Greetings to all our stakeholders that are focused on this Investor Day. Good morning to those of you that are not local to our region. That are in our local time zone. Today is all about, in my mind, people. And yes, we're going to be talking about ESG.
We're going to be talking about our gold business. But a business is about the people. And from the very first slide, you will see that people are very, very important to our business. People, good people with a good strategy and good assets can really move mountains. And today, you're going to have the chance to listen to our very engaged and professional senior managers in our business.
And they will be doing most of the talking and in fact will do most of the answering of questions and I'm sure you will appreciate it as much as I do. The first section is about ESG and a bit about strategy. I spent quite a bit of time on strategy with our H1 results. But for those of you who were not present or did not have the opportunity to join us for that. I will go through it in a little bit more detail.
There is a Safe Harbor statement in the presentation. And of course, there are forward looking statements and observations. Please take note of them. All right. If we can actually then move on to the first official slide, please.
A tree and our tree, the Sibanye tree has received international acclaim. And the tree is a very, very important part of our business, a part of our thinking. In fact, it describes our ethos. And much of what you see in a tree is reflected in our business. A lot of what you don't see obviously in a tree such as its roots are also very, very important.
And a lot of communication happens through the roots of trees. And when I describe the roots of our tree, you will also recognize why it's important for the roots to communicate with other trees, send signals and they do send signals. In fact, I'm told from having recently readable countries that signals between trees move at 1 third of an inch per second. So very slow, but nevertheless, they communicate. The roots of our tree holds our values and our values are commitment, accountability, respect, enabling and safety and that's a synonym for cares and we talk about Sibanye cares.
Now as you start thinking about this tree, of course, it has a trunk and the people of our company. And as I said, you will recognize this constant theme about the importance of people, whether they are employees, whether they are stakeholders, such as our investors, organized labor, suppliers, all very, very important to us. But our employees provide the strength and direction of the tree to the canopy, obviously, targeting sunlight so we can grow. And of course, to grow, we have to be profitable. And to be profitable, you in mining terms, you got to talk about safe cost, quality and volume.
And if the profitability is there, we can develop that canopy of the tree. And again, the canopy of the tree contains things such as the environment, shareholders, communities, all our stakeholders, organized labor and so on. And we've made it our business to understand what is superior value, which is our vision for our company, for each one of those stakeholders. And of course, the tree bears fruit when it's properly nourished and it's profitable. And for each one of those stakeholders, we recognize what are the fruits that come with superior value creation.
So that is really our tree and it's well understood in our company. If you visit our operations, you will see it well displayed. And as I say, this concept of stakeholder capitalism is well recognized and certainly we are seen as a leader in this field. Our purpose which is derived from the tree and our ethos and thinking, our purpose is we believe our mining improves lives. And as I've already said, we do that by creating superior value for all our stakeholders and that's the company's vision And our strategic intent at this point in time is to strengthen our position as a leading international precious metals group.
So that's our ethos. That is the way we think. It's not smoke and mirrors and we use this very effectively. Next slide please. As I said, our strategic intent is to strengthen our position as a leading international mining group by focusing on the 6 strategic focus areas that are contained within the pie.
The one at the center is one we will be focusing on today, but it is also the central theme in terms of our strategic focus and you can see that is about embedding ESG Excellence as the way we do business. But other strategic focus areas, building a value based culture, very important for safety. And of course, for the overall success of the group that is really led by David Mostert, who you will meet in the next presentation, Focusing on safe production and achieving operational excellence is a strategic focus area. I think we've done that particularly well. That area of our strategy is led by Doctor.
Richard Stewart and he will also be introduced to you in the next session. Optimizing capital allocation, we're very disciplined. We have stuck to our capital allocation model And I think that's well known and was discussed in detail at our H1 results. Prospering in South Africa's investment climate, the majority of our assets are in South Africa. It's a tough place to operate.
We know how to do that well and we know how to prosper. Building an operating portfolio of green and related technologies, green metals and related technologies is a key strategic focus area and I'm going to cover that in the next few slides as well. So that's how we move from the tree to proper strategy that is crystallized in focusing on these areas and there's an executive responsible for each one of these areas. Thank you. So talking about value creation and remember we said that our vision is to create superior value for all stakeholders and we have done that particularly well, building off what was seen as unwanted gold assets.
I will cover that in some in a bit of detail as I explained this sigmoid curve. We then entered the PGM business in South Africa and we exposed the company to palladium, platinum, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium and through our investment in DRD tailings retreatment specifically in the gold segment, but we also do a bit of PGM tailings retreatment in the South African segment. We then acquired the Stillwater operations in Montana and that gave us exposure to PGM Recycling and palladium, platinum and rhodium in that region as well. More recently, we announced our intention to enter the battery metal space as our 4th sigmoid curve And after significant due diligence, we announced our intention to obtain exposure to lithium, nickel. Cobalt is a bit of a challenge, manganese, graphite, Of course, recycling is a green metal, irrespective of where it may come from.
Uranium, the transition of PGMs into the hydrogen economy, we're well exposed to that. Copper is a common denominator and of course metals produced from tailings retreatment complement that. So the battery metal strategy together with the PGM strategy plus exposure to uranium, which I'm going to discuss in a bit more detail, has really crystallized our strategy as you will see from the following slide, which is a puzzle that pulls it all together. So let's have a look at that. You can see the base of the puzzle is the PGMs, recycling, uranium, tailings retreatment with our investment in DRPD Gold and then of course the green energy metals.
And I believe this is a unique combination of metals that positions our company extremely well for the future green energy environment. Thank you. As I said, I would just discuss uranium briefly. We did announce at H that we will be progressing our uranium strategy as well. Uranium has been identified and it's always been a green energy metal.
But I think as the world has become more sensitive to CO2 emissions, nuclear energy has emerged as an alternative 0 carbon based generation option to complement renewable energy, which as we know is intermittent. There is growing commitment to nuclear energy, especially in the Asia Pacific region with 125 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity being planned. We expect the uranium market to move into deficits within about 5 years and we expect long term forecast to exceed US60 dollars per pound. We have very significant uranium resources. We have £27,000,000 of uranium U-three zero eight, 250 to 500 meters below surface.
At our Beatrix West section. We have £52,000,000 of U-three zero eight on our Cook tailings dams on the West Vits and we have very significant uranium processing infrastructure both on the West Lits and at Nuffcorp. So we have a significant asset base to build our uranium aspirations. Dennis Tucker will be leading this initiative. Dennis Tucker is on the call and will be available to answer questions.
The diagram on the right hand side of this slide really just shows you what is known as Beatrix number 4 shaft or Beatrix West. It was originally the Baiza uranium mine, which after the uranium price collapsed in the 80s was turned into a gold mine. The subvertical shaft was sunk and the Kalkun Kranz Reef was accessed from the original Viza uranium shaft. The Beizer Reef, you can see is in purple and you can see it is initially a lot shallower than the Kolkunpraanse Reef. You can also on this diagram on the very right hand side see Beatrix 1, 23 shaft.
And of course, if ever there was a need, we could deepen those shafts and access the Beizer Reef below it, but that's not in the in even the medium term planning. We have very significant shallow resources of uranium that can be accessed very quickly. So uranium is moving from being unloved for the last decade, but it's now being recognized as a green metal that has a role to play in a decarbonized future? Thank you. There's a lot of debate around whether mining companies are just talking the talk around ESG.
You will see from the following presentations that we've already moved on from talking about ESG to having a very crystal clear sustainability strategy, including the capacity and I'm talking about the management resources to continue driving that and I'm going to discuss that in a little bit of detail in the bullet points below. But not only that, we as a group have moved to including ESG measures in our long term incentives and it really starts from a unitary board. We have a number of committees. And in fact, all of them in a way one way or another have an input into ESG. But as you all know, the Social Ethics and Sustainability Committee is where the full responsibility for ensuring proper strategic implementation of ESG and sustainability is monitored by the Board.
So it starts with the Board. In the C suite, I have a strategic advisory office and one of my strategic advisory senior managers is our sustainability executive. And will be presenting this afternoon. The link into operations is done through the Chief Operating Officer and the Chief Operating Officer's primary responsibility is to convert strategy into operational plans. So as I said right at the beginning, it starts with people, the right people, good professionals, well qualified, competent people that are engaged.
Strategy with you at our H1 results. And then of course, the right assets and of course, the right incentives. And as I said at the beginning of this slide, our incentives are in place. There are a few companies that have ESG incentives in place. Most of them have overrides.
So if you have an environmental issue, it's an override on an incentive. Ours has we have an override as well in our short term incentive. But in our long term incentive scheme, 20% of it is now made up of very specific ESG measurements and you can see the combination there 30, 40 and 30. So embedding ESG excellence is not just a title, it's not just smoke and mirrors, it is a proper strategic thrust headed up by competent and professional people and embraced by all of us in the group as a core strategic thrust. Thank you.
At this point, I'm going to hand over to Richard Stewart and Darby Mostert to talk to you about our initiatives on safety, health and building a value based culture. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Neil, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A real pleasure today, I guess, to kick off the session with what is really our 1st, 2nd and third priority in Sibanye Stillwater, which is the safety and health of our employees. I think traditionally when you talk mining and talk safety, very often your mine jumps straight to work related injuries and accidents and statistics. But really our safety and health strategy is about so much more than that. It's ultimately about really the holistic well-being of our employees and not only our employees, but also the communities in which they live.
And of course, tackling work related injuries and incidents is a key part of that. And we really do address our overall safety or it's underpinned by a risk based approach. But in addition, it does go to reducing the exposure of our employees to occupational related diseases, reducing exposure to dust, which obviously leads to silicosis, diesel particulate matter, radiation, platinum salts, etcetera. We do look at providing health services that enhance the overall quality of life of our employees. And of course, work together with national strategies to try and manage and eradicate epidemics such as TB and HIV.
And as we've seen this year, of course, COVID-nineteen, very difficult to eradicate ourselves, but certainly we try and manage that as far as we can within our own environments. And ultimately, we look to provide world class emergency response services and we subscribe to world class safety practices and are currently in the process of registering or completing accreditation of ISO 45,001 across all of our operations. I think COVID in particular is certainly one we are very proud of how we've handled it and this has been testament to our risk based approach to dealing with health and safety. 18 months ago, when we were designing new operating protocols, there were no rules. We didn't yet know how this was going to end up.
But through a risk based approach, we've been able to continue operating throughout most of this pandemic with infection rates that are in many cases better, but certainly no worse than surrounding communities and national average or the communities in which we work, which is really testament to the fact that the risk based approach and the work practices we put in place has meant that our environment is certainly not a hotspot for COVID infection, something we're very proud of. I think in terms of vaccination as a company, we certainly believe that that is the long term sustainable solution to dealing with COVID. And in that regard, we've invested heavily in our vaccination rollout. We've invested almost ZAR10 1,000,000 in terms of setting up centers across our company, investing in cold chain storage. We currently have 4 primary vaccination sites and can roll out multiple satellite sites of which 3 are operating right now.
We vaccinated in excess of 50,000 of our employees, which is by far industry leading and that represents over 60% of our total workforce. And in fact, more than 75% have registered to take up the vaccine And our priority right now is ensuring that those individuals receive the vaccine and through intensive education processes, we address any hesitancy regarding vaccination that may exist with the balance of our employees. We also took our first steps towards rolling out beyond just our own company on the 1st September where we now offer vaccination to dependents of our employees and we're working closely with the Department of Health to further roll this out into our doorstep communities and truly contribute towards the overall national vaccination strategy. So just in terms of our safety journey, I think very evident that from the time Sibanye was born and we took over these assets from Goldfields, we made a notable difference in the overall safety trends and statistics. I think like much of the industry in South Africa, we recognized around 2017 that while we've made some great strides in reducing fatalities, we had largely plateaued.
And that led to the development of a new safety approach engaging multiple stakeholders and we started our safety culture journey. In 2018, we had 2 very unfortunate and tragic incidents, multiple fatal incidents at Tri Fontaine, a seismic incident and Cliffs where we had colleagues walk into an abandoned mining area. But that really created a platform to truly bring with us all stakeholders and reengage on a new safety strategy and really reenergize the safety culture journey that we were undertaking. That led to world class results in 2019. I think we broke industry records of 13,000,000 fatality free shifts.
I dare say that was far ahead of what had ever been achieved before and is testament to the fact that the strategy worked. Fundamentally, the strategy is about teams looking after each other. So it's based on team dynamics and looking after the safety of your colleagues or your friends or your team members or brothers. What happened with COVID is those team dynamics were disrupted. And as such, we've unfortunately seen a regression in the last 18 months, which we are in the process of addressing and a regression that again sadly has been seen across much of the industry and one that we do need to arrest and bring back.
Very pleasing with the initiatives we've outlined during 2021. We have seen a significant improvement over the year and certainly the last quarter in particular has been very pleasing and we look forward to that trend continuing. If we look at the total injury frequency rate and this is really the measure that we compare ourselves against with our international peers. Since Sibanye started, we've managed to almost half the total number of injuries we see in our gold operations. And what we really look forward to is when we have a strategy over the next 4 or 5 years to have that number again.
And if we're successful in that, that will bring us down to injury frequency rates that is in line with our best performing international peers and certainly part of our strategy we look forward to delivering on. So how do we rank relative to our peers? Well, certainly if we compare ourselves to our South African or other ultra deep mining peers, we rank very well. But we fully recognize that we are an international company. We do measure ourselves against best practice.
And if we're going to be an international mining company, then we need to benchmark ourselves against our international peers, irrespective of the number of employees or operating environment that we are in. And that is certainly part of our strategy, strives towards benchmarking ourselves and competing with the best practice of our international peers. The way we expect to achieve this is through our 0 harm strategic framework, which we'll unpack in the next few slides. As with so many things in our company, it's underpinned by our values and our engaged leadership, which Dave will share a bit more details on. But fundamentally, that is the long term sustainable solution to safety where we have employees making the right decisions all of the time, undertaking the right behaviors all of the time that's pinned on our values.
We have 3 core pillars that look to address our safety strategy and enabling environment, which really goes around removing hazards or eliminating hazards, engineering out risks, having the right tools and equipment, designing the right operating protocols and practices by having those in place. Goes around empowered people, that is where the risk management of the business really comes in. You can eliminate the hazards through engineering them out, but the residual risks need to be managed by people. And this is about having appropriately trained, competent and resource people in the right places to execute our strategy and then embedding that strategy into the way we do business on a daily basis through appropriate systems. But with that, perhaps I can hand over to Davey.
Thank you.
Thank you, Richard, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And as Richard has alluded to the fact that we have commenced with this program some time ago. This is not a campaign. This is really a detailed, detailed program where we look at context and we design with some really appropriate solutions that are very specific per segment and per operating area. So if I can start, we operate really in complex times that we've seen with COVID and the disruptions that were caused and the impact of the environment on people and leaders in particular and operating teams.
We live in a world that is really unpredictable and ever changing. We call it the VUCA world, a world that is full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. And it's within this context where we need to get our leaders to be functional and our operating teams to take the right decisions. So where the focus are is really in terms of 3 areas. One is in terms of a values based culture where the design is top down and bottom up.
So we work at the top of the organization, starting with the executive, going to all of the management structures and we impact in terms of what we term team mechanics and team dynamics. The team mechanic sessions are really focused on role clarity and goal and value alignment, where we really look at what are those outcomes and how do we ensure that teams are functional. The team dynamic sessions focus more on what is always termed the softer side, the behavioral side, the team cohesion side and how we ensure that teams connect and people have a shared vision and a shared purpose. Leaders are the 2nd important aspect and critical because leaders impact culture. If we can quote some statistics, it says that leaders have a 72% impact on culture and culture a 24% impact on the bottom line.
So what we do is we have a leadership competency framework where we develop all our leaders from the executive right down to the supervisors And they really focus on 5 key building blocks, being managing self, managing teams, the context, movement and relationships. And it's with that in mind that we then build our teams. So if you impact on future ready leaders, leaders that will develop a future fit organization operating within this increasing complexity and based on a value set and a value system where our values are shared and the understanding in terms of the behaviors is a shared understanding, the outcome is really engaged employees and it is really focused on safe production. If we can move to the next slide, I'll talk to what the impact is at the bottom. So, this is typically what we do with our operating teams.
This is where the tech hits the top. So, we start with our teams on a 2 to 3 day program and each of these teams start with their story, where they come from, what are the issues that they need to deal with and they really look at the key aspects that will make the team successful. The second step is really understanding what are those key values and how to get the values the behaviors aligned to the values that we would want the team to underpin. We work with team in terms of development. They present their charter and there's a lot of buy in that happens between the ship supervisors, the mine overseers and these teams.
The third aspect is really making it real in their context and that is where we introduce what is termed in Songanu process or on the platinum side is called the Trela Pearl process. And the process is really making sure that the team takes ownership for problem solving. They take ownership for hazard identification and for risk management. And we ensure that at the end of the day, this is systemized and that the team will take control of their future journey. It's a process that is well received and we have probably to date taken approximately 30% to 40% of our teams through the structure.
With this in mind, I'll hand back to Richard. Thank you, Richard.
