Welcome to the Nickel Industries Limited March quarter results webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. For operative assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. Finally, I would like to advise all participants this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Justin Werner, managing director, to begin the conference. Justin, over to you.
Thank you. Thank you everyone for your attendance this morning at the Nickel Industries March quarter results call for 2023. If I could please ask the slide presenter to move to page two of the quarterly results presentation. We are, again, very pleased to announce another record quarter for both production and EBITDA. This is against the backdrop of many companies which are across the resources and battery minerals sector, which are reporting soft results and numerous production misses. Pleasingly, we achieved over $100 million in EBITDA from our RKEF operations for the first time. We had record nickel metal production of 26,665 tons, which is 15.6% higher than the December quarter.
Oracle Nickel ramp-up is progressing very well and I'll touch on that a little bit later on, but we expect Oracle Nickel to continue to drive record production and more importantly, significant increases into our.
Apologies for the interruption. We seem to be having some technical difficulties. Please stand by while we get the presenters back.
Apologies everyone, the line dropped out of there momentarily. Just to rehash another record quarter for production and EBITDA, again, against the backdrop of many companies in the resources and battery minerals space that have reported soft results and production misses. As I said, pleasingly, EBITDA from RKEF operations has exceeded for the first time, $100 million and the reported record nickel metal production of 26,665 tons for the quarter, which was a 15.6% increase on our December quarter. Oracle Nickel ramp-up is progressing very well and we expect that to add not just significant additional production tons, but more importantly, significant EBITDA to our bottom line.
Production of nickel matte continues with continued strong margins being delivered of $4,947 a ton. We achieved record RKEF revenue of $487.9 million and also very strong average received prices for our nickel matte of $21,858 per ton. I mentioned the record RKEF EBITDA of US$100.2 million. Pleasingly, our NPI margins from Angel Nickel, which were $4,894 per ton, were consistent with the margins from our nickel matte production at HNI of $4,947 a ton. The record EBITDA was mostly made up of the EBITDA contribution from our four Angel Nickel RKEF lines, which delivered $61.1 million.
That is a clear endorsement of our strategy to not only move forward from our original four RKEF lines into newer, more integrated lines, and we are seeing a significant margin improvement from those newer lines. Hengjaya Mine ore production, 2.8 million WMT . That was slightly lower. There was some seasonal rains and there was some delays in the delivery of ore over the quarter. We look forward to making that up in a strong upcoming second quarter. Hengjaya Mine EBITDA was $13 million, and underlying cash generation from operations was $108 million. If we could move to slide three, please. This table summarizes the results. As I said, production 26,665, up 15.6%.
Record RKEF sales and record EBITDA $100.2 million, up 11.3% from the December quarter. Cash balance $275.1 million. The company maintains a very strong balance sheet. If we could move to slide four, please. The slide here demonstrates on a quarterly basis the production from our various RKEF operations. Pleasingly, if you look at March of 2022, so a year ago, our production was 11,166 tons of nickel. In a period of a year, we have more than doubled that, in fact, increased that by 139% to 26,665 tons in March. There is still additional growth on top of that.
You can see the blue line for Angel Nickel, and you can see that ramp-up profile. You can see the other light blue line, which is Oracle Nickel. We expect that ramp-up profile to reflect the ramp-up profile of Angel Nickel. As I said, still significant additional tons to come online. I mentioned Angel Nickel, EBITDA of $61.1 million. We only recognized $1.7 million of EBITDA from Oracle Nickel. We expect to see a significant increase in EBITDA moving forward as ONI continues to ramp up and to achieve and deliver the same sort of results that we are seeing from our Angel Nickel operations. Pleasingly, we're already starting to see that.
We saw a 25% decrease in costs from our ONI operations this quarter when compared to the previous quarter. If we could just move to slide five, please. If I could ask you to move to slide five. You're one slide behind. Despite record high input prices for coal and ore at the back end of 2022 and softer NPI prices at the start of 2023, you can see here on slide five that margins have remained very strong and continue to grow. All of the growth that we've touched on the previous slide, is paid for. We expect looking forward to see a strengthening in the NPI price and in NPI margins, and that will continue to grow to support significant EBITDA growth.
