Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Mineral Resources June 2023 Quarterly Sell-Side Analyst Call. Your speakers today are Chris Ellison, Managing Director; Mark Wilson, Chief Financial Officer; Joshua Thurlow, Chief Executive, Lithium; James Bruce, EGM Corporate Development; and Chris Chong, Investor Relations Manager. 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 tab, type your question in the box towards the top of the screen, and hit the arrow symbol to send. To ask a live audio question, press the Request to Speak button at the bottom of the broadcast window. Follow the instructions on screen to join the queue.
If you prefer to ask your question via the phone today or have any issues connecting via the web, dial-in details can be found by selecting the Help, Join by a Phone button within the audio interface or on the homepage under Asking Audio Questions. Text questions can be submitted at any time. The audio queue is now open. I'll now hand over to the Minerals team.
Thanks very much. Hi, good morning, everyone. Chris Ellison speaking. Look, I'm just gonna run through a few of the highlights of the quarter. I'm gonna give a little bit of an explanation around where we're heading in terms of strategy on our lithium business. I'll make a few comments about where I think the market's sort of heading. Mark Wilson and I have joined this morning because obviously, a lot of changes in the business, and the business is moving very quickly. We're doing a lot of development work. We're growing very quickly. We just wanted to make sure that everyone's kind of clear on what our strategy is. Believe it or not, some of you guys, we do have a strategy, and we've had one for about 31 years.
Look, I'll kick off. First of all, I just want to mention, we're building out the Onslow Iron Project, 35 million tons nameplate capacity. We had a tragic loss of life up there recently. One of our contractors that we brought in to lay all the bitumen and asphalt on the runway of our new airport at Cairns Port. Loss of their young people, and our focus has been sort of wrapping around the contractor and their team and supporting them and all of the people, friends, colleagues on site. I went up with our senior management, our medical staff, psychologist. I was up there at the crack of dawn the following morning, and we were there to support our people, and we've done that moving forward.
I'm in constant contact with the family and his wife, and we're supporting them financially. The funeral is actually on Friday morning, so there'll be a group of us attending that. One of those things that's memorable for forever. Investigations are ongoing. Police and the mines department are handling that. We've done our own internal, and that'll take some time to get the information, but when we do, we'll certainly let everyone know. Our safety in the MinRes business has always been at the top end of the mining industry. Our first quarter of this calendar year, we had a TRIR of 2.21. And we've reduced it slightly for the June quarter, we're down at 2.18.
It's the sort of results that you generally expect to see in factories and controlled environments, not where you got seven to 250 people with rocks. Okay, look, I'll just move through. Mining services is performing well. We've had another good quarter in the mining services. It was reported, I think, in the first quarter of this calendar year, that there was a drop-off in the mining services. It wasn't really reported properly. We simply had high productivity in one of the projects that we had a lot of equipment on, and we got that finished earlier than the client expected, and we're able to transfer most of the equipment through to Wodgina, which I'll talk about shortly.
A crushing plant during the quarter for an external contract, we've extended 1 of the big haulage contracts of the jumbo road trains for another couple of years. This year, in total, just to remind everyone, I said, I think at the end of last year, over the next couple of years, I expected to bring in about 5 new external crushing contracts. So far, we're into July, we've got three in hand. Mining services also finished the Mount Marion upgrade. There's some more work to do down there. They're tidying up on the commissioning and ramping up. We've got a huge demand for these 330 ton jumbo road trains that we've got, that's sort of right across the country.
We're building them as fast as we can. All of them are being built here in Australia. All the trailers are being built right here in Perth. You know, I mentioned a few years ago, everything that we were doing offshore, we're pulling all our manufacturing back into Australia, and we've really got it here. Not all of it, but most of it. We run the largest workshops, probably in Australia now, and we're about to double them over the next 12 months. Iron ore business is going pretty well. We've set around guidance. Had a few issues up at Utah Point and Port Hedland, cyclone, and they had some issues up there with the ship loader, which hurt us a little bit. Pricing's going reasonably well.
The low-grade ore is only around about 10% or 11% on discount, so we're very happy with that. Costs at the moment are running at the up end, upper end of guidance. There's some pressure out there, as the whole world knows, around supply chain, labor costs, and everything you can imagine, but we're handling that pretty well, and we've always managed our costs well, and we continue to do so. Copped a bit of criticism a while ago. We drilled one hole and got one of the best onshore discoveries. The second hole was a fizzer. We then went down and done North Erregulla Deep-1 . That appears to be better than Lockyer, as good as Lockyer was.
About 10:00 P.M. last night, we were down in Lockyer Three, we call it, about 4.6 Ks down, and we hit another load of gas. Unsure how much is there. Obviously, a lot of work to do around measuring it, but about 17 meters of pay zone and no water down the hole. It's gonna be a high quality producing well. Three out of four wells. If we keep that up, we will, we'll be more than happy. Lithium business, running pretty well. I mean, but we're in a growth phase, and I think everyone needs to recognize that. We doubled the plant nearly down at Mount Marion. We've done a lot of work in getting the Wodgina site restarted after it was shut down in 2018- 2019.
We're playing catch up on both the sites. We've got two trains running up at Wodgina. It'll take us to the end of this year till we can feed them 100% with fresh rock. Train three will be coming online, I think we've said this before, around December, January. It'll probably take about 6 months to ramp that up and get fresh feed to it. Same is happening down at Marion. A lot of rock to move down there to play catch up and get at that fresh ore. About 80 pieces of yellow goods down there and 22 drill rigs. We're moving it as fast as we can. It'll take us till about Christmas time till we're getting good, fresh feed coming at Mount Marion.
Again, same at Wodgina, about 100 pieces of gear we've got up on the hill. We're literally taking the top off a mountain. Once we get that done, of course, the strip ratio will be down to the life of mine average. The costs will come down substantially, so they're adding a lot of costs per ton of spodumene going out the door. That's why we're unusually. By the time we get through to the middle of next year, about June next year, I mean, we'll have fresh feed going to all the plants, and we'll probably have some more news flow for you around Wodgina. Just to touch on a few of the things that we've done over the last period.
When the price of spod comes from sort of AUD 8,000 to AUD 4,000 a ton, it's always followed by carbonate and hydroxide. Sometimes that falls even quicker. We had an arrangement with Ganfeng. It got to a point where we're simply better off just selling the spod. Just for those of you that don't understand, if it's running around 6% spod, you need about 8 tons to convert it into a ton of hydroxide. You know, if you're getting 4,000 a ton for 8 tons, $32,000, and if you're selling carbonate for $36,000-$38,000 or hydroxide, you can see that you're really not if you own the plant, you would be forced to keep running it. We have the advantage that we don't, so we can go wherever we get the best return.
Great partnership with Ganfeng. We had that discussion with them and we just simply said, "We're gonna pause and not do that for the next sort of six or so months." If prices turn around, we'll be back doing it again. Generally, the lithium market out there is strong. The demand is generally stronger than supply. You don't just find a deposit and turn it on. If you, if you're finding deposits outside of Australia, you're sort of somewhere from eight to 12 years before you can get them permitted and get them online. In Australia, you know, three to four years to get them permitted. When you go build the supply chain out, there's probably another three or four years. Bringing lithium into the market is expensive. It takes a long, long time.
All of the approvals that are required from the TLOs, from the mines department, are getting harder and harder because it appears that half the people have disappeared off the planet, so it's just taking longer. The supply, in our view, is gonna lag demand going forward over the next sort of 5 years -7 years. The average lithium price we're sitting at the moment is around $40,000 a ton. You know, if you go back 3 or 4 years ago, we're extremely happy if we were getting $13,000 or $14,000 a ton for hydroxide. I mean, when we got to $1,000 a ton for spod, we thought that it was on a roll that wouldn't last.
I think supply-demand, if you have a look at that, and, always surprised with what the analysts come out. Goldman Sachs, I mean, you guys come out in 2021 and you thought that, spod was worth AUD 30,000 a ton. It was in fact, it was six times higher than that. Halfway through 2022, you expected hydroxide to be around AUD 48,000 a ton. It was actually one and a half times higher than that. 2023, you're talking about AUD 23,000 a ton, and we're sort of sitting at AUD 60,000. Next year, you're actually forecasting AUD 13,000. The Western world's demand, which lags behind China, it took the Western world quite a while to work out they needed to make electric cars and do power storage. They're getting onto it.