Thank you, Dovi. And just to shoot through the balance of our strategy on a very high level, as indicated, the 3 pillars, the first one was around an enabled environment, which fundamentally went to eliminating risks and hazards. One of the ways that we tackle that is through a leading indicator analysis, which is really a process of trying to identify unwanted events, hazards, high risks before they necessarily lead to incidents or accidents and trying to proactively manage those. This slide provides some of the leading indicator themes that we've specifically identified and been working on this year, such as around rock management, which talks directly to fall of grounds, winches and rigging, mobile machinery and of course rail bound equipment. And through that you can see several initiatives we've undertaken which really go to engineering out the problem as far as possible such as through vehicle to person proximity detection devices, many of which are complex and being trialed for the first time in some of our operations.
And on our trackless equipment, for example, the Level 9 rollout as it is known, where we are leading in terms of having rolled out vehicle 2 person proximity detection systems across all of our operations. Many of this revolves around technologies and new learnings such as our seismic roadmap, which is currently being developed and the application of existing technologies for understanding rock mass behavior ahead of our current mining phases. The second part of our pillar was around risk reduction, is around risk management and empowered people. And specifically what that goes to again is train people, but being able to implement our operating practices and processes in a way that we can manage our risk. That starts off with the fundamental risks we have and we call them our rules of life, which is an initiative we rolled out this year.
And that really goes to address the highest energy incidents we can have, which can result in serious injuries and fatals. On top of those fundamental rules, we build the rest of our risk management system as we move through critical controls, as we move through group minimum standards. And we do this with many international partners. A good example of that is the IMS hub, who help us take these operating policies and practices, which as you can imagine can be written in the Queen's English and the best technical language. But how do you implement that underground?
And working with our partners here, we look at ways of taking those operating practices into simple, visualized safety systems such that they can be well understood and easily implemented in the operating environment. And finally, if we move on to our last pillar, which is about our systems and appropriate systems in terms of embedding operating practices. One of the key areas we've been working on over the last few months is around building a significant digital platform. This really goes to utilizing large databases and large sets of information to proactively manage safety, risk management. We have several initiatives I think that are leading in terms of, for example, being able to monitor data on rail bound equipment.
And through being able to monitor that data, not only understand the operations of that particular piece of equipment, but also how it's being operated and therefore the behavior of operators and identify any risks that may exist with that equipment and therefore try and address it prior to an incident being undertaken. This is what feeds into our leading indicator analysis and certainly is a large part of proactively managing safety. We do subscribe, as mentioned previously, to international best practices and are in the process of receiving ISO 45,001 accreditation across our systems. And then we have several other systems which we've implemented across our business, which help us to implement, to measure, to monitor and continuously improve the various practices that we have on a continuous learning basis. But I hope thank you very much.
I hope this is shared with you at least on a very high level. Our approach to safety, which as I mentioned is certainly a holistic one to overall well-being of all of our employees and the communities in which we operate. But with that, I'd like to hand back to James and we'd be happy to take any questions you may have. Thank you very much.
Thanks again everybody for attending today. We're going to go into a Q and A session now. So the first questions I'll address to Neil, please, really relating to metal prices and our outlook for metal prices. I think we will cover those in quite a bit more detail in the upcoming Investor Days. But maybe, Neil, would you like to just give a high level response?
First of all, where do we see precious metal prices going in future? And is demand for these metals increasing? And then in order of preference for the metals we list as part of the green metal strategy, are we initially doing a due diligence on all of these metals and with the aim of filtering out the ones which show the most promise? So maybe if you can give a bit more detail on that.
Yes. Thanks, James. Arnold, let me start with the back end.
Okay. Sorry, we seem to have a bit of problem with the technical problem with the sound there. As I said, I think, 1st of all, we will be giving a bit more detail on gold and PGM price outlook as part of the Investor Day. We're generally still quite positive on the outlook longer term. Clearly, there are some short term headwinds that are affecting PGM prices, but I think again, let us wait for the PGM Dan will cover that in more detail.
And then on the green metal strategy, we've spent the last 2 years actually doing quite detailed due diligence on those metals. We acquired a group called SFA Oxford in early 2019. We've done a very detailed fundamental analysis on the evolution of batteries and BEV Mobility, where that's going to progress to and then also looking at which the fundamentals of the metals that we think are going to be critical to that future. So there's no specific order as such. We are looking at those metals are metals of interest to us.
And as that strategy unfolds, we've already made a lithium acquisition and a nickel processing plant acquisition in France. And as that strategy unfolds, we'll probably get involved in more metals than those. The next question from Arnold was about vaccines, which I'll ask Richard Stuart to deal with. Do we have enough access to vaccines to fully utilize our capacity? Or are there days when we run short of vaccines?
Richard, could you answer that one, please?
Arnold, thanks and good afternoon. Arnold, yes, listen, initially securing vaccine doses was our constraint. Certainly, when we went live in about July, August, it was a challenge and a lot of uncertainty at that time. I dare say over the last month or so, no. Securing vaccines, in fact, has not been a constraint.
And right now, we can get access to what we require. As you probably saw today, we've now vaccinated in excess of 60% of our own workforce. Our original objective was to get to a minimum of 70%. We're well on our way there, and that is why we've now started rolling it out the next step initially to dependence, which is the first step into communities. And we are in discussions with the DOH about taking that further into community.
So our facilities are ready. The doses are available, and we look forward to administering it and getting FEED through the door. Thanks, Arnold.
Thanks, Richard. The next question is from Raj Ray at BMO Capital Markets. Again for you, Richard, if you don't mind. With respect to the ISO certification, 45,001,14,001, what's the time line for getting all of the operations certified?
Yes. Thanks, Raj. So that varies across the ops. But in many cases, on the 45,001, it's largely in December. And listen, there are variations across the operations, but it's later this year, early next year for the majority of them.
Thanks, Richard. Raj, your second question on carbon intensity and the steps we're taking, we're actually going to address those in the upcoming presentation, the ESG presentation, which will start at 2 South Africa time, so in the next 20 minutes or so. So if you don't mind, can we maybe address it once we've been through that presentation? I'll then move on to the next question from Leroyam Goony from HSBC. The biggest safety risk in your portfolio seems to lie with your SA Gold operations.
Have you considered the disposal of these assets to drive an improvement in your overall group safety performance? I'm not sure if we if Neil's back on line or we've solved that problem or shall I pass that on to Richard? We'll try and go to Neil, please.
Yes. So let me say Leroy, of course, selling is always an option, but that's a cop out. I think Richard clearly demonstrated the progress we've made in safety and together with the cultural intervention that Gavi described, we believe that we can make them competitive with the our international peers, even though they may not have ultra deep level mines. So from a safety aspect, we're very aware of the heightened risk. I want to say there's another thing.
You can't just bucket safety on its own. There are 30,000 people who have jobs that are dependent on us owning that business and ensuring it's sustainable. We will not put lives ahead of livelihoods, but these are complex situations that need to be weighed up. But to me, selling because you can't solve the safety problem is a cop out.
Thanks, Neil. The next question is from Adrian Hammond from SBG Securities. I'll direct it at Richard, if that's okay. How has the COVID and how has COVID impacted productivity and costs, for example, absenteeism, overtime, attrition, etcetera? Richard?
Yes. Thanks, Adrian. And a multifaceted question that I guess is quite complex. What COVID has certainly done over the past 18 months has led to an increase in terms of fixed cost to stick to certain protocols. Whether that is increased spacing in transport arrangements where we've got to double up on buses as an example, and then numerous examples going through that.
So it certainly had an increase on the fixed cost base. Obviously, that is something we look to reduce as the vaccination rollout becomes more prevalent. And again, those costs and protocols are done on a risk based approach, so we will continuously review those. I think what we've seen, Adrian, no doubt in the first few waves, there's no doubt we saw an impact on productivity where as a result, not only of infections, but actually of people leading to quarantine, we saw operating teams going out and that did impact on overall effectiveness. I think the other area where we definitely saw it was also around the logistics at the end and the beginning of the year.
People who traveled home over Christmas coming back, we had significant delays due to logistics around COVID. And certainly, this year in particular, another impact that has hit us hard has been the where we've had a lot of senior personnel, particularly in this 4th wave, who've been off as a result of COVID. And that's not only had an impact on operations, but a severe impact on safety and has also meant that a lot of people have had to stand in for that. So Adrian, I think it's something we've managed to manage reasonably well, but it has definitely had an impact. And I guess, one of the big unwritten ones that's just so difficult to quantify is, as with all of us, it does create stress on the system.
I think people who are suffering from COVID, people who are losing loved ones, makes it difficult in the work environment. And when you have 80,000 employees, that inherently has an impact and hence, our focus on overall employee well-being. That's often those unwritten impacts that sometimes have the biggest one that's the most difficult to measure.
Thanks, Richard. Adrian, your second question on expanding on our plans for recycling. If you don't mind, today, we've got fairly limited time for questions on other things. So we'll try and keep the questions focused on the information that we're on ESG really and on the gold operations today. We will be able to cover the recycling obviously at the PGM Investor Day on the 23rd of this month.
So following up on the COVID question from Steve Shepherd, there's a question about whether we are thinking of making vaccination compulsory for our employees like Discovery is considering. Neil, perhaps you'd like to take that one?
Yes. Thanks, James. Hello, Steve. Absolutely, I think Discovery have done what is right And there is a balance and a debate around people that are resisting taking the vaccine, but we got to look after the company as well. You've just heard Richard talk about the cost of protocols and so on.
I think it's going to become a worldwide phenomenon that work in places where people have to congregate is only going to take place when everyone's been vaccinated. Rich, I know you've done some more work on this. Don't know if you want to add anything to that, but I think in as a principle from a company point of view, it is something we are seriously considering.
Thanks, Neil. We're almost at the end of the 10 minute Q and A session. Can I just check on the phone lines whether there are any questions at all?
No, sir. There are no questions on the lines.
I'm afraid we'll have to cut it short there. The next session will start in about 10 minutes, so on the hour. So we'll welcome you back at that point. Thank you. Welcome back, everybody, to the 2nd session on the Sibanye Stillwater Investor Day.
This will be focused largely on ESG, and I'd like to introduce the Senior Vice President and Head of Sustainability, Lauiso Ndlovu, who will carry you through this presentation. Thank you. Lauiso?
Thank you, James. As you have heard, sustainability for us at Sibanye Stillwater is not a function of compliance, but rather a strategic imperative to deliberately change the role our business plays in society, the role we also play in economies. We do this by sticking to the knitting and being minors and in supporting the growth of new economies in a manner designed to build legacies. The tenets, of course, of our sustainability strategy are guided by 3 areas: environmental stewardship, which is about our role in promoting sustainable use of resources and making sure that we transition towards the low carbon future. The second is social and impact outcomes, using our economic and societal influence to co create positive legacies and lastly, governance integrity, our commitment to engagement with all stakeholders.
But engagement with this ethical, which is undertaken with integrity, doing the right thing even when no one is looking. These three areas of consciousness remain relevant and integral to our business. Our work though over the year has been to mature these philosophies into application and focus on outcomes to understand how they are applied and to what end. This shift in maturity has led us to develop an integrated sustainability strategy, which in the end addresses short term actions, but these are short term actions required to achieve long term benefits: the benefits to society, benefits to the global economy, benefits to our stakeholders and strengthening our role as an extractive industry player. Our approach towards this has been to recognize interdependencies by creating value and acting on opportunities.
Thank you. Our broadening of application of these themes towards ESG has allowed us to not only address the discrete specialties of environmental, social and governance, but to provide clear and distinct paths towards economic benefit, the benefits, of course, that accrue as a result of our operations. In particular, due to the areas of our work in developing economies, in transitional economies, we have found an urgent need to not only build long term sustainable economic strength, but to link that economic strength to environmental sustainability, social sustainability and to embed governance in our work. Sustainable Economies enable participatory decision making, meaningful transitions towards making ESG valuable to our long term work. The strategy is divided into 4 distinct areas of focus.
Theme 1 is embedding human rights and ethics inside and out. This theme focuses us as Sibanye on aligning our behavior inside the organization and outside, but more importantly, it is a body of work that recognizes that there must be alignment between our internal commitment to how that behavior expresses itself outside. This body of work recognizes that the institution holds an ethical responsibility to both care and protect and support its stakeholders. You have recently heard about our joint responsibility towards employees in the safety and health. We discussed this a little bit more in looking at our diversity and accountability by focusing on women in mining.
And 2 is our focus on developing a climate change resilient business, color coded apple green on the slides. This directs our attention towards the strategic growth opportunities presented by ASG. The Chief Executive, Neil Frohnerman, has already alluded to the commitments into where we have taken advantage of opportunities. You will hear more later on from our colleagues Grant and Jevon on our road towards carbon neutral and also our commitment to the reduction of water intensity and demand, the proactive management of tailings and our view of the interconnectedness between biodiversity, rehabilitation and long term benefits to our areas of work. The 3rd theme we call entrenching long term economic sustainability, color coded tan on the presentation.
This focuses our work squarely on beginning with the end in mind. My colleague Themba will share with you our work on how we have used our assets of land, our economic and financial capability to co create, visualize modern towns, which are based on the ethos of sustainability, of an economy post mining, which is cocreated with the communities within which we work. And last but not least, the last theme focuses upon developing data driven and considered decision making. This one is color coded purple in the presentation. This really reflects our commitment to transparency, to rigorous reflection and testing and to ensuring that we use a science based approach towards our detail.
They are embedded into the business and do not act outside of the work that we do. Thank you. Moving on a little towards our Webroot in Mining and to how we reflect on inclusivity and diversity. I'll start off with a quote from our Chief Executive. Mr.
Frohnerman quotes, I am quoting on all leaders to champion this change to better our industry, our society. We must not forget the hardships women face every day, especially given the prevalence of gender based violence in South Africa. I urge everyone, men and women alike, not to be bystanders, but to report and stop gender based violence and harassment, both at work and at home. This area is one of the areas of which we are most proud. It is our work reflective of human rights insight.
It is our work to promote inclusivity and diversity. And it focuses specifically on making sure that we build a globally integrated and representative organization in mining. For 2 years, we've been included in the Bloomberg Gender Index. And again, we will submit ourselves to this index this year. It is a testament to our work that we've been included.
Our commitment to transforming this industry has currently resulted in 31% of new recruits in 2020 in the South African industry being women. This is a phenomenal achievement given the industry within which we work. It is still our target to have 30% female workforce by 2025. And this, in our view, would place us significantly above our peers in gender representation, in participation and in building a cadership of women who are professional and who are skilled. It supports us and our view of how we consider human rights inside out.
As mentioned to you before, we will now have an opportunity to move into the detail of the sustainability strategies, and I will pass you on to my colleague, Jevan Martin, to share with you part of our building of a climate resilient business, our road to carbon neutrality. Thank you, Jim.
Thanks very much, Luis. So yes, it gives me great pleasure to give an update on our carbon neutrality strategy. Sibanye Stillwater recognizes that climate change is the most pressing risk facing humanity and our planet today. It also presents numerous opportunities and risks to our business. In doing our part to mitigate climate change as well as achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Sibanye has made a commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2,040.
This commitment wasn't taken very lightly and was underpinned by extensive amounts of work that culminated in our energy and decarbonization strategy. This strategy is guided by our climate change and decarbonization position statements, but seeks to achieve the strategic objectives of reducing our overall greenhouse gas emissions, ensuring security of supply for operations, enhancing sustainability through reduced energy and carbon costs as well as partnering in the transition in a South African context. We've identified 5 implementation levers that will allow us to deliver on these strategic objectives. And without going into too much detail, just at a high level, the first one is really creating and enabling external and internal environment for decarbonization. The second is our traditional demand side energy management, where we focus on eliminating energy waste as well as improving energy efficiency.
Thirdly, we're focusing on sourcing low cost renewable energy renewable energy as part of our broader energy mix. We're also looking to leverage new technologies that are emerging in the market, predominantly looking at the likes of digital, storage and hydrogen technologies to ensure that we go 100% all the way through to carbon neutrality. Are also looking to take ownership of those emissions that incur upstream and downstream of our value chains, effectively our Scope 3 emissions and ensuring those 2 move through to net 0. And those hard to abate remittance emissions, we will also take accountability for those and ensure that we put in place offset strategies that will allow us to achieve a complete net zero. Looking at our emissions profile, SOVANIA has one inherent advantage in that the predominant operations are predominantly electrified.
And as a result, 88% of our operational emissions being scope 12 are electricity. As a result, renewable energy is going to feature very strongly as in order to reach carbon neutrality. Thanks. The execution of the strategy is already delivering very positive results. We've initially focused very strongly on the governance aspect of the strategy, ensuring that we have strong position statements in place to guide the strategy.
We've also adopted science based targets to guide our pathway and show adequate disclosure through CDP and CCFD aligned reporting. We've recently linked executive remuneration to decarbonization and conducted group wide initiatives to promote decarbonization through the operations. Last year, through energy efficiency opportunities, we were able to reduce our carbon emissions by 165,000 tons of CO2. We're also looking to displace all coal use within the group, starting with the replacement of the Beatrix boilers with electric deboilers. We also have our flagship Beatrix Methane Power Project that has reduced carbon emissions by 14,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum.
