Thank you for standing by and welcome to Mineral Resources' analyst call covering today's release of its June 2025 Exploration and Mining Activity Report. Your speakers today are Mark Wilson, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Chong, General Manager, Investor Relations. A little bit of admin before we kick off. This is a sell-side call with analysts able to ask both text and live audio questions. To ask a text question, select the messaging icon, type your question in the box towards the top of the screen, and press the Send button. To ask a live audio question, press the Request to Speak button at the top of the broadcast window. The broadcast will be replaced by the audio question screen. Use the dial-in number and access pin provided to ask your question via the phone.
Alternatively, for those on a home network or personal network, you can ask your question via the web by pressing Join Queue. If prompted, select Allow in the pop-up to grant access to your microphone. If you have any issues using the platform, dial-in details can also be found on the homepage under Asking Audio Questions. Text questions can be submitted at any time, and the audio queue is now open. This call is being recorded with a written transcript being uploaded to the MinRes website later today. I will now hand over to the MinRes team.
Here, I'm a picture from 1 July. We had a board meeting, a group board meeting at MinRes yesterday, and Mel's in the office this morning, so I was just sitting in on the call. As usual, I'll run through a few highlights first. We're on the quarterly. We've tried again in this document to give you a little bit more information than historically we've done, just to try and progress transparency. That's been released to the exchange this morning, and then take questions at the end. I'll start with the key highlights. Overall, pleased to advise that the business across all segments has delivered volume and cost guidance for FY 2025. You know, I'd characterize it as a solid performance across all aspects of the business.
We've made a lot of positive change on a number of fronts across the last three months, and there's this continued focus on execution within the business. You would have seen through various announcements that the board and governance refresh that we've been mooting for some time is well progressed and underway. As I said, Mel, effective as Chair from the start of this new financial year, also joined by two non-executive directors in Ros Carroll and Lawrie Tremaine, both of whom joined the meeting yesterday for the first time. That change at the board is leading a significant governance refresh and is one of the key priorities of the new Chair, along with strengthening of the balance sheet.
Through this whole process, management's working with the board to continue to review levers available to it across all aspects of the business, and we're doing a refresh of our capital allocation framework under the guidance of the board. In terms of bonds though, pleased to confirm that it continues to be cash flow positive, both at mining services and at the commodity level. I'll take you through that in a little bit more detail shortly. In June, we hit an annualized run rate of 32.4 million tons per annum at Onslow, which was a great performance, particularly as we only had our last fifth or a fifth trend shipper there operating really for the last week or so of that month. In today's report, we've actually provided some guidance for shipped tons out of Onslow Iron.
Our share, 17.1- 18.8 million tons, equivalent to 30- 33 million tons on a 100% basis. Roadworks are the reason why we're not hitting 35 million tons across the whole year, and again, I'll talk you through that in a little bit more detail as we get to Onslow. Completion of the Hall Road upgrade remains on track for completion through the end of this quarter, as is our move towards 35 million ton per annum run rate, which we expect to hit at the end of September or thereabouts. As is, I think, generally well understood, seasonality impacts for this operation typically between November and March with cyclone season. Again, I'll talk you through that as I think about the numbers. In terms of safety, the TRIFR for the 12 months on a rolling basis was 3.84. It's a tick up.
We had a few higher recordable injury numbers in the first half, and then we've had significant reduction in hours over the course of the year with Onslow construction coming off and also Ball Hill and Yilgarn operations stopping intercurrent maintenance. As corporate, we're pleased with where we finished the year with liquidity. We finished with over $1.1 billion at 30 June, and as a result, we'll see net debt to EBITDA continuing to reduce. We kept a small balance on our revolving credit facility drawn at 30 June, but we had more than $400 million in cash including that draw. Just so that everybody's clear, I expect to have full access to that RCF facility going forward. That's consistent with what I've said for a number of quarters now. In terms of net debt, we finished at $5.3 billion for the year.
In terms of the quarter, the key movements, we had a $200 million FX gain on the U.S. unsecured bonds. We had a couple hundred million dollars in interest payments in the quarter. We had a small working capital outflow of circa $50 million. We had a couple hundred million dollars spend in CapEx. CapEx in FY 2019, sorry, FY 2019, it was a long time ago, FY 2025 came out at $1.9 billion, which was below guidance of $2.1 billion. Just to be clear, about $100 million of that delta is a timing issue relating to Onslow and the timing of certain payments. That $100 million will fall into FY 2026, and the other balance of $100 million is represented by savings across the business. I'm just going to make a quick observation about FY 2026 CapEx.
