We're really aiming to get down to 50% of our emissions gone by 2035. We're going to do what everyone does.
We're aiming for zero emissions by 2050, but to get there, we need someone on the external like a Chevron or a BP to produce some green juice for us. In the meantime, we're looking at a whole range of things, so Wonmunna , the solar farm we've got up there now, it's in full gear. It produces all of our power on day shift, so enough power to fire up about 670 homes. The entire site on day shift's good. Nighttime, we're going to turn the gensets on. We've taken delivery of an electric hybrid front end loader recently, first in WA, and that's reduced our emissions by about 45%, so these are the sort of things that we're going to grow into the business over the next two or three or four years.
We've got studies running right now on battery-powered jumbo road trains, so we're running a couple of hundred on-highway road trains. We get out to I think we get out to about 180, 330-tonne road trains by the end of this year, by the this calendar year, so big we're out there as one of, if not the biggest in the world on running these, on and off-highway road trains, so got a joint venture with Ganfeng. Ganfeng are in the top four battery manufacturers in China. We've got a JV with them, and we're trying to figure out that we're not trying to do any new technology here. I mean, as you know, cars run on batteries.
We're just trying to figure out how to get a bank of batteries in and out of these trucks in about 10-15 minutes so that we can keep them cycling, and we look, we're hoping to have all of our trucks, battery operated within the next sort of 3 years. We're looking at a lot of solar power around the Onslow Iron project, and we're looking at electrifying our diggers and dump trucks. All of these things are highly possible. Around our traditional landowners, we're looking out there at growing partnerships. We've recently put in, I mentioned it a while ago, we've put in a facility for AUD 25 million where we guarantee them they go out and borrow money, buy, use our buying power to buy yellow goods, and we're out there awarding contracts, AUD 20 million, AUD 30 million contracts.
So what we're trying to do is get the traditional landowners in all the regions we live in up to our standard of living. We've got to get there, and we've got to do that sooner rather than later, so we're really focused on making sure that our traditional landowners have got long-term sustainable jobs, they've got guaranteed income, and they can live the same standard of life as the rest of us. I mean, they're not doing that at the moment. We really haven't done a good job on that over the last 230 or 40 years, so we're picking up the pace on that. First half 2024 performance. Mining Services, almost 140 million tonnes were produced. EBITDA, AUD 254 million. Five new contracts I said earlier add 65 million tonnes to what we're producing.
Those tons are spread across crushing, ore sorting, a couple of haul-and-mine operations, so running mines, and we've got our first fairly major contract. We're moving into Queensland, so with one of the tier one, tier one miners, and we've had three contracts that have been renewed, two of them are crushing and one is crushing and haulage. So probably never been in mining services never been in a better time than we are right now, so the mining services is always the powerhouse of the business. I mean, iron ore and lithium have their ups and downs, and they produce some pretty good money consistently, but the mining services is just an awful powerhouse. Iron ore, basically production in line with guidance. Yilgarn 3.8 million tons. We're FOB, as I said, high cost, shorter life operations we're running at the moment till we get into Onslow.
FOB at $109 down in the Yilgarn. We're spread out over about 200 k's in multiple pits and, two sites where we're crushing and producing, two sites where we're loading trains. Pilbara, better, 5 million tonnes, FOB at $74 a tonne, but look, the those costs are sort of at the upper end of guidance but within. Lithium, we used, as I said, the elevated prices to get that pre-strip done. At Mt Marion, 150,000 tonnes of SC4, so up 33%. We doubled our reserves down there. Probably need to explain. When we drilled out both the big deposits that we got at Mt Marion and Wodgina, when we were down at Mt Marion, I think we had to spend $5 or $7 million to earn 30% of Mt Marion back in 2010.
When I got to that number, we just turned the drill rigs off, so Mount Marion is, I think, the floor we've drilled down to about 400 meters. It's open in all four directions. There's probably 85% of the, the tenements, they've got pegmatites on them, they just haven't had drill rods in them. and we've gone down our geo's figured out there's a couple of probably multiple feeder units, so we put some drill rods down, about nine months ago, and we hit a feeder unit. We went down 1.2 k's, and there's a lot of lithium down there. We've done the same in another area where they thought it was the same, so, we we have got a lot. Both these deposits, Wodgina, open in all four directions and never had a drill rod go beyond 500 meters. We know it goes, over 850 meters.
We've had one drill rod down there. So there is a lot more than what we're actually saying in our resource and reserves. So we've just recently awarded a contract to Bill Beament and Develop, so we're going underground at Mount Marion, and we've just let the first shots off on that recently. It's an 18-month deal to get down about 350 meters, and it's about AUD 45 million we're going to spend doing that, so eventually what we'll do once we get down there, we'll go about 80% open cut for the next 30 years and about 20% underground, and that might vary a little bit, but keeps our cost balanced. A lot of the areas in Marion, we're running 10, 12, 14 to 1 strip ratio.
This going underground really pulls that strip ratio back, because when you're pulling those tons out, you only bring ore out. You don't go near the waste. So at Wodgina, we shipped around 90,000 tons, a 5.8%, and we were up about 41% year-on-year. We sold about 10,500 tons of battery-grade chemicals. Reserves are up at Wodgina. Bald Hill, we took control of that on the 1st of November. The plant's performing well. We shipped about 20,000 tons. Energy in the past two years, we've had two significant gas discoveries up there. We've got Locklea and North Erregulla, two really big gas discoveries, so when we're drilling up there, we're doing a combination of exploration and development holes, so to bring Locklea online, we need 10 development wells. So far, we're just about to finish our fourth development well.
In July of this year, we drilled Locklea, three appraisal wells. Flow test is going to happen around August this year. It takes a long time when you're dealing with gas, but we've also started drilling Locklea five right now. We're nearly done, so that'll be the fourth of the 10 production wells. We've also, and I don't think we've announced this before, we've got a lot of oil in the basin, so we've got one small oil well. It's capable of producing really high-quality AVGAS. We've got a very, very large well up there. It's got somewhere between 25 million barrels plus, whatever, so the hole we're putting down now, we've just gone through the – we went through the oil again at about 3,700 meters, so there's an awful lot of oil up there.
We'll kind of figure out what to do with that, but we're going to try and partner up with that, and we'll be selling oil for the next 20 years. I mean, I know it's not a great thing, but if I'd have said it 20 years ago, everyone would be very pretty happy, but it's a money machine. Carnarvon Basin, we took Buru Energy up. They're 25%, and we're finalizing approvals up there so we can get in later this year and start doing seismic, and then next year we're going to be up there with the drill rig and poke a few holes down. Look, I'll just pause for a while and let Mark come up and run through the financials.
Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everybody. It's great to be here to walk you through the first-half results.
As Chris mentioned, we've had a very busy and very productive half, and we remain on target to produce a strong result for the year. Starting with the P&L, I think this result demonstrates as well as any the strength of the MinRes business model, that a strong underlying performance spread across each of the business units despite significant weakening in lithium prices. In terms of the key highlights, as Chris said, lithium contributed AUD 270 million of underlying EBITDA in the half. That's off higher volumes and focus on costs. Iron ore, AUD 266 million. Higher prices, lower discounts. And mining services, yet another strong performance of AUD 254 million. In the period, as Chris said, we completed both the MARBL restructure and the Bald Hill acquisition. Each of those transactions set us up very well for the future.
As Chris called out, sitting in the statutory results, not the underlying results, is an operating profit of AUD 333 million on that MARBL transaction. Chris referenced the declaration of the AUD 0.20 dividend, which is fully franked. Next slide shows the strength of the underlying performance with respect to volume and costs. You can see their performance very good. Also calls out the impact of lithium prices to the extent of AUD 755 million over the half, the full offset in part by iron ore at AUD 349 million. In terms of cash flow, and I've made this point over a number of years now, MinRes has a great ability to convert its profits to cash. This half, you can see that again, a very strong operating cash flow performance.
