Thank you for again joining us for this DRDGOLD's Interim Results for Financial Year 2026. Before we start this presentation, I want to take a moment to remember Jan Nelson, who passed away earlier this week. Jan was a friend, and I'm ashamed to say that in recent times, I wasn't much of a friend to him, but his legacy lives on. He laid the foundation for what has become a very successful company in Pan African Resources, and we will always re-remember him, not just as an astute leader and, and a businessman, but also as a good person, and he, he lived a life worth living. Joining me today as usual, are Henriette and Jaco, our CFO and COO, respectively. They will be doing most of the talking today. Henriette has now fully assumed the position of Chief Financial Officer.
That is effective from the first of February. Portfolio is now hers, and I again want to say congratulations and good luck, Henriette. The transition is also now over in this portfolio, as is the restructuring of the finance portfolio, which, together with certain operational changes, also saw the promotion of Mpho Mashatola to head up corporate finance, and adding to her role in treasury, tax, financial, and integrated reporting, amongst other things, the role of investor relations, and she will also join Jaco now on the business development team. The format for today's presentation will once again be myself presenting the highlights. I will then hand over to Jaco, who will take you through operational performance. Jaco will hand over to Henriette, who will take you through the financial results.
She will hand you back to Jaco to update you on Vision 2028 and projects, and then I will cover what is left afterwards. Can we move to the next slide, please? This presentation will again contain certain forward-looking statements, and I therefore request that you familiarize yourself with the disclaimer. Next slide, please. To kick things off, performance at a glance. You will have noticed that our board has approved an interim cash dividend of ZAR 0.50 per share. This is our nineteenth consecutive financial year of declaring a dividend, and this one is special. We thought, when we embarked on Vision 2028, that by now we would be carrying some debt, substantial debt, in fact, on the balance sheet. That by paying a dividend, that was going to be a stretch.
Of course, with a surge in gold price, things could not be any different, and we are very pleased that we were able to distribute a portion of our free cash. Speaking of free cash, it increased by 149% over the comparative period to ZAR 791 million, and that has pushed our cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period to ZAR 1.7 billion. Revenue, just over ZAR 5 billion, showed a 33% increase. Operating profit of ZAR 2.7 billion was up by 72%. We saw a 99% increase in headline earnings, and we reinvested ZAR 1.6 billion in capital reinvestment, mostly towards Vision 2028.
In terms of sustainable development, you'll see that, so, Ergo solar plant is very apparent in the set of results. Our carbon footprint shrunk by 93.4%, and electricity consumption off the grid is down 28%. In terms of operational performance, I think we've mentioned this, and we'll just mention it again, that Ergo's current design is one of reduced throughput rate with a larger proportion of throughput from high volume, low-grade sites. In this regard, you'll recall that in the latter part of 2024, we were almost entirely reliant on clean up at mature sites when our water usage licenses were being delayed for the replacement sites. So the current mix that we are mining is quite different, with a low proportion of that high-grade material that was always a welcome part of the blend.
On the whole, though, the group still trended towards the higher range of guidance, with 2.3 tons of gold produced. The throughput was 12.5 million tons for the period, which on a flat extrapolation, takes us to roughly 25 million tons for the year. I think this provides some perspective on what we are targeting in terms of Vision 2028, which is designed towards a throughput rate of 3 million tons per month, which will take it to 36 million tons per year and 6 tons of gold output per year. So certainly, a project worth investing in. A pleasant outcome for which we have the gold price to thank, is an all-in sustaining margin of 48%, or rather of 48%. For the rest, in terms of operational, the numbers pretty much follow guidance.
I now hand you over to Jaco for some added color on the production numbers.
Thanks, Niël. Appreciate the intro. So if we start with the Ergo operational trends, the volumes, as you can see from first graph for H1 2026, is down in comparison to both periods, H1 and H2 of 2025. This is mainly due to three reasons: firstly, rain and weather interruptions, obviously during the summer period. We've had four power interruptions during this period as well, despite our PV and BESS system operating at 96% efficiency. And then lastly, it's a deliberate strategy to limit our deposition tonnage, while we're developing infrastructure like Withok and Daggafontein, that will extend our Life of Mine as part of Vision 2028. So, those are the main reasons for the volume reduction.
