Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Thungela's Interim Results Presentation. I'm Ryan Africa, Head of Investor Relations for Thungela, and I'd like to take a couple of minutes to introduce today's agenda. Before that, please allow me to draw your attention to a couple of important messages from our attorneys. While you take a moment to read through the disclaimers, a reminder that the interim results documents are available on the Thungela website, www.thungela.com, under the results tab of the investor section. This presentation can also be found under the investor presentations tab, alternatively, can be downloaded from the webinar pane. Today's session will be recorded and the recording will be available on the Thungela website from later this afternoon. Let's start with the agenda for today.
Our CEO, July Ndlovu, will talk us through the H1 highlights and will also briefly touch on our strategic initiatives, including the Elders project. Our CFO, Deon Smith, will then talk through the operational and financial performance for H1, and after this, July will close out the session. We will then have a Q&A session of approximately one hour to give those on the call and the webinar the opportunity to ask questions, and the call will then be closed at approximately quarter to two. Turning to Q&A. For those wishing to ask questions directly, we ask that you join the session using the conference call facility provided, as we can only take direct questions through this facility. In order to ask a question during the Q&A session, please dial star one on your keypad and this will register your intention to ask a question.
Once the Q&A session starts, the operator will then open your line and ask you to go ahead with your question. For those joining via the webinar, you will have the opportunity to submit questions via text, which will then be read out during the Q&A session. It is possible to follow today's session across both platforms simultaneously, although you will have to mute one of the sessions to avoid interference, and please bear in mind that there is a 30-second delay on the webcast. It is also possible to dial the conference call facility only shortly before the Q&A session and directly from your computer. If you are planning to do this, I encourage you to register for the conference call in advance of the Q&A session, as you will need the link sent to you upon registration.
Now, with those logistical matters out of the way, allow me to hand over to our CEO, July Ndlovu, to take us through Thungela's interim results.
Thank you, Ryan, and good day to everyone on the call. It is a privilege for me to speak to you today following the release of our interim results this morning, and to share with the market that Thungela has once again delivered a sterling set of results. These results were, of course, achieved in a supportive price environment despite poor Transnet Freight Rail performance. Before I get to that, please allow me to remind you of our purpose, which we first introduced earlier this year at the release of our annual results in March. As I said then, our purpose is at the core of what we do as a business and is the North Star for all decisions, choices, and actions we take. Throughout this presentation, we'll demonstrate how Thungela is actively delivering on our purpose to responsibly create value together for a shared future.
The first half of 2022 has seen a number of highlights, but let me start with safety. Today, I'm pleased to say that in the last 12 months, everyone at Thungela went home safely to their families. This shows that it is possible to operate a fatality-free business. Coal prices soared to record levels in the first half of 2022. On the back of this, the business generated a record profit of ZAR 9.6 billion, very strong cash generation, with adjusted operating free cash flow of ZAR 8.9 billion. This puts the business in a solid net cash position. Without doubt, an excellent set of results, despite continued poor rail performance. On the back of this strong cash generation, the board declared an interim ordinary dividend of ZAR 60 per share, returning ZAR 8.2 billion to shareholders of Thungela.
This represents 92% of adjusted operating free cash flow. The Employee Partnership Trust and Nkulo Trust received a combined ZAR 500 million , while we reserved a further ZAR 200 million for the Green Fund. This means that we'll distribute all excess cash above the liquidity buffer of ZAR 6 billion and reaffirms Thungela's commitment to disciplined capital allocation and returning cash to shareholders. Adding this ZAR 60 dividend to the ZAR 18 per share dividend paid relating to 2021, and the increase in the Thungela share price since listing, Thungela has delivered an incredible total shareholder return of more than 1,138% from listing through to June 30 2022.
The distribution to the two trusts gives meaning to creating value together for a shared future and will allow us to create a lasting legacy for host communities which will outlast the life of our mining operations in the area. Thungela is also committed to building sustainable livelihoods in our host communities, and to this end, has launched an enterprise and supplier development program called Thuthukani. It means, in Zulu, uplift. Our strategy implementation is underway in earnest. In that regard, I'm pleased to announce that the board has approved the Elders project at a capital cost of ZAR 2 billion. I'll elaborate more on Elders a little later in the presentation. Turning to safety, we continue our laser-like focus on being a fatality-free business, and we are working hard to achieve this.
Thungela has gone 12 months without a loss of life, reflecting our rigorous application and management of critical controls, focused leadership interactions, and high potential hazard identification and elimination. We continue to make progress on eliminating fatalities and injuries. The total recordable frequency rate in the first half of 2022 decreased to 1.48 from 1.66 in the comparable half of 2021. While these improvements are encouraging, we cannot let our guard down. Safety is our first value. Thungela's commitment to continuously improve safety performance, and above all, eliminating fatalities and accidents in the workplace is unwavering. After the release of annual results in March of this year, I shared with you our strategy. We've identified four strategic pillars which will enable us to deliver on our purpose.
These four pillars are driving our ESG aspirations, maximizing the full potential from existing assets, creating future diversification options, and let me be clear here that I'm referring to potential geographic diversification in the first instance. Optimizing capital allocation. In the next couple of slides, I'll unpack how our key areas of focus are aligned to these strategic pillars. Typically, when people talk about ESG, their emphasis is on the E, or rather, a specific subset of the E, emissions, rather than ESG in its entirety. Since listing, Thungela has consistently said that we focus on ESG in its broadest sense, and in particular, we'll spike on the social or S. A focus on the social element in ESG is particularly important both in South Africa, but especially in our host communities.
We believe that Thungela has a role to play in the upliftment of our host communities and also the nation more broadly. In addition to the dividend of ZAR 8.2 billion declared to shareholders of Thungela, we are also very proud to have announced a distribution of one billion rand in total to the two communities, to the two trusts, the Employee Partnership Trust and the Nkulo Community Partnership Trust. When we include the distributions of ZAR 137 million each to each trust received relating to 2021, Thungela has now distributed close to ZAR 800 million in aggregate to this trust. For employees, this equates to almost ZAR 100,000 pre-tax per qualifying employee.
For the CPP on the other hand, the distributions create a firm foundation for it to invest in a future that will outlive the life of our mines, creating a lasting legacy and impact. I would like to pause for a moment to talk about another issue which continues to plague the mining industry, illegal mining. A tragic event in the West Rand in recent weeks has sparked renewed outrage against illegal mining. The reality is that both informal and more sophisticated illegal mining activities have been a problem for a number of years. Addressing this issue is complex, and while we continue our effort to combat illegal mining through investment in security and related interventions, we are ultimately reliant on law enforcement, regulators, and the courts to hold these syndicates.
