Good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending OM Holdings Webinar this morning. My name is Jenny, and I'm from the IR department of OM Holdings. So together with me is Rui Qi, and we'll be hosting the webinar. OM Holdings is a manganese and silicon smelting company with vertical exposure in mining and trading, and has just released its March 2024 Quarterly Production and Market Update on Tuesday. I'm delighted to have OM's Managing Director, Adrian Low, with me today. He will run through the key points, followed by a Q&A session. If you would like to submit a question during the webinar, please use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. If we are unable to present your question to Adrian, we will attempt to address the query post the webinar.
Without any further ado, I'm pleased to hand over to Adrian for the presentation. Adrian, over to you.
Thank you. Thanks, Jenny, and, thanks, everyone, for dialing in this morning. Just wait for the slides to load. Okay. So look, I think, Q1 has passed, you know, in terms of, our overall production, uneventfully, in terms of, the volumes, that we were looking to put out. So if we could move on to this slide. Maybe just to do a quick recap, in terms of operational matters, at OM Sarawak. So I think, you know, investors and shareholders would have noted that, the silicon metal commissioning, which was paused, in the middle of last year, is now looking to resume towards, middle of this year, so I would say a couple of months' time.
All the rectification works that would need it for the silicon metal furnace, relating to, you know, the dusting equipment as well as some of the electrical appliances. Sorry, not appliances, electrical engineering have been completed. And so all these were done, you know, a couple of months ago, and we look forward to restarting the commissioning process. I think silicon metal as a product within the product mix for the company still remains a strategic objective. Albeit, you know, certain headwinds in the silicon markets. So as we have explained previously, these furnaces are not idle.
They are still producing ferrosilicon at the moment, in a temporary campaign to just maximize all the furnaces on site, as well as to maximize reutilization of the PPA. So that's essentially what has been happening in Sarawak. In terms of our mining operations at OMM, those remain in care and maintenance, and we look forward to restarting the UFP at the end of the year, with all necessary approvals having been obtained towards the end of last year.
In terms of, you know, the financial front, I think, you know, we paid AUD 12.3 million to project lenders in the last quarter, and so this is a slight step up from our regular payments in the past as a kind of mutual arrangement with the PF lenders. And I think shareholders and investors would have also noted in the past that we've talked about refinancing and looking for the right time to convert what is currently a project funding structure into a more regular term structure. And in fact, 2024 marks the 10th year anniversary from the first time we tapped, which was in September of 2014.
So this is the right time, perhaps, to look towards, you know, new financing options and the way we structure our financing. In terms of volumes that we put out in Q1, so these are all in our quarterly update, and I think there are no surprises there, as I mentioned at the start of the presentation. And I think based on what the current trajectory looks like, we should be doing better than FY 2023. So I, you know, expect, just looking at the ranges and what we've done in Q1 to hit perhaps the mid-400,000 tons for both, you know, ferrosilicon and manganese alloys, combined. So that's in a nutshell, a quick update on operations.
I think perhaps a lot of shareholders and investors would have looked at recent price action in our markets. I think you know, this is perhaps where I'd like to spend a bit more time discussing it, and obviously we can have you know, questions at the end of the presentation. In terms of ferrosilicon, I think what we've seen is a lot of action, a lot of discussion and debate around what's happening in Russia. So if you know, shareholders are not aware, Russia is the world's second largest exporter of ferrosilicon, at least you know, in this part of the world.
They used to be a dominant supplier of ferrosilicon, and with the nationalization of the largest ferrosilicon asset in Russia, there are. I wouldn't say large and direct impact at this point, but we are definitely seeing movements at least with our key customers around how they're positioning for the removal and for the absence of Russian material from markets. So this generally means that people are reaching out for spot inquiries, people are looking to trial our material, and then people are looking at potentially changing and amending the way they procure ferrosilicon. Because in the past, I think very often for East Asian markets or for Southeast Asian markets, the main suppliers would be Russia, China, and Malaysia.
