Morning, and thank you for joining us for Sandfire's FY 2026 Sustainability Briefing. I'm Cath Bozanich, the Chief Sustainability Officer at Sandfire. Please note these important disclaimers in our presentation. I'm joined here by John Richards, the Chair of our Board, Brendan Harris, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Jason Grace, our Chief Operating Officer, and we're also pleased to be joined here today with Franklin Gaffney, the legal representative to the Yugunga-Nya, and also Stuart Lane, who's a Yugunga-Nya person. Stuart lives in Perth and Meekatharra. He has been through law and practices his culture, and he's also a director of the Yugunga-Nya PBC, and has experience in the mining sector, having worked for the Yugunga-Nya Alliance, and also with Rio Tinto. Thanks for joining us.
Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians on the land on which we stand, the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation, as well as the traditional custodians of the lands around Australia where we work, including the Yugunga-Nya, the Djinjarrama, the Nharnuwangga, the Wajarri, the Nharnuwangga people of Western Australia, the Adnyamathanha, the Wiradjuri, and the Ngarrindjeri of South Australia, and the First Nations people outside Australia on the lands on which we conduct our business.
Today we'll be speaking with you a bit about how we embed sustainability into all we do, including through our governance framework and the Sandfire Way. We'll be finishing the session by sharing some insights into the management of the disturbance of artifact scatters at our now closed Monty mine. Both Franklin and Stuart will also provide some insights during this agenda item. Attendees are invited to participate in the question and answer portion of the webcast, and those invited can submit their questions in the indicated field on the portal. I'll now hand over to John Richards.
Thank you, Cath. I wanted to start by talking briefly about the board's sustainability journey. If I look back four years, we'd moved from a WA focus to being global in our outlook. We had a strong asset portfolio. We'd just acquired MATSA in Spain, and we were building Motheo mine in Botswana, which you can see in the background of that photograph. However, our systems, processes, and approach needed to be modernized to be able to manage that business. If we were to achieve our goals, we needed to extend the board's skills, especially in terms of international expertise and in sustainability, and we needed to transform the way the business was managed. The first thing we did was to add two directors with strong international skills and experience and with a focus on sustainability.
We engaged Sally Martin, who had a 34-year executive career at Shell with very strong safety focus. Sally led the OHNS aspects of Shell's downstream business for part of her time at Shell. We also added Robert Edwards, very strong commercial mining background, but had been a director of Norilsk Nickel for 10 years in a period when Norilsk went from being an ESG pariah to being a poster child for sustainability.
A year later, we added Paul Harvey. Paul brings from his background at BHP and South32 substantial international experience and a strong safety and risk background. Since those appointments, the board has remained stable with no changes to board composition since September 2023. This provides continuity and deep institutional knowledge.
Last year, we conducted a deep review of the board's skills, and I'm confident that the board has the right diverse skills and experience to allow it to discharge its obligations. Going back to FY 2023, that was also the year we appointed Brendan Harris as our new CEO. Brendan brought with him an understanding of what good looks like for an international mining business.
Over the following 12 months, Brendan established his new executive team, and that's a team with diverse experience and the capability needed to transform Sandfire. We then worked with Brendan and the executive to establish our strategy and our operating model. This has set a strong foundation for the business. Looking at the diagram on the right, I see our governance role in very simple terms. Sandfire's duty to its stakeholders, those groups across the top, is to do the right thing.
The governance structures, the board and its committees, are designed to ensure that we do the right thing. As a board, we regularly review our governance arrangements to ensure that they reflect and adequately support Sandfire's strategy and business context. In FY 2025, we revised the committee structure and established four board committees which have accountability for distinct areas of the business.
This included a dedicated sustainability committee with oversight of all sustainability-related matters, including safety, biodiversity, climate change, and human rights. We appointed directors to the four committees according to their skills and experience. With the sustainability committee, that is, we have Paul Harvey as chair and Sally Martin and Sally Langer as other members of that committee. The new committee structure has now been in place for 15 months.
We'll be conducting a detailed review of the way that those committees and the committee structure is performing in June to make sure that it's working well. In designing the new committees, we took care and to ensure that they reflected the structure of the executive team with the right executives reporting to the right committees. In sustainability, that means that Jason and his team report on safety matters, and Cath and her team report on the other sustainability areas.
The board has embedded sustainability metrics in decision-making, risk management, and in executive incentives. These are designed to reinforce accountability and drive performance. At the bottom there, you'll see focus areas. In relation to sustainability, safety is non-negotiable. As Brendan regularly observes, nothing is more important than everyone going home safely. Safety is a focus area of the board and leads every board meet.
In that context, I acknowledge the recent fatality at MATSA. On behalf of the board, I extend our sincere condolences to everybody who has felt the impact. We failed in our commitment to keep our people safe and are deeply saddened by the loss. We remain fully committed to understanding what occurred and our continuing focus on safety. Jason will touch on this later. Cultural heritage is another key focus area for the board. The management of cultural heritage in collaboration with traditional owners is grounded in respect and understanding, which are core to Sandfire's values. The Sustainability Committee is responsible for overseeing the management of cultural heritage and receives regular updates from Cath as Chief Sustainability Officer. Now, I will hand over to Brendan.
