Good morning.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to welcome you to the Metro Mining 2025 AGM. For those that don't know me, I'm Doug Ritchie, and I'm the chair of the company. You'll note that there's a little live stream up there. This is being broadcast as well to people who have been unable to attend the meeting. The meeting today is on the lands of the Turrbal and the Yugara people, and we would acknowledge them as traditional owners, and also in particular the Ankamuthi people, the traditional owners of Seven Hills, where the Scardon River, where the mine is situated. I've been advised by our company secretary that we have a quorum of members, and hence I declare this meeting open. Just a couple of brief housekeeping matters. First, if you could, as usual, turn off all your mobile phones to silent, please.
Secondly, in the event of an emergency and we are required to evacuate the building, please proceed out those doors to the right, down the stairs to the street, and then the assembly area is on the corner of Astor Terrace and Cousins Street. I think you know most of the directors, but there are a couple of new ones, but I'd like to introduce the board. Firstly, Simon Wensley, the Managing Director. Next, Andy Lloyd, who is also Chair of the ESG Committee. Next is Jo-Anne Scarini, who is the Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee. Finally, the Honourable Paul Lucas, the Chair of the Remuneration and Nominations Committees. Both Jo-Anne and Paul have joined us during the year, and hence one of the resolutions will be confirmation of their elections. We also have some of the Metro team here, including our executive leadership team.
Robin Bates sitting here is the Company Secretary and General Counsel. Nathan Quinlin, the CFO of the company. Gary Battensby, who's the Senior Site Executive up on site. Cherie Everett, who's the People and Culture General Manager. Vincenzo De Falco, who's the General Manager of Marine Operations, and Matt Graham, the General Manager of Technical Projects. Where are you, Matt? They were there. Also, we have with us both Matthew Taylor and Stephen Rowe from our auditors, Ernst & Young. If you've got any particular questions you'd like to ask them. And Louis Brimlow and Sam Schwartz, the representatives from Computershare Registry. With regard to the conduct of this meeting, I'll begin by providing a short address to you, and then Simon will provide an update on the company's operations.
Then we'll move on to that fun part of the meeting where we go through each of the formal resolutions. Time will be allocated for questions on each of the resolutions, and at the end of the meeting for any other business that anybody would like to raise. If you could keep your questions until then, thank you. 2024 was an exciting and very positive year for Metro. Through the hard work and dedication of our people, Metro significantly built on its achievements in 2023 to advance our core strategy of being the world's lowest cost pure bauxite producer. New capacity commissioning, ramp-up, economics of scale, and market conditions combined to deliver record margins. A significant milestone for Metro was the completion of its AUD 36 million expansion project during the second quarter of 2024.
This was completed by additional spend on our assets by our contract partners, Transhipment Services Australia and Blake Machinery Group, to take the total spend to well over AUD 50 million. The expanded capacity derives from new haulage or fleet, upgraded loading capacity at both the pit and the port, and a new high-capacity wobler screening circuit, two additional tugs, and significantly, the commissioning of our offshore floating terminal, Ikamba. Delivery of this expanded capacity enabled Metro during quarter four of last year to consistently operate at a project target rate of 7 million wet metric tons per annum. This culminated in total ship production of 5.7 million wet metric tons, a 24% year-on-year increase. Consequently, production and shipment guidance for 2025 has been set at 6.5-7 million wet metric tons. Metro's balance sheet was also a key focus in 2024.
An equity raise with institutional and retail investors for AUD 45 million was completed in May. AUD 39 million of junior debt was repaid during the year. In November 2024, Metro completed a refinance of its senior debt and private royalty held by Nabari entities, achieving a lower interest rate on borrowed funds and increased borrowing capacity. The dedication of Simon and his management team in delivering these very important initiatives and a favorable price environment contributed to a 30% year-on-year revenue increase to AUD 307 million. Site EBITDA margins improved to AUD 13.80 per wet metric ton and AUD 17.40 in quarter three and quarter four, respectively. Underlying annual EBITDA to AUD 37 million. As a result, a significant outcome for shareholders was the increase in Metro's market capitalisation, up 300% to AUD 364 million by year-end.
The board is extremely proud that Metro's improved financial performance was matched by our ongoing commitment to deliver shareholder value through the execution of our operations in a safe, environmentally responsible, and socially accountable manner. Pleasingly, last year, Metro significantly reduced the number of environmental incidents on site and published our ESG strategy and roadmap, which details our broader sustainability initiatives. The company also received national recognition of one of our rehabilitation projects, winning the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies 2024 National Environmental Award for the work associated with the restoration of the Old Kalen Mine at Bauxite Hills. Health, safety, and well-being remained a core focus of the company, with an elevated focus on critical risks and high potential incidents. This diligence and focus resulted in a marked reduction in our high potential incident frequency rate at the mine from 22.8 in 2023 to 11.4 in 2024.
Two audits of the Ikamba safety management system and an independent safety audit of our transshipment operations were also commissioned during the year to verify the safety of our operations right throughout the value chain. We continued to work collaboratively with our stakeholder communities, and we're particularly proud of the progress that we've made through our reflect reconciliation action plan and are excited to have begun preparatory work on our innovative reconciliation plan. This year was, however, not without its challenges. Periods of inclement weather continued to cause some disruption, while global economic uncertainty was also the cause for concern and will likely increase in 2025. The speed of regulatory change remains unabated, with the company currently focused on ensuring that we are ready for the implementation of the Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards.
Before passing over to Simon, I wanted to provide shareholders with some additional information in respect of the one-off management performance incentive that the board approved for implementation in December last year, and Metro's remuneration framework. With respect to remuneration, the board commissioned an external review of the entire structure for the executive leadership team in late 2024, which identified that the current REM packages were generally, in some cases, significantly below market benchmarks. The review also highlighted that Metro operates at a higher level of complexity than many of its peer companies and that this needs to be considered in greater detail within the REM framework.
In response to these findings, the board commissioned a redesign of the REM framework in order to ensure that it was fit for purpose and is competitive with its peers, helps to retain critical talent, and the outcome of the review will be implemented later this year. To address the current retention risk and taking account of those above factors that I've mentioned and taking further advice from external consultants, the board also decided to implement the management MPI for not only Simon and the executive leadership team, but for other key roles across the business, with its design to have both a reward component for effort as well as a retention element. The board is confident that Simon and his team have the expertise and perseverance to meet the challenges head-on and to further grow and mature the company.
To that end, Simon in his presentation will detail Metro's 1st capital management policy and outline some strategic directions and principles for growth in his presentation. On behalf of the board, I would like particularly to thank Simon and his team for their tireless efforts last year. It was a very challenging, but it was a very rewarding year, and I think we're all looking forward to a very successful 2025. I'd also like to thank our stakeholders and our shareholders for the continued support of the company. Simon, could I pass over for a business update? Thank you.
