I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Justin Werner, Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and thank you everyone for your attendance at the Nickel Industries Full Year 2024 R esults Call. Could I please ask the slide moderator to move the slide deck to slide three, please? Despite what has been a very challenging 12-month period, with multi-year lows across global nickel markets, we still managed to deliver $296.8 million EBITDA adjusted for HNI and RNI impairment and FX losses of $17 million, and a $186.7 million gross profit. Unfortunately, accounting standards led to the $205 million impairment of our oldest RKEF assets, HNI and RNI. These assets do not benefit from integrated power, and they are older assets.
However, both of those RKEFs, HNI and RNI, did generate positive EBITDA for 2024 and were mainly impacted in the second half of 2024 by abnormally high ore costs, where ore shortages drove premiums of up to $22 a wet metric ton above the nickel ore market price. These premiums are now subsiding, and both HNI and RNI delivered positive EBITDA for January. These factors contributed to the reported net loss after tax of $189.8 million. A final dividend of AUD 0.015 per share has been declared, bringing the full 2024 dividend to AUD 0.04 per share, which we believe to be a good result against the backdrop of many major global nickel producers either shutting operations or being loss-making over the course of 2024.
This is a greater than 5% dividend yield and is reflective of our strong underlying cash generation and robust margins across the different elements of our business. A decision was also made by the board to offer shareholders the opportunity to participate in a dividend reinvestment plan in lieu of cash, should they so choose. This will allow shareholders the opportunity to elect to take shares at a time when the company is on the cusp of delivering a number of significant value-accretive milestones across 2025, including first nickel from the company's ENC HPAL project, an intended increase in ore sales from our Hengjaya Mine from 9 million wet metric tons per annum to 19 million wet metric tons per annum, and first ore from our recently acquired world-class Sampala nickel project.
The fact that three of our largest shareholders and the full executive board, which comprises more than 50% of the Nickel Industries share register, have indicated their intention to participate in the DRP, demonstrates, I think, the significant share price upside that we feel exists. It allows the company to retain up to $22 million in cash to retain a conservative balance sheet, and ensures that we balance shareholder returns, which remain a focus and priority of the board, within our current capital investment cycle, which is nearing maturity, with only two further payments for ENC remaining across the course of this year. Net debt is $827.5 million, with the company remaining well inside its debt-servicing covenants.
Moving to the processing NPI and MHP, $212.6 million adjusted EBITDA for our processing operations, a record 135,602 tons of nickel was produced for 2024, and ENC construction progressing extremely well ahead of schedule, which I'll touch on later in the presentation. In terms of corporate updates, we increased our ownership across the course of the year in ENC to 44%, and over the course of this year, we will be increasing that to the final 55%. We announced a maiden JORC resource at our Siduarsi project of over 500,000 tons of contained nickel metal, and we moved to a 51% ownership in that project.
We also signed definitive agreements to acquire 60% of the world-class Sampala project, and then finally, establishment and syndication of $250 million of bank funding lines, again, very well supported by Asian and global banks, and this marks the second loan that we've done with this bank, and so I think it's reflective of the strong belief in the company's where it's headed and also its balance sheet. Finally, for nickel ore, over $100 million EBITDA from Hengjaya Mine, 9 million tons of nickel ore was sold, and I've touched on the acquisition of the world-class Sampala project, which we are very excited about. If I could ask the to move to the next slide, slide four, please.
Some of our safety and ESG achievements over the course of 2024, an independent third party released the carbon intensity of HNC, which came in at 6.9 tons of carbon per ton of nickel, significantly below the Australian peer average of around 11 tons. In fact, there was only one Australian nickel producer that was below us, and so this is reflective of ENC, which will operate at a similar carbon intensity, with a goal to drive that even lower. We established during the course of 2024 our Nickel Industries Foundation, and the first program as a part of that was funding of university scholarship program for local underprivileged students, and our first batch of 12 students is currently performing very well across a number of different chosen degrees.