You'll also see that on yield, there's a slightly down, about 0.01 gram per ton from H1 2025, but up at the same level for the second period of 2025. And then the reduction in gold is therefore almost, I would say, 50% in terms of tons and 50% in terms of yield. We look at the Far West operational trends, volume throughput, very constant. A lot simpler circuit at this point in time, with two mining sites in comparison to Ergo, where we've got 15 mining sites at any given point in time.
However, the yield, we did have 0.023 gram per tonne lower yield in comparison to H1 2025, and this is again mainly due to an overall lower head grade received during this period. And that is due to the reduction of Driefontein 5 coming to an end. Looking at a consolidated group operating basis then for the group, you can see the impact of the volumes, of Ergo's volumes coming through in the first graph. The second graph, there's a slight yield improvement in comparison to H2 of 2025. But then it's lower in comparison to H1 2025. Therefore, the lower tonnes and yield culminated in a 9% reduction in kilograms for the six months, and then 3% higher than H2 2025. I'm gonna hand over to Henriette for financials.
Thanks, Jaco. Good morning, everybody. It's my privilege to present the financial performance of DRDGOLD to you. Maybe just to start off, and not to break tradition from our previous CFO, I would really just like to thank every single person that has been involved in achieving these excellent results. Yes, we know that we had an excellent performance from a gold price point of view, but we had also had stable performance, cost containment, which was in line with our expectation from the previous year. So thank you to the operations, to all of our contractors, as part of this journey, to our shared services and our financial teams that are involved in this, in achieving these results.
Like I already mentioned, star performer absolutely was the gold price over the last six months, over the last year. It increased by 43% from the, from the comparable six-month period, from about ZAR 1.5 million per kilogram to just over two point one million rand per kilogram. This is actually not it couldn't have come at a better time, with our massive capital spend. So we have really taken advantage of that gold price performance. Okay, so if we go into the financial results from an Ergo point of view, you can see a very nice trend upwards from half year FY 2025 to all the way to 3.6 billion rand for half year FY 2026. This is despite a 7% decrease in our gold sold.
One trend that we're exceptionally proud of is that cash operating cost line on the Ergo side. If you look at Ergo, for the six month ended December 2025, the increase for that to the ZAR 1.9 billion was only 2%. Despite increases that was above inflation in your reagents, and some of the consumables, we actually saw a 23% decrease in electricity costs on the Ergo side. And that is despite the 13% rate increase from Eskom. Jaco will take you through some of the performance later from a solar point of view. That then moves straight into that operating profit line, which almost doubled if you compare the six month ending December 2024 to December 2025, at just under ZAR 1.7 billion per kilogram.
If we go to Far West Gold Recoveries, similar trend to that of Ergo. So also a 7% decrease in gold sold, but that 43% increase in revenue, in gold price, taking us to just above ZAR 1.4 billion in revenue for Far West Gold Recoveries. On the cash operating side, as I mentioned in the previous, presentation, Far West is in a different life cycle than Ergo. So this little operation is actually gearing up to growth, to double up its capacity, so additional people are appointed. The plant is a little bit older than when we started up 6 years ago, so consumables are higher, and that is why you're seeing this increase in costs.
The cash operating costs in ZAR million terms increased about 14% from the comparative six months. Still, if you look at that operating profit trend, it is magnificent. From about ZAR 750 million to almost ZAR 1.1 billion in operating profit for Far West. Just something to mention, this is a 73% operating margin, which is quite substantial. Then just from a group operating trends point of view, operating margin, we already sort of touched on. You can see that nice increase, upwards curve, ending up at 54% operating margin for the six months. All-in sustaining cost, also a very nice upward trend, ending at just over 48%. Just to mention, our all-in sustaining cost is about ZAR 1.1 million per kilogram.
If we can sustain that all-in sustaining cost in the future, everything, all of the increases in the gold price is always upside. So very nice margin, if you look at a gold price of ZAR 2.5 million, where we are currently. Then free cash flow, this is a very important measure for us. We believe that this is actually the one to, to manage quite substantially. I think Niël already mentioned that we expected to be in a totally different situation with all of the capital that we're spending. We ended up the year at, the six months at just under ZAR 800 million, after spending CapEx of ZAR 1.8 billion.