Thanks, Doug. You can hear me okay? I will point you to the usual disclosures here. If you could take those into account, please.
Firstly, again, to emphasize our acknowledgment of country, there are some beautiful pictures here of the country in which we work up at the Scardon River, quite an inspiring area. We really do acknowledge and thank the Ankamuthi people. We acknowledge the elders past, present, and emerging on that land. We also pay respects generally to all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples throughout Australia. Doug has touched on a number of these factors, and I would also point you to the excellent annual report that we've put together, and Robin particularly as the architect of that. It was a good year for us last year, the golden age, that we were probably a little bit aggressive in the production targets that we set earlier in the year, and we saw some delay to our expansion elements coming online in Q2.
Once they were in place at the end of Q2, we saw a ramp-up that was exported to plan. In terms of the profile, I was very happy with the way with that ramp-up. In particular, I was happy with the way that the team across Metro plus the contractors that we've got, particularly through Ben and Jerry from the CIA, how we worked together to implement those expansion elements within the fact sheet that at times was into this for challenges. The problem-solving involved in that was significant, and I think is a good reflection of the agility and the robustness and the team that we've built over the last couple of years.
Some of the other things in terms of production, it was still a record year, obviously, with that expansion at 24% and margins up to almost AUD 18 a tonne by the end of the year. You can see in terms of the share price how that was and how that was reflected through the year. Doug's touched on also the corporate side of things, and again, recognizing Nathan and our CFO, we're taking hold of that side of our business and managing it well. In the end, the combination of equity rules and the restructure of our debt package towards the end of the year, I think, was also the underpinning of a de-risking of the company.
What I've found is more critical, of course, I thought of how they reflect on the risks of what we're doing over the last four years, but also why we're moving forward to maybe sort of directing growth moving forward. Thank you. Doug's touched on the improved safety performances, and I'll come back to that and talk a bit about how we're using new technology to help us drive that forward a little bit later on. Most of these people are creating also sort of just also looking to the heading of Santa Lupe, and some people returned of the people extend to a little bit of time. We've got an excellent team that is currently busy in the fashion. I think just going back from yesterday after I told Coach Hopper he's continued to try to make changes for Q3 pricing. [audio distortion] .
In terms of the six terms of focus on the tech, about two terms on the. From about. Since coming to terms with this of. Is in its own voices. It is a diverse and it is a bit more diverse demand for the reasons why we want to make things that are more so it is more the basement or status quo that fit within this energy transition and revolution that's got decarbonisation. These things are more diverse if they respond much more than the last few decades, such as in public engineering and spike air that goes to the pilots. It's the fact that I'm extremely diverse. I can sell this in action in other areas of the time. I'm finding just touch on how things are just come back from China.
Maybe talking about some of the short-term issues that are facing people at the moment. From a perspective, look, I've seen that chart before at the top right-hand side, and you can see multiple sectors, certainly transportation and electrical. That's where we see electric vehicles, we see planes and trains, and we see the lighting of that. That's almost less than 60% of the team. Electric cars, where we see some planes, and then we see grid electrification being extremely important in the back of it. That's 35% back from the size of our across the land. I'm speaking to our banks and to growth. Finally, the end, it's a shield in this ends of the future. It's shelter to produce a vehicle and charge a commercial engine vehicle. For the centre, it's a long distance.
Actually, and it's called the cost of the citizen homes and the shelter place that becomes a commercial engine vehicle. So it's about the opportunity behind it. It's about to find much producing cars. So it's a huge growth gap. Stylus and touching that, the stylus provided, for example, in the last couple of months in China, is very focused on that side helping consumers in government, extra equipment, etc. It's starting to get to the start of things that are significantly substituting for equipment, but certainly electrical systems and in use. And so on. I completely deficits the system policies into a significantly again, and it makes people use that. It's going to should probably be lasting proper. It's also good for our money because there's continued increase in this substitution in many of those things.
Of course, even customers, the effective challenge reached the production gap that it has in terms of planning. A lot of them are still at least that they're going to approve any funds. There is a lot of money from three businesses and five years in probably existing sponsors, but that gap is going to be probably reached. It is going to finish quarter three sponsors to be positive. You think about 35% per year, let's say, some of the recycling. It is going to find it is a little bit of a thing that is over the capacity that needs to come on. The central price needs to rise for that, for those new sponsors to be built. The price of energy might need to rise, and that is a good thing from our point of view.
Sure, obviously, Trump impact on this change, and so our share price and a number of others in the mining space have been hit by that. That's still singled out as a specific model that Trump is targeting. There's still a certain outcome there. There's a chart here that has some think about this too, but it's in terms of good indicative of where things are at. Trees have been dropping a little bit. The 1st part of 2021, you can see that the trends in terms of social workers, so the entry in the supply chain in China dropping towards almost the lowest level in sort of four to five years. That's an indication that there is still demand for it to get through, and there's still a balance there that's going to be positive for aluminium.
We've talked about still showing. I think I was expecting to see a little bit of that flow through in the next couple of weeks. I think fixed investment is still a bit slow to take off. Housing prices are still quite low in China. Things are moving. You can see Ukraine's moving, but it's going to take a little bit longer, I think, for that fixed investment in China to respond to this. Look, obviously, China sort of moved away from its a product, and it makes wheels, and it makes refrigerators, and it makes all sorts of things that get exported out of China. That gets caught in the retail that by June time.
There's been a pause in terms, but who knows at the moment. I think there's a very positive vibe about the plans, but that plans hasn't been sort of confirmed yet. I think that's something that's going to provide a little bit of certainty. I expect us to be able to find out a little bit of uncertainty out there. We see our share price sort of suffer a little bit from that. It's been quite good. It's been grass into the goose. That's nothing. That's an incremental too, which is challenging. That's still sort of focused. It's actually tended to some sites where we find that it's at the level of about three in terms of the capacity combined in those two sites that we visited there in a few points. There's definitely indicated support.
They will be able to both use temperature refining capacity or high temperature refining technology. That is something that is very positive for us. It is a very flexible technology. You can actually process Guinean bauxite, Australian bauxite, etc., but it does have that flex to move around. We found that vehicle plants are starting actually to begin to be much more expensive. Finding capacity is being the rise of small sponsors. I think there is going to be very little leakage from energy into the global trade. Also, some of the plans to build refining capacity on the coast, as they have done for power, etc., and a lot of other industries. I am for the positive aspect of India growing over the next sort of five or so years.