Good morning, thank you, John. It's a pleasure to be here today presenting. May I just express my sincere gratitude to Franklin and Stuart for also coming to join us today. While our journey as a global copper producer of significance is far from complete, I think the fact that we're having this discussion today is simply a strong indication of the increasing maturity of our business. In the same way that our board and committee structures have been transformed, as John has just talked through, we've fundamentally restructured our executive leadership team in recent years, adding deep and diverse experience, capability, and the drive needed to meet the demands of a growing global organization.
In this process, you may recall, we elevated two roles to the ELT table, if you will, ensuring our legal and broader sustainability team's voices are not only heard, but valued as we seek to achieve our purpose, which, as you know, is to mine copper sustainably to energize the future. This broader executive leadership team has not only remained stable and delivered a series of strong results and a balance sheet that is fit for the times, but critically, it is laying the foundations for the future in a very powerful way.
Binding this foundation together is an intentionally simple operating model that is, firstly, fit for purpose and scalable for the future with very clear lines of accountability at its core. Put simply, we continue to believe that simplicity will always win over unnecessary complexity and that accountability trumps everything.
That's why our model looks and feels more like that of a portfolio manager or a Wesfarmers, if you will, where the corporate center is lean and focused on what matters most, working with our board to refine and execute in alignment with our strategy, establish our minimum standards, ensure we understand and respond to our enterprise risks, undertake effective second and third line assurance of our risk management processes and critical controls, and allocate capital in a very disciplined way that creates asymmetric risk to the upside for our shareholders in a sustainable way.
To give you a sense from a standing start, we have established 11 group policies, which you can see on our website, plus our code. 25 group standards and 22 group procedures of which four, three, and eight respectively are designed to guide sustainability related activity.
As many of you will know from deep experience, this is a somewhat vexed process that needs to remain acutely focused, given the potential for any document hierarchy and way of working to become overly prescriptive, and dare I say it, bureaucratic. Most importantly, all of this is designed to empower our assets to take accountability for their social license, the management of their risks, broader performance, and the potential to unlock long-term value premised on two key beliefs. Firstly, that decisions should be made closest to where the work is done. Secondly, that we want to embrace the local cultures where we operate, adapt, and ensure that our operational settings have the greatest chance of delivering success in each unique location.
When you go to one of our sites, as many of you do, you should feel immersed, for instance, in the unique cultures of Botswana or Andalusia, and yet feel the strong presence of Sandfire and our well-defined ways of working. In essence, we seek to embrace those local cultures and become part of the local community. That is the Sandfire Way, expressed here on one page, so it's easy to understand, bringing together our purpose, values, all strategic pillars of our strategy and our way of working. I know I've said to many of you that having performed many roles across industries over circa 30 years, I believe our primary goal is to be effective risk managers, reducing beta where we can to deliver safe, consistent and predictable performance and a premium market rating. After all, our industry offers more than enough excitement.
Our products are traded on public markets throughout the day with ever-present volatility, as we're seeing right now, and many of our cost inputs are exposed to the same vagaries of the market. That's not to mention foreign exchange rates, which can often have the greatest impact on relative cost performance and competitiveness. Which is why our strategy is intentionally simple and remains unchanged, with an unashamed focus on the basics. You'll notice, very importantly, that sustainability is not a unique pillar. That's because we also believe, critically, that sustainability has to permeate everything we do, as John said, and you'll hear more of that from my colleagues today. Before I hand over to Jason, I want to stress we're not where we need to be. We're far from the finished article.
As John mentioned just a moment ago, the recent loss of Ivan at MATSA is devastating for all of us, particularly his family, friends and closest colleagues. We can't let this tragedy pass without making sure we do everything we can to be a better organization, where everyone goes home safely at the end of every shift. Jason, over to you.
Thank you, Brendan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your time and attention. As Brendan said, and also John alluded to as well, our most important commitment is to ensure all of our people and our contractors go home safely at the end of every shift. I want to begin by acknowledging the tragic fatal accident at our MATSA operation in Spain that occurred on the twenty-fifth of February. A 34-year-old male employee of Construcciones MARY, one of our contracting companies, lost his life while a crew was installing a paste distribution line at our Magdalena mine. We are devastated by this loss and our thoughts remain with his family, friends and colleagues. Emergency protocols at the time were activated, authorities were notified and our CEO, Brendan, and I immediately traveled to site to support the team.
A formal investigation is now underway and we are committed to sharing learnings as the process concludes. We continue to work alongside Construcciones MARY to ensure the family and friends are supported, as well as our broader workforce at MATSA and around the company. We are also continuing to support the authorities in their investigations. While these investigations are incomplete, what we do know is a crew were installing a paste distribution pipeline at a 45-degree angle between two levels in the Magdalena mine when a falling metal object exited the pipeline and struck the worker. Despite the best efforts of the emergency response team, the injury proved fatal.