Over the next 12 months , 18 months , 24 months, we're gonna see a lot more vehicles coming out of the Western world, Europe, and the, and the U.S. As that demand is getting stronger and supply is getting tougher to get in the food chain, Goldman's, you're predicting AUD 13,000 a ton. I suggest if anyone wants to bet their house on Goldman's, they're gonna be a winner. Let's talk about the MARBL JV. A little bit of commentary out there, and I can see that there's a few out there that don't really understand the deal. We had an agreement with Albemarle, and we were able to amend it going back some time ago. Discussions were ongoing for quite some time. While those discussions are happening, the market is changing.
I mean, the market's changing pretty much every three months in the, in the mining industry, and we're able to react to those changes. Discussions with Albemarle got us to a point where we were lessening our involvement in China. For those of you that don't know, when Australia's trading with China, and Australia doesn't go along with some of the social decisions that are made in China, then they go and ban our coal. They ban our wine, which is not a big deal. We all enjoy that. They ban a whole bunch of stuff. They don't ban the U.S., and they don't play with the trade in the U.S. They're much too large, and it would affect them too much.
I mean, the risk for Australians in China is high, and we don't want to trap money in China, in capital. That's the first thing. The second thing is that the smart thing for us to do is if we can build some down-streaming here in Australia, I'm strong on wanting to do that. We're running a study on it. We don't exactly want to build hydroxide here. That is difficult, and it's expensive, but we can take our spodumene out to sulfate at 25%-30%, where we can get rid of a lot of the bulk. Our intention is we're gonna send that direct into Europe and the U.S. We're well advanced on discussions around that, and we want to have long-term contracts direct with the OEMs, and we're advanced on those discussions.
I mean, basically, I think the world's waking up, that, if you want surety of supply, you're gonna go and spend billions and billions of dollars on assembly lines to build cars. You've got to be able to go and have a deal direct with the owners of the rock. They're kind of starting to figure that out now. There's not a lot of value in having a contract with a battery manufacturer, because if they can't get the rock, then there is no surety of supply for the OEMs. It's really kind of simple. That's where we're heading. Having an interest down in Kemerton, because Albemarle was supplying the rock out of Greenbushes, most of the value was being captured in the rock.
Our return on investing capital down there diminished to a point where it didn't meet the hurdles, and it just simply had to go. It was a win-win for us and for Albemarle. They've got 100% of their site back, and they're expanding down there. We're not investing capital in China at the moment, and probably not at all. What we're going to do is we're gonna toll treat over there. For those of you that don't know, it's actually a little cheaper for us to toll treat with the tollers than it is for us to own our own plant. The Chinese are very good at being able to build a plant for a low cost. They're equally as good at being able to operate it. They've been doing it a long time. There's a lot of capacity sitting in China.
They simply go out and build plants without supply agreements. Currently, there's about 1.6 million tons of spod going into converters that is not gonna be heading in that direction within the next 18 months to 2 years. The two plants here in WA, all the spod coming out of Greenbushes, is going into China and getting toll treated. That'll come out as these plants ramp up in Kwinana and Kemerton, 800,000 tons there. There's at least two 50,000 ton plants that we know are getting built in China, and they'll be coming online over 12 months - 18 months. All that rock's currently, again, going to the toll treaters. That'll go to those owner-operated plants. There's gonna be a big shortage over there.
The market for us over the next couple of years as toll treaters, is going to be pretty good. The plants are all qualified. Why would I want to go out and try and just keep hiring people and growing, or growing the chemical business in a foreign country? It's really simple. The other thing that you may not realize, it's cheaper to build a plant in China in terms of capital value, no doubt about that. Probably about half what you can do it for in Australia if you're a normal mining company with no construction or design experience like we have.
We could actually go and buy a plant out of China, put it on a ship, bring it over here, and we can use the expertise we've got with our construction people and our design engineering office. We have for the last 25 years at least, we've designed and built every plant that we've got in the business. We even make our own cone crushers and jaw crushers nowadays. I mean, we have that in-house capability, and we have all our own mining. We can generally get it done for about less than half the capital costs that normal mining companies will spend when they go out and get those EPC companies that they hand their checkbook to. We can do that. As I said earlier, the risk, the geopolitical risk is too high for us.
The incentives through Europe and the U.S. are huge if we can take us there and if we're aligned with the U.S., huge incentives. We have been talking to the government, and my expectation is that I believe that the Federal Government will come to the party. They'll offer some help. They're very, very keen on trying to keep down-streaming in Australia, if it's possible. I mean, we're famous for being a one-trick pony, and we're primary diggers. We go dig the rock, put it on a strip, and sell it for a few hundred dollars a ton, and then Japan and others send it back to us for about AUD 50,000 a ton with a Toyota badge on it. We've got to get better at downstream, and we will.
I think I've probably said enough on that. Just a few comments that I wanna make around some of the comments that I've read lately that really sort of bother me a little bit. I mean, if you've never run a business, I mean, a business has got to make money. It's got to turn a profit. If it doesn't, you go broke. We're forever managing and looking at what we're doing. I mean, the market at the moment has been very focused on free cash flow and our balance sheet, rightfully so. None more than me on doing that. Ben Lyons, some of the comments you made recently are just, I mean, total rubbish. MinRes is the only one of the four large caps that's negative free cash flow over the next couple of years.
Well, I think I've said a number of times, I mean, our business, probably from end of 2020 through to end of calendar year 2024, is literally gonna double in size. 35 million tons of iron ore we're adding to the business. We're increasing production at Mount Marion. We're increasing production at Wodgina. The mining services business from 2022 to 2024 will again double. You know what the EBITDA is that it was making a year ago? It's gonna make double that in a couple of years' time, and I've said that a lot. What else can I say? If the business is doubling, we fund the growth internally. We never go out and ask our shareholders to reinvest back in the business. We think that's the management's job, and we do that. We've done that for the last 17 years.
I had one small raise once. I was reminded of a while ago for— I don't know what it was. I can't even remember. It was tiny. It was about 12 years or 13 years ago. I have used, where I have to, script to be able to bring shareholders like Norwest Energy on board. They made it plain to me that they wanted to be around, and they wanted to enjoy any benefits going forward, which I was happy with. We've done that. Our balance sheet since we listed, so 17 years heading into 18 years, has always been very strong. We have always paid attention to it. We're one of the very few companies that two things I pay attention to, re-return on invested capital and the total shareholder return.
Making sure if I invest money, I get at least 20% return, with average 21%. I've also said over the last 12 months that my aim is to take that out to 25% and better. By the time we get to the end of next year, all of the cash that we got sitting out there that's not earning a living at the moment, in iron ore and lithium, that comes online, I expect that return on invested capital to bounce up north of 25%. Total shareholder return, 33% average over 17 years. Making sure I invest properly and get the right return, and making sure that I am paying my shareholders, both capital growth and a dividend, 33% over 17 years. Not too many that have done better than that, and you can set it.
I don't go and milk the shareholders for money. Look, please bear that in mind when you pick up the pen and you make some of those comments, because a lot of them are simply unfounded, and they're damaging to our business. I think that's probably enough, James.
Yep.
Throw it open. If you've got any questions, we'd welcome them.
Thank you, Chris. 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'll then hear a beep indicating your microphone is live. Our first question today comes from Kaan Peker from RBC. Kaan, please go ahead after the beep.
Good morning, Chris and team. Just a couple of questions, if that's okay. Just wanted to get a bit of understanding around, you know, how you plan to realize value from downstream, and how the conversations have changed with downstream partners. I know Albemarle and Ganfeng are there, but is there any other parties that are currently in conversations with? I'll circle back with a second. Thanks.
Yeah, the situation's changed an awful lot over the last six months. We used to I'd sit and look at my business every couple of years and just figure out where we should be steering it. I'm doing it quarterly basis now, because it changes that quick. If you have a look at the incentives that have come out. Well, let me go back a step. If we go back, it's only about three and a half years ago, four years ago, most of the car manufacturers were gonna dabble in electric cars. Covid came along, it changed the world. You know, we're reporting on our ESGs and everything now, like we report on our safety. Four years ago, we weren't doing that. This is all to do with climate change.