In the half, we continue to invest in strategically in lithium, obviously in the development of Onslow, as Chris called out. We've released cash from the MARBL transaction, and we've also increased our borrowings. The net result of all that was that cash was pretty much flat period on period. In terms of CapEx for the half, came in at about AUD 1.5 billion. As we've foreshadowed, the majority of that's on Onslow. Some increased spend in lithium. Just, you know, again, I've said this a number of times, the CapEx that we're undertaking is investing in assets that will last for decades, and they're going to be very, very high quality. In terms of the balance sheet, this is my favorite topic, and those in the room, I'm sure. You can see on this slide the growth in the capital employed in the business as we continue to invest.
You know, we're currently sitting with over AUD 4 billion invested in assets under development and yet to generate cash. That's for the future. They're the investments we're taking. They're the decisions we're taking to position the business for the next 20-30 years. Sitting within the balance sheet, and again, I've said this before, we've got plenty of opportunity to recycle capital. You would have seen we took advantage of one of those opportunities last night. Opportunity presented itself with respect to Azoa. I'd said previously that we would transact on Azoa. We did. We saw an opportunity. We made a decision. We executed. That's what we do. It's nothing more than that. We just executed for certainty. In terms of the road process that we've talked about previously, that's progressing well. I'm very pleased with the level of interest that we're seeing.
I think what we're seeing when I talk to the parties that we're engaging with, they see a real opportunity around the strategic nature of that asset. You know, this is a unique asset in a region that has AUD 6 billion tonnes of stranded iron ore. So I'm very confident that transaction will complete this half. We're going to continue to explore other options for recycling capital. We'll continue to do that. And as Chris said also, when you think about the future, we will consider other ways of using capital when we start to develop assets. Chris referenced it in the context of energy, for example, how we might go about developing some of our energy assets. We've moved from a position of having to absolutely own every single asset on the balance sheet.
But, you know, at the risk of laboring the point, incredible strategic value tied up in the balance sheet that we're looking to release. Next slide just gives you the bridge to the net debt position at the half, which we guided to recently. Pretty straightforward. I just want to spend a few minutes on the credit metrics because I think it's really important that this is understood well. In 2019, we made a decision to pivot our funding strategy away from the Aussie bank market. We're a business that likes to develop assets. Long-life assets take sometimes a number of years to develop those assets. We operate in a commodity environment, obviously. The beauty of the U.S. market is we can access long-dated capital. Our first maturity is 2027. That's more than three years away for our first maturity.
Onslow will have been operating for a number of years. The lithium business will have been growing out. Chris will talk through all the other growth that we're going to see in the business. That market is great for our business. We have fixed interest rates. We have very light touch covenants. No financial maintenance covenants. It's very different to the Australian bank market. We've got good credit metrics at 31 December, 2.4 times net debt to EBITDA. That will grow. It will peak around June. But the cash that we're going to see produced by that Onslow project, we'll see rapid deleveraging. The last time we invested heavily for growth was through the development of Wodgina. We took the gearing up for Wodgina, and then you saw rapid deleveraging after that with a transaction.
Our intention is to bring the debt back down, which will happen through the natural deleveraging from operations. In terms of guidance, I think this talks to the strength of the performance. Guidance is pretty much unchanged from guidance we gave at the start of the year. In terms of Yilgarn, a slight increase in the lump weighting, but volumes and costs unchanged. In terms of lithium, we're going to sell more spods, so less battery chemicals. Cost down a little bit at Mt. Marion, but otherwise in line. As Chris said, we've taken over the Bald Hill operations. We're still working through development of the mine plan there, so we're not providing any guidance at this time. We'll do so when we're in a position to. Our mining services just kept ticking along. It's just the powerhouse of this business. Continues to be very predictable for margins and volumes.
And finally, in terms of the outlook, in terms of CapEx, AUD 3.2 billion for the full year, up a little bit, partly because of the lithium and the strip and so on that we've talked about. But I just want to call out a couple of things there. So there's about AUD 100 million that we've also added for to support the new contracts for mining services. They're great new contracts. As Chris said, these are contracts that can run for years and years. And we're also investing in the underground mining development at Mt. Marion. And for context, you know, that development could see us pull 300-400 million tons of waste out of that operation over time. So the payoff for that investment is going to be significant. So, you know, to close, a strong performance over the half financially.
Cash pretty much in line with where we started the period. AUD 1.8 billion of cash and liquidity at the end of the AUD 1.8 billion of cash and liquidity at the end of the period. Plenty of opportunity to release more cash. We're in great shape. Thank you.
Thanks, Mark. This part here I'm going to run you through where we're taking the business over the next 2-5 years. As I said at the beginning, I mean, this is a year we're focused on delivery, so we've got to get first iron ore on ship, and we're going to do that in June this year. I've got a cyclone bearing down on us up there at the moment. As luck has it, it looks like it's heading out to sea, and it's not going to bother us too much.
We've moved a few people off site over the last 24 hours, but those are the sort of hiccups we get operating in the Pilbara. But, I mean, delivery is critical to us. We will get this project, and I keep saying it. I mean, I think everyone's expecting us to come out and say it's going to run over time. It's going to run over budget. It's not going to happen. We have not run over budget over 20 years on a project, and this is not going to be the first. These are world-class projects that we're building. This 12-month period is going to set us up for the next 50+ years. So if you have a look at what we're building, we're actually building infrastructure, and our money comes out of owning infrastructure over long, long terms.
Mount Marion, without drilling too much more, we've got more than 30 years there. Wodgina, we've got more than 50 years. Where we're setting up in Onslow, in 50 years from now, we're probably going to be spitting out somewhere around 80 million tonnes a year. So, I mean, they're powerhouse projects. We've got mining services that are glued to all of them. If we choose to sell out of some of the commodities we're in at some point in time, we still retain those contracts for life and mine. So we've got each of those business pillars set up awfully well. This next slide we've got just shows you a little bit about how we think about ourselves, and we want to get you thinking in this way. As I said, we are more of an infrastructure organization.
So we've had a lot of growth over the last five years. That comes about fundamentally because I started the business literally at AUD 10,600 cash. And forgive me if I get a bit short when I keep hearing this the ramblings about the balance sheet. But seriously, I started with AUD 10,600 in the bank and a credit card with a AUD 50,000 limit. And you think we're running a AUD 12 billion company. You think I don't know how to manage a goddamn balance sheet. It drives me insane. I mean, we've got so many frigging levers we can pull. It's a joke. The vast majority of people in the world are very happy with the way things go. So, you know, I think there's about 2% of the population that are just weirdos. They go get locked up in jail. They break the rules.
I mean, don't take this to heart, but there's a few of the our investors out there. Not so much the investors, but there's a few cowboys out there that throw a bit of shit at me. And it drives me insane. But, you know, every now and then I call them out and everyone goes, stop picking on them. You go, come on, give me a frigging break. You think we don't know what we're doing? We have got I mean, I can go sell half our haul road off, but I mean, that thing there is going to generate for us about AUD 240 million EBITDA a year. When I get to did I say that right, Mark? 200? Yep. So when we get out to 50 million tonnes, this thing is going to be printing cash like AUD 400 million a year.
And if I said to you, let me give you that haul road. It's going to be around for 50 years. I'll give you that haul road. It's going to print you $400 million a year in cash. There's no costs associated with it. There's zero risk. Go and start a business. What can you do with that to start some sort of business off? I mean, you've got to say that thing. It's got to be a 12x multiple. And now, under the pressure I'm under at the moment with everyone whining and bitching, I've got to go I'm going to go and sell off half it just to put the money in the bank and go like, fuck you. You got it? So anyway, I've had my thing. Past 5 years, we discovered the high-yield bond market over in New York. We have done 3 bonds.
We went over there in 2018. From 2018 through to 2022, we grew the business 4.25 times. From beginning of 2023 to end of 2024, we're going to double the business in size. The ROIC that we're pulling out of the business is substantial. I'll talk about that. But anyway, what we're saying here is that if you have a look at us on a global scale, the growth we've had over the last four years, we've grown the share price over 400%. Watch the SPOT. I just said we're going to double as business, double it in volume, double it in EBITDA, and long, long-term sustainability. So earnings that are going to go on for more than 50 years. I reckon our earnings and our infrastructure will outlast the iPhone. So we've got a really strong customer focus. We started as a contracting business.