The two primary issues that we need to understand as part of the investigation is firstly, why the metal object, which is not used in any application on the mine site at all, came to be in the pipeline, and why the worker was positioned inside an exclusion zone in the line of fire. This routine activity for an underground mine is undertaken on a regular basis and we have completed this safely many times. On this occasion, one of our team did not go home to his family and friends. Even as our injury frequency has improved over time, this incident is a stark reminder that statistics are never the goal. Our focus is to prevent high consequence events through rigorous critical control, design and verification, and through the behaviors that keep our people safe when nobody is watching.
We will be undertaking a group wide review of recent high potential incidents to identify any systemic themes and embed learnings across all assets. We're also doubling down on the frontline culture we expect, which is for us, don't walk past. If something isn't right, stop and intervene. Leaders must be visible in the field, coaching and reinforcing safe work, and where life preserving rules aren't followed, we apply consequence management consistently and fairly because rules only protect people when they're followed every time. That's the standard that I expect, and that's the standard that we are reinforcing right across our company. Turning to our broader safety performance, in the first half of FY 2026, our group total recordable injury frequency reduced to 1.3.
This represents a 70% reduction over the past four years. Over this same period, we have also seen an increase in high potential incident frequency, and I wanna be very clear about what this means for us, as we are identifying and reporting more high potential events, and this is intentional. It reflects stronger field observations, better reporting discipline, and a deliberate shift to focus on precursors to serious harm. In other words, we would rather see high potential incidents surface and re-learn from them, than miss the opportunity to prevent a life-altering event. Thank you, and I'll now hand to Cath to talk through sustainability.
Thanks, Jason. As Brendan and John both mentioned previously, we deliver our purpose by remaining focused on the four pillars of our strategy and our unwavering commitment to sustainability permeating everything we do. Our sustainability framework is built on a foundation of six pillars that you can see: communities, our people, water, climate change, biodiversity, and business integrity. The pillars and the targets that sit underneath them inform our business strategy and guide our day-to-day activities.
In developing our framework and targets, we considered the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, how they apply to the communities in which we operate, and where we believe we can have the greatest impact. It's also important to note that our approach to sustainability has evolved with the transformation of our business and growing stakeholder expectations. Some of our key sustainability targets are listed on this slide. Climate change.
Climate change presents both a challenge and a market opportunity for Sandfire, as copper will play a critical role in the electrification and decarbonization of the global economy. These targets were set by our board in FY 2022. Sourcing 50% of all electricity from renewable sources by 2030, that's a target that we've been focused on over the last few years, and we are achieving over 70% of our electricity being sourced from renewables. Our people, y ou can see we have two targets there that relate directly to safety, and we have two targets that are based on the 40/40/20 gender diversity target. The priority has been on the board and the executive, and we have achieved that target.
Our objective now is to maintain that. Nature. In 2023, we also set targets to have no net loss of biodiversity values at legacy sites t hat captures MATSA. Net gain on biodiversity values at greenfield sites. That captures MATSA and any new greenfield assets that we might have, and that would include Kalkaroo. Community. Recently our board approved the allocation of 0.5% of EBITDA to strategic community investment.
Our assets will continue to fund their own day-to-day community programs, including sponsorships and short-term projects. Sustainability performance. The management of climate change-related risks and opportunities remains a priority for Sandfire, and this is overseen by the board. The board receives regular updates on climate change activities. As mentioned, we have that target to source 50% of all electricity from renewables, and as you can see, over 70% of our electricity is currently sourced from renewables. 100% at MATSA.
You can also see that we have we are constructing two new solar facilities, a 33 MW facility at MATSA, and a 21 MW facility at Motheo. Both should be operational in FY 2027. Sandfire comes under Group One or is a Group One entity under the AASB S2 climate reporting requirements, and our report will be released with full-year financial results on the 26th of August 2026. Nature. Our approach to nature and biodiversity has matured to be more strategic and ecosystems-focused, and we are also working towards TNFD disclosures. We're currently working with our assets to develop group-level nature targets and expect to have these approved by the board this calendar year. These new targets will further define our existing targets of no net loss of biodiversity at legacy sites and net gain of biodiversity values at our greenfield sites.
Our people. We believe an inclusive culture that values diversity, delivers better business outcomes, enables our people to achieve their full potential, and creates sustainable outcomes for the benefit of the communities in which we work. We've achieved, as I said, the 40/40 gender diversity target at the board and the executive, and we'd like to achieve that across our business. We know that this may take some time. At the moment, we have female employment rates that are above industry norms in the countries we operate. At MATSA, 24.5%, Motheo is 21.1%. In Australia, we have 45% of our employees are female. Communities.
Sandfire aims to deliver a long-lasting, positive contributions to the communities in which we operate through training and employment, the payment of taxes and royalties, the procurement of local goods and services, and by investing in communities through in-kind contributions, donations, sponsorships, and partnerships. This year, we developed a group community investment approach, which moves towards a more strategic needs-based community investment.