This is the first time the world's actually got serious on it. The Chinese got very, very serious on making electric cars much, much quicker than the Western world. Detroit and Europe are sort of sitting back, going, "Yeah, we're interested, but not really." Now, they've figured out that at least half their production has to be electric around between 2030 and 2035. I mean, there are a whole bunch of different parts of the world that are saying, "We're not gonna register up to 2035." That's a dynamic that has changed rapidly. The incentives that are coming out from the U.S. on anyone that's willing to invest capital, and they're aligned with the U.S., so you don't actually have to be in the U.S.. I mean, it's better if you are.
There, Europe, we're expecting a lot of incentives to come out of Europe, and the Australian government is also trying hard. The Australian government obviously doesn't have the balance sheet of the U.S. or of Europe, but they are trying hard. We're talking to them. When you go into China, and most of these don't realize this, you go build a plant in China, that's fine. Once you start operating it's far more expensive than operating in Australia, and that's where the real cost is. These plants are gonna be running for 40 years or 50 years plus. You go into China, you got, like, 13% VAT on your spod. You've got to make a minimum profit over there.
If you sell your hydroxide in China, you pay the Chinese tax, obviously, but then your money's caught there for a year, and when you bring it out, if you bring it from China direct to Australia, there's another 10% withholding tax that disappears. If you send your hydroxide out of China and sell it to Europe, there's another 14.5% VAT. Add all that up, and you've got to operate. That's half the reason we're not gonna be in China. I mean, if I operate here in Australia, we know what the taxes are, we know what the quality workforce we've got here. That's where we're gonna be, and we're gonna partner up with Europe and North America. Much more economic for us. Stability going forward.
I mean, anyone out there right now that wants to buy hydroxide, they want it to come from Australia. That's their first choice in the world because it's ethical and they know that environmentally and the way we look after our people, we do it right. We're a sought-after product, and we want to keep that sanitized if we can. Hope that answered your question.
Sure. Thanks to you, Chris. The second one's on Wodgina. Just wanted to confirm, you're expecting clean ore, Wodgina for train one and train one in 1 QCY 2024, and then sort of a six-month ramp up for all three trains having clean ore? Just the confidence around getting that clean ore in 1Q, and sort of moving that top of the mountain, as you, as you sort of alluded to, you know, is that 40 million tons, and is additional equipment required to achieve that? Thanks.
Yeah. Look, well, right now, again, the reason our costs are elevated on the ton of spod going out is about 80 pieces of yellow gear down in Mount Marion, about 100 and a bit sitting up on the mountain in Wodgina. High degree of confidence. We know how much rock we're moving out there every 24 hours. We've obviously built a bit of fat in so that we don't get it wrong again on when we're gonna get fresh rock. Highly confident, trains one and two will be 100% fed with fresh rock by end of this calendar year. By June of next year, train three will be fed with fresh rock, so be in good shape there, and, we're starting to talk about, what we're gonna do with train four, and we're thinking about what approvals look like for trains five and six. One other thing I'd just like to add.
Sure, thanks.
Sorry, I'd just like to add one other thing. Where we've rejigged the joint venture, what we used to call the MARBL Joint Venture with Albemarle, I mean, I just want everyone to know, it's a real win-win situation for both sides. I mean, they got Kemerton back. They know what they're doing in China. We know where we want to be. They're American, we're Australian. They got more horsepower and longevity in China. They're not putting too much capital at risk. The partnership with both Ganfeng and Albemarle is incredibly strong. One thing MinRes is good at is that we grew up operating in others' backyards. BHP, Rio, Hancock. I mean, we are good at managing and operating joint ventures, but the partnership with Albemarle is incredibly strong.
Right now, I mean, they are screaming for rock in China. There's no pushback on us. It's simply, we've got to get out. We've brought those plants online quickly, and we've got to get out the ore body. Albemarle need more rock in China. I read a comment this morning that there's some potential that Albemarle is pushing back and not taking Wodgina volumes to process into chemicals and, I don't know, horseshit.
Yes. Thanks, appreciate it. Just a follow-up on the Wodgina approvals. I just wanted to see if train three and four approvals have fully been obtained.
Train four's sorry, train three was approved a long time ago. What actually happens, train three is actually operating now, so we're rotating the three trains. We might have one and three running or two and one, and we're rotating them, and we're doing a lot of work up there. We've actually got Curtin University engaged. We've got a whole range of different things happening, and we're incrementally increasing the recoveries. A lot of work going on there, and we've got the luxury while we're ramping up of being able to swap those trains around and experiment, is, one of them is a big lab.
Well, thanks. I'll pass it on. Congratulations on the quarter. Cheers.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Paul Young , from Goldman Sachs. Paul, please go ahead after the beep.
Chris, good to connect and hope you're well. Chris, a question on Wodgina to begin with. Just a reflection. Listen, I really appreciate the passion and so wind the clock back to, I think it was 2017 when I was at Wodgina with yourself, and that's when you just picked up Wodgina for, what it was, AUD 50 million. It's been a great success story for the company. At that time, you were talking about selling out 50% of the asset. You know, obviously Albemarle came into, into the fold there, and I think you sold that original 50% for AUD 1.2 billion.
we've had a lot of changes to the joint venture since then, you know, in and out of chemicals, so to speak, and now, you know, Albemarle pays you another AUD 600. Overall, you know, give or take with, I know there's been a lot of working cap and CapEx movements, but you'll end up getting AUD 1.8 billion pre-capital gains tax for your 50% of Wodgina. In reflection, I mean, how do you - all said and done and how this has played out, do you think this has been a great, good transaction to Min Res?
Yeah. Hi, Paul. Look, thanks for that, too. I forgot we were standing up on that rock in 2017. Yeah, it's been outstanding. I mean, there's nothing that I've done that I'd regret, 'cause it happens then. I mean, we had a market cap of AUD 2.16 billion for Wodgina back in 2018, and the whole world thought it was out of control and the price was ridiculous. You know, I mean, I wouldn't part with it now for $15 billion, but no, it's been successful. I picked the right partner, no doubt about that. We've got expertise in mining, hard rock, designing, and building plants, which is exactly what Albemarle wanted there on the downstream. What I've done, we've basically gone from where we were, 60/40 to 50/50, you know?
The other key thing that we did, we've taken the marketing back. When the spod comes out the gate of Wodgina, we can send it wherever we like now. Before it was all locked in the joint venture. Having the marketing and the offtake, I think the offtake's worth more than the mine, because that's all the OEMs want. Yeah, look, I'm really, really happy with where we've got to. Just spent nine days up in London with Kent Masters and his team, and we really sat down and we really got some good plans for where we're going in the future. Look, we'll be able to publish them somewhere down the track once we sort of get them in writing.
Yeah. Okay, thanks, Chris. The next question is on the downstream strategy. It's, to be honest, it's hard to actually ascribe any value to the downstream at this point, just based on, I guess, the history and track record of what we've seen outside of China. China knocks these things up in nine months, commissions them, ramps them up in two months, and we struggle here in Australia. There's a range of factors there which you know about with respect to understand and bad design and COVID impacts, et cetera. You know, you've been very good at crushing, mining, screening, et cetera, more on the upstream. I guess the challenge I've got is that, you know, I mean, this, the strategy of Wodgina has changed so many times.
I mean, how do we actually back you guys to actually put a sulfide process in and actually put the kiln and the leaching and then all that back end in place? You know, until we actually see you align yourself with a, you know, EPCM firm that actually has the credentials. I'm just really struggling to see how we actually back this new strategy.
Yeah, Paul, don't get caught up in too much detail and try and figure out how to make a Meccano set. I mean, our job here, we're simply here to make money. I mean, we happen to have lithium and iron ore and gas and all that stuff to do it, but I'm focused on return on capital, shareholder return. I keep saying that. I'm gonna say for the next two and a half, three years, we'll be sending all the spod we make out of Marion and Wodgina. It'll all be going to China, and it'll be going into toll treaters. The only subtle difference is that we don't have capital and own the plants up there. Why would I want to?
I mean, the average plant up there, those guys up there for AUD 150 million-AUD 180 million, they can build 50,000 tons if it's Chinese branded. I go up there with that capital value, and all I want is to toll treat. They're struggling to find rock to toll treat because most of them have built plants, and they don't have. It's crazy to own. You guys get carried away, and you go, "Oh, everyone owns their own plants. That's the only way to go." Well, you know, if you want to take a goddamn taxi, Paul, you don't own it. You know what I mean? It's much cheaper to get in the. And that's the case with us tolling in China.
