Here to address the audience and talk about the recently released AusPozz project and the preliminary feasibility study that looks pretty robust and highly commercial. Thank you for joining us, everybody. There'll be time for a few questions at the end. I'm going to hand it over to James to walk us through the PFS for the AusPozz project. Thank you, James.
Right, thank you, Peter, and good afternoon, everybody. I'm very happy to be able to present this pre-feasibility study. A huge amount of work went into this with a small team, and we're very happy with the outcome. We feel we've got a very strong, very robust pre-feasibility study here that we can stand behind everything that we're stating here. It means that from this point onwards, it's only upside because this presents a base case that we know we can support. Now we're working towards a lot of new opportunities to give constant improvement to this study. We'll move through to the metrics to start with. Here we have the top-level numbers that everyone was looking forward to seeing and happy to present. Here we based the pre-feasibility study on one train of AusPozz.
One train will give us about 300,000 tonnes a year of AusPozz. We do have the option to expand that to at least double this on the same site. Of course, there's an option to expand it to more than that, subject to other sites being available and other options. This is based on just one train and also on a DSO production target of just over 150,000 tonnes of DSO. That's very important because that gives us the ability to go into early cash flow, which will start Q1 next year. Early cash flow could start Q1 next year, and that will give us a very nice, healthy contribution towards the capital requirement for the main plant that we will start to build as soon as possible. NPV, top line there, just over AUD 400 million, IRR 42% after tax.
Very fast payback, looking at around about two years for payback, which is now that shows the strength of the project. Very importantly, and this is important for a number of reasons, that one train will take approximately 230,000 tonnes of CO2 out of the system. That is a very large amount, especially when you consider the new government regulations are coming in, which is a safeguard mechanism where anyone producing over 100,000 tonnes a year at the moment, which is going to be reducing shortly, is going to get hit by a significant carbon tax. We have some very interesting opportunities based on our carbon savings. Last line there is this project will support about 140 people, new workforce. We also have a very interesting economic benefit to the local area. Here we have an economic benefit.
We have a very interesting carbon saving and a profitable project. All the ingredients required are there for some, I think, some top-level government interest in what we're doing. If we look a bit more closely at the numbers, here we have the key project parameters. We've based the project PFS on a 20-year mine life. 20 years has been based on the mineral resource that we have, which is just over 10 million tonnes. That's actually a subset of the whole resource. The whole resource itself is almost 20 million tonnes, but we need to do a bit of upgrading on that. With the inferred and the measured section of that, we have over 10 million tonnes, which supports 20 years of life. You see there a very low stripping ratio, so that is an indication of how easy the mining process is.
Looking down from that, we've got the mine production DSO, about 150,000 tonnes, dry weight, and also about 371,000 of that will go into AusPozz, which will produce 300,000 tonnes of AusPozz. That's the production summary. The financial metrics below that, we've mentioned the top level, I've mentioned the top-level figures already. EBITDA, there we have AUD 1.6 billion EBITDA, which is a number we're very happy with. You see that's based on one train. That's a very good start. Also considering that we have built in a lot of factors into our PFS to make sure that we would be very confident of achieving that at the very least. If we move down a bit further, now that one train I mentioned would be based at the port of Bundaberg. You can see there the outline of where it will be.
We have a LOI in place with Gladstone Ports Corporation to position that train. It's only about 260 km along an approved B double route for trucks. There's no issues about getting the material down there. It's also adjacent to a multi-user bulk minerals loading system at the port. Over AUD 20 million invested in that. It's not being utilised much at all at the moment. We've got a great opportunity to get in there. You'll see there's also an outline of the proposed DSO site. We could put a stockpile of DSO there. That's right alongside the conveyor belt. That conveyor belt takes it straight to the ships, onto the ships. That port will take 40,000 tonnes ships in there. Certainly plenty enough for us to support a very healthy DSO business and then moving through into the AusPozz business.
CapEx and OpEx i s always an important question. Bearing in mind that here this is a PFS that we conducted at an accuracy level of ±25% on all inputs. Direct costs, indirect costs, contingency about 11%. That takes us around to total project capital just over AUD 100 million. Not a bad number that now we'd be very confident in being able to fund that based on the metrics that we have. You see the breakdown, the pie chart there below that, the transport and the processing, large components of that. We have got a very simple flowsheet here, very simple mining. That's the beauty of this project is simplicity that we're keeping the whole thing extremely simple. That makes it much lower risk and much easier to execute. Based on operating cost, you see the mining cost, AUD 4 million.