This is also registered as a UN Clean Development Mechanism project and 2 data has generated just short of 300,000 carbon credits. We're actively deploying digital twins across our operations to enhance our energy management. And we're also promoting the decarbonization of the spires as part of our broader value chain. Thank you. Looking forward, there's a number of other initiatives currently under development that will allow us to deliver on full carbon neutrality.
On the advocacy side, Sibanye Stillwater continues to play a significant advocacy role in the South African electricity supply industry where we engage extensively with government, the national regulators as well as the local utility, Eskom. We're looking to set Scope 3 emission targets to ensure that we take accountability for those emissions outside of value chain. As mentioned, we're looking to eliminate all coal use throughout the group. As part of our strategic energy sourcing plan, we plan to deploy extensive renewable energy, which I'll talk to shortly. Whilst within the U.
S. Operations, we are preparing a request for proposal to ensure that we secure renewable energy within our Montana operations. From a technology perspective, we're looking at the trialing of battery electric vehicles within our operations to displace the diesel tractors mobile machinery currently in use. We're also extensively analyzing different storage technologies in order to ensure that we can reach our goal of 100% renewable energy, including a pre feasibility study currently being conducted for the underground pumped hydro. We're also discussions with a leading global OEM in terms of incorporating battery energy storage systems as part of our renewable energy projects.
We're also progressing a carbon offset strategy, which will include the likes of nature based solutions, carbon trading and carbon capture storage. Our renewable energy projects are core to our decarbonization strategy as well as our ESG strategy. In 2020, in the beginning of this year, we undertook a comprehensive study to understand our energy requirements as well as our greenhouse gas footprint associated with each of our individual shops and processing plants, together with an understanding of South African regulatory environment, the renewable energy market and the technologies available within, the natural resources in terms of wind and solar available in South Africa as well as a good understanding of available sites across our operations as well as remote sites across South Africa, we are able to put this information together and develop a comprehensive portfolio of renewable energy projects approved for execution. This includes a 50 megawatts solar PV project for our gold operations with the site secured and permitted close to our CLIF operations. The process is currently underway to appoint the project developer that would execute this project on a PPA basis.
Basis. We are targeting to achieve commercial operation of this project in late 2023. Earlier this year, we also issued a request for information out to the market for up to 2 50 megawatts of wind to identify shovel ready projects that we could bring into operation as quickly as possible. We got an overwhelming response and we identified a number of projects across the Northern Western Eastern Cape. And based on the economics put forward and our understanding of the regulatory environment, we are now progressing a request for quotation for 2 50 megawatts of wind to secure these projects as part of our broader energy mix.
Based on the preliminary time lines, we anticipate we'll bring these projects online in 2024. Considering our expanded footprint across the Northwest province in South Africa from RPM, Corindale and Marikana, we've also identified our long life assets and their requisite energy requirements. These assets can support collectively 175 Megawatts of Solar PV projects. Earlier this year, we completed a feasibility study, which identified suitable sites, demonstrates the economics and the decarbonization potential of these projects, which have now been approved for execution. We have commenced the site crediting processes, including environmental authorizations and rezoning.
These projects are in terms of time lines are driven by these long lead items, but we plan to have these commercially operational by early 2025. Collectively, these projects have a capital cost in the order of about ZAR8 1,000,000,000 to be funded through off balance sheet PPA financing on a 15 to 20 basis. As a result, there's minimal capital outlay from a Sibanye perspective, and we gained access to electricity at a 20% 30% to 50% discount for solar and a 20% to 30% discount on wind from day 1 escalating its CPI. The projects would also generate further offsets from a carbon tax liability perspective. Collectively, the projects will enable 24% reduction in our Scope 2 emissions in 2025 and 100% by 2,038, including the likes of storage and balancing marketing mechanisms.
It also allows us to partially derisk our South African electricity supply and the cost thereof. As part of our strategy, we're looking to maximize the socioeconomic development impacts of these projects for our Infrastructure Impact program. We're also looking to link these projects with our closure projects to ensure that we can supply those communities and those social projects that we are developing with electricity beyond life of mine. Together, these projects will create multifaceted benefits across environmental and social. I'll now hand over to Grant Stewart, who will take us through the balance of the sustainability presentation.
Thanks very much, Jeff, and good day to everybody. Global warming is expected to reach 1.5 degrees between 2030 and 2,052 at current rates. These rising temperatures and accompanying hydro climatic phenomena, including changes in precipitation, will lead to disrupted water supplies and amplified flood and drought disasters, impacts that we felt across communities, ecosystems and economies. We and our communities have been exposed to these risks and we therefore recognize the need to invest in good water management and governance as those that don't will certainly suffer the most. Regional participation in integrated catchment management forums is an area where we, as industry, regulators, society, local and national government must align on a common purpose much like that of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal, which is the clean water and sanitation for all.
We as a vocal participant in these forums are demanding accountability and forcing a move away from just simple talk shops. If we are to make meaningful difference, we must hold each other accountable and there must be consequence. It cannot be that we can continue to accept local municipalities inability to main wastewater treatment works, the flow of uncontrolled sewage discharge into our river systems without consequence. Key to building a climate resilient business is an understanding of the complexities of the areas within which we operate. Our U.
S. And SA PG sorry, our U. S. And SA Gold operations are located in water rich areas with our U. S.
PGM operations operating in water scarce environments. 65% of the SA PGM operations is from external third parties and therefore aligned to a water security strategy to secure and sustain safe operations. A key driver of water security is self sufficiency and to reduce reliance on third party suppliers. Some of the initiatives that we have in place at the moment include water harvesting, unlocking large volumes of additional storage capacity through the desilting of dams and the utilization of pits. The integration of Marikana's water balance into the SA PGM footprint has introduced a great deal of flexibility and the ability to marry east with west, the water rich areas and the water poor areas within that footprint.
A focus on tailings and density management and control with a target of 1.6 tons per cube by 2025 is also a key focus. And then sustainable use of boreholes and graywater from wastewater treatment works. These initiatives will serve to reduce the overall reliance on the integrated Bal River system, and our target is by 25% in 2025. Water use management at the gold operations in the water rich areas, as I alluded to earlier, are resilient I'm sorry, are reliant on external supplies for some 30% of the water requirements yet discharge far in excess of those requirements, making independence a realistic achievement. Esalwine and Cook are already water independent.
The Trufontein operations, which currently consume 22,000,000 liters of water a day with an existing 20,000,000 liter per day treatment capacity or facility, bodes it well to become water independent completely by the back end of this year. The first phase of Clueck to achieve 33% independence is also well advanced with a plant likely to be commissioned also by the end of this year. Another exciting initiative is a study on our wastewater treatment works across our various footprints. Not only is this a source of gray water supporting our water independence and security drives, but it also is a subject of closure plans supporting the infrastructure for impact philosophy and development of our local communities post mining. As part of our drive to water security and independence and responsible water management, we have climbed on board and have very clear targets in place and support transparent disclosure.
And that's why this year, we reported for the first time on our water CDP. Thank you. We recognize the importance of our role in the protection and preservation of all life as part of our broader ESG strategy. This is also highlighted in our ESG policy available on our website. Our aim is to play a positive role in the management of our biodiversity,
not only in the areas in which we operate, but also within the regions within
which we operate through catchment management forums, as I alluded to before, and the Good Neighbors agreement in the U. S. At our U. S. Operations, as part of our Good Neighbors Agreement, we have commitments in place and play an active role in monitoring the trout in the Stillwater River as well as the conservation efforts to monitor populations of the Beghorn sheep.
Biodiversity, like water conservation and water demand management, plays a critical role in mitigating the risks of climate change and supports our focus in building a climate resilient business. Our wetlands and ecosystems are the lifeblood of the catchments within which we operate. The fauna and the flora within the wetlands play a critical role in water quality control through the removal of heavy metals and also play a role in pollutant trapping. They also play an important role in reducing erosion, the impacts of floods and droughts and the preservation of fertile soils, which are important for our agri development and support sustainable post mining socioeconomic development. The use of these natural systems and our future costs and focus on expanding the use of artificial wetlands improve our engineering solutions and reduce our operational costs as responsible miners.
Whilst biodiversity is a relatively new and emergent theme, we believe we are well positioned to drive ecosystem resilience by targeting a net gain in biodiversity for existing operations and no net loss for new projects. As a member of the ICMM and an active participant of the Biodiversity Working Group, we have set targets to have scientifically based plans that embody the mitigation hierarchy for all catchments supporting a net gain for these existing operations. We have partnered with the Endangered Wildlife Trust as part of the National Business and Biodiversity Network and had a hand in the development of the biological diversity protocol. We will be one of the first companies to report against this protocol internationally. Disclosure, as I've mentioned before, is a principle that underscores and embeds our commitment to ESG.
Thanks. We have matured our approach to the way we manage waste on our footprints. Our waste management initiatives are dependent on data integrity and the collection of meaningful data at asset level. We are committed to reducing non mineral waste to landfill as well as developing circular economies that benefit local through job creation and sustainable secondary industries. High levels of methane gas and carbon dioxide are generated by waste decomposition.
Methane is 84x more effective at absorbing the sun's heat than carbon dioxide, making it one of the most powerful and potent greenhouse gases and as a huge contributor to climate change. Our management focus to reduce waste to landfall is further outlined in the published waste management position paper that demonstrates how we plan to play a role in fighting climate change, again, published on our website. The production of calcium sulfide at both our U. S. And Marikana operations is an initiative where we are looking to convert the calcium sulfide into commercial gypsum and thereby avoid 4,000 tonnes per month of hazardous waste to landfill, which is both a significant cost at both our U.
S. And SA PGM operations. Our U. S. Metallurgical complex continues research into drying and pelletizing gypsum into cement additives whilst our SA PDGM operations are looking into commercial gypsum into the cement and board industry.
Other examples of circular waste economies include the generation of compost from sewage sludge. In 2020, we generated 17.6 tons of compost, anticipated to an increase and we anticipate an increase of 300 tons once these composters are fully scaled and operational. We also have diverted some 2,200 tons per month of liquid hazardous waste to landfill for recovery of PGMs and in so doing made our precious metals refinery some 50% independent of potable water supply. We also have a focus on the reduction of mineral waste to tailings, where our acquisition with DRD Gold is anticipated to reclaim and rehabilitate vast tracts of land and these typically encumbered through the decade old tailings storage facilities. We've also progressed a number of other opportunities, including the deposition of our tailings into old pits for backfill and reducing closure liabilities.
Our U. S. East Boulder mine targets, for example, 55% of tailings to backfill from 48% in 2020. Local job opportunities where local partnerships are being created to utilize the waste rock for pit closure is also an example of how we demonstrate socioeconomic closure and development. The Middle Flay pits recently closed was a community driven and led initiative executed on the executed to rid ourselves of the social ills, more specifically in the hot rainy conditions where young children like to get and treat and like to play in and around those bits.
Thanks. When Jevon spoke earlier, he articulated how we are going to decarbonize as part of our commitment to carbon neutral by 2,040. I outlined in the slide before our plans to minimize non mineral waste to land for and the impact that the decomposing waste has in respect of its contribution to global warming. Just as important in our fight for climate change is against air quality management. Whilst carbon dioxide is recognized as the largest contributor to climate change, a comprehensive approach to tackling climate change can't simply just be on decarbonization.
Other gases like sulfur dioxide, as I mentioned in my previous slides, must also be a focus. Whilst we are proud of the levels of the SO2 emissions emanating from facilities in the U. S. And our SA PGIM operations, we are a leading and benchmark leading the benchmark in the peer group when it comes to the U. S.
Operations. This aligned to the strategic objectives of continuous improvement in technology deployment to reduce emissions further below the regulatory compliance levels is a key objective. As such, we have set clear targets with our overall SO2 capturing and cleaning efficiency to be 90% by 2027 and 99% by 2,030 from a base of 80% in 2020 at our SA PGM operations. Another key dimension on air quality management is, of course, the impact of air quality on our local communities. Dust mitigation measures include the implementation of netting, chemical dust suppressions and planting of tamarisk to ensure that the dust emanating from tailings dams and roads does not impact our local communities who live in and around those footprints of tailings dams and the roads that we've just spoken about.
Endeavor to monitor and proactively manage these dust levels through careful bucket dust bucket placements. The group environmental focus is twofold, a crusade against global warming and supporting the development of climate resilient business. Our tailings storage facilities remain vulnerable in the eyes of climate change unless stringent standards and protocols are enforced. Ross Cooper, our Vice President, Tailings Engineer is the custodian of all things tailings. Ross, over to you.
Thank you, Grant, and good afternoon, everybody. Sibanye's acquisitions included the associated active and dormant tailings facilities. Historically, South African facilities were managed in accordance with related legislation, in particular, SENS 10286 code of practice for mine residue deposits. All South African tailings facilities are constructed in the upstream direction. Facilities in the United States are managed according to the state of Montana regulations.
All facilities are constructed as line impoundments with engineered waste rock embankments. In line with our commitment to 0 harm and as a member of the ICMM, we have committed to manage our tailings facilities in accordance with the global industry standard for tailings management. These commitments include providing public disclosures related to the safety of our tailings facilities, which are available on our website and will be developed further as we continue our journey to full compliance. In terms of governance requirements, we've appointed our Chief Technical Officer in the position of accountable executive as responsible for the C suite individual responsible for the safe management of our tailings storage facilities and appointed myself with 28 years' experience in the tailings industry as the group's Vice President for Tailings Engineering, responsible to the accountable executive. In terms of independent governance, we have engineers of records appointed for all of our operations and have established an independent tailings review board comprised of 3 internationally renowned tailings specialists for our South African operations.
The ITB has reviewed our group tailings management system and are currently busy with the review of selected Golden operations. And in October, we'll undertake a review of selected PGM operations. An independent review panel has been in place in the United States for a number of years. To coordinate efforts across the group, we established a tailings working group chaired by myself and comprised of senior managers within the operations. The working group developed the group tailings management system and we remain responsible for the implementation of the system across the operations.
Historic practices in South Africa resulted in large reliance of technical and operational support from external parties such as our engineers of record. An internal tailings course has been developed and presented to raise competence within our operations and support divisions as part of our drive to retain ownership of the management of our tailings facilities. To ensure compliance with the global standard within the committed deadlines, formal monthly audits have been initiated at operation level with the identification of actions required to resolve any nonconformances. These audits and actions are consolidated and managed centrally using a digitalized platform. Progress against compliance is reported to the accountable executive on a monthly basis.
Key initiatives we are currently undertaking to elevate settings management include implementation of the K2 flight tailings management solution. This includes satellite information monitoring and it's placed across the group. The solution serves to consolidate tailings facility performance parameters as well as environmental and social data to enable proactive risk management. We're currently undertaking detailed stability assessments based on specialized in situ and laboratory testing to evaluate the geotechnical status of our facilities as well as to update the consequence classifications utilizing the global standard classification matrix. Thank you.
I now hand over to Mr. Neil Preturis, the Chief Executive of DoD Gold.
Thank you, Ross. Yes, so we're proud to be included in this presentation and also pleased by the way in which we've been portrayed in the presentation. DoD embrace sustainable development as its primary consideration in the allocation of resources and capital more than a decade ago and has become as a consequence a technology based mechanized operator for whom its environmental and social dividends are as important as its financial dividends. Our environmental value add lies in rolling back the environmental legacy of mining by removing and retreating mine waste and restoring land in the process. We've cleaned up in this way just over 900 hectares of land in and around the Johannesburg area, which is an area roughly 16 times the size of the Johannesburg Zoo or 2.5 times the size of Central Park, New York.
Closely related to this and in fact overlapping in value contribution is the social value to affected communities of no longer having to live next to a mine dump. Then in instances where a waste facility is permanent, we limit the nuisance of dust to surrounding communities by cladding and vegetating the surface areas of the dump. And you can see the picture on the slide what that vegetation looks like and it comes at a price. Last year alone, we spent just over ZAR110 1,000,000 on vegetation and cladding. We also keep all the water in and on these facilities in a closed circuit for reuse.
And in fact, most of the water that we use in our process is gray water. 2 other important social investments we make are aimed at poverty alleviation and youth education. In terms of the former, more than 4,500 families have taken the first steps out of abject poverty and breaking the cycle of dependency through our broad based livelihood program. And in terms of the latter, our youth education, teachers and the full time employee of DRD Gold offer extra classes in Math, Science and Accountancy at 8 high schools in our area of influence with remarkable results, I must add. We are primarily a business though and entrusted with the capital of our shareholders, we expect a return.
And in this regard, we continue to offer exposure to the gold price by being unhedged and we remain very serious about our dividend yield, the 14 years in a row of paying dividends and we're pleased that the total pay to Sibanye Stillwater to date has been just over ZAR0.5 billion. A new theme to our investment proposition is growth. And to the next slide that explains this, we are explicitly aligning ourselves with the broader strategy of Sibanye Stillwater and building a portfolio of green metals. Wherever Sibanye Stillwater goes in this regard, there is likely to be mine waste or stockpile as we prefer to call it. See on this slide how tailings retreatment features side by side with recycling uranium as part of a broader strategy and we're very pleased to be taking up this space in the group.