This, this actually, this is the one that gave us the opportunity to declare that ZAR 0.50 interim dividend, which I believe is the biggest interim dividend that we have declared from a DRDGOLD point of view. Headline earnings per share almost doubled from the comparable six-month period, from ZAR 1.12 per share to ZAR 2.23 per share. Okay. If we just stand still on the statement of profit and loss, revenue, like we already mentioned, 7% decrease in gold sold, but 43% increase in rand per kilogram gold price, going straight into that bottom, ach, into that top line. Cost of sales, very proud of that figure. Yes, it's a 4% increase, which sort of trends inflation or is similar to inflation at this point of view.
But all of us know that mining inflation tends to be higher. So this is something that we are very closely monitoring and managing. So very proud of that 4% that it increased period-on-period. Gross profit from operations, very healthy at ZAR 2.5 billion. Then if we go to the administration and other expenses, that increase is 23%, which is quite substantial. The biggest drivers of that increase was our ever, our LTI, our long-term incentive, share-based payment expense. That goes through that line, and our share price increased a lot from the previous period. Okay. Maybe to stand still on that loss on the sale of asset. So that ZAR 5 million relates to our sale of Stellar in December to NOA.
So as we announced in December, we received about proceeds of about ZAR 147 million from NOA, recouping most of our costs. So that ZAR 5 million is the little bit that's left after all of the consolidation entries. But more importantly enough, paving the way for a, for future agreements, which Jaco will also take you through later. Then on the finance income side, again, our cash interest all more than what we would have expected if we look back at it. But we did see a decrease for this from the previous six months, and that's due to Rand Refinery not actually paying us a dividend in this six months period.
Yeah, finance expenses, that mostly relates to the unwinding of our rehabilitation provision, but very much in line with previous periods, ending profit before tax at ZAR 2.4 billion. On the income tax line, and I'll touch on this line in the balance sheet or in the statement of financial position again. That whole ZAR 490 million actually relates to deferred tax. Okay. Very healthy profit of ZAR 1.9 billion for the six months. Okay. If we go to the statement of financial position, so you'll see in the three periods how that line, property, plant, and equipment, just keeps on growing. And that is our investment that we are doing into this Vision 2028 project.
That balance, we expect to still keep on going, growing for the next 2-3 years. So very excited to see that, that balance, increase. Then just to stand still on non-current investments and other assets, that balance relates mostly to our investment in Guardrisk, our rehabilitation trust funds, which is over ZAR 1 billion. I believe that's quite a good position to be in, and we can be proud of that. The other movement, big movement in that balance from the previous, from the financial year, 30 June, was Rand Refinery. So Rand Refinery, we measure at fair value, and we saw a ZAR 150 million increase in the fair value relating to Rand Refinery. Cash and cash equivalents, ZAR 1.7 billion. I'll allude to that in the cash flow statement. Okay.
Then on other current assets, maybe just to stand still on that as well. We, although you didn't see an income tax on the income statement, we actually had to pay a provisional tax on the Ergo side of about ZAR 230 million. This is because our forecasted profitability shows that we will pay tax for the full year end. So there's about ZAR 230 million tax receivable included in there. The other balance, and one of our more exciting stories that we've got, is the inclusion of Kloof 2 dump from Sibanye. So we've added about 67 million tons to our mineral resources.
This transaction, all of the decommissioned dumps from Sibanye, was already envisaged in the 2008 agreements that we entered into with Sibanye. Due to the timing of the transaction and some regulatory approvals that still need to require, we couldn't—we didn't receive the trust funds relating to this asset now before 31 December. That will only happen now in the next few months. There is ZAR 117 million included in that other current assets line. Okay. Equity, ZAR 10.7-ZAR 10.8 billion, that will keep on growing with the profitability from our operations. Provision for environmental rehabilitation increased with the unwinding for the six months, and then that inclusion of the Kloof 2 rehabilitation liability.
Deferred tax asset, that is now our single biggest deferred tax liability, sorry, apologies. That is now our single biggest liability on the balance sheet, and that balance has grown substantially, as you can see, over the three periods. We expect that balance to keep on growing. We are spending more capital, but we are actually using that capital allowances on our site. So our asset base and our tax base keeps on growing bigger apart. Also maybe to note is that once a year, we determine our weighted average forecasted tax rate based on our Life of Mine plans. If the gold price continues as it is at this current levels, there will definitely be an increase in our deferred tax rate, which will make that balance even bigger.