I think the supply spike at the moment, the things that we've seen from the police definitely created a bit more of a small increase in that capacity that accelerated some of these projects that may have been on the back burner. Obviously, if you look at it, it's quite an elastic production process. You can shut down individual trains without there being too much of an issue. We've already seen a reaction to that, as you can see in the bottom right, as the oil prices dropped for about 10 million tons of capacity in the market. Expense costs, which are still for their own consumption, also exporting. They're exporting, which is positive. We've seen a bit of it just on that right-hand side.
You can see after a bit of stagnation, we've seen a lot of the price stabilize above RMB 3,000 per tonne. It makes the most of the refineries in China cash positive. They're not losing money, but at least they're kind of cash positive and working. Okay, we've seen continued vehicle trade over the next couple of years. That's been growing at about 9% combined for the last sort of five years. I mean, we've seen 12-13% growth individually within that. The first quarter of this year has also been another record. We're continuing that trade. Traded bauxite is definitely continuing to grow strongly. We're seeing probably a likely another sort of 55 million tons of additional bauxite demand over the next sort of eight or so years.
We have seen, even though on that previous slide you saw alumina prices come down, you have seen the bauxite price come down, but it has not come down by anywhere near as much from a percentage point of view as the alumina price. There has definitely been a sticking point in the alumina, in the bauxite price, and I will cover that a bit more in the cost curve slide. That is being driven by supply constraints. Disputes in West Africa, particularly in Guinea, are really contributing to supply uncertainty in this market. That is a continuing something that started a couple of years ago, and now there was a big impact last year with EGA's GAC mine being suspended.
Now in the last week or so, a further three mines have been suspended, which is about 50 million, sorry, 40 million tons of additional capacity that is currently being suspended by the Guinea government. If you put that in perspective, that's almost all of Rio Tinto's total production being suspended. Look, these licenses have been revoked. There's definitely a big power play coming on. There will be elections in Guinea at the end of this year. You can just imagine, I guess, the volatility in this environment in Guinea over the next sort of at least another nine months as we get towards those elections, etc., etc. We're already seeing what was this declining. The Guinea price I saw yesterday popped back up over the last few days after having been sort of declining for the last few weeks.
There is definitely going to be a response. It is going to be a response to that. Metro has about 6.9 million tons of formal contracts. There is some flex and options in those. I have already mentioned that our current pricing, which is pretty much, I know it has been a bit of, I have had a few questions about Q2 pricing. All of that is fixed. The volume is what we can produce. We are targeting about 1.8 plus million tons this quarter. All the pricing for that has been accounted for. All of our refineries that we are supplying are operating at the moment. From that point of view, we are really now looking for July onwards as to what the pricing is going to look like.
The cost curve, we've seen this before, and I've put a couple of extra markers on there just to kind of talk about, I guess, quantify, I think, some of the things that we've been talking about. This cost curve has been steepening. You can see the projected cost curve for next year, which I think may also be underdone, frankly, given the costs that have increased in Guinea. A lot of the new capacity has been coming on on the right-hand side of that curve. They are much further from the coast, 200-300 km away from the coast. Transshipping costs have almost doubled over the last few years as constraints in the river, barging, and transshipping have occurred.
Of course, you've got the natural evolution of Guinea's regulatory system. There will be taxes and royalties being put on to those companies that do survive the purge in terms of, in terms of, and there's been a bit of bad behavior in Guinea in terms of the mining side of things. Not everybody, but you've seen transfer pricing. You've seen probably underpayment of workforces. You've seen dodging of royalties and fees, etc. So there's a bit of payback here in terms of the way that the Guinea mining sector, the Guinea, certainly the bauxite sector, has been operated over the last few years. I have sort of put in place, I guess, where the bottom of the cost curve is, and that's about $30 per tonne. These are all delivered China costs.
The whole, I guess, strategy around where Metro is, is that we are targeting that bottom of the cost curve. The difference between $65, which is a Guinea price, and normally in cost curve terms, you'd expect the long run price to be set at about the 90th percentile of the cost curve. Round about that $65 per tonne for Guinea. It will, of course, bounce around that, but that's generally accepted practice in bulk commodities where you see the price get set. If that's what the Guinea price is, if you factor in a discount for quality, etc., we should be targeting at the bottom of the cost curve around a $20 per tonne margin. That's what this cost curve tells us about the future of this business.
If we can target and get to that $30 per tonne delivered with all of the quality and other sort of discounts that occur in these contracts, then what that tells us is that margin for someone at the bottom of the cost curve can be around $20 per tonne on average. Right? You take that and convert that into Aussie Dollars and let you do the math. That is where Metro is targeting our financials and our output. Okay, are we going to get there? That is a good question, right? We are going to get to $30 bucks a tonne. Look, I think when we talk about Guinea, the new place is coming on 200-300 km from the port, Metro is nine. Okay?
When we talk about the sort of the economies of scale that we've got here, the Guinea transshipping distance is roughly 50 km, roughly port to ours is about, depending on which anchorage we're using, 10, 12, something like that. This is a very different physical position. Our bauxite is high grade. It's high alumina. It does obviously have silica, which causes some of the penalties, but it's a very acceptable product in the marketplace. We've done a lot of work over the last couple of years on market positioning. We've got a very simple flow sheet. I said no washing. We don't wash the bauxite, so our costs can be low, and we've now are heading to that 7 million tonne economy of scale position.
When I 1st looked at Metro, and I still believe it today, we have all the prerequisites here of a very, very successful bulk commodity operation. If you look at what we've done, I want to talk a little bit about strategy here over the next sort of three or four years. It doesn't take long for investors and analysts and everybody to start saying, "Okay, what's next?" I just want to emphasize what we're doing, what we've been doing, and why we've been doing it. We come back to that. We fundamentally come back to trying to add value to this business and a lot of de-risking. We've recapitalized the business several times from a pretty desperate situation in 2021, a lot of new team and a turnaround in that operation.
Again, my hats off to the whole team who are sitting here who've really executed on that turnaround. We've really had to reposition our product. We've had to test the boundaries of that quality trade-off. What's the price impact of moving our position? We've now reset all of our contracts towards the reserve grade of our product. That's an accepted product in the market. That's the price on the basis on which we're negotiating prices today and what we've been doing for this last quarter. The prices that you see flowing through will reflect all of that in the numbers to come. We've really de-risked and increased control over our supply chain all the way through to the customer, increased the resilience of our operation. A key part of our strategy, a really key part of our strategy, has been about driving resilience in the business, right?
