I would like to welcome you all here in the room and the ones online. Just a quick reminder that the presentation or the slides that we'll see here today will be available on our website and have been lodged with the ASX. I'll begin today by acknowledging the Yuggera people, traditional custodians of the land on which we gather today, and pay my respects to their elders, past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today. Let's start with agenda, the agenda and what we have prepared for you today. Alistair will be the first speaker of today, will give us an overview of the strategy. We will then move on. Alistair is our CEO. I think you all know him. We'll move on to the Sims Resource Renewal.
We'll have Christine Baker. Christine is our General Manager for the Sims Resource Renewal, and she will provide an overview of the strategy for the business. We will then go outside and do the tour of the demonstration plant. Just for the ones online to bear in mind that we won't hear or see anything at that point. We'll effectively be offline for one hour and 15 minutes approximately. We will then return to the room and people online will be able to hear us and see us again, and we will cover the ANZ business, the ANZ Metal business. We'll have Rod Bonnette, our Chief Commercial Officer, giving us an overview of the fundamentals for the ANZ Metal business.
We will then hear from David Burrows, our Chief Operating Officer for the ANZ business. He will give us some insight into the plans for the Pinkenba site, our newest site. After that, we'll have a Q&A. Alistair will wrap up for today, which will mark the end of the presentations for people attending the session online. For the ones here in the room, we will break out for lunch and, after lunch, we'll have a bus waiting for us outside, which will take us to the Pinkenba site. After the tour of the Pinkenba site, if you want to return to the airport, you can just stay on the bus, and the bus will drop you off at the airport.
I hope you enjoy what we have prepared for you today. I look forward to speak to you during the breaks and hear your thoughts about what's going to be discussed here today. Alistair.
Thank you. All right. Good afternoon. Good morning to those around the world and talking to you here today. Rocklea is obviously one of our key sites here in Australian operations. It's about time that we've actually had all you, and we've spoken to you a lot about Sims Resource Renewal, so it's gonna be great being able to take you around today. Sims' purpose is obviously a very focused led strategy by design. We chose to go down a purpose route with a clear expression of being able to create a very clear pathway for us in our decision-making processes, be that M&A, but the culture aspect, but also our values. The purpose narrative is really embedded in this organization now. It helps us in terms of decision making as a lens.
When we choose which M&A targets or what we want to acquire, there needs to be some fundamentals that we actually, you know, live by. The actual values that we live to in this organization, absolutely key. The communities that we operate in, again, also come from those values and the behaviors that we actually display as a management team. A really well-led purpose organization. The employee feedback that I've had, the recruiting folks that have joined us have all given us good and positive feedback around that approach. When I have a look at our business, at the moment in terms of the tailwinds, we have a look at the environmental concerns that we've seen across the world.
Right across the globe, we've actually seen a lot of concerns from our customers and the steel companies coming back to us, asking us to work with them in terms of reducing CO2 emissions that they are undertaking. That journey is obviously underway. The environmental compliance aspect, when we have a look at some of our U.S.A. businesses, when you look at other competitors that we've had, that environmental compliance aspect is growing right across the globe. The demand for recycled copper and aluminum, I think all of you in this room are very familiar with that trend, be it electrification, but that demand has not diminished. In actual fact, it's starting to pick up even further. I think one of the aspects of today's discussion is also the higher landfill costs that we've seen both here in Australia and across the globe.
That obviously has not abated, we see that trend continuing. The electrification and energy transition is obviously driving copper and aluminum prices higher. I mean, if you go back and you look at 2018, 2019 copper and aluminum prices, we're pretty much back to that level after COVID. You know, when you have a look for the next two to three years, copper definitely over $9,000 and $2,300 for aluminum. Those trends are continuing unabated. The high quality metal aspect, that has been a journey over the last two to three years. We've seen different parts of the globe really raising that standard.
China, as an example, is one of the last, about two, three years ago, that really set a quality standard that actually copper and aluminum that enter China has to meet a certain qualification and standard. That has actually been vetted and managed quite carefully. That continued drive for quality metals, we're now seeing that flow through our ferrous business as well. Our steel companies are wanting a higher quality shred material. That obviously needs some technology on our part, which I'll talk about. The increased demand for recycled metal. I think we've seen the journey of electric arc furnaces on a global basis, particularly in the U.S.A. in the last couple of years. We've seen over 25 million tons start to come into the market at different phases.
That demand for recycled metal, be it ferrous, but also copper and aluminum, has continued to grow. The cloud services, our SLS division, we've seen the actual services that have been requested growing. The actual data centers have grown a lot more than what we actually anticipated, and obviously driven through the COVID period quite significantly. When we have a look at Sims and the capabilities Sims brings to this table to actually manage those market tailwinds, one of the key aspects for us is our in-house engineering team. The last big facilities that we've built here in Australia, Kwinana, the shredder offline recovery plants, et cetera, that was all done by an in-house engineering team.
Our growth in Chicago in terms of the new technology there, as well as in Claremont, the Zorba separation plants, the Twitch plants, that has all been designed and put together by our in-house engineering team. It's really key for us because that actually gives us a very quick start when we know what we want to do. Best-in-class shredding and non-ferrous metal separation, the Zorba separation plants and the Twitch plants that we've been able to implement, we've actually been able to lead the market in those changes.
I think one of the other key aspects for us is to operate best-in-class assets at scale, and that's key for us, is being able to demonstrate that we are thinking long term, that we are actually operating out of facilities that have long-term viability, both from domestic as well as export, capabilities, using the rivers that we can, and hence one of the visits today will be at Pinkenba, which is a really strategic asset for us. Part of this journey, obviously, is understanding the environment that we're in, and that environment, as you all well know, has been changing quite radically. When we have a look at some of these aspects, and this formed part of the presentation that I gave to you many years ago around the risks that our business are taking and the trends in the globe.
This is just a little bit of an update on that. When we have a look at the social aspects, community activism has increased. We've seen that. I think we've had discussions around the world where we've seen a lot more competition that's come into the market, but actually, the actual activism that takes place in communities has actually stopped some of the actual technologies that have wanted to start up, but also in terms of running an operation that is in a neighborhood who actually does not want that technology or that environment with a company in it. We've seen that play out, and that activism is a really key aspect for us.
When we take this journey forward in Pinkenba, as an example, we need to be very aware that the communities that we operate in today have actually got a lot more say than they used to in the many years, and rightly so. Climate change. I think that urgency and the commitment that we're seeing across companies, governments, continues and accelerated. Inflation, generational high. I think we're all very aware of the inflationary aspects of our business over the past 12 months, and that obviously is a key aspect for us in just managing the actual costs. Volatile commodity prices, supply chain constraints. I think we've seen quite a whoop swing over the last two, three years, particularly during the COVID period. That obviously went through, you know, literally every part of our business from a supply point of view. Technological.
I think we've seen the discussions with car manufacturing companies have now started to increase. We've been engaged and talking to a lot of international global companies around cars and them understanding what the actual full recycled of a vehicle means. I'm not talking about the metal components. I'm talking about the plastic components as well now. Hence one of our reasons for being here today, is that full circularity is an actual key issue for a lot of these large global car manufacturers if they're gonna meet their customers' expectations. Digitization, cloud storage solutions, unabated. Artificial intelligence, it's already part of life in a number of These cloud companies that we're talking to, they're actually quite far advanced in that development. I think we're all very aware of the Ukraine issue with Russia.
That has obviously, you know, given an elevated risk in that area. I think we saw the result of, you know, literally from day one to, you know, 90 days after the impact of that war. That obviously continues today and something that we need to be aware of. Geopolitical tensions in general have obviously, you know, continued to play out across the world. Obviously from a Sims point of view, you know, we need to be understanding of that and how we actually manage that risk going forward. When I have a look at our business structure, from a Sims Limited point of view, our core business, Sims Metal, obviously that continues. Adjacencies today, we'll talk about Sims Resource Renewal. You'll get a good understanding of what we're trying to achieve there.
Sims Lifecycle Services, as you're well, our cloud focus. Some of the divestments that we've made or we're busy making. Sims Municipal Recycling, as you know, we sold a part of that business a year or so ago. We're closing out the last components of that. We should be, you know, in the next four or five months, hopefully that will be closed. LMS Energy, I think is obviously currently going through a process where we are divesting that, which is also including the Sims Energy component. That was the international arm that we opened a facility in the United States after a lot of sort of focused work on what type of a plant we wanted in the United States. Sims Energy, actually, that Florida plant is up and running very well.
The LMS divestment, obviously for us, is a decision that we've made. We actually are gonna work through that process, and that should be, you know, over the next six months. Again, capital recycling, surplus land that we have across our group. All of the capital management, I think, is one of the key aspects that both Stephen and I have focused on, is the discipline that goes around capital in our group, the returns that we expect from our group, but also making sure that when we run projects, they are run in a strict fashion. In other words, when you get to certain gate reviews and you do not pass that hurdle, that project basically stops. That discipline for us is something that we've actually worked on very hard over the last term.
Really, the three focus groups, Sims Metal, Sims Resource Renewal and Sims Lifecycle Services are obviously our current focuses and obviously the divesture of the other two. That's really a quick introduction. I'm happy to take any questions on this stage if you want to, before we go into Christine's presentation.
Alistair, it'd be interesting just to get your view. Obviously, you've seen GFG come out and talk about an EAF in Whyalla. I'd like your take on that, and then, you know, the ability of scrap supply in Australia to feed that, and then how that maybe plays into some of the investments you've made recently, like the bought land in Brisbane.
Yeah. I think firstly, putting an EAF makes sense. I get that. Whether they actually go through with that is yet to be seen, because I've heard that come up before. I think one of the challenges that you have in Adelaide is being able to get material into Adelaide. That scrap or the shred that they would require would need to be brought in from other states or countries. I don't know how much due diligence they've actually done around that body of work, but depending on the size of that EAF and I've had, you know, various feedback of as to what that size of that facility is. From an Australian point of view, if you actually wanted to feed that EAF, there's not a problem to being able to do that.
