Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. On the call with me is our Chief Financial Officer, Sandy Sibenaler, and our Chief Operating Officers, Vanessa Torres and Noel Pillay. Before I give a summary of our financial results FY25, I'd like to acknowledge the tragic loss of our colleague, José Luis Pérez, who was fatally injured at Cerro Matoso in September. Our thoughts remain with Mr. Pérez's family, friends, and colleagues.
An investigation into the incident was completed, and we shared learnings across our business with actions taken to prevent a similar incident from happening again. During the year, we continued to implement our safety improvement program, which is supporting measurable improvements in our safety performance. While it's encouraging to see a positive shift in our leading and lag safety indicators, we remain focused on continuously improving and embedding safety leadership across our organization.
Nothing is more important than our people going home safely at the end of every shift. Turning to FY25 results, we increased our production of minerals and metals critical to the global energy transition, delivering annual production growth of 20% in copper and 6% in aluminum. Our strong operating performance enabled the group to capitalize on improved commodity prices, with underlying EBITDA increasing by 7% to $1.9 billion and underlying earnings increasing to $666 million.
Operating free cash flow increased by $272 million, and we improved our net cash position by $885 million to $123 million, supported by proceeds from the sale of Illawarra Metallurgical Coal. At the same time, we invested $517 million to grow our future base metals production at Hermosa and return $350 million to shareholders.
Reflecting our strong financial performance, today we have announced a fully franked ordinary dividend of $117 million, or $2.60 per share, in respect of the June 2025 half-year, and a 12-month extension of our capital management program with $144 million remaining to be returned to shareholders. We are focused on maintaining our positive operating momentum into FY26 by developing new bauxite mining areas at Worsley Alumina after securing primary state and federal government approvals to extend the operation's mine life earlier in the year.
Improved bauxite availability is expected to support a 4% increase in production FY27 and improved operating unit costs as the refinery turns towards nameplate capacity. Brazil Alumina is expected to operate near nameplate capacity in FY26, and unit costs are expected to trend lower due to a reduction in plant maintenance and lower bauxite prices from MRN.
In aluminum, Hillside continues to test its maximum technical capacity, and in Brazil, volumes are expected to increase by 16% FY26 and further 3% FY27 as the smelter continues to ramp up. As announced earlier this month, due to the uncertainty of electricity supply, we have stopped pot re-lighting at Mozal Aluminium and currently expect that the smelter will be placed on care and maintenance in March 2026 when the current agreement expires.
Turning to our base metal operations, FY26 production guidance at Sierra Gorda is unchanged, and we expect a 5% production growth in FY27 due to higher copper grade. Sierra Gorda continues to progress brownfields growth options to increase future volumes and unlock the exploration potential of the Catabela North East prospect. At Cannington, we have completed our mine plan review design to manage more complex underground conditions and deliver reliable mining rates.
We are working to embed further cost savings as we optimize contractor and equipment requirements and advancing options to extend the current reserve life of six years with the remaining underground resource and open pit opportunity providing significant potential. At Australian Manganese, we have completed the operational recovery plan following the impacts of Tropical Cyclone Megan, with export shipments on track to reach full capacity this quarter.
With the recovery plan now complete, work is underway on options to extend GEMCO's mine life. We continued our portfolio transformation FY25, realizing significant value through the sale of Illawarra Metallurgical Coal and exiting lower-return businesses. This has further streamlined our portfolio toward high-margin businesses, reduced complexity, and unlocked capital to invest in our high-returning growth options in base metals.
At a regional scale Hermosa project in Arizona, we achieved key construction and permitting milestones for the Taylor zinc-lead-silver project in FY25, and construction activity for the shafts and surface infrastructure is set to increase in FY26. Costs for packages awarded to date for Taylor have been within bid expectations. While we have not seen material direct impacts from US tariffs, we continue to monitor potential inflationary pressures as we progress to remaining packages.
We are progressing work to unlock value across Hermosa's highly prospective land package and today announced an upgraded mineral resource for the Peake deposit. Exploration results from the Peake support the potential for a copper-dominant mineralized system, and we are continuing study work on the potential to add copper production from Peake, leveraging the infrastructure established for Taylor. In closing, we have simplified and improved our portfolio. Our operations are performing well.