We find the prospect of producing the metals used in the generation and storage of green energy by retreating mine waste or through environmental cleanup very appealing, especially if recycled water and PV also come into play. Who would have thought that by rehabilitating mine dumps, one could be delivering into the demands and requirements of the green economy. And we're very keen and also excited to play a role in that regard. And with that, I hand you over to Thembo and Korsy to talk about trenching socioeconomic sustainability. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Neil. Our history of extractive industry in most regions has unfortunately brought about high levels of distrust among stakeholders. This is mostly prominent in South Africa with its unique past. This creates context for our operating in South Africa and our socioeconomic environmental impacts. We are therefore inspired by intent to become a trusted economic partner in nation building and to doorstep communities where we operate.
This we intend to do playing a 3 pronged role, 1 being a catalyst in the economy, secondly being a participant and thirdly, as a patron. And these are going to happen at various stages of our maturity curve of our operations and they'll be timed. However, some of the actions are brought forward by the changing environmental context wherein we find ourselves. Our aim is to embed stakeholder relationships that are effective and at trust base. We will therefore take lessons from the best practice case study of our Good Dayba Agreement principles from our U.
S. Operations, whereby we create cooperative models with stakeholders where we operate across regions and across the districts. Secondly, we will therefore strive to create modern mining towns, ensure that we operate within a sustainable environment conscience, work to empower the people that we work with, particularly local government and rational authorities. And then lastly, ensure that we facilitate and catalyze economic growth where we operate. Now Grant has spoken about strengthening the flows of value from our activities in the economy.
And this we will do operating and acting with the end in mind. So along our life cycle of our operations, we'll find ourselves intervening firstly via our social and labor plans, ensuring that the social and labor plans deliver improvements and a positive impact in our social asset base. The second one will leverage our land for high impact projects and ensure that where we operate, we do not only leave the previous legacy of the mining industry. However, we leverage our land to integrated special development working with the various stakeholders. We will also strive build capable institutions such as the traditional authorities and leverage our economic activities to empower local SMEs.
We also are cognizant of the housing and living standards of our employees and we will strive for partnerships, which we are doing in South Africa already with human settlements and the housing development agencies to catalyze into greater special developments. For example, the project we are doing in Marikana Extension 13 in our SA PGM as well as the proposed township in West Rand, which is to commence extension 4. We also have got various agricultural initiatives, which we believe that will leverage and unlock parallel economies such that when we leave the mining operations, we don't leave ghost towns as at hand and in the past in South Africa. This we believe will strengthen our reputation for effective stakeholder engagement, tangible socioeconomic development, which impacts sustainable livelihoods beyond the life of mine. Thank you.
Moving on, we're focusing on enhancing sustainability through economic, environmental and social transformation. As you know, social transformation is very critical in our industry as I have just spoken about the legacy of the mining industry, particularly in South Africa, but I think it's prevalent in most regions where extracted industry happens. We'll leverage our assets to ensure that we boost job creation. We also will operate within our social performance model with a social performance toolkit that keeps us honest within our compliance, firstly, in the start of chem context, but also keeping up to standard with the voluntary codes of Well Gold Council, ICMM, GFS as well as the King Code 4 of Governance in South Africa within that perspective. Louisa spoke earlier on about embedding human rights inside out.
We do believe that the mining industry, firstly, needs to acknowledge its past work towards improving lives as it is our imperative and purpose, but also create sustainable livelihoods that are going to last beyond the life of mine. This will do by delivering tangible value within our operating context, but also ensuring that we leave R0.20 of every rand spent in the districts where we operate, which will ensure that those districts thrive beyond the life of mine. For example, we will use our infrastructure to create socioeconomic development where we operate and we will talk later on about the Bokomsobaruna project that we are doing in the West Beds. However, that will create a benchmark for how we leave post mining economies going forward. We will do this in collaboration with our stakeholders and ensuring that also our stakeholders are heard and listened to and we implement grievance and compliance procedures that are aligned to regional and international best practices.
Thanks. Our mining has the power to play a critical role in society to close the inequality gaps. This we will do through various flows of value, which we will create for our stakeholders. So we do believe that we have the power to drive socioeconomic transformation and this value will be demonstrated via our shared value ethos. As you know that our shared value is about creating superior value for all our stakeholders, which is a major shift from pure shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism.
This slide demonstrates the value that we have created since the founding of Sibanye in 2013 up until 2022. Key numbers as highlights, revenue has grown by almost 5 60%. Salaries and benefits have grown by about 2 90%. And our socioeconomic development impact initiatives have grown by 90%. We do not only stop there, we also believe that our presence in the economy impacts the skills base for firstly, the mining industry, but secondly, the entire value chain across the mining industry.
We also invest in socioeconomic development and CSI, again, operating with the end in mind, ensuring that we also build portable skills for communities so that they can have meaningful participation in the economy where we operate. Lastly, we also paid taxes and royalties to the tune of $6,500,000,000 As seen in South Africa this year, this has come in handy for treasury as the mining industry collectively has enabled some social relief fund. As we work with the end in mind, we believe that we can do more as a trusted stakeholder and social and economic partner, and this will be well demonstrated by interventions of business during the COVID pandemic last year as well as within the recent unrest events in South Africa as we rebuild the economy, our business is starting to play a prominent role. We believe that this should be the ethos that embraces all the stakeholders in South Africa towards lasting socioeconomic impact. Beyond this, we also are mindful of leveraging our supply chain for local economic growth and ensuring that we use our SLP spend to optimize service delivery and leverage value flows through the various community trust that we hold for meaningful and lasting social impacts.
Thanks. As we all know, South Africa has had the unfortunate events of Marikana, which led to loss of life. We were not there in 2012 when the Marikana tragedy happened, but we believe that it was something that should not be associated with industry. It is wrong. It has to be condemned with all the content it deserves.
Going forward, we believe that this creates an opportunity for stakeholders to forge a new path and work together. So we have launched a program that is called American Renewal, supported by the Archbishop Thabo Mokuba of Cape Town as the patron. We believe that this is a structured program that calls for all stakeholders to come together to achieve an African concept of circles of conversation, which we will call the Latimer engagement process effectively calling for all stakeholders to come together and shape the new legacy of Marikana. When we took over in Marikana, we made commitment to do 4 things. One was having spoken to all the widows, we've acknowledged their pain.
We have made certain commitments around finding a restitution and closure for them. This was about ensuring that they all have got the houses. We also noted that the compensation from government had only gone to the 34 widows that whose husbands died at the hands of the state and some people that got injured and some others that got wrongfully arrested. There are 10 widows that have not found closure and restitution purely because the various cases are at various stages and the wheels of justice are grinding slowly. We have committed to support the pursuit of justice for these 10 widows and their families and that we will do working together with like minded institutions, NGOs and the legal fraternity.
We also have set out a 16,008 Memorial Trust, which we had found in place at the time that we took over at Marigana. We've enhanced that. We've ensured that it is fully endowed to see through all 141 beneficiaries until they finish our education level as they wish. I think the flagship star of that trust has been Daimman Doyawa, who this year will be graduating with his PhD in agriculture. And we also have got 10 other graduates that have come through the system.
We also have made a commitment to support the Babu Bamukhale in 3 ways. One is we believe in line with the sustainable development goals in creating functional institutions and we will support capacity building for Wapua Mokale to ensure that they act and conduct themselves like a professional institution and then traditional authority. As you some of you would know, Lonmin had actually gotten into an arrangement where certain business opportunities were given to Babu Bamukhale, and we had found that there was a lot of maladministration in some of those businesses with the flow of funds that was misused and has disappeared. We also know about the famous D account with €460 odd,000,000 have gone missing. We have committed to hire a forensic company that will do a forensic audit to an extent that some of the monies are recoverable.
We will recover those monies and some of the monies that are not recoverable, we will ensure that the institutions of justice go after those people that maladministered those businesses. We also have a leg of social restoration, which is about creating social programs that bring about change, visible change in that community. I think one of those flagship projects is the Green Project where we've done subsistence agricultural initiatives that have not only assisted in alleviating poverty and hunger in the area, but has got some income generating capacity. We also have found that there's been lots of gender based violence and we've launched a gender equality program, which has got various facets such as access to institutions for support and psycho emotional support, as well as ensuring that the victims find the justice and closure that they require. Our SLP project are supposed to be an add on to functional municipalities with basic services.
So we will focus on social infrastructure. We are mindful that if we want to make a lasting legacy, some of the add on projects would have to be over and above SLP to make sure that basic services and basic amenities are taken care of are taken care of. And we are committing at least R100 $1,000,000 this year over and above our SLP to deal with some of those social infrastructure and social amenity projects. And lastly, we believe that the recognition of the KOPI where the Marikana tragedy come massacre happened needs to bring closure and healing and reconciliation to all participants. So we've called all participants to get into the LYTHIMA process to ensure that we do the 3 steps of honor, engage and create, where we will create a social economic path to create to bring about closure around the Gobi and create a Gobi memorial and ensure that as we go forward, we move forward together and ensure that the legacy of Marikana never ever repeats ourselves in this industry and under our watch.
This leg will also bring up our district development model participation, which is a stakeholder collaborative process that will focus on agriculture, industrialization. As we reduce our footprint, we will also leverage our assets to support agricultural initiatives, the value chain, the logistics hub in Malikana and surrounding areas. And lastly, we'll develop sustainable enterprise and supplier development initiatives for the local SMMEs. Tier 2 leveraging our assets for social closure is the flagship program, which we call the become sobaruna, which is about 3 phases. 1 is about program mobilization, which is where we are today.
There's medium term impact and there's long term value creation. This is a partnership between Sylvania Stillwater, Far West Rand Dramatic Association with strategic partners being the Gauteng Province, West Rand Development Agency and the program managers, which are Talma, CDH and Zuntari. The critical success factors of this program are about us beginning with the end in mind and changing long term economic sustainability and integrating post mining economies for sustainabilities. We believe that in doing this, we will create large scale catalytic development with 30,000 hectares of land that both Sibanye and Forest Land, Government, Nuclear and Water Associations are contributing. This will facilitate entry for other industries.
It will facilitate agroindustrial and commercial value chain, and it will develop an overarching post mining closure blueprint for mining areas where we operate. The benefits of this project, just talking about key numbers, at medium term and long term development, we'll create about 18,000 potential new jobs, which will be a true we will develop into full scale. We believe that it has potential to bring in about ZAR1 1,000,000,000 wage bill, ZAR7.6 billion potential CapEx in various activities from bioenergy to animal husbandry and integrated animal farming value chain. We also believe that this project will be an value adding partner for ultimate success if all partners come together. So effectively call about all like minded institutions like direct investment from developmental agencies as well as the banking industry.
And some conversations are at advanced stages with potential partners for funding. Sibanye Stilota has to date put in seed funding of close to about ZAR20 1,000,000 and also some partners such as the AFDB have gotten on board with potential funding. And this give us a good usage of our land as we plan for post mining economy. I thank you, and I'm going to close here and hand over to Loyce. So thanks.
Thank you, Themba. We've discussed in detail our commitment to sustainability through our portfolio of programs. It is the consolidation of all of these actions that will provide us with the greatest value and provide benefit directly for all of our stakeholders. The development of the environmental, the social and the governance outcomes are economically impactful. These design principles have been essential in our drive towards moving towards sustainability rather than the discrete actions of environment only, social only and governance only.
Our commitment in sustainability is, of course, supported by robust protocols and an openness to setting significantly higher standards of rigor and accountability for ourselves. Our membership of ICMM is an example of this. We implement the International Council on Mining and Metals Principles as a condition of membership, but also as a mechanism to lift significantly our work. ACMM has a global membership of 28 minuteing and metals companies and 28 regional commodity organizations 38, apologies, regional commodity organizations. What it has allowed us to do is to undertake a deep introspection of our work and also to ensure that with the introspection comes an ability to obtain independent external assurance, in line with the global reporting initiatives, the GRI and other principles.
This commitment is applied across the groups. As a result of our membership of ICMM and our commitment to other standards thank you, Henrike we have been awarded a CDP rating of A on our climate change disclosure. In addition to this, we have this year voluntarily submitted ourselves to responding to the water CDP. For those of you that are aware of the CDP project and program know that the level of disclosure that is required by bodies such as the CDP is extensive and not only is it about reporting, but it is about to what extent has there been intrinsic understanding of the impact of the work we have undertaken. We believe that both on climate change and on water, we have progressed greatly.
We align and are a member of the United Nations Global Accelerator Program and of course, include our commitment to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The Global Accelerator program is aimed at activating the inclusion of STGs into business priorities. And for us, our commitment has been significant. The presentation given earlier on, on our support of women in mining and to what extent we've been able to support diversity and inclusion as an example of how we've been able to lift those SDGs. We are a constituent of the FTSE Good Index Series.
The FTSE, of course, is aligned to the Financial Times Stock Exchange Russell, the FTSE Russell. And we confirm and it confirms that Sibanye Stillwater has been independently assessed according to the FTSE good criteria. And of course, we've satisfied the requirements to become a constituent of the good index series. The importance of accolades is really to show and to evidence our commitment towards transparency, towards self reflection and towards growth. We understand and we are committed towards a growth mindset, but that growth is underpinned by meaningful impact in respect of our work.
The task force for climate and financial related disclosures, for example, has been in discussion since 2018 in the market with application and confirmed requirements only coming through this year. As of 2018, we had already included the outcomes in the recommendations coming out of TCFD. Those recommendations drove our understanding of our responsibility on the environmental impact and outcomes. So they've already been included within our work. What it remains for us to do is to commit to a time line within which we will be fully reflected of reflective of TCFD commitments.
We have now matured that work, and we believe that by H1 2022, we will have been fully committed and aligned. Our sustainability maturity has been about our commitment to a process that improves and to a process that achieves meaningful outcomes for all of our stakeholders. And I'll pass you back to our Chief Executive, Mr. Neil Frohnemann, to conclude. Thank you.
Thank you, Luisa. And I'm sure you would all agree with me that the people aspects have come through very clearly in today's delivery. As I said, I was excited to see the competence, the professionalism and the deep depth that we've got in our organization. So let me try and conclude without summarizing everything that was said. So as I said right at the beginning, ESG is I think pretty well understood today in terms of the components that make up ESG, environmental, social and governance.
We've really moved forward to develop a sustainability strategy. And in fact, the value creation strategy that is derived from that in terms of the growth in the company and that is really designing and building a climate resilient a climate change resilient business. So you can see how central sustainability has become to our business. So any suggestion that the mining industry is paying lip service to ESG, I think is completely wrong. I know all our peers are putting in a lot of hard work to doing the right thing in terms of ESG.
I would like to think that we have presented a class leading transition building on ESG to sustainability. So to me that is one of the key highlights that I hope you all saw from today's presentation. As I said, climate change resilience as an anchor is critical and no longer is M and A or value creation driven as a separate strategy. It is driven as part of our sustainability strategy. Our operations have clear roads to carbon neutrality that was well developed and presented in detail by Jevan.
And I think you can see our organization is morphing into a resilient business when it comes down to climate change and our green metals strategy. In terms of water and airborne pollutants, we continue to show good progress. Of course, we haven't arrived. I don't think we would will ever arrive in the metrics of environmental health and safety. That is a long journey of continuous improvements, but we have clear metrics, our targets are clear and we've displayed a track record of delivery and I believe Grant displayed that extremely well.
In terms of social compacting, that remains our aim. Not all our stakeholders are there. We've made significant progress. We've stepped up to the plate at Morikana and I think you saw good examples of that. And it's one of the competencies and qualifications that I think allow us to operate in the environment in South Africa and elsewhere in the world.
It's not just South Africa, but South Africa is a pretty tough environment in terms of social compacting. But you can see we've taken that on and we're right at the front end of that and stakeholder inclusivity is right at the core, right from our ethos, our tree. We recognize that superior value creation for all stakeholders is an absolute necessity. And of course, we promote stakeholder capitalism and we are not shy of saying a business needs to be profitable if that is going to be delivered on. We building on that point, the purposeful injection of economic into social and environmental balances the portfolio, I have made it public.
We are not social partners. We are economic partners. We have very high social ideals, but we are economic partners that interface with our social partners and provide sustainability because of our economic contribution. And we must not forget that is the primary role of business. We are committed to increasing transparency around ESG issues.
And as one of our Board members said, it's about radical transparency. It's tough. It is very tough, but we have certainly have no hidden agendas. And we will continue to build on providing increasing transparency through our commitments to CDP declarations, our commitment to TCFD and of course, I did in one of my slides highlight our deeper governance and accountability. Ultimately, the climate change resilient business has resulted in a green energy metal sigmoid curve, which I believe is class leading in terms of the combination of metals, the combination of recycling, the combination of tailings retreatment.
And as we build that portfolio, I believe we will be very well positioned as we move into the 2030s with our base of PGMs morphing into the hydrogen economy. So, we're well positioned. We're not scratching for ideas in terms of building climate change resilient business. So with that, thank you very much. And we will now move into Q and A.
And of course, I want to make sure that you all know there's another set of Investor Days on the 23rd September. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Neil. We'll proceed with Q and A. The next set of question and answers. First one is from Bruce Williamson at Integral Asset Management for Loyiso. This applies to all countries, but concerning SA in particular, have you had any discussions with government to ensure that regulations and policy does not prevent you from achieving your targeted outcomes?