I mean, we can put it into high-quality plants, plug it in, pay them a fee, get it out the back end, and then we can sell it in China, or we can pay the 14.5% VAT and send it out of China. Right now, that's sort of your only choices. I'm certainly not gonna go out there. I can go out there and buy some plants if I want for AUD 200 million. I could have 50,000 tons. For AUD 400 million, I can have 100,000 tons, but as I say, I don't wanna be doing it in China. You will see a couple of years down the track, remember, it was 2000—s ix years ago, Paul, we stood up at Wodgina, and about three years from now, we'll be standing on plant, got nothing to do with China, and we'll be making more money.
Yeah.
We will make more money. I've saved over AUD 1 billion of cash going into China. Get your head around this and do this in your spreadsheet. My sales will go up, my bottom line will be more, and I got no capital invested. What do you think I'm gonna do with that capital that I've saved? I'm gonna go and put it somewhere where I'm gonna get 25% return plus.
Yeah, Chris, so that, yeah, again, to the point, it's all about a spreadsheet and assumptions. I just think that you need to stay upstream and not take the risk on of a downstream investment. No matter how many governments and OEMs wanna throw money at you, all they want is cheap end product. You've built this business over the last 20 years, staying upstream, and that's probably just what I'd like to say.
Okay, well, let me just remind you of something, too. When I built my very first crushing plant 31 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. We're the largest crushing contractor on the planet. Can you believe that? I mean, I'm adding more and more tons. We've added 30 million tons this calendar year so far to our crushing alone. We've just built the largest haul trucks, off-highway haul trucks, on the planet. 330 ton, they move. When we built Wodgina and we built Mount Marion, we'd never, ever built a spod plant in our life. We had no idea what we're doing, there was no EPCM contractors out there, still to this day, that knows how to build a hard rock spod plant. That's because the industry is so young.
We have the best spod plant on the planet sitting at Wodgina, designed and built by MinRes. Believe me, if I want to go and do sulfate, it is not hard. It's not rocket science. There's actually one design engineer sitting in China that has actually designed every hydroxide and carbonate plant in China. We've got them on the payroll, and they're doing the design on ours, and all we need to do is pick it up, put it on a ship, bring it out here, and concrete it to the ground. Paul, I can do it. It's not that difficult. I mean, let me frighten you even more. Not too far down the track from now, I'm gonna be building and operating a gas plant.
Okay, thanks. Thanks, Chris. I'll leave it there. I'm holding the phone here. I'll pass it on.
Okay. Well, next time we're going somewhere, and two years from now, I want you to be with me.
I'll be there, guaranteed. Send me an invite.
It'll be there. Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. The next question is from Kate McCutcheon from Citi. Kate, please go ahead after the beep.
Hi. Good morning, Chris. It's good to have you on the call this morning. I just wanted to clarify the strategy for downstream integration. Peers are talking about the gain being speed to market in offtakes for the chemicals. Your comments are interesting. Can I clarify, firstly, you said you were seeing OEMs interested in the midstream products, so presumably further refining themselves. Secondly, is midstream an interim strategy or a final strategy per se, or it's subject to some of those moving parts, like the government's appetite to help out?
Yeah. Hi, look, thanks. Good questions. Our intent and what we're aiming to try and do is instead of, if you go, we send rock to China at 6%. What we want to do is we want to refine that a little bit more on the mine site. We want to take that to about 30%. That gets rid of most of the bulk, and we've got the tailings facilities on site to clean that up and do that, reduce our shipping costs, and unlike hydroxide, it doesn't have a shelf life. It'll last forever. Hydroxide's got a shelf life of probably six-ish months or a bit longer. We take 30% and sitting over in Germany and the U.K., they have chemical parks over there, and a lot of the industry in those parks has fallen over.
Steelmaking, urea, anything that's energy intensive, because the cost of energy, as we all know, has gone through the roof, and they're going broke. We've had substantial interest in being involved in those hydroxide plants sitting in those parks. At the moment, the discussion is that we wouldn't be putting any capital in them. We'd be getting a shareholding. We could toll free through there, and all our contracts and long-term offtakes, we will have direct with the OEMs. That is our intention, and unless something better comes along, that's what we'll be doing.
Kate, it's Mark Wilson here. Good morning. There's one point I'd like to add, which I think is probably being this market. Chris alluded to it earlier. With the revised Albemarle deal, we're completely free now to deal with all of our spod in whichever way we wish. There isn't another player in the market that has access to that flexibility, and it's that flexibility that I think the market's missing, because the demand is there, and we have choice. We have choice now to set our own destiny, and that's what Josh and the team are working through.
Yeah. Okay, just a quick one on Mount Marion. Any comments on the driver well, that. Are you still thinking about a 50/50 split between low-grade and high product on high-grade product moving forward on that asset? Is that just dependent on getting more fresh ore?
Good day, Kate. It's Joshua Thurlow. Yes, that's right. It'll be a 50/50 split going forward, as we move through different parts of the body, that will change slightly, but generally, it's a high-quality product. It's coarse. It's quite unique in the market. Ganfeng like it, It works well for their plants, and they produce a good end product from the Mount Marion 50/50 split, so we'll keep that up.
Okay. Thanks, Josh. My final question, thank you for breaking the news on Lockyer-3 on the call. How are you thinking about that business now? Any comments you can talk to around how you're thinking about the size of an operation, timelines for that? Any other comments?
Yeah, sure. I mean, look, we started out, I like that Perth Basin. I thought it had a lot of potential, and it was underexplored, and it turned out to be right. I mean, our capital in getting into there has been pretty low. We spent a little money trading shares for Norwest Energy . I'm very happy. I was happy with the outcome at the time and happy now. What am I thinking? Originally, we wanted to be self-sufficient and be able to control our energy costs going forward for the next 20 or 30 years. We've done that in spades, but we've now got a lot of gas. What I think I'll be doing is we'll be building a plant up there, and we've already started a study on it.
We've got external engineering engaged. We pretty much know what size we want to build, and we're gonna get that underway. Probably come out towards the end of this calendar year with exactly what we're gonna do on that. It's going to add a huge amount of value to the business, and it'll be welcomed by the WA government. They're a bit concerned about gas supply going forward, and I think that's gonna be a big help in balancing it. Yeah, look, I'm very happy with that, but we'll be. We see gas as a traditional fuel. You know, we're trying as hard as we can. We want to get out of diesel, we want to get out of being connected to any coal-fired power, and we're doing all those things.
Unfortunately, until someone comes along with green juice, where we can go down to the Bowser and buy it and put it in our equipment, we've just got to use the sun and the wind and gas to be able to minimize what we're doing. Yeah, but certainly it's gonna be a significant contributor to the business, you know, 18 months, 2 years out from now.
Okay. Thank you, Chris.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Glyn Lawcock , from Barrenjoey. Glyn, please go ahead after the beep.
Hi, Chris. Good morning. Chris, I'm still a little bit struggling to understand. You know, it's great that you've got out of the MARBL JV downstream in China. You got out in four months, not four years, as you said to me back in February. Well done. You also said on the call, Albemarle is gonna have to divert 0.8 million tons of spod from Greenbushes to Kemerton to feed it. They're gonna be short. How do they feed their plants in China? I mean, I know you said you're not committed to selling to them, but for how long are you actually committed to sell to them before it's completely free? I mean, to me, they now, on face value, seem short, and so they've walked away with feels like the wrong side of this deal.
Yeah. No, they're not. They're certainly not short, because look, right now, I mean, they've got their own plants in China, and they've been feeding those plants out of China for years. When they built Kemerton, they probably ordered the rock to come out of Greenbushes about three years in advance. That happened a couple of years ago, and Greenbushes produces the rock, so, you know, they have to. I don't want to talk too much about Albemarle's business, but I mean, they've had to divert it up to China. There are plenty of capacity there to feed it, but and it's a high-quality plant they built at Kemerton. I mean, they take a bit of work to get them to go, but they've got a good team down there, and that plant's starting to fire.