I think as long as that it is a competitive pricing arrangement, that shouldn't be a problem. I think one of the key aspects in Australia is unprocessed material that leaves this country that should not be leaving. In other words, crushed cars that get put into a container that are full of plastic and waste, those should not be leaving. That should be processed in Australia. If that's the case, there's more than enough scrap.
A second one, if I can. The EV story, you obviously have that accelerating on your slide. Like, have you changed your view around how you can be involved in that? I mean, obviously in the past around batteries recycling you've been-
Yeah.
said you won't be there.
We are obviously watching that space very carefully. I think for us, the actual recycling of electric vehicles at this stage, as you know, an obsolete vehicle typically takes 10-12 years before you actually start that recycling process. We're obviously geographically well-positioned to be able to get electric batteries back and hand them back to the manufacturers or the owners of them. The actual breaking up of a battery and the actual recycling of black mass, that's a different story for us, and that's one that we are watching as well. I'm very hesitant environmentally to go down that route. Secondly, when I look at all the actual companies in the United States that have undertaken that route, they're all running at a loss. I think we are not gonna just jump in and throw.
'Cause I've seen a lot of capital thrown at this, and I'm not sure that we have the solution yet.
Alistair, see reference to the trends onshoring deglobalization. Is that a threat for Sims in terms, particularly in terms of export flow, where the material that you're processing is strategically important to the country that it's sourced from?
Yes, I've heard that, you know, the European question that came out. I think it is what is a processed material, a finished product. It's a commodity. Shredded scrap is a commodity on the open market, can be sold accordingly. I don't see any nationalization taking place here in Australia or even the United States. I do think that you're going to have issues like Section 232 in the United States will continue, but the actual scrap sourcing, I think, is fine in the United States as well as Australia. I think at some stage, if you got to a point where you really needed it for some particular reason, as long as the actual pricing is export parity, I'm okay with that.
Sorry, Alistair. How big is the unprocessed scrap export market from Australia, and where does it go to and stuff? Yeah.
Sorry to interrupt. We'll cover that later on.
Okay.
in Rod's presentation. Maybe just so we don't spoil Rod's presentation.
No problem.
Keep going, Alistair. Keep going. It's not small.
Can I just ask just on the business portfolio slide and just note that yous are still referring to the underperforming assets as potentially up for sale. I know that you have referenced the U.K. business as falling into that category at the moment. How, I guess, is the turnaround there progressing, and is there a world where we should be potentially considering that that moves across to the divestment side of things?
We're obviously going through a turnaround program of work at this stage. We obviously are going to want to make sure that we're actually doing everything from a U.K. point of view to make sure that it has a long-term viability with us. At this stage, there's no discussions around divesture. All right. I'm happy to take questions again.
Alistair, just following on. LMS Energy, you know, you sort of told the market that you were sort of looking at options there.
In LMS, we've made the decision to sell it.
Yeah.
It's a deliberate process, yeah.
What was the key driver behind that decision to sell? Because, I mean, you've had that for a very long time.
Reasonably profitable asset from what I understand. Was it a change in the dynamic of the market that they are operating in or is it more just kind of to compete within the.
It was more to do with our long-term progress going forward. In terms of LMS, I think there are shareholders that would like to see LMS literally in a business more focused on ESG, more in the renewable space, which is actually not, I think, giving the full value to Sims itself.
Hence that decision was undertaken. Is there an update on it?
I don't know if you've got any comment.
No, the process is going well. Is the update. We're exactly tracking on line with where we wanna be. I would say, you know, it would be the. It'll be sort of, you know, sometime between July, September that it will complete and close. The process is going well. I think just to add to what Alistair says, I think with LMS, we formed the view that, sitting within Sims, you know, the market wasn't valuing it as highly as the market should value it. It was a classic example of if you pull it out and put it separately, that group of shareholders, that group of owners value it more highly, and I think that's proven to be true.
The amount of interest we've had in that asset is huge, and that's why we're having to go through this very structured process to make sure we get it down to the, you know, to the final bidders.
Okay, I'll come back and answer questions again later on, after you've done a bit of a walk around. I'd like to introduce Christine.
Thank you very much. Sims Resource Renewal. Thanks very much for the introduction there. Great to be part of the session here today. I know I haven't had an opportunity to meet any of you before, so I thought I'd just take a couple of minutes and just tell you a little bit about myself and my role in Sims Resource Renewal. Christine Baker, General Manager of Sims Resource Renewal. I've been with the business now for about six months. I joined in September of last year. My background's quite different to probably a lot of the other people who you've met through our metals recycling business. I'm a chemical engineer by background, I've spent over 25 years basically in the oil and gas industry, working with the oil majors predominantly in the refining and petrochemical sectors.
My experience covers sort of technical and operations roles working in refineries and petrochemical plants, as well as supply coordination and optimization. I've also had senior business leadership roles across Australia and New Zealand, Singapore and the UK. That's just a little bit of my background as I come into this role in the resource renewal space. What we wanna talk to you today is actually around the demonstration plant. You'll see quite a bit of material and obviously the opportunity we'll have to go out in the field later and see the asset that we've built there.
I thought it'd be useful, and I understand there's a few new faces in the room and there's probably some new faces online, just to take a little bit of time to talk about how Resource Renewal fits into the overall Sims purpose, our Sims Limited business. It's really a key element about delivering our purpose, so we talk about a world without waste to preserve the planet. Many of you know that as part of our metals processing facilities, once we've removed that metals from the stream, we end up with a waste stream that's left, and that waste stream can contain materials like plastics, concrete, wood and other hard to treat waste.
It's reached a point where we can no longer recycle that material through mechanical methods, as a consequence of that goes to landfill. Our objective with Sims Resource Renewal is to really transform that hard to treat ASR, the waste plastics, into higher value products. Our goal is to really divert one million tons of this waste away from landfill and into higher value products. A really important goal in terms of delivering our overall purpose. I think what you'll see today is really the first step as part of the demonstration plan, but our long-term goal has always been about increasing that recycled content in products and really driving a pathway to full circularity. That's a really important element as we move through the process of developing and delivering in the SRR program.
I think as we start to become a solutions provider to advanced plastics recycling, to dealing with plastics waste, it's really important as we look at the waste stream of the ASR, it starts to become a resource to grow value. It also provides a really important element around the risk exposure that we have for the Sims Metal business around the cost of waste and waste cost escalation, as well as the potential reduction in landfill capacity. That's why Sims Resource Renewal is a really important element of the business that we're growing to really help support the overall Sims Limited business. The piece that we really wanna spend some time talking about today is on the demonstration plant. I'm very pleased to say that we have completed the mechanical construction of the demonstration plant for approximately $22 million.
I think it's interesting to think back over this last period of time of where we've executed this project. We can all forget that it was only in February of 2022 that Brisbane and Queensland had significant flooding activities, including this site. We've also had significant impacts as we've been through the COVID recovery in terms of logistics and supply chains being impacted. In addition to that, we've also had escalating wages and salary costs and equipment costs here in Australia. For the team to deliver this project for this cost of AUD 22 million, I think it's truly an exceptional effort, and really the credit goes to the team who've delivered that.
That important element around the strong focus on governance in the project delivery, that discipline that the team has had to deliver this project, ensuring really that safe operations and effective risk management. Why is that important to us? As we're looking at delivering a different program for the business, what gives us the confidence in our capability to be able to expand our systems and processes and our operations into advanced plastic recycling and these type of facilities. We've been able to deliver that really with a very experienced core team, and I do wanna give credit to the team versus me taking that all myself, having only been here for the six months. I'll take this opportunity to introduce two of the team who are here with us today. Doug Grimmond, who's our Chief Operations Officer. Thank you.
Adam Caine, who's been the project delivery for execution for the project. Doug and Adam are both gonna take you out into the field and escort you through and give you an overview when we take the plant tour. What's the demonstration plant? What is the purpose of doing a demonstration plant? Why is that important for our business as we move forward? One of the key elements as we think about managing change of our business is about validating this technology and validating the gas and vitrified product qualities. Making sure that we truly understand the applicability of this technology to what we are truly trying to achieve. The operations are gonna commence in June, and we'll have an initial test period of approximately six months.
I thought I'd just take you very briefly through sort of a very high level on this little flow diagram that we have here, so you can understand the key elements of what you'll see in the demonstration plant out in the field. We'll go through quite a bit more detail when we're out in the field. The core purpose is we take that scrap material, those end-of-life consumer goods, and we process them through the shredder, recover the metals that you see in the first part. We'll end up with the ASR, that automotive shredder residue. What we'll learn as part of this demonstration plant, and I've got an example of the ASR actually that we can put on the table so that you have a feel for the kind of material that we're processing. It's a lot about the materials handling.
How we will take this material and move it into our plasma gasifier, the reactor that we have for the facility, which is the core process that we will have to break this waste down into the core elements. This reactor uses energy in the form of plasma torches to break that waste plastic down and gasify that material. As a consequence of that, we'll end up with a gas stream. That gas stream we'll be able to sample. We'll understand whether we can produce a high-quality syngas, which will include hydrogen and CO2. The material that doesn't gasify will end up in a vitreous product stream. The vitreous product will be a glass-like material. We've got another sample that we can pass around, so you have an understanding of that.
This glass-like material can be crushed to form an aggregate that can be used in construction, so putting more recycled content into construction materials. Our priority as we go through this process is really to make sure we can execute this with very safe operations. Safety is always the number one priority for any operating asset. We'll go through extensive testing of startup, shutdown, and emergency response procedures because this facility will be different to the operations that we have in our metals. Making sure we fully understand that. Why is it important to have the results from the demonstration plant? It's important to us to understand the product qualities and the technology ourselves, but it's also gonna assist us as we move forward in the commercial operations.