We are now working with our stakeholders to identify projects that can meet the strategic requirement of the allocated 0.5% of group EBITDA towards those strategic community programs. We're currently in discussions with the Botswana government to fund the construction of a 114 km transmission line to the village of Kuke to connect power for the first time to approximately 1,500 people. We believe this investment will provide significant opportunities for this community. Cultural heritage.
We are committed to working in collaboration with Indigenous peoples to safeguard cultural heritage, and respect is the foundation of all our relationships with Indigenous peoples. Our human rights policy and group standard establish the minimum requirements for actions across our assets, and it also includes a requirement for ongoing assurance and reporting. Because each group is different, we collaborate and we work to tailor our management of cultural heritage for the group's specific needs.
The board's sustainability committee, as John mentioned, has oversight over cultural heritage and is regularly updated on any activities in this space. You can see some of our commitments there, which include striving to obtain free, prior, and informed consent and also that we have the cultural heritage management plans that will detail how impacts and risks are identified and protected and managed at each of our assets.
We'd like to now share some insights into how we manage the disturbance of the artifact scatters at our now closed Monty mine at DeGrussa. In June 2022, an internal review of geospatial data identified the historical disturbance of artifact scatters at our now closed Monty mine at DeGrussa. The CEO, the Board, and the Yugunga-Nya were notified of the disturbance in October 2023, and we lodged an ASX announcement on the 30th of November that advised that we had identified the historical disturbance, that we were deeply sorry for the disturbance, that we had self-reported the disturbance to the regulator, and that we would undertake an independent investigation to determine the cause, the process failures, and any opportunities for improvement.
On the same day as the release of our ASX announcement, we contacted many of our key investors directly and offered to meet and brief them. There was considerable interest from investors, and we held multiple meetings with multiple investors over a 12- 18-month period. There was also some media interest. There are a number of actions that were undertaken, and this slide provides a list of some of those key responses, key actions that we undertook. But throughout the whole process, open, respectful, and transparent engagement with Yugunga-Nya was a priority for Sandfire.
In December 2023, shortly after the ASX announcement, Brendan and some of our directors met with members of the Yugunga-Nya on country to apologize and to hear their concerns. In December 2023, we also signed a framework agreement designed to map issues, steps, and relationships with the Yugunga-Nya.
One of the priorities that we had was to work with the Yugunga-Nya to establish formal ways of communication, and we established a cultural heritage and relationships committees that meet on country on an ongoing basis now, at least twice a year. We also importantly paused closure and rehabilitation activities while we worked with the Yugunga-Nya to protect cultural heritage.
We enhanced our group approach to the management of cultural heritage with the publishing of our human rights and social performance group standard. In October 2024, we jointly agreed with the Yugunga-Nya to put the challenges of the past behind us and focus on the successful implementation of the framework agreement and to make a meaningful, ongoing contribution to the community. Also in October that year, an independent survey of heritage places at the mine site was undertaken by the Yugunga-Nya and their appointed anthropologist.
Our Chair and CEO joined the survey for the first two days. Another survey was undertaken in October last year to recommend protection measures for heritage places, and we supported the Yugunga-Nya with the demarcation of heritage places last year. This was completed in December. As I mentioned, at Sandfire's request, Gilbert + Tobin undertook an external investigation into the disturbances of the artifact scatters, including to determine why it occurred and why it took the time it did to notify the CEO, the board, and the Yugunga-Nya. We released the full report via an ASX announcement on the 4th of June 2024. In summary, the G+T investigation found that the historical disturbances occurred in error due to ignorance and process failings within Sandfire, including a failure to appreciate the potential importance of the scatters.
The investigation also determined that Sandfire was not historically organized in a way that would ensure such disturbances could not occur, and that the time taken to escalate the matter once it was identified was a result of a broad failure to understand that our ESG obligations exceeded legislative compliance. This slide summarizes the recommendations from the report and the key actions that have been undertaken. You can see that there was a priority on the consolidation of the geospatial data. There you can see two items there, one that falls under cultural awareness training and the other under reassess and finalize the heritage management plan that are still in progress. We're currently working with the Yugunga-Nya on those. The first one is the cultural awareness training. That package is near completion, and we hope to roll that out shortly.
That will be rolled out by a person nominated by the Yugunga-Nya to undertake that training. The other matter was the heritage management plan. That plan has been updated and we did the final updates following the demarcation at the end of 2025, and that will be provided to the Yugunga-Nya for final approval. I'll now hand over to Franklin to provide some comments. Thanks, Franklin.
Thank you very much, Cath. Before I start, I'd just like to acknowledge Sandfire and the decision to share this case study with you today, with the market. I'd also like to acknowledge Stuart Lane, who's with me today. Stuart, if there's anything I'm missing, jump in and make sure you correct me. Stuart and I will be more than happy to take any questions at the very end of the presentation and share our thoughts with you. The purpose of my presentation, and I should say that before starting that what Sandfire experienced and what the Yugunga-Nya experienced is not unique.