Our balance sheet is strong. Our pipeline of base metal options has the potential to underpin significant growth, and our unchanged capital management framework is designed to reward shareholders who have capitalized on increasing demand for the minerals and metals needed for the global energy transition. I'll now move 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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Jason Fairclough with Bank of America.
Yep. Good morning, Graham, or good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. Two quick ones from me, one on Sierra Gorda and one on Cannington. O n Sierra Gorda, can you just maybe talk to us a little bit about the pathway to first metal production from the fourth grinding line?
Is that going to be just a carbon copy of the existing grinding lines, or will it actually be upsized? On Cannington, I was interested if you could talk a little bit about the decision to derate ore production. I'm wondering, is there a possibility here just to get some of those open pit tons going through the plant in the near term?
Thanks, Jason. It may be if we start, obviously, with the Sierra Gorda piece. Sierra Gorda, as you know, is a jointly controlled asset between ourselves and KGHM. W e'll require both shareholders' approval to actually obviously progress the fourth grinding line in addition to the other improvement opportunities that we actually have. Probably the critical pieces as we think about that fourth grinding line, because essentially what it'll do will move throughput up to about 58 million tons per annum.
It really is increasing capacity by adding a fourth grinding line and a flotation line. Y ou get the copper concentrate production uplift, and you get a reduction in unit costs. The big one in terms of getting success there is we've installed a third thickener, so we have three.
As part of the mining conditions to sort of expand the facility, we need to increase the solids, if you like, or the CP that's going out to the tailings. The first new thickener is actually achieving those on a regular basis now. The other two are sort of still a little bit hit and miss, W e're doing some work on those around the power recharge and the source of how we actually do that, and some general maintenance to sort of fine-tune how we use those.
We're expecting to make progress on that, which allows us then to bring forward the study work by the end of the calendar year for the two joint venture partners to opine on and make a decision if we want to actually approve the project. From our perspective, we think the project makes sense. It's sensible.
Logically, there's value in it for us. We've had the same impression from KGHM, to be clear, but obviously, as we get closer, that's something we'll get to seek in writing from them.
Just to push you on that, Graham, first metal, what's the earliest we can think about it?
The way I think about it, usually it's we expect at the feasibility and the bid expected in the back end of this half year. Generally, you're talking about a three-year construction period. CapEx is saying, "Oh, this is probably somewhere in 100% terms of which we'd have a 45% exposure, around $700 million.
Okay. Thank you.
The Cannington one looks like an interesting one. I mean, one thing to always keep in mind with Cannington is Cannington. I was lucky enough to be there when we built that, and it tells you how old it is because I was a graduate. That project at the time was designed to run for 14 to 70 years.
We're probably in year 28 now. This time last year, we talked about a five-year underground mine life left. Now we're talking about six years, even though we've been through another year, t hat's about a two-year addition from where we were. We still think there's potential to maybe add another two to three years underground.
We do think there's the ability to potentially process some lower-grade stockpile material and do some work in the open pit that potentially opens up the open pit option, which historically has probably been hugely dependent on silver price, whereas now we've got a bit more optionality around it.
I think the challenge we've had, Jason, to give you a sense of Cannington is obviously we've gone through that transition over the last couple of years where we stopped using the shafts, and we stopped using the shafts because of the age and deformation and the cost to keep them up didn't make any sense. W e'd also moved higher up the ore body. W e moved to trucking about two and a bit years ago. That's worked quite well for us.
I think the challenge for us has been the number of stopes that we need to sort of put into action. F or example, if I go back to FY14, 15, we were probably running at about 50 stopes. 18 to 23, we're up to 64. 24, we got to 80 stopes. This year in the plan, we've got about 70. We did about 71 stopes, and next year in the budget, we're talking about getting back up to 80 stopes.
We originally thought it was possible to do about 109 stopes, but the reality is when we're getting in there, the stopes are fragmenting and breaking because the way you are in the mine now, you've got a number of voids covered by paste fill. You've got no more solid rock walls, so you don't have the same stability or ability to actually muck it out as quickly.