We're focused on customers. We're focused on delivery. We're developing long-life infrastructure. The BOO model that we have, the build-own-operate model and the equipment we have, it is we can get it on site faster at lower costs than our competitors or our clients. We're more efficient. We've got a much lower capital intensity and the safety wraparound what we do. I mean, we are the whole package. We're the Bo Derek. We've got all the good shit going on. And we're the partner of choice for all the majors sitting out there. I mean, BHP, Baowu, Rio Tinto. We deliver, and we deliver tons for them every 24 hours. So, I mean, innovation, it's the forefront of everything we do. We've got equipment that our competitors don't have. We've developed in-house. We make it. We put it in our own mine sites. We test it.
We get it out there in the market. I mean, at the moment, these 330-tonne trucks, we've got AUD 0.04 per tonne kilometer they're moving dirt for, and we're making really good margin off them. These things are going ballistic. We're going to have probably 60 of them out in the market by the time we get to the end of this calendar year. Returns focus. So always aiming for a minimum of 20% ROIC. We're going to be at 25% by the time we get to the middle of next calendar year. We've averaged 22% ROIC since 2019, but as said earlier, we've got a lot of capital parked at the moment, not earning. When those earnings start coming in, they go beyond 25%. And we'll do better than that. The money we're investing in 2023, 2024 is all going to deliver us better than 30% ROIC.
So when we get into the energy side of the business, we're up at +50% ROIC. Mining services. As I said, it's the powerhouse of the business. It's a mining infrastructure company. The innovation just drives the business, and we're building assets that are going to be around for 50, 60, 70 years. So some of the key things we've got, you can see them on the slide. So our next-gen modular crushing plants, we can do 5, 10, 15 million tonnes. We're putting three 15 million tonne modules on site at Ken's Bore. It's about just under, we're about AUD 190 million. We'll give us 40 million tonnes of capacity. If I was out there building that under the normal large mining company strategy and the way they like them, it's about AUD 800 million bucks to build the same capacity.
If they're doing it themselves with the EPCM contractor, where they just you give the EPCM contractor your checkbook and it's, say, like, go to town, go shopping, it's about AUD 1.5 billion to put 40 million tonnes on site. So our advantages, it's quite significant. So we can build a 15 million tonne module. We build them offshore. They're about 4 months, 4-5 months build. We get them on site, and it's about 12 weeks to put them together. We're about, like I said, we're less than a quarter of the capital costs, but we're way down on operating costs. That's how we make our margin. There's no real secret to it. Less energy, much more efficient environmentally in terms of noise and dust control. And we can bank them up to make any size that we want.
Our supply chain, we're running over 250 on-highway quad-road trains. Right now, we've got about 75 of the big 330-tonne jumbos, and we get out to 176 by December. Similar cost to running medium gauge rail, but just a fraction of the capital cost to put a haul road in and bring these things online. We're going to be autonomous within the next 12 months. That means no drivers. So we pull the drivers out of those trucks on Onslow Iron at 35 million tonne run rate. It's about AUD 100 million bucks a year saving. That goes into our mining services pocket. In the next 2-3 years, we want those trucks to be all battery operated, so zero emissions. I mean, that'll make them really highly sought after. Transhippers, you can see there, quite a beast. We've had them built in the COSCO yard in China.
They say they're the best transhippers they've ever seen, and they're unique in their design. Standard materials, handling gear in it. This whole project, by the way, is dust-free. It's the first one in Australia to be built completely dust-free. So in terms of looking after the environment, we're right out there. These things here are fully enclosed, single point entry with ore going inside them. Take about 20,000 tons. Don't have to go and spend AUD billions dredging channels. And where we are at Onslow, thanks to Uncle Chevron, they've already done a channel up there. We only need 7 meters. They've got a 14-meter channel. We only need 7 meters. So these things are mobile. We can put them around the world. And, I mean, incredibly great piece of gear. And we're creating a better FIFO experience in our mining services for all of the industry.
Right now, we operate 3 airports of our own. By the time we get towards the back end of this year, we're going to have airports on pretty much every site. So we can get our own people to site. We are starting our own airline. We've already started bringing charters in. We'll end up owning about 4 A319 jets by the end of this year. But basically, we're the only mining company that are flying right now. We're direct out of Brisbane, straight into Cairns Borough, Wodgina, Onslow. Shortly, we'll be coming into Kambalda down at Kalgoorlie. So typically, a FIFO worker on the East Coast has to pay their own fares to Perth overnight at their own cost, and then they go up to Pilbara the next day. So a day and a half each way, and they've got to write money out of their own pocket.
We're 5.5 hours from Brisbane direct onto our mine sites at our cost. We're tapping a whole brand new workforce. We'll encourage more people to live on the East Coast because we've got these services, but we are the go-to place for that whole labor pool coming off the East Coast right now. By the end of this year, as I said, all of our FIFO will be run by MinRes Air. And we're doing that because we're going to save tens, if not hundreds, of millions of AUD where we can put our people. Typically what happens, we fly someone up to a Wodgina or a Cairns Borough, they get up there tonight, they're all overnight, then the next morning the night shift comes off and they all go an hour an hour. We're going to reduce our camp sizes.
We're going to be able to land our people on site at 5:30 A.M. and they do a shift change at 6:00 A.M. and the night shift hops on the plane and goes home. So we're going to be the go-to place. I mean, but this thing is going to save us AUD millions. And I could see his smile when I said, "We're starting our own airline." You go, "Of course. Why wouldn't you?" I mean, everyone needs an airline. And it's not going to be called Virgin. I mean, we're not that good. We've got the resort. So, you know, within 4 years, every room that we've got on site will be a couple's room. So we're going to encourage that female workforce. We're really working hard on making sure that it's a really safe go-to place.
It'll be like you're going back to your own little luxury apartment at night when you knock off. We've got all the good stuff there. By the way, I mean, you might have read in the paper some of the food that's getting around the mining industry. We are serving and have been for years. We serve the best food in the mining industry. We've recently just gone to à la carte on every mine site. I mean, every single mine site we've got, we've got our little guy out of Perth. He sets up all of the beans, all the machines, trains them on how to be baristas. So we've got Fitzie's coffee on every site. We've got Benny's happening with all of the great food that we're serving.
Mining services growth, a little snapshot in here just to let you know how good we are in terms of time. Mining services averages about 20% growth a year. We've done that since 2006. Some years are a bit more. So this year we're in now is going to be a bit quite a bit more than 20%. We're really sort of growing up this year. From 2018 to 2022, we grew at 19%, but we increased our margins by 18%.
So I remember I was roadshowing in 2018, 2019 on the bonds in New York, and I told them how much we're going to grow, and they went, "Yeah, but typically, you know, any business that grows, they wash off margin." Next time I went back, I said, "Guys, we're 18% up on where we were." We've got over $35 billion on our order book, and that's not accounting for work that we've got in hand, but we haven't yet built. You know, quite a powerhouse. The business, as I said, from beginning of 2023 to the end of this calendar year is doubling. So there's a hint in there. If you want to get on board, you want to do it sooner rather than later. This is the strongest growth period. Excuse me, strongest growth period I've seen in 30 years. It's quite phenomenal.
I don't see an end to it. And again, I mean, our earnings at the moment, I mean, we're going to grow the order book. We're going to grow our revenue. We're going to grow our margin again. Our margin is going to increase. And you know the world-class assets we're putting in place on our lithium sites, on these iron ore sites, I mean, and the mix that we're getting out there with the likes of BHP and Rio Tinto and all of them, I mean, they're taking a lot of gear off us. The pie chart shows us that 91% of our contracts are in excess of 20 years in duration. That's better than Apple. Engineering construction, I broke this off recently and turned it into our fifth pillar. It is our secret weapon.