Eventually that plant down there, it's a 50,000 ton plant, so that will consume about 0.4 million ton of spod, 6%. The guys down here at Tianqi and Kwinana have got a plant, it's 50,000 tons or thereabouts, and that's about 0.4 million tons of ore coming out of Greenbushes and currently being toll-treated. When those plants go, there's 0.8 million ton. There's two other plants that we know that are getting built in China, both 50,000 ton. There's another 0.8 million ton that comes out of the toll treaters. You know, right now, most of our ore going to China is being toll-treated, and it's got capacity. I mean, the toll treaters are very, very concerned.
They're gonna run out of rock to toll treat, even with us sending all ours out there, it's gonna be a problem. You know, I don't know why everyone's so fixated on the fact that you've got to own your own plant. I mean, our crushing business, don't forget, we're toll treaters. We toll treat rock for the largest mining companies in the world. Why do we do that? Because we can do it for less than them, because they're running their whole mine. We're just running a crushing plant. That's why we're good at it. Toll treating is a good way to go. You know, Uber got really big, really quick because, you know, you don't have to own your car if you want to go for a drive.
Fully understand, Chris, unlike Paul, believe you want to stay upstream in the margin, downstream will get competed away as you get overcapacity in the conversion side. Just so I'm clear, come middle of next calendar year, 2024, if you want to take your spodumene away from Albemarle's plants in China because someone offers you a better tolling deal, you have that capability. You're not committed to an Albemarle plant beyond middle of calendar 2024. You can toll anywhere. I wanna know where you can get your spod, your 50% share of Wodgina spod out of China. Like, can you effectively get it out of China if there's an alternative option from the middle of calendar 2024?
Absolutely. Look, I may not have been totally clear on this. We're simply, for the deal to close, we're waiting on FIRB approval to come through. Albemarle will get that to move to 100% ownership of Kemerton. Once that happens, that's settlement date. We will settle, and all things will happen, and I get my check, not for AUD 600 million, but AUD 700 million in the bank. Albemarle graciously have said that they will stick with us, and we'll work together and continue to toll treating MinRes' dirt up there. Just so you understand, none of our dirt has been going to Albemarle plants. It all goes through toll treaters, always has. Albemarle's plants up there have always been full with production out of Greenbushes.
As the plants, they're building new plants up there and down here at Kim. As they ramp up, they'll just divert some of those away from the toll treaters. We'll continue with the toll treaters. They're Albemarle in some areas. They'll simply pass us, and we'll deal direct with the toll treaters. We're assembling a team up there now, remembering that we've been selling iron ore into China for about 15 years, and we're well connected with that. We've got a very good marketing team wrapped around iron ore, and they've sold manganese, they've sold spod. Transitioning into that's not a biggie. We've got people on the ground out there now, so we will simply step in and take over with some of those toll treaters.
Other areas, we're working at the moment, and we're identifying other quality plants. We've got to do audits, and we've got to put peasants through them. That'll all happen between now and Christmas, and then come January, we'll slowly be up there beside Albemarle, and we'll be taking over and dealing with our own, our own product.
Okay, that's clear. Just maybe a follow-up for Mark, if I could, just quickly. Just the change of everything now, even though you're going to tolling from your own plants, I'd assume we still have the six-month lag on cash receipts, and then we've now almost finished the working capital adjustment for Wodgina as it switches across to tolling/downstream.
Hi, Glyn. Good morning. Yes, the I mean, obviously, the deal with Albemarle changes the capital piece of the business and, you know, just going off piece for a second, we've said consistently for some time that we've had a lot of flexibility in the business to be able to move, to respond to what we need to do to protect the balance sheet. Chris has been very clear on that as long as I've known him. In terms of the working capital, you know, I'm comfortable with where we're at with the, with the working capital and the impact on the business. This tolling arrangement is better for us on the balance sheet because we can direct where the sales go. We've got more control over that end transaction and where the cash ends up.
And sometimes-
Okay, thanks very much.
Sometimes it's prudent to go and just sell the odd cargo of spod depending on where the market's sitting. We can make that choice, but we will control the supply chain now. We're much more agile, and we are flexible around it. We're happy to sell the odd cargo of spod if we're gonna make more money than running it through the toll treaters and converting it.
The other point, Glyn, is that we've also got more flexibility with the, with the commercial terms that we transact upon. Hopefully it was Albemarle that was controlling that process, and they've been doing it for a long time. They do it their way. We've got the flexibility to do that in the MinRes way going forward.
Look, twofold: The market tends about outside and internal mining services nowadays. On the internal, basically what we do, we'll go out there and find an ore body, set up a joint venture, and that's what we've done with Onslow Iron. We own 60.3% of the ore, but we've got up there, but MinRes owns the supply chain, the road from the mine gate all the way into Onslow, the port, the wharf, the outlay facility, the big trans-shippers, the trucks. That's all mining services. That's getting added to the business progressively as we ramp up from next June going forward. And we— How do you say this? Because we export commodity, we can do things with our contracting business that our competitors can't do.
The level of training that we put into our people, that results in those figures I read before, you know, a 2.2 tripper rate, I mean, almost unheard of in the mining industry. All of those come off the back of the fact that we are a conglomerate, where we're doing commodities, and the commodities training flows into the, onto the mining services business. That gives us a lot of horsepower also to develop innovation. These trucks, we've developed them in-house. The trans-shippers, if you have a look at them, I'm gonna load ships at Onslow for 40% of the cost of what I load them for in Port Hedland over Utah Point.
Just to give you a sense of it, my cost in Onslow on trucking is, again, it's about 40% of what it is in the top of the Pilbara. The big trucks give us real benefits. The big trucks are similar to a medium gauge railway line, so huge interest. I mean, look, we're building the trucks as quickly as we can. We've probably got about 60 of the big jumbos running now, and as quick as we build them, they're going out to third parties. Then when we take that to them, it's much better that they have us doing the crushing, because we're the safest contractor in Australia.
We've got the best technology, the crushing plants we put on the ground, these next-gen plants, we call them, there's nothing in the world like them. We've got a huge advantage, and we keep multiplying that advantage. I know it's kind of hard to explain it, but we win most of those jobs because we deliver such a high-value product to our clients.
On its mark, there's one further point I would offer, and we've talked about it previously. The external environment continues to get more difficult for everyone in the industry. The regulatory framework gets more challenging, that ability to be agile and flexible is why the clients keep coming back, and that's what's creating the opportunity for us. They need a group that can actually pivot and help them quickly. We can do that because of our structure, our supply chain, our workshop, our workforce, the spares that we carry. What I'm saying is that the external environment is helping us with our mining services.
Understood. That's great color. Thank you both. Maybe then just a follow-up. Just on tolling, agree, Chris, it makes much more sense than investing downstream to lithium hydroxide right now. Certainly, China is getting better and better and cheaper at converting to chemical. Maybe just for the previous gun thing arrangement at Mount Marion was a sensible decision to cancel that given the commerciality. A couple of questions: Just to confirm, will there be any financial impact in FY 2023?
Secondly, you know, going forward, and if you're looking at, tolling going forward and the cost of conversion, in China, the very, very low CapEx, very low returns on invested capital there, you know, how do you see toll charges evolving, over time, as we get that build and excess capacity in China? Clearly, the starting point would be that toll charges would likely fall, but I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Thank you.
Yeah, look, I think they will fall somewhat, you know. Again, what we're looking for here is, you know, a good relationship with the tollers. I mean, we've built our business on that, on being fair and reasonable. We don't want to go in there and try and cut their throats. I mean, we want to have that right sort of partnership because we want quality product coming out of it, consistent quality product. Look, there might be a reduction in the charges, but, I mean, we're not looking to go and do anything significant on that. We're all about building that right relationship with them and making sure that what we're getting works. That's exactly what we've done with all of our clients over the last 30 years.
That's why they keep coming back to us. I mean, if they're in a market where it's really hard to get crushing done or get haulage done, and it happens all the time, we're like McDonald's. We serve the Big Mac at the same price wherever we go. We're consistent with our pricing, our service, so, we're gonna be the same up in China. We're gonna be well-behaved out there. We're gonna be respectful, because that's the way we behave in Australia, and we're gonna do that worldwide. We hope that that has an impact as well.
Great. Thank you. Just one final one, super quickly. Just Onslow, look, well done with getting all the approvals and permits. Great to see that's now on the critical path to first tons mid-next year. Can you just talk to, you know, I guess maybe specifically in terms of this project, but also more generally, you know, CapEx, industry-wide, we're seeing a lot of inflation still and still delays. Just interested to understand, you know, how you're seeing perhaps the risk around CapEx and execution at Onslow, but maybe more broadly as well.