We're still working through with the board what that looks like, and as normal, we will provide more detail at the guidance and more detailary guidance at the FY 2025 result at the end of this month. As I've said previously, we expect that CapEx number to come in just a little bit over half of the FY 2025 spend, so circa $1 billion or thereabouts. About half of that will be sustaining, and then we'll have some significant ongoing spend at Onslow, including the transshippers, the completion of the road, and the opening up of Upper Cane as a satellite deposit. We've also got some exploration spend, including some energy. I'll take you through all that in more detail in about a month's time. When we think in terms of CapEx, we've historically quoted net of asset finance.
We've given a little bit more flavor in this material around what the gross figures look like, just to help. In terms of numbers for FY 2026, we're thinking we'll have about $150 million of asset finance in both yellow goods and transshipper six and seven. As we've talked about before, those transshippers are important to take us above 35 million tons. In terms of leverage, consistent with what we've talked about for a while, EBITDA continues to increase month on month, and as a result, our net debt to EBITDA ratio continues to decline organically. In terms of the carry loan at Onslow, which is an important asset of the group, representing our receivable for funding our partners into the project, that's being repaid with interest. The current balance at 30 June was $766 million, and that's a net decrease of just over $20 million.
That balance did actually go up through the quarter because as we bring construction to completion, the invoice goes on the carry loan. That $20 million is a net number. In terms of full-year statutory report, that'll be released at the end of August. We've given some indication of the potential adjustments that we've identified as we move towards year-end. Obviously, that's all subject to audit and so on, but trying to give you an advanced look at some of that material. Turning to the business, just step through this quickly so we can get to questions. The mining services performance was very strong. We've come in just at the bottom end of guidance range in terms of volumes, but our EBITDA per tonne margin is expected to be at the higher end of the guidance range of $2.10- $2.20.
We recorded a record 83 million tons in the quarter, which is up 21 million tons on the prior quarter. That's driven by the ramp-up of Onslow Iron. I should also add the mining services, the external facing, the crushing and haulage businesses have done incredibly well over the past year, the last six months in particular. In terms of iron ore, iron ore total attributable production was 8.9 million tons, shipments of 8.3. We realized $79 on average across both hubs, and that's about an 80% realization. It would have been 82% with our prior period adjustments. As you would have all seen, the iron ore prices moved back over $100 in recent times. The forward curve actually had quite an interesting shape to it. It was quite flat.
We have taken the opportunity to just start to hedge some of our volumes over the next six months to lock in some of that price gain. In terms of Onslow in particular, I'm very pleased with the progress over the last quarter. As I said, the fifth transhipper really started towards the tail end of June. We loaded 30 vessels and 5.8 million tons shipped. We had 147 trucks operating across the quarter, 83 of them ours, and 64 contractors on average. 31,008 road train trips completed over that road that a number of people were able to see through the quarter. This is a statistic that always amazes me. We traveled an aggregate of almost 10 million kilometers on that road through that period.
In terms of where we are at the moment, we have 120 MinRes, in fact, over 120 MinRes trucks commissioned on site, heading towards the 140 that we need. Our plan continues to be to transition contracted trucks out following road completion at the end of this quarter. In terms of FY 2025 shipments for Onslow, 14 million tons on a 100% basis, 8 million tons of our 57% share, and FOB costs were $57 a ton in the quarter, full year at $63. Yilgarn Hub, we shipped a total of 2.5 million, another strong quarter. That took full-year shipments to a touch under 10 at 9.7 million tons. FOB costs were $76 a ton at the low end of guidance.
As we've announced separately, we completed in the quarter the sale of the Yilgarn to an unrelated third party, which was a good outcome for the group and for the state of WA. In terms of lithium, I think, again, this quarter's highlighted the quality of these two assets at Wodgina and Mount Marion. We've continued to work to bring flexibility into the operations wherever we can. The average realized price across both sites was $642, dry metric ton on an SC6 equivalent basis. Mount Marion numbers were impacted as shipments were weighted heavily to June in the quarter, and it also has a discount applied to it for the lower grade portion of its tons. The average prices were about 8% below average indices.
The price in lithium, and I'm sure you guys want to ask me a few questions about this, but the market's been up and down a bit. Prices were back towards $600, just over $600 in early June. Since then, we've seen prices bounce back strongly to $800 to $900. In terms of spod production, Mount Marion and Wodgina generated 145,000 tons and shipped 135,000, and the relationship with both of the JV partners, Eldon Island Game, things continue to be very, very positive. In terms of Mount Marion specifically, FY 2025 shipments were 203,000 tons on an SC6 equivalent basis, above the high end of the guidance. Full-year costs, again, on an SC6 basis at FOB costs were at $900. June quarter FOB costs, however, were $717, and that's in line with the prior quarter, and that shows the benefit of high feed and continued plant improvements.