Well, yourself?
Thank you for that question, Bruce. Much appreciated. I think you would appreciate that as Sibanye, we have really taken a proactive approach towards engagement on both regulatory matters and policy matters around our industry. I'm assuming that when you're talking about regulations in this regard, you're talking about the Scope 3 emissions around energy generation. And yes, we have.
You would note that the recent agreement by the minister on allowing organizations to generate up to 100 megawatt, I think is an example of where we have actively engaged. Of course, we didn't do that alone. We did that with industry. But we've always taken a view that where we believe there is something to be done and where the regulations and the policy framework doesn't allow you to do what's correct, we will always engage with a view to finding a positive outcome for all. So yes, we have engaged.
In the South African framework, your question was also, is it only specifically about South Africa? Have we made the same engagements in the U. S? We take that approach across all of our areas of operation. But to your view around whether there's limitations, for example, in the U.
S, you would know that the U. S. And the Biden administration have recently made a commitment to moving across to solar generated energy by 2,000 and 50, which, of course, has an impact upon our commitments in the Montana area to move across to renewable energy. So have we experienced challenges? We don't think of them as challenges.
We think of them as opportunities to find a better way to do things.
Thanks, Louisa. The next question is from Chris Nicholson regarding carbon neutrality. So the question I think I'll direct to Jevon, if I can. Why do you target carbon neutrality rather than net 0? The cynic in me says that based on existing reserve lives, many of your SA operations will either be closed or significantly depleted by 2,040.
So is being carbon neutral really that ambitious? Jevan, could you deal with that one, please?
Thanks, James, and happy to jump in here. 2, some of the depletion of our emissions will result from natural mine closures, but we've been very cheat the system, but it's really around standards and common definitions available in the market. So carbon neutrality and net 0 are used interchangeably by the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Net carbon neutrality is defined in terms of past 2,060. But however, there's no formal framework or standard in terms of net 0 yet.
There isn't one under development by these science based target initiative that's likely going to come out at COP26, and we are very aware of what that's likely going to include. And we will consider adopting that formal standard around net 0 when it's published. However, what we will commit to doing is ensuring that our carbon emissions pathway declines with the pathway required by science and to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre industrial times. What we will continue to also do is adopt science based targets. So in that respect, we really do have a science based target initiative approved target for 2025.
And then in terms of the other requirements around net 0 is the use of offsets. We only intend to use offsets to really neutralize our remnant hard to abate emissions, not necessarily to substitute our emission decline. So we're very cognizant of the definitions and the differences between them and we will consider the adoption of the standard once it's published. But we thought it'd be premature to do that at the moment considering that it's not publicly available yet.
Thanks, Jevin. That's a very interesting response. The next 2 probably directed to Neil, I think, at a higher level. Following the recent announcement from the ANC government in South Africa regarding the 100 Megawatt cap, what actual progress has been made in enabling Sibanye to proceed with its long standing plans to build renewable generation capacity. Is there some government action to match the talk?
Or has Sibanye encountered further bureaucratic obstacles?
Yes. Thanks, Chris. And I'm going to ask Jevan to come in on this one as well. Jevan is the Chairman of the Energy Intensive User Group, so well positioned to discuss it in more detail. But certainly, as I said in the H1 presentation, you will remove 3 to 6 months off the current timeline of projects.
Probably more importantly, it reduces the risk and therefore you can use a slightly lower discount factor in terms of your commercial assessment. I think the other thing is there is commitment. There is no doubt I sat in recently a BUSA and a BLSA engagement and there is no doubt that the government is trying very hard to remove obstacles and even try and implement some reforms. So absolutely no doubt there. It's still a difficult environment.
And Jevan, perhaps you can pick it up there.
Thanks, Sylvia. Happy to jump in here. Yes, I think we can view the lifting of the generation license threshold as very positive. It's indicative of where government's mindset is. It's open to private power generation in a South African context.
Behind the scenes, there is movement in terms of updating the national wheeling framework. Eskom is unbundling and establishing the independent transmission and system market operator, which will really open the markets. We're also receiving a lot more support from Eskom through engagements with the executives and even at a ground level and their support of our renewable energy projects. Where we have engaged further with governments is around the likes of updating of the integrated resource plan on a more regular basis, streamlining of government processes and then also just capacitating the likes of NUSA and Eskom to process the number of new private power generation projects that are going to go into the pipeline very soon.
Thanks. The next show are similar, so I'll just read them together. Why build a solar project with a 20 year PPA when none of your gold assets have 20 year life of mine? And what happens to these power plants post mine closure? And then secondly, if all SA miners increasingly move off the Eskom grid, will this not guarantee the collapse of Eskom?
Maybe if we can deal with those two questions first, please.
Okay. Let me say that, first of all, I've been in the industry a long time and when you see a life of mine of 13 years, it's probably not going to be 13 years. But be that as it may, let's park that. That's the underground life of mine. So you need to consider the fact that the Far West Rand Gold Tailings Retreatment business is going to be going a long time thereafter.
So essentially DRD will benefit from that plant. But of course, there's wheeling and I think that's becoming far more acceptable to the powers that be. And I also want to say there's something else. I think that in the national interest, we should see this as a contribution to the future power constraints or the current power constraints, I should say. In terms of the collapse of Eskom, look, I don't think that every company is trying to become independent of Eskom.
But as I've said publicly before, if Eskom doesn't clean up its act irrespective of power shortages or power prices, those that manufacture products that get used in the rest of the world will not be able to sell those products. And Andre de Reuter has taken that very clearly on board against what is clearly very stiff opposition from the minister, but correctly so. We have to clean up our act. And I think we are not going to compromise our company with dirty energy, which doesn't allow us to prosper and have sustainability in terms of this new very green environment. But the intention is not to see Eskom collapse.
I think the restructuring of Eskom will go a long way to ensuring that doesn't happen. Again, let me just see, Jevan, if you've got anything to add to that.
Yes, Neil, just two things to quickly add there. I think beyond life of mine, we'd also look to use these projects to the benefit of the communities and our social development projects. So we're looking at the synergies in that respect. And then secondly, just in terms of the Eskom question, we are engaging with Eskom directly with Andre Dureta and his executive team as part of the industry looking at how do we ensure Escom sustainability as a partner beyond or whilst we implement these large scale projects. So we're in discussions with them to ensure their sustainability, ensure that we have the right mix of technologies such that they can control the grid.
So that type of planning is going on in the background already.
While we're on the topic, I'll just ask the last two questions, and then I'm afraid we'll have to take a break for now. I'll answer or I'll ask the rest of the questions at the end of the next session. So the first one from Chris Nicholson is what is the payback or breakeven in years on the solar and wind PPAs? Given that we talk about we will be this electricity will be at a discount to forecast Eskom tariffs, what time period does the forecast relate to? And then the question from Leroy Mguni.
Again, the challenge with renewable energy seems to be the cost of storage capacity. Have you considered fuel cell power stacks where you produce hydrogen from the renewable energy as a way to reduce your reliance on Eskom Power when wind or solar energy is not available?
James, it looks like we might have lost Neil there. I see Neil's but I'm happy to jump in here.
Nothing so okay, sorry.
So just in terms of payback, we're executing the projects on a PPA basis. So we'll appoint project developers to finance, build, own and operate and later transfer these projects back to us. So in terms of capital outlay, there's limited capital outlay on our part. We do need to sign up to a a long term offtake agreement in order to facilitate the project. But from day 1 of operation of these plants, we get electricity at a discount to our grid supplier.
And that then allows us to generate returns from day 1 without having to expend that capital. Just in terms of the second question related to storage. We have assessed a multitude of different storage technologies from battery energy storage systems to hydro to gravity, etcetera. And what we found is the most advanced technologies are still slightly capital restrictive in terms of we're seeing a decline in capital, but it's not quite there yet. So in about next 2 years or so, we will definitely deploy battery energy storage systems as part of our renewable energy projects.
In terms of hydrogen, we view hydrogen as beneficial to our border corporate strategy, but also in terms of our decarbonization pathway. We are investigating a number of hydrogen technologies and we'll definitely deploy it when the timing is correct and makes commercial sense. We are likely going to initiate a number of small proof of concepts in the interim just to understand the technologies better, etcetera. I hope that answers the question.
Thanks, Kevin. I think at this point, we'll take a break. The next session is going to start at half past 3, our time, in South Africa. So we've got about 5 minute break before we start with the next session. I'll carry over the rest of the questions to the end of that session.
Thanks very much. Welcome back, everybody, to the last session in today's Sibanye Stillwater Investor Day today. In this session, we'll be covering our South African gold operations. So we're in the Home Straits now. So I hope you find this interesting.
Thank you.
Good afternoon again, ladies and gentlemen, and to all of our listeners online. I think a real pleasure to kick off session 3, looking at our South African gold operations and I hope to share with you some of the passion we still have for these operations, some of the real value that they've delivered over the years and the value that they can still deliver over the years to come. So thank you very much. I think as with any presentation of this nature, forward looking information is contained. There is a Safe Harbor statement, which I'll quickly take you through.
The information in this announcement may contain forward looking statements with the meaning of some joking, but if I could please request you to read this in your own time. It does include some important information. Thank you. Okay. So, moving on to our gold operations.
I think as many of us know, this was really where the company started 2013 from some of the less loved assets that were unbundled from Goldfields and back then as it was known, Sibanye Gold. Our first task as a management team was to take these assets and enhance the sustainability of them. That was really achieved through an aggressive cost cutting. We were able to cut about 25% of the total cost out of these operations. That increased our flexibility in terms of our mining operations, increased our reserves and therefore increased our life of mine.
And it is really off these core assets that we've been able to build our business, not only our gold business through the acquisition of Wits Gold, which included Burnstone, the Cook operations and more recently DRD, but also the rest of the business, which has pivoted into PGMs and more recently battery and green metals. So this really has been the solid foundation on which Sibanye Stillwater has been built. But I dare say these assets in their own right have delivered significant value. For anybody who was a shareholder at the unbundling or who invested in the company in those early years, I'd say you got back half of your value just in the 1st 4 years from dividends out of these assets alone. That excludes any of the significant capital appreciation and growth that you would have experienced as a shareholder.
So substantial value from these assets. And over the coming slides, I hope that we can show you and share with you that we still believe that there is significant value still to come from these assets in the years to come. So a question we are often asked is why gold and how does it fit into our portfolio. And then fundamentally, there are 2 parts to that. I think the first one is that gold is countercyclical.
We know during tough economic times where the metals battle, gold thrives and anybody who question the safe haven status of gold only needs to look back over the last 24 months to see that it still fulfills that function. This gives us the opportunity to live our vision of delivering value to all stakeholders through essentially having exposure during tough economic times to gold cycles, which tend to behave better. Secondly, I think we are fundamentally bullish on the long term outlook of gold. There are some short term headwinds in terms of rising interest rates and tapering of stimulus packages. But fundamentally, the unprecedented amount of lending and stimulus packages we've seen over the last decade inevitably will underpin gold as we see a more inflationary environment and heading towards sustained low or even negative interest rates in the time to come.
Supply side, we see peaking in the next couple of years. There have not been any significant gold discoveries over the last few years. So fundamentally, the long term outlook for gold remains very positive. If we move on and take a look at our business as a whole, I think as we highlighted before, we started our operations back in 2012 with a total reserve base of 13,500,000 ounces. That was fundamentally underpinned by our 3 core assets being Cliffs, Drefontaine and Beatrix.
And if we look at where we are today, after 9 years, having already mined over 10,000,000 ounces of gold, Today, our reserve base stands at 15,500,000 ounces, so in fact higher than when we started back in 2012. A significant portion of those additional reserves have come from our 3 key assets, but also a portion through the addition the acquisitions we've made, specifically including Burnstone, which has recently been turned to account as well as DRD Gold. I think this is best displayed in the graph here, which shows that when Sipanha gold as it was then called or was created, by this stage of our lives, we were due to be a 500,000 ounce gold producer with less than 5 years of life left. Today, our gold business alone is still producing at about 900,000 ounces and we're forecasting to be able to sustain that for at least 5 years out of the initial operations which we were formed upon. We also have a long life with many of our assets well beyond 10 years.
And I think we will share with you how that positions us well relative to many peers in the industry. We have also created additional optionality through some of the acquisitions we've undertaken. Burnstone is a project that has now been approved, a long life project that will add value to the overall gold business. That's been approved by our Board and we commenced capital expenditure this year on that project. And in addition in the Southern Orange freestate, we have the Debron and Blumhook projects, which as has been discussed before, the opportunity to sustain the lives of the Free State operations through the inclusion of uranium and these projects will certainly add a lot of option value in that event.
So how do we stack up against our peers? Well, on a reserve and resource and life of mine basis, I think so often our larger assets Kluft, Trufontein, Beatrix are perceived as being at the end of their life in decline and that is seen negatively. Well, yes, it's quite right. They are at the end of their lives and they are in decline. They are never going to produce what they did in their heyday.
But given the size and the status of these assets, even in decline, they still compare very favorably to many of the smaller assets that are being developed today by our peers. And these assets alone with lives extending well beyond 10 years is highly to the assets that many of our international peers are mining and our projects that we are commencing and our investments in DRD Gold is certainly among some of the longest life assets that exist in the industry. Overall as a company, Sibanye Stillwater, when we look at ourselves as a combined precious metals producer, we are in the top 3 of precious metals producer. That gives us a substantial base to deliver off. But looking at our gold industry alone, it still remains a substantial business in terms of production, still within the top 13 or 14 companies.
And likewise, in terms of reserve, it's still got a substantial base. I think look forward in the coming slides to the team unpacking for you a bit more details about this business. And as I say, why we still believe it can add significant value in the years to come to all of our stakeholders. So with that, I'll hand over to Richard Cox. And thank you very much.
Thank you, Rich. Hello, everyone. My name is Richard Cox, and I'm the Executive Vice President of the South African Gold Operations. So our operations are located in what we call the West Bittwatersrand Seiden Entry Basin. This is the greatest source of gold in the world.
The basin largely extends along axis from the East of Johannesburg to the Southwest of Valcom for more than 400 kilometers. We have 6 high quality long life assets with unrivaled production history, Kluwerf, Drefontaine and Cook operations in the Westwitz near Cartonville, Beatrix operation and South Freestate Opportunities in the Freestate near Balcon and burnstone project in the South Rand Goldfield near Balfour in Mpumalanga province. We also own just over 50% of DRD Gold. However, our team does not manage these operations. So all in, when we take everything into account, the gold business has a resource base of just over 80,000,000 ounces and a declared reserve of 15,500,000 ounces.
And today, we will speak about much of the 15,000,000 ounces that our team relishes in the opportunity to bring to account much more of what remains. Our workforce, including contractors, numbers 31,000 staff residing in different accommodation models very close to the operations. And clearly, given our size and impact where we operate, we are a significant economic contributor to provinces and regional economies and we improve lives. I'd like to present the members of the South African gold team. Chris Barnard, our Senior Vice President for Mining Operations William Assai, our Vice President of Technical, Including Metallurgical Operations and Surface Operations Peter Hennen, our Senior Vice President for Finance and Toussaung Maping, our Senior Vice President for Human Resources.
I'm very proud to lead this team. This team is very experienced and up through the ranks, managing the assets at this time of their life and our lives is great appeal to us and we see new possibilities. We see new opportunities for our operations and we are excited about adding value from our assets and today is about sharing with you how we are still able to create value. Here we have our 3 core producing assets, Grafontein, Kluwerf and Beatrix. All of them are assets that have been built over a very long time.
Look at Drefontaine, for example, commissioned in 1952 and production to date of over 110,000,000 ounces, impressive and significant. All of them underground assets with ore bodies at various depths and access through several vertical shaft systems. The shaft systems form an interconnected matrix that has endured over time and extracted predictably the gold from the reefs. The trend has been increased levels of extraction over time or expansion and now sustaining the operations by extracting remainder reserves from much fewer shafts. This requires new skill sets and we have those skill sets.
So you would be correct to observe that it is a lot to maintain with many moving parts. However, we see opportunities for value. Some of these opportunities are, for example, at Refontaine reconfiguring the 13 shaft operations to support D1, D4 and D5. And I must tell you that within previously thought low grade blocks standing 200 meters by 200 meters or 40,000 squares Within the VCR, we are now discovering high grade channels that can sustain opportunity specific mining. We've had to change our readiness horizon, the speed between discovering and exploiting these opportunities from existing infrastructure.
We see these channel opportunities at D1 and D5. These opportunities are not yet in plan and we look to bring them into account quite quickly from existing pre developed infrastructure. In addition to the success at the Cliffs in transitioning to secondary reefs, now I'm talking about the Middle Flay Reef compared to the VCR, we are busy with a drop down project at K4, providing access to fresh ground between the levels 4547. And at Beatrix, we also highlight the buyers of reef uranium deposits and this holds possibility for life extensions beyond 2025. We own significant amounts of vacant occupation land that lends itself to solar power generation And one such example is the 50 Megawatt solar project being dusted off for eventual construction at the Clurf operations.