We established and were awarded a conservation biodiversity area to protect local fauna and flora in close proximity to our Hengjaya mining operation. There's a number of awards that you can see there across the course of the year, best climate reporting and transparency, and recognized by a number of different groups, and our MSCI rating. We achieved the top rating for an Indonesian metals and mining company, and our S&P score. Again, these are all independent third party scores. We achieved 37 in 2024. That was up from seven in 2021, and the global metals and mining average is actually 29, so we're performing well in excess of that S&P Global average. Once again, we've been shortlisted for the Green PROPER rating for the third consecutive year.
Finally, the safety, our LTIFR of 0.11, well below the world steel average of 0.76, and our TRIFR was 1.43, again, well below the world steel average of 4.73. We worked 17.4 million man hours in 2024, which is up from 16.7 million in 2023, and the Hengjaya Mine has recorded over 18 million work hours since its last reported LTI, which was way back in November of 2021. If we could just move to slide five, please, and I'll hand over to Chris to talk through the P&L and balance sheet.
Thanks, Justin. As Justin mentioned, relatively strong financial results in terms of EBITDA and gross profit in quite a challenging operating environment. Both the LME and NPI prices were down significantly through 2024, and we also had pretty significant RKEF associated issues, affecting both the mining and the processing operations throughout the year. Pleasingly, however, ONI and HNC delivered significant production improvements throughout the year, and we also saw the benefit of the haul road upgrade at HM, which the management team at HM had been working on for a number of years. Finally, the dividend, as Justin mentioned, we've declared a AUD 0.015 per share final dividend. We've overlaid that with the DRP, and which, as Justin said, is supported by all of our major shareholders and executive directors.
The balance, we're really casting a balance here of shareholder returns versus maintaining a robust balance sheet, for our investments and debt servicing. Can I turn to page six, please? We've continued to maintain a strong balance sheet despite the margin compression, throughout the year. Our cash has reduced as we paid almost $700 million for ENC payments, including an early payment this year to look to fast-track the nickel sulfate and nickel cathode plants at ENC. Total assets were down due to the impairment, which we've touched upon at HNI and RNI, and obviously our debt and liabilities went up through the year, additional $250 million debt raised from a syndicate of global banks earlier in the year, and we drew down the remainder of the first bank loan, the $400 million bank loan. Can I turn to page seven, please?
Here we just set out a couple of reconciliations for everyone. Really just the first one is the EBITDA, the adjusted EBITDA to get to a total number of $306.5 million, less the overheads at the head office level to give us an adjusted EBITDA of $296.8 million for the year. That's comprised mainly primarily from the RKEF business of $187 million and additional $19 million for the HPAL business and $100 million for the mining business. We've also included a profit to EBITDA bridge, and that's starting at the net profit after tax line of negative $189.8 million, adding back the usual items in EBITDA of our depreciation and amortization, our taxes, adding back the impairment, the interest, and then obviously the FX, and that gets us to that same $296.8 million of adjusted EBITDA.
We turn to slide eight, and I'll hand back to Justin.
Thanks, Chris. You can see a record production in 2024 of 135,602 tons, up 4,500 tons from the 131,000 tons produced in 2023. While the LME nickel price was down significantly 26%, and NPI price was down 17%, we also were able to bring our costs down 11% from 11,138 in 2023 to 11,957. This was also achieved in an environment of record nickel ore prices, and so you know that did result in a decline in overall RKEF margins from 2023 to 2024, so our average margins in 2023 were 2,676. That was down to 1,458 in 2024. However, the margins still remain at our main producing assets, which is ANI and ONI, very strong.
So we delivered margins of $1,900 per ton from ANI and ONI, which produced over 70% of our RKEF nickel tons, and the margins at HNI and RNI were about $334 a ton. If we could just move to the next slide, please. One of the most pleasing aspects of 2024 has been the performance of HNC, which delivered over 83,000 tons of nickel and 8,000 tons of cobalt. This is 38% above its nameplate capacity of 60,000 tons. A ne wer HPAL plant in IWIP called Huafei, which is built under similar sort of design to ENC. It has larger autoclaves and a number of improvements. It is also currently performing at 38% above nameplate capacity, so I think this bodes very well for ENC.