It's gonna assist us with the customer and community engagement, discussions with regulators as we go forward and understand and build confidence as we work on the commercial application of this. Other key elements that we'll really learn through this demonstration plant phase. It's important around the information that we'll have will help us to understand and optimize the commercial facility that we'll be building. It'll give us insights into equipment performance, integrity, and reliability and really help to optimize that future commercial scale and facility design. I do wanna take us back just to a point of saying our end game, our long-term goal is to provide circularity.
Really the stage that we're at now with the process and for the demonstration plant is really this first element of taking the plastics and the automotive shredder residue and turning it into a syngas, breaking that waste down into the core elements. Once we have those core elements, we have that optionality to take those molecules and convert them into other products as a pathway to circularity. That's a really important element about this program. It's a series of stepping stones to drive towards circular solutions. The important element of that is. It'll inform us of the product qualities, it'll inform us of a range of products we can produce aligned with what the markets need, and a very market-back approach to where we wanna go with the molecules that we can create.
That's why the demonstration plant will also be utilized for future secondary trials and research and development processes, because the demonstration plant and first commercial facilities will be focused only in these early phases of the circular pathway we're on. Output product optionality is very important as we think about going into other markets. It's really important to have these multiple product choices to provide greater commercial flexibility as we consider as we enter into different markets, what are the right molecules? What are the right products that we need to produce? I won't go through them all, but there's a range of different products that you can see that could be produced from this. Particularly, you look to things like methanols, with a growing market, is used as an alternative in shipping fuel, ethanol, aviation fuels.
There's a whole range of options that are available in terms of different products that could be available. As we look to consider different markets, particularly in the U.S. and larger markets, we need to look at what those market options are available. A very customer-back focus and market-back focus to determine what is the right configuration and what are the right assets that we would need. Our strength is going to be very much in being ownership of the waste, seeing that waste as a resource, the capability of the technology around breaking that waste down into the components, the syngas, then working with other technology providers for this existing technologies about the finished product portfolios that we might offer.
I thought it'd be appropriate to provide a little bit of an update of where the Australian market development is and where we are for that, and just our investment timing for any commercial facility here in Australia will be linked to the demand and product evolution. I know that we've been talking about carbon dioxide as a key market within Australia, and hydrogen, which has been an evolving and growing market within Australia. What we'd say is that the hydrogen market is still emerging and still developing. It's not grown at the same rate as what we had anticipated, and there is quite a range of forecast demands that we can see. This is just one example of many sort of publicly available sort of options and ranges of demand globally that we'll see for hydrogen.
In addition from the hydrogen market, there is also the Guarantee of Origin scheme that's still being finalized. This is around the regulation and the regulator working to have basically an emissions accounting framework. The important element around the Guarantee of Origin is it's still being finalized. We're working with the regulator in providing feedback on our processing and the way that we're making hydrogen to make sure that that's considered within the Guarantee of Origin framework. That's gonna be really important because consumers will want to understand what is the emissions intensity, what is that emissions footprint that we have for the products that we're making. That's still in development and something that needs to be finalized.
I think it's very important to say there is growing demand for, by governments, by consumers, by our own customers, about understanding, about managing these kind of wastes, and particularly plastics waste. The Resource Renewal Program provides solutions to these advanced plastic recycling and that demand. We will continue to work with technology partners on what is the right product portfolio that we need for each of the markets, and I feel that we'll be in a position, very well positioned, to be able to capture those market opportunities as they continue to evolve.
I suppose just to really wrap that up in terms of what that means for the coming year in the shorter term, it is a very disciplined project program process that we're following and really looking to maximize the value that we can get from the product portfolio we can produce. In terms of FY 2024, the demonstration plant commitments, there is no further capital commitments that we have for that project, and we have some operating costs of around AUD 2 million to execute all the testing programs we would like to do. We will continue a very disciplined commercial plant development process. We have a capital gate review process to determine whether to advance to the next stage, and that's always been a core part of the program, to follow these very targeted processes.
We will continue to pursue technology partnerships to develop a range of product options. That optionality in the market is going to be very important. We're well positioned to capture those market opportunities as they evolve and very much aligned with the customer demand for circular solutions. Our commercial facility funding expected to be largely sourced from commercial partnerships and really structured to meet our own internal hurdle rates. Really, that's kind of the summary of where we're at. A great opportunity to go out in the field and see the value of this demonstration plant and the importance that that will be as we continue to develop our products and our markets for our program. I was going to leave you with one final set of pictures before we move into the Q&A.
When I talked about delivering and executing this program, back in July of 2022, this site was very key to the recovery of Queensland post the floods, and you can see the large amount of material that was stored on the site. In September 2022, we only just got access to the area, and we're clearing the site and leveling the site to commence construction. Really that's only six months ago. In November of 2022, the base footprint's down, and by April of 2022, really the full asset had been constructed. To be able to deliver this program really in a six-month period was really a great result for the team to be able to deliver. I will throw it back to Ana.
Thank you, Christine. We'll open the room for Q&A. I'll ask Stephen to join us up here. Stephen is our CFO, and Alistair as well. We'll start with Lee. Lee, you can go first.
Can you remind us of like similar processes globally? Like what's the cost per kilogram of hydrogen that they can produce or range that you expect this to be producing hydrogen at?
sorry, if I understood the question, what's the cost to produce hydrogen-
Yeah
from other processes?
No, just something similar or if you want to say what this project's gonna produce hydrogen at, whether that's a range. Like what do you think is a viable outcome in terms of hydrogen dollars per kilogram that you could get out of this?
I suppose what I would say is, I probably wouldn't share what our cost of production of the hydrogen is, 'cause that could impact obviously commercial negotiations. What we believe is that this is competitive versus other hydrogen production, alternatives such as electrolyzer hydrogen production.
Okay, thank you.
What is the capacity of the demonstration plant relative to your 1 million ton per annum aspirations?
The demonstration plant is gonna process 12 tons per day. It's a relatively small volume really that's required from a demonstration perspective.
Okay. Then 12 tons per day goes in, and what ultimately needs to still go into landfill?
From that, there won't be anything that will go to landfill per se as a solid in this process. Of the 12 tons per day, this demonstration plant is really just testing the technology. The gas stream will be combusted through a thermal oxidizer, so that will be safely combusted. We will collect the material which is the vitrified product for testing. I suppose any of that material that we don't require for the testing program will ultimately end up in landfill. What I would say is that the mix of materials that come in, about half of the materials gasify and about half of the materials end up in the vitrified product.
Okay. Thank you. Last question related to this is what would the cost of the landfill be per ton?
The cost of the landfill, just standard landfill costs, for this market. It doesn't change. Off the top of my head, I don't know. I can look to my brains trust in the background.
The state government landfill levy, you're up around AUD 120 a ton.
Okay.
Pre tax will cost.
All right. Okay. Relative to the AUD 2 million of operating cost per annum for this site, we can work out the saved landfill costs with all of this AUD 120 per ton, 50% of the 12 tons per day not going to landfill or still going to landfill?
Yeah. Well, I mean, we can work those numbers out.
Okay. No, no. Can I?
Yeah.
Okay. I think I've got them. Thank you.
Can I ask how much energy does this plant consume in that plasma gasification process? Longer term, is that ultimately going to be quite circular in terms of the syngas you produce? Are you gonna use that to generate the energy that comes back in?
In the commercial plant, we'll be using renewable energy. It is energy intensive because we are breaking the molecules down. One of the key elements, and we were actually going to highlight some of this out in the field, so I won't take away the sun, but the importance about energy recovery through the design, and they are some of the elements that we'll be working through and learn through the demonstration plant in there.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that the amount of energy that you generate with syngas.
Yeah
does that exceed the amount of energy that you're putting into the system to create the syngas?
The issue is about what you want to do with the molecules at the end. What you want to value them at for it. If you're only doing waste to energy, that balance is that the syngas will generate less energy than the energy you put in. It's just sort of simple thermodynamics. What we're looking to do is take that syngas and take those molecules as either hydrogen and CO2, and the value of those molecules versus the alternative cost to produce or the alternative energy required for those.
While you're gonna be combusting those gases during the demo, the idea is that you'll identify those molecules and then they'll be pushed towards the markets that create the best value.
That's exactly right. In this demonstration plant is about testing the technology at the front end, how we manage that waste, how we break that waste down, understanding how that operation works, and then that gas will be combusted through the thermal oxidizer. We're not selling products out of the demonstration plant.
The thermal oxidizer, does that energy go back through the plant in the first instance?
Not from the thermal oxidizer.
Okay. That's just lost.
Yes. Because it's a relatively short period of time that we're operating with.
There'll be If you get this through the demonstration phase, then we go over to the quality next, or would you?
Commercial.
Commercial?
Yeah.
The scale of the investment relative to $20 million in the demo plant, because you're now gonna have to add components at the end to take the molecules off.
Mm-hmm
.put those molecules. If we were thinking about a CapEx number, let's say this thing is an outstanding success, as I'm sure it will be.
As I'm sure it will be.
As I'm sure it will be.
Look, in terms of the final commercial plant, what's the capital outlay for that? Yes, it will be more than $22 million. It will depend very much upon what is the final decision on the output products that we produce. At this stage, not really got a number to share with you because we haven't finalized that next phase of the project.
Is the technology proprietary? In other words, can you sell license this technology to others around the world if it's successful, or is it kind of a combination of off-the-shelf things?
Our priority at the moment is really using the technology for our own use. There are elements around the technology that we have developed. It's not our objective at the moment to go into the licensing of it, but it's something that we might consider in the future.
When you-
Sorry.
When you look at the economic case for this, you're gonna be very exposed to commodity prices, so the hydrogen price or the carbon dioxide price. You know, where prices are today, does it make economic sense or are you kind of relying on a changing market or an increasing level of demand for, say, hydrogen?