And finally, I'd like to mention water. And so water we pump from Kluwerf, Griffontein and Cook operations. Quantities are significant and in excess of 200,000,000 liters per day. We can see a time when this water will be the next prized commodity and we hold a valuable resource. Stuart and the team have plans for value creation and they will share a little later in the presentation.
So you may ask what is it that we see? What we see are world class assets, we see a team able to deliver promised value to stakeholders and we see opportunity. We present here our 10 year plan of production and cost. Notably, the last few years have been tough with safety related stoppages weighing in 2018, labor stoppages in 2019 and COVID-nineteen impacting both 2019 2020. We are happy to say that our production has normalized and we forecast a steady production profile for the next 5 years of approximately 1,000,000 ounces per year and that includes DRD gold.
And I must add that 1,000,000 ounces per year of production is a significant gold producer over the coming 5 years. And we look forward as well to the contribution from the Burnstone project as from 2024. We are forecasting a gradual planned decline in production when the Beatrix operation reaches end of life in 2025. We highlight 2 cost trends, operating cost and within the operating cost, this has a component of overhead that we are tackling through our Project 3B and Peter will highlight the opportunities we see a little later. And also in the all in sustaining cost and in contained therein is all reserve development costs as well as sustained business capital costs.
We are seeing opportunities to reduce operating cost and we are taking a much closer look at the overhead structure through our 3B project and with some clever reconfigurations by the team, we can see opportunities that will deliver value. Our pre development costs will reduce as ore bodies become fully developed with reef horizon extraction being the main cost. Same business capital will reduce over the maintained assets as they are no longer required, but also will spend smartly in areas of infrastructure optimization and renewable energy and receive a good return. Would also like to see the upside from the channels I was mentioning earlier in the Griffontein area that the team are discovering within the VCR reef horizon at D1 and
D5. We
see in the slide the head grade and recovery percentages per operation for the next 10 years. Both Kluwerf and Beatrix operations head grades are largely in line with the life of mine reserve grades and also highlighted is our highest grade recovered gold from the Kluwerf KP2 metallurgical plant. Kluwerf grades will remain will benefit from increased volumes from the K4 deepening project and the timely mining of the K3 pillar from K4. We're also looking forward to rolling out the gravity concentration circuit at Beatrix and that will improve recoveries going forward at that operation. Trifontaine's head grades increase from the eventual extraction of the large pillars protecting current shaft infrastructure.
Example is the mining of the D4 pillar, which will significantly increase grade and offset lower extraction rate in the mine and lower throughput rate in the metallurgical plant. I must reiterate as highlighted by Rich is that we are extremely discerning when it comes to capital expenditure and the focus is on cost discipline across the business and this includes our capital expenditure profile over the next 10 years. There are significant cost and cash flow benefits from our planned reduction in capital expenditure, allowing to our aligned to our slowing need for predevelopment going forward and aligned to our reduction in operating infrastructure and associated running costs. The project capital will peak in 20222023 with a lot of work that needs to be get done in next year for which we are preparing our readiness. So all reserve development will also peak in next year and then steady decline by ZAR1 1,000,000,000 by 2025.
The reason for the decline is from the slowdown at Drefontaine from 2025 and the end of life at Beatrix. Also note that the ORD also includes the burnstone expenditure expected as from 2023 2024. Same business capital declines to 0 at Beatrix and includes the expenditure forecast from 2023 at Burnstone. Our infrastructure optimization project expenditure driven mostly at the Kluwerf operations will peak in 2022 and the bulk of the work to be completed in 2024. And the Clouffe deepening project scheduled for completion in 2023.
Burnstone growth capital also peaks in 2022 and scheduled for completion in 2026. So in summary, the capital expenditure peaking in 2022 with expenditure of just shy of $5,000,000,000 at $4,900,000,000 and reducing to $2,100,000,000 in 2025. This sets our business up and with significant flow through to cash flow relative to 2022 and we see that we'll have a margin enhancement expected to be approximately ZAR60,000 per kilogram by 2025. Thank you very much. And I'll now hand over to Itter Enel.
Thank you, Richard, and good day, everybody. If we look at our performance over the last 3 years, it's fair to say that the business has been severely impacted by business interruptions from 2018 with the safety incidents that we experienced at Gruff and Rifontein. In the latter half of twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, the business was severely impacted with the industrial actions on the back of wage negotiations. Rolling into 2020, we've had the impact of COVID-nineteen. While we still had significant free cash flow in 2020 on the back of higher gold price, it's evident that the business is highly geared to the gold price, which was also evident in 2016.
Richard Stewart has also highlighted that from 2014 to 2017, this business did generate free cash flow, helping to the growth of the bigger business. If we look at our unit cost measures at the bottom graph, it is evident that these 3 years has played in heavily on our unit cost. As we will discuss a bit later, we've got a high fixed cost base. And as a result of those high fixed costs in the short term, when we have business interruptions, these our unit costs are inflated because we, obviously, divide the high cost base with the units produced within that period. If we look at 2021, which was presented a couple of weeks ago, Our unit cost is also a bit higher on the back of as a result of some safety incidents that we experienced this year, but mainly on the as a result of higher capital spend, which we will also touch on later on in the slides.
If we look at our paying cost drivers, 41% of our cost basket consists mainly of labor and electricity. These two baskets has increased 2% to 3%, respectively, over the period from 2016 to 2021. While the other cost baskets, contractors, stores and others have actually reduced over the same period. If we get to mine labor and the average and therefore, looking at the average cost of the employee over this 5 year period, this cost has increased by approximately 18% above inflation if we assume a 5% per annum inflation rate. When we gear to electricity, our average cost total cost basket has increased 32% over this 5 year period, while we actually achieved a 13% consumption reduction over the same period, working towards that 0 carbon emissions going forward.
On the left hand corner, we talk to our total working cost, which is approximately ZAR20 1,000,000,000. As is evident from 2017, 2018, when we had to restructure the business on the closure of KUK and even in 2019 on the back of restructuring Driefontein. It is evident that we are able to reduce our total cost basket when we get to restructuring the business. We will discuss a couple of the fixed variable cost ratios on the next slide. If we look at our fixed variable cost ratio, 60% plus 5% of our cost base is deemed fixed in the short term.
We have to discuss this fixed variable ratio with caution because this is not a real representation of the ZAR20 1,000,000,000 as discussed in the previous page. This is a representation of our current cost profile and will be seen as variable as we effectively have to close infrastructure or operations in the long term. This 65% of our cost base being driven by mainly labor and electricity as shared on the previous page, We unfortunately have to incur that cost when we have lower production, hence the high unit cost production that I've talked to in the earlier slides. If we start reviewing our cost by activity, we will notice that 81% of our cost base is driven by operational costs, whereas 19% of our cost base is driven by overheads. We've recently not that operational cost is not important, but we've recently started a project referred to as Project 3B with the objective of reducing our overhead cost build by 5% or from $3,800,000,000 to 3,000,000,000 dollars This overhead cost basket contains mainly of insurance, security, training, employee accommodation and employee transport.
The initiatives that we will embark on reducing this cost basket is by consolidating accommodation facilities, consolidating of office space as a result of COVID, more people work from home and effectively selling more houses. We also then will optimize transport associated with these footprint reductions. These reductions and the reviews of our cost base have other consequences and benefits to the business. Concurrent rehabilitation is enabled, and we can also, obviously, reduce electricity, water and secured associated security costs that comes with these footprint. We start looking at the capital on the next slide.
As highlighted by Richard Cox, our capital profile is declining over life, but it is important to note that our capital investment in the first in this year and over the next 2 years are a bit inflated as a result of 2018, 2019 and 2020 business interruptions we had. We effectively had to defer some of our capital spend over these 2 from 2019 2020 into 2020 1. If we look at ore reserve development on the left hand top, our ore reserve development is reducing in line with life of mine. It's actually reducing our life of mine profile as we have 24 to 35 months 25 to 32 months of ore reserves already pre developed. If we look at staying business capital, again, elevated in 2021, but thereafter reducing to a more stable position, but no way reducing our capital spend on this critical basket as can be seen from Kluwer being a constant number over life of mine.
Also driving to the higher capital expenditure in the in 2021 2022 and 'twenty three is the investment that we're doing in optimization optimizing our infrastructure, especially on the crew of operations. Chris will Bharat will share more detail around the benefits and the detail of the investments that we're making on these on Kluwer. Exciting that we've announced this at the beginning of this year the investment and the project investment into Burnstone. Burnstone, with Kluwer forward drop deepening project, is also resulting in elevated capital spend, especially in 2022 2023, where after it will reduce in line with the project development and delivering on its project completion. Ralf Lomberth will share more detail on Burnstone also in a later couple of slides.
Thank you. On that note, I hand over to Urs.
Good afternoon. I'm Koos Barnard. I'm the Senior Vice President responsible for the Mining and the Gold segment. The slide that you see is outlining a transverse level plan on the mining area of the Kluwer complex. Shafts that can be seen on the plan is Kluwerp 1 shaft, that's the main shaft.
There's 2 sub shafts and then to the right of that, true of 3 shafts, which is outlined with a rectangular box, the red one. And then to the far left, Kluwer 4 shaft with its sub shaft infrastructure. Not visible on the plan is Clueve 7 and its sub shaft to the left of Clue 4 shaft. I will explain the rectangles as we discuss the content, all of which delineate all reserve, which potentially can be mined from alternative infrastructure. The objective of the infrastructure optimization is a planned reduction of fixed infrastructure and associated cost and then also the optimization of capacity of the remaining infrastructure.
This whole process already started back in 2019. Further involves development of our long life shafts, extract through the mining reserves and facilitate the closure of the shorter life shaft. The Kluwerf infrastructure project is primarily focused on the early orderly closure of the K3 complex. The extraction of remaining Kluwerp 3 shaft reserve will therefore be facilitated from Kluwerp 1 shaft, the 24 to 31 levels, 2 larger rectangles, the blue and the green one outlines that area on the plan. And then also, Curve 4 shaft, which is from 39 to 42 level, and that's a smaller rectangle at the bottom of the plan.
The closure of the curve 3 shaft complex will therefore result in a reduction in overhead cost and results in lowering the Parliament. In this case, from above 17 10 grams to below 1600 centimeter grams per tonne, ensuring the economic viability of the lower grade secondary rigs, in our case, the Turfrees, supporting higher throughput and production over the life of mine. Optimization of the capacity utilization of Kluwerp 104 shaft, ultimately, hoisting capacity is taken up and it will improve productivity at the long life Kluwer Fosharp. Additional reserves from Kluwer 3 will also be mined from Kluwer Fosharp. And as I said, that's the green the little green rectangle at the bottom of the plan.
Thank you. Some key statistics in 2020 21 terms. The pay limit reduction, as mentioned earlier, increased the true of mineral reserves by 1,100,000 ounces to 4,600,000 ounces by enabling economic extraction of the secondary Kluwerfries, which is sitting approximately 40 to 60 meters above the VCRs, we're currently mining. It's been targeted at Curve 1, Curve 7 and Curve 8 shafts. This will result in the Curve average steady state production maintained at 350,000 ounces per annum over the life of mine.
When I look at elements of the Kluwerf integration project, Kluwerf 8 shaft expansion project is designed to increase the production of the shaft by 40%. This shaft historically mined extensively on VCR and Middlefly Reef to a lesser extent, now targeting and mining essentially on the Kluwer Reef, which is a steep tipping secondary reef above the VCR at an average grade of about 1200 centimeter to 1500 centimeter grams per ton. It's a single lift shaft with good infrastructure. The current exploration development is done on 3 levels, which is 14%, 15% and 16% level. Clouve 4 to Clouve 3 shaft integration designed to access Clouve 3 subvertical shaft reserves on the longer life of Q4, reduce infrastructure costs by closing down the Q3 infrastructure and improve capacity utilization.
That is clearly to fill up the Q4 rock wasting infrastructure and capability. Those mining targets the remaining deep level ore reserves previously mined from Q3 shaft on the BCR. As I said, that's the small little rectangle on the plan. Curve 4 development reached the Curve 3 boundary and is ideally positioned to mine 3940, 4142 levels. I then look at Cluev I to Cluev III shaft integration.
It's designed to access Cluev III sub vertical reserves from Clueve 1, reduce infrastructure costs by closing down Clueve 3 and then better capacity utilization. That's to fill up the curve 1, wasting rock wasting capacity and infrastructure. This mining targets the 2 larger rectangles on the Cluep 1 and between Cluep 1 and 3. Opening up is progressing on 24 to 31 levels. In doing so, Kluwerp between Clueve I and Clueve III is also targeted to eventually mine out the remaining VCR reserves previously mined from Clueve III.
Clueve 4 to Clueve 7 shaft, this is designed to improve productivity at Clueve 4 shaft through increased face time. Kluwer 4 is the deepest operation and extend its mining below the current infrastructure of Kluwer 7. By setting up declining infrastructure from 43 level to 40 level, mineral material can be transported via Case 7 to this mining area. This reduces traveling distances extensively and increase face time for the mining crews, which will be mining in this area. All time is produced in this area will still be hoisted at the Pier 4 infrastructure.
Pier 3 shaft surface closure established a refrigeration system independent of Curve 3, who will the other curve shafts. Once the Curve 3 sub shaft closure is affected. 2 of the refrigeration machines will be relocated to Clerve 7 shaft. The cooling capacity dependency from Clouve 1 will then be provided from Clouve 7 shaft. This will result in total closure of the Kluwer 3 complex.
Some provision made for the closure of Kluwer 3 surface and all the integration projects discussed in the slide. Kluwer 1 to 3 opening up will continue over the life of mine. And then lastly, the Kluwer 4 to 7 project will continue up to the end of 2024. The integration project together with the dropdown project will result in a steady state production profile of approximately 300,000 to 50,000 ounces per annum over the life of the mine. The Q4 Shoal Deep Link Project.
This project extends the mining of VCR, RFPLA infrastructure at Tier 4 to 40 six and 40 seven level. Project involves the development of a 10 degree tireless decline related infrastructure for ventilation, chairlift and the rock handling facilities to facilitate access to the planned levels. Conventional mining is planned on these levels. The decline has already been developed to below 46 level and horizontal development is already progressing on 46 level. Most recently, permission has been obtained from the DMRE to form full cooperations on this development and together with multi blast conditions established will now speed up the development of the decline.
Peak funding for this project is in 2021 as well as in 2022 and includes refrigeration infrastructure and trackers mining equipment. The estimated capital cost to completion of the project is ZAR 687,000,000 over the next 3 years. The mining below infrastructure adds significant ounces to the mining life of Code 4 as well as to the Kluwerf complex. Steady state production will be above 150,000 ounces per annum over the life of mine. I will now hand you over to Ralf Lundberg, the Senior Vice President responsible for Benson Project.
Thank you, Akwas for introducing me and hi everyone. So Burnstone is a greenfields project which will ensure a long life shallow to intermediate depth mine. The one thing you must note about Burnstone, it has already been extensively pre developed and this includes vertical shelves for main material rock wasting ventilation, a decline for access for TMM machines, a metallurgical plant and its associated infrastructure, surface workshops and other offices. The project will ensure a life of mine of in excess of 20 years and it must be noted that we already have 9,100,000 ounces of resources available at Burnstone and also 2,200,000 ounces of reserves. Burnstone is lying next to the small town of Balfour.
This region has quite a lot of challenges with socioeconomic issues. And it must be noted that the unemployment rate in this region is more than 30%, of which you've standing at more or less 44%. Both the Burnstone project and mine will enhance the socioeconomic stability by creating 2,500 jobs in the long term, but it also will create meaningful opportunities for procurement, SMME development and skills transfer. At Burnstone, we'll be mining the Kimberley Reef at an average depth of 550 meters going up to 1.05 kilometers by utilizing mining methods, which is well known for Sabania Stillwater. Project capital of $2,300,000,000 will be spent over the next 6 years.
This will establish a sustainable mine and the capital includes the finalization of infrastructure, the acquisition and the refurbishment of TMM fleet as well as equipment and setting up the required ore reserves. An additional $1,500,000,000 preproduction capital will ensure that there's enough inventory to start commercial production by 2024 and by that stage we will have a fully operational metallurgical plant and associated infrastructure. We expect to produce around 138,000 ounces of gold when we reach steady state with an average incremental operating cost of R419000 a kilogram over the life of the mine. This will result in a net present value of $900,000,000 and an IRR of 20%, using the commodity prices assumptions of US15000 dollars per ounce for gold and an exchange rate of 15. It must be noted at that spot that NPV is more than $3,000,000,000 Thank you.
I'm handing over now to Jevan, which will take you through sustainability.
Thanks very much, Ralph, and pleasure talking to everyone again. It gives me great pleasure to deep dive into our energy and decarbonization strategy by SA Gold Operations. If you look at our South African gold operations as a result of the structure and depth, they are inherently energy intensive, accounting for 51% of our group energy requirements. As a result, they are also very carbon intensive. One inherent advantage that they have relative to our peers that operate open cast remotes gold mines is that they are largely electrified.
And as a result, 83% of the current greenhouse gas emissions stem from electricity, specifically Eskom's coal fired power stations. 5% of that is associated with the care and maintenance of the cook operations, which really just highlights the importance of finding a permanent closure solution to not only reduce the associated emissions, but also to reduce the fixed costs components that Peter Henning mentioned earlier. If we look forward, we anticipate the greenhouse gas emission profile of these operations will decline in line with their production profile. And as renewable energy increases penetration at a national level. We, however, have a number of active interventions that we're currently pursuing to accelerate the decarbonization.