About weather, particularly around weather, etc. Then we fast-tracked this expansion. I guess I do admit that we were a little bit late off the mark last year in that expansion, but I will also point to the fact that we have really been pushing and pushing and pushing this expansion. We could see the market moving, and we did not want to wait. We have been pushing this probably faster than might otherwise have been the case. You can see the growth in volumes, in sales and production to a target of that sort of 6.5-7 for this year and sort of a minimum margin for us this year based on a cost focus. Now let's talk a bit about, I guess, 1st time Doug touched on this about capital allocation.
The 1st key message here is that the 1st two columns here around about there's plenty more to do at our Bauxite Hills Mine. This is our core asset. It's our core business. There is a lot to do here in terms of adding value. That business alone, we're looking to try and generate over AUD 300 million of cash available for allocation, net of debt, etc., over the next five years. That is the ability that underpins a business that has a net asset value of greater than AUD 1 billion. Okay? From a Bauxite Hills perspective, we're seeking to, and of course, we're trying to be a little bit conservative here, but it's difficult not to see these sorts of numbers flowing through based upon the rate that we're moving. Obviously, that means we should be net debt. We should be net cash.
This year, from a cash perspective, our amortization on our debt sees us repaying all of that anyway under the current schedule by the end, by March 2027. One thing we're doing is starting exploration again this year. We are looking to try and maintain and increase our reserve life through this period. The organic growth comes from initially a creep factor. Our current flow sheet with a few tweaks and additions, we think can do about 8 million tons per annum. That is where we're focused on for 2026. We are basically working on investigating the material handling benefits and beneficiation that provides additional value over and above our current reserve to be able to kind of to access that. We are taking a bit of a different perspective on beneficiation. We did a conceptual piece of work last year, sorry, two years ago on that.
That was a traditional Rio Tinto sort of big bang approach. We're now looking at a more modular, flexible, mobile approach that we can bring in a lot earlier and a lot faster to kind of help valorise the resources that sit outside the reserve. Here's the sort of next year's, the micro of next year. What does that mean for those two elements? Obviously, being lean and safe, but next year, we should be at or around that $30 per tonne US delivered into the market. A resilient asset and business model, the wet season. I mean, just for instance, over the last couple of weeks, we've had some pretty severe winds.
The TSA's garden, the floating crane has had to park itself up on the mooring, but Ikamba has been regularly delivering over 20,000 tonnes, even in very difficult wave conditions over the last couple of weeks. There is a validation there around that resilience that we have been putting in place. Talked a bit about that product and market positioning. We are going to further drive that, leveraging the logistics supply chain, working on that debottlenecking strategy and going into exploration. We have done quite a bit of work on kaolin over the last 12 months. We now have done some customer test work. We have done some logistics testing. We know what that looks like. It is something that is now a real opportunity for us going forward.
We're not going to be pursuing that in the very near term based on where the current bauxite prices are at, but it's definitely there for us. These are the focuses for next year. In particular, I guess one of these things that the resilience provides us is the possibility to make Q1 not a cash negative quarter, which it has been in the past. We're definitely focusing on trying to make that a cash positive outcome. The 3rd column here then is, okay, what are we looking to try and do over and above that to add value to you as shareholders and to our business? We will be focusing, as I said, that core. Most of the effort is placed on the core business.
If we're going to grow and we're going to take that $1 billion plus business into a $2 billion-$3 billion, sorry, $1 billion business into a $2 billion-$3 billion business, then we also have to look at growth opportunities and about leveraging core competencies that we have in our business. We have set some initial targets for that, looking for definitely IRRs above 20%. I'll talk a bit about the inorganic growth strategy in a second, about setting a firm limit on what we're going to deploy in areas which we say are not core to our bauxite in Australia business. All of that added together means that we are going to commit to moving into capital allocation in 2026. At least 20% of our available free cash flow after debt servicing will be distributed in dividends.
We will also be looking at opportunistic share buyback programs as soon as we are able. Let's cover a bit more about that growth. Core competencies require, when we reflect on our business, obviously, we've developed a bauxite mining business in Cape York. What does that really mean in terms of what we're good at? I think when we look at those things, transshipping, project development, value-added marketing, asset turnaround, logistics, and supply chain, those are all, I think, really go to the core of what our team can deliver and have delivered over the last five years. Within that, we've obviously done that within the challenge of a very remote operation and also done it whilst punching above our weight in regional and community impact. This is something that we feel is a really important part of what we do.
I think it's something that underpins, I guess, the security of supply that we've got in a location like Scardon River. It's something we can really build on. That's all contained within what has been a pretty stable management team. We've been adding to that over the last couple of years to bring the skills in that we need. I'm really confident that this team has all of that capability to be able to deliver on this. Let's talk a bit about these organic opportunities. Look, we've talked a bit about earning the right. That capital management framework is about earning, placing a framework around our business that we're going to commit to. Obviously, outside of Bauxite Hills, our focus is going to be bauxite.
How do we find additional bauxite mines that we can access, that we can add value to, that we can bring to bear? Obviously, within playing at home, if you took the bottom left-hand box there, it's about what you might call your home base, Cape York or Australia. The products that we have on our lease at the moment are bauxite and kaolin identified. How do we play? How do we play that? We have to sort of really recognize the fact that there aren't that many bauxite projects around the world, aren't that many in Australia. There are a few more around the world, but when you look at them, they're in a jurisdiction risk that is a big jump from where we are at the moment.
If you think about West Africa or you think about Vietnam or Laos or whatever, then some of these opportunities in bauxite are not an easy step away from where we are at the moment. We just have to recognize that fact. That is why we need another dimension to this. I think that is why the core competency piece is so important, is that how do we leverage our core competencies maybe into something that is adjacent to what we are doing at the moment? When I think about bulk minerals, I think about high-quality minerals like silica, or I think about industrial minerals or maybe phosphate rock or whatever it is that might be out there. How could we deploy our skills in developing and running a bulk mining operation which adds value?
How can we deploy some of these things like marketing, about logistics, etc., etc., and that have a high-quality and scalable resource like we've got at Bauxite Hills? How can we replicate that model moving forward? Look, obviously, the focus is at home, as I said. If we are going to play away, we're going to place a firm limit on what we're going to deploy there to about 20% of market cap. We're going to try and seek high-quality partners where we can to be able to do that. We'll seek low-risk cash flows within that model. Management fees, maybe working on the transshipping parts of the business, etc. Those are lower-risk parts of the supply chain where you've got fungible assets that are mobile. If worse comes to worst, you can demobilize those sorts of things. How do we?