That shows you how easy the mining is, a simple coring operation. We do not do anything apart from just rip the material out, transport it down to the port, almost AUD 23 million, process it, about AUD 28 million for the storage and handling. That gives us a variable cost of just over AUD 60 million. Fixed cost, annual operating cost divided up in personnel, general admin, fixed, so on. That ends up with a total of AUD 76 million annual operating cost. I mentioned the word simplicity before, and this just shows you how simple it is. It is really emphasized by the flowsheets down there below. You see the processing circuit in green for AusPozz. The one in gray below is conventional metakaolin processing.
That is what gives us the ability to make this project at such a low-cost product in comparison to the rest of the industry. We can produce a low-cost product. We can also make sure it is highly reactive, and it is probably the most reactive anywhere you will see in the world. Also, the lowest carbon footprint. Because we cut out most of the major processing steps, we do not have to do any refining at all to our feed material. We end up with this very low carbon footprint. We have all the ingredients of a very successful project here. The manufacturing circuit itself is all proven conventional plant equipment. Nothing new about that. It is a conventional rotary calciner, typical feed systems. It is used throughout Australia and throughout the world in the cement industry, in the lime industry, mineral sands.
That makes it much more easy for us. Now we've put the PFS out. We are moving quickly to the DFS stage. The DFS, we set ourselves an ambitious timeline for that, Q1 next year. We're confident that the simplicity of what we have here and the commercial interest we have in the product will allow us to meet that deadline. Another important action following the PFS is that we will be now going to looking at an expansive drilling program. We need to explore a lot more of not just the ML. We've got 40% of our ML that hasn't been drilled yet. We've got another extra, maybe another 500 hectares-600 hectares of freehold land around that. The resource is open in all directions. We need to drill that.
We have 28,000 hectares around that of our tenements that we need to drill. This drilling will give us the opportunity to expand, upgrade the resource, and then produce an ore reserve. Based on ore reserve, we can look at how many multiples of train one we can incorporate in the DFS. This just shows you the plant design. At the top, we have the train one. It is a very linear, long train. Below it, we have enough room there in the red outline to put train two in, which would not just double the metrics of the project. Economies of scale, it would more than double the metrics of the project. Based on what we get in our drilling program, we will be looking at how we do that in the DFS.
Just to cover the commercial developments, because this is a very important part of the project. Commercially, we have made some very large advances. It's been a pleasure having a product to promote that the industry really wants. We constantly get surprised by major companies coming to us asking for information and asking for products and asking for material for trials. At the moment, we have 49 active domestic leads, and nine of those are tier one. That means the very biggest construction concrete cement companies in the country, which is virtually the whole lot. They're now testing, and all feedback we've had so far has been very positive. Tier two, we've got 32 of those who are looking at information and the number of those testing. We also have seven who have requested trials. This is large concrete trials.
One of those trials is actually the biggest infrastructure project ever held in Australia. A AUD 30 billion project wants to do a trial as soon as we have material available. Certainly, commercial interest is extremely strong. We have in the max, so what we call the AusPozz max, which is a real high value, real big margin product. We have a number of those testing. We also have three that already want to buy it. As soon as it's available, they will buy that. There we're talking about a price probably three or four times the average offtake price. I've talked before about the size of the market, so I don't need to emphasize that. What I will say, though, is that our MOU partner, Holcim, they have also been waiting for our pre-feasibility study.
They will be now looking through our pre-feasibility study in great detail. They will have access to the whole document, which is a 100,000-word document. It will take them a while to go through. Once they look at that, we will await the feedback, and that could be a very interesting outcome. Just to give you an idea of what that 230,000 tonnes of carbon offset means, if you relate that to cars, then it is almost 54,000 cars off the road every year, or planting 3.5 million trees every year, which are sequestering carbon for 10 years. That gives you a perspective of how much we are saving with just train one. As I mentioned before, the safeguard mechanism now for companies is 100,000 tonnes.