As I said, we're the only ones that can actually go out there and we can go and design and build and operate a plant. I mean, we're recognized for that right across the country. That's why we're a go-to organization. We can control costs. I mean, we're building Onslow Iron on a fixed price. I put that price in place three years ago. I'm going to come in with surplus. Surplus. I'm not going to run over. I'm going to have change. And you won't be used to that over the last four years because everyone that's built a project has all they've all run over on their budget. I mean, it's been tricky to control the supply chain, no doubt about that. And they've all run over time. But we have absolute control. And that's this engineering construction division.
I've got people in there that have been with me more than 20 years. I mean, we know how to build a plant. We've been building lots of plants for a long, long time. We're running at the moment, we've got about 2,500 people in the workforce. And they're everything. They're engineers and they're drafties and they're geos and they're mets. So we've got a center of excellence. We're looking at recovery. We're looking at how we can make these plants better, how we can get more product out of them. At the moment, I want to skee us off, but at the moment, we're probably studying somewhere around about AUD 10 billion worth of projects that not all of them, but a lot of them are going to get legs over the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years. And they'll be added.
Our focus in terms of going forward in the future, our focus is sitting within our core business. I mean, I'm going to grow the iron ore. I'm going to grow gas downstream on gas. I mean, I like the add-ons that go with it. We're just making sure that we're not going to go start exporting LNG through Woodside where we can get a better, longer return if we're doing methanol or if we're doing urea. So we're having a bit of a quick look at that. I may change direction on, am I definitely going to do LNG? No, I'm definitely not. I'm going to get the best bang for our buck we can out of that gas. I mean, when we get gas out of the ground and through our plant, it's about AUD 0.70 a gigajoule it costs us.
I mean, we're at the very bottom of the industry. We're 400 km north of Perth. We're onshore. We've got a lot of gas. So iron ore, gas, lithium, that's our core business. That's where we're going to be expanding. We're expanding on what we've got. Not a lot of greenfield stuff out there. I'll tell you where we're going shortly. Onslow Iron, we're unlocking that West Pilbara region. So there's a couple of main regions sitting up in that Pilbara. You've got the Port Hedland region that runs inland. That's got Hancock and FMG and BHP. You come down to the next level, you've got Hamersley Iron, Rio Tinto. So they've got all of that area from Dampier, which runs right through under Tom Price. This area here, if you have a look down at Onslow, this whole region's been locked up. And we're opening that region up.
There's over 5 billion tons of iron ore sitting in there. It's a great region. We're starting it. I originally got a deal. I mean, the government didn't want anyone to export anything out of Onslow except gas. And we talked them into letting us do it because of our track record and our reputation. And I was only going to do 5 million tons a year. So as I've been building, I've gone from 5 to 15 to 20 to 30. And we've changed governments, so they've all forgotten. We've changed. The Premier's gone now, so they've forgotten what the original deal is. And I've now got them sitting in there going, how much am I going to earn? How much are the royalties coming off this? How many people am I and they completely forgot that it's only a petrochemical area.
That's the reason why I built a big shed to make sure that it looks like it's going to be a real clean operation. And it will be. It'll be a great operation. But so great partners in this thing. So don't underestimate. I've got Baowu. They want to do an offtake on all the ore. They've got three-quarters of ours and all of theirs. They'd like to have 100% of ours. They're the biggest steelmaker in the world by two and a half times. We've got POSCO in there from Korea and we've got AMCI from the US. But the relationship we've got with these joint venture partners is unbelievable, particularly around Baowu. I mean, they are just an absolute powerhouse and great people. How it works, we've got Onslow Iron and we've got a joint venture on the mine site.
MinRes is building and operating that JV. The mine site is owned in proportion by each of the shareholders. MinRes has got about 60.3%. The other three have got the balance. From the mine gate, well, from the crusher and the mine gate, the highway, the tracks, the port, the transshippers, 100% owned by MinRes. A bit of cash that flows out of that. We're going to have first ore on ship in June this year. We're starting haulage in March, as I said. By June of 2025, first ore 2024, June of 2025, we're going to be 100%, 35 million tonnes run rate. By December of 2025, we're going to be at 40 million tonnes. By December of 2026, we're going to be at 50 million tonnes run rate. We've got in terms of the mine site, everything's well advanced out there.
We're currently in the month of January. We moved 3 million tons out there of total material movement. So we're doing pre-strip. We're building stuff and we're getting ore into stockpile ready in front of the crushers. We've got the first of the three next-gen crushing plants is in operation. We've got the first big stacker out there. Second ones, you saw one on the truck going out. Second ones in Zhoushan and the big reclaimer is all in Zhoush an heading out there. The haul road, we were late getting the approval on that. We've got multiple fronts running on that. It's going pretty well so far. Fingers crossed that cyclone stays away and doesn't drench us. But that's progressing incredibly well. So when we do first ore on ship, we won't be coming all the way up that haul road. It'll still be getting built.
It'll take till sort of around about September, but we will be ramping up. We've got alternate ways around that road. But regardless of that, we'll have first ore on ship in June, and then we'll be putting more on ship every month from July, August, September, all the way through till June of 2025. By the end of this year, those big jumbo road trains will be autonomous. The port, as I said, 100% owned by MinRes. We've got the big shed is almost finished in there, the unloading system, the reclaim system, the port's built, the shiploader's on board. So all of that's sort of there and ready. I mean, we're in pretty good shape. In terms of money, how much this thing's going to make, FOB costs, so cost, total costs including capital, $29 a tonne FOB. So that's free onboard ship.
That's gone up a little bit. We were AUD 26 at the beginning of the project. It's bumped up about AUD 3 a tonne. So the fuel costs have incrementally moved a bit. When we start producing our own oil, we'll be doing deals there. So when we've got our own oil, we'll be bringing that oil. It'll come back from Asia into our tanks in Onslow and in Port Hedland, and we'll be bringing that back at an extremely low cost. So for the next couple of years, elevated fuel prices, but eventually we're going to more than halve those fuel prices. So end of this year, we're running at about AUD 500 million spent on diesel. So we're working towards getting out of diesel, but I'm going to cut my costs more than cut it in half as we go forward. And there's also been inflation.
So in that $3, a little bit of fuel, but it's mainly inflation in the mining services contracts. It's pushed that up $3/tonne. So that inflation comes to MinRes. And I know it sounds pretty silly, but I mean, we've got rise and fall on all the contracts with CPIs. So amazing. Onslow Cash Flow, as I said, 35 million tonnes per annum we start at. Two years down the track, we get to 50. On day one, the earnings are around $2.5 billion a year for MinRes. MinRes, sorry. The CFR cost to China landed in China, $47/tonne in China, and that includes about $9 for shipping and about $9 for royalties. And they're all in US tonnes. At today's market, at $128/tonne, we will be receiving a sale price of about $107.
That's after it's rate adjusted and moisture is moved. We're running at about 8% moisture. So actual sale price, about $107/tonne. In round numbers, about $60 U.S./tonne goes in our pocket. So about $1.9-$2 billion hits the MinRes bank account. As I said before, we've got 4 life-of-mine mining services contracts. They produce about $280 million a year EBITDA. And then the toll road has got about $8 and a bit dollars/tonne times 35, about $280 million a year income. We get out to 50 million tonnes, we're about $400 million a year that thing will be producing. So when we're running at 50 million tonnes, on today's numbers, about $3.3 billion a year comes into the MinRes coffers. So if anyone's concerned, I might be stretching the balance sheet a little bit. That's the price.
I mean, that thing will be going for more than 50 years. So no matter what happens, I mean, it's just a brilliant project. We've chucked a couple of other projects up here for you to compare. We've got these, this info has been extracted from Wood Mackenzie, but it just highlights the capability that we have in-house and what we're able to achieve. So Onslow Iron is being built at about a third of the capital cost. So about $56 a tonne per capital tonne, it's about a third of what happens out there in the industry. We're doing it in about half the time. When I put first iron ore on ship in June, it'll be only 10 months before that where I actually got approval to mine the iron ore. So 10 months later, it's going on a ship. FOB $29, CFR $47, payback.