1 of the key contributors contributions is our advanced energy management, which not only reduces fixed cost to the business, but last year achieved 105,000 tons of CO2 reduction in 2020. 1 of the key enablers was the deployment of digital twins to energy intensive infrastructure that allows the identification of both energy waste and energy efficiency opportunities. Last year, we also replaced the Beatrix coal boiler with an electrode steam boiler and heat pumps, which has allowed the reduction of just over 14,000 tons of CO2 equivalent. I'll shortly speak to our solar project for but these operations also enjoy the benefits of our wind strategy, where the remote wind projects will allow us to wheel renewable energy to these operations. An existing flagship project is our Beatrix methane to power project, which currently produces normally between 1 to 2 megawatts on a continuous basis and just spaces about 20,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum.
This is also a UN clean development mechanism project that has generated just short of 290,000 tonnes sorry, tons of CO2 or 290,000 carbon credits to date. We're also exploring some technology opportunities to displace the remainder of our diesel on these operations, including on Rolf's projects, deploying battery electric vehicles at Burnstone. Going forward, the focus remain on electricity with also exploring opportunities related to future demand methane and diesel. As a result of the structure of the mine, as I mentioned, largely electrified, renewable energy will be the strongest decarbonization lever we can pull. On this basis, we initiated a solar photovoltaic project back in 2014 on sites adjacent to our Driefentine and Cliffs operations.
That project was however historically delayed due to regulatory and Eskom constraints. However, those have now been alleviated and we've elected to reprogress these projects. Currently, the intent is to develop a 50 Megawatt PV project and will directly supply the CLIF operations by a 132 kV overhead line. The site is in close proximity to the CLIF operations and is currently permitted for up to 200 megawatts with the majority of key consents and approvals already in hand, including the environmental authorization, the rezoning, etcetera. The project will be executed on a power purchase agreement basis, where a third party will be appointed to finance, build, own and operate the plant on a 20 year basis and sell us the electricity through the agreement.
This will afford us electricity at a 30% to 50% discount to good spite electricity escalating at CPI from day 1 with minimal outlay from the business. Beyond life of mine, given that Cliff Life of Mine extends to 2,034, the power will be used for the care, maintenance, pumping, local tailings projects and then wheeled to other long life assets across South Africa. From an accounting perspective, this will be recognized as a lease liability and the right of use asset. However, due to the structure of the PPA, there are no minimum payments due, so it's effectively represented a value of 0. Concurrently to the final permitting processes, we executed an expression of interest earlier this year where we got an overwhelming response from the market in terms of willing project developers.
We've now progressed this through to a request for quotation that's underway where we intend to appoint the preferred project developer in the next 2 months. In the current plan, we plan to reach financial close by mid year next year beginning construction And one of the key benefits is we can potentially link these projects with some of our social projects, being the Bokomosa, Barona agri industrial project in the area. And I'll hand over now to Grant Stewart, our Senior Vice President of Environmental, who can talk to this.
Thanks, Jeff, and good afternoon to everybody. The gold operations pumped some 250,000,000 liters of water a day and discharged 200,000,000 liters per day thereof. The operation is also purchasing some 20,000,000 liters of water a day at a cost of ZAR130 1,000,000 per annum. This is in itself an opportunity to become potable water independent. We have made some significant inroads into this endeavor with our cook plant and our EMC plant completely water independent of potable sources.
We are well on our way with 3 Fontaine, who is currently approximately 90% independent and Perf will be 33% independent by the end of this year. Recognizing the pressure on the current potable water systems, we are seeing increasing pressure on the integrated Pearl River system rand water imposed volume curtailment initiatives an increasing phenomenon. One less drop that we consume from the potable water system is water available a developing town or needy community. As indicated in the ESG presentation earlier, our water conservation and water demand management drive is to ensure efficient and effective utilization of our water resources with minimum impact on the surrounding water resources and ensure availability of water resources for effective ecosystems, surrounding communities and our operations. To support our effective and efficient water utilization drive, have a total consumptive specific water use target, which we measure in kiloliters per ton processed.
Performance against this indicator is formally measured and reported on a quarterly with monthly tracing and monitoring. Fundamental to reporting on our total consumptive specific water use target is the ability to monitor, measure and report water flows at site level. Site level accounting and assessment is intended to help develop comparable and material information as the foundation for accurate and consistent external reporting. This technology also supports 2 critical management tools: 1, our predictive water balance models to assess future water balance movements under variable climatic change imposed scenarios and 2, 5 year water conservation water demand management plans driving initiatives to improve water management on each of our sites. Alignment with ICMM and transparent disclosure is an important part of how we operate.
This is why we have recently for the first time disclosed to the water CDP. Thanks. Our gold operations in the West Rand are overlaying by dolomitic aquifers with the result that there is significant water ingress. Continued pumping of ingress water from deep workings has placed an enormous financial burden on these mines that are in some instances no longer revenue generating. On the other hand, it is a well established fact that improved water supply and sanitation boost economic growth and contribute greatly to poverty eradication, something that South Africa and the West Rand desperately need.
Notwithstanding economic opportunity, we have regulatory hesitancy, failing to lead the region to prosperity, hiding behind incompetence and the one environmental system inefficiency. This is not the only factor that compromises regional growth and development. Failing municipalities and the inability to maintain basic infrastructure, resulting in uncontrolled sewage discharge into our river systems and resulting sinkholes are illustration of further missed opportunities. Failing law enforcement, the ability the inability rather to control the swell of illegal mining, sabotage of infrastructure and theft of cables powering infrastructure to pump and treat asset mine drainage, yet more of our reality. I paint a grim picture, but these are not complex problems to solve when there is a willingness to make a difference and align on a common regional vision.
Investing in water is a sound opportunity. Improved water resource management significantly improves productivity with economic sectors. This is certainly true for envisaged post closure scenario for the West Rand where we see Bokamosa Verona, an agri industrial socio economic solution energized through the reliable supply of water.
Yes, they are green shoots.
Our collaboration with Randwater where Randwater have stated the need to augment their current volumes from between 400,000,000 to 600,000,000 liters per day by 2027 and also the draft mine closure strategy. That speaks to the heart of collaborative regional closure. But who will lead this? Who's the competent authority to deal with this? That's the question.
Of all the uncertainty, one thing is clear, maintaining deep level pump stations and shaft infrastructure to continue to pump in perpetuity at huge expense and at risk to human life is not the solution and that's not going to support economic growth and development of the region. Re watering and the natural reestablishment of the dolomites with access to water closer to surface has to be considered. Thanks. Let's drop down into the case study of Cook. Cook is not unique when you look at closure from a sector perspective.
There are four similarities that are evident, especially as mines move to close. A decommissioned mine following a depletion of resource contiguous interconnected mines ingressive water and safe illegal mining comprehensive studies, both engineering and environmental support closure applications, all very similar scenarios across our mining region. Yet the authorization for closure, despite following the applicable legislation, is not forthcoming. In fact, I'm not aware of any closure certificates having been awarded in the mining environment. This can't be good for an economy begging for investment.
Clearly, we need our regulators to deal decisively with the elephant in the room. Back to the closure of Cook, where we pumped some 100,000,000 liters of water a day at a cost of around ZAR500 1,000,000 per annum. Cook IV is interconnected with our own Cook III and our neighboring mine, who ironically commissioned the plugs between the mine and Cook Fall for the purposes of rewatering, again with sound engineering and environmental specialist studies in support. We ourselves have studied extensively the risks associated with the solution over the past 4 years and have support for re watering from a number of corners, including conditional support from the Department of Water and Sanitation and the Federation For Sustainable Environment, whose perspective is to manage re watering whilst the mine is still operational and can be held accountable as opposed to a liquidation and the movement of the liability to state. We will continue to protect our stakeholders' interests and ensure learnings from Ezzawine Mine, and those learnings are embedded into our future operations at Drieffuntein and Clorth and Beatrix as we close.
We constantly carry on with the same process and expect a different outcome. Things must change and that requires bold action. Thanks. We must start with the end in mind. For us to achieve an agreed safe, stable, non polluting regional post mining solution supporting sustainable post mining communities and conservation areas and ecosystems.
I had mentioned earlier Bokumasa Verona and will elaborate on this in the slide coming. The development of this blueprint is a critical success factor and a key outcome that gives meaning for our closure plans. All initiatives, including concurrent rehabilitation, are costed in accordance with our closure strategy and plan. The gold operations have an annual assessed closure liability of some ZAR4.6 billion, of which 83% is funded. Those costs will go towards the closure of the end state.
We have also significantly advanced our concurrent rehabilitation strategy aligned to our closure plans with the transaction with ERD Gold, where we elected tailings assets and plant infrastructure for an equity interest into DRD Gold. The transaction was key to our service is key to our service remediation strategy and environmental rehabilitation program and more importantly to address the impacts of tailings dust on local communities and the environment. We're also advancing our footprint reduction exercises. The processing of waste rock, the filling of pits, as in the middle plate pits that you can see on your right hand side, where we've utilized and leveraged the skills of local communities to fill those pits and eradicate the social ills associated with kids playing in and around, especially in hot summer rainy conditions. We've also looked at the donation of infrastructure where appropriate to local communities and municipalities as part of our infrastructure for impact.
Thanks. Wakamorsa Barona means future in Setswana. This is our blueprint of a deliberate transition from a mining economy to a post mining economy through regenerative agriculture. The BBR program, as we quoted, aspires to build a globally competitive, inclusive, environmentally sustainable and diversified economy with communities on the West Rand through facilitating large scale development and socioeconomic empowerment. This will be achieved through large scale agroindustrial and renewable energy projects that create and sustain thousands of jobs in enabling environment for the entry of previously disadvantaged entrepreneurs into the West Rand District municipality of Gauteng.
The program aspiration will be achieved through the consolidation of supply of demand aggregated resources within the integration of renewable energy. The program will achieve this by establishing early stage economic development enterprises to prove the concept followed by large scale regenerative catalytic agricultural projects with expert operators that bring skills, networks, infrastructure and supply chains with capacity to create an enabling environment for the entry of small and emerging farmers. A venture capital fund that is currently in the process of being established and capitalized will manage and host the capital used for the implementation of the program. The investment vehicle will invest in early stage catalytic operations with a long term investment horizon and high potential for good returns. The large scale nature of the BBR program will allow the venture capital fund to diversify its interest across a range of operators and subsectors, producing different agricultural products, enabling it to mitigate some of the inherent risks within the agricultural industry.
I'll now hand back over to Rich for the conclusion. Thank you.
Grant, thank you very much. And to Rich Cox and the rest of the team, thanks very much for sharing that with us. So if I could try and I guess just wrap up what has been said and shared with you over the course of the discussions. I think hopefully the first point that you've taken away out of these discussions is that we still have substantial assets. We have great assets.
We have a world class management team. And that together means that we have a combination that can continue to add value for a substantial period still to come. And then critically important, these are high grade operations and that gives us flexibility to manage them appropriately during the inherent downturns. I think we've heard a lot from Grant and Jevon and the team around embedding ESG and some of the real low hanging fruits and opportunities we have around the environmental possibilities that we have. From my side, a significant point is the social side as well, which these operations do impact on.
As we know in the mining industry, the dependence to each one of our employees prior to COVID was roughly 10:one. I dare say today that number could well be higher, which means these operations sustain the livelihoods of over 300,000 people. And when we've been faced with a tough task as we were in 20 18 around the sustainability of these operations, I'm very proud to be part of the team and pleased that we've been able to turn them around, get the operations back onto a stable footing and to be able to contribute significantly to the surrounding communities and economies in which we operate. I think thirdly, operational excellence. As has been highlighted, we have had a tough few years.
We've had several significant operational disruptions. And it's very pleasing that despite the difficulties of operating under COVID, we've now had a few quarters of consistent steady operation, and we are starting to see that coming through to the benefit of the operations and being able to get back to a steady state position, which is critical in operations of this nature to be able to be sustainable going forward. Cost management is key. I think we are completely aware and open to the fact that these operations are high cost or fixed cost operations in the short term as Peter shared with you. I think we're also very open to the fact that while the team is doing some very smart things around continuously improving operations and finding areas of new ground to mine, we are not going to get significant growth out of these assets in the years to come, certainly not significant growth that's going to impact on unit costs.
Therefore, cost management becomes absolutely critical to being able to survive those tough times and put yourself in a position to have real leverage to gold during the good times. And that is an aspect that requires input and support from all stakeholders. As you have seen through the presentation, we are actively addressing our footprint, looking at ways to increase the efficiencies in which we mine, addressing our overhead costs, looking at new aspects around ESG and power solutions, all of which contribute to reducing that cost base. But to truly get the sustainable, all stakeholders need to come to the party and that will position us well to leverage off these assets for a period of time to come. In terms of capital allocation, we have heard about the Bernstein project and that certainly is a project we believe will add value in the years to come and hence the reason we're investing in that.
But also very key to get the capital discipline right in our core operations that remain. Invest appropriately to ensure the efficiency over the remaining lives of mine, but also manage that capital in a responsible manner that will have a positive impact on our all in sustaining unit costs as we move towards the end of those lives as Peter shared with you. And I guess finally, as Grant has highlighted, I think planning for responsible futures, we again are a company that is led in this regard. As Grant mentioned, we're probably one of the ones that are ahead in terms of going down the process of looking to close operations. And what we've taken from that, there have been some learnings, there have been some school fees and no doubt that will hold us in good stead going forward.
I think a key learning not just for ourselves, but for the industry as a industry as a whole is that if we want sustainable closure going forward, it will take the buy in and support of all stakeholders. We have all benefited from this industry and we should all support the responsible closure of this industry for the communities around us. I dare say and I hope that what you have been left with through our discussions though is that mine planning and closure for that planning understand, it is something that technically can be done confidently. It is not something that we fear or that we see as a threat. In fact, contrary to that, I dare say closure is something we embrace as it is a true opportunity to leave our legacy, to leave communities and environments in a better way than what we found them prior to our mining, which is ultimately the legacy we would like to leave.
And we look forward to working with all stakeholders to deliver on that to the benefit of the communities in which we operate. So ladies and gentlemen, once again, I think thank you for your time today. I truly hope that we've managed to share with you why we are passionate and excited about our gold business and believe it's still got a lot of value for the future. And we look forward to sharing that same passion and excitement around our PGM businesses, both in South Africa and the U. S.
In roughly 2 weeks' time. Look forward to engaging with you then. So thank you very much. And on that note, we will gladly, together with Rich and his team take any questions. And I'll hand back to James to go walk me that.
Thank you very much again.
Thank you, Richard, and thanks to everybody for listening. We're now on to the final session, so Q and A for the next half hour. I do have some, as I said earlier, some carryover questions from the previous session, so I think let's deal with those first. A couple are similar. So the first, dealing with water, Grant, if I can pass those on to you, if you don't mind.
How have we approached the potential cost of treating polluted water subsequent to closure? Is this included in your rehabilitation provisions? And do you allocate funds for water treatment in your rehabilitation trust funds? I'll just read them all out first, if you don't mind. Cook incurs significant pumping costs as part of ongoing care and maintenance.
What is the quality of this water and what is done with it? What options do you have to offset these costs with respect to gold recovery from tailings and management thereof. Are you in compliance with 2025 legis okay, this is slightly different. Sorry, now we're on to SO2 emissions. So I'll just carry on, on the water theme.
I think that's it, Grant, if you don't mind answering those. I think that covers most of the questions relating to water.
[SPEAKER UNIDENTIFIED
COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE:] Good. And James, I think that was from the question from Leroy. So thanks very much for the questions. I'll try and unpack them and hopefully if I don't address all of them, I'll ask James for help where I have left some out. I think first and foremost, we have a considered approach to closure.
So all of the costs that we are associating with closure have been well backed up by scientific and environmental studies. In other words, those plans are supported by those environmental studies. We do not go and just simply make a statement to say that we're going to go and literally re water where it isn't backed up by science. So in terms of the closure plans, as I say, supported by well considered studies. In terms of Cook and its closure study, those studies have supported a re watering strategy.
And as such, the cost associated with re watering is included into our plans. We've also made very clear understanding in terms of the financial provisions that we put forward that should the water that emanates following the decant or the day lighting of that water when it eventually flows through the eyes back into its, let's call it the pre mining state that that if there is a poor quality water associated with that water, we've made and dedicated the surface treatment plants that we do already have on surface in support of cleaning up that water. But as I say, all the scientific evidence and support in terms of the studies that we've done suggests that we will not get a poor quality water emanating. As far as the water that is currently pumped, we currently pump in excess of around 100,000,000 liters of water from the Cook 1, 2 and 3 and 4 complex. 75% of that or 75 megaliters of that is discharged under water use license in with the cooperation of the Department of Water and Sanitation.