If they produce more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon, then they're going to get hit really big, big time by this new carbon tax. By using AusPozz, this could allow them to avoid a lot of financial pain. This also gives you an idea of why we think that the governments and large companies will be interested in our project. Compared to other projects like carbon capture and other ways of saving carbon, they are a little bit opaque, a little bit vague, and you're not quite sure what carbon you're saving, but this is quite clear. This is also a conservative approach. This is based on a fairly low level of AusPozz in a fairly weak concrete. If you increase the amount of AusPozz, which we know we can, this is based on 30% replacement. We know we can go to 50% replacement.
If you go into high-strength concrete, there's a lot more cement used. We can do a lot more to reduce carbon in those high-strength concretes. I've mentioned before that we can double the strength of concrete. That's not factored in here. You can use half the concrete. You don't just save the cement. You can save half the concrete. That's also half the steel, half the water, half the chemicals, half the labor, half the transport. Also remembering that AusPozz and metakaolin increases the longevity of concrete by usually decades. The concrete could last 20, 30, 40, 50 years longer. There is some huge potential savings here. Should probably expand a little bit more on the DSO. We are now working towards buying the offtake for the DSO. We have got the MOU in place. We've kept it simple.
We've got one offtaker who is certainly one of the biggest kaolin traders in the world. A serious operator here I've known for many years. They signed an offtake for 800,000 tonnes of the DSO, of the kaolin itself, over five years. Cosmetic grade, which is much higher value. That's the pink version, 150,000 tonnes. Also, interestingly, 1.5 million tonnes of the bauxite clay. Now, the bauxite clay is our overburden. In the pre-feasibility study, that's actually a cost. We do not factor selling that in at all in the PFS. That could potentially go from a cost to an income. That could also give us a nice big uptick in the metrics.
The plan now is to move that towards a buying offtake so we can then fit the timeline, which is, if I move on to the last slide now, fit the timeline, which is shown here. Here we see, looking on the left-hand side there, we've got the first section there. We've got the DFS, which is starting imminently. We're looking at finalizing that Q1 next year. Ambitious target. We finished the PFS in our target. Now we're confident that we'll have a team in place that can achieve that. We're expecting a lot of upside to that. As I mentioned before, this PFS is a base case, and we are looking at just constant upside all the way through the DFS now. There's some approvals that need to be made, not for the mine site.
There's full approvals in place for the mine site. That's approvals for the council road, where we have to link into it, and also for the production site down at Bundaberg. There's a bit of financing required there. Moving on down through the timeline, we've got the first ore shipment Q1 next year, which is very close, really. FID, also late Q1 next year. We go into detailed design, equipment, watering, construction, build, ramp up. There we're looking at first AusPozz production in 2028 and full operational production in 2029. That might sound like a long way off, but there are several opportunities that will shorten that dramatically. This is a worst-case scenario, something we know we can achieve. Now we are looking very closely at opportunities on any upside to that.
Over the next few weeks and months, we are hoping to be able to talk to you more about how we're going to improve on that. That probably concludes enough for me today. Thanks, Peter.
Thanks, James. I think the key takeaway is the word simplicity that you begin the video with. For those in the audience who have walked through mining operations from start to finish before and the complexity of those, this is a pleasant change. Just following on from that timeline, one of the questions I have here is, are you exploring early monetisation opportunities for AusPozz via third-party kilns, either as a subcontractor or as a licensor prior to the 2029 timeline? I think you talked about some of that cosmetic product there as well that would fit into that.
Yeah, we certainly are.
As I mentioned before, this equipment we're looking at is used around the whole country. It's used in cement production now, lime production, even mineral sands production. The equipment is available around the whole country. We're looking at opportunities to, as the questioner said there, how we could shorten our timeline dramatically by doing a deal with someone, whether it's a toll operation, a profit sharing, or just even acquiring equipment that's already there. We are looking at all those opportunities. There's a lot going on in that space, which I can't talk too much about. We are doing a run right now. We've been doing a run down in Melbourne as a kiln down there that's just put 200 tonnes of our material through the kiln. That's just gone through the kiln down there.