Just looking back at the margins, if you were to take this time last year in March of 2022, where we were averaging $7,000 a ton margins, if you were to apply that to this quarter's production of 26,665 tons, that would be EBITDA in excess of $180 million, and this doesn't include a fully ramped up ONI. You can see, we are very well-placed to take advantage of any upside in NPI and Class I nickel pricing moving forward. I think what we've demonstrated is throughout the cycle in a high-cost environment, in a softer NPI environment, that our margins remain very robust and are very strong. That, again, is because we sit right at the very bottom end of the cost curve. If we could just move to slide six, please.
Whilst the numbers were down for the Hengjaya Mine. P leasingly, if you look at our saprolite and limonite ore delivered, our saprolite grade reduced by 0.1% from 1.67- 1.57, but we were able to still increase margins from $14.01 in the December quarter to $15.81 in the March quarter. The same result for limonite. We were able to reduce that grade by 0.02% and increase margins from $14.08 in December 2022 to $14.62 in March. This reduction in grade is significant because it does increase the mineable resources and obviously the mine life. If we could just move on to page seven, please. The haul road is progressing well. It's about 60% complete.
You can see some photos there from different sections of the haul road. The bridge construction is progressing well. You can see the photo there on the bottom left. That's about a 70-m span bridge. Whilst we were targeting end of Q2, we believe that it'll probably come online early in Q3. Really the only reason for that is, we have had heavy rainfalls, most recently, and also there has been significant limestone outcrops that have required us to mobilize additional rock-breaking equipment. Moving on to slide eight, please. We were pleased yesterday to provide an update on our Siduarsi Project. The Phase 1 drill program is now complete. We've completed over 167,000 km of ground-penetrating radar and 31,000 m of drilling, which covers a prospective area of 1,400 hectares.
23,000 samples have been received, and we still have another 7,400 samples awaiting assay and another 2,800 that are in transit to the laboratory. Pleasingly, the results to date have been better than expected. We've certainly discovered that there is higher grade pods of saprolite, which we weren't expecting. We were expecting it to be purely a limonite deposit. We've returned peak assay results, very high results, 3.68% nickel and 0.82% cobalt. Along with that, very high chromium oxide, 21.72%. That is recoverable through the HPAL process. Interestingly, quite high scandium numbers. 191 ppm peak, with overall scandium grade of 48 ppm. That is something that we will explore further.
Now that that Phase 1 work has been completed, we are no. Once we have received all of the assay results, we will be releasing the initial JORC resource estimate for the Siduarsi Project, and then using that to form the basis of a feasibility and environmental study, which will look at a direct shipping operation initially supplying ore most likely to Weda Bay. The completion of that JORC resource, we look forward to that building on the nickel inventory that we already have, which is significant. We currently have 3.7 million tons of contained nickel metal at Hengjaya Mine. We expect Siduarsi to make a significant increase on that. This builds into our strategy to hold the world's largest known nickel resources.
We do have other potential acquisitions that are progressing well, and we look forward to providing further news as those projects continue to develop. If we could just move to slide nine, please. During the quarter, very pleased to execute the electric vehicle battery supply chain strategic framework agreement. A number of elements to that. The key being, firstly, acquisition of a 10% interest in the PT Huayue Nickel Cobalt or HNC HPAL plant from Tsingshan. The consideration to be paid in NIC shares. HNC has the record for the fastest build, fastest ramp up, lowest OpEx, less than $10,000 a ton, lowest carbon intensity of 7 tons of carbon per ton of nickel with a roadmap to net zero by 2030.
Obviously, that compares very favorably to NPI, which is around 60 tons of carbon per ton of nickel. What the acquisition of this interest does is it gives investors a see-through into the world's best operating HPAL. It also gives us a marketable parcel of our 10% share of MHP to start to build relationships with tier one global EV and battery customers. Another element of the battery supply chain strategic framework agreement is the option to build what we've coined the Excelsior Nickel Cobalt project, basically a replica of HNC. We were pleased to announce during the quarter that we were able to negotiate a CapEx reduction down from the initial $2.5 billion- $2.3 billion, as well as an increase in the guaranteed nameplate capacity from 60,000 tons of nickel metal to 67,000 tons of nickel metal, also further diversification of the product that will be produced.