On current liabilities, that remained very stable from 30 June now to 31 December, although it increased from the previous comparative period, and that was just due to accelerated capital spend. Then we're sitting with a exceptional good current ratio of three, due to our high cash balance and the increase in the current assets with a stable current liabilities. Okay. Statement of cash flows, probably one of our favorites always. If you just look at that cash generated from operations, which more than doubled from the comparative six months period at ZAR 2.5 billion, that is exceptional. Finance income increased, due to our higher cash balances. Dividends received, I already alluded to, we didn't receive anything from Rand Refinery in this period.
And that income tax, that provisional tax payment that I explained, sitting the income tax paid of about ZAR 230 million-ZAR 240 million. If we move to investing activities, there you can see that ZAR 1.7 billion that we reinvested in our capital for Vision 2028. That balance will also as we still have a bit to go for this financial year, so that will keep on increasing. Then environmental rehabilitation payments, this is specifically our continuous cladding of the Brakpan tailings facility. So we keep on rehabilitating as we grow that dump. Proceeds from assets held for sale, I already explained Stellar to you, so that is what we received for the sale of our investment.
Then moving on to dividends, the 345 relate to the ZAR 0.40 final dividend that we paid for our financial year, 2025. And yeah, if you then just see net increase in cash, in cash equivalents, about ZAR 430 million. Taking our cash and cash equivalents balance to a very healthy ZAR 1.7 billion, as at 31 December. Yeah, if I can now hand over to Jaco to take you through some of the exciting projects that we have delivered.
Thanks, everybody. So yeah, just starting off with our... Sorry, let me just go back to that slide. Then starting off with the solar and BESS project. We've seen a reduction of approximately 28% for the group. And for Ergo, it is down by 38%, taking into consideration that this asset has been operating since November of last year. So this is comparing six months of last year, H1 to H2 of 2025. There's a 23% reduction in electricity cost, and that is despite the 12.7% increase in cost. So in total, in excess of 35% reduction in the cost. We also had a just shy of ZAR 50 million worth of wheeling and offsetting revenues.
That's essentially offset against other Eskom accounts within the group itself. This project makes sure that we've got all of the daily consumption for a majority of the big sites, being Rooikraal, Brakpan, and then the Ergo plant, running off the PV and BESS circuit. I think important for us to distinguish between the Ergo PV and BESS system and the transaction that we did referring to Stellar and NOA. The Stellar/NOA transaction was specifically focused at reducing our carbon footprint in anticipation for Vision 2028 and what we're busy with in Vision 2028. As we bring Vision 2028 online, we bring DP2 online, we're bringing the RTSF online, and Daggafontein online. The power consumption will increase. Because of the power consumption increase, your carbon footprint will increase.
So this project was aimed at anticipating what the load would be for Ergo and Far West, and in anticipation of that increase in load, to be proactive in how we can secure additional power for the operations. So just in a nutshell, the Stellar project is located in Polokwane and is designed for 150 MW solar. It's only solar plant design. We, as mentioned by Henriette, have sold our 100% interest in the project. We took a 100% interest in this project to develop it to a point where we knew that the project will be viable going forward.
In this process, we have secured now 30 megawatts, or approximately 20% of the power, to be generated by Stellar, at a very, very competitive price. So not only is this project designed to reduce our carbon footprint, it also reduces our operating cost going forward. And with electricity being in the top four or top five of our major cost components, this has got a significant impact on the business going forward. And as mentioned, this is aligned with the Vision 2028 and increased production that we anticipate. Just having a quick look at the big five capital projects, two of them at Ergo and three of them at Far West Gold Operations. The two at Ergo, just to recap, that's the Daggafontein operation, bringing that back online.
That's a TSF, where we intend to deposit onto Daggafontein and reduce the deposition onto the Brakpan facility. The second one is then the recommissioning of the Withok TSF. That one is in authorizations phase, and I'll take you through some of the details of these projects a little bit later on. This slide is just to recap what the five projects are all about. At Far West Gold Recoveries, we've got the three, which are all linked to almost one project. It's the expansion of the DP2 plant from 600,000 tons to 1.2 million tons. Construction of the Regional Tailings Storage Facility, or RTSF, as you will hear us refer to this going forward, and then the piping infrastructure connecting the plant and the RTSF to one another.