Plus, you have to apply more paste than we have in the past. W e're working on some efficiencies in that space. W hile we have downgraded the throughput, we have extended the life of the underground. We also believe there's more optionality in the open pit than we probably thought before because of some of the metallurgical work we've done.
We'll know more about those two items over the next 12 months. What we're now turning our attention to is lower throughput, changing mine life cycle. We haven't actually looked at the cost structure yet. That's a piece of work we're just kicking off now. Does that help, Jason?
Absolutely. Thank you, sir.
Your next question comes from Tim Clark with SBG Securities.
Thank you. Good evening, everybody. T hanks very much from our side for doing this later call. Perhaps I can start just my first question just on GEMCO. Very interested to see those northern leases appearing. We didn't know much about those before. We've been speaking about the southern leases.
Perhaps I wonder if we could just talk about the process that you're expecting and what you think can be done in terms of elongating the life of GEMCO and perhaps just with traditional owners if you feel like there's better momentum after the recent interruption. J ust my second question's on exploration. You guys were the first movers, right? You got into good joint ventures early. You were first movers on exploration. Feels like some of the exploration is just taking the whole industry a lot longer.
I just wondered if you could highlight to us any areas that you think are advancing now or where opportunities are perhaps coming a little bit closer to maturity in your portfolio? Thanks.
Look, absolutely. M aybe if we sort of and we'll come back to exploration. If we start with GEMCO first, if we look at GEMCO, what I would like to call out is I think we've done a complete rebuild of a wharf in a very pristine environment where you've got a very tiny, small special purpose lease that allows you to use the infrastructure there.
We've still got more work to be done, but done on the majority of the dewatering. F or this quarter, we'll be back up to full shipping rates and full production rates. I think Vanessa and her team have done a great job in actually getting GEMCO back online. Insurance is progressing pretty good. We've had some consistent payments along the way and hope to settle it by the end of this calendar year, but understand that's always a negotiation.
I think when it comes to what do we have left on GEMCO today? Because while it's getting older and more spread out, that and Gabon are still probably the two best assets in the industry by a country mile. If you think about the life today of GEMCO and we sort of focus on what we have, we have about six years that's currently in the reserve, which is the western leases and about 1.5 years for the eastern lease south.
Then there's probably another easy two and a half years that we think we can take from the resource and convert to, if you like, reserve. That's really the eastern leases north, and it's also the southern areas. T hat sort of gives you a life at the moment about roughly eight and a half to nine-ish years.
We've got large pieces of the southern areas that to date have not been accessible to us based on the traditional owners, if you like, their view, if you like, on cultural significance, waterways, white sand, etc. That's an opportunity for us to engage with them over time. F or the first time, and how it works on the island is obviously it's the ALC's island.
We need their absolute permission to do anything. The northern leases were something that was probably talked about 10, 15 years ago. And when you can't come to an agreement, it goes into a concept which is called moratorium up there, which means you can never talk about it until it's released out of that time. It got released probably around February, I think, this year. W e started having some discussions with traditional owners.
They've certainly given us access, as you can see on slide 24 of the pack, to a part of the northern areas to do some exploration work. There's actually a much bigger footprint at the moment for the northern areas, which is not available for access today. Over time, obviously in line with what they would like, we would like to understand the northern areas, not only the area of interest, but the broader land package. and we still think there's some potential on the southern areas. but we should be clear on both of those areas.
This is really land that hasn't been touched, drilled before. I t could end up adding three, four years. It could end up two years. It could end up adding 10 years. It could end up adding nothing. We haven't done the work there.
What I would say is during COVID, obviously, we make large royalty payments for the right to be on the island to the ALC. No revenue, no royalty. So they certainly felt the pain like we did. We work very closely together to sort of manage our way through the cyclone. We think we have a really good relationship with the ALC.
There has been a little bit of change over the last 12 months where their long-serving chairman passed away. They're looking for a new CEO. T here's a little bit of a vacuum at the moment, t hey're waiting for some of those key positions to be filled.
Certainly would like to talk about how we extend our stay on the island, but always understand it's absolutely at their discretion and making sure that we have a good, strong relationship with them every single day of the week.
That's really helpful. Thank you, sir.