Rather than just purely Mixed Hydroxide Product or MHP, it will go further downstream to produce nickel sulphate and also nickel cathode, which nickel cathode attracts 100% of the LME price, and nickel sulphate does at times trade at a premium to the LME price. Of the recently announced Indonesian HPAL projects, we are the only one that has made an announcement with a CapEx guarantee, a timeframe guarantee, and a nameplate guarantee, which we see as significantly valuable, given if you look at the CapEx blowouts across the battery metals complex that have been announced recently by a number of listed companies. It's been those CapEx guarantees that have allowed us to significantly drive our growth over the last 2 years- 3 years and been a key part of our success to date.
We expect the first draft of the feasibility report this quarter for the ENC, as we look towards a potential final investment decision sometimes towards the end of this year. As part of the electric vehicle battery supply chain agreement, we completed a successful equity raise. We raised $185 million. That was a fully underwritten institutional placement, which was very well supported. Additional to that was a further $270 million placement to Shanghai Decent. A $15 million placement to Shanghai Wanlu Investment and AUD 2 million or $1.4 million to Non-Executive Director Mark Lochtenberg. This is a conditional placement. It still will require approval by shareholders at an EGM, which will be held. In the case of the placement of shares to Shanghai Decent, we're just awaiting approval by the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board.
Also, as part of the equity raise was a share purchase plan that was completed in March. Again, well-supported, that raised a total of AUD 34.5 million. If we could move to slide 10, please. We also declared during the quarter a final dividend of AUD 0.02 per share, taking our full dividend for 2022 to AUD 0.04 per share. We were pleased to bring forward the release of our 2022 sustainability report to the end of March. That was to enable it to be included in numerous third-party reviews, such as the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors. This is a sign of our commitment to transparency and being measured by recognized independent third parties. Highlights from that sustainability report, we were re-recipient of seven trophies at the Environmental and Social Innovation Awards. We received a silver award at the Asia Sustainability Reporting Rating.
Probably the one we're most proud of is we were awarded a Green PROPER rating for our mine by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, one of only two nickel operations in the whole of Indonesia to have received that recognition of Green PROPER. I think Hengjaya Mine really has become a showpiece for responsible and sustainable mining. We were nominated as a finalist for three credit categories at the Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards. We're in the top half of ESG performers in the global mining and metals industry, according to S&P Global. We were the highest achiever in S&P Global's ESG scores for Indonesian nickel operations. Finally, I'm also pleased to announce $400 million senior unsecured note issuance and a concurrent refinance and tender offer of existing bonds.
That was a refinancing of the company's $225 million senior secured notes. As I mentioned, a concurrent tender offer for the existing $325 million notes, maturing in April 2024. What this has done is simplified our capital structure and all secured debt has now been removed. The outstanding bonds, which is $400 million of new notes, they don't mature until 21st of October 2028. That obviously gives us a long runway, but we do have a non-core period of only two years, which is unique in this type of bond. As I said, this improves our debt profile and more importantly, removes the security that we previously had, allowing us to better leverage our balance sheet moving forward. In summary, once again, we've delivered record production and EBITDA growth, as I mentioned, despite the backdrop of soft NPI prices, which have ticked up.
As I said, we remain optimistic that we've seen improvement in that pricing. We're very much looking forward to further significant EBITDA growth as ONI continues to ramp up and the power commissions sometime this quarter. As I mentioned, ANI delivered $61.1 million, ONI earned $1.7 million. We expect ONI, once that power is commissioned this term, to have a similar EBITDA and margin profile. You can see the significant EBITDA growth that still remains to be captured moving forward. On the mining side, as the haul road comes online, we look forward to tripling the production from where we sit today and assuming margins stay the same. Again, a significant increase in EBITDA from the Hengjaya Mine. We have the Siduarsi initial JORC resource to look forward to, which will contribute to growing our significant nickel resource base.