Yeah. Hydrogen and where this the resulting outcome, as it were, from the certification of the hydrogen will also affect what the price of that is. The Australian market at the moment is an importer of CO2, and that sets it on a commodity import parity pricing. Whilst commodities can be seen as the lower end, commodities also have the benefit of we understand what that market, that depth is as well. I think there's value to understanding the linkage to a commodity market that can set a much more longer term economic outlook for the project. I think in reality, all of those things are being assessed, and some of these markets are still developing, like the hydrogen market.
There's also a lot of development in markets like methanol and a recycled methanol as an alternative to fuel oil, and shipping has got a lot of interest and a lot of development that's occurring. That's another very, very likely market that we could take these molecules into, and that's the importance of that optionality that we have, is we go into each of those markets. I mean, I think ultimately when you talk about returns, our goal is to deliver 15% to meet the hurdle rate, and we will find the outcomes to that. That's the gated process we go through. If we don't meet the hurdle, we'll look for an alternative or we will not move forward.
That, 15% hurdle, does that include the cost offset for avoiding landfill levies?
Yes. The economics would include the offset of the landfill.
I think it's also important to understand that there's a regional demand for products here in Australia, and there's also different demand in the United States, potentially. We need to understand that those two are both going to be looked at.
Kristen, depending on the type of extension of solids, for sure, what would be the scale of a commercial plant? What would be the minimum size to give you appropriate scale efficiencies?
We're looking at a number of different options for a commercial facility. I think the two ranges that we're looking at are really to size a commercial facility to meet the local market, as it were, for Queensland. You saw similarly with Campbellfield. That's about the 60 tons per annum volume that we. Sorry, per day. That's the design basis that we would work off. We're also testing other options at larger scale because we get some economics around a larger scaled facility as well. We're testing a different range of options in terms of the scale of the facility.
Just remind us the benefits of doing this in this location, please. Then also, I guess, related to, the science question, what is the, what's the reason you chose the particular gasification technology that you're using, please?
Okay. The reason for the location of the demonstration plant. We saw the benefit of locating the demonstration plant on our own assets, and there was space available. Whilst we have impacted our colleagues here in the metals part of the business, but we were able to allocate a small piece of land to do that. You'll get a feel for that when we go out onto the site around that. I mean, that was really the driver. It's an effective piece of land. It mitigates some costs of finding a separate piece of land, and it's closely located.
Nothing to do with Queensland then?
The Queensland government was very positive when we approached them about doing it here and working with them, so yeah, no problem there.
Yeah.
Okay.
Appreciate that. Your second question was around why the selection of the plasma gasification. There's a number of technologies that we have looked at over a period of time. It started, as you would all recall, from just considering a simple waste to energy. Other technologies that people look at for these kind of wastes or plastics wastes are often around pyrolysis. One of the key things that we get with the plasma gasification, the material I think that is very key in terms of this inorganic material, that 50% of the material that ends up in the vitrified product, we're able to vitrify it within there. A lot of these other technologies result in high volumes of ash. That's not able to be utilized or recycled and hence must go to landfill.
Our objective was to look for systems, for technologies that enabled us to really minimize the amount of waste. We saw that plasma gasification was really key to that. I think the other piece of it is you can control how this operates. It's a closed system. We're able to capture, in this case, the carbon dioxide. That becomes a valuable product versus other technologies which may just incinerate and you're not able to capture as effectively high quality, high purity CO2. I can talk a lot more technical detail. That's probably a good place to stop.
All right. Thank you.
Any other questions?
We'll walk around.
Yes. If we don't have any more questions, maybe we could get ready. I think your bag is behind.
Okay. Do we want Doug to do the safety briefing first?
Yes.
I'll ask Doug to come and share the safety briefing for the team before we get out there, and then we'll get you all kitted up in your gear, and we'll be able to take you out in the field. Thanks very much for the time.
Hopefully you've come away from your walk around a little more informed about our SOR business. David Burrows and I will be taking you through the ANZ business. Now, I appreciate that some of you have heard some of this before. What I'll be trying to do is to explain some of the nuances that are relevant to this region and why we've remained a very competitive force within the Metals Group. Firstly, I'm Rod Bonnette. Joined the company in the year 2000. I've had various roles through that time across commercial trading, as we call it, operations and logistics, so predominantly, every gamut of what we do. It's involved general management roles for some of the divisions.
For a very short time, I actually ran the Australasian e-waste business, and then moved back out of there in 2018, took over as Chief Operating Officer for the ANZ group. More recently, as part of a structure change, moved into the commercial role. What I really want to do this morning is just simply give you a quick snapshot of who we are, what we do, and the base or base elements of our strategy. Alistair's already kindly touched on some of the potential opportunity for us, but we'll go over that as well. Who are we? It's fair to say that we're a very mature business, and that we work or operate within a very well-developed industry. We are the largest metal recycler.
We're the only one represented in every state and territory across Australia and New Zealand and, of course, Papua New Guinea as well, where we have three locations. 910 full-time employees plus contractors, FTEs in the sort of 1,040 range. Last year, turned over 1.6 million tons of metal. As you might expect in terms of ferrous being the most voluminous part of our business, just north of 1.4 million tons of ferrous. Non-ferrous, just north of 140,000 tons. The balance made up with those metal recovered from residues that we've talked about this morning already. As you would expect, this is where the business started.
We're in a very different part of our evolutionary stage, or evolution I should say, than other parts of the group. We're well catered for in terms of our market penetration. We've had consistent long-term investment in our business model. I think Alistair touched on it earlier, being two islands in the middle of the Pacific, have had to build our own, wherewithal in terms of engineering, et cetera. We've had very large engineering teams, so it should be no surprise that in terms of global industry standard, we employ state-of-the-art recovery technology, and processing technology. Equally, we're, I'd say, advancing in terms of non-ferrous processing. One of the issues for us, we were talking about, someone was talking about before, of offshoring that's happened.
Unfortunately for us, there's a lot of industry that we might have once sold to that's been offshored. Having said that, we are, we're advancing in our non-pressing processing capability, and the whole idea there is obviously to get ourselves to the terminal market, not go through the middleman. In summary, scale and technology relevance for our region. Very strong logistics base, which is really critical to what we do, and I'll touch on that a little later. Importantly, a really well-developed market delivery channel or channels. We understand how to do it well. We've set ourselves up to do it well. Equally, we've given ourselves, I think, almost world-class optionality in which way we move metal in terms of ex-export or domestic output. Excuse me.
What all that meant was, circa AUD 1.7 billion revenues last year. In round numbers, market share in the region of sort of just below 30%. The ANZ metal strategy, and this is one that's developed over time. We continue to develop it. When we look at the screen, I look at this as four elements, but the two on the outside are the supporting pillars. What I would say, again, been around a long time, securing at-source scrap, we'll touch on that later, what that means, but that has been part of our DNA for a very long time, and it continues to be. We continue to invest in it. It's a paradigm that drives our acquisition decisions, our infill decisions in terms of greenfield developments, et cetera.
We operate from terminology well known, hub-and-spoke arrangements, but we'll give you a quick picture on what that looks like. Importantly, securing at-source scrap, outside of the advantages that it confers, is also requires of us to be adaptable and to change with the times. I'll touch on how we're doing that with some of our evolving supplier relationships. The key point about securing at-source scrap and the other elements that you see here is pretty simply, two things. It underpins our volumes, so therefore we can, we continue to have consistent volumes to sell, to process and sell. The other thing is it moves us up the value chain. There is intermediaries on both buy and sell side in our business.
When I'm buying from a dealer or I'm buying from someone who's already aggregated it, potentially processed it, but taken value out of the value chain, so I want to stop that. Equally on the sell side, if I get it smelt already, then I've cut out a broker or a trader that might have traded it for us, okay, or a processor. The other element I described as the pillar here, domestic and export optionality, I'll touch on it again later, but approximately half of our yards, we have 51 locations in this region, nearly half of those have some form of export capacity, and that's really important in how we deliver to either export or domestic markets. Really well-established domestic supply arrangements now.
We've worked very hard over the last decade or so with the Australian steel industry, and we are the preeminent or predominant supplier to them. Of course, David will touch on a really exciting opportunity that will further this in terms of the Pinkenba Wharf. Briefly, operations at scale and product quality differentiation. Operations at scale, there's a nuance for us. We don't have many mega cities in this part of the world. We've only got a couple with more than five million people. There's a nuance to how we bring scale. We clearly bring scale like you've just walked past. In the Australian capital cities, New Zealand, et cetera, we provide the right scale, shredder size, downstream processing, et cetera. We do all of that, but we also aggregate scale with processing capacity right around both countries.
Of course, product quality, Alistair touched on it earlier, very important to us in terms of getting to terminal markets, whether it's simply removing contamination or whether it's actually taking the next step in terms of getting alloy separation or what have you, they're all important matters. I'll just touch on a couple of recent advents that we're looking at for the Australian business, which you'll hopefully understand will play an incremental role in what we do. I think the key for us is that, you know, because of our well-developed position, we are almost forced to look at organic growth. There isn't an acquisition that we can make that will move the needle, or not a likely one, that will move the needle seriously for ANZ.
You know, the paradigm, I've used that word a couple of times, but the paradigm is around how do we incrementally improve the asset base, logistics base, and expertise that we've got on ground now. What that seems to do is be a really consistent performer over, you know, virtually all market conditions. Just to touch on the four elements, at-source scrap. Firstly, what does that mean? Essentially, we just talk about at source as being acquiring the metal at the first exchange. If a plumber goes and strips out some copper pipe from a house and he goes to a scrap dealer, if that scrap dealer is called Sims, we've bought it at source.
If Aurizon want to relay some track or BHP do the same, we've got a collection crew, we're there at rail site collecting it, processing it, we've bought it at-source, et cetera. You get the idea. How do we do that? In two ways. The most effective way that we've built over a long period of time is investment in people and infrastructure to support those people that work in regional and remote areas. As I stand here today and talk to you, there would be upwards of 20 outside job crews, as we call them, working in various parts of Australia and New Zealand, operating mobile bi-balers, shears, and compactors, we'll take excavators out to do cleanups. We go everywhere. When I say we go everywhere, you know, we obviously have yards up in Northwest Australia.