Look, on the exploration side, yep, I would say we were quite lucky when we sort of came out of the old owner when they made the decision not to do any exploration. W e had access to a lot of information, some of the best minds around. W e sort of got in, when I say minds, exploration mindsets. W e got very early into those exploration plays.
What I would say is, geez, it's got super competitive over the last four or five years. In the early days, you could get good terms, good earnings, and a clear pathway to control. That's much harder now where some of our peers, I think, are signing interesting agreements, which probably means they set new benchmarks. That's moving. It's challenging.
Outside of easy brownfield ones, such as what we've got at Sierra Gorda with Catabela North East, which we released last year, I think the most prospective one for me from a pure resource perspective is the Ambler Mining District, where we've got the joint venture Ambler Metals with basically Trilogy and Bornite.
Arctic today, if you look at Arctic at 43 million tons of that grade, that strike length, anywhere else in the world it would have been developed, it's just in the middle of nowhere. That's one of what we hope is a number of VMS style deposits up there. Bornite's got similar kind of signatures, had probably less work done on it.
It's certainly an area where we've not had a focus for the last three or four years because COVID originally, but also then the Biden administration talked about never opening that area up, whereas the Trump administration funding up is probably trying to go in there too fast. We think there's a balance between the two that will unlock a largely unexplored area, but an area with a hell of a lot of potential. T hat would be one of the ones that I'd say that, look, we get quite excited about.
Some of the work we've been doing in Argentina has advanced in terms of resource and size. You enter the next stage of understanding, for example, at Chita Valley, what do the economics look like? Is it for us? Is it for someone else? More work to be done in that space. That would be another one.
The other one, which I think is particularly interesting, is some of the work that we're starting to do in the Namibia and Botswana with Noronex. I think that Kalahari Belt obviously has got two producing assets in there today, but generally speaking, it's been largely underexplored. So we think that's another opportunity.
That's ignoring, again, some of the brownfields, more stuff like at Sierra Gorda with Catabela North East. Short-term, the one that I think will be most interesting is going to be around the Peake deposits at Taylor because, A, it'll be approved under the current structure. Two, it's outside of the silver circuit. If dewatered, you've done the shaft, you've already got 95% of the plant in there. It's just about how big the resource is going to be. It's been a four-fold increase with this reporting period.
I think there's probably something similar still left to be discovered there.
Thanks. That's really helpful. I'll pass on to the next person.
Your next question comes from Alex Bedwany with Canaccord Genuity.
Hi, Graham, Sandy and team. Thanks for taking my question. I was a little bit surprised to hear you say that you haven't been seeing material inflation for the Taylor project. Just on that, how much of the budget has or how much of the project has been progressed in sort of percentage terms, would you say? D o you think there is scope for things like, yeah, steel imports and what have you to impact the overall CapEx budget? I've got a second question, but I'll come back to that.
Look, absolutely. M aybe if you take a step back and let's talk about what the positives are of Taylor. One is it's great to see the approval process continue to go through at speed. P robably this time next year, we've already got all state approvals. We'd expect to have almost all our federal approvals to allow us to do the tailings facility and connect the power or run a power line through an eastern area of the Coronado National Forest.
I think that's a real positive. Obviously, we spoke about Peake. There's Flux. There's Clark. There's a whole lot of other things on top of Taylor. On slide 28 in the pack, we actually talked about where we are in terms of the project itself. The absolute critical path has been dewatering, which has gone to plan and probably better than we expected.
The second thing I'd say is that when you look at the vent shaft and the main shaft, they're now the two items on the critical path. The process plan for us is less on the critical path. It's more about the vent shaft and the main shaft. We're probably at this stage, if you think about the vent shaft, that's the one we've been the most advanced on, and we've made pretty good progress on that one. We're probably about, I think it's I'll just find the exact number.
We're about 47% complete, and the main shaft are about 7%. So for the vent shaft, we've done 370 of 824 meters. The main shaft, we've done 7 of 898. We have laid the foundations, if you like, for the surface process plant facility. We are at the moment building the admin support facilities.