Yeah. No, look, we had a timing issue down at Mount Marion that ran on a little bit longer. Again, because we build and do everything in-house, if there's a hold up on supply chain and getting equipment out of Europe or wherever it's coming from, we just don't mobilize those people to site. We'll move them somewhere else. We got Mount Marion done. We were out of time, but we got it done under budget. The one thing that we are reasonable, one of the many things we're pretty good at, is, I mean, we know how to build and we know what the risks are. We can adapt very quickly. Regularly, monthly reviewing where we're going up at Onslow.
I sat down around the—h ad a couple of sessions on that, only a couple of days ago. Now, I'm gonna say, and I've said this before, I'm gonna say it again, there is no risk of us exceeding the budget. Mark hates me saying that, but we're not gonna exceed the budget up at Onslow on the. I want to make a couple of other comments as well. The federal government helped us up there to get those approvals done. We got them through in 11 months, so I'd like to, and we've acknowledged the federal government for doing it. They've done it because they want to add value to Australia. The, the state government was right in there with us as well, as a status on that project.
They had a gypsy person assigned to the project, and like, I think 13 months with the state. Outstanding results we've got, and we're managing that budget extremely well. Other areas, look, I don't see any other areas we've got where there's risk out there. Look, I can see why the others are running over, because sitting inside MinRes, I mean, we've got all our own costing in here, our engineering, our design, our innovation, everything happens inside, and if something happens out there, we can stop, we can adjust. And there's no doubt, too, I mean, our team have built the right factors into their model. Going forward, we recognize the issues around supply chain. Look, let me say this, it's all under control. If it's not, you can come back at me. We're not gonna run over budget on Onslow.
Great, thank you. I'll pass it on. Thanks very much again, guys.
Okay, thanks.
Our next question comes from Hayden Bairstow from Macquarie. Hayden, please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Chris, just wanna touch on Marian, just with this sort of underground drilling you've been doing. Is it getting to a point now where underground economics are looking pretty attractive versus where that pit is, given strip ratios and where the cash costs are already? I mean, is that where you're thinking with, and getting your head around underground costs? You've obviously got, you know, you've had equity stakes in some of these other regional players. Are you thinking about making Mount Marian more of a hub and making it bigger over time? Just keen to understand what the overall strategy is there.
Yeah, look, I'll just make a couple of comments and pass that over to Josh. First of all, Hayden, congratulations on— You do your homework well, and you're in the business pretty well, and you pretty much nail it every time, so well done on that. Both those deposits, so Wodgina and Mount Marian, when I drilled out Mount Marian originally back in 2010, I had to spend a certain amount of money to earn a 30% equity interest in it. The day I spent that cash, I turned the drill rigs off, and we never put another drill hole in the ground. That's open in all directions, and it's certainly, Josh has proved it's open at depth. I did exactly the same with Wodgina. It was a little different, I own Wodgina.
I got up to about 270 million ton of resource. I told them to stop spending money. Again, Wodgina is open in all directions. We probably haven't gone any deeper than about, I think I've mentioned this a few times, we've never gone any deeper than about 500 meters - 550 meters out there. Josh put some down under Marian a while ago. I'll pass it over to Josh, and he'll explain to you the detail that I don't understand.
Hi, Hayden. Yeah, the potential for underground at Marian is excellent. The numbers that we sort of work on, once you get to a strip ratio of between 9% and 12%, somewhere in that area, it makes sense to go and look seriously at underground. Based on the operating costs, the geometry of what we're seeing come through on the drill holes, it lends itself really well to underground. There's a big vertical, nice, wide, long feeder zone. We haven't reached the bottom of it yet. It lends itself really well in terms of a cost perspective. In terms of a hub, yeah, we've got a really strong foot in the gold fields there, like you said.
We do wanna build a hub in that region. It makes sense for us. We know the region well. We've already invested significant capital there, and we're in a great spot to leverage the capital, the people, and the know-how we've got in that region. Yeah, it makes sense for us.
Okay, great. Thanks. I'll leave it there. Excellent.
Just hanging on that, I mean, we'll be open pit mining down at Marian. I'm thinking for, you know, the next 20 years , 30 years , 40 years. We'll be running underground in parallel with open pit, just to give us different, or a more balanced blend, if you like, going into the plant. You know, we've got some numbers. Josh, what are the numbers for us to put a portal and then a drive down?
Oh, I mean, if you're talking about an exploration decline, it's gonna be, you know, under AUD 20 million.
Yeah. I mean, to get to the ore underground, it's not a big number. I mean, so, I would think that we'll be looking at doing that and in different areas going forward, just to give us. The more fronts we can get to the ore body, the more consistent we can get the blend going into the plant.
Thank you. The next question is from Ben Lyons at Jarden Securities . Ben, please go ahead after the beep.
Good day, Chris, Mark, Josh. Chris, firstly, thanks for your feedback on my free cash flow forecast. I guess the fixation with owning conversion facilities in China and building in the requisite CapEx into our forecast, I guess that largely comes from that being the clearly enunciated strategy, which has been communicated by your company to the market over the past year. As you yourself have just pointed out, you've removed over AUD 1 billion of cash that's now being directed at China, but we've got no clarity on the likely amount of CapEx that'll be invested in downstream conversion capacity elsewhere, whether it's Australia or Southeast Asia or somewhere else. Just to be clear, are you expecting to be free cash flow positive in fiscal 2024, despite the bulk of the remainder of that AUD 3 billion in Ashburton CapEx going out the door?
I would think when we're growing the business the way we are. Look, Ben, I mean, look, if you've got, and I'm pretty much available to everyone. If you've got some queries or issues, pick up the phone and call me before you put pen to paper, because, you know, the relationship we've got with our joint venture partners is second to none. To go and put that in the press and, you know, to have Kent go and wake up and read that over, and Charlotte, it's just not good. The other thing is that you got to understand, I mean, if you've never business, understand how it works, because I mean, I started this business off 31 years ago. I had AUD 10,600 in the bank.
We're now in the top two or three on return on invested capital on the ASX, and we're probably in the same spot on total shareholder return. I don't go out there and tap shareholders for it. I go out there, I borrow it, or I generate out of earnings. You know, not a bad track record. I just don't like getting kicked in the balls. I apologize if I've been a bit strong on that, but. Yes, I did. The circumstance, the deal that I had with Albemarle when I'd done a AUD 2.16 billion market cap on Wodgina, was that I had to suck it up, and I let them do the marketing. That was a mistake.
You know, I put my hand up for it because the best deal going forward is them market their own and us our own, and we have a different way of doing things. Australia is vulnerable in China, America is not. They can lock China out of Australia out of China, and it won't affect them too much. Excluding iron ore, of course. The dynamics for us are very different and they're fluid. I had the opportunity to be able to get our marketing back and to be able to increase our market share of Wodgina. To do that, Albemarle said, "Well, if you want to do that, give me Kemerton back." I said, "Well, I'll give you 25% back." Eventually we found a way of getting to the whole thing.
It was an evolution, and you have to have market change for them to start thinking differently to the way they were two or three years ago. As the market changed, I was able to get into a better position with, for MinRes, but at the same time, Albemarle got in a really good position with their own assets. That's kind of how it evolved. Now, I mean, everyone was screaming that I'm gonna have a problem with my balance sheet, and I go, "Well, how do you figure that?" You know, freaking years, I haven't had a problem with that. And all of a sudden, because I can't go and announce to the market what I'm doing until I get it done, until the ink dries, I can't tell you what I'm doing.
I knew six months ago where I was gonna be come June, July, and I kept telling everyone, "Don't worry about the balance sheet, I have it under control." I don't know if that answers your question, but, you know, I mean— We're running a business here that's doing iron ore, and it's doing lithium, and doing gas. We're doing mining services, and we're kind of at the top of our game with all of them. You know, I think we're doing... I've got the best management team in the country, and, I mean, the business is pretty well run, and that's not patting me on the back. That's the team that I've got that run it.
Yeah. Okay, thanks for the comprehensive response. Maybe, Mark, can you address the free cash flow question for fiscal 2024, please?
Ben, I'm not gonna give any guidance in 2024. We've got results in a month. We'll take you through the plans then. We're always very open around what we're doing. You understand the aspects of the business we're working on, but I'm not gonna put numbers out now in terms of 2024. You'll understand why.