Costs over the course of 2024 remained stable in the first quartile at an average of about $7,115 a ton, with margins ranging across the course of the year from $5,000 to $7,000 a ton and an average margin of $5,746. So this is an excellent barometer of what we can expect from ENC, which we'll be commissioning in the second half of this year. HNC delivered an adjusted EBITDA on a 100% basis of $466.3 million in 2024, and we have uploaded a link to an ENC video on our website, which I would encourage people to go and view. If we could turn to the next slide, please. ENC construction is progressing very well. All three autoclaves are now installed, and the autoclaves are the heart of the HPAL system.
You can see there from some of the aerial photos, the top one is the HPAL. The bottom photo is the sulfate and cathode plants. You can see they're very advanced, and so we expect first nickel from those in Q3 of this year, and then ENC first MHP commissioning in Q4, which is around the October timeline. And again, as I said, there is a video on the website, which I would encourage you to visit. If we could move to the next slide, please. Another record year of production at our Hengjaya Mine and sales. If you look at the chart in the left there, we've experienced a three and a half fold increase in EBITDA from 2021, where we recorded $22 million up to $101 million for 2024.
We are in the process of hopefully, again, increasing our sales quota to 19 million tons, and our Hengjaya Mine currently supplied about 60% of the ore requirements for HNI, RNI, and ONI. If we could move to the next slide, please. During 2024, we announced the acquisition of the world-class Sampala project. It already has initial JORC compliant resource of containing 2.3 million tons of contained nickel metal. This is an area of just 900 hectares. There's a total area of 4,700 hectares, which is highly prospective, so really that only covers 20% of the prospective area.
with an additional exploration target on top of the current resource of 187 million dry metric and an upper range target of additional 60 to 700 million, this easily takes the deposit to over 1 billion US, sorry, over 1 billion wet metric tons. With current blended margins at Hengjaya of $11 a wet metric ton, that obviously underscores the significant value of the Sampala project, given that, as I said, there's potential there for over a billion wet metric tons. We undertook a very aggressive drilling program across the course of 2024, and we've drilled almost 50,000 meters with some spectacular results of up to 7.41% nickel and 1.37% cobalt. Mine development and haul road construction has commenced.
What's attractive about these laterite mining operations is the very low development CapEx, and we're expecting a number of around $50 million, but very strong margins as demonstrated by our Hengjaya Mine performance. We are targeting first production at the end of 2025 or in early 2026, and Sampala will deliver full self-sufficiency across all of our RKEF operations and HPAL operations within the IMIP. If we could just move to the next slide, please. This slide shows where we currently sit. If you look at the far right there, the blue bubble, which is our Hengjaya Mine, our Sampala, and our Siduarsi resources. With an additional six to 700 million dry metric tons, that takes us over to the far right-hand side there of around 1.2 billion dry metric tons.
And so our strategy is to become one of the largest holders of nickel resources globally, and we're certainly on track to achieve that given the results that we are seeing coming back from the Sampala project. If we could just move to the next slide, please. Just to reiterate some of the corporate highlights of 2024, the acquisition to acquire 60% of the Sampala project I've just spoken about, successful syndication of two loans, the $400 million and $250 million bank loan, as I said, again, with the same bank, a move to 51% of the Siduarsi project, and a maiden JORC resource of over 500,000 tons of contained nickel metal, and increasing ownership in the ENC HPAL to 44%.
In terms of our targets for 2025, commissioning of the ENC cathode and sulfate plants, ahead of schedule in Q3, with MHP, on target to come on in October or Q4 of 2025. Increasing the Hengjaya Mine, RKAB sales quota from its current 9 million tons per annum to 19 million wet metric tons per annum, first ore sales from our Sampala project, either the end of 2025 or early 2026. We continue to assess and potentially look to acquire value-accretive nickel resource projects given the significant value that's currently being realized across our mining operation. To summarize 2024, despite a challenging environment, still robust margins, what's to look forward to in 2025. At the end of 2024, we actually saw NPI volumes down by about 10,000 tons for the month, in Indonesia.