We've got the first package out for the processing plant, which is, and it's four packages left to go on top of that, but underground infrastructure, auxiliary infrastructure, and lateral development. F ar, we're seeing that the estimates are holding to our FID. Keep in mind that our FID estimate was done post-COVID. What we're seeing today is the steel that we got for the vent shaft and the main shaft, and we've already sourced a fair bit of steel for the actual processing plant.
That's sort of come in pretty well as we expected. I think our risk now is on the remaining pieces of work because we've probably only spent about 33% of the capital. The remaining pieces of the work is there are some impacts around tariffs, as you can appreciate, tariffs are changing every single day.
I think what worries me more is the general impact on tariffs and what does that mean for things like labor rates? What does that mean for concrete? Ultimately, what does that mean for steel if you have to buy it in North America where we've already seen some of the windows start to push out? Now, outside of the windows for steel pushing out, we haven't really seen any increases in the first pieces of packages we've let around labor rates and concrete.
A s you know, projects occur over multiple years. If the tariffs do become a push on inflation, that's something we'll have to watch. Today, not overly concerned, but we're watching it very closely. What I would probably focus on all the time is based on experience of seeing other people do this. Vent shaft, main shaft feels comfortable at the moment.
We've got a long way to go. You never feel comfortable in either shaft here to the bottom.
Okay. Fair enough. J ust the second one's a quick one. What do you reckon is the drop-dead date for a deal on the Mozal power contract?
I'll be honest, as every day goes by, it becomes harder and harder because obviously, there's a series of raw materials such as pitch and coke that we need to provide, but also, while we absolutely see value in Mozal from an economic sense, we see value consistent with our purpose around jobs and employment opportunities.
There is strong demand for Worsley aluminum out there, and ultimately, we're going to have to think about how we've placed that, I think as we get closer towards the back end of the calendar year and the start of the new calendar, we'll have to start making some decisions. Not where we want to go, but at the moment, there's probably not a lot that we're as much involved in the deadlock or in impasse as we were two, three weeks ago when we made the announcement.
Okay. Appreciate you answering the questions.
Your next question comes from Myles Allsop with UBS.
Great. Thanks. Thanks for the call. Maybe just on Mozal, could you give us a sense as to where the bid and ask is for the power cost, how that compares to Hillside? C ould we have the same issue with Hillside over the next kind of, well, as we go to 2029, 2030, as the power contracts start to get renegotiated there? Is there a similar risk that could come through that power becomes overly expensive and you can't green the power, you can't sell the asset, and it's just another big impairment? That's the first question.
Maybe I'd sort of, Miles, break that into what's the difference between the two first, and then I'll dive into them. I mean, obviously, the Hillside contract runs to 2031. The challenge we have at Mozal that's really appeared in the back end of last financial year is originally it was all about, could you agree at a price with the government of Mozambique who effectively controls the Cahora Bassa, which is the hydro source?
Even though that power is wheeled by the infrastructure in South Africa, it comes back to us and it's nominated for us. Y ou thought you're dealing with one counterparty where you want to agree on a price. P rice is an issue for that, and we're stuck with the price on them.
But probably the bigger concern for me is of the 950 megawatts that we need. They now, the Cahora Bassa, for the next two years have indicated that they can only provide 350. T hey can only provide 350 because they've had two years of severe drought and the dam was at really low levels. T hat means not only have I got a challenge around price with the government of Mozambique, I need to find another 600 megawatts to come out of the Eskom system.
If you're South Africa Inc. selling power into Mozambique for Mozal and job creation and protection there, what's in that for them? I've got two challenges, one around price and one around quantity. I wanted to make that point of difference because I think when it comes to Hillside, it's quite different.
There are some benefits to Eskom about Mozal. I'll come back to. W hen you think about South Africa in terms of a country, we're a large employer. We're in KZN, which is one of the more politically sensitive parts. We sell about 30% of the product downstream, which is another whole lot of industry. T he job impact is much bigger than Mozal, and it's consistent with the industrialization policy in South Africa.
When it comes to Eskom, we're the largest paying customer in the country because a lot of people have jumped off the network and built their own self-sufficiency. We also provide them the interruptibility of power in terms of load shedding and the reverse battery backup, if you like, as their network becomes more challenging. We have an outstanding relationship with Eskom. We manage record load shedding with them at Hillside.