These disturbances or destruction of heritage sites have been going on for years across WA, and that, in one way, shaped Yugunga-Nya's response and how we addressed initially with Brendan and the board. As we developed respect for each other, we were then able to deal with it in a far more rational, and I would say in a far more respectful way. Ultimately, I believe the way that Sandfire have dealt with this matter does address probably four of the main values, being one of respect, collaboration, accountability to the board, and honesty. That has taken time, but we've got to a place where I think all those values have been addressed. We live by those values between Yugunga-Nya and Sandfire.
What you have before you is really a mind map of how I approached this unfortunate incident. The first thing is when I did get a call from Sandfire, I had to relay that to the community. It's not an easy thing to relay to the community. In many cases, you know, we do unfortunately be the bearer of bad news and we do get a range of responses from the community as a result of that. Just like any other community, there is a spectrum. Some people within the community don't like any mining at all. Other people say, "We have to live with mining.
Let's work with them, and let's make sure that we can protect our country while at the same time allowing mining to coexist with us." There are a range of views within the community, and those range of views do lead to a range of expectations of how we deal with this information when it comes to us. Again, some people want to jump up and down about it, and others want to take a more rational approach to it and sit down and try to work with the mining companies of how to address these issues. As part of that, we do look at, just like any other board would do, we look at the legal, the political, and the media.
In this case, if you go back to 2023, 2024, there was a lot of noise, if you want to say, within the media around this. It had, I think probably 12 or 18 months prior to that, we did have the Rio Tinto issue that did arise, and that, in one way, assisted us to address this issue. It did assist very much in the media and politically. Likewise with Sandfire, we were well cognizant of this, especially our initial engagement with John on the board. He did reach out to us, but we also reached out to a number of its stakeholders and investors, and some of you are online.
You reached out to us, and we reached out to you, and we shared our thoughts and experiences with you. Ultimately, the capacity of the group as well as my own capacity to deal with this is not a small operation to manage such a large and complex issue. We do have to be very cognizant of how we address that, and we don't want to overstretch ourselves because Sandfire is just one proponent who works on our contract. At the moment, we have 15 matters in the Future Act processes, which are ongoing, and negotiations for agreements, whether that is a heritage protection agreement or a mining agreement, and we have one lawyer. Contrary to people's expectations, we get no funding from the Commonwealth, no funding from a trust or any other form of external funding.
All funding comes from negotiations with mining companies and governments. The next level was the engagement. Engagement, as Brendan and John would know, is not just a word. It is a process. It takes a lot of time to get right. We don't always get it right, but we make sure we learn from the lessons when we get it wrong. The engagement from my level was both at the Waian community, and the Waian community is diverse. It is not just in Meekatharra, it's not just in Perth, it is not just in Brisbane, and it's not just in South Australia. Waian people, like any other groups of people, are throughout Australia and in one case even in Canada.
We need to, I need to be in a position to discuss with them and to field their questions, and that does take a lot of time. Likewise with Sandfire, while initially, we did have a lot of communications with various people within Sandfire, it took Sandfire a while to actually channel it through just Brendan. A number of people want to assist, but ultimately we need to know who is the person being responsible, who can we call, and Brendan stood up to that.
Stakeholders. In many cases, stakeholders, as I said before, did contact us and we did contact a number of stakeholders, investors and superannuation firms to let them know our views on what had occurred. We sought their assistance to assist with us, and in some cases they would have then approached the board.
Again with settlement options, what is the ideal outcome? Before we do anything, we need to be in a position to know where we are going and what success will look like. There's no point going into this and hoping for the best. I need to be in a position to have a good understanding of where I'm going and to be able to sell that to my client. I need to manage my client's expectations, and they need to agree to the position that we're taking. There is no point going into this hoping for the best and not achieving what my client is expecting of me. At all times, there were three times in this process where I would revisit this strategy, and I would revisit the strategy with my client.
At the time I believe we were probably going up to Meekatharra every second month to make sure that this was occurring correctly. While GT, Gilbert & Tobin, did a review internally for Sandfire, our main objective was to get an independent audit of the process and that occurred through the appointment of an independent anthropologist who went out on site. As part of that independent review, they reviewed all heritage surveys that took place over probably the last 12, 15 years on Sandfire's tenement, and to ensure that each of those sites that were identified, and I believe there was over 30 of them, at the time were protected.
Where they were not protected, one of the outcomes and findings was to actually go back out on country and to re-fence them, and I'm glad to say that we're at the very end of completing that. We're just some last ones around maybe two or three sites with signs to do.
Yep.
Yep. We're nearly at the very end of that. That has taken quite some time, probably between 12 and 18 months. Given the number of people involved and the logistics around that, it has been done to a great, I would say at a very efficient and a great high standard where the community is grateful for what has occurred. We've now got our 33 sites that have been identified, and those sites are now protected going into the future. To close off, I think the main achievement here is that regardless of the legal framework, and bearing in mind the legal framework would not have helped Yugunga-Nya. Bearing in mind that the legal framework did not assist us, the work that the Yugunga-Nya did with Sandfire did assist in building respect.