We've been in places like Wyndham and right through the territory back down the middle of the country to places like Elliott, Alice Springs, the APY Lands, down to Esperance in Southwest Australia. We've even collected scrap on Kangaroo Island. There isn't a place that I can think of that we haven't been to to collect scrap. There's not many competitors that we have. We have competitors that have pockets of this, but not consistently. It takes people to drive that, so people to have the relationships regionally. We have to have the right investment in them. You know, a lot of FIFO conditions, but also we've got people living regionally and remotely with local relationships, and they're a very long-term investment and sustaining investment in that collection equipment. I touched on evolving suppliers' relationships.
Two examples, one obvious one is sustainability. Corporate social responsibility is forcing boardrooms, companies to look at who their partners are and who they're using to provide services. It's not just about what our Scope 1 emissions are. It is about things like modern slavery, compliance. It is about DEI. It is about reporting capacity, et cetera. Those sorts of things are playing very firmly into our model. We do it well. Certainly what we're seeing big strides in terms of business development on major accounts. Not just mining accounts now, but certainly all large logistics accounts. Any national supplier, we're getting a lot of traction. I guess the other bit there, but which is probably a bit exciting for us, is around joint ventures and potentially joint ventures with traditional landowners.
There are some parts of this country that other corporates are saying, "We want to work with traditional landowners. We don't necessarily wanna work with a corporate based in Sydney." You know, we understand that. We've been on our own journey. We've been working on our own RAP for about two and a half years now. We've had indigenous cadet programs, and we've worked in community support programs, et cetera. We've engaged, but we're looking for ways where the rubber really hits the road. Whilst I can't use names yet, we do have 2 in-principle agreements for the formation of joint ventures, which we're working on right now. We're excited, not because of the fact that it will help us continue to do work on some well-known names, but it will open up lots of other opportunities.
There's lots of companies out there that want to do this that don't know how to do it, if we can provide the delivery model, we think it is going to be exciting. Of course, above all of that is potentially the role we'll play in terms of community benefit, which is sitting at the core of all of our considerations when we do this. I just touched on that briefly in terms of M&A and infield or infill, greenfield, brownfield development. You heard what I said before about acquisitions. Having said that, an example there, Recyclers Australia, a local one here in Brisbane, why did we do it? You know, there's some nice synergies around some of the types of business we did.
Importantly, a yard in Brendale in North Brisbane where we weren't located, sorry, and a yard in a place called Yatala, which is right smack bang in the middle of the fastest growing industrial corridor in Australia. We weren't there. We need to be represented. We targeted the approach, and we were successful. We've got similar examples in terms of our green or brownfield development. In the last 12-24 months, we've opened up new yards in Minto. We've repositioned a yard in Gosford in New South Wales to be more customer focusing, focused in a better area. We presently are working on an infill opportunity in Tasmania. We've got two sites.
People would say, "Oh, that's enough for Tasmania, surely." One of them isn't fit for purpose in our view. It's not customer-focused in the way we want it to be, we're changing around. A constant focus on infilling, making sure the spokes, forgive it, forgive me, support the hub appropriately. Just briefly, operations at scale. As I said, we've got. You see the map here. Please don't try and count 51 dots because some of them are joined together. The red dots representing the shredders, five in the capital cities of Australia, one in Auckland, one in Christchurch, and a specialty shredder in Adelaide. I may have met you in 2018, when we did the beneficiation plant tour, and we've got a shredder on that site.
We do some specialty work with that. That's scale. What accompanies all of those is the appropriate downstream technology. Even if it was first generation, all of our first generation equipment has been updated, and we've adopted second or third generation technology in part or in full in those plants. Most importantly, and I spoke about it before, this idea that right around the coast of New Zealand and Australia, what you see is an ability in some way to process and export. That's. I'll touch on it more a little later when I get to the optionality piece. Having the ability to do that simply saves us logistically in terms of costs of moving material. In New Zealand, we have topography and forgive me, Stephen, but a terrible road network which makes logistics very expensive.
We have the tyranny of distance in Australia. The reality for us is that being able to process and export right around the two countries gives us, quite frankly, a cost advantage over many that might have to transport back to one hub, one processing center. We've used that to our advantage both domestically, which is important, and in export terms. If I think about that from a ferrous point of view, the advantage of that scale. Sorry, let me take a step back. I called it aggregated scale, so I'm not calling it scale in one place. I'm calling it the combination of scale is our advantage. What that does is it cements our position as the predominant player in ferrous terms in both acquiring the scrap and then processing and selling it.
In non-ferrous terms, it gives us greater cashflow opportunity with this scale because what non-ferrous domestic markets there are, we're absolutely tapped into. We would be the preeminent supplier just about every single one of them. There aren't many, but those that are there, we are fully engaged and work with. The obvious thing to say is the cycle to cash when I'm delivering 5 ton at a time of copper granule is a lot quicker than waiting for a 40 or 60 ton contract to be exported to, well, let's just pick China. Great benefit there. Also, in some cases, tighter correlation between the time we buy it and the time we sell it, because it's the gap between the two. We're used to living in a world where sometimes correlation has to be adjudged.
Certainly when you have the tighter correlation, you can take advantage of it. You can bring real certainty to your margins. Then obviously the last two pieces just around the technology edge it gives us and just simply the geographic coverage. There are customers out there that have workshops or distributorships or what have you, some sort of facility all over Australia and New Zealand, and they wanna deal with somebody who can do the lot. We're about the only party that can. Anybody else has to use third parties to contract. In this region, we're the only party that can do this, and that is a clear advantage to us.
Rod, can I just ask moving volumes around Australia, do you use rail much to move your volumes?
Yeah, that's a great question, and I'm gonna say I wish, because unfortunately Australian rail is very expensive.
I was going to ask you, the development of the Inland Rail line, is that going to help you?
It has all the potential to do so. You know, let's just say we're looking at what opportunities that might avail itself for us. Again, the predecessor to that is what we already know. You know, we've worked with a lot of rail groups, and even with that intimate relationship, we found it very hard to get anything like commercial costing on moving scrap. Now interesting, in New Zealand, we think with New Zealand Rail, there might be an opportunity there. There's a very strong relationship between us and the local steel mill who equally have a strong relationship with New Zealand Steel. We think between the three of us, there's something we can do together. There was a time when in many of our yards we had sidings and we used rail regularly.
That was my next question. Where are you located relative to-
Yeah.
the rail line?
Our Smorgon yard has a siding that if we really wanted to, we could reestablish. Sorry?
Auckland potentially.
Auckland, absolutely. We're right on the back of the rail, so we've already engaged with them about a potential siding. Pinkenba there is a possibility for same. you know, or we might be close to a hub that we can utilize. It is a frustration, I have to say. Oops, sorry. Quality and differentiation. I said I'd just give you two examples. Now I am going to apologize for the quality of this photo, but what I would say to you is, it is a robot, and it's not in jail. It's just safely hidden away. That only happened about two or three days ago. We've got some of our engineering team with their colleagues in North America right now, and we're doing the first trials of a picking robot. Picking robot is something we've talked about for a long time.
Essentially what this will do, we're going to use it in its first, in the first place, to pick out copper from the ferrous downstreams. This is a job we employ men and women to do. It's a boring job. Quite frankly, in the wrong environmental conditions, it's hot, it's cold, it's mind-numbing, and I don't care who you are, after a while you can grow inattentive. This thing will be faster, and it's got a dual benefit. One, we pick up more copper to sell. Two, one of the issues that you've heard us talk about is low copper shred. Low copper shred happens in two ways. One, it's intrinsic to the metal, bound within the metal. Two, it's free. We just don't wanna give away free copper. This is just our bread and butter.
We've been waiting for this development and I'm very pleased to say that the next set of trials for this are gonna happen in South Australia, and we're hoping in the second half of this calendar year. Pretty excited about that. The other piece of technology there, again in South Australia, we're gonna be building this, in fact footings are down for this now, is a polishing plant. A polishing plant simply takes metal, and it works it effectively upon itself. What that does is it removes oxidation and dirt. It presents it in a better way. We get a more colorful metal. Two benefits here. One, when we send it to a place like China, we can go straight in the front door, and it's far more likely to meet customs requirements.
Two, we're thinking about this as the second idea, one of the technologies we use in beneficiation is color sorting. If we've shined it up and we've made it more colorful, it will segregate better. We will be able to detect it better. A dual purpose for that, looking forward to seeing how we go with that in the second half of the year. I just talked about the other pillar here that stands adjacent to at-source scrap. You know, I talked about 70% at source. Key number here for us is this number down here on the right, and this is about our ferrous volumes. Over the last decade or so, we have migrated that tremendously to nearly 50/50, and that optionality has been really important.
We have a strengthening domestic steel mill industry here in Australia that makes us their largest supplier. It cements us as our largest supplier. We are first at the table. In fact, it's my job on a monthly basis to negotiate the Australian steel price. That's the price that applies to all the other suppliers, but we negotiate it. That's the position that we hold. You know, we don't abuse that power. That's a normal commercial negotiation. It speaks to how important we've become and I take your thoughts back to that map. You know, we've got. Let's think about the state we're in North Queensland. We've got Cairns, we've got Townsville, Gladstone, Mackay. Did that in the wrong order, sorry. All of those sites have export capacity, and we can load onto a boat.
Does it matter if it goes to Port Kembla Steelworks or does it go to Bangladesh? The answer is no. We avail ourselves of the best opportunities at the time, whatever that opportunity is. It has been clearly a, you know, an underpinning item for our consistent performance as a business. I just would point out here that not to confuse, but the F22 revenues are all metals. That includes non-ferrous as well. The problem with that is far fewer tons in non-ferrous, but the revenue per ton is much greater, so it does skew those numbers a little. You're not seeing 50% Australia, that's why. Okay? I think that's all I need to say there. There were some questions on it. Alistair started to talk about this.