I see the CEO on their team all the time. It's a relationship where both people recognize the value of each other. The last contract at Hillside also went through a process where an independent regulator appointed by the government said, "Look, the cost of production for residential is very different in terms of the cost of production for a smelter because a smelter has virtually almost 100% load factor and what it does for the network."
That goes through a process where they were very comfortable that what we pay is a fair price to Eskom and is certainly above their cost of production. We have been working with Eskom very closely about potentials to green the network over time and done a lot of joint studies together. But I could not give the relationship with Eskom a bigger tick than what it has today.
That's not just today. It's been over a long period of time. Going back to Mozal, again, the challenges around the price and Mozambique and government is willing to sell it, and it comes back, can you get quantity at the same price, i.e., the balance of the 950 you need from Eskom? That's where we're going with the discussions. It's become much harder.
We would probably if you think about where do you sit on cost curves, Hillside today probably sits third quartile of the cost curve, maybe pushing to the upper end of third quartile. Mozal's lower than that. We appreciate that we're probably looking for a contract that's similar to what you have at Hillside, which is quite an increase on the power cost.
If you look on Wood Mackenzie or CRU, they would talk about the highest cost smelter ex-China for a power contract is probably $50 a megawatt hour, and they really struggle to survive, and they're in and out with problems. Fair to say the first offer we've got from the government of Mozambique is well in excess of that. What we can't do as operators is a smelter that loses money every single day, week, year.
Great. Thank you. Can you hear me? Sorry.
Can you hear me?
Sorry. Cool. No, that's super helpful. Thank you. M aybe six months to go, what are the key priorities? F or Matt, as he sort of steps in, what do you think his biggest challenges will be with the business?
Look, I think Matt obviously starts in February. Matt has the benefit of, if you think about his work experience working at Mount Isa, working with Glencore, working with Anglo, he knows the majority of jurisdictions that we work in and operate and our commodities. Maybe aluminium will be a little bit new for him, but everything else he's got a good understanding of.
H e certainly knows the context of country discussions in somewhere like South Africa, Botswana, etc. Look, I think his initial phase would plan for is very much to get out and see the operations and the assets to meet the people, deep dive into the strategy of where we're going, meet our investors to hear what's on their mind. Matt is super smart. He's super hardworking. He's great with people. He'll pick it up very quickly.
I think if I have a chat to him today, and hopefully it's the same chat later, he would also say, "Look, our opportunity is first and foremost to deliver the successful execution of Taylor, deliver on the fourth flotation line and growth options that Sierra Gorda has continued to actually manage the group, see what you can do to extend the life of GEMCO and Cannington because they're world-class assets."
A t the time of the demerger 10 years ago, they probably had a useful life of six years or maybe 10 for GEMCO. W e continue to push those out. I think also with how do we grow our business in attractive commodities being copper and zinc.
Cool. Thank you. That's all I have to ask questions.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Jason Fairclough with Bank of America.
Hey, Graham. Just one follow-up from me, and coming back to manganese, I think in the past you've said if Anglo were a seller of their stake in the JV, you might be a buyer for the right price, you wouldn't pay a premium for something you already run. How do you think about this business now? I mean, is this a core South32 business, or is it, "It's an okay asset and we'll run it for cash, and that's kind of it"?
Look, I'd start by just saying we're not a purist. We just create money for our shareholders so everything's at the right price. Whether it's Taylor, Cannington, Worsley, you name it, you've got the right dollars. We just create value for our shareholders. We think, look, manganese is an interesting one. The business in South Africa doesn't tend to make a lot of money or lose a lot of money. It's a swing producer.
GEMCO can generate a lot of cash, has high margins. It and Gabon are by far the best assets in the industry for many different reasons. I think if you were going to sell that, you'd have to actually realize a fair bit of value for your shareholders. Now, in the past, it's been floated that with what Duncan's doing around his simplification strategy, that manganese is not a fit for him.
That is a decision for him, but he'd have to come and talk to us about it before he could market that. A s you'd expect, would have some rights under the agreement. M y philosophy would be, if you're buying an asset you can control, you recognize there's a control premium for the benefits you get of control. The reality is today, for both SAM and GEMCO, it's South32 people, South32 shorts, shirts.