If that trend continues, we hope to see a potential strengthening in NPI pricing. Approval of the HNI RKAB would mean a potential doubling of our EBITDA, so taking it from $100 million for 2024 to around $200 million. With the Sampala project, we're targeting a similar production profile, and with HNC margins of close to $6,000 a ton, EBITDA of close to $500 million on a 100% basis, assuming ENC operates at the same nameplate and margins, that delivers us an additional $400 million to $500 million.
So when you add all of these numbers together, an additional $100 million at HM with a ramp up in the RKAB, a similar profile at Sampala of about $200 million, and the $400 million to $500 million of EBITDA from ENC, that takes you to around $700 million to $800 million EBITDA annually, combined with this year's EBITDA of in excess of $300 million. That gets us on our way to our target of $1 billion in EBITDA over the next two to three years, assuming that margins stay where they are. With that, I'll hand over to questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Mitch Ryan with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes, I'm in team. Thank you. First question, just hoping for an update on the RKAB quota increase. Obviously, yeah, has there been anything material since the last, since you last spoke to us at the quarterly, and, and can you just remind us of the timeline on that?
Yeah, so there's basically sort of three steps to increasing that RKAB. The first is submission and approval of a feasibility study that has been submitted, and we've been working through with the evaluators. There's basically 13 key chapters to it. We are now at the point where all of those 13 chapters have basically been signed off, and so we're optimistic of receiving final sign-off and approval of that feasibility study in the coming weeks. Once that's approved, we have already prepared what's called an AMDAL, which is an environmental impact statement that would be the equivalent in Australia. That is prepared. We're ready to lodge that submission. Once that's submitted, we'll submit that for approval. We expect that to take sort of three to four months for approval.
Once that's approved, there undoubtedly will be some small amendments to the feasibility study, which we will go back and make. Once those are completed, it's then approved for an RKAB increase. So we're targeting to have that RKAB increase completed before October of this year, which is in line with commissioning of the ENC HPAL MHP plant, and would allow us to start delivering those increased volumes.
Perfect. Thank you. My second question just relates to the impact of Indonesia's mandate for natural resource companies to retain 100% of FX revenues in Indonesia for 12 months. Can you just talk about what impact this would have, what revenue streams this would capture for Nickel Industries, and then, potentially what impact it would have on working capital for the company?
Chris, do you want to take that one?
Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Mitch. We are still analyzing specifically what is covered by the export revenue. It is a little bit opaque on which exports are covered, but if we assume it does cover all of our exports, we would be looking at our NPI exports from Angel. Should we not work with Tsingshan to actually redivert those to the stainless steel plants in from the IWIP into the IMIP? We would also be looking at exports from HNC and in the future ENC. That will obviously have a working capital effect, should that happen, and should we not, sorry, and simply by a buildup of cash.
However, there is also talk about, and Justin's had discussions in Jakarta on this point regarding if the revenues are actually split, converted from US dollar into IDR, which is, I guess, part of the whole point of what the government's trying to do, that there will not be such restrictions. Justin, do you want to touch on that, conversion?
Yeah. So, I believe at this point in time, it's only for companies that are holding USD, companies that convert USD into IDR. There is no requirement to hold that capital for up to 12 months.
Okay. Appreciate the comment and the color. Thank you.
Thanks, Mitch.
Thanks, Mitch.
Your next question comes from Adam Baker with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning, Justin and Chris. I'll just add a couple on the dividend, if that's okay. Just wondering if you could provide some color on your reasoning to pay the dividend for the second half of CY24, and just putting this in context of your dividend policy of 30%-60% free cash flow.