Just looking at some additional data on the Ergo project. So Daggafontein going very, very well. We virtually complete on the installation of the pipelines. One or two tie-ins to be completed, and the project is on schedule and on budget, and anticipating to start with this project in Q1 of 2027. This facility provides 120 million tons of deposition capacity, and a 20-year life of mine. The second one is Withok, which is the bigger project. Withok, as mentioned, is in the authorization stage. We have successfully appointed the IPP as part of the Department of Water and Sanitation's process with Dam Safety Office.
And all environmental approvals are still pending, but all of them, we've met the conditions up to this point. Now, again, the commissioning of this project is only anticipated within the next three years, and it forms part of a longer process towards the end of 2028. And it will create 310 million tons of deposition capacity at a significant rate of 1.3 million tons per month for at least a 20-year life of mine. Looking at Far West Gold operations, and there's a few slides that will follow on to this, going to give you a better indication of each one of the three legs of this project.
Firstly, the DP2 plant, you'll see on the photograph, the left top corner, there's a big concrete building. That's the smelt house. Something that we are very keen on getting to commission because currently, we do not have our own smelt house facilities. So one of the things that we're obviously focusing on is to get that commissioned in Q1 of 2028. We're approximately 80% complete with the plant, and as mentioned, expecting to start that all of this in Q1, 2027. The pipelines are 135 km. This includes the connection between the plant, DP2, and RTSF, as well as the new site, the new, new Libanon site, connecting that on onto the infrastructure.
We're about 77% complete, and we've completed 104 km out of the total. On the RTSF itself, I'll show you some pictures just now. Lining is sitting at about 1.2 million sq m. We require about 3.4 million sq m of liner for beneficial occupation. Beneficial occupation is aligned with when we anticipate to start this project, which is Q1 2027. The RTSF is designed for 800 million tons deposition capacity at a rate of 2.4 million tons per month, and that will give us a 30-year life of mine. Now, just to put that into perspective, we're currently processing at Far West Gold Recoveries only 600,000 tons per month, up to 600.
We intend to increase that to 1.2 million tons per month as part of this DP2 expansion phase. We can double up on that as well, in future. All right, just comparison-wise, the left-hand picture, you can see June 2025, where we were still barely starting with the earthworks, and we had some of that wall constructed already. On the right-hand side, what you can see is the liner already being installed. You can see the liner over the wall, which means that the wall had to be at. So, the wall's got to be 16 meters high, 100 meters in diameter, the starter wall. The wall had to be 14 meters high in order for us to do the lining over the wall.
You put another 4 meters or 3 meters on top of that. That is currently what you're seeing on the southern side. The liner, where it stops currently, the black surface that you're seeing, that is virtually on the point that we need for beneficial occupation. Obviously, we need to complete the balance of that section towards the left and the right of the black liner to get beneficial occupation. DP2 plant, that's going extremely well. As mentioned, what you can see here is just these top left-hand corner is just the elution facilities. The MCCs and some of the internal electrical infrastructure are on the left, left bottom side. The top right, you can see the thickener, the new thickener coming in.
And then bottom right is some of the CIL tanks and some of the screens being constructed. As mentioned, this will take us up to 1.2 million tons, and this project is on time and on budget, ready for commissioning in Q1 2027. So just referring to what Henriette has mentioned with the Kloof 2 dump, that's been added to our mineral resource classification, about 67 million tons, adding 480,000 ounces.
After the depletion of our mineral resources through the work that we've done through the last six months, we end up with an increase of 55 million tons to 741 million tons of resource, and an increase of 350,000 ounces to 6.2 million ounces, after adding the Kloof 2 dump and removing the depleted mineral resources.
I think that is the last slide on mine. And, Niël, I'm gonna hand back over to you.