I can talk to this in more detail in the questions, but we've tried to bring more flexibility into the operations at Mount Marion, recognizing it's a DMS operation. What we're trying to do is, and you would have seen this in the quarterly results, targeted higher grades and focused on recovery than just pure volume. That does, depending on what we do with some of those flexible options, have the potential to increase costs a little bit next year or this new year, but we'll talk about that a bit later. As I said, we'll give more guidance at the full-year result, but very, very happy with the way Mount Marion is shaping up. One of the opportunities we see for the new year is to continue to pull the third strip out of it. In terms of Wodgina, another fantastic performance, production 32% up, better quality feed.
We've talked about the importance of that feed for some time, and the direct relationship through to recoveries, costs on an SC6 FOB basis down into $641 at Wodgina, a significant reduction over the course of the year. That's driven by continued laser focus on cost management and continued improved recoveries. We've talked in the quarterly a little bit about some of the changes to the plant we're doing to give us a little bit more flexibility again in operation, and we're expecting to see recovery rates tip up above 65% through FY 2026. Just to give you a little bit of background of the costs, we're right through stage two now in terms of the ore body development there. That ore body's gotten better as we get deeper through that stage.
FY 2026, we're just starting to open up stage three, tend to see a few more stringers and narrower veins at the top, and then we expect to get better quality as we go deeper. Just bear that in mind as we think about costs for next year. Again, we'll provide explicit guidance in the result in a month's time. Just finishing finally with energy, we received just a day or so ago independent certification in relation to Moriari Deep, which came in at 27 Bcf on a 2C contingent resource basis, which is just below the minimum threshold that we needed for a contingent payment on that asset. Lockyer 6, the arrangement there doesn't have a minimum threshold. That's going through the same certification process, and we'll expect to find the outcome of that this quarter.
In summary, very pleased with the quarter, both in terms of the operations, the continued performance of Onslow, the setting up of the business as we move into FY 2026, and the integration with the new board and chair. Business is set up very well going into 26. There's great energy in the business and a very strong focus on continuing to take it forward and strengthen up. With all that, conscious I've been talking for a bit, I'll now hand back for questions. Thanks.
Thank you, Mark. If you have not yet submitted your text question or joined the live audio queue, please do so now. I will introduce each caller by name and ask you to go ahead. You will then hear a beep indicating your microphone is live. Our first caller today comes from Paul Young. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning, Mark and Chris, and Mel, hope you're all well and thanks for joining. Mark, first question is on just liquidity, looking at the December half, and I know you've drawn down part of your revolver and you're going through the budgeting process at the moment for next year. When you look at, I guess, your internal model at the moment, do you need to draw down any more of that revolver into December half, and are you looking to re-fire the $1.3 billion senior secured potentially early? Just trying to get a handle on how you're looking at liquidity in December half. That's the first question. Thanks.
Yeah, hi, Paul. Thanks, and thanks for joining. The way I think about it is this. Q1 and Q3 of each quarter are typically the tightest because that's where we have pretty significant royalty payments. In this new financial year, we also have a front-ended weighting of CapEx as we move to complete the road, and we make some milestone payments on transshippers and the like. We've had carryover payment of acquisition of Iron Valley as well. There's a little bit of cash moving around this current quarter. If we do another draw, it'll only be for a relatively short period. I think the point that I want to emphasize is it's a revolving credit facility. It's there for working capital purposes. We pay to have it available so we can draw it when we need it, and then we pay it back when we don't need it. That's part.
Bigger picture, I'm very comfortable with the liquidity position. I feel like the business is in good shape. Onslow is starting to generate a fair bit of cash, and we're coming to the tail end of that CapEx profile. We've got a pretty good grip on what the outflows will be over the next six months.
Thanks, Mark. With respect to the refi of the $1.3 billion?
Sorry, the $1.3 billion, you mean the $700 million U.S.? You're talking about the bonds or?
The senior secured is due in, yeah, that's right. That's right. Due in May 2027.
Yeah, that's unsecured. Yeah, US$700 million. We have a bond, US$700 million, that's due in May 2027. We are in good shape on that. By that, I mean when I spoke to the quarterly three months ago, it was a few weeks after Liberation Day. The world was a different place. There was a lot of global uncertainty, spreads had opened up. Markets were pricing in a fair bit of risk and uncertainty just generally. If you look at where the bonds are trading today, they've probably come in 400 bps or more. We continue to have really strong support from our bond investors in the U.S. We're in a period where we can't do anything with it. We need a fresh set of financials, which we'll have at the end of August. Unless something changes significantly, you could assume that we'll be targeting something like that this half.