We market 100% of the product. Really good relationship with Anglo, but we're the operator. F or us to buy out their share, besides value, there's no operating synergies. There's no further control where you could actually make things go better. I think the opposite to that would be Sierra Gorda, where it's a jointly controlled asset, and we have a really good relationship with KGHM.
But because it's an independent joint venture, it requires both partners to regularly work, discuss, and move, and probably would go slower than I'd like it to go. That's something we'd be interested in owning more of.
Just again, on the manganese business, could you frame for us how you think about the value of this business? I mean, I'm just looking at the segmental reporting in your annual report. If I look at those book values, do you think those are a fair reflection of the value of those assets?
I would start by saying, obviously, book value is a historical point of view, t he book value itself, obviously, if we think we've got a value lower than the book value or the book value is lower than what we think the realizable value is, we need to impair it down to what that value is. Clearly, we're not doing that, so it tells you the book value is below where we think the value is.
When you talk about manganese as a commodity, it is the one commodity when you recycle steel, you have to add manganese back in. You can't recycle it. Two is we think there is a fair bit of potential for growth in batteries when it comes to manganese that we continue to monitor and watch.
Probably the flagship effort for that at the moment is in the U.S. at Hermosa because of proximity to where we think some of that growth is going to come from. But both GEMCO and longer term, potentially have value in that space for different regions as well. A bsolutely, we think if you do discounted cash flows, they're way in excess of the book value.
Okay. Fantastic. Thanks, Graham. Appreciate the color.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Miles Allsop with UBS.
Great. Thanks for the follow-up. Just maybe on alumina, you're going to be more materially net long if Mozal, assuming that Mozal closes. In terms of the commodity, it does seem pretty challenged with the structural oversupply in China. I mean, what's your sense in terms of near-term outlook for alumina prices, long-term kind of outlook? W here's the bull case in alumina itself? W ho's going to buy that? You're saying there's interest for the Mozal alumina. Where are you likely to sell that?
Look, today, if you think about our total alumina sales, we sell about 52% to the open market. 48% goes into our own smelters. Alumina is interesting because it does have the ups and downs in terms of the tight supply chain, and it just takes a little bit of disruption at somewhere like bauxite production in Guinea or El Niño or embargo out for a period of time, and the price skyrockets.
I t generally has been a tight market. I guess to some degree, you've got to also look through the bauxite to alumina to the aluminum market to understand where the value is. Not necessarily where the ultimate value is achieved in what part of the process, but how do you have the flow back and forth?
Look, alumina is interesting because obviously you're seeing the smelting refining continue to move out to the coasts in China. You're continuing to see more bauxite come out of China to go to those western coast refineries. W e do believe that aluminum smelter cap of 45 is real in China, and they're heading towards that. W e also recognize the growth that's occurring in Indonesia, potentially on the bauxite, the refining, and the smelting side.
W e think that's going to continue, but I don't think they will get exactly the same capital compression that you actually see in China and Indonesia. They'll get some of it. T here are some other challenges, which means it's very difficult to sort of say alumina in Indonesia is the next nickel in Indonesia. T hat's around industrial parks, tailings mining, BRDA, red muds, etc.
Look, I wouldn't say we're super, super bullish on alumina, but I think we are slightly above consensus pricing on our view, and that hasn't changed. To your question around alumina, there would be a bit of alumina that obviously hits the market if Mozal was to actually close.
That alumina in itself certainly would be particularly out of work. It would be in high demand today, predominantly from the Middle East who are looking to secure their own sources. You've obviously seen EGA lose their leases or lose their leases in Guinea around bauxite. They're one that we know is looking for feed long-term and are willing to look at a premium. They're not the only one in that space.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Kerr for closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. In closing, we have continued to simplify and improve our portfolio. Our operations are performing well. Our balance sheet is strong. We have a pipeline of base metal options that have potential to underpin significant growth.
Our approach to the balance sheet, capital management, capital management framework remains unchanged, and we look to continue to capitalize on the increasing demand for the minerals and metals needed for the global energy transition, and thanks for your time today.