We get the strategy that we have in play here. We want to make sure that wherever possible, through whatever means, we're securing scrap at source, that we're applying the right technologies, et cetera, to augment the processing benefit. We've got the right channels, contractual channels, and arrangements in place that allow us to deliver it to the best opportunity for us, cutting out any of the middlemen. Clearly, I'm not gonna repeat what you already know around Safeguard Mechanism, et cetera. You all know there's three ways, effectively, that the global steel industry can change greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. They need to do greener energy. They need to find a way to perform reduction without carbon or mitigating the use of carbon. Typically, hydrogen is what's talked about.
They need to use more scrap. Now that's really relevant for an organization like us that's now got a 50% supply into the domestic market. We talked about it before. 1.5 million tons have been announced for Whyalla. I'm not gonna give any conjecture about whether it will or won't happen, just 1.5 million tons there. Collie, Western Australia, feasibility study announced for 400,000 ton EAF. A couple of hours from southeast of Perth, has government support for the feasibility study, so it's certainly got support straight away. We're also aware, and can't divulge, but we're aware of other parties that are looking at extra EAF capacity. Right at the moment, there's about. Oh, beg your pardon.
Of course, BlueScope, any integrated mill, is looking to change the amount of scrap that they put into the charge. To be very fair, BlueScope have worked very hard at this over the last couple of years, and they are approaching, I won't say they're there yet, but they're approaching world's best practice in terms of that. You know, those charge rates for a merchant scrapper operator like ourselves really change how much their scrap demand profile looks in the future. If I add all of those influence together on top of the fact that there's 4.5 million tons, roughly, steel production in Australia, there is circa 2.1 million sort of scrap demand as we sit here and talk.
Potentially, there's another 2 million tons, all round numbers, coming on board, from what you know from the announcements, let alone anything else across the region. We're not gonna run out of scrap, but the scrap isn't all well-positioned to get to the right place. The truth is, that Sims and the industry have been calling for some action because one thing that is hurting the industry is the cheap export of unprocessed, I want to be very clear about this, unprocessed scrap. Unprocessed scrap is a car that's just simply baled up, a fridge or light gauge material that's cubed up and shoved in a container. They've normally got a very high waste component, upwards of 30, sometimes 35% waste, i.e., non-metal in one of those bales, and that's plastic, cardboard, glass, fiber.
They're all the things that the Australian government moved to ban in terms of waste exports. Yet today, it's still legal to do that if you bale it up with some metal and put it in a container. It doesn't make sense from a policy platform, but more importantly for us, it doesn't make sense in terms of supporting the sovereign industry and the onshoring activity that we're all hoping for. You know, there's estimates around this. I think Alistair's answer was a lot. There is a consultancy, the Australian Economic Advisory Services Group, that estimated at slightly more than 1 million tons being exported. You know, our range might be, say, half a million to 1 million to apply some conservatism.
I think you can imagine that with our positioning, with the existing market penetrations, et cetera, that we would naturally expect to take a large share of that if that opportunity was to come around. Sims and the steel industry and one or two others have been very active in this space and will continue to be because it supports sovereign industry, it has environmental benefit, sustainability benefit, circularity benefit, and policy alignment. It just makes sense.
That's the cracks in 2019 when they put all those bans through.
Yeah. Look, we pleaded for it not to. At the time, unfortunately, the Sussan Ley at the time viewed our industry as mature enough. What her mindset was around was developing terminal market or recycling capacity. Her prism was slightly different to the outcome we were looking for.
Sorry, Rod.
Yes.
Technical term.
Sorry.
Yeah, I know. 400,000 tons CONS, you mean metric tons or short tons?
Yeah, yeah. Yes, that's. Yes, it's tons. T-O-double N-S.
short tons.
There. Can we just leave the questions to the end?
Yes, I was just gonna say. I'm gonna ask David to step up, and then we'll address any more questions at the end. Thank you very much. Sorry, I'll squeeze past you.
Thanks, Rod. Okay. Good morning once again. My name is David Burrows. I started my career with Sims way back in 1989, actually right here at this site as a cadet. In the ensuing 30-odd years, I've managed to work my way through to the role that I hold today. Along the way, I held a number of senior roles, both in commercial and the operations space, here in Queensland, of course, in New Zealand, Victoria, Tasmania. I've run the PNG operations, Western Australia, et cetera. One of the highlights of my career was actually the construction and the development of the Kwinana operation in WA that we hold in such high regard today.
to have that opportunity to build, you know, 100,000 square meter parcel of land, greenfield site effectively, was an incredible opportunity, and that really excites me for what's ahead at Pinkenba. Without further ado. The Pinkenba site is clearly a strategic acquisition for the business, primarily because of its deep water access. It will be, once we're on site and operating, in Australia and New Zealand, at least, it will be our only deep water berth access that we actually have and operate. It certainly gives us the opportunity to create a world-class facility, taking those learnings from Kwinana and transferring them here to Pinkenba in Brisbane.
It's a large site of 140,000 square meters, so 40% bigger than the Kwinana facility, located on the river, as I said, but also within about 3 or 4 km north and south to the M1. From a transport infrastructure point of view, you know, getting around the place, certainly made very easy. Total consideration, including stamp duty, was circa AUD 94 million. The wharf itself is capable of berthing Handymax size vessels, so 50,000 ton displacement. In terms of tons loaded on a vessel, that's in the order of 25,000-30,000 tons. That's our bread and butter. That's what we do, you know, week in, week out.
Importantly, it has the ability to not only be an export option for us, but also an import option for us, and both in dry bulk, but also liquid, potentially. It currently services liquid vessels, so Incitec Pivot have been using it to import acids and other chemicals, which they've been using through the plant. There's pumps and pipe infrastructure there that could be converted should we choose to do that. It also will play a critical role in mitigating what's become, in recent years, a real challenge for the Brisbane, Queensland operation, and that's around the constraints we've experienced at Fisherman Island. Back in 2020, Queensland State Government closed the Hamilton Wharf, and that was because that whole precinct is going through a gentrification phase, you know, hotels, retail, residential accommodation, et cetera.
We were forced to move to Fisherman Island. Consequently, we're traveling greater distances from both Rocklea and Northgate to get to that wharf facility. Additionally, because of the high demand, and the fact that, you know, Brisbane lost a terminal or a wharf, we're now having to load those boats 24 hours around the clock, and we've never had to do that until the last couple of years. The problem with that for our operations here at Rocklea and Northgate is that we're not licensed to operate 24 hours around the clock. We were capped to run till 9:00 P.M., so that it really created a real issue for us.
We were able to negotiate some leniency on that here at Rocklea by exporting shredded steel, because it's a little quieter than it is with the cut grade materials. To combat the problem or the challenge, we actually had to acquire another property at Hemmant, and we use that as a staging point or a stockpiling point. We've had to incur additional costs, both in terms of raw costs to lease the property, but also in people, equipment, manning it up, you know, to be able to pull scrap from three different locations at once to be able to meet this 24/7 demand. In terms of the wharf itself, the lease currently sits with Incitec Pivot, but that's due to expire over the next couple of months.
We are well progressed with our own negotiations with the Port of Brisbane on a long-term lease on that wharf. When I say long-term, we're talking 40, 50 years. They are very excited about having Sims as a, you know, future operator of that wharf and, as I said, well advanced in terms of those negotiations. The site also presents a really low flood risk, so what I can confirm is that it did not go under in 2011, and it did not go under last year in 2022. Obviously that's key for us, considering the impacts we've had here at Rocklea. Having lived through it just 12 months ago, it was a significant impact on the business, so we're certainly very keen to take advantage of, you know, that the site presents.
Of course, due to its size, we have the opportunity to consolidate and integrate in the future a metals and SRR facility should that opportunity present. In terms of the development of the site itself, we'll be doing this in a very, you know, measured, stage gate process, ensuring that, you know, each of the decisions, you know, meet our internal hurdle rates, as we've talked about earlier this morning. In terms of the activities ahead of us, in FY24, we will commence some trials in August, September, in actually putting scrap across the berth in its current configuration. It does come with some current constraints. It's not.
In terms of its infrastructure, it's not ideal for what we need today, we're going to try some things that we haven't done before, we'll learn from that as we go. Of course, you know, those learnings will inform us around the longer-term redevelopment of the site. We're also drawing from our experience in both the U.S. and the U.K., where, you know, this is done in multiple locations. We've been doing it for many, many years. In terms of the equipment that's used at those berths, at those wharfs, we're looking at all the different options and obviously trying to pick a solution that will best serve what we need here in Brisbane. At the same time, we're obviously working through the actual site master plan for the metals business.
We've made some good inroads into that, but we've got a lot of work still to do. There are some things that are going on internationally here in Australia that Rod touched on earlier in the R&D space that will actually inform the final site design. Things like the polishing plant, the robots, but there's a range of other initiatives that are currently underway or will be getting underway in the next 6 to 12 months that will dictate and help us make decisions around what type of equipment, what type of infrastructure we build on-site. As we move forward into 2025 and 2026, we'll need to develop, demolish the site. It's built out, as you can imagine. You'll see that when we get there later today. I suspect there's very little that we'll be able to retain.
You know, we'll certainly do our best to integrate some of the infrastructure that might be there today, but my gut feel is that the vast majority of what you'll see there today will be demolished and removed. We've got a long road ahead of us in terms of the, you know, the permitting license approval process. Having lived that experience in Western Australia and knowing how long that takes, it's important that we get that off to a good start early, and we've done that. We are proactive in our engagement. We are talking to the regulators. We're talking to local and state government. Alistair has had numerous meetings, as well as the senior management teams located here in ANZ. We're engaging with the local community and industry associations.