At the moment, we've got that material lined up for probably about six major trials with very recognized names. We've been looking forward to putting news out about those trials and who we're working with. Yeah, the answer there is yes, we certainly are doing that. As I mentioned before, the pre-feasibility study there gives us a base case where we just go it alone. We build the whole thing from scratch, and we operate it ourselves. That is the base case. Now we're looking at a lot of very interesting opportunities that we have to short-circuit that. The fact is that people would buy this stuff tomorrow. AusPozz would sell. If you had it on the ground now, it would sell tomorrow.
The quicker we can get it produced, the quicker it goes out the door, and the quicker the money starts coming in.
Yeah, love that talk, James. There's been a green cement has been a buzzword for quite some time. And you've discussed that here in the presentation today. How do you plan to position AusPozz in the rapidly expanding low-carbon green cement market? And what sort of premium do you think you could achieve with your product?
Yeah, so green cement, there's a lot of misunderstanding in the green cement space because there's all sorts of so-called green cements. Usually, green cements just mean you use more material, like more fly ash or more slag. Quite often, that just dilutes the cement. It doesn't necessarily offer anything in terms of performance. What it does do, it reduces the carbon footprint, and it works.
It gives concrete that actually is fit for purpose. There are things like geopolymer which can replace cement completely. They have been around 20-odd years or more, and they are quite problematic. A bit of a niche. That is a bit of a niche play. What we are talking about with AusPozz, we are talking about a product that has been around, well, since the Romans started using it 2,000 years ago. It has been used globally for at least 30 years in concrete around the whole world, but usually at a quite small low level. It has been used just to give very high-quality concrete normally, very durable, strong, resistant concrete. That is because it would have been used in more high levels, but it is usually too expensive. Now we have got a product that is actually extremely economic.
We're talking about a product here that we can match the actual cost in use of cement, which has never been achieved before with a metakaolin. We can get in there at a competitive economic price with cement, and we can make money at that price. Now, metakaolin is actually produced around the world and imported to Australia right now. It's been used in concrete right now at up to AUD 2,000 a tonne. That's up against cement that's AUD 300 a tonne or less. For us, we've got something that is a true green cement because we could be blended in with cement. We could not just create a cement with a low carbon footprint because we're 80% lower carbon footprint than cement, but we can give something that gives us huge boost in concrete performance.
It will allow engineering design companies to design structures with far less concrete, even less steel, and save carbon that way as well. Not only are you getting a low-carbon cement, you're getting a low-carbon end product in your building because the whole mass of concrete is reduced. Yeah, here's the green cement. We're a little bit separate to what you would normally consider a green cement solution.
James, how does that relate to carbon credits? Does Zeotech expect to generate carbon credits or other incentives related to emissions reduction?
No, there may be a way to capture carbon credits. It's a little bit convoluted, but the best approach for us is to capture the value of AusPozz in the product itself. We know we've got a life cycle analysis on the AusPozz.
We will convert that to what's called an EPD, Environmental Product Description, which is what the construction industry uses. We'll convert that to an EPD, and that gives you a value of using our product, what that saves in carbon. That allows us to capture the value in the product. We don't have to actually—we can match the price of cement. We don't have to because we offer a lot more than cement. We can offer that carbon saving. There is value there. We can reduce the total binder used in concrete. You don't just replace the cement. You use less cement anyway. There are cost savings. You can use less chemicals. We're looking at—we've done studies where we've used AusPozz at a very good price for us, where we can make money in pre-cast concrete.
We can save the customer probably AUD 100 a tonne on their concrete, on their cube, on their concrete. Even though we are a bit more expensive than cement, we will save them money because of all of the benefits that we can factor in. I probably should add that where we can get carbon credits and where we have got the very interesting future is Horizon 2, which we have not talked about, is our zeolites. AusPozz is going to be the feed material for our zeolites. Probably Train 2 in the PFS. If anyone has read the PFS in detail, Train 2 will be a feedstock for zeolite production. There we have our zeolite, which potentially can remove up to 90% of methane emissions from landfill sites by a very simple, cheap process.
Methane has a factor of something like 80 or 90 times higher in carbon savings than carbon dioxide. There is a massive opportunity to get carbon credits, but that's our Horizon 2.
Right. We've answered several of the questions that have come through in the presentation around the timeline, DFS and FID potential. Let's look at this funding structure question. What mix of debt and equity do you plan to use to finance the approximately AUD 110 million-AUD 115 million CapEx number?