As I mentioned in my presentation, we sit on those catchment management forums where we in detail discuss the water qualities. I think what's probably more disturbing to understand is that that water is actually diluting the other impacts of, let's call it, other industry and poor or failing municipalities who discharge their sewage uncontrollably into the integrated Vaal River system. And that's the point that we need to be very clear on and put very clear actions in place to address those ills. But in terms of the water quality, the water quality is good. And that's why it's forming part of the conversations that we're having with Boronavirus program to, as I say, invest in water to support post mining economic growth.
In terms of other opportunities to support that, to support the cost of pumping, the cost of pumping are exorbitant, as Peter mentioned earlier, probably just for the Cook complex, we're looking at about a ZAR500 1,000,000 per annum. But when we decommission those pumps, those costs will disappear. There's no need to have any additional sustaining costs. So any other opportunities in terms of reclamation or tailings or other supporting costs will go into other bits or other parts of our operation where we have overheads. James, have I addressed all of the questions that we've that you put forward to me?
[SPEAKER JEAN FRANCOIS VAN BOXMEER:]
Yes, Graeme. Thank you. I think, listen, while we're with you, there is an additional question that's linked to that regarding the environmental trusts and the funds associated with rehabilitation. The question is, are they fully funded to meet future obligations at the SA Gold and PGM operations? And there was a follow-up one, which was similar.
Just give me one second. Yes, I think that will cover both
of the questions. Grant, if you can answer those. Okay. Thanks, James. So let me maybe outline very quickly the process that we follow.
As I mentioned earlier, carefully considered closure plans in respect of all of our operating footprints. Those plans are then costed independently and a closure provision put forward in respect of closure. As far as our gold operation is concerned, we've got a ZAR4.6 billion closure liability, of which 83% is funded currently. And we look to the balance with guarantees. Those funds are located in trust funds and are well on ring fenced.
But I think also to the point is around concurrent rehabilitation. Obviously, as we move towards the end of the life of mine, we fund those trust funds to be fully or to be 100% funded and reduce obviously the reliance on guarantees. But further than that, the concurrent rehabilitation of shrinking footprints, which as Peter also mentioned in his presentation, is important to reduce the overhead costs associated with that like security, etcetera, etcetera. So an important part of our journey to closure is not only the funding of the closure plans but also the concurrent rehabilitation. Thanks, James.
Thanks. Thank you, Grant. The next questions I think I'd like to pose to both Neil Frohnemann and potentially Neil Pretorius as well regarding DRD operations and surface tailings on the West Rand. So first one from Chris Nicholson. Could you comment on the possibility of expanding DRD's operations?
Firstly, the West Rand tailing retreatment project, how this links into the Cook uranium strategy or 2, to the PGM dumps, I guess, at our PGM operations. And then the second one from Adrian Hammond, which is associated, is does our surface uranium strategy fit together with a larger gold recovery plant as you previously envisaged with regards to the West Rand Tailings Retreatment Project? And what permits are needed to remine Cooktailings for uranium? And what options do you have to source a new deposition site and CapEx related to this? Perhaps I could ask Neil Frohnmann to maybe start with that.
Yes. Thanks, James. Thanks, Chris and Adrian. And again, I'll just deal with it at a high level. And Neil, if you wouldn't mind just picking up where I leave off.
So let me start strategically in terms of DRD. The block that it is part of in terms of the green metal strategy is not just gold. Tailings retreatment is about producing green metals, in this case, gold. Down the line, of course, where it makes sense in the PGM sector, we've said that publicly before. And more recently, I think you've heard us talking about other metals from a tailings retreatment point of view.
And I'm now talking completely separate to recycling. Of course, recycling is a different activity that will bring to the fore other metals. And DRD is our chosen vehicle business to accomplish the tailings retreatment that we are exposed to. We would like DRD to move into other metals. Uranium, there's clearly an interface.
And Neil can explain how that slots in. The sharing of infrastructure, the mega tailings facility that's being planned in on the Westvitz, which is part of the gold tailings retreatment strategy, but it complements the uranium as well. So let me stop there and say that we will grow together and certainly, I think, into other commodities as well. So Neil, you pick it up there and add what is appropriate. Thanks.
Thank you, Neil. I think you pretty much said it all. The planning of infrastructure in the Far West Rand, the second phase of the Far West Rand project. The design is such that it will facilitate not just a regional consolidation of gold in the area in terms of scale and in terms of size, but it's also designed in such a way that it does not close any of the options in terms of other metals and particularly uranium in that particular area. So our design is extensive to be large enough to accommodate all of these things as and when they develop.
Implementation, however, will be incremental. So we're sitting at the moment with a 250,000,000 tonne resource and initial steps in implementation would be to accommodate that. But in such a way that it could that it's scalable, that it can be expanded. That applies to tailings facility. In terms of the design of the plant, obviously, you're looking at 2 different products and each one has its own specifications or requirements.
There too, the design would be such that nothing in terms of future expansion is excluded. So if uranium comes into the picture at some point in the future, then there would be a place for that and the design would be such to accommodate that. I think what's important to maybe note is how in terms of just the discussion on developing these resources, how infrastructure synergy is integral in those discussions. So to talk to Cook, for example, Cook and then the Cook Ford dump, which are the major uranium dumps in that area. Now if you want to build pipelines connecting those dumps with the rest of the infrastructure on a stand alone basis, then clearly your cutoff in terms of or your hurdle in terms of uranium price on a standalone basis is fairly high.
But by integrating it with the gold circuit for that matter, you're basically diluting the CapEx by distributing it amongst all of the possible configurations. So that's really how we I think how we've come together and we're having our conversation along those lines to ensure that to the extent that we can develop synergies to just open up these things as soon as possible And at the same time, also position them such that as much of the rehabilitation associated with that footprint could be absorbed and taken care of but that's also brought into the conversation. So the broad synergy exercise.
Thank you. Thanks for those answers. Just for Neil Frohnerman again, some questions which again are on a similar type of topic relating to broader strategy with regard to the gold portfolio. Given the increased push towards battery and green metals, should we assume that we are not looking to grow the gold portfolio outside of South Africa at least in the near term? And similar questions of that nature from some of the other analysts?
Thanks, James. And absolutely not in the near term. We have said it numerous times that at the moment, it's very difficult to find value in the gold sector. I don't see the gold price doubling or tripling. I see battery metals doing that in the not too distant future.
And I think as Richard Stewart pointed out, we've got a very good gold base. And yes, we in the longer term do want to grow it, not in the ultra deep sector, because it is part of the combination of precious and industrial metals, gold plays a drill. But in the near term, that is not a focus. I said it at H1 results, but we like gold in the long term. So nothing's changed.
Our focus right now is on growing our green metals portfolio and more specifically in battery metals. James, I just wondered if Neil wouldn't want to comment on his appetite for other metals. That was one part of the question where I thought he could add a bit of his view as to where DRD sits with that.
Certainly. Thank you, Neil. I'd love to do that. I think the opportunity for DRD Gold and considering that we represent a group of other shareholders too, the opportunity for DRD Gold in terms of near term growth really is to, as far as we can certainly align ourselves as closely as possible with the strategy of Sibanye Stillwater. Ourselves as closely as possible with the strategy of Sibanye Stillwater and to sort of slot in behind Sibanye Stillwater into that slipstream.
Our scale is the retreatment of tailings and configuring infrastructure in such a way that we can deliver tailings at the requisite throughput rate, at the requisite in the requisite condition in terms of densities and so forth. And then also set up management systems to treat that material and to monitor it very closely on an ongoing basis. Importantly, also to dispose of the tail in a responsible fashion and in line with the contemporary standards. So that's the skill. We want to leverage that skill and we certainly want to follow Sibanye where it goes in terms of its foray into other metals.
But what we liked about the story really is that at the moment we are mining gold by cleaning up the environment. So it's mining by way of rehabilitation. We're using mostly gray water in the process. And one of these days, we'll be using we'll be substituting a lot of the electricity that we use with PV. And I think it just has it just completes that loop.
If through that same process of mining through rehabilitation, once producing the metals used in the storage and in the generation of green power and contributing in that way to the green economy. So I think values wise and strategy wise, we're 100% aligned and we most certainly want to just make sure that we don't fall behind. We want to stay in that slipstream and follow Sibanye Stillwater into this venture.
Thanks, Neil. Perhaps for Neil Frohnerman again, last 2 on the ESG side. You may I'm sure you can respond to these 2. The first one is, as we progress towards more reliance on clean energy sources, do we intend to make use of green funding instruments in future? And then the second one from Bruce Williamson regards this move towards more ESG or the focus on ESG and your view on whether global institutional investors are putting unrealistic pressure and targets on the mining industry?
Thanks, James and Bruce. The certainly, green funding forms a very integral part of our consideration of funding things from new projects to even recycling because of the benefits of that type funding. So absolutely. I think in terms of ESG and unrealistic pressures, I must tell you, I think that it's absolutely right to put the pressure on business to up its game in terms of ESG. I don't think there are unrealistic pressures.
I think global warming is absolutely real and we all have to step up to the plate. We are extremely fortunate that the current metals we positioned in our exposure to tailings retreatment, our exposure to the circular economy of recycling, the PGMs underpinning the future hydrogen economy, our move 2 years ago to consider battery metals has really positioned us extremely nicely in terms of many of the ESG principles. Not only that, I think the completion of the process of understanding ESG and moving it into sustainability in terms of how it impacts the entire business, not just those buckets of E, S and G, is something that has taken us further forward. And certainly, we don't perceive the push from investors or very specific shareholders or funds as being unrealistic because we've got real solutions. It's not smoke and mirrors.
There's no hidden agenda. There's no buying of time. So no, I think if you're in some other commodities such as coal, perhaps you don't have plans that are, let's say, as easy to achieve, maybe they're financially stretching, you might find those pressures unrealistic. We don't. We are going to participate.
We're going to be class leading in this very rapid change that's occurred over the last few years. And more specifically, the acceleration post COVID in this area has been enormous. But we've embraced it. We're very well positioned, and I don't find the pressure unrealistic at all.
There's a couple of questions from Adrian Hammond on the gold production graphs that we showed in the presentation, the last session. So first of all, and I'll direct us at Richard Cox, please. Could you expand on your plans to grow production from the core gold ops as you show in the slides? Slide 15, I think, is the one he's referring to. And how do we reconcile that growth with declining ORD CapEx?
Richard?
Thanks, James, and thank you, Adrian, for your question. So in the Gold Ops, our objective is to have stable delivery. So other than the K4 dropdown opportunity, there is no gold growth. And what we have done is we've put together a 5 year production plan that does show stability. So for us it's just delivering predictably over the 5 years, those 800,000 to 900,000 ounces.
And then we do see the ORD decline, so different facets of ORD, a lot of horizontal development that's coming to an end as we develop to the boundaries of the ore body and expose the reef horizons and what remainder is the marginal development on the reef horizon. So naturally that would come to an end in decline. So that's where we are seeing a lot of opportunity in having fully developed those ore bodies and now exploiting the reef horizons. And then out of pre existing horizontal development, getting a repurposing of that same infrastructure again over newly discovered or identified parts of the ore body for exploitation. In a bit of a different methodology, more scattered mining, more going after smaller opportunities.
So that's what our production strategy entails over the next 5 years. So stability, predictability and a lot of focus on cost containment. Thanks, James.
Thanks, Richard. Adrian, regarding your question on the on Slide 15 on AISC exceeding ZAR25,000 an ounce and whether we would need to use our or are prepared to use our balance sheet to fund capital given where Spot is. So first of all, I just think that just looking at that, 2021 is the only year where it's at about ZAR25,000 per ounce. And as we said, I mean, this year, we're carrying over CapEx from last year when we had the COVID lockdowns, where we were unable to do all of the all reserve developments and maintenance that we had planned. We also are still carrying the infrastructure project at Kloof, which will now CapEx will reduce over the next few years.
So it's only really 1 year and to be honest, ZAR25 ZAR25000 per ounce is effectively ZAR805000 per kilogram and the gold price has averaged well above that this year and we're currently sitting at spot of 8.12. So it's at a marginal point at this stage at current spot price, but certainly there's no real impact on our balance sheet from having 1 year of slightly elevated costs. And the profile going down in future will obviously alleviate and create some margin in future. Then just and maybe Richard Stewart would want to answer this was, is the current state of labor relations or Richard Cox perhaps given the wage negotiations that we're currently going through in at our gold operations and what the state of relations with labor is, particularly with the Amku and Amku leadership?
Thanks very much, James. Look, I think in terms of those relations, as we've always stated, and I don't think much has changed, we maintain very credible relations. And we are, of course, engaged in wage negotiations as we speak at our gold operations. Those are carrying on. And I think as you've heard today, these are operations that require very strict cost control.
That has to be our focus. And in the interest of all stakeholders, we have to be able to manage our business during the tough times so that all stakeholders can benefit during the up cycles and when times are good. If we don't manage and survive through those tough times, then there's nothing to share when the good times come. And I think those are the critical discussions that are being had with all stakeholders. And I think as always, they are credible, and we're having good robust discussions.
Perhaps for Neil Frohnerman, question around the uranium and Beatrix. So first of all, from Mudiwa Gavaza at Business Day, Uranium prices are currently at their highest level since 2014. Do you expect this momentum to continue? And then secondly, from Leroy at HSBC, in the event that Beatrix's life has extended, are there any challenges around mining gold and uranium simultaneously?
Yes. Thanks for those questions. And let me just say, in terms of the uranium price, and I think this
is somewhat
a duplication of a previous answer that I gave around gold. I think any metal that is part of, let's call it, the low carbon or 0 carbon emission energy base is going to be in short supply. And I'm talking over 10, 15 years. And again, there was an earlier question, James, and I just want to link the same answer to that. In terms of the future of PGMs, I think if there's a perception that the internal combustion engine has come to the end of its life and therefore the question marks around the demand for PGMs in the short or medium term.
That's completely wrong. There is such a shortage of these green metals. And that's why I predict very significant price rises for things like lithium, nickel and so on. And uranium is part of that. I think we're being very conservative talking $60 a pound.
If you can produce the greenest uranium and of course tailings retreatment is going to be very much part of that, you're going to have a real edge. And I think we're looking forward over the medium term to much higher uranium prices. I think that the second part of that question relating to additional gold production, absolutely, it can be done together. And the acquisition of Witzgold and some of the projects that came with it in the free state are the type of projects that could come to fruition. A lot of work has been done on modern mining approaches.
And perhaps, Dennis, this is where you could just step in and give everyone an overview of that in the free state. So James, I think I've covered the two questions. But I think, Dennis, you can add a bit to that. Thank you.
The Freestate uranium assets are key. They've been mined before. They are shallow. There are some really exquisite new age autonomous mechanisms out there that will allow us to access those ore bodies fairly rapidly. The Baiza project is ready to roll.
We are busy with the cost analysis of the companies, of Beatrix itself to see what impact adding another project or 2 or 3 onto the back of that will make. In the Southern Freestate Mining right, there are a couple of really good interesting gold projects that will add value to the company under a different cost structure. And that detailed work is happening at the moment. There is a serious life in the free state and it's our intention to fully unlock all of that and take this to another level. Having said that, it is important to understand that the uranium price is in a completely different place.
It's green energy now. It's not the old uranium of the past that everybody was afraid of. It's going to become the baseload of the planet. And on the back of that, I think we're going to see some surprising price moves. I think that covers it, Neil.
Thanks, Dennis. Just further to that, I guess, consistent with that theme, there's a question from Mirage Ray at BMO about the visibility on Southern Orange Free State projects, which we acquired through Witzgold in 2014, 2015 and Bloemhoek decline and where the work is continuing on the DFS. So yes, Raj, we have allocated capital that's in that capital profile for 2021 already, and we expect to conclude those studies towards the end of the year. So we'll then take it further and make a call on whether we continue with that depth extension, which would then increase the life of the Beatrix III shaft quite substantially. And I think that's it for now.
Can we just check on the lines whether there are any calls on the phone lines?
No, sir. There are no questions on the lines.
Thank you very much. On that note then, I think we'll conclude with the Q and A. Perhaps I'll hand over to Neil Frohnerman for some last words. Thank you, Neil.
Yes. Thanks, James. And thank you to everybody that took time to join us for this session. I also want to thank my management team for really delivering what I thought were excellent presentations. And it's not so much the delivery, it's really the content of the presentations.
And just to conclude, again, I think the theme of people through our business, a, the people that presented the deep knowledge base, the deep experience and competence base that we have, coupled to our ability to create economic value, which is really an underpinned to sustainability and the pivoting into a much greener future was important. I think to me it was nice to sit back and hear our gold team and Richard Stewart talk about our gold business. It's a really decent business. And I know that it is it's overshadowed by the PGMs. But as I said, for the challenges we have, specifically on the safety side, it's a cop out to walk away from these assets.
If we can't solve the safety problems, I'm not sure who can. And I back us to solve the safety problems or challenges. I also back us to make those cost differences that were alluded to. And somewhere in the future, we will have a bigger gold business, but it's not now. That is not our primary focus.
But it's a highly leveraged well run business unit. It's important to us. It is part of the insurance that you need with a large exposure to industrial metals. So James, I think all in all, I hope it's been a good session for our listeners. It was certainly a good session from my point of view.
Thank you to everybody and we look forward to seeing you in a few weeks' time where we'll discuss I think a lot of other interesting aspects to our business. Thank you very much.