Some of these illegal mining activities are increasingly violent, with dire social and environmental consequences, such as what we saw earlier this year at our closed chromite mine. While I'm on the chromite matter, we've made good progress in the rehabilitation of the chromite area, as well as the remediation of the affected water courses. Through collaborative efforts with law enforcement agencies, illegal miners have now been removed from the area, allowing specialist rehabilitation contractors to do their vital work on-site. The mining sector is a key contributor to the South African economy. Enterprise and supplier development is critical as it supports economic growth and transformation imperatives.
In keeping with our aim to be a responsible value creator, making a meaningful contribution to society, Thungela has partnered with a major South African bank and a respected business incubator to launch an enterprise and supplier development program called Thuthukani, which means to uplift in isiZulu. This joint initiative is focused on providing small enterprises in mining communities in Mpumalanga with all hands-on entrepreneurial business support and mentorship, loan funding, and technical enablement support. It will run across the areas where Thungela operates and will not only contribute to the creation of jobs, but also a thriving small business sector in Mpumalanga. Earlier this year, we announced that it is our intention to chart a pathway to net zero by 2050. We qualified this by adding, subject to the requirements of the countries we operate in and the markets we serve.
This approach recognizes that a responsible transition to renewable energy will be underpinned by a continued provision of reliable, secure, and affordable baseload energy. Allow me to take you through our journey so far and also to touch on what lies ahead. Prior to the demerger, while a part of our former parent company, we set an initial target of reducing our absolute emissions by 15% of the 2016 baseline by 2025. In 2021, our CO2 equivalent emissions were 17% lower than those in 2016. We acknowledge that the early achievement of our 2025 target is partly attributable to factors such as production changes and poor TFR performance, and steps that we have taken to improve energy efficiency.
Some of these factors can obscure the proactive steps we have taken, and this is part of the reason as to why the development of a climate change strategy and pathway is important. A review of our emission reduction targets has been underway since early 2022, and progress is being made in detailed energy mapping, baseline determination and tracking, as well as energy and carbon reduction opportunity scoping. This will inform the development of appropriate emission reduction targets over the short, medium, and long term. We are planning to announce our intermediate emission reduction targets at the release of our 2022 annual results in March next year. In the meantime, we continue to work towards reducing the carbon intensity at each of our operations on an annual basis while we chart the pathway to net zero.
We are implementing energy efficiency improvement projects such as ventilation systems optimization, improving truck and shovel cycle time efficiencies. We're installing a 137-kW solar plant at the Emalahleni water reclamation plant, and a feasibility study for a 4-MW solar photovoltaic plant at our Zibulo colliery is complete. In terms of ESG reporting, we are committed to transparent disclosure. Our reporting and disclosure processes continue to evolve, and it is our intention to be compliant with the recommendations set by the TCFD by the time we publish our 2022 full-year results. I'm excited to share with you today that the board has approved the Elders project, thus demonstrating the business's ability to maximize the full potential of our existing high-quality endowment.
Elders has been an integral part of our Thungela equity story from the outset, and you may recall that we spoke about the importance of Elders as far back as our capital markets day in May last year, before the demerger. Elders is not a production expansion project, but rather replaces volumes from the Goedehoop operation which comes to the end of its life. The relative production profiles can be seen in the bottom left of this slide. At the last results announcement, I spoke about the Thungela lens, through which we would seek to optimize capital. I'm proud that we will execute the Elders project at a cost of ZAR 2 billion, significantly down from the ZAR 3 billion originally envisaged. We have consistently said that we'll pay careful attention to ESG factors when making investment decisions.
In keeping with this commitment, in my earlier comments around speaking in the ESG, we carefully considered the social implications of the project. If you look at the map in the top left of this slide, you see that Elders is in close proximity to Hoedspruit, which will be ramping down. The development of Elders will therefore sustain jobs and existing community suppliers in the region. Elders will be an underground operation with five conventional continuous miner sections. Construction will commence in the third quarter of this year, and first coal is planned for the end of 2023. Let me turn to the robust set of benefits and economics for this project. When assessing opportunities to develop or acquire new assets, we use a strict set of investment evaluation criteria which falls into three categories.
Responsible stewardship, upgrading our asset portfolio, and shareholder value creation. Let's start with responsible stewardship. We have consistently said that we'll take ESG considerations into account when making capital allocation decisions. In this case, we've approved a project which has significant social benefits. We'll also power the complex through solar power. With respect to regulatory matters, we've already obtained approval of the environmental impact assessment and the integrated water use license. Moving to portfolio considerations, we recognize that we are currently experiencing high prices, but we remain of the view that competitiveness of an asset is crucial to long-term sustainability. In the case of Elders, we have an asset that is comfortably in the lower half of the cost curve, has a short pay back at conservative price assumptions and low capital intensity. All capital allocation decisions are guided by a careful analysis of potential shareholder returns.
When we decide to allocate capital to a project rather than returning to shareholders, we must be confident that it will generate superior returns in the long run. Elders has an NPV of over ZAR 600 million at conservative cost of capital and long-term prices assumptions with an IRR of approximately 24%. We are thus confident that Elders will maximize shareholder value through the cycle. We have spoken extensively about the Elders project, but you'll recall that at the annual results release in March, I also spoke about potentially acquiring assets. Specifically, I spoke to geographic diversification within coal. Over the last six months, we've studied a number of acquisition opportunities in great detail.
After thorough due diligence and careful consideration, we've determined that these opportunities were neither better than Elders, nor did the relative attractiveness of these opportunities meet the levels of returns we'd require to improve shareholder returns through the cycle. As a result, after studying our future cash generation, we are returning all excess cash above the liquidity buffer of ZAR 6 billion as at June 30 to shareholders. Let me be clear. We needed to study the cash generation profile so that we can decide how to fund the project we've just approved. We'll continue to evaluate other potential diversification opportunities and targets in the coming months. So far, I've spoken to a number of highlights for Thungela in the first half of 2022, it would be remiss of me not to touch on a point of concern which continue to negatively affect our business.
Transnet Freight Rail performance. Rail performance remains a defining factor for our business, the coal industry, and in many respects, our country. The disappointing rail performance in H1 of 2022 continued to undermine our full potential as a business. This has, however, not distracted us from focusing on what we can control to optimize the use of our allocated rail capacity to the extent that trains become available. Our efforts to prioritize export sales rather than third path volumes, coupled with railing the highest margin coal, continues to pay dividends. In the first half of the year, TFR achieved an annualized run rate of 53.3 million tonnes for the industry as a whole.