From my perspective and the perspective of Yugunga-Nya, it reconfirmed Sandfire's, if you want, like, social license to operate at DeGrussa even though the mine was closing, but there was a recognition of that. Likewise, we do believe that Sandfire, Brendan in particular, has recognized and built respect among the Yugunga-Nya people. What I mean by that is that Brendan and the Yugunga-Nya people may not always agree with each other, but the point is that they will come and talk. Now where there is disagreement, we do not walk away. Issues may get heated. But when tempers subside, then the talking does commence, and that's the main lesson we have learned from today and over the last 24 months.
Brendan and the board have been prepared to listen to Yugunga-Nya. Have been prepared to understand the consequences of the actions that took place, and have been prepared to work with the Yugunga-Nya to ensure, as much as possible, that this will not occur again in the future. Going back to the beginning, I would like to say that this case study, while not unique, does present an opportunity to assist other groups and miners in the future who will come, and it will inevitably arise that similar situations will occur.
We hope that this presentation and the case study will assist those and will ensure that respect does occur when these issues arise, and if it does arise, that people do not walk away from not so much the legal issue, but the moral issue and the right issue to address these issues. That's the end of my presentation. I will open up to questions if that's what we do.
Yes.
I've got some more. But Stuart, was there anything that-
No
... that you wanted to add? Okay. Thank you. Maybe just to round out, and thank you Franklin and Stuart. Just a reminder to people who are online, if you'd like to pose a question, please do so. We'll be finishing shortly. I just had a few additional remarks to make. Perhaps before I do that, and speaking on behalf of the organization, we've said it many times in various disclosures, but from the heart, again, can I just apologize, Stuart, to you and your people. Clearly, the disturbance of the artifact scatters that occurred should not have occurred. As Franklin's just described, there are deep lessons there for everyone.
I appreciate, as Franklin said, it's not always easy, but I've always felt that there's been a strong commitment to work together to find a way through to enable us to be where we are today. Ultimately, as an organization, we always need to do things that set us up for a sustainable future. I think most importantly, that enable our communities. Obviously, as we move through the closure process, one of the critical elements is working very hard to create as many opportunities for the Yugunga-Nya as we can, particularly as we really do ramp up activity there over the coming years. I think, you know, Franklin said it well, like most things in life, it's hard to do anything if you don't have a strong relationship.
I think one of the key lessons for me, and I should also note that these are our observations. We're not here to tell others what to do, and we're not suggesting that we have all the answers. This has been a, you know, an experience that I think has had a deep impact on everyone associated with it. Relationships matter. The duration of relationships matter. When you let relationships over time deteriorate, it's very hard to reignite them when you face challenge. That's probably the most important message that we communicate with our teams on the back of this. It's why, as you can see here, we're making it very clear that how we manage cultural heritage has to be embedded into the way we work.
Just as the way we manage the performance, the production, our costs, how we look to keep people safe, we need to make sure the cultural heritage is embedded in those same processes. That's because through those processes, it's required, it's beholden upon us to understand every agreement that we have in place with any of the traditional owner groups, what those agreements require of us, and over time, making sure that we do what we say we will do. I think that is a critical element for me, because as organizations evolve, people move. As people move, there is a loss of corporate memory.
Critically, if you have those core accountabilities defined, you build the things that matter most into your ways of working, then you have the greatest chance of ensuring that you're not people reliant and that you can succeed through the way in which you develop your systems and processes. I think that's hopefully what we've spent today trying to achieve, is to help you understand, as I mentioned right at the outset, that as an organization, we have evolved substantially and we are continuing to mature. As we heard with Jason's presentation and our recent tragic loss of one of our colleagues in Spain, in the Andalusia region at MATSA, we're not yet where we need to be. A couple of thoughts, specifically, respect. One of my greatest learnings, I've always thought about trust.
Initially, for me, it was working through this issue and thinking deeply about how we could establish trust. What I became very aware of, and I think Franklin helped me with this a great deal, is it's very hard to develop trust quickly, and particularly where, in this instance, there's a broader context which over decades has meant trust has been eroded, and that's why it's about respect. That's why it's about the last point here, which is around keep showing up. In every conversation, in everything we do, is making sure there's a clear commitment, and that, in this case, the Yugunga-Nya know that we'll be back. We'll be back to resolve issues. We'll be back to make progress.
I think the other thing I really wanna draw out here, and I think is arguably a risk, I'm sure, in many organizations, is that there are government-defined processes, there's legislation, et cetera, et cetera, that guide you. I'd really encourage others to take an approach which says it's not for the organization to critically determine or have a view on any aspect of cultural significance. There's only one group that can help you with that, and that's the traditional owners that you're working with. People's lands on which you're operating, it's important you understand their context, and you need to spend time, you need to stay committed, and you need to put the effort in. Cultural awareness training is clearly an important part of this. It's something that many of you, I'm sure, will have done yourselves. If not, I'd really encourage you to do so.