We're really getting on the front foot, listening to what they've got to say and then, you know, taking that and informing, you know, our next move. Obviously, redeveloping the wharf to suit our long-term needs will be key here. I touched on that earlier. As we then move further into 27, 28, we wanna get on and obviously, you know, build that key infrastructure, shredders, metal recovery plants, metal separation plants. We've got functioning assets here at Rocklea and Northgate, and we have an opportunity to optimize the use of those over these, you know, forward 3, 4, 5 years. We are going to take, as I said earlier, a measured approach in terms of the site design, what infrastructure we build, while simultaneously, you know, optimizing these assets that we're still using today.
Longer term, Northgate will operate as a feeder yard. By a feeder yard, that is a small site that would receive, you know, scrap at source, as Rod spoke about earlier. You know, it might be something in the order of a 4,000 square meter section of the property. Right on the street frontage. It's been a scrapyard for 40, 50 years. It's a high-profile site. We want to encourage that scrap to keep coming to us, and then that would feed into Pinkenba, of course. At Rocklea, the current thinking is that we would maintain the non-ferrous operations that are out here today, but relocate everything else. Shredders, MRFs, et cetera, et cetera. Once those, you know, once that work's done, we will subdivide the properties, and we'll divest the balance. That's the current thinking.
In terms of the benefits, there are some significant cost savings to be had across those things that I've spoke about earlier, wharfage, berthage, road transport. They are quite significant. We're talking about something in the order of 13,000 truck movements per annum. To move the volume that we purchase directly and trade, that's 13,000 truck movements per annum that we could remove off the road. Obviously, we'll be building the site to meet, you know, world's best practice environmentally. In terms of stormwater management, some bag houses, you know, particulate capture, all of those things that are currently, you know, that we're doing, we'll build the next generation of those plants. There's a lot of this work currently happening in the US as well.
A lot of that is being driven by, you know, some of the environmental constraints that we're faced in some of those other jurisdictions. Again, that will help inform us here. Obviously, in terms of technology that we use, the improvements that we'll get around the finish quality. You know, again, Rod spoke about that earlier. In terms of removing tramp elements, waste, you know, producing the best possible end product that we can go direct to market with to the end consumer. Of course, the safety system. We, you know, we're very focused on eliminating and mitigating one of the key risks that we have in our business, which is that interaction between people and plant equipment and trucks. It continues to challenge us everywhere we go.
We are working very hard to mitigate that, but I see technology also playing a key role here. There are for example, right now in Australia, there's an organization that has just developed a robot, if you like, it on a track, set of tracks with a range of different cameras that they're hoping will replace the need to have an inspector out on the ground in amongst that heavy equipment. We're watching that closely. We trialed a robot, I can't remember the name of the thing, the robot dog that you may have seen on television in recent years. We brought that out here a year or two ago and had a look at whether that could play a role for us. Those sorts of things will be adopted where applicable. Moving on to my final slide.
We've spoken about the discipline around the spend. Here we are just mapping out what the forward period looks like for you. Very minor capital spend in this current year. Certainly well below AUD 1 million. AUD 2 million in 2024. It's really about that design element phase, consultant engineers, planners, those sorts of things. As we move into 2025, 2026, we're estimating an approximate spend of AUD 35 million around the demolition of the existing infrastructure and then the build-out of the wharf. As you can imagine, the lead times on building a wharf, getting those approvals, procuring the cranes, et cetera, that you need are significant. Even if we move today, we don't believe we could deliver that until 2025 at the earliest.
As we move into the major works program in 2027 and 2028, we have, at this point in time, an approximate range of AUD 150 million-AUD 170 million for metals infrastructure. Certainly an opportunity, as I said earlier, for this to be a fully integrated facility. Depending on the outcome of the trials and where we go with that may impact, obviously, the civil works that we need to undertake at the site. That's me, Ana.
Thanks, David.
We'll open the floor for Q&A. Now I'll ask Rod to join, and there are a lot of questions for this presentation.
Is there any environmental, like rehab liabilities at these locations?
Yes, there are.
Yeah, from the previous owners?
Yes. Incitec Pivot, to their credit, it's taken a little while to get them to the finish line. They are standing up and will take ownership and responsibility of those. Of course, we'll be carefully watching and managing, you know, the body of work that they've got ahead of them. You know, some of these things you don't know until you start digging holes in the ground, right? The, the extent to which, you know, some of those areas may or may not be contaminated. As I said, they've been very upfront, and they're owning that at the moment, which is good.
Is that their liability, remediation?
Yes.
Yes.
Rod.
Just interested in your non-ferrous metal, volume and the growth of that over the last few years. Looking forward, can the robot picker actually materially increase that tonnage?
Yeah. I think there's probably slightly at cross-purposes there. That when we're picking effectively electric motors, shred electric motors, we're considering them a downstream ferrous residue. Look, the volume's not huge. You know, the payback on a simple little robot like that will be very immediate. The big bonus for us is continuing down that road for low copper shred. You know, the one thing, you talk to steel mills, and they'll nominate tramp elements of concern, chrome, et cetera, but copper stands out above all else. Anything that we can do in that regard, just is common sense. You know, just play straight into. It's a home run, basically. It won't be a big volume mover, but it will change the quality aspect ever so subtly once again for us.
Whether that's domestic or export supply, it doesn't matter, as I've noted.
The 140,000 tons, how has that grown?
Yeah. That's. Look, it's incremental growth. We've been pretty successful with some updates on processing equipment to penetrate into some nice volumes around cable granulation. Again, this is all over Australia. Each one of our sites is picking it up, and what we've been able to do is prove to the customer, the end customer, that there was a security measure, right? They don't want this type of cable with their name on it rolling around any old scrap yard or appearing, you know, being burnt in a 44 gal drum. There's a security measure for them. Again, our spread makes a difference. We take control of it immediately, got our own logistics base to rely on.
We've moved nicely into that space, and that's given us incremental growth. Again, I'm gonna say, there isn't a contract or a type of metal out there that's gonna offer us a 50% growth rate. It will always be incremental.
The at-source scrap, is that more around securing the volumes or some sort of buy price benefit that you get going closer to source?
Well, I think it's both, to be honest. You know, the ability to control it from source means we own it, and we get to sell it. We're always at risk when somebody owns it in the first place. Will we buy it or not? Ordinarily, they will take a big slice out of the value chain. In a competitive state, and probably a point I didn't make well enough, but if you think about the capital city populace, that's where most of your competition is. It's red hot there. You know, smaller margins are to be made. We can augment our overall margin by going to these other places, providing the logistics base, getting it right there and then. We're helping ourselves with margin.
Especially if you think about upgrade as well, taking a product, buying it as one thing, and then upgrading it through processing in whatever way we do or finding the right market. We're very targeted in what markets we aim for.
Okay.
We pick up the benefit at both ends. It's definitely margin, but it underpins what we do in terms of volume.
If you think the buy price at source versus the sell price that you've got, has that changed materially? Like, it feels like everyone's kind of realizing that scrap metal has a greater value than they have traditionally. Have you been able to hold that relative pace?
Yeah. Look, for the last couple of years, we've demonstrated that we could, and we have. There's been some interesting dynamics. You think about supply side disruption, what that means. For a lot of parties, supply side disruption equals I can't get a container, or I can't get a shipping slot. I can't get it to the market I normally want to, or there's a delay in getting it to the market. Our balance sheet, our scale of size, the variety of markets we can go to, we're operating across all of those dimensions of the market and have done really well at it. I think in some ways, adversity worked for us, quite frankly. You know, I'm not gonna sit here and say to you that they're in concrete for the days all to come.
What I will say is we've done pretty well at managing that buy-side uplift risk, to this point.
Are you passing logistics costs and all those through to the buy price in terms of these at-source?
You either do it directly or indirectly. To answer your question, yes. If it's gonna cost me $200 to pick it up, I might pay you $20 for it.
Talk about the supply chain issues.
Mm.
Just wondering if the last couple of years that's been a pretty easy conversation, I guess, to have with the customers?
Yeah. I don't know.
An easy conversation.
Not really, no. Because at the time where there's these disruptions, they've all got cost increases. They're trying to maximize the benefits for their resource. You've definitely got more and more customers out there that understand that scrap metal isn't just a thing to be dealt with. There's value in it. A lot of the circularity benefit will come with the same customers 'cause then they're gonna start working out they need a partner to work with to reintroduce that material back into their own systems. Think about the copper smelt-refiners and aluminum smelters, et cetera. You know, it's almost incumbent upon their business models to find a way to do better with secondary metals, and we're really well positioned to help them do that.
With many of those outside job projects that Rod touched on earlier, we do pass on a charge to do those projects. Some of it's built into the price, depending on the contract, but in other instances, it's actually an invoice that we'll send to the supplier so that they're expecting to pay for that service. Those, you know, those jobs, when they come along, can be quite lucrative.
Simon?
Yes, Rod, sorry, just two questions. The one is on this unprocessed scrap. Putting aside whether or not it should be allowed to happen, that it is happening, is that indicative of Sims being too cute on buy pricing, that someone can afford to export unprocessed scrap rather than sell it to you?
I think it says more about the compliance model that we operate under. The compliance model for us is, I hate to say it, but we've got competitors that don't pay GST. We've got competitors that don't pay the right wage rates. They don't have environmental controls, so they take shortcuts all the way along. No, I don't think it's about being too cute. We're margin-focused, but we're sensible about it. When we know we've got to be competitive, we're competitive. Really, quite frankly, it's almost an arbitrage because of compliance, right? There's a cheaper place to go to. I don't wanna mention any countries, but there are places that you can send your material to be processed, and there is no landfill cost.
If there is one for your residue, it's very minimal. You know, conditions around your employment safety are virtually nonexistent. I think it's more about taking advantage of that circumstance than us being, if you like, lazy on margin management.
The other question was just, in your talk, you spoke about 30% market share. Who's Sims' largest or most formidable competitor in Australia or ANZ?