Okay, good to know. Mark.
Sorry, Paul, just one final thing on that. I really don't see any execution risk on that. As I've said before, it becomes a question of price to clear it, but I don't see any execution risk on pushing that maturity out.
Yeah, understood. Thanks, Mark. Maybe moving to Onslow, good update today and broadly in line with what we saw a couple of months ago on the site visit. I'm just curious around your comments around some hedging because we're hearing there's been quite a lot of producer hedging on this bump in iron ore price as well. You're one of the companies that's done it. I'm just wondering if you can talk through volumes you've hedged, pricing, and just how that works and how we should think about it. Also, just on your realized pricing for Onslow, which came down a fair bit, considering I know on the visit the team was talking up realized pricing. I'm just wondering if there's anything in relation to that with respect to the unwind of the prepayments. Thanks.
Yeah, so no impact on the prepayment. I mean, those sales are the sales in a very soft iron ore market for a period through that quarter. We've typically found discounts move like that in the past where the price starts to move back towards $90. In terms of the hedging, yeah, I looked at that curve. It was almost flat out to January, which was quite extraordinary. Anyway, what we've done is we've laid in a number of zero-cost collars, which put a floor typically around $99 to $100. We won't go above a third of production in the half. You know, we're just trying to get the balance right, but we're just taking the opportunity to lock away some of that downside.
Thank you. The next question is from Glyn Lawcock. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mark. Good morning. I just had a couple of quick ones. Just trying to discern your comments around you've got CapEx to spend on the transshippers, but then you said you've got $150 million of asset financing, which also was for the transshippers. What's the distinction between the two spends, thanks?
Morning, Glyn. Nice to talk. What I was trying to do was call out the material items of spend coming up this year, just to give you a heads up. What I'm saying is, what I'm also saying for the first time is when we think about FY 2026, we're thinking in terms of about $150 million of asset finance generally through that period. That's not exclusively transshippers. It includes things like the rest of the haul truck fleet, the jumbo road trains, and also some yellow gear, mobile gear as we roll off older assets and acquire new assets over the course of the year.
Yeah, sorry, Mark. I guess I was maybe I misspoke a bit, but I was just trying to assume if we're spending CapEx on the transshippers, why are we also asset financing as well? Why? It feels like I'm doubling up. Is there something I'm obviously missing?
Yeah, so Glyn, historically, we've talked CapEx net, historically, and reported net. What I'm trying to do today is give you a sense of both net and gross, and give you a sense, in some cases, of how we're going to use the asset finance. We can sip you through the detail offline if you like, but I'm trying to give you both those pieces of information to give you a little bit more transparency.
No, that's great. Just a final question. You made the comment that you—I couldn't keep up with you, but I think you said 27 Bcf on the first expiration for energy, which came in below the levels of contingent payment. You said Lockyer 6 certification should happen this quarter, but there's no level for contingent payment for that one. What's the best-case scenario you think out of the $300 million-odd that we could receive? Any thoughts on what we could get this half?
Yeah, apologies if I was talking quickly. I should have spoken a little bit slower. We're targeting out of Lockyer, most we can get would be around 100.
Our next question comes from Lachlan Shaw. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, Mark, Chris, Mel. Thanks for the time and thanks for taking my question. Two from me. Just starting at Onslow, obviously, you know, pleasing for the guidance into FY 2026. Can you give an indication of how you're thinking about pulling together that quarter of, you know, above 35 million tons for annualized run rate to secure the next $200 million from MSIP? I'll come back with my second.
Sure. Good morning. In terms of the way we see this year, and specifically to answer your question, clearly, this quarter that we're in now, we're going to be impacted by completion of the road. That causes inefficiencies in terms of the movements and the like. We have contractor vehicles that are less efficient through the port in load and, you know, the load out of the mine. We factor all that in. This quarter will be softer than others. Obviously, we have weather through Q2 and Q3. That'll be the same every year, as we've talked about on a number of occasions. We have a pretty clear Q4 we would expect. In terms of your specific question around targeting the three months and the 200, I think the best way to think about it is this. We can't plan for the weather. We can't deal with the weather.
It'll be what it'll be. What we can do is develop plans to sprint and to flex. We have a little bit of capacity within the system to be able to do that despite the constraints that we're dealing with this quarter. I should have said that in my comments that July production is going to be a little bit softer. That's because we've taken the opportunity through July whilst the road's being upgraded to basically focus on maintenance, not just at the plant, but also in the transshippers. We've been getting all the maintenance done, getting everything cleared up. That'll give us an opportunity to start to go hard at production over the next month or so.