I think as a society, we're all learning, and we continue to learn. Going out on country with the Yugunga-Nya, and again, I express my great appreciation on behalf of John and others, for the fact that you've invited us to join you on country and understand just a little bit about why you're so deeply connected to country. I think, you know, for us, what we're looking forward to is that training being broadened as the package of work that Cath mentioned earlier is completed. Lastly, clearly for us, I mentioned earlier that we believe that being effective risk managers is core to everything we do. It is so important that we build cultural heritage into our risk management processes, which is also tied, as I mentioned earlier, to our ways of working.
After all, everything is said and done, really just try and do the right thing. With that, I think, Pippa, we'll close the formal part of today's presentation. I'll take a seat. I think John will chair the Q&A. If there are any questions, we certainly look forward to answering them. I should note as well that, as you soak on these materials, there's a lot in this. This is not something that has probably been done commonly in the marketplace to talk about a specific issue like this, let alone our broader approach to sustainability. I know Dave, the team, myself and the broader executive, including particularly Cath, would be very happy to take questions offline in future days if anything comes to your attention. Pippa, if you can open up the questions. Thank you.
This question comes from Maddy Dwyer from Paradice. There's a couple of components to this question, so I'll read all of it at once, but I'm happy to read out if you need so. In light of the new deal for the Kalkaroo project in South Australia, could you please take us through all the aspects relating to relations with traditional owners and cultural heritage management? For example, who are the traditional owners? Are there any native title determinations in place? Are there existing relationships or agreements with Havilah Resources? So far, what do you anticipate Sandfire will need to do in the short to medium term from a TO perspective as the project advances?
Thanks, Pippa, and thanks, Maddy, for the question. I might get Brendan to make some comments and then Cath to add to that.
Yeah. Thank you, John. Look, excellent question, and appreciate the focus on Kalkaroo. Obviously we believe that it is the next major opportunity for our organization, that really can further transform the group and become a very significant component of the organization in the years to come. Of course, you can imagine we've done a lot of things in relation to due diligence before we made obviously the decision to participate in effectively a joint venture with Havilah.
I'd also note, however, that if you look at the way that the deal structure has been, if you like, designed, it gives us a very modest entry point to enable us to complete even more due diligence and particularly understand all of the aspects that will be required to be addressed to enable a successful development. One of the parts of due diligence that we spent quite some time on was understanding the various matters in relation to the traditional owners. You may have heard that Cath talked to the Adnyamathanha, the Wilyakali and the Ngadjuri. They're all part of a group called the Ngadjuri entity that has effective carriage over this area. Havilah has a range of agreements in place, and various approvals for the land on which they've been operating.
That includes across the mining leases that exist there today. One of the first things that we'll be doing as we look to ramp up activity, and I must say very much drawing on the lessons of DeGrussa that we've just talked about, is ensuring that we have monitors out on site before any major activity is undertaken beyond what has been done to this point, to ensure that we understand the areas of cultural significance and that that is fundamentally built into the design of our program. We will also need to extend and expand the areas that currently have access approval from the traditional owner groups to enable us to test the true strike length to the southwest.
I've said to many of you, the ore body is currently defined across a loose strike length for around 3 km, and we believe at least to the southwest, that there's another 2 km of open-ended extent. To really test that, we'll need to further those approvals processes. Look, again, the deal structure is designed to enable us to work through a number of these issues, gain greater understanding in the same way that we've talked today. It's about showing up. It's about continuing to engage and understand the issues of cultural significance on those lands, and ensuring that any development of Kalkaroo is undertaken with the support of the traditional owners and importantly in a sustainable way. You know, we're here talking about the broader elements of sustainability as well.
One thing I've mentioned to a number of investors is if you look broadly to the northeast of the proposed mine site, if you will, subject to all of the other work that needs to be done to confirm the economics, is a very large wind farm that is underutilized that has significant expansion potential. There's also the potential to really develop a mine from the outset that has a very, if you like, positive energy footprint from the perspective of carbon emissions. Also if you look at the land, it is incredibly flat, and it is sunny on most days of the year. It's also an area that is very much amenable to the development of large solar installations and energy capacity, renewable energy capacity. That's another area that I think is very important with Kalkaroo. John, I hope that answers the question.
I think it does. Thank you, Brendan. Cath, do you want to add anything just-
Yeah, look, the only thing I would add is that Jason Grace, myself and Ian Kerr, who's the project president for Kalkaroo, and Brendan was online, but the others of us actually attended a meeting of the Ngadjuri board in February. Yeah, and we actually gave them a bit of some information about what was coming up and as Brendan touched on, the monitoring that we would need support on, also future surveying, and also we made our commitment to provide those business and employment opportunities to the Ngadjuri. We'll continue to work with that group as we progress with the project.
Okay. Thanks, Cath. Pippa.