Yeah. Yeah, I'll take that, Just. Thanks for the question, Adam. Look, I think we obviously have, on the 30th of January last year, put out our new dividend policy, and you're right, it is, we are guided by 30%-60% of free cash flow. Ordinarily, we would not, or obviously we are paying above that minimum, the 30% level. However, we have been guided by the policy, and we do recognize the extraordinary events in 2024 on the free cash flow.
When I talk about that, I'm talking about the events we've spoken about in terms of the RKAB sites, RKAB sales license effects across the industry, not just on Nickel Industries, and the effects that's having, particularly on our processing business, and also the heavy rainfall throughout the course of the year, which affected both the mining and processing operations. What we're seeking to do, Adam, is balance reliable shareholder returns while still maintaining that balance sheet strength for our ongoing obligations and investment opportunities. So this decision was not taken lightly. We had a lot of discussion, a lot of modeling, internally, a lot of discussion at the board level, with shareholder level, with the shareholder representatives on the board as well. The decision was taken to reduce the dividend.
We are still confident. We're obviously confident in our upcoming obligations over the next 12-18 months, or we wouldn't be letting that cash go out the door, but also balancing it by showing the strength of the conviction that the major shareholders and directors have by overlaying a DRP.
Okay, got it. Thank you. And, and maybe just, was there any consideration to implement a share buyback and lower the dividend? This is just noting, you know, where you're currently trading, given that you're, you know, you're near your 12-month share price lows.
Not at this stage, Adam. I think a share buyback is really right now. Well, there's two arguments that it's supporting the exiting shareholders. However, we just continuing to focus first on dividends, over share buybacks. I know we announced one at the start of last year as well, a share buyback. However, obviously the market environment was not conducive for us to executing on that share buyback. But the decision was taken at this stage, to implement the dividend, but overlay it with the DRP, and those shareholders who have the conviction in the share price, which we do, as well, can take the shares and still benefit on that uplift in the future.
Cool. That's, that's very clear. Thank you.
Thanks, Adam.
Your next question comes from David Coates with Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks, Justin. Thanks, Chris, for your time this morning. It's a couple from me. Can you just, first of all, just on the impairment charge, just maybe a couple more details on, I guess, the exact kind of triggers for that, and just confirming it's all non-cash and no impact on or no effective impact on the business.
Yeah, thanks, Coatsy. I think as Justin mentioned at the start in the intro, it is really an accounting adjustment. Every period, the board, myself and the board go through a process of checking our assets for impairment. And so this is nothing new. However, I think it's fair to say that our older RKEF operations, while they're still being profitable, have not been making the profits we're seeing in prior years as compared with our much larger ANI and ONI operations, which have the integrated power. So we've worked through effectively doing a DCF on these operations. You have to do that under the accounting standards.
All the assumptions that we've put in there are in the note in the back of the annual report. Where, unfortunately, what happens in this sort of low-price environment is we have to obviously include cash flow projections based on market analysts' forecast nickel prices. I'm sure as you're aware, in the global investment banks whose research we rely on for the forecast nickel prices, when they're set, they often seem to follow wherever the current commodity price is. I'm not going to say they're price hugging, but when the market's low, you generally find for the next few years they are low before any look for recovery. So we have to use those prices. We have used those prices.
We've set out all the assumptions there. And the other important fact with these DCFs is the useful lives of them, Coatsy. So it says there are remaining useful life in our notes of for Hengjaya, ONI, Ranger of 15 years. Now we know they're going to go for much longer than that. However, given they started off, the first feasibility started with 20 years, and that's what it went into our accounts at, we are unable to change that from an impairment perspective. So you're right. It is cash. It has no cash effect. It is just in our accounts on our balance sheet.
Excellent. Thanks for that, Chris. That's great. And, Justin, maybe one for you, just on the ore premiums, which have been elevated this year and really helped Hengjaya along to bring the result. I said they're sort of starting to come off. So presumably that's sort of we see that in the Hengjaya Mine through, well, you know, through the near term. But is that also offset by, you know, better margins in the RKEF and HPAL businesses?