And so now, you know, there, there's only two left, which puts us in a much stronger position. In terms of near-term price action, I think, look, you know, China remains the marginal supplier of ferrosilicon to the world, in fact. And so, you know, we very often look to what's happening in China for ferrosilicon prices. And this obviously is the regular commodity grade stuff. So in terms of, what's happening in China, I think in the near term, there's some weakness in steel. But, you know, looking further out, I think, you know, we see a lot of parallels between what's happening now and sort of historical downturns.
So if you look at 2020, if you look at 2016, you know, those are all periods characterized by a very sharp decrease in Chinese ferrosilicon production. Which, I mean, if you look at the chart, has occurred, you know, come and gone in cycles in the last 18 months or so. The key difference between now and then is that, you know, we are now range-bound between $1,200-$1,300, whereas historically, I think this point has been closer to $1,000. You have to keep in mind that Sarawak's cost, OM Sarawak's cost structure overall has not really changed, but the cost structure of a lot of our competitors have changed.
I think there's a big difference for ferrosilicon pre- and post-COVID, and we are the better for it at this point in time. I think you know, we see price support at this level. And you have to keep in mind that you know, with RMB trading at between 7.2-7.3, this is very different from the past, where you know the RMB was trading at you know, 6.3, 6.4 around these periods. And even with that, I think we're seeing kind of a slow uptick in prices at least in the last two weeks or so.
So, you know, we look forward to bringing more positive news, and this is definitely an area we'll focus a lot of our attention on. Moving on to manganese alloys, I think... Thank you. There's been a lot more discussion, I think, around what's happened in the last couple of weeks. And so for investors who are not aware, South32, one of the world's major suppliers of manganese ore, declared force majeure following a cyclone a couple of months ago. And so since then, I think, you know, the price speaks for itself. Basically, if you look at the charts, you know, prices have increased quite substantially.
And, you know, I think if you look at it from a month-on-month basis, I know the chart doesn't look like it, but the uptick, if you look at single week prints, is in excess of 35% increase on a month-on-month basis. Silicomanganese prices likewise have trended up. You know, investors remember that at the end of last year, 2023, I think around November, S&P Platts must have been pricing prices at around $840-$850. And since then, I think, if you look at the Platts price from two days ago, being the fifth of May, this Wednesday, they're printing $990-$1030.
Just anecdotally, you know, through the grapevine and what's happening in the market, I think we're hearing numbers that are even higher than this. So, you know, this is obviously something that's evolving very rapidly and changing on a weekly basis, and that's something that the company is focusing on as well. You know, both in terms of how we're managing our costs and purchasing the ores, as well as how we are positioning our sales in order to maximize really the return for silicomanganese. And then that very often includes decisions around what we're doing for silicomanganese, the subproducts that we choose to produce, as well as the interchangeability between silicomanganese and high-carbon ferromanganese.
So I think the outlook here is very much, you know, price action has really been catalyzed by ore supply concerns. But I think more broadly speaking, you know, a lot of investors would have heard this from me a couple times, but you know, really, there is huge volatility in the markets we operate in. And very often, you know, when there's a downturn, we have this recency bias of looking at what's happening in terms of pricing. But what goes down must come up. You know, there's a profitability hurdle, I think, for all players in this industry, and Sarawak really remains, you know, first quartile cost producer. So look, I think we're very confident that this recovery will run its way.
Obviously, the ore price catalyst really came in, kind of at the right time, to really show that there's this gap between demand and supply. Given that throughout 2023, I think a lot of producers have reduced production, just on a sort of year-on-year basis between January 2023 and December 2023. You know, looking at statistics, I think we can count multiples of OM Sarawak sort of leaving the market. So that eventually will catalyze recovery. Okay. So I think that's all I have to share in terms of, you know, operation and sort of market updates. Just want to be mindful of time and then leave some time for questions.
Great. Thank you so much, Adrian, for the quick update. Now, since we're on the good side of the manganese alloys, the first question actually relates to that, and it's on the price difference between high-carbon ferromanganese, medium-carbon ferromanganese, and low-carbon ferromanganese. So, what is also the difference breakdown of such production mix for our company?