Great. Just to follow up there, the sprint capacity, we're not talking there about transshippers six and seven in the next 12 months. We're just talking about, I suppose, bottlenecking or identifying incremental sprint capacity in what's there today.
Yeah, I should have been clearer. Apologies. We have sprint capacity at different parts through the chain, but in particular with the haulage constraints, we've got some temporary storage closer to the mine near the truck maintenance facility at Yarry, and that gives us a little bit more flexibility in the way that we move tons through the system whilst the road upgrade's happening.
Okay. All right. That's great. Thanks. My second question, just to the mining services margin, yeah, sort of top of the guidance range, but you did highlight that that's been impacted, a bit of a drag from the contractor trucks. Can you give us an indication of, as those trucks demobilize through December half, what sort of uplift might you be able to sort of bank from the mining services margins? Thanks, Mark.
Prefer to hold guidance on mining services margins to, you know, to the results in a month. Historically, it's been around $2. There have been lots of, yeah, as you've identified, there have been lots of impacts, lots of factors impacting over the last few months, including the contractor vehicles. The mining services business is Onslow plus a lot of other things, and there are a lot of other factors that feed into what those margins will be going forward. I know I'm hedging. I'm not giving you the answer that you want, but I'd prefer to hold the guidance commentary back on the margins until the end of August.
The next question comes from Rahul Anand. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, morning team. Thanks for the call. First question on Wodgina is a lot of them on the debt side have been asked. This year's recovery on my numbers, and I know you don't report this, is around 55%. You've talked about the HICs coming in and potentially taking it to 65% next year. That's a big lift. How long do these things take to ramp up properly and optimize and get to that 65% level? When do you actually expect that all of that impact could be felt in the cost base? That's the first one. I'll come back with the second.
Morning, Rahul. Nice to talk. I touched in my comments on the introduction of flexibility into our operations, and the introduction of those HICS cyclones has already had a significant impact. As the market would know, we have three trains constructed at Wodgina. We've been running two trains, sometimes three, depending on circumstances. We've been able to complete the installation of the HICS on one train, so we've got pretty good evidence of the impact that it's had on the performance of the train and the recoveries. We're expecting to have the third, the final cyclone installed by mid-August. We should see the benefit of those increased recoveries for the vast majority of the year. As I said, we're not guessing with the data that we're quoting here or the numbers we're quoting. We've actually seen it operating day to day.
Okay, brilliant. That's clear. Look, second question is just a bit of an extension from Loki's question, and I was going to ask you about the mining services margin, so I'll change it a bit. You were nearly at the top end of your next year guidance for Onslow in the month of June, right? Obviously, you'll have maintenance and other things, and you're using contractors at the moment. My question is, when do you expect to be 100% MinRes fleet being able to operate on the private haul road and not have any contractors or any use of the public highway? The reason I'm asking this really is because I want to understand when that contingent payment can be expected to come through from Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners. Thanks.
Nice question. I'll anticipate what you were going to ask on the mining services because I probably didn't answer it fully. When we gave guidance on the 210- 220, at that stage, there were a huge number of moving pieces around contractor trucks, volumes, costs of those contractors. We were mobilizing, continuing to mobilize a lot of vehicles and people. We took a view at the time, and we wanted to make sure we got it right. Over the balance of the quarter, we were able to actually identify some savings. In terms of Onslow and the $200 million and the full run rate and Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, I should say that we've got a fantastic relationship with the guys at Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners. They've been incredibly supportive of the business, and they're very keen for us to hit that threshold.
I'll try to answer it a little bit differently. We'll have a window to run it at hard before the cyclone season starts. Whether that's November or December, you can assume we'll be going for it before then. If for whatever reason we can't get there, we'll have another opportunity to do that in, sorry, in calendar year 2026 once the season is finished around the end of March. We see clear windows to go at it. What I was trying to say earlier, and I'll try to be a bit clearer, whilst the road is an impediment to us delivering that milestone, it doesn't preclude us from doing so. We just need to have a few things work in our favor, including the use of this sprint capacity whilst we're working with the upgrade. We expect to have the contractors off the road by the end of the quarter.
The next question comes from Lyndon Fagan. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Just wanted to ask whether any OpEx at Onslow was capitalized in the quarter.
Yeah, so what we've done, Lyndon, hi, is we've basically been using the standard cost approach, which we've disclosed throughout until June 30, 2023. There was a small amount capitalized, but not much. The actual costs are pretty much in line with what we reported. We are seeing the FOB costs come down.
Excellent. With the $1 billion of CapEx for next year, what would you say is the amount that's spent above staying business CapEx?