There's definitely an approach about how we might want to work in these different parts of the, when you might be playing away from home, if you like. We can't wait for that. I think this doesn't happen overnight. I've been involved in business development all of my career, as have many of the board. You can't just switch a switch and suddenly do BD. You've got to actually get your processes in place. There's a lot of shoe leather that gets worn out in going around talking to people, accessing opportunities, doing the analysis, getting the rigour in place, going through the kissing the frog sort of process, all right? There's a lot of that work involved. It doesn't happen overnight. We've got to just start ramping up in that space. That's what we're going to do, going to do this year.
That pipeline that comes out of that, that's the richness in the opportunities to choose what we want to do. Developing that pipeline of opportunities, being able to choose the right ones that fit what we want to do is a very, very important part of that process. That discipline, that rigor, the application of our capability into the right place is all part and parcel of that approach. Okay. A quick focus then for 2025. Back to this year. I mean, it's all about execution. We know that. We're going to continue to mature our safety culture, and particularly through the marine operation, which we've taken a large amount of responsibility in that marine organization. We've had a lot of help from our partners and also from the regulators in developing that. We thank them for that.
That's going to be a continual focus. We've got to fully leverage now the money we've spent over the last in the first quarter of this year, particularly around that large loading facility. We're seeing some really good signs straight away that that work has been very useful for us in terms of getting increased throughput and reliability. We need to leverage the vast international experience of our new transshipment partner, ABL. I'll acknowledge Bill Bisset, who's the CEO of the new CEO of TSA. TSA has been purchased by a huge global transshipping company called Asian Bulk Logistics. Bill is the new CEO that's been put in place there. He's got huge experience in transshipping and in the marine industry generally.
We are really looking to leverage that relationship, Bill, this year to enhance, particularly around the tug and barge productivity to service the transshippers. We have spent a lot of time on mine planning and quality control. I will touch on that again in a minute, as I will on the use of technology to improve our productivity and supply chain effectiveness. Look, one example on the safety side is the use of AI now in safety and in hazard identification and those sorts of things. We have already had the Guardian system in our trucks for quite some time. That allows us to pick up when a driver is starting to feel sleepy and maybe has micro sleeps. These cameras or software behind these cameras now pick up these very small changes in movement and behavior. That is also now happening on our marine vessels.
We were able to, one of the things that ABL can bring to us is the experience of using what they call Captain's Eye, which is an AI-based sort of detection system around offshore marine vessels where you can pick up even outside where there's no smoke sensors. You can pick up smoke and fire. You can see when there might be water leaking. You can even, for example, when a human is there and doesn't move for two minutes, you can actually pick up and say, "Okay, well, there's something wrong with this person. Let's go and do a formal check on that person." These are the sorts of things that we can now do with the new technology that comes in here. Just on site as well.
Matt Graham, who's come in from Anglo last year and is the GM of technology and projects, is really going to be focused on using effective fit-for-purpose technology on our site to be able to improve not only the safety side but the productivity side. Working with Gary and his team and Vincenzo and his team across the board in terms of how we do that. For example, GPS guidance, etc., improving the quality of how we mine from a quality point of view. We already have a sort of it's not XRF, but I never can quite get the it's basically an online scanning technology across our bauxite that picks up the quality of the bauxite live, real-time on that conveyor belt. We've spent just almost AUD 700,000 over the last wet season to improve our sample station that picks up physical samples. That was one.
That is a really good example of where one of our older pieces of kit was not coping well with the new throughput. We have had to go back and look at some of those older pieces of equipment and upgrade them to suit the 7 million-ton or 8 million-ton rate that we are targeting. That has now been put in place. We have also got a new on-site laboratory, which we have revamped, and that is coming into play. A couple of other areas we have been working on—one of our most difficult planning exercises, both from a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year perspective—is the barge planning side of things. How many barges do we need? When do they go out? When are the tides coming up and down? We have got a new planning software that is helping us to optimize that barge planning, load rates, etc., etc.
That is being implemented as we speak. We have also, as Doug said, for the 1st time, come out with an ESG framework and strategy. It has really got three areas. We have the sustainable mine and supply chain. That is our what are we doing today and tomorrow around the physical flowsheet. We have then what impact do we have as a company from an original perspective. How do we ensure our activities, our community, and workforce are aligned. Then a 3rd element, which we call future proofing. This is about making sure that we are pursuing long-term strategies that are kind of aware or registering the fact that regulations change both here and abroad.
For example, whether it's in China to do with our quality or to do with our upstream reporting, could be in the shipping space, could even be the regulatory environment in Australia around what's going on. How do we align our strategy and positioning to ensure that we can still deliver on the mine and supply chain and the future and the original impact? Look, I'd say that ESG, our sound practice here is about strengthening our business. That is the core. That's the reason we're doing this and for no other reason. That's got a positive impact across not only I think we all want to work for a company that's got those values. I mean, I think that obviously our suppliers, our customers want to work with a company that's got these values.
I think it's really important from a culture point of view that we do that. It's very important to our traditional owners that they see this right at the top of our agenda in terms of managing the land that we are temporarily occupying for this operation. It's a thoughtful structure. We're building and leveraging on the good work that we've already done. We've never really kind of, I guess, brought it all together in one way, but we've been doing a lot of good work so far. I think it gives us sort of focus and clarity in terms of our impact with the community and blends the current activities with a proactive approach in terms of what's coming through. Our current focus areas are all win-win opportunities for us, and particularly around water. Fuel efficiency fuels one of our biggest costs.
How do we reduce our fuel usage? That is an active discussion within the mining site. We have got a new diesel electric loader that we are trialling, which is going superbly well. Thanks to BMG for providing that. It is a live conversation with ABL around tugs. How do we kind of improve fuel usage on our tugboats? Cyber resilience and improving reporting against our standards obviously are clear ones. I want to talk a bit more about employment readiness and particularly around our local community members and females. In the annual report, you will see some stats there on how much, I guess, impact we are having on some of the local communities. Some of the background to that is some of these other stats in terms of over, should we say, 90% of our workforce, roughly, for Far North Queensland?
are 486 workers all coming from that Far North Queensland area. The impact that we're having here is initially through our workforce, but with all of these other programs. Metro, that's all of us, that's all of the contractors and so on. I mean, our own Metro salaries alone are worth about AUD 23 million that go back into that FNQ, into that FNQ community. We're very pleased to say that we're still tracking above the 30% target that we agreed with our Indigenous communities to have those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in our team. That doesn't happen by accident. This is not a sort of a kind of throw up the card, see where they land, and suddenly you've got that level of employment. There's a lot of hard work and a lot of things that we do.
Nothing super revolutionary, but it's the combination of about four or five factors that give us this multi-generational. We've got workers in their 60s and workers in their teens from these communities right the way through. That's from things like our training and development program, apprentice roles. It's about flying. That's one of our new service providers, Torres Strait Air. We're flying small planes into these communities on a regular basis. We basically say to a worker, "If you're from Far North Queensland, we will go and pick you up." Right? If you live in Horn Island or if you live in Bamaga or if you live in Mapoon or you live in Weipa or if you live in Far North Queensland, we'll find a way to come and get you and bring you to the site.
Now, that's obviously got a cost, but the benefit that we see coming through here is tremendous. That's the approach we take rather than going, "Well, look, you've just got to meet. You've got to be in Cairns Airport by 8:00 A.M. on every Monday." That's not how we're approaching this. One of the things I'm also really pleased about is some of our female sort of engagement. It's hard in a FIFO environment in any case, particularly with the sort of negativity that's been around some of the FIFO side of things in Australia in the last few years. I'm glad to see the mining industry as a whole engaging in some of those issues and addressing them. We're trying to do our own thing. We have a pretty small camp.
We want to make it as safe as possible for every member of that community. I'm glad to say we've had no incidents in that space. Look, we're really happy with that. To bring through female participation, we've really enjoyed working with the NPA College on the Johnathan Thurston Lead Like a Girl program. It's about trying to give high school students that confidence around engaging in having the confidence around being workforce ready, being able to express themselves about how they can participate in a company or in a job later on and get that experience. We're the only sponsor of that. It's been a tremendous 1st year for us last year, and we're going to continue with that sponsorship.
So look, there's a whole bunch of different things here, and it's not one thing that's revolutionary, but a whole bunch of things that I think add up to us sort of driving that very high level of engagement we've got and the employment levels. Okay. I think that's basically it. Thank you very much for listening. Sorry, that probably took a bit longer than you were planning, Robin.
Thanks, Simon. I hope that gave you a very good and detailed flavour of what has been taking place and really where the focus is for us going forward. Thank you, Simon. Now I'm going to sort of change the tone a little bit, and we're going to just go through all these formal resolutions. The formal notice of meeting dated the 22nd of April 2025 has been released to the ASX and dispatched to all shareholders.
I will take the notice, therefore, as read. In accordance with the company's constitution and as set out in that notice of meeting, we have determined that voting on each of the resolutions will be conducted by a poll. The results of the poll will be declared and released to the ASX as soon as the results are counted by Computershare and available. Only shareholders present, persons holding valid proxies, and validly appointed corporate representatives are eligible to ask questions and vote at this meeting. If a shareholder has appointed a proxy but is present at the meeting, the proxy holder is not entitled to ask questions or vote. Only shareholders who are entitled to vote on a resolution may cast a vote on that resolution. Shareholders who are entitled to vote can cast a vote using the voting card that they would have received upon validating their registration.
As chair of the meeting and as detailed in the notice of meeting, I will vote where authorized all undirected proxies in favor of each resolution. The attendance register is at the entry to this room. You will all have registered and received a voting card upon entry if you are entitled to vote. If you have any questions, please see Robin, the company secretary. You would have been given an attendance card when you registered. If you have a blue voting card, you are a voting shareholder, proxy holder, or corporate rep and have chosen to vote using a paper voting card. You are also entitled to speak at this meeting. If you have a yellow card, you are a non-voting shareholder. Whilst you are entitled to ask questions and make comments, you are not entitled to vote at this meeting.
If you have a white card, you're a visitor and are not entitled to speak or vote at the meeting. I'd like to inform the attendees that the proxy votes for approximately 36% of the shares on issue, and I thank you for your vote. Further breakdown of the proxies will be detailed prior to the voting for each resolution. Can you click? The 1st item of business is to receive and consider the financial statements for 2024. In this regard and in accordance with the Corporations Act and the Metro Mining Constitution, I table for discussion the financial statements, the director's report, and the auditor's report for the financial year ended 31st of December 2024. Are there any questions in respect of the audited financial statements? Hold your card up.
Is there any solution to the foreign exchange loss problem? Can you hear me?
Yep. Great. Yeah.
Thank you very much for your question on the foreign exchange. It's naturally, as you all would have seen, with significant volatility in the financial markets, a pretty key area of focus for us. I guess just as a little bit of background in how we manage our foreign currency is, as an exporter, naturally, our receipts are in USD. The 1st thing that we'll attempt to accomplish is to reduce that exposure in as natural and organic a way as possible. That will generally require or have us seek to have as many outgoings in USD as possible to reduce that net exposure. What we're left with is essentially then what we need to hedge. For example, I think this year we've gone to the market to an expectation of around $200 million of USD net exposure.
That is essentially then what we've gone and hedged. In terms of the unrealized loss that you would have seen in the financial results last year, that was unsurprising for us given our hedging positions and the average rate at which those hedging positions were initially entered into and that relative to the closing price at that balance sheet date. Given the difference between those two rates, it was quite a significant quantum, albeit unrealized paper loss. From that perspective, what you're seeing there is actually the results of our hedging that's in place, right? That is the volatility that we've essentially managed at that point. I'm pleased to say that subsequent to that balance sheet date, what we've been able to achieve is a restructure in our currency hedging book at this point.
have been able to, fortunately, take advantage of some of the volatility that you have seen in the financial market to do our best to time our restructure well. Whereas what we had before was about $50 million of net hedging at around $0.68, we have been able to restructure that into, I think, approximately $200 million at roughly $0.635. If you looked at the foreign exchange rate today, at about $0.645, it essentially means our entire hedge book for the moment as of today is essentially in the money. We are fairly pleased with that result.
Thanks, Nathan. I also note Matt Taylor from Ernst & Young is here. Are there any questions in respect of the auditor's report? Okay. On that basis, I will turn to the resolutions to be put through the meeting. Resolution one, the adoption of the Remuneration Report.
The 1st resolution is an ordinary resolution and relates to the adoption of the remuneration report. The resolution is put to members under Section 250(2) of the Corporations Act. The resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors or the company. The resolution reads that the remuneration report for the financial year ended 31st of December 2024 be adopted. As you may know from the meeting materials, there is a voting exclusion which specifically applies to this resolution, excluding the votes of directors, management, and their families and related entities. Are there any questions in relation to resolution one? The proxies received are set out on the screen. I note that all discretionary proxies have been directed in favor of the resolution. Based on the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried.
Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to the resolution one on your voting card. Voting cards will be collected at the end of the formal part of this meeting and the final result declared after the meeting having regard to any votes cast here. As the next resolution relates to me, could Andy please take on the role of Chair?
Thank you, Doug. Good afternoon, everybody. Resolution two is an ordinary resolution and reads as follows: that Mr. Douglas Ritchie, who retires by rotation in accordance with Rules 38.1A and 38.6 of Metro's Constitution and the ASX Listing Rule 14.4, and being eligible, be re-elected as a director of Metro. Are there any questions in relation to resolution two? Thank you. The proxies received are set out on the screen. Based on the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried.
Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution two on your voting card. Thank you. I'll now hand the meeting back to Doug. Thanks, Doug.
Thanks, Andy. And thank you to shareholders. Resolution three is the re-election of Andy Lloyd as a director. It's an ordinary resolution and reads as follows: that Mr. Andy Lloyd, who retires by rotation in accordance with Rule 38.1C of Metro's Constitution and being eligible, be re-elected as a director of Metro. Are there any questions in relation to resolution three? Thank you. The proxies received are set out on the screen. Based on the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried. Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution three on your voting card. Thank you. Resolution four is an ordinary resolution and reads as follows: that Mrs.
Jo-Anne Scarini, who retires in accordance with Rules 36.2 and 38.1B of Metro's Constitution and listing Rule 14.4, and being eligible, be elected a director of Metro. As this is Jo-Anne's 1st meeting, I thought it might be nice if she just gave a short address to the shareholders.
Thanks, Doug. I'm Jo-Anne Scarini, and it's nice to be here with you today. I joined the Metro Mining Board in late October 2024, and I've loved having the opportunity to get a little bit of red dirt on my boots again. Through my career, preferring to live and work in remote environments, I found that I gravitated towards working in and leading operations. This allowed me to develop strengths across a very broad range of disciplines that I've found highly relevant in the Metro boardroom. I've had the good fortune to work in senior roles in two multinational resource companies.
Amongst other work, I have successfully led several significant and complex operations across the commodities of bauxite, thermal coal, and manganese. My work in bauxite was leading Rio Tinto's Weipa bauxite operation, and I have spent 10 years of my career in, on, or leading that operation. The leadership experience that I gained in the latter part of my career was built on a very solid governance, commercial, and systems base, having spent the best part of the 1st half of my career in accounting or accounting-related roles. That background, the accounting background, as well as having spent quite a lot of time applying risk frameworks to operations to ensure that optimum outcomes were achieved, has been very helpful in taking on the chair role for Metro's Audit and Risk Committee.
I've really enjoyed being part of the Metro Board, and I have developed deep respect for my board colleagues. I believe that my background is very complementary to the background of the other members of the board. I've also really enjoyed working with the executive team. I think Simon has assembled a really strong, capable, and committed group of people who are doing some remarkable things. I was very impressed when I went and had a look at Metro's operations and very impressed looking at just the very, very dedicated commitment to perpetually improving the outcomes from the operation. Today, I seek your support to continue in a non-executive director for Metro Mining. Thank you.
Thanks, Jo-Anne. That was very useful. Any questions from the floor? The proxies received are as set out on the screen.
Based on the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried. Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution four on your voting card. Thank you. The next resolution is an ordinary resolution and reads as follows: that Mr. Paul Lucas, who retires in accordance with Rules 36.2 and 38.1B of Metro's Constitution and listing Rule 14.4, and being eligible, be elected as a director of Metro. Similarly, this is Paul's 1st AGM with Metro. I would just like, if he would like, to address the meeting briefly.
Thanks, Doug. Thank you, everybody. It's great to be here today. I'm before you today for your consideration of my appointment as a director. I'm also chair of the Remuneration and Nominations Committee. I'm a practicing lawyer and an urban planner by profession and a fellow of the Institute of Company Directors.
I've chaired or served on boards in the private sector and at all three levels of government and nonprofit in aviation, energy, rail, water, university, and indigenous native title, particularly in the mining area. Relevantly to a business that has many international trading partners, I also run training in governance and public policy courses for DFAT in the Asia-Pacific area, particularly in Indonesia, a country that I love. I'm also state president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. I was a state minister for 11 years, mainly in the infrastructure sector, and I'm very familiar with the workings of government and the public sector bureaucracies in what is a highly regulated sector.
In relation to mining specifically, my experience, of course, is in Queensland, both involved as a regulator but also dealing with mining companies at various levels, but involved with organizations in both South Australia and Western Australia in bulk commodity, touching mining companies in bulk commodity mining. My journey with Metro Mining started, like you, in early 2022 as a modest shareholder. When the share price was not what it is like now. I followed the journey of Metro Mining, a journey that has been due to the hard work and efforts of Doug and the board and Simon and a wonderful team and our team of staff. It just does not happen. It is that hard work.
When you get on site, though, at the end of a wet season and there's more threatening, and it happened, and in an area where monsoons and cyclones are routine, you do get an appreciation of the complexity of it, not just being another mine. The hauling, the screening, the shipping, the loading into barges, the shipping barges out, the loading a vessel, then moving the vessel further out, then, of course, dealing with a market where there are enormous trade uncertainties now, and we don't need to canvass, as you're all aware of them, into a market where it is not a generic product and different bauxite smelters take different bauxite. The enormous work that has had to go in from Simon and his team in improving those contracts and markets is 2nd to none.
You see the value of a management team and a board that work together cooperatively that actually do not play gotchas, that actually are prepared to canvass all of the issues. It is a board that I am very proud to say, or pleased to say, is as good as any board that I have ever observed and far better than the vast majority of them in the way that it works and cooperates together. I am honored by the opportunity to put myself before you for reappointment to the board. I look forward to working together to be part of the team to guide the company to a prosperous and responsible future.
Thank you, Paul. I think that was quite informative. Now, are there any questions in relation to this resolution? Okay. The proxies are set out on the screen.
Based on the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried. Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution five on your voting card. The next resolution, again, relates to me. Could Andy please take the chair?
Thank you, Doug. Resolution six is the grant of performance rights to Mr. Douglas Ritchie and reads as follows: that for the purposes of listing Rule 10.11 and for all other purposes, the grant of 2,600,066 performance rights to Mr. Douglas Ritchie or his nominee in lieu of his director's fees and otherwise on the terms and conditions described in the explanatory memorandum be approved. Are there any questions in relation to resolution six? Thank you. The proxies received are set out on the screen. Based on the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried.
Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution six on your voting card. Thank you. I now hand the meeting back to Doug.
Thanks, Andy. The next resolution is an ordinary resolution. It reads that for the purposes of listing Rule 10.11 and for all other purposes, the grant of 417,269 performance rights to Mr. Andy Lloyd or his nominee in lieu of 25% of his director's fees and otherwise on the terms and conditions described in the explanatory memorandum be approved. Are there any questions in relation to resolution seven? The proxies received are set out on the screen. Based on the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried. Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution seven on your voting card. The next resolution, number eight, is an ordinary resolution.