Yeah. So that's, you know, I mean, that's, that's an industry question. It's not really directly relevant to us at this point, because we're not producing medium carbon and low carbon. But, you know, for, for the broader public, these products are produced when you want a lower carbon footprint in, in your product. And typically, that's used by steelmakers who have the requirement, whether they're making specialty steel or stainless steel or what have you. And so then you would be producing ferromanganese, which is generally 25% iron, 25% manganese with carbon content of, you know, 1%, 0.5%. And those premiums tends to, you know, they would range from 10%-20% above and beyond the price of ferromanganese.
Obviously, that's not something we're tracking on a daily basis. But, you know, every now and then, the company does look at it, and to sort of evaluates the options of, you know, whether we should be producing these products. And I would say, you know, once a year, we look at it and look at the sort of ROI of really investing in these facilities. I think generally the current product mix, what we have between silicomanganese and high-carbon ferromanganese, has worked well for us, and there's no immediate plan to be producing, you know, any of these refined ferromanganese products.
Great. Thanks, Adrian. So moving on to the second question. I think we covered this question quite a fair bit, but maybe just to let everyone know again. What is actually the smelting furnace uptime over the long term? Or in other words, how frequent do you think our major maintenance is needed? And what is the maintenance CapEx per annum?
Sure. Yeah, look, I think, you know, sustaining CapEx in terms of maintenance, we're really looking at, you know, less than $5 million per annum just to keep the furnaces going. We've just done a round of major maintenance, obviously, post-COVID, that took us, you know, between 12-24 months, I'd say. And really, it could be done in a faster span of time. Really, I think the idea was to spread it out and minimize the impact in operations and not have that volatility in output volumes, as well as on our power purchase contracts. In terms of how long, you know, how often we have to do that, you know, I think we... So we commissioned in 2014 the first furnace.
We ramped up in stages. I think the manganese alloy furnaces came up at the end of 2016. So, so since then, from 2016 until, I think, 2022, 2023, that was one cycle. So generally speaking, you know, the recommendation is to do it between 5-7 years to do a major maintenance, and that typically costs something between, you know, $20 million-$30 million every 5-7 years. Obviously, the company has the ability to sort of manage production around those bands. And so, you know, you will note that I think during COVID, when prices were really, really high, we decided to sort of postpone all the major maintenance to capture what was then a very, very tight market. So yeah, that's...
In very, very broad strokes, that's, that's sort of the CapEx required and the amount of sort of regular maintenance, sustaining maintenance, CapEx, as well as sort of major maintenance CapEx required.
Great. Thanks, Adrian. So I think just to remind everyone that we have recently completed a major maintenance, so 14 furnaces out of 16 furnaces have already completed. So the other two ferrosilicon furnaces is actually due for maintenance in 2025. And all right, I think we have the last question here, and it's on tax issues. So this question relates to the progress of the company in terms of the tax rebates. And can you actually give us some light on this one?
Sure, yeah. So, look, I mean, the first five years of the tax incentives, the pioneer tax incentives, has lapsed, and so we're, we're really in the second five years. So, you know, I, I'm aware that, you know, we're, we're sort of fairly deep into the second five years. And while, you know, historically, in the past, we've said we have recognized taxes, in a bit to be more conservative, with respect to that, I think, you know, the company is on track, in sort of progressing, to meet its KPIs. You know, with respect to the authorities in terms of the second five years, and, and, you know, we look to sort of receiving, you know, official confirmation, basically, and approval for the second five years.
That will not be on 100% of income, but will be on 70% of income. You know, the remaining criteria revolve around you know, local vendor support as well as training opportunities, so the company is confident that we'll be able to meet that.
Great. Thank you, Adrian. Now, that actually appears to cover the... all the questions from our audience today, but in case if any of you do have any further questions, please forward them to investor.relations@ommaterials.com. We will be making a recording of this webinar available by our OM Holdings links in the coming days. Well, this concludes our webinar for today. Thank you, everyone, for attending, and thank you, Adrian, for the comprehensive update.
Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for dialing in. See you next time.