Sorry, I just missed it. Was that above sustaining CapEx? Was that the question?
Yeah, just trying to get a sense of what the sustaining component of that $1 billion is.
Yeah, the qualification is that I still have to take the new board through all of this and get it all finalized for guidance. As we think about it today, and I've obviously got a basis for saying this because I've put the comments out there, about $500 million of it's sustaining. The big portion of that is to first strip it to about $285 million. That's as of current mine plans, but mine plans will be reworked a number of times between now and the end of next month, and it's an opportunity for us to try and take some tons out.
One of the areas that we're looking at trying to pull tons out is in lithium, again, with Mount Marion in particular, and just trying to make sure we do that in a way that leaves us with the flexibility to operate into the future, which we will do.
The next question is from Kate McCutcheon. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, Mark. Consensus is looking at iron ore below the $100 a tonne level that you spoke to, that MinRes had locked in a floor price hedging, I guess. In terms of modeling those revenues, can you please give us a sense of those volumes and the tenure of that floor for those hedges?
Sure, Kate. Sorry, volume's a little bit low, but I'm pretty clear that I got your question. In terms of the hedging, what we've done is we've moved to put a floor under realized prices for this half, effectively. If you think about it for this half, and what we've done is we've layered it in at different maturities between now and the end of the calendar year and different volumes. The essence of it is to put a floor of between $99 and $100, depending on the zero-cost collar. The actual percentage of volume, we're targeting to go up to a third, but we're not there yet. It'll be less than that. If the prices come back, then we'll lock some more in. At the moment, it would be between 1 and 1.5 million tons at that sort of price.
Perfect. That answers my question on that. The May 2027 bonds, I assume that window for refi is September. Is there anything you can say around that rate that we could expect those to be refied at based on what we know now, or any collar around that?
The window basically runs within 135 days of year-end when you've got fresh financials. It basically starts at the end of August, and it'll take us through to mid-November. Then it opens again at the end of February next year when we do our next set of financials. You can go outside of that period, but it's a little bit more complicated. In terms of rates and so on, what I would do is refer you to the way the bonds are priced at the moment. They're all trading above par. They're trading quite tightly. Generally, when you go to the market, effectively, you raise a new bond in this case to repay the old bond. You might expect to pay a small premium for new issuance.
I think if we step back for a moment, and we've talked about this for a while, the credit markets have been supporting MinRes through a period of significant capital investment and project development. They understand that what Onslow is about is transforming the business for decades to come with better quality earnings. I think as the market starts to digest the news out of today, our confidence in terms of going forward and the strength of the performance through June, I would hope that subject to what the external market's doing, that rates continue to tighten. If you were to ask me what would the cost be today, it would probably be about 8.5%, but it could be tighter.
The next question is from Matthew Frydman. Please go ahead.
Sure. Thanks. Morning, Mark, Chris, and Mel. Can I ask another one on mining services? Obviously, you've had a discussion there on the margins. You called out strong external volume growth in the quarter. Are you able to expand on that at all, Mark? Maybe give a bit more context on whether that's from existing contracts or new contracts, and I guess whether those opportunities for volume growth extend into FY 2026. Thanks.
Yeah, morning, Matt. This is the jewel in the crown in this business. It keeps performing really well. The way I would position it is, and I sort of touched on it in one of the earlier responses, there are lots of different components now to this business in terms of different projects, different contracts, different clients. The best way to think about it is that the market positioning remains incredibly strong. The level of inquiry remains incredibly strong. The level of awareness of the services that we can bring continues to increase year on year. We have a unique set of capabilities markets appreciating. The performance with the clients this year has been really strong in terms of delivery. The clients have been able to give us the feed into the assets. We've been able to process it.
It's been strong across all those contracts for the first time that I've seen across all of them. Historically, there's been some that have been up and down. What I was talking about there was consistency. In terms of going forward, we haven't guided on tons for 2026. We're still looking through that. In part, that's because some of the tons that go into the guidance relate to deferred strip and the like. We're moving around with mine plans. We could strip quite a few tons out of some of the operations. The Pilbara, for example, in 2026 is going to have less deferred strip. Marion will have less deferred strip than we did in 2025 and so on.
I know I'm not giving you a hard number yet, but I'm trying to give you a sense as to how I think about it and the business opportunities for that mining services operation.