Okay.
Well, why I said that.
Yeah, absolutely, Mark. Thank you. Maybe just one more. Certainly, Chris, I respect the returns that you've generated. Absolutely not going to try and advise you how to run your business as maybe other participants on the call might have tried to do. I'm concerned also about the recent decision to terminate both of the conversion agreements with two of the most technically proficient participants in the lithium industry globally. Maybe just a simple one on the lithium sulfate strategy. Are you wedded to going that alone, or would you still consider bringing in a partner who might bring some technical capability to that process? Thanks.
Yeah, okay. Let me be a little bit clear. The term that everyone uses, it's no termination. I mean, we've got a great relationship and partnership with Ganfeng. I mean, it was the team's call. We rang them up and said, "Guys, the price of selling spod is about line ball with trying to turn it into hydroxide when you add the cost. Why don't we? We'll just go sell our spod ." They said, "Don't mind that, but would you sell it to us?" We said, "Of course, at market price." That's the extent of the cancellation of contract. In a couple of months from now, if the price of hydroxide goes up, we'll have Jiangxi back on the phone from Ganfeng, and we'll say, "Let's start making hydroxide again." That's kind of how it works. There's no cancellation with Albemarle.
It's just we took our marketing back. Because we want to go and market it and set up long-term arrangements with OEMs. In the short term, short to medium term, we're working to get us and Albemarle still work together in China, and we're toll treating. Our ore has always gone to the toll treaters over there, uncertain and Albemarle plant. Look, by the way, Albemarle are very, very good at what they do with hydroxide, but up until 2015, they weren't doing anything to do with lithium. I mean, there's a point in time when everybody is new to something, and look, we have the skill set to go and to. I mean, we've got the best in the world doing the design on the plants now for us on the study.
Look, the opportunity is there. If I said to Albemarle, "Why don't we do a joint plant up at Wodgina?" I've spoke to Kent about that, they would certainly consider that. If I said to Ganfeng, "You want to do one down at Kalgoorlie?" They'd be up for it. We just haven't crossed that bridge yet. Look, when we do, we'll come up with, like we always do, we'll come up with the best, safest way of being able to add the value to our. Whether that's here in Australia, and I've said we'll build in Australia, but I need the government to help and support us.
If they don't help and support us, we're screwed. We'll be going offshore. We'll go to a safe zone. I mean, my preference is, though, I want to head to the OEMs, but to get there, I've got to have white powder to sell them.
Okay. Thanks very much for addressing my questions, Chris. Thanks.
Yeah, look, just one last thing. The other thing I can do is, I mean, I can go buy a plant out of China, buy this organization that puts them together. I can go buy it, put it on a boat, bring it out here. MinRes has got a very good track record of being able to build plants here in Australia at the right capital cost. Look, as I've just said earlier, we will not run over budget on onsite. You know, that's a AUD 3.25 billion dollar build, we've had that price on the table for a couple of years, we got it right. We knew what to put around that price to make sure that we could get it right.
I need to be able to get my 21%- 22% return out of that, and we will. Look, we can do what we say. I mean, granted, we overrun our time at Marian on the upgrade, but that's about the first time we've ever done it.
Yep. Nobody's questioning the engineering capacity, and the best of breed technical capability that you bring within the business, Chris. It was more just questions about the downstream strategy and the free cash flow generation in the short term. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Ben, next time you're in Perth, drop around and have a cup of coffee, and we'll see if we can have a good discussion around where we're going.
I'm Perth-based, Chris, so I look forward to catching up for a cup of tea shortly. Thanks, man.
Even better. Okay. Good on you, Ben. Thanks.
Our next question comes from Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley. Rahul, please go ahead after the beep.
Hi. Hi, Chris, Mark, and team. Look, perhaps if we switch gears a bit and go to Mount Marion. Chris, congratulations, obviously, on completing the project within budget. I wanted to touch upon, how does it look now in terms of going into perhaps the next year? How does that ramp-up profile look? Also, how should we think about the costs as well? When can we start seeing some of the benefits come in of perhaps an improving strip ratio, improved volumes? Just to follow on from that, when are you expecting some of the drilling results as well from Marion?
I'll hand it over to Josh on that one, Rahul, I mean, there's a few little questions in there that are kind of crossing the line. We're not gonna talk about costs and the like. Look, as we said, I mean, it's, we're pulling the top off the mountain down there as well. We've got 80, over 80 pieces of yellow goods down there. We've got a plan, we've got a budget, and Josh's team watch that every 24 hours. It's going pretty well so far. Look, I'll let Josh.
Hi, Rahul. look, the main focus down at Mount Marian now is opening up. Chris touched on it earlier, opening up new mining areas, so getting as many mining fronts open as we can to make sure that we have that consistency of feed and ramping up the plant now that it's constructed. you know, it's tied in. I'm really happy with the way the tie-in and the commissioning went. it was, you know, it was as smooth as it could be. It was a really good tie-in. we'll give you guidance, you know, in the coming months. I won't touch on exactly what the production profile or the cost profile will be down there, but I'm happy with the way it's going.
We're focused on opening up new mining fronts and ramping the plant up. It's a quality plant. As I said earlier, it's a quality product as well. You know, there's not many places that produce that really coarse product that's sought after by the converters.
Okay. Josh, just quickly on when are you expecting some of the results to start coming through in terms of drilling, et cetera, potential there?
We're already releasing those results. You would've seen some, I think it was last month, that we released, or maybe the month before. We released some of the results from the underground, some of those deeper holes. We've now drilled over 500 meters below the bottom of the life of mine pit, and we're still getting good intercepts of nice wide pegmatite zones, mineralized areas, and good grades of lithium. We're really happy with that, and that's only encouraging us to do more. We're going to have more drill rigs down there. We're going to be ramping up the number of drill rigs down there to 12 from 6 at the moment.
That'll include some resource definition rigs, but there's a lot of exploration potential down at Mount Marian, and we're systematically peppering that place. As we do, we continuously find more pegmatite and more lithium, which is fantastic.
Okay. I mean, in terms of a resource update, any sort of timelines you're working to, or is it more as you progress and as you get more meters in?
No, as we progress and we build the resource out, you'll know as soon as we do. We'll go through our process, we'll do our studies, and we'll release the updates as they come.
Okay, perfect. Chris, one for you, apologies. I mean, you've talked a fair bit about your lithium strategy today, and I'm sure it's perhaps erring on the side of irritating to keep repeating yourself. There's one thing that I wanted to cover specifically. You know, in your comments, you have talked about potentially thinking about a plant in Australia, given the assistance of government and, you know, potentially looking at other downstream options, not just the sulfate route. What I want to understand is, obviously, at Kemerton, you initially had that 40% ownership, that was then down to 15%, and obviously now that's gone down to zero. Was there an opportunity to hold on to that? Why was that let go? I mean, do you want to be a majority owner in a plant? Is that why?
Just trying to understand if there was potential to hold on to some of that downstream capacity at all.
Yeah, no, Rahul, it's a commercial decision, purely. When the rock's going into the hydroxide plant, the hydroxide plant buys the rock, and it's buying it from Alba Mill. Greenbushes rock to Kemerton, and I'm gonna go 80% of the value was going to he who owns the rock. I've always said, "If you own the rock, you're god." I mean, everything else. You can go buy hydroxide plants or car manufacturing plants or battery factories, but it is very, very limited on the planet who owns the rock and controls the lithium. We've got two Tier one. Well, Wodgina is certainly a Tier one asset. When Josh finishes filling out Mount Marion, that'll get reclassified as well.
I mean, we've got two of the best hard rock deposits on the planet, and we want to make sure we manage them responsibly and get the best value out for our shareholders. You know, my return on capital coming out of Kemerton was awfully low, because I don't own the rock that was going into it. I could have taken Mount Marion rock there, but then you got the difficulty of blending that with the Greenbushes rock, and it wasn't gonna work. I can take that cash out of Kemerton, and I can go and reinvest that in other areas. Look, we'll talk about that in three months' time, what we're gonna do with that money. We'll show you what we've done with it, but I can guarantee a better than 20% return on that, you know, sitting down the road there, it was getting less than half that.