Thanks, Jaco. Yes, and, and I think we're probably underplaying the last slide a little bit. It's, it's really encouraging to see an increase in, in resources, where, typically, unless there's some form of an acquisition, most companies are having to adjust their resource and reserve statements downwards off the same footprint. Talking to sustainable development performance, and this is a very important part of our business, as you would well know. It's become a, a very important part of our, our brand identity, both on the environmental and social side. So moving to the next slide on environmental performance. The one that clearly stands out here is electricity consumption. You just look at that trend, and that is not that we're using less power, it's just that we're using less power off the grid.
Marginally less power, perhaps, because of the load turns, but certainly less power off the grid. That's really the reason for that big swing. And then, as we said earlier, that 34% decrease in carbon footprint. And the encouraging thing is, and I think this is where this is such a good example of what sustainable development is all about, it's not only is there a very significant financial and risk benefit for our business, but there's a very significant nature, nature dividend as well. If this is not what your sustainable development program, then this is not the kind of results that it yields, then it's not really sustainable development. Then it's something that maybe resembles sustainable development. But in order to be sustainable, it needs to be sustainable. Simple as that. Just on the next slide, then, on social performance.
Here again, we work off the premise that, and this is a very important part of our strategic thinking, that a business is not going to be successful if it's an island of stability in an ocean of social instability. So there is a very real benefit from a sustainability perspective, and just being around and being able to optimize your asset portfolio in making some sort of a difference, and delivering on a very deliberate and strategic campaign to enhance socioeconomic stability in the areas where you operate, and to assist communities to become increasingly self-sustainable. The ZAR 25.6 million was spent on socioeconomic development, and that I can tell you, it's not a one-off spend in terms of stuff that's been handed over. That is a spend in terms of establishing a platform and a footprint of which participants can leverage and go forward.
So to use the cliché of a fish and a fishing rod, that was ZAR 25 million spent on fishing rods, not on fish. Moving on to the next slide, on the share price movement. I must say, it's very pleasing to see that our share price is now following the same trend of that of our peers. Obviously, towards 2023, 2024, when we had a lot of explaining to do, when we were falling behind on a whole host of things, and we simply were just getting there in this transitional phase, establishing the platform of which we could launch Vision 28. You could see that there was some sort of a disconnect and that the discount, our stock was steeper compared to that of our peers. We think that that's now been erased.
It's certainly trending similar, if not somewhat steeper than some of our peers. So we are very pleased to see that the movements in share-- in gold price has also found its way into our share price performance. And you look at the market capitalization, and you see ZAR 48 billion, ZAR 50 billion, remembering not too long ago when this market cap was ZAR 400 million, and it's just remarkable. It's, it's a real privilege to be part of, of something like this, and an even greater privilege to see how what Jaco and the rest of the team are doing in terms of Vision 2028 is positioning us to continue to take advantage.
It will be interesting to see, because I do believe that some of the recovery in the trend performance of our stock may have been attributable to the fact that we've delivered into some of the projects that that we embarked upon, and they were very ambitious projects. So the fact that the Ergo solar plant has turned out to be a huge success. It was an in-house project, obviously with skills brought in from the outside, but hopefully, that played some role in that. The fact that there's improved stability in terms of of output, particularly in line with with guidance, hopefully, that's also brought about a measure of confidence in the stock, of credibility in in stock.
What will be interesting is to see if and when some of the interim goals in Vision 2028, some of those goals are achieved. That which we are aiming for in terms of Vision 2028, of 3 million tons a month, 6 tons of gold, when that becomes, there's an increase in the probability of us actually delivering into that. It'll be interesting to see how the market starts anticipating that in, in the investment patterns that we hope to see. Moving on to the next slide, on the looking ahead slide. Obviously, we can go to the thank you. We're keen to deliver into our guidance, both in terms of production and in terms of cost. But our single biggest obsession at this stage, other than the safety of our staff-...
is to delivering to Vision 2028 and to continue to hit those goals. I've explained to you what it needs to look like in order for us to start taking early occupation. We also explained to you the interface and interactions that we're having with the regulator, which I dare say, I believe is much improved since some of our previous experiences, and that's because maybe we changed our game to an extent. We lifted our game a bit, but also, the more you talk to people, hopefully, the better your relationship becomes. And also understanding what the challenges are that some of the regulators face, and witnessing how they're putting in the effort to facilitate.