It is our expectation that industry throughput will improve in the second half of the year, especially as a result of the maintenance charter, but we have planned our business in a manner that does not require a material ramp up and step up in H2 of 2022. During the first half of this year, we trucked coal between operations and rail sidings to optimize our stockpiles and rail distribution pattern. Thungela has, in the meantime, commenced with the evaluation of alternative logistics, logistic arrangements in order to move additional export coal to the market. The movement of coal to the Port of Richards Bay via road and the loading of vessels through alternative bulk exporting facilities will begin in the second half of 2022.
Clearly, we remain motivated to solve the issues plaguing TFR as rail remains the primary route to port, given the volume limitations of any road transport solutions. TFR's performance in H1 forced us to curtail production at some of our operations. As a result, today we announce the revision in our export sellable production guidance to 13 million-13.6 million tonnes, down from the 14 million-15 million tonnes originally guided. Our CFO, Deon Smith, will touch on our full year guidance in a bit more detail. With that, let me now hand over to Deon to take us through the financial and operational performance in more detail. Deon?
Thank you very much, July, and good afternoon, good morning to everybody on the call. We are indeed very pleased with our financial results for the reporting period up to the end of June 2022. Profit at ZAR 9.6 billion compared to ZAR 351 million for the first half of 2021 clearly reflects the impact of operating in a strong energy price environment and highlights our leverage to achieve thermal coal prices. Record Adjusted EBITDA at ZAR 16.7 billion is also a multiple of our first half 2021 Adjusted EBITDA of ZAR 1.9 billion.
While our export sellable production was lower at 6.1 million tonnes compared to the 6.7 H1 2021, our export sales remain fairly consistent at 6.5 million tonnes compared to 6.6 million tonnes in the prior year. The lower production was intentional as we curtailed production in order to mitigate the ongoing effects of the poor rail performance. The lower production denominator, combined with a higher royalty cost, resulted in an FOB cost per export tonne of ZAR 1,093 a tonne. Excluding royalties, the FOB cost per tonne is ZAR 927.
As July mentioned earlier, our strong cash flow generation and are now in reference to the ZAR 8.9 billion adjusted operating free cash flow for the period, and our net cash position at the end of 2022 enabled the board to declare a total dividend to the shareholders of Thungela of ZAR 8.2 billion, or in other words, an ordinary cash dividend of ZAR 60 per share. I will unpack some of these numbers as we step through the presentation today. In reflecting on the first six months of 2022, we have experienced unprecedented volatility and high prices across the energy complex due to energy security concerns which were exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine.
The increasing cost of energy in the markets we serve is well reported on in mainstream media, and now mirrors continued concerns by industry commentators about the need for affordable and reliable energy to safeguard economies and livelihoods, and to support the transition to a lower carbon future. The geopolitical tension, which resulted in tighter supply/demand dynamics across the energy complex over the past year, and I'm referencing both the Australia-China situation as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, clearly added to an already constrained supply of coal due to limited investment in projects, restricted access to capital more generally, logistics challenges and adverse weather conditions across some of the main producing countries. We have also seen a shift in the flow of energy across the globe to compensate for restrictions imposed through sanctions.
These dynamics played into benchmark prices across all regions and ultimately resulted in a realized price for our export quality coal of $240 a tonne for the first half of the year, compared to $75 a tonne in 2021. In unpacking the trends I mentioned earlier, it's worth noting that coal exports from RBCT into Europe has increased by 720%, from 500,000 tonnes in H1 2021 to 4.1 million tonnes in the first half of 2022. At the same time, exports to Asia from RBCT dropped by 17% compared to the first half of 2021.
These changes to coal flows and the tighter supply and demand situation are expected to prevail for some time, and as a result, the thermal coal forward price curve remains well above historic price levels, and indeed well above any historic price forecasts. Comparing the $240 a tonne realized price with the average benchmark price of $277 a tonne for this period equates to a 13% discount to the benchmark price in the first half. This narrow discount was a result of elevated premiums for certain high-quality export coals in our portfolio relative to benchmark, coupled clearly with our continued efforts to optimize the value we get from every train. In simple terms, prioritizing the highest margin coal while managing a set of operational constraints such as stockpiles is important to us.
As July mentioned a bit earlier, the disappointing rail performance was by far, far our greatest limitation and resulted in the need to curtail production from late 2021 and throughout the first half of 2022. The production curtailment was focused at operations where we stood the best possible chance of eliminating costs associated with that production without taking flexibility to ramp back up away, but also focused on areas where we could redeploy equipment and people to other activities, such as rehabilitation work. We've accordingly spent almost ZAR 200 million on rehabilitation activities using equipment and people ordinarily focused on production. The production results compared to H1 2021 is a reduction of 1,000,000 tons in export saleable production for the period.
Our export sales at 6.5 million tons for the first half was broadly flat compared to H1 2021 as we prioritize our own equity export sales rather than utilizing the limited rail capacity for lower margin third party tonnages. Export equity sales accounted for approximately 90% of our first half 2022 revenue of ZAR 26.2 billion, which is another record number for this business. Let us now turn to costs. The single largest factor in our absolute cost escalation from the first half of last year to H1 2022 was the royalty charges of ZAR 1.1 billion, resulting in an increase of ZAR 171 per ton on a like for like basis.
Royalties are paid to the government at a minimum of about 0.5% of gross sales, up to a maximum of 7% of gross sales. The main driver of the royalty percentage is a regulatory calculation of an earnings margin. To be specific, EBIT over gross sales. Double-digit percentage inflation has become the norm across the mining industry this year, with energy and commodity input costs accounting for the largest part of our cost escalation. We continue to seek opportunities to limit the impact of inflation as we drive a number of initiatives, such as our buy better, spend better program and strategic advanced procurement of higher inflation-linked consumables. We have fortunately also experienced much of this tailwind in our revenue. I'm referring to energy complex prices.
The lower production denominator, titled TFR performance on the slide, reflects the impact of our fixed stranded cost on our unit cost. The resultant ZAR 927 a ton unit cost excluding royalties is above the unit cost range that we previously guided of ZAR 850 ZAR -870 on the same basis. We have reflected on the full year outlook and accordingly update our guidance. Before we do that, let's reflect on our profit for the first half of 2022. If we now look at our profit for the period, the single largest impact on our earnings compared to the prior year is higher revenue of ZAR 16.1 billion, resulting from the higher realized prices and weaker rand.