No, I understand. Thanks, Mark. I guess your commentary there is suggesting that certainly, at least from an external contract perspective, that you're still constructive on volume growth in that part of the business. Maybe secondly, if I can ask on the Wodgina performance in the quarter, and obviously, again, you've already spoken through the expected recovery improvements looking forward, but clearly a pretty strong step up in production during the quarter, and you've related that back to the plant performance and also the feed quality. I guess in terms of the mine sequencing and the ore quality that's being presented to the plant, is that now a fairly repeatable performance going forward? Is the mine in a better place in terms of delivering higher quality feed? Again, is that likely to be sustainable in coming quarters? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the question. If I think back 12 months ago, I was having to explain to you and your peers the fact that we'd identified a gap in our understanding of the ore body. We'd had to drill 90-odd extra holes to try to consolidate our understanding. I think I said in my comments earlier that we've progressed well now through stage two, and it's just, you know, it's just pure ore, and it's going through the plant very, very well. What I was trying to say is at Wodgina, we move through different stages as we develop. We're going to, in 2026, we're going predominantly out of stage three, which we don't have to open it up. It's there, but the upper levels will see some narrower veins, some risk of increased dilution, and so on, just through the early stages.
All I'm trying to do is temper expectations that it's going to be one for one or just drag right. When I say that, this plant and the way that it's recovering now is set up very, very well, and it is going to perform very well this new financial year.
The next question is from Rob Stein. Please go ahead.
Hi team, thanks for the update. Just quickly on Wodgina along current theme, you know, the production outweighed shipments. Was that a strategic decision to withhold to sort of seek a better pricing environment, and can we expect that to result in a working capital adjustment next quarter? I've got to follow up just on CapEx and the balance sheet.
Yeah, I think the answer is that in terms of shipping and working capital at Wodgina, we basically try to time the ships to go when production's, when the stockpile's there, when the ore's available. Sometimes there's a delay up there depending on access to the wharf, which can have a little bit of an impact, but not significant. I don't think you should be factoring any sort of material working capital movement at Wodgina over the next quarter or six months.
Sorry, just to follow up, you know, just looking at the cost performance of the assets, it was a surprise across the board. In what way was that facilitated by a build in the stripping and the like? I note that your CapEx number was also a beat as well. Just trying to get a handle on how sustainable some of those cost out initiatives are, just for the forecast going forward.
Yeah, it's a great question. The CapEx was more a timing thing. There was a little bit of element of strip that came out of the forecast that we thought we were going to spend, but it was more a timing thing on a chunk of the Onslow spend. In terms of generally, if I think about the cost performance, we've talked about cost performance for almost 12 months now, and you know that we've taken lots of heads out of the business all the way through. We've changed the rosters. We've reduced dig fleets. We've resequenced. We've actually developed an even greater sophistication with the mine planning in terms of the technologies that we're using that are giving us better insights and are able to refine more quickly the planning. It's more iterative, and we're getting great results from it.
That's not to say that we're kicking the can down the road and we're going to have problems next year or the year after. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that we're able to identify the best way to optimize the extraction of the ore, and we're doing that coupled with the focus on taking costs out of the direct costs out of the operations. I've given you some hints around how I'm thinking about costs for Wodgina and Marion in the new year. I don't see it going back to where it was 12 months ago. I'm just trying to encourage you guys not to just drag right, and I'll use that phrase again, and I don't mean to be flippant about it, but hopefully I've given you a little bit of a sense as to how I'm thinking about it.
The next question is from Ben Lyons. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Similar theme to the previous question, please, Mark. Obviously, you've made several very high-level comments about how the business is broadly responding to low lithium prices. I guess similar to Rob's question, my intuition is that when you change the mine plans and you further high-grade these assets by reducing the strip ratio, clearly at some future point, there comes a period of having to catch up on that stripping. Can we put some numbers around the strip ratios expected for fiscal 2026, for example, or even more broadly, when you're expecting the next major cutbacks at each of the assets? Thank you.
Morning, Ben. Nice to talk. We can provide that when we give the full guidance next month. There are various aspects to cost performance. Strip is just one, and recovery is another. I'd encourage the market to think about how well those assets have performed in terms of recoveries, particularly Wodgina. We've really got that plant tuned well now, and that's had a significant impact on performance. In terms of stripping generally, Marion's a little bit different, as you know, because of the expectation that at some point in the future we'll go underground. We started that work. We put it on pause 12 months ago to preserve capital. We're very conscious that we need to be developing the mine to be able to continue to go underground at the right time when the market allows us.
Take on board what you've asked, and we'll make sure that we come back and deal with that through the year-end process with guidance.
Okay. Thanks, Mark. I do appreciate the disclosure of the recoveries and look forward to that disclosure continuing in the future. Second question, maybe just a housekeeping one on the accounts. Can you possibly remind us of the outstanding balance of the loan to RDG and whether you're expected to take some kind of provision over that facility with the fiscal 2025 result? Secondly, just some clarity on where the assets financing that you've alluded to will come through in the accounts, whether that sort of pops into investing in cash flows or financing cash flows. Thank you.