Yeah, exactly. And the premium only applies to or over 1.5%, so there hasn't been any premiums applied to any of the limonite or for HPAL. But yeah, we have already seen a significant reduction in that premium. And given the 80% ownership across both the mine and the RKEFs, we're just seeing simply a transfer of margin from the mine back into the RKF entities. And I think we can probably expect to see that across this quarter, assuming premiums continue to come down.
Excellent. Thanks, Justin. Thanks, Chris. That's all from me.
Thanks, Coatsy.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from Richard Knights with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Justin and Chris. Thanks for the call. Just on ENC, wondering if you can give us a flavor of how you're seeing the product mix shaping up over, I suppose, the first 12 months of operation between sulfate, MHP, and cathode, and also if you've had any progress with offtake agreements for MHP in particular.
Thanks, Richard. Yeah, we both, the sulfate and the cathode plant, will have a maximum capacity of about 40,000 tons each, of nickel in nickel cathode and nickel in nickel sulfate, so we do expect to fully utilize that available capacity across both of those plants. MHP production from ENC, we think will be around 80,000, which will then match, feed into, the cathode and sulfate plants, so predominantly looking at cathode and sulfate. That said, we, and this is where ENC is unique, we do have product flexibility, so we can choose to sell MHP and not put it through our cathode and sulfate plant and simply acquire MHP from other HPAL producers in Indonesia, or we may choose to put 100% through.
So we haven't reached a decision yet as to how we operate that, but it certainly will be our intention that all three of the plants will operate at 100% of their capacity. We continue to advance discussions with a number of potential offtakers, and so we hope to be able to announce something sort of prior to commissioning.
Okay. That's great. Thanks. But I mean, I suppose, does that mean, I mean, you've obviously, you've got a cost advantage from producing MHP, and I guess that would be the preference if that market was available to you. Is it fair to say that the market conditions for MHP have been pretty soft over the last six months or so?
Yeah. Look, I think what we think is attractive about ENC is, you know, starting with nickel cathode, you know, that will attract the spot LME price, and that is a market that we can sell into at any point in time, at the spot price. So there's no requirement for any negotiation. It doesn't have the fluctuation in payabilities that you see across MHP and nickel sulfate. Nickel sulfate is interesting because it has traded between premium to the LME price and also a discount. So, you know, there may be margin opportunities in the future in nickel sulfate over and above the LME price and what we get for our cathode. And then MHP also, the payability, you know, we've seen it from, you know, low 70s up to high 80s.
And so I think we have flexibility in that product mix, and I think similar to what we were able to do with nickel MHP in the early days, you know, where we were getting margins of $5,000-$7,000 a ton, you know, we'll be able to play segments of the nickel market where we think there's pricing opportunities.
Yep, that's helpful. Thanks. Just maybe perhaps one more just on the final two ENC payments. Obviously, the dividend is a pretty strong signal about your view on the strength of the balance sheet at the moment. I mean, is there any sort of likelihood of those payments being moved around at all, or do you think you'll be in a good position to make those payments at the time they're called due currently?
I think it's Chris here, Richard. I think we'll be in a good position to make the payments when they're due. And if there was any deterioration in our cash situation, we would look for alternatives, potentially looking to push those back, but we're not seeing that now. Obviously, otherwise we wouldn't be paying the dividend.
Yep. Great. Okay. Thanks .
Your next question comes from Dim Ariyasinghe with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Morning. Maybe just a couple quick ones from me. Just on HNC, can you just walk through what is driving that outperformance, that you saw in 2024 and how, how to think about that in the context of ENC going forward, please?
Yeah. Look, Dim, Tsingshan has a track record of outperformance, not just in HPALs, but in RKEFs as well. And it is also driven by, similar to RKEFs, the grade of ore that's fed through. And so in its early operating life, we expect the HPAL to be consuming sort of 1.3% limonite ore, and that will come down over the course of its life to sort of somewhere average around 1.1%. So partly driven by, you know, higher grades going through in the initial life, and that makes sense, you know, as you're looking to try and return the investment and deliver the best margin possible. But it's also, look, again, you know, Tsingshan has a track record of this.