I'll answer that as two separate answers, actually. InfraBuild's our largest. I'm not sure they're our most formidable, but they're our largest. They are not represented in West Australia, obviously not in New Zealand. They do have operations in the other places, barring PNG. Look, there's a couple of large, what we'd call tier 2 privateers that, you know, to be really fair are on their game and are formidable competitors. That's, you know, that's only this region. Obviously, across the regions it differs, but
Southern Cross would be the next best.
North Star.
North Star.
Those two.
Those 2. 1 in Melbourne, 1 in Sydney. They both operate well-run businesses.
Yeah.
Who was the first one? Southern.
Southern Cross.
Okay. InfraBuild is internally-focused, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, they have their recycling business just simply augments their steel make business, and I think you can see it in the way they operate.
May I squeeze in a third?
Sure.
If you leave the non-ferrous processing here-
Yes
How does that work? Aren't there going to be road transport sort of. Yeah, I just don't understand.
When we talk about non-ferrous at Rocklea or any of the other major operations, we're talking about product that is typically containerized, so has to move on road regardless of where you are. What we did experience in 2011 and 2022, despite the floods, is it was very quick and easy to turn the non-ferrous operations back around again. They were impacted only for very short periods. We can still do some things to mitigate that risk going forward. By making that decision, it's not a final decision at this point in time, we can save a pretty big chunk of real estate at Pinkenba to do some other things with. That's the current thinking.
I think just. There's also volumetrically, it's hugely different to ferrous metals that get moved.
Yeah, you're talking about, you know, 3,000 tons a month, 35,000 tons a year versus 250,000 tons ferrous. That's chalk and cheese in terms of volume.
Does it just mean everything goes through some magnetic separation, everything that's not magnetic?
No, no.
. gets
Sorry.
That's the bit I don't understand.
Okay. When we talk about non-ferrous, it probably does get a little confusing for people who don't live in the industry. We buy non-ferrous direct from manufacturers, from tradies, plumbers, electricians. We're talking about aluminum window frames around your doors and your windows, stainless steel sinks, copper hot water systems, plumbing, electrical wiring, et cetera.
I think the best way to describe it, you get retail, which is what we're talking about here, and then there's NFSR, which is the product that comes out after you shred it, which is also the non-ferrous. We separate those two. We talk about this yard being more retail, and obviously if you have a shredder down there, correct.
Yep.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Rod, just with the copper granules you were talking about before, you said there's a number of downstream purchasers of that. What is the sort of market size for that? I mean, obviously LCL, which is part of Reliance World, might do their own recycling. You're supplying them with the copper cable-
Yes
-in Melbourne. Are you doing that elsewhere with anyone or?
We actually have a deeper relationship than that. We have a reciprocal trade arrangement and in fact supply them equipment as well. It is a deeper relationship. They're the predominant granule user. There are other companies. There are those trying. BHP, for instance, is certainly trying. They'd be a user of high-quality granule. You know, unfortunately the truth is that in consideration of the total that we might be able to produce, a very high proportion, I'm gonna call it 75%, would have to be exported.
Right. You're processing that yourself. Okay, thanks.
We just talked about Reliance, where we've got a relationship where they actually work with us. We've got our own granulator in New South Wales, and we're putting one in in Perth.
We're building our own capacity. Yeah, and we'll be able to predominantly. I'm being careful here, but we should be able to granulate predominantly all of the volume, barring a few exceptions which are a bit too hard, but they're low value. We might export those just as is.
All right.
The 13,000. You said 13,000 truck movements?
Truck movements, yes.
Is that between here and port?
Correct.
Okay.
Between here and Northgate and port. Yes.
Yeah. How many trucks come in to here?
Significantly more.
Yeah.
I don't have the number off the top of my head, but I would suggest it's, you know, four, five, six times higher. If you imagine how scrap's received and delivered.
Yeah.
Small bins, 5 tons at a time, moms and dads, tradies, a couple 100 kg.
Yeah.
It could in fact be significantly more than, you know, five, six times.
Does that create a port congestion issue is where I was going with this?
In terms of?
Well, they've gotta get there, don't they? All those five times as many truck movements have gotta go to Pinkenba instead of coming here. Does that create a bigger issue around that precinct?
No, I don't believe that it does. Obviously, we'll be taking trucks off the road. Yes, you know, what you're talking about is trucks coming into the business. You know, if we look at where the operations are at Northgate, sort of five, seven minutes around the corner, it'll just be a redirection of those trucks. All o f those movements are still on the road today, it's really just about, you know, rerouting them in terms of that inbound flow. We are also going to look at whether or not the wharf can play a role in transporting down the coastline, for example. At the moment, we truck from, you know, Cairns, Far North Queensland, all the way down to Brisbane.
We are going to have a look at whether we could barge material down the coastline and take some further trucks off the road. Early days.
Thank you, Dave.
No more questions.
We'll be around, Jeff.
Thank you.
If there's any other questions, please just feel free to ask.
Are there? Oh.
Sorry. What I will say, we're obviously heading to Pinkenba to have a tour. We'll be going on the bus together, so you will need to keep your PPE with you. I'll also just let you know that Incitec Pivot still have operational control of the site, so we're actually their guest. They're actually winding down the operations. We do have, certainly safe passage around the site. Just wanted to make sure you take your PPE with you, please.
Dave, we are going to get off at the wharf. Is that.
Correct. That's the intention.
Okay, cool. Maybe just to wrap up. Firstly, thank you for Christine and your team for taking all our guests around. I appreciate that. The discussions obviously have been fairly open, and if there's any other questions you have or you wanna, you know, drop us an email around something else, please go ahead and do that. Sims is obviously in a process now where we've taken a look again at the next 20, 30 years and some of the, you know, environmental picture that I gave you, some of the risks that we're exposed to. This step in Sims Resource Renewal is obviously a body of work, and I'd use the word program, is that we wanna get our head around this and understand what the future is.
I would hate to think that Sims Limited, as a global company that leads in so much of our metal technology, does not lead the way in the waste, in ASR, which we own and which we pay over AUD 100 million a year to stick it in the ground. This pilot plant that you've seen is about a disciplined approach to a waste problem that we have that I'd like us to come up with an opportunity to create another stream of revenue, and it needs to meet our hurdle rates. We're not getting ahead of ourselves in here. We're not trying to be group of pale heads that are trying to create new methanol just because we've got nothing else to do. This is a structured process that we'd like. Are we gonna potentially have partners? Yes.
There's people coming up asking us about partnerships in many aspects of it, be it the aggregate or be it the actual, you know, gaseous product. This is a journey that we're on and we obviously trying to share that with you and understand that this is not just a capital spree that we're on. Very disciplined again. The Pinkenba for us strategically, you'll see the site of it today. It's a very large piece of land. I don't think Dave would actually do the circle around it, but it is a large area. It has a community that we're very engaged with, and are having very good discussions with.
It's an exciting opportunity for Sims Limited here to have that access to port, deep water port, for us to be able to move material in and around Australia. You know, who knows? At some stage, maybe we'll be, you know, moving ships from state to state around Australia. I'm not quite sure when that would be, part of that is being able to move, whether it's waste or finished product, anywhere in the world. That gives us such flexibility. We've obviously taken group knowledge around the U.S.A. operations, ocean-going barges, all the barges we use up and down the Hudson Rivers, all of that type of issue needs to be brought to bear over here as well.
The technology that we're driving, that polishing drum that Rod was talking about, we've been running that Chesapeake, and there's premiums that you can actually sell our finished product shred to for others. You know, there's a selective few that are prepared to pay for a high quality shred that doesn't have that copper content. We're on a technological journey, but very disciplined. That's my message for you today as well. All right. Any other questions? Happy to take.
Sorry. Can I just ask one more? In terms of the approvals, it's probably for you guys at Pinkenba.
Yes.
What are the major changes in use of site? I imagine more noise, less smell. Is that the major thing?
You could argue that. Having not been there in its heyday and not seeing it in its operation, I think noise less so. You know, there's probably three key ERAs that we will need to get approval for. Again, we've engaged early with the regulators, and we're on a very positive footing with them. We will certainly be seeking 24-hour operations at that site. The wharf has the ability to be utilized 24 hours a day. That's, you know, it's obviously the, you know, the process that we're moving forward with. That's not to say that noise won't be a concern. There are residents reasonably close. You'll see them as we drive in. I think that engagement piece will be critical to allaying their fears. Yeah.
you know, the way that we build the site up too, right? You know, we'd be silly to put the noisiest operation at the front gate, you know, opposite their, you know, 400 meters from their, you know, their streets. We will need to be very careful about how we, you know, lay the plant out and then how we operate.
Particularly the rail as well. Rail can upset a community. Middle of the night, wagons clanging and all the rest of it. From the mining industry have taught us that very clearly so.
What we have heard, just anecdotally at least, is that many of the residents that live in that nearby neighborhood were former employees of Incitec Pivot. They're all used to, you know, that dynamic, if you like, of that industrial environment.
I think it's something we will take very seriously.
I presume 140,000 square meters gives you a few options, so.
Yeah. It does. Absolutely.
I think the choice that they make with cranes, how you use rail, where you place the spurs, your actual shredding operation, you know, does David put a pre-shredder in? A pre-shredder race, you know, as in Melbourne, you would remember, you often have a gas bottle that goes through a shed, and it goes with a big bang. You know, that pre-shredder literally just opens it up very quietly. It's very silent and obviously a lot safer for us. There's all of those type of things that need to be brought in because if you lose the community, you have a problem. We've seen that in the United States.
Mm. Yeah.
We're learning as we take this. I think we're gonna have some lunch. Is that right?
Yes. We'll have some lunch in this room. We'll just need five minutes to get organized. If you could all meet downstairs.
After lunch.
After lunch, yes. After we have lunch. Good think. We'll have the bus waiting for us. Maybe if we could meet downstairs in 40 minutes.
40 minutes.
After everyone enjoyed their lunch. Yeah. Thanks.