Certainly, it's been delivering, it's predicated on four key pillars. It's about the operating platform. That's the economic engine room of the business. We continue to focus on making that stronger, making that better, through doing that, of course, that fuels our other objectives, which is about our second pillar, growing the operating platform, making most of the incredible asset set we have in the portfolio. It's about chemicals, aiming for that trifecta of economic return, supply chain resilience, diversification.
Lastly, it's about diversification outright, expanding the PLS Group portfolio where that makes sense to deliver more value for our shareholders. I told you that the strategy was delivering. Let me take you through that. Here is the June quarter highlights that we released this last week. We had an incredibly strong quarter, delivering on what was actually a record-breaking year for the company. Record production, record sales, a lower unit cost, all timed with an upwards movement in pricing, which has flowed through to a strong set of financial outcomes across pricing, revenue, and flowing through to the balance sheet.
A fantastic set of outcomes for June and the year at large. These outputs just didn't happen because of June. They reflect years of discipline execution through the cycle. This is the slide I'd like you to remember. What you see here is the pricing curve, the wiggly line, and the columns are our cash margin generated from the operating platform. You can see for the quarter of June, those 12 weeks, the business cleared over AUD 500 million, half a billion, in cash operating margin one quarter alone. How was that achieved?
It's delivery of that strategy which achieved several key ingredients. One, we've got a bigger operating platform. Two, we've got a lower cost operating platform. Three, 100% ownership. The combination of scale, low cost, 100% ownership means that our shareholders enjoy the benefit of that high-priced environment. Bear in mind that yield of circa AUD 500 million of cash operating margin for June quarter alone, that was at a headline realized price lower than the AUD 2,465 long-term price benchmark.
When you consider this, the mind boggles in terms of the cash-generating potential of this business, depending on what price outlook you want to pick, particularly when you think forward to the growth profile that PLS Group has ahead of it. It's not just about cash generation. Equally important is about capital deployment. I'd like to turn here next. In this regard, by way of example, we've picked the three years between FY 2023 to FY 2025. During that period, we distributed AUD 3.1 billion worth of capital.
The majority, AUD 1.9 billion, went back into the base to build a larger operating platform and a lower cost operating platform care of our P680 and P1000 projects. That's what's performing. That's what's generated those returns you saw the slide before. We also made distributions to our shareholders to the tune of AUD 800 million. The balance, we kept that on the balance sheet, which was important as we navigated the most recent trough through the cycle, setting us up to make sure that we could navigate that part of the cycle and be ready for opportunities if and when they presented.
Out of all of this performance is driven through grassroots delivery. Here it is, a fantastic set of graphs representing the base operation. This is one for the fridge door. I encourage you to print it off. We're really proud of these trends. We've got step ups in production through the last cycle, step up in lithium recovery to what we think is, if not best in class, we're right up there. Lastly, unit cost on the trend down. This deliberate investment and this focus by the team to get better and get better, well, here are the results.
We move into the year ahead, we've offered our FY 2027 guidance as it relates to production, where we're doing a further step up again and produce tons going up to 1.1 million we've guided. Looking forward to adding to this graph in the year ahead. At this point, I'd just like to thank the team at PLS. They've delivered these incredible results. It's just phenomenal to see what they've achieved, and it's a credit to our great people. It's also a credit to our partners. The results speak for itself, and I'm excited to see where we head to next.
The team has got a head of steam, and we're only just getting started. What flows from this is we have got a strongly competitive business operating at a truly global scale. To put that in perspective, we are the third largest primary producer as compared to the primary production volumes for calendar year 2025. Bear in mind, this was with our Ngungaju processing plant switched off. We're already a scale producer, but what's really exciting is where we're heading. On the right-hand side, you can see our future growth projects.
We've got our P2000 expansion, which is for Australia, which looks to double the production capacity here in Australia. Beyond that, we've got the Colina project in Brazil. The P2000 alone, if that was built today, well by our reckoning, we'd have the largest lithium operating center globally, which is pretty exciting. Homegrown here in W.A., an amazing feat, and we're looking forward to navigating that to market when that makes sense. Turning to P2000, it is our most significant value step in our history to date, and I'd like to take you through a short video here.
Today we're announcing the name of this plant being Jimma Ganya, which refers to the spring country located north of Pilgangoora. That's a Nyamal word named by a Nyamal, by one of the elders. The fly-through here, you can see what's in the brown tone is the existing facilities, the P1000 project. What you see to the bottom is the flotation circuit, to the left is midstream. The colored to the top is P2000 or Jimma Ganya as it's been named, and the deeper blue to the top of the page is the front end, so the coarse dry circuit.
This is inclusive of the ore-sorting technology that we've proved up and improved as part of the P1000. You can see that facility there to the right hand, channeling that through to the crushed ore stockpile that you can see. That flows through to the green component, which is the wet plant or the flotation circuit. In combination, we think this is the next generation of mineral processing capability. Incredibly exciting. Where to next? Well, we're in study mode. The next level of study is due December quarter.
If it's anything like the first level of study that we did on June 2024, we're looking for, hopefully, an exciting set of outcomes. The June 2024 study not only demonstrated a much larger operation, it demonstrated a lower operating cost and an exciting set of economic returns. A lot's changed since June 2024. We look forward to printing that next study in December quarter. Moving to chemicals. I covered this earlier, the reasons why we're in chemicals. We've got our JV with POSCO in Gwangyang, South Korea.
We've got our midstream plant, which is being built on-site to prove up the concept of potentially more concentration at the mine site that is coming to life as we speak. Beyond that, in diversification, the Colina project in Brazil. The team there is busy doing more drilling, more study work. We're considering some pre-FID funding. Really the key milestone we're looking for here is a study output December quarter next year. Excited to see the outputs of that one. Narrowing the focus into the year ahead.
It's about those four categories again. Strong operating performance, the ramp-up of the Ngungaju Facility in particular. It's about growing the platform, specifically the P2000 study outcome I mentioned in December quarter. Chemicals, the JV with POSCO, the potential JV with Ganfeng. They're working together. The midstream plant and then diversification. The Colina asset in Brazil I mentioned a moment ago. Before I finish, I'd like to leave you with a broader observation about where I believe the industry is heading.
I mentioned at the outset that over the past decade, there's been a focus on resources, size and quality. That's important, but more than that, it's moving to what we term our reliability. To offer a framework in the way we think about this, those four key points. It's about the quality of the assets, it's about the economic offering, it's about the ability to deliver, and it's about the alignment with partners, community and government. Everything I've spoken to you today, here is PLS mapped against that. Our Tier 1 assets, the strong economic returns, the execution, the record production.
We didn't even get to the AUD 600 million bond we raised this year. Top three primary producer, and all made possible with the alignment with our customers, partners and community stakeholders. The best evidence of where reliability is now starting to get valued is the likes of this offtake we did with Canmax. Price floor, no ceiling, AUD 100 million prepay. Massive credit to Canmax for leading the way and showing the industry what's needed to inspire and support reliable supply. In summary, lithium is an incredibly exciting industry.
New growth sectors, new growth markets, but it's incredibly volatile. To navigate that, we have to move from resources to reliable supply. It's about quality assets, execution, economics and alignment. That is the playbook and that is the strategy PLS has been pursuing. That's what's delivered our strong track record and that's what we're pursuing as we move forward. Thank you very much