They like to be conservative on their nameplate capacity and generally try to operate at a sort of beat to the nameplate.
Yep. So, under promise over deliver. Yeah. Okay. Cool. And then maybe just the second one, I guess just with regards to the 2025 targets that line on continuing to acquire value accretive nickel resources. Maybe if you could just help me with this. So with the Sampala coming on, I presume I think you are then fully self-sufficient on your inputs. How do you think about future investments versus capital returns versus, you know, continued risks around RKAB? Like, I understand that it's a place you want to be in, but yeah, just if you could just talk through that a little bit more, the longer term strategy, I guess.
Look, every, yeah, every potential resource acquisition is analyzed on a case-by-case basis. We see Sampala as being extremely value accretive given that the acquisition price is only $2.50 for every dry metric ton above 1.7%. So effectively we're getting anything under 1.7% nickel grade for zero. Our RKEFs currently using a grade of 1.5-1.6%, and our HPALs will need a grade of 1.1-1.3%. So effectively we're not paying anything for the ore that we need other than we are paying for ore that is high grade and we'll get a premium price with the potential to host a, you know, a billion wet metric tons at a $11 margin, you know, which is the margin that we're experiencing at HM at the moment.
You can see the significant value of the Sampala acquisition. And, you know, assuming we get to where we want to get HM, which is 19 million wet metric tons a year with possibly a billion in the ground, you know, that's a 50-60-year-plus asset mine life. So, you know, those sort of opportunities, you know, given the very low capital development costs, you know, $50 million and very, very fast payback, you know, those sort of opportunities, you know, we'd, I think we'd look to capitalize on, you know, every day of the week, but it's on a case-by-case basis. And in the case of Sampala, you know, we have also deferred payment. You know, there's a three-month due diligence period and then a further 18-month period before we're required to make the payments.
So, you know, we push the payments right down the back end. And in fact, that'll allow us to hopefully have the project up in production, you know, before we're required to make a significant acquisition payment.
Yep. Yeah. Okay. No, no, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Thank you.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from Kate McCutcheon with Citi. Please go ahead.
Morning, Justin and Chris. Just on the fiscal side, there's been a lot of news flow recently. Mitch mentioned the export proceeds regulation, but there was also the 15% global minimum tax last month. Is your understanding that your existing tax holidays will be grandfathered per se, or are there any impacts you're expecting from this or no changes?
We have some things, Kate. I'll take that, obviously, Justin. We've done a lot of work with tax advisors on this over the last probably 12 months, Kate, and including in this these annual reports. We're currently paying over the minimum amount through our various operations. It's not just a straight 15% across the business. You've got jurisdiction by jurisdiction. You've got concessions in each jurisdiction. It's quite detailed, but where we are now, we're comfortable. Obviously, as ENC comes online, and there's a much larger contribution from operations which have the tax holiday, if that pushes us down below the 15%, there may be consequences there in the future.
How that plays out with companies which have been provided tax holidays, and the government is obviously an unknown at this stage, but you could imagine that all anyone who has had tax holidays will be having discussions with the government going forward.
It makes sense. And then the realignment through of HN I, I think it was Mr. Werner said, how long should we expect that to be down for and how much should we expect that to cost? And would it be fair to assume that RN I also slots in this year?
Sorry, you cut out there at the start. Was it the realign, Kate, at HNI and RNI?
Yeah. For H. Yeah. Correct. Yeah.
Justin, do you want to take those?
Yeah. So we are looking to do a realign of one full line at HN I and a realign of one full line at RN I over the course of this year. That will mean that we take down one line at HN I, probably starting around May of this year for a period of about three to four months, and then once that's complete, we'll then move to RN I to take a line down at RN I as well. That cost is mostly captured in our OpEx, and given the performance of HN I and RN I, we will be doing a bit more than just a kiln and furnace realign.