Okay, perfect. look, last one from me, Chris. You've spoken a bit about Onslow, obviously. Congratulations for the approvals to have them come through. You've talked about the CapEx that you're expecting to stay within budget. Perhaps, another way to look at it, you know, what are the critical items now that are currently in process that can potentially be risk factors? What are you looking at closely to make sure you are within that time and CapEx budget?
What are the risk factors? Look, all of the long lead items are in place, and we've got them nailed down with time, and they're all getting built offshore for those proprietary products. We've got teams over there that are sitting, watching them getting built. All of the as we speak right now, we've got a heavy lift ship alongside the berth. All the piles and dolphins are driven. They're dropping the tops on the berth right now, it come in late last night. The road from the port out to the Northwest Highway was a bit tricky, but, you know, we've sort of mastered that. We've been working on that for some time, and now we're onto the main haul road, so it's about 130 Ks.
That's probably our biggest risk, that road, but we've built hundreds of kilometers of haul road over the last five years, so no issue there. CSI are putting all of the processing out on site. That's sort of a walk in the park. It's all the big next-gen plants. All the mining gear is ordered. Because of the nature of the... It's not like building a hydroxide plant or the like. It's all around, there is really no- the other thing, too, there is, I mean, the dredging was about AUD 20 million. We've done that months ago, so, you know, no risk there. We've got— I'm gonna go, there's very few construction companies left in Australia. I'm gonna say we would have the best construction output in any way, by miles.
I mean, the guys that lead my construction, I got Milk Salt, which is leading it out on site, and I got Jonathon Roth and Darren Killeen, do a pretty amazing job, and they've got a great team of people. I mean, they get stuff done on time and they get it done under budget. There is no risk out there unless there's a sinkhole that opens up and swallows half the road or something. You know, look, highly confident. Our program tells us at the moment that it's gonna be first ore on ship next August, and they've got a program they're running, where they're pulling that back into June.
You know, you can't build 35 million tons in the time we've got approved and the ambitious date of next June to getting it on. I mean, if I get it on then, big pat on the back from the team.
Okay, brilliant. That's excellent color. Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.
Thank you. The next question today comes from Matthew Freedman, from MST Financial. Matthew, please go ahead after the beep.
Sure. Thanks. Morning, Chris and team, yeah, thanks very much for your time on what's been a pretty extensive call. Look, I don't wanna risk treading over covered ground on the downstream strategy, but maybe trying to think about things through a slightly different lens in terms of taking a multi-year view on the business, and I guess the balance of the four pillars of the business, obviously, lithium, iron ore, mining services, energy. I guess the question is, you know, do you think about your capital allocation decisions in terms of that concentration or exposure to certain commodities or certain business units?
you know, clearly pursuing a solo or a unilateral downstream strategy, you know, in whatever form you choose, would require a significant further capital commitment to lithium specifically, when maybe you'd actually prefer to create more earnings diversity in the business. Does that factor into your decision-making and the timing around those decisions? Is it purely your view on the returns of those projects, the relative risk of those projects, and obviously the best returning projects in the business will get prioritized on that basis?
Yeah. Well, yes, Matthew, I call that the beauty lineup. We've got all the opportunities. Look, as a matter of interest, the opportunity we've got sitting in front of us now is the best that we've ever had. I said that a couple of years ago, but it's so much better today. We've got a very clear plan on where we're going on lithium. We're on a growth strategy with that. There's no doubt about that, and that'll continue. We've got a lot of eyes on. We're looking for, you know, better ground all the time, and we're sort of looking in Canada. We're looking right here at home. I mean, we're scouring all of that and securing more land. Big focus on lithium.
Gas is coming at us, again, the return on gas is gonna be good. Iron ore, we're having a good, hard look at where we're going on that and what our strategy is going to be. Again, you know, the lithium business, I mean, we've gotta make sure that we focus on that. It's a 50-100-year business. I mean, we got at least one great tier one asset, and probably Mount Marion is gonna fall into that category. We're gonna make sure we're setting that up for the long term, but we wanna get the returns quickly. Our mining services happens naturally, but it just keeps growing. It grows at about 20% a year, last year, this year, next year, it's gonna grow quicker than 20% a year.
I mean, next year, it's gonna have a rocket under it. Yeah. Do I think about capital allocation? Every day. I mean, we're looking at it. I mean, I've got meetings every week that look at projects that we're developing or we've got in the beauty lineup. Whether we have to trim back-
Yeah, thanks, Chris.
Sort of things. Yeah.
Yeah. Thanks, Chris. I guess the question was more alluding to, you know, do you see a risk of over-concentrating on lithium as a business unit or as a commodity exposure specifically, you know, particularly if you need to allocate a significant amount of additional capital to that business over the coming, you know, two to three to five years to build out a downstream strategy? Does that run the risk of over-allocating capital to lithium as a commodity?
No. No. Look, we've got a plan. If all goes as we suspect it's going to go in the supply chain, I mean, we've underestimated the demand over the last few years. I mean, I wish I had have known it was gonna grow as quick as it has, and probably listening too much to consensus. We're chasing, we're gonna grow that lithium business, and we know how we're gonna fund it over three, four, and five years. We've got a solid plan on that. We know how we're gonna do the same on the gas, the same on the mining services. You know, the iron ore, we know where we're at with that until the end of next year.
Once we get the, just you'd need to remember, too, if you have a look, come end of calendar year, next year, the cash that the business will be generating will be incredibly significant.
Matt, if I could.
Yeah, sure.
It's James Bruce.
Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead, James.
Just, you know, if you went back 5 years ago, no one would have predicted the growth that we've had in our business. We had about 1,500 people in the business back then, and today we've got 7,000 or more. In the next 5 years, I think we're gonna, you know, Chris has said it a number of times, we're gonna double each of our businesses and more. you know, I don't think we're gonna be... We've got growth in all of our businesses. Yes, lithium looks particularly attractive, but each of our businesses has a solid business plan and significant growth ahead of it. What it's going to constrain us is, quite frankly, the ability to execute on all of this.
I think, too, the other thing to add to that, I think, you guys run a standard model on mining companies, and we are far from that standard. I mean, if you have a look at what we've done over the last 5 to 6 years, how we've been able to fund the growth and get to where we are, I mean, I do think you need to adjust your model a little bit, if you want to, kind of figure out how we're gonna keep growing the business. You know, I give you as much information as I'm able to, at least, on a 6-monthly basis.
Look, the reason that Mark and I have come on the call this morning is that we wanted to just get it really, really clear out that, number one, we've got a plan, and we manage our balance sheet. We're focused on return on capital. We're making sure that we look after the shareholders because that's who we're working for. I mean, there was a lot of commentary coming into the market, and we're kind of figuring out where it's coming from, but I hope this is helping to get everyone a little more focused on what we're doing.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Chris. I mean, for what it's worth, my Mineral Resources model is already my most complex model. Yeah, I look forward to adding more complexity to that model over time. Just picking up on your comments around the cash flows in the business at the end of FY 2024, I guess, leads me into my next question around— You've talked about how lithium sulfate, in terms of a midstream product, might be a potentially attractive starting point. You know, you also alluded to the fact that you expect to continue tolling for at least another two or three years, which, you know, as you say, makes sense from a timing perspective in terms of the ramp-up of Onslow and the cash flows coming out of the business.
Just wondering, specifically around a midstream product or a lithium sulfate product, could you move, in your view, could you move forward with that kind of a strategy without having those downstream refining and battery chemical facilities in place, in, you know, in places like the U.S. and Europe, as you mentioned? You know, could you push ahead with a midstream strategy in isolation? Is there a market, in your view, for that product, for a sulfate product? Does that market exist, and would it deliver attractive margins?
Look, the answer is that they are, they're starting to build up in Germany and Europe. We could also take that product over to China and keep doing what we're doing while we're getting built out on that next stage. You know, there are no gaps. I mean, we can do it. Yes, the answer is yes. I'll kind of keep it short. I think the other thing, too, is that I'm pleased that you've got a much more complex model for us than others, because as Bill Wyllie used to say some time ago, "The harder you work, the luckier you get." You keep making that more complex and keep working on us, and you'll make a lot more.
Okay. Appreciate the answers. Thanks very much, Chris.
My pleasure. Thanks.
That is the last question we have time for today. That concludes today's call. Thank you for your time, and have a great day. Please reach out if you have any follow-up questions. You may now disconnect.