This question comes from Kristen Mazur from Farcentia. On safety, you mentioned more focus on reporting, stronger field observations, focusing on high potential incidents. Can you give us a sense of the metrics you're tracking that help you assess live safety culture on mine sites rather than lagging indicators like TRIFR?
Thank you, Kristen, for the question. I'll pass that on to Jason.
Thanks, Kristen. In answer to your question, we track a myriad of safety KPIs right across the group. Firstly, John touched on it before. We report up to the sustainability committee as part of the board escalation and reporting of that. We report lag measures, so injury rates, high potential incidents, number of those, and also the consequence ratings of all of our injuries out there as well. If you look at it, leading indicators, we look at all of those things that you've mentioned there before. We actually look at all of close out of actions.
Any action that's identified across the company that is there to actually improve safety, whether that be from routine investigations or incident investigations, or whether it be routine compliance or even field observations, we track all of those things in compliance to that, and we hold our assets and all of our people to account from that as well.
In terms of reporting, all right, we have very structured reporting coming all the way up to the board and also including myself as well, and we have a single meeting every month with every one of our key leaders across the organization that actually lead people that are physically out, boots on ground, and we come together as both an information sharing mechanism, but also as a safety leadership forum to make sure that we're heading in the right direction and doing the right things. We're learning at all of our assets, for things that may happen in MATSA, we're learning those things in exploration at Kalkaroo, right, and Motheo, and right across the company.
The other thing I will say there as well, in terms of field observations, we carefully track all of our leadership observations, which we have a target set for each of the assets, and we consolidate that up at a group level. That's tracked on a monthly basis to look at how we're trending and making sure that we're addressing that if we've got positive outcomes or if we're starting to fall away in some areas, which doesn't often happen. Then finally, you know, we are working through particularly what we have as our principal hazard program. We're systematically going right across our organization, and we're well advanced on this, by identifying all of our principal hazards, so the areas that can cause significant harm to any of our people that work on our sites. We do detailed bow ties around those.
We identify all the critical controls that are associated with that hazard, and then we actually have critical control verifications that we assign to individuals across the group. We put that in a centralized database, and we track full compliance to that as well.
Thanks, Jason. I'll just get Brendan to add a couple of points.
Yeah, look, thank you. Jason, well said. I think, as we've talked to earlier in the discussion today, we've done an enormous amount of work to mature the systems and processes as part of the Sandfire Way, and clearly while we've made enormous progress, as I've mentioned, and you can see obviously with Ivan's loss, we're not as, you know, not where we need to be. The comment I'd make, I said this to a number of people on the East Coast last week, and it's confronting to some, I guess, to hear it put this way, but the reality is, from my experience in the organizations I've worked in, where we've experienced fatalities, that typically they occur in areas where you would define as being of lower risk.
They're not necessarily the highest-risk activities. They're not necessarily activities that would be defined as areas where your critical risks and your critical controls are put in place. That makes this very hard because in effect what we're talking about therefore is culture. One of the things that very much is on our mind is building an organization that has very strong and robust systems and processes, that actually has a cultural way of being and a way of working, which we call our speak up philosophy, where everyone feels safe to speak up. It's why we believe so deeply about creating an inclusive culture that values diversity. 'Cause we believe those elements are what enable people to speak up and stop work if something doesn't feel safe. It is a critical element.
It's why, you know, we track a lot of the input and output metrics. Ultimately, over time, what we need to make sure is that we're seeing the visible field leadership, we're seeing the supervisors in the field right up to my level. When I'm on site, I'm in the field, I'm observing work, and when we see things that don't fit the criteria, we call them out. Because the only way we're actually going to eliminate the highest potential instance, dare I say fatalities, is when we get to a point where 100% of the time people are following the rules and they're adhering to the controls that are in place. It's akin to being on a highway where no one speeds, no one tailgates. When you're on the road, no one jaywalks, no one drink drives, no one drug drives.
Not every now and then, but ever. Because as you can see with a number of the incidents in our industry that I'm sure you track, it's only takes one, occasion where people, potentially, put themselves in harm's way, and the situation arises that the stars align, that we deal with very high energies and people can get hurt. That's why the cultural journey that we're on is so important and, if I can say, we need to double down on all the elements we're doing to further mature our systems, but all the work we're doing around training and culture, and particularly in terms of speaking up, ensuring our people feel safe to speak up and stop work.
Thanks, Brendan. I was just kind of making one other comment from a board perspective. We've tasked management with coming up with a second safety metric for short-term incentive. Hopefully that will be a forward-looking metric. We're working on that. In fact, I think I have a meeting on that subject this afternoon. It is something we're very much focused on as a board as well as management. Thank you again, Kristen, for that question. Pippa?
There are no more questions. I'll pass back to you, John and Brendan, to share any final remarks and close the briefing.
Thank you, Pippa. First of all, if I can just thank Franklin and Stuart for their time today. It's great to have them here and it's great that we now have what I think is a really good working relationship with the Yugunga-Nya. I'd like to thank everyone on the line for your time today and to Maddy and Kristen for those questions. Brendan, do you wanna add anything to that? No. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for attending.