Yes, that's something we're looking at quite closely now because we wanted to get the pre-feasibility out. We also had to find out what the requirement was in capital. Now we know what the capital requirement is. We're now looking at the options. There are some interesting opportunities here.
Because we have such a strong, robust business case, and because we are moving towards potential offtakes with real blue-chip customers, we do not see any problem in debt funding going forward. We have not pushed that yet because we have not needed to. Now, we have enough money right now, so we have enough money to see us through for quite a long period yet. We are not looking at raising right now, but we are looking at—now, we have had initial talks with people where it could be a 70-30 split, 70 debt. Now, with having the two-year payback in our metrics there, that makes it very attractive for any lender. And having the commercial interest that we will probably have, then underwritten by some very strong offtakes, that should not be a problem.
But then we also have, now, we've got some people that are looking at some strategic investment-type people in the concrete industry, in the cement industry. Those companies now are very interested in having access to AusPozz. And so they might be interested in getting involved in the company somehow. So those discussions will be skipping off. Now we've got a project value. We can start talking seriously to these people about that.
With such an early payback, James, if you pay it back too early, then a lender mightn't get as much interest as they'd like to get. So maybe the payback's too short. So you're talking about offtake agreements. You'll enter into those now that the PFS economics are there and turn some of those letters of interest or MOUs into binding offtakes. What would be your time horizon for that?
Are some of your potential customers likely to be involved in project finance?
Yes, we published the details on our MOU with Holcim previously. Those details are out in the public domain. Completion of the PFS was our milestone, which we've now completed. That moves into those discussions that were mentioned about potential joint venture, potential offtake agreements, or profit sharing schemes. All those things are on the table now. Now we have numbers to put around those. We know what the values are for those. That is something that is going to be happening now. We are looking at moving the TSO to a binding offtake as quickly as possible because we want to start that business early next year. That is something that we have been moving first.
We are currently discussing a number of MOUs with construction companies, engineering companies. You will be seeing some activity in the MOU space. We will be trying to convert those through into binding offtakes as quickly as possible. A lot of that comes down to our timeframe into operation. If we find a way to shorten that timeframe into operation, which we are working on very hard, as I mentioned, then suddenly those negotiations will accelerate because the customers we are talking to, we have people in the concrete industry now, as I mentioned, who would buy it right away. They say, "We will take tons now if you can supply it." Those people will supply it and will give us offtakes, but they want to know when it is going to be available. Until now, that has not been public, but now we will start those.
James, with the PFS numbers out today, that's going to really set business in motion, and you'll be probably working pretty hard over the next few months. What can investors and shareholders look forward to hearing from the company in the next few weeks and months?
Next milestones we're looking at, we'll be talking about the drilling program that we'll be starting. One nice problem to have is, okay, we've got maybe 20 million tons, but how much more can we actually find? Because we can probably sell a lot more than that. As you ramp up and we do more deals, the opportunity is huge. That's not even considering export business. We've got probably six or seven different countries around the world testing now. We're not talking about small players.
We're talking about, in one case, probably one of the biggest construction companies in the world based in Europe, not Holcim, someone else who's testing right now. And we've got at least two of the biggest construction admixture companies in the world testing as well. Yeah, we need to find more material. There'll be news about that. That will be translated into an ore reserve. We published an ore reserve, which we're hoping to get a very nice number for. I mentioned before MOUs. We're working on a number of MOUs with some very interesting offtakers and then converting those through to binding offtakes. That's all going to be happening going forward. What happens on our talks and discussions with shortening the timeline as well? Any developments on that, they'll obviously be announced. We've got these big trials coming up.
We're still testing the material down in Melbourne, but if we've got 100 tonnes plus of AusPozz down there, that'll be going into a number of high-profile live trials. These won't be any sort of Mickey Mouse bits of pavement. These will be decent trials where people want good performance. That news will come out as well. A lot of good things happening before the end of the year. As we turn into the new year, we'll be looking at, well, the DSO start and moving into the completion of the DFS.
James, it's going to be a hell of a six months coming up. We look forward to hearing the progress from Zeotech and look forward to more communications to shareholders and the rest of the market in the next few weeks. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you.