The higher prices also resulted in increased corporate taxes of ZAR 2.2 billion and royalty taxes of ZAR 1.1 billion for the period. The effective tax rate at 18.2% was below the corporate tax rate of 28%, mainly as a result of the recognition of a deferred tax asset of approximately ZAR 1.2 billion in this period. The effective tax rate is expected to increase closer to the corporate tax rate towards the end of 2022. The derivative movement of ZAR 3.5 billion relates to the cash settlement of ZAR 2.1 billion in relation to coal swaps, and the balance of ZAR 1.4 billion relates to the mark-to-market fair value movement on the open coal swap positions and the Anglo American capital support agreement as at June 30 2022.
In explaining the net profit for the period, I mentioned the impact of derivatives. Let me now unpack those for a minute. During the last quarter of 2021, the board approved the initiation of a price risk management strategy to underpin the sustainability of our lower margin export operations. The aim of this program was to lock in firm prices and accordingly a minimum firm margin for a maximum percentage of our production and sales. We accordingly entered into a series of coal swap agreements during Q4 2021 at a firm average price of approximately $130 a ton.
To put this into perspective, prior to the demerger, our business experienced two consecutive years of $60-$70 prices, and the capital support agreement with Anglo American was accordingly priced at a floor of around ZAR 1,175 a ton, or around $80 a ton. These $130 a ton coal swap instruments were essentially priced at almost double that, so ZAR 2,000 a ton, which is a level of pricing where our business is highly cash generative. In unpacking the income statement and cash flow impact, as mentioned earlier, the strong price environment in H1 2022, especially post the Ukraine conflict, resulted in record half year revenue of ZAR 26.2 billion, which included all physical export sales into the market, including sales from those lower margin operations.
As the derivatives which we entered into Q4 2021 matured, we utilized around ZAR 2.1 billion of this revenue to settle those financial instruments. As outlined at our year-end results in March, we were not overly excited to report a fair value profit on those instruments end of December as perversely large losses on these coal swaps, which represent a small percentage of our sales, equate to enormous free cash flow on the larger part of our sales, which is what we are reporting on today.
The board supported the continuation of this price risk management strategy, and we accordingly rolled this program forward, albeit at a higher firm margin and lower volumes, mainly due to limited liquidity in the forward market. At the end of June 2022, we had coal swaps of approximately 625,000 tons in place, with maturities up to the end of Q1 2023. These coal swaps have an average firm price of $198 a ton for H2 2022, and $211 a ton for Q1 2023. In other words, we are set to earn firm prices of more than ZAR 3,000 a ton for that 625,000 tons of our sales up to the end of Q1 2023.
Given the strong forward curve at the end of June 2022, we recognize a non-cash fair value loss of one and a ZAR 500 million in our income statement and a further ZAR 347 million in relation to the Anglo American capital support agreement. Those are both non-cash. This fair value movement was calculated as at in June 2022. The movement, based on the forward curve, on a particular date, such as Friday last week, would have resulted in a ZAR 500 million movement. Final turn to adjusted operating free cash flow. Adjusted EBITDA of ZAR 16.7 billion represents an all-time record for this business. In bridging this number, sorry, to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization down to operating free cash flow.
You will note that we paid taxes of ZAR 3.7 billion, so that's corporate taxes. That is on top of the approximately ZAR 1 billion royalties number I spoke of earlier. We also adjust for the derivative settlement of ZAR 2.1 billion, as well as a working capital build of ZAR 1.8 billion. The working capital movement is mainly a higher export receivable balance, given that what prices did in H1 2022. We spent approximately ZAR 500 million on sustaining capital, which results in an adjusted operating free cash flow of ZAR 8.9 billion. This is also the basis of our dividend policy. In terms of capital expenditure, at ZAR 540 million, our H1 2022 sustaining capital represents around 34% of the lower end of our full year guidance of ZAR 1.6 billion.
While this is slightly below historic H1 average percentage spend, we typically see much higher delivery and spend rates in the second half of the year, which reflects the typical planning, design, and execution cycle for our business. With the Elders production replacement project now having been approved for execution, we envisage spend to ramp up during the last quarter of 2022, with approximately ZAR 150 million of project mobilization, long lead time orders, and civil works expenditure being planned as we speak. Our stated dividend policy is to target a minimum payout of 30% of adjusted operating free cash flow. The minimum dividend would therefore be ZAR 2.7 billion.
Given our net cash balance of ZAR 14.8 billion at the end of June 2022, coupled with continued strong fundamentals for our business, the board has declared a total ordinary cash dividend of ZAR 8.2 billion, or in other words, ZAR 60 per share, representing a payout ratio of 92%. As July mentioned, a further ZAR 500 million has been allocated to the employee and Nkulo Community Partnership Trusts. The board also resolved to contribute a further ZAR 200 million to the Green Fund in order to increase the cash available for future environmental rehabilitation obligations. This ZAR 200 million is in addition to the ZAR 188 million we paid into the Green Fund during the first half of 2022.
We remain committed to a disciplined approach to capital allocation and have accordingly resolved to return all excess cash above the liquidity buffer of ZAR 5 billion-ZAR 6 billion as of the end of the reporting period to shareholders, and indeed, stakeholders. In response to TFR's inconsistent and poor rail performance, we have curtailed production, thus affecting our ability to take full advantage of the strong pricing environment. Taking into consideration TFR's execution since the pre-closing trading statement issued on the June 13th, and we anticipate rail performance for the remainder of this year to probably remain constrained. While we continue to implement mitigating actions, this uncertainty has necessitated a review of our full year guidance for export saleable production and unit cost. We are accordingly revising our export saleable production guidance to a range of 13 million-13.6 million tons for 2022.
That is down from the 14 million-15 million tons previously guided. This range assumes a potential stock build of between 400,000 and up to 1 million for the full year, should TFR only be able to rail at the first half rate, which is extrapolated to an annual rate of 53.3 million tons for the industry. Our revised guidance range for export saleable production also implies a step up in production of 13%-23% in the second half of the year. We are comfortable that this step up will be achieved as first half production was lower due to curtailments already in place.
Furthermore, our business is seasonal, and we are typically able to achieve higher second half production due to fewer interruptions and rain events. Recognizing that the improvements at TFR are likely to be gradual, we continue to use the levers at our disposal to mitigate the impact on operations and particularly financial performance. As July set out earlier, we continue to track volumes between sites in order to optimize stockpile management and indeed train distribution patterns. This also allows us to continue to prioritize the railing of higher margin coal. In addition, we have re-established previously used stockpile facilities to provide further product mix flexibility.
As a result of the change in export sellable production guidance as well as materially higher royalties, the group is now likely to incur FOB cost per ton of ZAR 1,025 a ton to ZAR 1,065 a ton, including royalties, or ZAR 885 a ton to ZAR 915 a ton, excluding royalties. This represents a measured increase over the guidance originally provided and a healthy stretch for the business operating in an environment characterized by abnormal global inflation and lower production. We confirm the capital expenditure guidance range of between ZAR 1.7 billion and ZAR 2 billion for total CapEx for 2022, with sustaining CapEx likely to be at the lower end of this guidance range.
We will provide guidance for 2023 at the release of our 2022 annual results in March next year or earlier as may be appropriate. With that, let me now hand back to July. July?
Thank you so much, Deon, for quite an impressive set of numbers. Let me wrap up before handing back to Ryan for questions and answers. We've shared a lot today, but let me leave you with the following key messages. Thungela is committed to running a fatality-free business and every effort will be made to ensure that everyone returns home safely every day. With the price environment expected to remain strong for the balance of 2022, our ability to capitalize on this is very much dependent on Transnet. The Elders project will provide superior shareholder returns in addition to sustaining regional jobs and supporting local suppliers.
Thungela is able to demonstrate a commitment to exceptional shareholder returns as we declare a dividend of ZAR 8.2 billion to shareholders, representing 92% of adjusted operating free cash flow, substantially in excess of our targeted dividend payout ratio. Considering the dividend, distribution to the EPP and CPP and the additional contribution to be made to the Green Fund in the second half, we've distributed all excess cash above the liquidity buffer of ZAR 6 billion. The Employee and Nkulo Community Partnership Trust are set to receive ZAR 500 million . This distribution will make a meaningful impact on the lives of our people and empower the CPP to create a legacy beyond the life of our mines. We also recognize the important role that smaller businesses play in the prosperity of the country and launched the Thuthukani enterprise and supplier development program.
Finally, work on charting our path to net zero by 2050 continues, and I look forward to providing you with an update on our intermediate carbon emission reduction targets in March 2023. At this stage, we'll also be largely compliant with the requirements of the TCFD. In closing, I'd like to thank everyone at Thungela for their commitment and agility in navigating a challenging operating environment in the first half. I am proud of what we've achieved in the first half of the year, and we look forward to continuing to deliver on our purpose of responsibly creating value together for a shared future over the remainder of 2022 and beyond. Ryan, back to you for questions.
Thank you very much, July. We will now move to Q&A. A reminder that if you wish to ask a question directly, please join the conference call facility using the link you'd have received upon registration. Dialing star one will indicate to the operator that you'd like to ask a question. For those that have submitted questions via the webinar platform, I will be reading those out. Operator, please could I ask you to open the line for our first question.
Thank you. First question comes from Brian Morgan of RMB Morgan Stanley.
Hi, guys. Thanks very much. Just to start with, three questions. The first question is just your thinking around price realizations for the second half of this year. Do you expect them to remain in line with the first half, widen or narrow in the second half? That's the first question. Second question is just on operational integrity. All of the operations, with the exception of Mafube, saw volumes drop year-on-year in the first half, and that's for obvious reasons. Just a question from me is to what extent do you think the operations are sustainable going forward?
Are the operations able to ramp back up to prior production run rates, were we unconstrained from a rail perspective, or has there been some kind of operational damage done to the capacity of the operations to run fully? That's the second question. Third question is, we've had load shedding for 15 years, and it's taken 15 years of lobbying to get the government to, you know, around the idea of deregulating power generation in South Africa. Surely it can't take that long in transport infrastructure. Do you have any thoughts in this regard? Is there any intense lobbying going on? Do you think we can ratchet it up? That's it from my side.
Thanks, Brian.
Maybe you take the first one.
Yeah. Good morning. Well, afternoon. Sorry, Brian. I'll kick us off on the quality or the discount to benchmark price. For different reasons, we hope and believe that the discount of around 13% would prevail for the balance of the year. While the quality discount might widen slightly, we have a couple of plans on grade to offset that. If all our plans work out, we should be able to achieve that 13%. I will get July to sort of give you a sense in the operations, given he's much closer to those. From my perspective, Brian, we've certainly pulled up handbrakes on a number of the operations in H1 for various reasons. That was all intentional.
I'm quite confident the operations can bounce back, and that those levers are very much that too controllable for us. No permanent damage to the throughput capacity or capability of any of those operations, that I'm aware of. July?
I think that's right. Brian, it may not look obvious, but we have pulled handbrakes at Goedehoop, we've pulled handbrakes at Khwezela, we've pulled handbrakes at Zibulo. All these are intentional decisions we took given the real constraints that we've got. Those decisions are taken with the intention of doing one thing and one thing only, which is maximize cash flow given that constraint. From where I'm sitting, I don't think any of the decisions that we've taken are long-term damaging. We should be able to ramp up if we need to. Your last question is probably much broader.
Like you, I'm optimistic that it won't take us 15 years to come to a realization of what needs to be done to repair and create integrity in critical infrastructure. There are a number of solutions that would have to play out. Privatization is not the only solution, but clearly, if that is one of those that will allow all of us to get better real performance, we are obviously supportive. As a shareholder, what government can do is wait until we've figured out what we need to do to get private partnerships on that infrastructure to get performance. The Transnet Freight Rail is in desperate need of recapitalization for them to catch up on backlog maintenance.
Two, on acquiring additional equipment which they desperately need to get back to their historical performance. I think that is a here and now discussion that needs to be had between Transnet, us as industry, and government, so that we can get the infrastructure performing. We while we're deciding what all these models look like, which we're quite supportive of.
And Brian. I trust that addresses your queries. Thanks for those, Brian.
Yeah, that's cool. Thanks.
Thanks, Brian. Operator, if we can go to the next question, please.
Thank you. The next question comes from Ben Davis of Liberum.
Morning, guys. Congratulations on a fantastic set of results. I just had three questions, if I may. Firstly, you've got Elders project being approved by the board and so effectively replacing tons. What else in aggregate is it gonna have an impact in terms of cost position and also on product qualities of the coal, just in aggregate for Thungela? Secondly, just wondering in terms of that turnaround, building starts in Q3, and you think you'll have first tons coming out by Q4 next year. Is there any key hurdles or bottlenecks in terms of delivery of that? Lastly, obviously at current coal prices, your bank account keeps filling up rather quickly.
Just wondering what sort of flavor the bank account looks like at the moment, and whether you would ever consider quarterly dividend payments to deplete it quicker. Anyway, thanks.
Ben, seeing that all those questions, I'm going to let my CFO tackle all three.
I'm gonna do your first and your last one, Ben. I might need help on the second one. On your first question on Elders, it is indeed a production replacement project, as you've termed it. The qualities of that project is very similar to the qualities that we get from Goedehoop currently. It's very close, so contiguous almost, and therefore we mine exactly the same seam, and the washability of that coal gives us a range of anything between 5.5-5.850. Then it's about playing with what the most optimal output is. But arguably, based on data we have today, I would think that we will wash it to a 5.7 product.
That's consistent quality to what we've seen in that region and for our portfolio. What it does for a cost per ton
As operations typically get older, so Goedehoop, as you know, Ben, we typically sink shafts in the sweet spot, and when you get to the end of the mine, you start mining remnant coal, and as a result, something like clearly Goedehoop is slightly higher cost at the end of its life. We're therefore expecting Elders, yes, in inflation and all those good things to come in at a similar, but probably a better cost position than Goedehoop. Our current plans is to bring Elders in at an OpEx cost around $65 a ton. That's on FOB per ton basis, which is very competitive, and that's H1, and therefore should improve, retain or improve the position of our portfolio on balance.
The last part of your question, I don't know the cash balances this morning, but at the end of July, we had ZAR 16.8 billion in cash in the bank, so that compares to the ZAR 14.8 billion at the end of June. Clearly, yes, you are correct. That cash balance keeps on coming in.
Your question on ramp-up and if there are any constraints to the ramp-up, when we develop these kind of projects, we simulate what it would take to develop the box cut, to begin to develop the coal. I mean, the portal into coal. We're quite comfortable with the assumptions the team has taken in terms of development plus the ramp-up that is required. We don't see any risk that we haven't taken into account that could derail us on this specific one.
Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for those, Thanks, again.
Thanks, Ben.
Thank you. Perfect. At this stage, I am going to move to the questions that have come in through the webinar. I see a number of questions that have come in. I'm going to try and group them as much as I can, and I think we've also addressed some of them throughout the course of the presentation. I'm going to start with those relating to the number of questions relating to Transnet, so I'm going to start there. The first question is from Nicholas Wallace. "Hi. Welcome to the incredible results. Have you considered contracting private locomotives through the likes of Grindrod to transport your coal? If you feel it isn't a feasible solution, could you expand on why?
Look, bringing in a third-party set of locomotives is not as straightforward. Yeah, we could go and do that on our own. To do that, we'd then have to have a contract with TFR to be able to put them on the rail tracks. You're introducing them into an existing system, therefore we'd have to develop an appropriate planning system and scheduling system that allows third-party to operate alongside Transnet. Unless the regulatory environment and the rules have been developed adequately, it's something that we can consider, but we may not actually be able to execute it for the reasons that I've just explained.
Yes, we have looked at alternatives, but there are constraints to us being able to pull the trigger on that. The other point really to be made is that on the bulks or heavy hauling corridors, only certain types of locals are suitable to operate on those lines. It's a little bit more complex than just that someone has got locals. All those are things that we've been looking at in the last year.
Thank you, July, and thank you, Nicholas, for that question. The next question, also related to Transnet, comes from Papaki Legodi. Transnet has communicated that they gave up sourcing spare parts from the Chinese OEM and instead opted to re-engineer or reverse engineer the parts. From your interactions with Transnet, can it be confirmed that South Africa has the technical capability to achieve the same?
The first point to be made is that I should be very careful to speak on behalf of Transnet, and that's not what I want to do here because I can't. That question is appropriately addressed by Transnet. Suffice to say that in the interactions we have had, we did quite a piece of rigorous work together to understand what it would take to disaggregate the components in a loco and whether in fact we could find those components locally and from other OEMs. The answer is yes, a substantial part of that we can, and then there will always be proprietary OEM-specific components that we'd have to reverse engineer. Again, you know, we should not underestimate South Africa's ability to innovate around these kind of things.
If we set our minds to be able to do it, we will be able to do it.
Thank you, July. Still relating to Transnet, the next question is from Bruce Williamson at Integral Asset Management. Actually, there are a couple of questions, three questions. Question one: What additional export challenges do you expect in H2 2022 via road transport, and how will logistics costs compare to TFR costs? The second question: Due to cutbacks and export challenges caused by Transnet's appalling performance, have you had to retrench any of your employees?
Yeah. Happy to take the second one first. No, we haven't yet had to retrench any of our permanent employees. As I mentioned earlier, our aim was to constrain or curtail production in areas that we were able to eliminate costs as easily as efficiently as possible. We have, unfortunately, had to reduce a number of contractors' scope of work, as well as the number of contracts we have in place. Clearly we went for the lowest hanging fruit first. In terms of volumes, it would be difficult to speculate today as to what that upside volumes could look like.
Safe to say that the trial that we're busy with, and that July spoke about earlier, will give us much needed intel as to what the constraints and the challenges could be, and also indeed what that cost or that incremental cost would be. We had some views and thoughts, but clearly, that would be firmed up once we've completed such a trial.
Thank you. I'm just going to the further question related to this. Jack Elliott from Argus would like to know which alternative port facilities are you planning to export coal from in H2 2022?
We better this year, but we evaluating Maputo, the General Purpose Terminal at RBCT. We're gonna prioritize the General Purpose Terminal at RBCT for a slightly different reason because, again, our team is evaluating whether it's possible to take coal from the warehouses that we have found there back into the RBCT system. If we could do that's a far more efficient outcome for us. We're looking at all these possibilities in terms of our ability to get to the market.
Perfect. Thank you, July. I see there are a number of other questions related to Transnet, but I think we've largely covered those, so I'm going to move off that topic for now. The next question is from Andre Pieterse at Sasfin. In terms of M&A, which geographies would you consider? Mostly places like Australia or the USA, or also places like Indonesia?
When we communicated our strategy, we said that we are looking at geographic diversification in coal where we have a right to win. That means two things. Firstly, that you would want to target, in first instance, geographies where you know how to operate. In Sub-Saharan Africa is something that we understand. The developing economies is something that we understand. The developing world is something that we understand. The other lens is to say that we believe if you've got the ability to win, it's based on our operating skills, our operating capabilities in coal, and therefore we'd be looking at thermal coal assets in general, wherever they may be.
Again, it's on the basis of whether we think those assets, asset characteristics are superior to anything that we've seen, and secondly, whether we think we can add value to those assets. If all those pieces come together, yes, we'll look irrespective of which geography it is. Of course, I don't want this to sound like, you know, we'll go, including the most unstable regions. We'll be very thoughtful. The key criteria here is do we have the ability to go and win and deliver superior returns for shareholders?
Thank you, July. A related question on M&A comes from Mark Zand at Wexford. Could you comment on the M&A targets that you looked at, what continent, what product? Did any of these projects wind up being sold to someone else?
You can imagine, I mean, when you do M&A, a lot of these things are covered by NDAs for very good reasons. For that reason, I wouldn't be able to share with you which targets we have looked at. Safe to say that you can almost guess which are the core regions where one would have to go and look. I wouldn't, given the nature of the agreements we go into when we evaluate these opportunities, be able to share the specific targets with you.
Thank you, July. I'm just going to the next set of questions. We have a question from Chris Reddy at All Weather Capital. Please, can you provide further commentary on the impact of selling more coal to Europe versus Asia?
I'm happy to give you direction of travel, but as you can imagine, the discussion or the points I shared with you earlier around the movement of coal and the competition for coal between Europe and the East has certainly helped drive premiums on some of the higher quality coals. If I take you back many decades, many of the European coal-fired power plants were originally constructed and built to burn South Africa coal, so South African quality property coal. Therefore, clearly, South Africa was a primary target for the European buyers, as Russian coal dried up.
Add on top of that the freight differential, so South Africa is fairly well-placed or better placed than Australia, or South America to deliver in the European coal demand. Therefore, you will continue, while Europe is short of energy, you'll continue to see those premiums. At the moment, clearly with the drought in Europe and low river levels, maybe there's a bit of reprieve on some of that for a couple of months until the rainy season, until the Rhine river lifts up again, and ARA stocks. The stocks at Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the like gets barged down the Rhine again. You'll see increased European buying activity again and very narrow margins, if not premiums. Europe is playing a very significant role in the premiums that a lot of SA coals are enjoying.
Thank you, Deon. The next question is from Yatish Chowthee, another one from Yatish Chowthee at Visio. How should we think about forecasting EPP, CPP contributions? Will that typically be in line with increases or decreases in dividends, or is it more discretionary?
Happy to answer that. The alignment with the dividends would be there over time. While there are a couple of intercompany loans, you might recall that the EPP, CPP owns 5% each, or 10% in aggregate of South Africa Coal Operations, which is a subsidiary below Thungela that owns and operates all of our mines. That dividend should broadly mirror Thungela's dividend other than from time to time cleaning up intercompany loans, which is a repayment of loans which happened in this time around. Over the long run, it'll mirror the ultimate Thungela dividend.
Thank you, Deon. I see there are a number of questions relating to the domestic market, but before I get to those, there are a couple relating to the coal swaps. The first one is from Tony Bundy. Please comment on the available liquidity on the forward coal swap markets.
Tony, that's something that we look at every day. As I said earlier, with the positions we've locked in at $198 a ton in the second half this year and $211 a ton in Q1, 2023, we were only so far with our margin requirements able to lock in around 625,000 tons. The forward curve clearly remains in backwardation, but on top of that, the liquidity is fairly limited a couple of months out. We would never get ourselves to a position where we are able to do many more tons or percentage-wise compared to our sales than what we're currently seeing. Might increase slightly, but there just isn't sufficient liquidity to get that level of price certainty into the future.
Where we get it, as you see, we will absolutely take it within the confines of the board's mandate.
Thanks, Deon. A related question on the swaps and the aging comes from Zach Oster. What is current portion of forward revenue that is aged?
In order to determine that, I would need to take an assessment on price to start off with. If you assume a consistent price in H2 compared to what you've seen in H1, that forward would be. Apologies, I'm just doing the math for you for a second. Roughly about between 7% and 8% of H2's revenue.
Perfect. Thanks, Deon. I'm then going to move to a couple of questions that have come in, regarding the domestic market. The first question is from Livhuwani Dada at Investec. Can you please talk about the 87% decline in sales in the domestic market at Goedehoop? How should we think about this going forward? A second question, can you please provide an update on wage negotiations?
I'll
You wanna do the 87%? You might as well just comment on the.
Yes.
Wage negotiations because we all know the same thing.
Hi, Livhuwani. Good afternoon to you. Goedehoop has got the opportunity or the ability to run a mineral residue deposit through spare plant capacity, and what that means is that it's idle historically mined discards sitting on stockpiles. When we mine those stockpiles and we wash those, we have the ability to access certain domestic markets, but those domestic markets quite often hinges on Eskom's burn rate. Therefore, in the last number of months, seeing that Eskom's burn rate hasn't been high, we haven't seen much sales in that very low margin and a high volume area. That's why it has come down as dramatically.
You will, however, notice when you look at domestic revenue, it didn't make a dent on the profitability or revenue otherwise, because as I said before, the biggest reason we've done those, and we would continue to look for those markets over time, is because in reducing the size of those MRDs, it also reduces our ultimate future footprint. In terms of wage negotiations, as you probably know, we have a very good historic relationship with organized labor, mutual respect, and I think with the efforts that we as a business have gone to ensure that employees are aligned with our business, and their participation in employee participation trust and the like into the future, we are confident that we would align on a good wage outcome this year.
Discussions are ongoing, so it's best for me to put the pressure on our head of HR, Lesego, to report back on positive news soon.
Thank you, Deon. The last two questions just relating still to domestic. I think, Deon, you've largely answered, actually. It's from Tshepo TSefolo. Has Thungela thought of dealing with Eskom for excess coal supply to maximize production?
I think that question on whether we have targeted to supply Eskom is informed by what Deon has just said. It's not as straightforward because Eskom's burn rate has come down in the first instance. Secondly, we have to take a view what will maximize Thungela's cash margins in the medium term. What we are finding is that actually it's probably better to stockpile some of this coal and be able to sell it at the right time than to supply it at a significant discount to Eskom.
Thank you, July Ndlovu. I'm going to move on to a couple of questions from Sandile Magagula at Umthombo Wealth. The first one relates to Elders. How did you arrive at the ZAR 100 million Elders closure cost? Do you consistently apply the same approximation methodology for the rest of the operations?
Good afternoon, Sandile. Same methodology, absolutely, and from next year's cycle, that assessment would be standard practice across, as we do with an independent environmental advising consultant that would evaluate the level of disturbance. What we set out in terms of ZAR 100 million is a real number, so you're not talking about a number of years into the future all discounted to today's money terms. You also have to recognize that while a number of years ago we investigated open cut options for Elders from a variety of perspectives, we have opted to develop Elders and its resource extraction through an underground mining methodology, so a smaller footprint and the like than what an open cut would have been.
Perfect. Thank you very much, Deon. Sandile has a further question around the European drought, but I think you've addressed that. His third question is there any potential impediment that may result in poor working capital performance in H2?
Working capital doesn't perform by itself poorly or otherwise. It's a number of factors that influence it. You would have seen the working capital build in H1, which is primarily a build-up of accounts receivable. Therefore, what that means is our balance sheet has enjoyed the higher prices has resulted in a higher receivable asset for us or balance for us. That's been the working capital performance, which you could argue therefore is poor in H1, but it's a nice store of wealth as that unwinds clearly. As I answered Ben's question earlier, you would have seen a lot of that net free cash come into our balance sheet 14 days later.
We are not expecting any other material changes to that working capital, but as I said earlier, we are now gearing operations to achieve, let's call it the 13 million-13.6 million tons full year production. If Transnet performance doesn't necessarily achieve what they envisage it would achieve, we might build further stockpiles. That is necessary from a number of perspectives. The most important one I also touched on a bit earlier, for us to be able to optimize that discount, that product discount, and for us to enable us to sell high quality coals into the market and optimize the energy that we send down to Richards Bay, we need to make sure that we mine a particular blend of product to get the higher quality coals out.
In doing so, it might be that we need to stockpile more of the lower quality coals. If we do that, which there is a chance, I said, it might be between 400,000 tons and just, well, 1,000,000 tons. Clearly, if that is the case, you will see a slight working capital build on stock also. So those are the only two factors that are likely to impact our working capital reporting at the end of December.
Thank you very much, Deon. A couple of questions, just moving back to hedging. The first one is from Wesley Gore at WCM Investment Management. Would you be incentivized, given the current price environment, to lock in more long-term pricing agreements with the likes of Europe?
Clearly, as I said earlier on the liquidity in the market that isn't necessarily there, we don't necessarily have in a financial instruments market the opportunity to lock in firm long-term contracts, given a lack of market depth. We still have an export sales agreement in place with Anglo American, and that agreement we entered into prior to the demerger, if you might recall. It runs three years post that demerger date. That really precludes us from selling volumes outside of that export offtake agreement with Anglo American. The flip side, clearly, is that last time I looked at Anglo's balance sheet, we have a very solid counterparty and therefore very limited credit risk or counterparty risk in Anglo American delivering on buying our export coal.
Thank you very much, Deon. The next question, and I will look to wrap up the Q&A quite soon. The next question is from Fernando Lopez-Oña at Wexford Capital. Cash of ZAR 16.1 billion at the end of July. Has the Green Fund and the EPP, CPP payments, approximately ZAR 700 million, been funded already? Let me just for clarity, let me just repeat that. Cash of ZAR 16.1 billion at the end of July. Has the Green Fund and the EPP, CPP payments been funded already?
Apologies. The 16.1 is actually a 16.8. Apologies if I misspoke. It's ZAR 16.8 billion at the end of July, compared to the ZAR 14.8 billion in cash at the end of June. The answer is that your Green Fund payment of ZAR 188 million was made in H1, but the allocations to the EPP, CPP, as well as the dividend, has not yet come off that balance. Clearly that balance is also not net of our royalties and taxes, which we pay twice a year. Our most recent royalties and taxes payment was made late June, so the 14.8 at the end of June was net of all of the cash taxes and royalties that we paid during the month of June.
Thank you very much, Deon. A further question from Fernando. At today's RB prices, what do you expect the H2 derivatives cash settlement amount to be?
Let me just see what is today's price. Apologies. I would have to just do the calculation for you on,
Can we get back to Fernando with the specific we give you?
Yeah. Just to be clear, I ran it on Friday, and on the open positions, the 625,000 tons, at Friday's forward curve, because these settlements we measure rather against the forward curve and not a spot, if that makes sense. Yeah. You don't look at a particular spot price. You look at the forward curve, which is in backwardation. It was around ZAR 500 million to settle those Friday last week. Just before the weekend.
Perfect. Thanks, Deon. The last two questions that we'll take. The first one is from John Hardy: Is the topic of share buybacks off the table for the foreseeable future?
As a board and as a management team, clearly we would want to reserve as many as possible options to return cash to shareholders. What you've seen today is that we've used the dividend mechanism to its fullest for all cash above that ZAR 6 billion buffer, because that's the tool that we have available. Clearly, we will continue to engage with our shareholders over time because we believe that it would be healthy for us to have as many as possible tools that we would continue to pursue at the appropriate time and for the appropriate quantum authority from our shareholders to buy our own stock. Given its relative attractiveness, if you look at the price earnings or the yield as of today, it is certainly a good buy.
Thank you, Deon. The last question that we'll take on the webinar platform is from Izak van Niekerk from Mergence: What are you doing from your side to improve TFR performance? The massive loss of industry revenue as well as the loss of tax revenue to government due to TFR performance is highly disappointing. Just the question, what are you doing from your side to improve TFR performance?
I think, Izak, one has to start off by realizing what is in our control and what isn't. What is in our control is, for instance, as an industry, we have helped with security, and we've seen the big impact that we've seen as a result of the security intervention. We have been in negotiations and discussions with Transnet to see if there are areas we can work on planning, and there's a project in place to improve planning and scheduling, again, to improve the efficiency of the limited rail capacity which is there.
We also are, as an industry, lobbying side by side with Transnet to ensure that the shareholder, which is government, can recapitalize Transnet to allow Transnet to catch up on the backlog of maintenance, and secondly, get capital they require to invest in additional equipment. They've announced, you would be aware of that they're imminently about to go into the market to secure additional locos. This is all results of the collaborative effort between us and Transnet to ensure that we can fix the infrastructure.
Thank you very much, July. Thank you to everyone on both the call and the webinar for your questions. I am going to wrap up the Q&A session here. There are a couple of questions on the webinar, which I think are more of an administrative nature, which I will get back to you. Of course, if you feel that your question wasn't adequately answered, please do get in touch with me via email. My email address is ryan.africa@thungela.com, and I will get back to you. With that, please allow me to hand back to July to close out the day.
Thank you, Ryan, and let me just thank everyone who has joined us on the call. Again, another opportunity for us to share with you the stellar results that Thungela has been able to deliver, a year since the demerger, and we continue to be focused and determined as a management team and board to ensure that we continue to create value for all of you, our stakeholders. Thank you very much for joining us.