They're never going to lower or adjust their standards to accommodate anyone, but they are sometimes flex stretching to also accommodate and to assist us in achieving some of these outcomes. So I think the significance of what we're doing here and the bigger picture of South Africa Incorporated, that is not lost on anyone, and that's certainly encouraging to see as well. But there are some very clear goals we have to deliver into that. And then, of course, with the focus of DRD in the last few year and about decade and a half of being a cashflow-focused entity, maybe that sort of reserve resource equation has become less of our marketing pitch.
But I do not think we should underestimate just the significance of adding 60 million tons of high-quality material that's been mined out of the richest ore body in South Africa, the Kloof Driefontein license areas. That entire cluster of reef, one should not underestimate that. And that, of course, will further support the capital that we're spending to achieve sort of output capacity or rather throughput capacity that Jaco has been describing. So clearly, what we're aiming for at the moment in the medium term, is to sequentially or systematically rather transition up to 1.2 million tons as the infrastructure is completed. But ultimately, this facility will have a 2.4 million tons a month throughput capacity, the tailings dam in particular. And that's the catalyst. That is the main catalyst.
If you have a large enough exhaust, you could put a big engine in front of that exhaust, and this is what they're building there. So for the longer term, it certainly, from a strategic perspective, could potentially be a big catalyst in some of the other ambitions that the business team are harboring at this stage. We are talking to a whole host of other companies as well. We do believe that it's become increasingly hard to simply just bring about a clear separation of mature assets globally. Increasingly, governments are insisting that before you go, you put all sorts of guarantees in place to make sure that the final closure of your footprint is done responsibly.
More and more companies are starting to say, "But, you know, why should we sell something and continue to, to carry this risk, this long-term risk of environmental closure, not being done properly? But maybe this is a risk that we should own." We do believe that our model of activating the latent income-generating capacity of mine waste, and to doing that by way of repurposing existing infrastructure, in other words, doing it in a, in a very financially scrupulous way. We do believe that that that is something that could resonate well with other companies, and those conversations are picking up as well.
We haven't had the opportunity yet of doors swinging open completely, but we do believe that they are being opened at a open skrefie, and we intend to go through that skrefie and having these conversations, if they'll have us. And our business development team is certainly very keen about that. We've also spoken in the past about cracking the code, and we have now, in fact, entered into an agreement with an enterprise that has come up with a device that we believe is getting us closer to that goal as well. So we'll have more of that in the market as we go along, but we, we're quite keen to see. An add on to existing infrastructure could in fact have an impact also on extraction efficiency, and that's happening as we speak.
So those are all exciting things for the future, and we hope to be able to have some more news on that for you going forward. So that is the outlook. There's a final slide, which is really summarizing, we can go to that, what it is that we are aiming to do in terms of delivering on purpose. And as you can see, this is deliberate. None of this is random, none of this is impulsive. We think that our commitment to sustainable development and broader, integrated, overlapping value has found its way into the way that it's being summarized on this slide of reclaiming, restoring, and returning value. And with the reinvestments that are taking place now, we really do hope that we'll be able to continue doing that for many years more.
So that's it. Thank you very much, for those of you who dialed in. Jaco and Henriette, also for doing this presentation and doing the bulk of the talking. We're happy to also take your questions now. I see we do have a little bit of time left on the clock. If you want to follow up on any of the topics that we discussed here or anything else for that matter, we now do have an executive office at drdgold.com email address, and that's executiveoffice@drdgold.com. Please send your questions, your queries to that, and we'd be quite happy to respond to those. All right. So I don't see any questions. Jaco, Henriette, any final words from your side? Nothing from my side, Niël. Okay. That's it then.
Nothing from my side.
Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, Henriette. Thank you very much, everyone. Thanks for dialing in. Thanks for listening to us. Oh, I see there are two raised hands. Sorry. Let's just deal with those. Let's just deal with those. That one was a comment. Thank you very much for your kind comment. We appreciate that.
Just to remind everybody, you are on listen-only mode, so instead of raising a hand, we encourage you to type in your questions.
Let's give it a little bit more time to see if anything comes through. I think we drilled down in quite a lot of detail, Henriette. I think you really gave a very detailed summary there, and same to you, Jaco. So hopefully, we covered most of the questions. All right. That seems to be it. Thank you very much, everyone, for dialing in, and yeah, just again, the email address, executiveoffice@drdgold.com. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.
Bye.