So if I use consensus for payback, it's about 2 years and I get all my money back. If I use the price of iron ore today, it's about 1 year I get payback. And that doesn't include anything smart that we're going to do around selling 49% of the haul road, for example. So if I sell part of the haul road, the payback's ridiculous. We've just done a little slide up here. I've spoken often about consensus and my high opinion I have of them and how accurate they are at landing the numbers. So I just wanted to show here that they have been absolutely consistent for 10 years. They have never once predicted where the price of iron ore's going in 10 years. Not once have they nailed it.
So the break-even out there for the marginal producers in China is around $100 bucks US a tonne. Iron ore is, it's a great commodity to be. And I mean, every mining company out there that's got really big has got iron ore as their staple. And we've seen some of the big guys out there really screw up their balance sheet, make some really dumb decisions, and all they do is stop and they just let that tide of iron ore wash over the top of them and drown them in cash. So I mean, we're going to be sort of sitting in that sort of position not too far down the track. We're growing our lithium portfolio. You've read about it in the paper. Everyone's really happy.
I've been out there and I've got some chunks of lithium companies and we've done some really good stuff over the last 12 months. We're the largest hard rock operator in the world, largest hard rock operator in lithium. We've got 2 tier one deposits, get your head around that. We're the only company out there in the world that's operating 3 hard rock mines. We've got Wodgina, of course, 50/50 with our great partners in Albemarle. We've got about 217 million tons in resource. It's one of the top 3 deposits on the planet. And as I said, it's open all directions and it's open at depth. We know that, but we've only gone down about 500 meters. We know it goes beyond 850 meters. We suspect it goes beyond 1.25 km. It'll eventually, one day, be an open pit underground mine.
We're doing some work over the next couple of years on both of them, on drilling them out. So right now, we've got Train 1 and 2 are basically running it at full capacity. Train 3 runs well, so we alternate. We'll turn Train 3 on and turn 1 off and do maintenance on it. So all 3 trains are operational. 2 of them we're feeding with fresh rock. Train 3, we're kind of pulled up on it and we're really not in a hurry to turn that on. We're just going to pack up and we'll sit and have a look and see where the price goes. And when the price is okay, when we'll be bringing that on stream. I did say a while ago that we're going to start bringing that online about now, but we're not. We're just going to sit and wait. And when Mr.
China decides they're going to pay us enough for it, we'll turn it on. So our FOB cost, what we're aiming for on these sites, we've got to remember we've been in this thing, this is my third down cycle I've gone through in lithium. So it's not new. When we're normally used to operating in an environment, we're getting around $455-$600 a tonne for our product. Where it's been has just been absolutely magic. It's like when iron ore goes to $200 bucks a tonne, but we all know it's not going to last. I think in the long term, it's a $2,500 environment that we'll be sitting in. Right now, we're a bit under $1,000.
I think that it's going to get a bit better over time, no doubt, when we get through to, I think once we get through Chinese New Year, we'll see a bit of a lift in the price. I think incrementally it'll grow over this year. Our aim is to be at Wodgina and Mount Marion by around about the middle of this year. So we get out of the pre-strip. We've got out of the pre-strip at Mount Marion. We're going to be still running that through till about the end of June up at Wodgina. So about $320-$330, $340 USD/tonne. That's where we want to be with both the sites and that's where we will become June, July. We'll get there a bit quicker with Mount Marion. Train four is scheduled to come online around about mid-2026.
But again, as I say, we're going to flex these depending on market and supply demand, the supply demand chain. Certainly not going to turn it on and put more ore in the market than we can sell. Mount Marion, 50/50 JV with Ganfeng. Designed, built, and operated as a 100% mining services contract. So we run the whole thing. We make our margin off that. About 66 million tonnes down there in reserve. But as I said, there's about 85% of this thing that hasn't been drilled out. And we've hit two feeder zones. So a feeder zone is this thing like, if you can imagine a cyclone coming up from the earth's crust, they're generally, in these nature of ore bodies, you get these feeder zones. We've found two of them down at Mount Marion.
We've got a lot of work to do around the drilling, but you know I expect the reserves down there to double, if not triple, over the next sort of 18 months to 2 years. So I mean, they're both long, long sites. We've got through the plant upgrades down at Mount Marion. So basically what we did at Mount Marion, we went from 2.9 to 3.8 million tonnes a year on the upgrade. We're going through the process of adding WHIMS and flotation down there over the next 18 months. So it's going to scavenge a lot more recovery and it's going to increase the final product. So about 700,000 tonnes of SC4.5 by around July 2025. By the time we get through to July 2027, about 900,000 tonnes of SC5. So some growth down there, but gradual. I mean, these plants are difficult to operate.
So gradually growing that. FOB cost down there is going to be around about AUD 325 by July. Pre-strip down at Mt Marion is finishing as we speak. We're relocating about 130 people off site. Most of them are gone now. About 40 pieces of yellow gear is all getting removed. In fact, we moved a lot of that stuff over to Bald Hill. Bald Hill, it's 100% MinRes zone. We took it over on November 1. I haven't told the market how much we pay for it. I'm probably never going to, so stop asking. It does 150,000 tonnes of spot a year. Great little plant. We've got about 270 people down there. We've onboarded. They had a pretty good culture down there. We brought in a lot of MinRes gear and we put our management in there. We've got mine planning in there at the moment.
We're drilling the crap out of the thing. And over the next 4-6 months, we'll come out with a mine plan and we'll come out with a resource. The resource we're advertising down there is basically what we knew was there in 2018. So we haven't got anything more to go on. So there's no JORC compliant anything down there. So any numbers you see on it, they're just, at the moment, it's purely guesswork. So don't take them as read. And we're also, so we've got all the high gear off site. We put 8 dump trucks in there, a couple of MinRes diggers. We're commissioning a crushing plant and they had a contract, can you believe it? They had a freaking contractor down there and it wasn't us. So they've got the flick off site.
So we've got a bunch of drill rigs down there, mine planning, and resource upgrade is coming. Mt Marion, we are heading underground down there now. We've got Billy Beaumont mobilizing to site. That'll run at about an 80-20 split on underground versus open pit for the next 20 or so years. With those feeder zones, we're able to go out and announce a doubling of the reserve at depth. So we're saying that we've got about 19 million tonnes at depth. We've got an awful lot more than that, but it is what it is. So we're doing definition drilling down there. Over the next 18 months, we're targeting to get that underground reserve up. About September this year, we're going to have a complete refresh on our reserve and resource across our lithium business.
Underground study will be complete by April and we'll be mining in earnest by about mid-2025 down there and feeding the mill. The lithium growth, just basically showing you where we think we're heading over the next sort of five years. We're building one of the largest lithium businesses in the world. Recent investments that we've had across the board setting us up for significant growth. I did have a slide in here showing how much land we've accumulated over the last 12 months, but then I pulled it at the last minute because I don't want to share that with our opposition. But look, come around June, I'll be able to show you just what we have accumulated in terms of land holdings and lithium rights with the gold miners and the like. So within the next four years, we're targeting 1 million tonnes attributable to MinRes.
On a longer term, we're also the only company in the world, believe it or not, that doesn't have any offtake. So we don't have our product where it's committed to anyone. So our business is sort of wide open. I've done that because I believe that the offtake is worth almost as much as owning the mine. I mean, and I think they're going to wake up to that shortly because a lot of organisations out there, whether you're OEMs or whether you're making cathodes and making energy storage equipment and assets, the most important thing you've got to have is surety of supply. Price is secondary. So we're selling on the spot market. I mentioned a while ago that within the next couple of years, we're going to have a big flotation plant down in the Goldfields. We're going to do it sooner than then.
We've advanced. Look, I think in the next month, when we're able to make an announcement, we're heading down the path with a big float down in that region. The idea of that is all of these little shareholdings we're gathering up. I mean, I'm going to go out to the juniors and we're going to be able to offer them a tolling service where we take some ownership of their deposit and we toll the dirt and we'll be able to move that dirt. And just to give you some context, that I said earlier, processing spot is awfully tricky. It's not like doing copper or zinc or, I mean, all of that stuff's really easy. This is really difficult. So there's a certain percentage of the dirt that we put through dense media plants that just doesn't perform and it goes straight to tails.
So all the Galaxy plant, Bald Hill, Mt Marion, those tailings dams are full of product. You need flotation to get that out. And then a lot of these smaller projects that are sitting out there, they've got 8, 10, 12, 15 million tonnes, they will never be viable. You'll never be able to support a plant. So we'll be able to offer that service and that's where I'm heading shortly. And finally, we're out looking around the world at a range of opportunities with these downstream, as I mentioned, so people that are out there making batteries and making stuff where they're committing to needing product for the next decade or two out and they need a lot of it. We're looking to do a partnership with one of them. So I expect to be able to do something around that over the next three or four months.
Natural gas, it's a transition fuel. We need it. It's going to be a money maker. It's going to be a cash care. We're the largest onshore holders of land in both the Perth Basin and the Carnarvon Basin. The two of the most significant areas in WA, Perth Basin, 7,300 square meters. We've got two major gas discoveries up there and we've got a major oil discovery. We're building a pathway to production. We're going to develop a gas plant somewhere around 160-250 TJs a day. We're going to put AUD 500 million into the plant. We're going to put about another AUD 350 million into these production wells we're drilling right now and the connecting pipelines. We're looking at a whole range of ways of getting the best value out of the gas. As I said earlier, urea, methanol, LNG plants, all on the drawing board.
We'll figure that out probably over the next four or five months. We're waiting on the government approval. We're fairly confident the government will approve to let us export LNG and we'll toll that through Woodside. Highly confident that'll happen, but we want to make sure we get best bang for our buck out of that. We expect in the Carnarvon Basin, we're going to start seismic this year and we're going to be drilling some holes up there next year. We've also recently gone out and purchased our own drill rig. These rigs are fairly scarce. So we've bought our own drill rig. It's fully automatic, this thing. State of the art. It can go down 5Ks. We'll bring that online about the middle of this year. We're putting a crew together at the moment and building all the ancillary gear that goes with it. Okay, long-term business outlook.
I'll try and pick up the pace a bit over the next 5 years. The mining services is more than tripling its volumes over the next 5 years. The EBITDA today is around AUD 500 million. 5 years from now, we're going to be out about AUD 1.75 billion. So we'd be one of the largest mining infrastructure organizations in the world. The lithium business, July 2026, we're tripling volumes. We're upping around 1 million tons. Mount Marion will be around 730 of SC5. They're getting up to 900 beyond that. Wodgina about 1.2 million once we get it into full production. Train 4, as I said, comes online about 2026. Train 5 and 6 are sitting out there in the background. We're doing all the work around the approvals and whatever on those.
Bald Hill, we're going to push that out to about 250,000 tons and the flotation plant we do down in the Goldfields, it's going to be somewhere around 400,000-450,000 tons of product coming out of that. Iron ore, by 2029, we're going to be about 92 million tons run rate. They'll all be low cost, long life operations. Within two years, we'll be producing natural gas and probably doing some LNG. Within five years, expect us to be building or running a urea plant and certainly a methanol plant. So I'll just wrap up with a few comments. We've delivered an awful lot so far over the last sort of six or eight months. We're on track for guidance. We've made huge progress at Onslow and a lot of progress around our lithium business, discoveries around gas, and of course, mining service is an absolute powerhouse.
So over the next six months, we're fully focused just on delivery, not doing anything clever. Delivery and continuing to do what we've done with our balance sheet over the last 32.5 years. We will continue to manage that thing to the degree that we have. As I said, iron ore in the short term, we're going from 20-50 million tonnes. Onslow goes live in 2024, full capacity by 2025. And we're selling 49% of the haul road. It breaks my heart to do that, but I'm just out there showing the industry that we can keep raising capital without stressing our balance sheet. So we're going to do that. I mean, I expect that they're happy with the single digit number and I'll use that cash and recycle it at better than 30%, ROIC.
Mining services, I said it's doubling by the end of 2025 and the innovation we've got in that business is in huge demand. Engineering and construction, I mean, it builds these projects, it builds innovation. I mean, over the next two or three years, the innovation we're bringing into that is going to be second to none. We're getting into well and truly into stuff around carbon fiber and a whole range of things. But it gives us low capital base, low operating costs, great business. We're developing a lithium. We're going to be one of the largest lithium businesses in the world within the next five years. We're heading in that direction now. We've got tier one assets sitting inside that lithium business. The energy business is going to be a bit of a cash cow. We're returns focused.
So total shareholder return, we're third best on the ASX on it over the last 17 years. We're going to improve that over the next two or three. You can see that the EBITDA every year, it's just going to get more and more. The ROIC will be over 25% by around June of 2025 and we're all supported. I've given the board last year a commitment that I'm going to be around for at least the next 10 years, sorry to say. And I've got, I have got the best management team in the country, bar none. So sorry about the length of time that took, but we are a little passionate about where we're going. I think it's important that we sort of get the message out there. So if you've got any questions, more than happy to field them.
Thanks, Chris.
If you're online and you'd like to ask a question, please submit your question now. We'll first of all go around the room and if you can please state your name and affiliation and limit it to two questions at a time, please. And Glenn, I'll start with you.
Morning, Chris Mark. It's Glyn Lawcock with Barrenjoey. A lot there to unpack, Chris, in the last few minutes, I'm sure. But just firstly, just how are you, why the different approach to Wodgina? I think back to the last downturn, you know, you were very disappointed that Albemarle shut Wodgina and you weren't allowed to start it up. Now you're doing the opposite and prices are actually higher than what we had at the last down cycle still. So just your logical thoughts around that, is it an issue with being able to place product?
You gave us a price of $2,500. Clearly, that's not the price you're waiting for to restart it. Well, maybe, maybe you are. But just what your thoughts are on restart price and finally just on Wodgina downstream. Are you thinking of putting capital back into downstream again or how does the partnership work? Thanks. So partnership is just, we're just simply 50/50. I got out of downstreaming. I mean, everyone has this vision, you make a lot of money in downstreaming. Let me tell you right, really clearly, the ROIC on downstreaming, it's single digit. And if anyone tells you out there that they're an expert on running these plants, it's called bullshit. I mean, we've got two very large plants in Western Australia that have never made a tonne of product. So I'm just not up for that.
I mean, MinRes's value is being able to do primary. We can go in and we can dig dirt, we can crush it, we can process it, we can beneficiate it, we can float it. I have no desire to go and invest $1 billion in China or $400 million or $500 million down south of Perth for a single digit return. First and foremost, MinRes is here to make money. That's always our focus. I got to get better than 20% ROIC. Partnership, by the way, with Albemarle is brilliant. I mean, they're great people, but they chose, they wanted to go ahead and build in China. Once I got a smell of what the costs were in operating in China, the capital you tie up and the return you get on your money, I couldn't get out of there quick enough. And I did.
I mean, and we were a little naive to think that we should have went there in the first place. I kind of got stuck with the Kemerton plant because we had a binding deal with Albemarle in 2019 and all of a sudden the world changed. They couldn't afford to write me a check. So they give me a check and part of Kemerton, but the return just wasn't there. I am never going to invest in downstream processing unless I get given a free carry. So and we've been offered free carry plants in Germany and in the UK. The problem I have with that is that the organizations have offered us a free carry, free carry of 30%, is they've got no experience in building a hydroxide plant. So I just don't want to get tied up with that.
I am looking though at producers that have got the skill set and the expertise and I think, you know, look, within the next 3-6 months, we will partner up with somebody, but I won't be putting capital into downstreaming. It's just, I'm here to make money. Lachlan Shaw, UBS. Thanks, Chris and Mark for today. So two questions from me. So the step up at Onslow to 40 and 50 million tonnes, can you just help us understand, I mean, critical pathway, so is there more CAPEX to come and permitting around that? Are there more permits that you need to secure? Pretty simple. Look, 35-40 is the first upstep and basically all we're doing in there is sweating the assets. You know, you and it's a no brainer to go from 35-40.
I mean, the transshippers will handle it, the crushing plant will handle it. We got there now, we just stretch them a bit. 40-50 means that we need to go from 5-7 transshippers. So transshipper number 6 and 7 are on order. They're, I've got them locked away in the COSCO yard after a fair bit of effort and help from Baowu. But they are being delivered in about June and October of 2026. So by the end of 2026, we'll be at 50 million tonne run rate. We're probably going to put in between now and then another transshipping berth. And we kind of, we want that as security anyway. And then when we go from the 40-50, we'll put a ship loader on it. So we'll be able to load out of any two berths.
But look, fundamentally, if I had to pluck a number out of my head on what are we going to spend up there to do it? Maybe AUD 300 million? We'll take us from 40 to 50 and, you know, do the math. I mean, EBITDA, AUD 60 a tonne. It's a pretty low upgrade. I mean, the road will handle, all the infrastructure we've got will handle it. I mean, it'll be awfully low. I'll come out, look, when I do the full year results, I'll come out with a fairly good plan around that, capital cost per tonne and all the bits. But yeah, it's a bit of a no-brainer. Great, thank you. And then my second question, so you commented around mining services and expectation for margins to sort of start to expand again.
Can you just perhaps give us a little more insight in terms of what you see the key levers are to achieve that? And then maybe just a quick comment. Do you have a view on impacts for you guys or no impacts of same job, same pay? Thank you.
Yeah, no, look, let me start with the labor one first. I mean, we are really, really, you can see, we're people focused. We're making sure that we've got, I mean, we've got, for example, no no gender pay gap in our thing. If you have a look at our reporting, the metrics on the way they do it says we've got a gender pay gap. But we've been through and we've got every single position gets paid on the position. But the way they measure, am I saying this right, James?
The way they measure the thing is really, really dumb. It depends on how many you've got at different levels. So I don't say, the way we look after our people, I've never had a strike or I've never had any industrial action in over 32 years. I don't expect to have any. I think that if you pay people in the right way and you look after them in the right way, I mean, everything follows. I don't see a big deal with it. I think that, I don't think there's any doubt that the federal government has really, really disappointed a lot of business. There's no question about that. They're just doing it in a reckless way. And it's going to give some pain.
You know, when you start getting highly paid people like oil and gas or train drivers in the northwest going on strike, I mean, it becomes a bit silly. But I think, look, I think our business is going to be okay. I don't see any real issues with it, but we're managing that situation as we move through it. So and the other one was, I think around how do we keep increasing the margins in the mining services business? Quality of the goods that we're putting in place. I mean, you know, we're the only ones that, transhippers, the big trucks that we're running. I mean, we're the only ones that are doing that and we're delivering incredible value to our clients and they're willing to pay a pretty reasonable return for it.
So we can do it at a cost they can't do it and we share in the share in the value.
Hi, good morning, Chris and Mark, Kate McCutcheon at Citi. Just if I look at the CapEx guidance, it looks like that's gone up about AUD 480 million or so. Just some additional color there, particularly on the lithium. Is there some bucket for Bald Hill? There has stripping been bought forward because I guess in part with this question you've reduced the cost, the OpEx guidance at Mount Marion, so.
Yeah, no, look, basically, I mean, we just went to town on moving that rock while those prices were up. We moved as much of that as we can so we can get down to normal operating costs or where we wanted to be. You want to add to that, Mark?
Yeah, I think, okay, the guidance increase includes, as I said, some additional investment in mining services and also the Mount Marion underground that wasn't previously planned for. We've obviously got also higher strip numbers in Mount Marion and Wodgina over the full year and also a little bit more in the iron ore space. But there's no secret buckets for Bald Hill or anything like that. Yeah. And in terms of the lithium market, last downturn, there was issues with shipments going. Just some comments. Are you saying everybody wants to take your shipments, no issues selling those tonnes into the spot market? Any comments around that? No, look, there's no issues selling it, but supply and demand rules the price.
And I mean, if you want to be, if we keep putting more and more and more tons into the market, we'll keep pushing the price down. I mean, there's a balance to how much. So we want to make sure that supply is meeting demand. And you know, you can sell a ton at $1,200 a ton or you can push it down to $600. I mean, I like that one. And it just, it's supply and demand. It's reasonably simple. But and none of us know where the real price is. It feels like the price has bottomed. I feel like we're on the bottom of the tin now and I think there's going to be a slight improvement when as we come out of Chinese New Year, but wait and see.
Yeah. And can I just sneak one more in? Did I hear you correctly that you were looking to bring in a partner possibly for your energy business?
No. No, no, no, no, not on the energy. We're looking at how we can do something around the lithium and we're looking for a form of partnership on that. So we want, we're going to partner with someone that is into the power storage business so that we can close that loop off. And I want to be focused on producing spod and making sure they've got a partner that is going to use it in the right area. So look, I can't say a lot more on that, but over the next 3 or 4 months, I hope to be able to come back to the market and let you know exactly what we're doing with that.
Sorry, Kate, if I can, not a partner in the sense of co-ownership of the business. What I was talking about was how we go about funding the development of some of those assets and how we source capital to basically build facilities, whether it be the gas plant or others.
Okay, thank you. Somewhat similar to what we're doing on the road. Thanks, James.
Yeah, morning, guys. Matt Frydman from MST. Can I firstly ask, I guess, on the theme of the energy business, what's your thinking around timeline, around putting out a resource for that basin? I mean, obviously we've seen some missteps from some of your neighbours recently. Yeah, how do you think about the, I guess, putting out something with a degree of confidence behind it that you can then engage in some of those partnership discussions or an FID decision with a resource behind you?
Yeah, no, good question. You've got to be extremely careful with that because, you know, people can make assumptions on how big the field is and get it wrong. And I mean, a couple of our neighbours have done just that. And it takes, I mean, it takes; it's not like we're putting rods in the ground, we send them off to get acid. It takes frigging months. It's frustrating the time it takes to get a good understanding of where we're at. Look, certainly with the oil, we're getting a fairly clear understanding.
This hole we're doing now, the rig passed back through the oil well so we know it's bigger than what we thought it was. The gas is about what we thought it was, but I think realistically it's probably 18 months away. We know the minimum size that we've got and based on that we can go out and build a gas plant. But we're not going to know the maximum for 18 months to two years is the real answer. And whatever I do up there, I really want to do it standalone, just MinRes because look, in terms of the capital when we're building it, any kind, we can build literally any kind of plant. To build a gas plant, not hard. There, you know, how many are there? 20,000 of them around the world.
We just go out and we buy one off the shelf and then I get my construction crew to go and glue it to the ground. So, but we can do that. I'm going to say we're going to spend 50% less than what any of our competitors out there are spending and I can guarantee you we're going to do it in about half the time. So I really don't want to go and share with anything because I'm going to overpay to get involved with theirs and then I'm going to have to put up with the frustration of someone else operating it. And look, we are really efficient at operating. I don't have any gas operators in my business now, but not hard to get them. And ours will be kind of remote, but highly confident.
We're going to be conservative and we're not going to go out there and hope we've got something that's really big and it's only a pillar of our business. It's not all of it. So we'll be conservative in what we do. And at the moment, I mean, we were looking at 250 TJs a day and I'm thinking of peeling that back at the moment to something more like 150 because I need to make sure I've got plenty of gas for urea and for methanol and all those other things. And I think I'm going to get a bigger bang for my buck out of doing that and I think it'll last a lot longer.
Okay, thanks. So if a resource is 18 months away, potentially you could have an export permit or an FID decision. Well, I reckon FIDs, I reckon FIDs probably about 6 months away. And we can come out with a bulletproof resource within that time. But I think to understand how big it can get in terms of the oil and the outer reaches of the gas field, yeah, it's probably about 18 months to get to that sort.
Thanks, Chris. And then secondly, if I can just ask on Wodgina again, obviously the decision to sort of slow down the pace of utilizing all three trains. If you sold on the market today, assuming you could get today's price, you're talking, you know, 60%+ EBITDA margins. Is it a bit of a, that's if we believe your sort of directionality on costs and where you can get to costs at the end of the year.
Is it a bit of a circular argument where if you're not utilizing that additional installed capacity, how can you achieve that unit cost reduction? So I guess I'm asking, what's the impact of slowing down the ramp up of train three to the directionality of where you're saying you can get unit costs? There's no real impact on it. I mean, to run that third train, I mean, look, it does, if you're running three trains, your total cost is incrementally better, your unit cost, no question about that. Running two trains is highly efficient. I mean, it's just, look, it might save us $30-$40 a tonne. But I mean, I just want to make sure that if you keep putting more product into the market, it doesn't matter if it's iron ore or anything.
You've often seen someone has a mishap somewhere and, you know, 5% of the iron ore disappears out of the market, the price goes like that. I mean, you all of a sudden you're making, you know, 20% or 30% more margin. And so I just want to make sure if we put too much out there, we're just going to kill the margins a bit. So kind of hoping that you'll go out there and tell everyone that we're going to slow down production and the price will go up.
Operator, if we can just see if there are any questions online, please.
Thanks, James. To ask a live audio question, press the Request to Speak button at the bottom of the broadcast window. I will introduce each caller by name and ask you to go ahead. You'll then hear a beep indicating your microphone is live.
Our first question comes from Lyndon Fagan from JPMorgan. Lyndon, please go ahead after the beep.
Good morning. Good morning, James. Look, my first question is just on the mining services outlook. Some really impressive growth forecast there. Can you perhaps share some details on the CapEx that's associated to deliver all that growth over the medium term ex-Onslow? And I've got a follow-up question. Thanks.
Do you want to tackle that, Mark? It's a muddy thing.
Hi, Lyndon. So the answer is this half we've allocated another AUD 100 million or so for the contracts that we've secured over this period. We're extremely positive about the market outlook for the mining services business. We are seeing significant demand, not just within Western Australia, but in other states for those services. And we're seeing limited capability in the competition. So we're getting a lot of inquiry.
What we've guided there is in terms of our expectations of where we can think, where, sorry, where we think we can take this business. The sorts of contracts that we're talking about, haulage, bulk movement, some crushing. So a combination of a range, well, a range of different opportunities. So I'm not going to give you a specific number, but give you a sense of the sorts of projects that are going to underpin that growth.
Okay, no worries. And then I guess just looking at the iron ore target on page 32 of the pack, 92 million tonnes, just wondering if we can unpack the the other big project there at Port Hedland. Where are we up to in terms of trying to get that underway and when you'd be likely to share a bit more detail on the scope, etc.?
Yeah, sure. Look, the joint venture we've got with Hancock, it's moving along at snail pace at the moment and it's really wrapped up around approval. So rail access approval for to get that rail up to their project has got a few issues wrapped around it. It's inevitable, we've got the government behind us supporting, so it's inevitable that that'll happen. But look, I don't I don't see any spend happening of any significance on that thing over the next 12 months. It's really going to be, it's a calendar year 2025 where the action starts to pick up on that. That's a couple of years of work to get that rail upgraded and get the port installed. Yeah, so I mean, it's it's moving a bit slower than we would like, but from a balance sheet point of view, I'm not overly disappointed.
Our next question comes from Paul Young from Goldman Sachs. Paul, please go ahead after the beep.
Yeah, morning, Chris and Mark. A few questions on the lithium strategy and relating to the, Chris, the decision on the to delay the third train ramp up at Wodgina. I can't seem to find that in the presentation. So thanks for talking about that. But I'm just curious around the strategy there, first of all, around decision to delay Wodgina, arguably your lowest cost asset and not curtail production at Bald Hill and to Mount Marion. Can you step through, you know, the reasons for curtailing the low cost asset, not the high cost assets?
So we're running Bald Hill and Marion. We're sort of running them at capacity and we're still ramping up down at Marion from the upgrade work.
But it, look, Paul, it's simply. I just spoke about it a few minutes ago. It's supply-demand. I mean, if we're supplying more than the demand can take, I mean, we're going to push the price down. I mean, it's just common sense to try and manage the amount of supply we're putting into the market.
Our next question comes from Kaan Peker from RBC. Kaan, please go ahead with your question.
Good morning, Chris and team. Thanks for the opportunity. Just a quick question around the big flotation plant that was referred to at the Goldfields. Maybe if you can give some conceptual around the size. Is it, you know, 200,000-500,000 tonnes in spod basis and I'll follow up with the second one. Thanks.
Look, at the moment what we're planning on, and it's conceptual, but what we're planning on down there is somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 tonnes of product of SC5.5 per annum. Well, thank you. And secondly, just with additional cutbacks at Mount Marion and Wodgina, when would they be needed? You know, I assume that when we were on site last year, there was still the cutback at the northern pit required at Mount Marion. Is there sustainable or till the underground opens up? And yeah, just the timing of subsequent cutbacks would be great. Thanks. Yeah, look, pretty much we think that we've sort of got a sustainable position down at Marion right now. 18 months is the timeframe to get down underground with that drive we're putting in.
And we're going to be running at Wodgina and through till somewhere around late June, early July, and then we'll be pulling all the gear out of there. So about, look, it's safe to say by the end of July we're back to a steady state up at Wodgina.
Our next question comes from Robert Stein from Macquarie. Robert, please go ahead with your question.
Interesting to hear on the call just now, the multiple of 12x EBITDA for the haul road. Just interested, is that predictively where you're discussing with potential infrastructure partners? How do they value the upside going forward in terms of production and Onslow? And in terms of any type of base in play, in terms of infrastructure that is, sorry, mining, tenements that are around that infrastructure, how is that factored into any type of deal that you're looking to do with the road?
Yeah, no, look, that was a hypothetical. I was simply saying the quality of that haul road, if I recall, at 50 million tonnes is going to turn out AUD 400 million a year in EBITDA. So I was simply saying if one was to take that out as a separate vehicle and list it and you were starting a brand new business, it's not a bad start. And I would suspect that you'd probably be getting 12x or 13x EBITDA if you would go and do that. I'm not suggesting that I'm giving any guidance on what the value of that is as a partnership. That's a different arrangement.
Thanks. I'll now hand back to the room.
Mitch Ryan from Jefferies. Just one question. At the quarterly, about a month ago, you said you'd give us production guidance for Bald Hill. We haven't received that today. I was just wondering what you've seen or what's changed to delay that.
No, look, it's not delayed. I think at the quarterly, as I said, that it'll be during the course of this year coming because, look, we've only moved in there on November 1. We've got drill rigs down there. We've got people down there. It's 4-6 months away before we actually get the data. So we're dredging through a lot of the old data. The most current stuff was from around 2018. We're doing reconciliations around what's happened from then through to now. And we've got drill rigs in the ground. And the drilling is, you know, so far it's going, the signs are incredibly good. So we're happy with where it's going. But we just can't come out with anything that we can hang our hats on.
Look, I'm thinking sensibly it's somewhere around late May, early June before we really get anything that we can hit the market with. And even at the moment we're a bit hand-to-mouth with the feed to the mill. They kind of high-graded the couple of the zones when they were exiting and really sort of hit it pretty hard. But in saying that, you know, really too happy to have it. It's a great little mine. And I mean, my expectation is that we're going to be able to lift that not too far down the track from about 150 to about 250,000 tonnes production. That's sort of, I think, where we're heading. And we can do that for, you know, a fairly low capital cost. I mean, I'm thinking somewhere in the order of AUD 20 million or AUD 30 million will get us another 100,000 tonnes.
Hi, Michael Orphanides from Tribeca Investment Partners. The Western Australian nickel industry is in a bit of disarray at the moment. I was wondering if MinRes sees an opportunity to capitalize on others' misfortune in any way given the infrastructure.
Yes. Yes, working on it. Can't say anything. Again, look, if we go and share what we're doing, but absolutely, yeah, no, we're all over it. Look, in the next 4-6 weeks I'll come out and let you know what we're doing. But yeah, no, and it's not capitalizing on their misfortunes. I saw it more as being able to get in there and partner and help people, sort of.
Chris, with that, we might leave it there. Any final comments?
Yeah, okay. Well, look, thanks everyone for coming along. I probably went a little bit longer than you would have liked, but important that we try and we're really trying to be as transparent as we can and get as much information into the market and let you know where we're going with the business and how it's going. But look, for all those that support us, thanks very much and we'll be in touch. Thank you.