We're actually looking at a sort of full furnace rebuild, which will give us hopefully significant operational improvements in terms of the efficiency. Then we are looking at some other work such as improvements to our desulfurization plant and other improvements that can be made in the plant with the aim of bringing down that OPEX cost and increasing the efficiency. To answer your question, yes, we will be doing a realignment of the kiln and furnace along with other work at HNI and RNI over the course of this year. That will be one line at HNI and then one line at RNI.
That will obviously have a limited impact on our production in terms of only doing one line from each plant in series.
Okay. Got it. Thanks, Justin.
Your next question comes from Stephen Mayne with Mayne Report. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Just a couple of questions. I'd normally be asking this at the AGM, but it's. I'm in Melbourne and it's a physical meeting that you're running in Sydney. So I was hoping you would be able to introduce the hybrid model for the AGMs for your 15,000 retail shareholders. Just a couple of questions on the financials. Is there any tax or is there any cash flow impact from lower tax payments down the road from the write-down? Because it is a bit curious that your market cap's AUD 3.23 billion and you've still taken write-downs to AUD 2.54 billion. So you had sort of AUD 500 million of headroom in terms of market value versus book value, but you've still taken the fairly hefty write-down. Is there any upside financially, you know, from tax deductibility with that down the track?
Just one other small governance thing. Would you be able to publish a copy of your constitution on your website? That's normal for ASX 200 companies and I'm not sure why you don't do that.
Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Stephen. I'll look into the constitution absolutely with the company secretary after this. There's no specific reason. In terms of the write-down, it's not, you can't look at these write-downs on the basis of the total assets. In terms of the accounting standards, you have to look at each separate CGU on its own standalone basis. And that means for the RKEF business, we're looking at HNI, RNI, ONI, and ANI totally separately. So looking at it as a combined effect versus our total assets, it doesn't matter what our total assets are. We have to look at each one on its own.
You will note in the accounts there, there's as a result of the impairments to the PP&E, we have had a deferred tax liability involved included in that as well, which was revalued and that gave us an income tax benefit of over the life of $31.9 million. But in the context of our operations, that 31.9 over the life is irrelevant or it's immaterial.
Right. Right.
That it's a benefit that's immaterial.
Right. Okay. Well, so thanks for getting the annual report out today. It gives the proxy advisors more time to look at the REM report and things like that. Last year you did it on the same day as the notice of meeting at the end of April. And just on last year's AGM, you had two material protest votes against the non-independent shareholders, a 23% and a 13%. So obviously your independent shareholders and the proxy advisors are a bit concerned about the lack of independence on the board. Is it worth moving to an independent chair model? Because I know that Norm Seckold is the executive chair, but he's like, he's not on the call today. So he's not being an executive in that sense.
So why, given we have had unrest from shareholders on the independent director question, why wouldn't we move to an independent chair model and, find someone apart from Norm?
Yeah. Steve, I'll take that one. We have improved our independence with the appointment of Emma Hall. We are actively looking at appointing another independent board member to the board. We believe that will provide us enough independence. So for now, I think, you know, the actual percentage vote against the independence was very small. So we don't see any issues at this point. And certainly it's not the feedback that we're getting from anyone in the market.
Great. Thanks for taking my calls.
Thanks, Stephen.
Thanks, Stephen.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Werner for closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for your attendance today. As I said, I think 2025 is a watershed year for us. A number of significant value accretive catalysts that we'll be looking to hit this year. First production from ENC, an increase in our HM mine sales and first ore sales from our Sampala project. This growth is mostly all locked in and fully funded. So I think that's representative of, you know, our confidence in still retaining a dividend. Against the market backdrop, where we've seen many of our peers, not just in nickel but across the commodity complex, caught significant impairments and, you know, zero dividend or extremely reduced dividends. Thank you again for your time. We look forward to providing further updates in the future.
As always, Chris and myself are always available for any further follow-up questions. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.