Sorry, Ben, I heard the first question, which was around RDG loan balance and possible accounting adjustments. I'm sorry, you're a little bit quiet at our end, probably not at your end. Would you mind just repeating the second one? I just couldn't pick it up. I'm sorry.
Yep, yep, no worries. The asset financing that you've alluded to, which I think was about $400 million in fiscal 2025 and a further $150 million, I think you said, for fiscal 2026. Where can we expect to see that showing up in the accounts, please? Does it come through investing cash flows or financing cash flows? I assume there's also an interest component applicable to those facilities. Thanks.
Sorry, Ben. The answer on RDG is the RDG loan. You can have a look at the accounts from December. They're lodged. It may have gone up a little bit in the half, but you know that'll give you a broad sense of it. In terms of the asset finance, you know that shows up both on the, obviously, on the asset side and on the debt side. It does go into the gross debt number.
The next question is from Mitch Ryan. Please go ahead.
Morning, Mark and Tim. Sorry, Mark, I just didn't think you answered Ben's question there. You talked to his balance sheet, but where does it come through in the cash flows?
Sorry, I missed his question. It comes through on the cash flows in the financing component. You can see it through the financing line.
Okay. Thanks. My question just related to Kensborough and the strip ratio. They're obviously quite low at 0.5. Do we start to see that? How do we think about that as Kaito Bore comes online? Does that increase? Does the strip ratio that you're talking to include or exclude the clay ores that you're sort of stockpiling for when the Benny plant comes online?
In terms of the strip generally, it's one of the features of Kensborough that differentiates it from the other iron ore operations up there. It is low. We expect that to continue for some time. I don't expect the satellite deposits. The satellite deposits will contribute about a third to the production out of Kensborough. I don't expect the activity at Upper Cane and Kaito Bore to materially impact that number. In terms of the clay, I actually don't know the answer to that. I would assume that it's all factored in, but we can take that offline and come back to you and confirm that.
Appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.
Thanks.
The next question is from Jon Sharp, and if I could please ask that you speak up. Thank you.
Yeah, morning, Mark and team. Just one question from me. Production seems to be progressing well at Onslow, but logistics has always been the higher risk constraint there with the potential of becoming stockpile bound if haulage or portage delayed. By my rough estimates, you're carrying around 2 million tons in stockpile across the system, and please correct me if I'm wrong there. In terms of capacities, my numbers are you have about 1.5 million tons at the mine, 350,000 - 400,000 tons at Yilgarn hub, and then 200,000 tons at port. Again, correct me if I'm wrong there, but can you just tell us how you're managing this and whether it's being managed fairly tightly, please?
Yeah, great question. You've got the general thrust of it, correct? The shed at the port does hold that 200,000, and Yarry does have the capacity up to about 400,000. It doesn't have 400,000 in it today, but it has the potential to be at that sort of volume, and that's one of the levers that we have in terms of sprint capacity and so on. In terms of the way that we manage it is ultimately we just slow down crushing if we need to and mining. Obviously, there's an efficiency consideration with that, which we need to be cognizant of. We do have that flexibility because we're integrated all the way through. Yeah, we manage it at the front end that way.
Okay, thank you. I'll leave it there.
Thank you. The next question is from Kaan Peker. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mark, Mel, and Chris. One question on FY 2026 CapEx, just to go back to Glyn's question. Of the $1 billion, is that a gross or a net number? Does that include the $150 million in asset financing? How much is expected to be spent on the lithium business? Does that include a flight plant at Mount Marion? We'll circle back with a second.
Hi, Kan. The number that I quoted was a net number. In terms of lithium, we have not allowed for a flight plant at Mount Marion in our spend for FY 2026. That's something that we continue to monitor, though.
Sure. Thank you. The second one was if you could give maybe an indication of how many kilometers of the haul road had been upgraded. I think from memory at site, it was around 60 at the end of May. Do you have that number off the top of your head?
I think we say about 60% in the document. That's about 90K. I don't have the precise kilometers, but I can get that for you, KaaFn.
Sure. That's perfect. Finally, just on the contractor haulage, would you have an indication or average cost per kilometer tons of that?
No, I don't. I'm sorry. I know what we pay across different parts of our operation, but I can't actually give you that number. It's not because I won't, it's because I just don't know it. I'm sorry. Again, we can take that offline with you.
Thank you. That concludes today's call. Thanks for your time and have a great day. Please reach out to the MinRes team if you have any follow-up questions. You may now disconnect.