Finally, we will continue to work on the strategic battery agreement as we look to diversify and move into higher margin, lower carbon intensive Class I nickel. To give you some idea, you know, margins that are being achieved by the HNC HPAL, sitting somewhere in the order of close to $10,000 a ton. We will look to, as I said, diversify our production base into that higher margin, lower carbon intensive Class I nickel as we continue to grow into, you know, already we are a Top 10 Global Nickel Producer. We will look to move closer to that number one position. With that, I'll hand over to questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. That is star one if you wish to ask a question. Your first question comes from Mitch Ryan of Jefferies. Your line is open.
Good morning, Justin and team. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on a good EBITDA and cash flow during the quarter. My first question. Relates to the market dynamics. I've read reports that there were some matte lines converted back to NPI during the quarter within Indonesia. Did you see evidence of that in the facilities that you operate in and do you understand what was driving that?
Yeah. If you look at the supply demand, Tsingshan has been and is very good at managing the supply demand across, you know, a number of different products that it produces. If you look at the margins from our Angel Nickel NPI, which were $4,894 versus our margins from nickel matte, which were $4,947, you can see actually very little difference between the margins from the newer NPI lines and the converted nickel matte lines. Look, really a supply demand balancing that Tsingshan undertakes. I think it also points to Tsingshan's confidence that we have seen the bottom of the NPI pricing. Moving forward, they are expecting better conditions for NPI and the stainless market.
Okay. In similar vein, I had read an article stating that some Indonesian NPI, some of the lines, you know, partially cut production in March. Did you see evidence of that? Within sort of your facilities and, you know, given Tsingshan manage that supply demand, who makes that decision about which lines are cutting production?
Yeah. There's been no production in NPI from any of the lines within IMIP or IWIP. There has been production cuts from other NPI producers in Indonesia, such as Virtue Dragon, and that is because they have smaller, older RKEF lines without integrated power and their margins are significantly lower than what Tsingshan is able to achieve. you know, We're talking margins from those producers of $1,000, less than $1,000 a ton. Whereas, you know, as we just pointed out, ANI and Tsingshan's newer NPI lines are achieving margins up around $5,000 a ton. Again, I think it just highlights that if there is any production cuts in NPI, there will be many other producers that will be making those cuts well before Tsingshan is even forced to contemplate doing that.
No, definitely. Great margins. Okay. Thank you. That's it for my questions for this morning. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Mitch.
Your next question comes to line of David Coates of Bell Potter Securities. Your line is open.
Thanks so much. Thanks, Justin. Thanks for the presentation this morning. Just following on a little bit from Mitch's questions there and extending that kind of supply management dynamic into Chinese NPI production, where, you know, which is, as I understand it, where the high end of the cost curve is. Do you expect Tsingshan to sort of, you know, manage supply out of there, as well to the extent that they're able?
Yeah. Tsingshan is by no means close to self-sufficiency in NPI. They're probably at about 60% of their NPI needs are met from, you know, IMIP, IWIP, and existing NPI operations within China. There is still a heavy reliance on, you know, third-party NPI producers, particularly third-party Chinese NPI producers. I mean, we think that will continue moving forward given that most of the NPI capacity in Indonesia is now built out. There's no real plans for any significant further NPI capacity expansion. What that does do is it gives us the benefit of NPI pricing is set off the cost of a marginal Chinese NPI producer. whilst they may only enjoy slim margins, as evidenced by even producers in Indonesia that don't have the same size or scale or execution capability, it will allow us to, you know, always enjoy a, a healthy margin, given that pricing dynamic.
Yeah. Okay. I still expect those supply from those marginal producers to be required to sort of feed overall stainless steel demand, and I guess kind of keep the high end of that cost curve in business.
Correct.
Yeah. Cool. Excellent. Thanks so much. That's all from me this morning. Thanks, Justin.
Thanks. Thanks, David.
Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. That is star one to ask a question. There are no further questions at this time, so I'd like to hand back to Justin.
Thank you, everyone. again, we look forward to reporting another strong quarter for the June quarter. Look, if you have any other additional questions, please don't hesitate to contact myself, Cam or Chris. We look forward to providing further updates throughout the course of this quarter on many of the other projects and opportunities that we continue to work on. Thank you, everyone.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect.