Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to you all. Thanks again for joining us today. And this is our second of our sustainability performance updates for the year. And these sessions are the ones that we really do enjoy sharing with you, not only because of the stuff that we have to share, but also with the idea of getting some of your perspectives on it, too. So today, as always, I will start with the introduction and safety, but then we'll hand over for most of the heavy lifting to Helena and Patricio. Helena will talk us through how sustainability is unlocking value for Anglo American, with a very specific focus today on our copper portfolio.
And then finally, Patricio, who is the chief exec of our copper business in Chile, will do a bit of a deep dive into some of the work that we're doing there, just to illustrate and bring to life how sustainability works in practice across our operations. I'll then come back a few closing remarks, and then we should have plenty of time for Q&A. Now, of course, safety remains absolutely our most important value. And it has to come first in absolutely everything that we do. And we can really never, ever compromise on that in order to ensure that our colleagues do go home safely every single day. Now, while we do continue to see a very pleasing reduction in our total injury rates this year already, an 8% improvement over 2023, we have unfortunately not yet delivered a fatality-free business. And this remains our primary objective.
I'm deeply saddened to say that we had two fatalities at Dishaba, which is in our PGM business during June of this year. We've just recently had another one at the same mine earlier this month. It is a simple truth that absolutely nothing can matter more than bringing people home safely from work every day. We remain committed to this and believe it is possible to do so. In order to prevent these sort of injuries from happening, we have some very specific and focused activities and programs in the business running today. The first of these is that we continue our focus on operational leaders having quality engagements in the field. So that is actually spending time in the front line with our people in their workplace.
The idea here is that they get an opportunity to then experience firsthand what is working well, where there are changes and improvements that are required, and also heighten their own hazard awareness and the potential stopping of unsafe work. Leadership, for me, has never been a desktop or a boardroom exercise, and in no area does this matter more than in the safety arena. The second initiative that we're driving very hard in the business, which is fundamental to our operating model, the operating model itself being premised on a very simple principle: plan, do, check, and act, and in terms of that, it applies to all of our activities, including our planned maintenance work, which really this year has been a very key focus for us.
Planned maintenance work helps us with the proactive identification of risk and therefore then the control of risk so that all activities can be appropriately scheduled and then safely executed. And thirdly, continued implementation of our contractor performance management program. And as I've shared with you before, when we analyze the type of incidents that we're having and where they're happening in the organization, they tend to fall very heavily on the contractor cohort within the organization. And all contractors we deem to be the same as employees in the business.
And so therefore, it really behooved us to get a program in place that really focused on ensuring that every person working in our company is equally valued and that our contractors are fully integrated into our systems and our processes, with the work that they undertake being well planned and well aligned to our operating model, which is then also rigorously executed with the right skills being applied at the right place. Now, we've seen a consistent improvement in management oversight over our contractor partners during the course of this year, now with five times more of the first-line safety verification events, including inspections, observations, and critical control audits compared to when this program was first introduced in the group. A quick word on Grosvenor.
Now, the fire that we had there in June, I think, is a very clear reminder for all of us of the potential hazards that exist in this industry and the importance of systems, people, processes, and culture. Now, all critical controls were in place at Grosvenor, and the emergency management system was followed to the T, which ensured the complete and orderly safe withdrawal of all of the workers from the underground to the surface. Now, our safe response to this incident at Grosvenor, I think, is a testament to the very strong and mutually beneficial relationships that we have been able to build and build those on trust and been able to nurture these with all levels of our steelmaking coal business over many, many years.
Now, these relationships enabled us to swiftly transition from an emergency response back to a project and an asset recovery phase at Grosvenor. Now, this is a slide that you'll be well familiar with now because I've talked about it several times during the course of this year. We are pursuing transformational and exciting change here at Anglo American. And through this, we remain laser-focused on the three key pillars of our strategy, which are operational excellence, portfolio simplification, and growth. At its core, operational excellence is supported by a set of strategic enablers, sustainability and technical competencies, our culture, our reputation, and, of course, customer solutions. Now, built over many decades of establishing and operating businesses in developed and developing markets, our deep capability and experience across all of these areas are integral to delivering the full value potential of Anglo American's portfolio, as well as our growth opportunities.
Now, we believe that our approach to sustainability adds significant value to all of our stakeholders, starting, of course, with our shareholders. Portfolio simplification is moving ahead at pace now, and our plan to simplify this company will provide multiple benefits. Our new business will be more valuable and more resilient, with a focus on future-enabling copper, premium iron ore, and crop nutrients. This high-returning, highly cash-generative portfolio, with very substantial high-quality growth options, all of which we already own, is expected to make Anglo American one of the most attractive mining stocks in the market, and we're already seeing a move and a shift to that valuation. We are making rapid progress with our portfolio simplification, as I said, and a structurally lower cost base as we reshape this company into a streamlined and significantly more agile organization for the coming decades.
Now, Helena is going to soon remind us of some of the outstanding growth options that we have. And we are also excited about how our focus portfolio will really allow for value of growth to shine through. But of course, our approach to sustainability is absolutely paramount in this quest. Sustainability is fundamental to our ability to deliver that value and growth, for example, simply just the securing of permits. Sustainability is fundamental to our approach towards the critical requirements of building strong relationships with host communities. And finally, sustainability is fundamental to our ability to establish ourselves as a preferred partner for our future growth, as well as with all relevant stakeholders and other strategic partners. And with that, Helena, I'll hand over to you before you hand over to Patricio to give us some of the real examples of sustainability in action.
Thank you, Duncan, and good afternoon, everyone. We are proud to have taken a leadership approach over many years, underpinned by our fundamental belief that sustainability is critical for value creation through both enhancing operational performance and unlocking new growth options. Sustainability can be and should be profitable, and this is why we embedded sustainability into our strategy and value creation model across the organization, from board decision-making to day-to-day operational activities. Our approach is led by our Sustainable Mining Plan, which we launched back in 2018, and it is built around three global sustainability pillars of healthy environment, thriving communities, and trusted corporate leadership, each with ambitious stretch goals. Our sustainability strategy is further underpinned by critical foundations, which are consistent requirements for each of our operations that are essential for our social license to operate, and it has produced results.
On climate, we have delivered absolute reductions in Scope 1 and 2 emissions of 26% relative to peak emissions in 2019. On water, today, we are 22% below our 2015 baseline for freshwater usage. And through our socioeconomic development programs, we supported over 140,000 jobs outside of our mines. As a result of our ethical value chain commitments, 14 of our operations have undergone third-party audits against recognized responsible mining certification schemes, including IRMA, with six operations receiving IRMA 75 accreditation. Our plan is ambitious. It galvanized action, and it continues to deliver results. And Pat will bring some of this to life with the great work we are doing in Chile. That said, our sustainability strategy has always been designed to be a flexible, living plan.
And we continue to evolve our priorities, our ambition level, and our delivery pathways as we learn, make progress, and as our business and technologies develop. We also continue to ensure that it stays relevant to our stakeholders, is ambitious, and importantly, continues to deliver business value. With our business now undergoing a fundamental transformation, it is an appropriate time for us to review our sustainability priorities and pathways adapted to our new portfolio, incorporating lessons learned and taking account of an ever-evolving external context and positioning our business for its next chapter. We believe that strong sustainability performance and capabilities that enable it will continue to be a prerequisite for long-term value creation in our industry. Our approach is anchored on a number of key principles. Firstly, our sustainability priorities must deliver tangible value to the business and our many different stakeholders, including shareholders.
Secondly, we always want to focus on the areas where we can drive real change and deliver greatest impact, so we continuously seek to tailor our work and our commitments to local context, recognizing that the needs and priorities of stakeholders differ across different countries and regions, and thirdly, we seek to ensure that our delivery pathways themselves are effective and value-creative. Sustainability, as I said, must be profitable, and it is the way that we go about delivering on our sustainability commitments that I believe really sets us apart, and we will continue to evolve and optimize our pathways, leverage our networks, and act as a catalyst to create partnerships and co-funding models. Our focused technology and innovation programs and proactive integration of sustainability considerations into long-term planning and permitting will also help ensure that the value delivery pathways and accountabilities to deliver them are very clear.
And this approach will enable us to continue driving meaningful local impact through realistic goals with truly sustainable and value-creative delivery pathways. Our strategy is based on what we firmly believe is the right thing to do for our company, local communities, both governments, and, of course, investors in the long run. And we are now working on detailing this for our future portfolio. And we look forward to bringing you further updates through 2025. As Duncan mentioned, today, we will be focusing on our world-class copper portfolio, which offers exceptional growth opportunities in one of the most sought-after commodities and how our sustainability competencies uniquely position us to deliver that growth. As you know, there are three major global trends that underpin the demand for copper. And these are decarbonization of energy, industrial, and transport systems, its population growth, which is forecast to hit around 9.7 billion by 2050.
Connected to that is the pull for improved living standards for this growing and urbanizing population and all the infrastructure, products, and technologies required to support this, for which copper is a critical raw material. Combined, we forecast 2%-3% annual growth in primary copper demand for the foreseeable future, which is on top of the underlying natural depletion from existing sources of supply. However, as with any commodity, it is the supply side that determines its attractiveness and the economic return potential. We all know that bringing on new copper supply is extremely challenging for the industry. As we've said earlier, these challenges and constraints are not so much financial or technological. The nature of these constraints is often related to sustainability and permitting, and in particular, water and community issues.
And that's because many of the most promising resources are located in the areas that are more complex from a socioeconomic perspective, as well as with significant water and biodiversity issues. And the challenge of navigating through these complexities is significant, but we take pride in having worked through these to successfully deliver Quellaveco. Quellaveco can serve, in fact, as a blueprint for how to deliver a greenfield copper project on time and on budget. The successful delivery of this world-class project was made possible because we took an innovative approach to sustainability and license to operate issues, leveraging the experience and relationships that we have built over many years. Quellaveco sets the benchmark for how projects integrate with stakeholders in a more collaborative, transparent, and impactful way.
We understood how to work for mutual benefit, and we understood the challenges, obstacles, and risks faced by us with our stakeholders if we didn't get this right. Trust is built over time, and we were able to do this by extensively engaging with the community and local government, starting with our groundbreaking dialogue table, which involved extensive and genuine engagement with stakeholders to identify, understand, and incorporate their needs and expectations, be it the need for jobs, local supply opportunities, social development projects, and most importantly, water. It was very important for us that Quellaveco is not just tolerated or accepted, but that it becomes an integral part of the societal fabric, that it catalyzes socioeconomic development and genuinely improves people's lives without making them dependent on the mine. On energy, we already use 100% renewable electricity across our South American operations, and those projects all have NPV-positive outcomes.
Finally, we see sustainability as a key driver of commercial and stakeholder value. We aim to show what responsible and sustainable mining looks like. These efforts have been recognized through certifications such as the Copper Mark that was awarded to our mainly Chilean operations and IRMA, which we are currently working towards. Given the scale and quality of our copper endowment more broadly, through our interest in three world-class copper assets, Quellaveco, Los Bronces, and Collahuasi, we are set for multiple decades of competitive production, value-creative growth, and cash flow generation. Through our well-sequenced, predominantly brownfield options, we see a pathway to over 1 million tons of annual copper production by early 2030s. The cost and risk of bringing our expansions online will be much lower than those for new greenfield projects across the industry.
So on a relative basis, our growth pathway will be more value-creative. Our approach to sustainability then brings even higher confidence in project execution sustainably, on time, and for value. And that supports our future ambition to grow even beyond that. How metals and minerals are produced is becoming even more important to all stakeholders, from host communities to end consumers. And rightly so. And our integrated approach to sustainability and technical innovation, our FutureSmart Mining program, is central to our reputation as a responsible mining company, our day-to-day operational performance, and our ability to unlock growth opportunities within our portfolio and others that we will aim to secure over time.
And with that, I'll now hand over to Pat, who will illustrate our sustainability competencies at work across our operations in Chile and how they both deliver value to our assets today and uniquely position Anglo American to deliver our outstanding growth opportunities from our world-class ore bodies. Over to you, Pat. Thank you.
Thanks, Helena. As you mentioned, we have a world-class copper portfolio in Chile, accounting for around 5% of the global known copper reserves and resources, with huge optionality to grow across our endowments. Combined with over four decades of experience operating in the country, our aim is to continue providing the world with a sustainable supply of copper through long-lasting, profitable, socially, and environmentally responsible mining operations. Helena shared an overview of the growth potential in our copper portfolio. And in particular, I'd like to call out Los Broncos and the huge opportunity for growth we have there. The Los Broncos underground reserves and resources are roughly double those of the open pit, and our sustainability credentials will be central to unlocking it.
Our sustainability and technical capabilities underpin performance at existing operational assets while being a critical enabler of our ability to deliver innovative solutions to realize our growth ambitions. It is clear that sustainability is key to the future and a prerequisite to developing and operating mines with increasingly wider range of sustainability requirements embedded into permitting. As Helena mentioned, many of the world's undeveloped resources are sterilized due to environmental and community challenges. However, we have demonstrated through our holistic sustainable approach an ability to unlock value at Los Broncos. We continue to focus on delivering production as responsibly and as profitably as possible, and our sustainability considerations are fully embedded into our strategy so that we can unlock value for the business and also create a positive impact for stakeholders.
I strongly believe this approach is key to demonstrating to our host communities, governments, customers, and partners, as well as to current and potential shareholders and society more globally what responsible and sustainable mining looks like, guided by our clear purpose. We aim to be a partner of choice to those who, like us, focus on long-term sustainable value creation. Today, I will touch on a few examples from across our sustainable mining plan of the work we're doing here in Chile. First, I would like to provide some specific context, as in Chile, we are at the center of a complex matrix of challenges and opportunities, expectations, and demands which require us to be adaptable. We are feeling the effects of climate change. Droughts that have affected central Chile for more than 13 years have forced us to adapt our operations.
On the other hand, we're now seeing rain and record snow precipitation at unusual times of the year. We have to embed the impacts of climate change in the design of projects and therefore in the engineering and capital estimation of projects going forward. This is also now a regulatory requirement here in Chile. From a macroeconomic and demographic perspective, an example is the challenges of sustained price increases of our supplies, with the consequent impact on our operating costs. This pushes us to think about how we finance, collaborate, and partner to address sustainability challenges. Societal expectations for improved living standards and geopolitical complexity are constantly evolving. We are facing a society that rightfully demands more and more information about how we operate, what our impacts are, and how we manage them.
We developed several citizen participation processes during the permitting process for Los Broncos Integrado, a mine life extension project, in order to explain the project and address community concerns. In Chile, we are aligning ourselves with the principles of the Escazú Agreement to ensure fair access to information and participation in environmental processes for all people. Today, we find ourselves in a more complicated, multipolar, and dynamic geopolitical context. In Chile, the last few years have been tremendously dynamic, going through two processes of discussion around the Constitution following the social unrest in 2019, then a return to moderation, and currently focusing on issues such as public security and lack of growth, among many others, and finally, for us, innovation and technology go hand in hand with sustainability, so we have adopted this trend in order to reduce our environmental footprint.
Examples of these are projects such as the Coarse Particle Recovery, which allows us to optimize our use of water and energy in the process, and the Hydraulic Dewatered Stacking, which allows rapid recovery of water contained in tailings for reuse in the mining process. Over time, we have developed technical and social innovation capabilities and strong stakeholder relationships that enable us to continue to adapt and prosper in this dynamic environment. Water is the primary sustainability challenge for copper in Chile and Peru. As I have just mentioned, the area of Chile in which Los Broncos is located has been suffering from 13 years of droughts. We have been supplementing reduced continental water with third-party water purchases. We have reduced the use of fresh water by almost 50% since 2015 in our operations in Chile.
This is a significant contributor to the progress we have already made in delivering against our water goal under our sustainable mining plan. Los Broncos already reuses about 90% of the water used in the mining process, and we have made a commitment to the U.N. to become water resilient in this operation by 2030. With the progress of the Integrated Water Security Project and other initiatives, we are well positioned to achieve this goal within the defined timeframe. We have secured a desalinated water supply for Los Broncos from 2026 via a multipurpose desalination plant. It is an offtake from Aguas Pacífico, a Chilean water desalination provider, that will meet almost half of the mine's water requirements in the first phase. It will also provide clean water to around 20,000 people in the communities of Colina and Til Til and around 15,000 people along the pipeline.
In a second phase, yet to be approved, we're studying the option to provide additional desalinated water for human consumption in exchange for treated wastewater that will supply 100% of our operational needs. At Cuayaguasi, a desalination plant is under construction at a cost of circa $2.7 billion on a 100% basis, and that will reduce the operation's freshwater abstraction by about 60% while reducing long-term costs as we partially eliminate the need to purchase water. Construction will be completed in 2026. This project not only supports sustainable growth, bringing significant economic contributions to the Tarapacá region, which has an important indigenous community's presence, but also provides jobs for around 7,000 workers, 23% of whom are from the local region, strengthening our social impact.
We speak a lot about Los Broncos and Cuayaguasi, but one thing worth noting is the importance that El Soldado Mine has played for the entire Anglo American Group. El Soldado, for us, is not only a production site, but also a site to test innovation development. One key example, as I mentioned before, is the Hydraulic Dewatered Stacking technology, which enhances the safety, water recovery, and legacy of our tailings dams. Since August 2022, we have been working on this industrial-scale pilot solution at El Soldado to reimagine the way we build and operate tailings dams to recover water. I must say, the results are showing very strong potential.
With this new technology, we have been able to recover around 80% of the water from the sands to reuse in the process, which is significantly higher than a conventional tailings impoundment and therefore enables an increase in treatment capacity without the need of more fresh water from external sources. In addition, the results show that the overall footprint and stability of the tailings dams improved significantly. Furthermore, the dewatered sands drain rapidly through solid channels. Fine spray sand provides channels for drainage, and the final product provides an amazing platform for rehabilitation once the tailings are completed. Looking more broadly at our sustainable mining plan, Healthy Environment Pillar, as we continue to address water challenges, we're also playing an active role in Chile's journey to a low-carbon economy, building climate resilience and driving positive biodiversity outcomes.
Since 2021, all our Chilean sites have run on 100% renewable energy, bringing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions to zero and a bigger step towards our sustainable mining planet climate targets. Our sites are now certified for energy management, highlighting our commitment to efficiency and sustainability. We have many great examples where our operational excellence initiatives have helped us achieve multiple benefits across safety, sustainability, and lower operational costs. For example, our Integrated Remote Operation Centre based in Santiago improves productivity, removes people from the line of fire, and supports reduction of CO2 emissions by better controls and systems. Our fleet of autonomous trucks enables system-driven decision-making, which enhances safety as well as increasing productivity and reducing diesel consumption. Aligned with these efforts through a public and private collaboration, we recently launched Chile's first Blue Carbon Initiative, Driving Innovation Through Nature-Based Solutions.
This project involves cultivating microalgae, which have the potential to absorb up to 50 times more carbon than terrestrial ecosystems and could help offset CO2 emissions. By capturing carbon and supporting ecosystems, this initiative fosters both climate resilience and biodiversity while also promoting job creation and economic growth across the country. To further our SMP commitment to bring positive biodiversity outcomes, we acquired the 11,000-hectare Los Nogales Sanctuary in early 2024 to implement biodiversity conservation initiatives, including conservation, preservation, and public use. In addition, we supported the creation of a national park in the Rio Olivares area in 2021 on 8,400 hectares of our mining concessions. These actions reflect our commitment to Chile's long-term sustainability while enhancing community access to nature. It is also an example of how our SMP goals, in this case, biodiversity, drive multiple co-benefits.
In support of Chile's National Green Hydrogen Strategy, in alignment with the Anglo American goal of achieving carbon-neutral operations by 2040 through a private and public partnership, we supported the design and construction of the first hydrogen bus made in Chile, led by the Chilean startup Reborn Electric Motors as part of our shift to sustainable transport. Also, in collaboration with the Universidad Católica de Chile, we started a study to identify the feasibility of creating a green hydrogen valley in Chile's central zone. While we acknowledge that lots need to happen to build the ecosystem to enable green hydrogen at scale, the initial findings are very promising, with key areas in the central region that have the potential to displace around 3,000 kilotons of CO2 annually. Air pollution is a significant problem in the city of Santiago, with wood fire residential heating being one of the major contributors.
Residential sources generate more than one-third of the pollution in the metropolitan region. Considering this as part of the Los Broncos Integrado, in addition to minimizing our own dust emissions, we committed to an unprecedented measure aimed at making a significant contribution to the decontamination of Santiago as a whole. The commitment aims at offsetting 150% of the project's total emissions per year versus the mandatory 120%, which will result in a substantial reduction in particulate matter pollution in the metropolitan region. In other words, a net positive impact. To implement it, we're looking at a set of initiatives, one of them being the potential of a larger scale replacement of a big proportion of the wood-burning heaters that still exist in homes in the metropolitan region with cleaner high-tech electric equipment.
These types of initiatives, subject to the execution feasibility, will contribute to reducing the impacts of dust emissions, including cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, reducing mortality rates, and public health costs of around $290 million annually. To our knowledge, this is the single biggest initiative in the country to reduce dust emissions and would help to accelerate the compliance to regional standards by more than a decade. This is, without a doubt, a win-win. We strongly believe that our business should not only generate benefits for our investors and employees, but also to have a positive impact on neighboring communities and generate value for society. To this end, we aim to act as a catalyst and work in collaboration with partners to drive outsized impact, promoting both social and technological innovation. To give you some examples from our sustainable mining plan, Driving Communities Pillar. First, in education.
Through our Modelo Pionero program, which we have been developing with partners since 2016, we have been recognized nationally for its innovative approach, supporting 41 schools and more than 16,000 students. It seeks to transform schools into centers of educational innovation, where students, while learning sciences, humanities, art, etc., also establish a link with the territory and develop projects that offer real solutions to problems in their environment so that students can be agents of change within their own communities. In these years of work, the schools that are part of the Modelo Pionero network have also increased their enrollment by 30% on average. Attendance has improved by 5%, and admission to higher education has grown by 18%.
To implement and develop the Pioneer model, we have established partnerships with more than 20 organizations, including the Ministry of Education, local governments, trade unions, universities, various expert education organizations, NGOs, and other corporates. In health, one example is our Smiles for Life program in partnership with Fundación Sonrisas, which was recently awarded the Smile Grant 2024 by the World Dental Federation, which also highlighted it as the most innovative community oral health initiative in the world. The focus of Smiles for Life is preventative and curative dental care. We develop it in educational organizations neighboring our operations, serving children from preschool to elementary school. One example in livelihoods is our Emerge program, which since 2006 has supported more than 5,000 entrepreneurs in the communities neighboring our operations through capacity building and the promotion of business networks.
We also have the Empleate program, which has created a comprehensive model that aligns women's and young people's skills with labor market demands, working with the wider ecosystem. The program was recently featured on the World Economic Forum's website as an innovative example of how to facilitate successful job transitions. Both programs are the result of a strong collaboration with the public and private sector. As we have described today, mining is crucial to the world's economy, with copper supporting economic development and the global energy transition. There is growing societal focus on environmental responsibility and equitable development, and in Chile, this is especially true after the 2019 social unrest. Chilean society is actively shaping its future with debates on mining's role and sustainable development.
Understanding this landscape, we designed and launched a National Accountability and Sustainability Forum to convene stakeholders and to create a space to share information, increase transparency, promote open dialogue, and build trust. In our dynamic environment, with these evolving societal expectations, these relationships and trust enable us to navigate change together. And with that, I'll hand you back to Duncan for closing messages. Thank you. Thanks, Pat. All very interesting and pretty incredible work, really. So today we've done a bit of a deep dive into our holistic approach to sustainability in Chile and how we continue to integrate and build new sustainability work into long-standing operations. We also have, I think, as we heard Helena talk to, a pretty impressive track record in Peru with Quellaveco, where I believe we really now have a blueprint for how to develop a new mine.
This is the experience that we are taking forward at both Woodsmith and Sakati, and these are the next generation of future smart mines, how mines should look and how they should feel for our stakeholders and the planet at large, so to wrap up, we are absolutely laser-focused on our three key strategic priorities: operational excellence, portfolio simplification, and growth, and all of these are supported by our enablers that we have built up over many decades and that are integral to delivering the full value potential of this company's portfolio and our growth opportunities, which, as I've said before, I believe are second to none. We are seeing the results of this come through, and we are on the right pathway and moving absolutely at pace in terms of the execution of our plans, so thank you all very much again for your attention today.
And with that, we've got some time to take your questions and hear your comments. So with that, Operator, open the lines, please. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Robert Pitman with Natural Resource Governance Institute. Please go ahead. Hello, can everybody hear me? Yep, can hear you well, Robert. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Great presentation. It's really, really exciting to see all the great work you're doing. My question concerns standards at the moment. It's really, really great to see Anglo engaging and attaining the IRMA standard. I know that there is currently a lot of standards in development at the moment.
Some of these standards aren't quite at the same sort of high level as IRMA. And I was wondering what Anglo's position on some of these other standards are, including the Consolidated Mining Standards Initiative that is being developed? Sure, Robert. I mean, look, we've been on this journey for a long time, as has the ICMM. And absent any conformed set of standards, we've taken a decision internally that we will progress with the most advanced of those that exist in the industry today, and that's IRMA. But we continue to work very, very collaboratively and actively with the ICMM in the context of the conformance of these standards, to the extent that the industry itself has a common set of standards, which it can be measured by and can create the level of transparency that it needs for it to gain the trust of society as a whole.
So I think a lot of very, very positive and good work has been done by the ICMM and its partner bodies in terms of this conformance, but there's still quite a bit of work to do. Everybody really committed to getting something that works not only for the industry, but more importantly, for society at large. Thanks. Do we have another question? Again, if you would like to ask the question, press star one on your telephone keypad. Okay, it would seem we might have addressed most of the pressing issues during the presentation. Let's just give it a little bit more time just in case there is another question. Your next question comes from Matt Green with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for the presentation. Duncan, I'm just keen, you've touched on the blueprint at Quellaveco.
We all know that water was a constraint, and you've been able to demonstrate through new technologies and your ability to stay within the confines of your permit there. And having been fortunate to go to Woodsmith, it's quite extraordinary what you're achieving there in terms of a mine in the future. But we look at a lot of these jurisdictions out there, which historically we've said are mining-friendly jurisdictions. And I get the sense that from a permitting standpoint, from environmental and also growing social concerns, is that the goalposts seem to be shifting a fair bit. So are you finding whether you can measure this in the timeline it takes to get permitting or the process in which you're going through that your track record is benefiting you?
I just wondered if you could touch on, it just seems that we're, as an industry, catching our tail a bit in terms of constantly keeping up with the shifts we're seeing from a permitting standpoint. So are you able to sort of quantify or give us some sort of insight as to your track record and how that's benefited your permitting? Yeah, sure, Matt. I mean, and look, thanks for the question. Really good observation. I mean, permitting is probably one of the biggest challenges that the mining industry faces today in terms of bringing on new projects. And there's no doubt that the consequences of all of this is that projects are taking longer, they're becoming more expensive, and they're becoming very onerous in terms of the operating criteria associated with them.
But if we just stand back a little bit and remind ourselves why that, in fact, is the case, it's fundamentally because of the experience that the people have had of mining over the last 100 years or so. So there is no doubt in my mind that this doesn't get any easier in the context of getting permits for mining operations, no matter how important the cause is. And we all know how much minerals are required for the energy transition, for instance. And therefore, the one thing that I think we can hope for and continue to work on is the efficiency of permitting processes whereby things become a little bit more joined up and things can move a little bit faster.
But I don't think we can ever hope that the content of permits diminishes and therefore the requirements to be deeply rigorous around data collection, the modeling of that data, the avoidance of impacts, etc., that go to the mine design or the process flow sheets that are associated with it, particularly areas where there's very high stress. And Patricio mentioned them. Water is a number one challenge, certainly in our South American operations. And that's not going to go away any soon. I mean, climate change is a reality. And the fact is, and I think Patricio also mentioned it in his section, societal expectations are now at a completely new level, and there's just no way that these are going to be avoided. And therefore, having a very deeply embedded way of dealing with this within the company, I think ultimately is a competitive advantage.
The fact is that we actually were able to get the Los Broncos integrated permit. Sure, it took us a year longer than we'd planned to get it, but we'd started on that program about six or seven years before we actually got the permit, and having the sensibility of seeing that this is a direction of travel, understanding how these things work, having a deeply ingrained system within the organization, I mean, Helena refers to it as a connected and integrated part of the DNA where the decisions that are the right decisions are made intrinsically by the people in the operations all of the time, these are things that do lead ultimately to people saying, "Okay, that is a company that I can trust." It's not a company that just says that it's going to do something, but actually can be seen to be doing something.
I think its track record, its history in this regard ultimately gets what stands up and gets counted at the end of the day. Did it take seven or eight years to get that permit? Yeah, absolutely. But we did get it. I mean, did we get the Quellaveco permit? I mean, the Quellaveco permits? Yeah, we absolutely got them. In fact, we voluntarily gave them up and then reacquired them. That doesn't come easily. I mean, Quellaveco is going through a permitting process. Again, just the way that company has operated in the context of its past and its performance, I think we'll see it certainly getting those permits. Therefore, that is absolutely a competitive advantage. Look, I mean, it's not, as I say, it's not just about the permits.
It's about how the company actually operates, and that's what's ultimately valued by society. If that's valued by society, it's valued by the host governments. If it's valued by the host governments, it tends to be valued by the shareholders.