It reads as follows: that for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.11 and for all other purposes, the grant of 222,543 performance rights to Mr. Paul Lucas or his nominee in lieu of 20% of his director's fees and otherwise on the terms and conditions described in the explanatory memorandum be approved. Are there any questions in relation to resolution eight? The proxies received are as set out on the screen. Based upon the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried. Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution eight on your voting card. Resolution nine, the grant of performance rights to Simon Wensley, 2024 management performance incentive MPI, 2025 short-term STI, and the 2025 to 2027 long-term incentive plans.
Its resolution nine is an ordinary resolution and reads that for the purposes of listing Rule 10.14 and for all other purposes, the grant of the following performance rights to Mr. Wensley or his nominee under the company's employee incentive scheme titled 2020 Employee Incentive Plan or otherwise on the terms and conditions described in the explanatory memorandum be approved. That slide does designate the three types of incentive plans. Are there any questions in relation to resolution nine? Proxies received are as set out on the screen. Based upon the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried. Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution nine on your voting card.
Resolution 10 is an ordinary resolution that reads as follows: that for the purposes of Rule 39.5B of Metro's Constitution and Listing Rule 10.17 and for all other purposes, the maximum aggregate amount of the director's fees that may be paid to the company's non-executive directors per annum as remuneration for their services be increased by AUD 300,000 from AUD 500,000 per annum to AUD 800,000 per annum. Are there any questions in relation to resolution 10? The proxies received are as set out on the screen. Based upon the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried. Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution 10 on your voting card. You'd be pleased to know that resolution 11 is the last resolution.
It's an ordinary resolution and reads that for the purposes of Listing Rule 7.2, exception 13, and for all other purposes, the company be authorized to issue equity securities pursuant to the company's employee incentive scheme titled 2022 Employee Incentive Plan, the details of which are set out in the explanatory memorandum as an exception to Listing Rule 7.1. Are there any questions in relation to resolution 11? The proxies received are as set out on the screen. Based upon the proxy votes received, the resolution should be carried. Please now indicate for, against, or abstain next to resolution 11 on your voting card. As that is the last of the resolutions, a member of Computershare will now move around the room and collect your voting cards. The result will be announced to the ASX as soon as possible after the meeting.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the formal items of today's annual general meeting. Is there any other business that a member wishes to bring before the meeting? There being no other business, I now—oh, sorry. I did not see. I missed you. Sorry.
I have just got a couple of questions, I think, more for Simon. But am I right in thinking the legacy contracts wash out this year?
Yeah. Thanks. Hello? Can you hear me? Yep. Working? Yeah. Pretty much. That is the plan. It is probably going to be back-ended a little bit. It will be increasing, the percentage of sales will probably be slightly higher in the 2nd half versus the current quarter. I mean, if we are hitting close to our topic—if we hit our target around 6.97 million, then they should all wash out this year.
Two other quick ones. It might be more for Vincenzo.
When we get surprised by shittier weather than we expect, it seems as though demurrage is almost inevitable. Do we have any way of being more agile on that? I'll give Nathan one to think about. It would seem as though we're still not going to pay tax for a while. Rather than paying dividends, maybe the focus ought to be on share buyback.
Peter? Yeah. On the weather events, I think it's more the management of the backlog of it. The weather events cannot be handled as it is, but it's more how you manage the backlog of it, so the consequence of it. In terms of supply chain and transshipment capacity, we have that spring capacity to be able to recover in the next coming days what has been lost in the previous one.
To, let's say, edge the demurrage exposure these days in the future. It is how you do it, having enough capacity out there to have that sprint capacity to recover. That is how you manage.
Yeah. Thanks very much. Thanks very much. I'll just comment on the demurrage as well, if I may, is that one of the things from a shipping schedule perspective that we will do is we will assume a small level of demurrage as essentially a cost of the shipping schedule, right? As part of that, as you can imagine, in terms of a general cape-size vessel contract, generally, you'd be looking at demurrage of between $20,000-$30,000 per day US, which is not a small amount. What we are trying to manage is not having any shipping schedule gaps.
What you will do is you will err on the side of having a little bit of overlap between your vessels and actually incurring some demurrage. As Vincenzo says, it is more about how do you address the concertina effect that often happens when you have got a weather delay. That is something that we will keep working through with our shipping partners to stay as agile as possible. Particularly with our longer-run relationships with some of our shipping partners where we have long-term contracts of affreightment, that is a little bit easier to achieve to get that flexibility. That is something that we are going to continue to prioritize as part of our shipping relationships, how do we respond to those sorts of situations where we have limited control over them but will happen at some point during the year. That is sort of more the demurrage side.
Absolutely agree with your point from a tax perspective. As we currently model things, we would not expect to be paying tax probably until 2027. A lot of that is driven by, naturally, the pricing environment. With pricing the way it currently is, we are expecting to probably pay tax a bit earlier than what we were expecting maybe a year or two ago, which is actually a fantastic thing in some respects. From your perspective, I agree entirely as there is going to be the right balance from a tax efficiency and optimization perspective to see serious value in opportunistic share buybacks. I think it forms part of a sort of broad balance capital allocation where there is probably merit in all of them. It is just at what level and at what quantum. Yeah. Yeah. Cheers. Yeah. Thanks. I assume you are referring to the carryforward tax losses from tax?
Yeah.
Absolutely. I think at the end of the balance sheet period, I think we had approximately, in gross terms, around $250 million of carryforward tax losses. Naturally, what we will do is a process, and it's generally a process you'll do every six months where you'll assess what is the likelihood around the recoverability of those tax losses. As you can imagine, with some of the metrics we've been talking about and some of the cash generation we've been talking about, that's clearly something that we need to look at in time for the next balance date. It's essentially a modeling exercise around expectation of utilization of those carryforward tax losses, particularly from almost a rule of thumb sort of within the next five years is generally the sort of timeframe that you would look at.
Yeah, I think the time is right to definitely have a fresh look at potentially the re-recognition of those deferred tax assets. Absolutely. Yeah. Agree completely.
Other questions for any of us, please?
Just in on a cheerful note, Shoren Partners, the big resource-focusing stockbroking company, recommends MMI as a strong buy.
Yep.
That's good, isn't it?
You can see why.
Yes. Yeah. Just more of a comment. I don't know about anyone else, but I'll be looking forward to my nice dividend in 2026. Thank you.
Thank you. That's a positive note too.
If there's no other questions, we'll close the meeting at whatever it is, 12:33. Thank you, everyone. I think we've got tea, coffee, cakes, and biscuits or something outside if you'd like to join us and maybe ask a few more informal questions outside the meeting.
Thank you very much, everyone, for your attendance.