Good day and welcome to the Kenmare Resources FY23 preliminary results. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero . And finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Michael Carvill, Managing Director, to begin the conference. Michael, over to you.
Thank you, Paul. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Kenmare's 2023 results presentation. I'm Michael Carvill, and I'd just like to change to slide number three, please. I'm Michael Carvill, the MD of the company. I'm going to make an introduction. The body of the presentation today will be a financial review, an operating review, and a market update by Tom Hickey, Finance Director, Ben Baxter, Chief Operations Officer, and Cillian Murphy, Group General Manager, Marketing. And then finally, I'll make some comments on our outlook at the end. If I could turn to the next slide, please, slide four. As already previously announced, I will be stepping down as Managing Director of Kenmare in August of this year. It's been a pleasure and a privilege to run the company during the period that I've been in tenure.
And the company, in my view, is well set up and will, you know, hopefully move from strength to strength under my successor. We have very strong internal candidates for that role, and we have appointed an external search agent to turn up external candidates. And the nominations committee is running that process, which will, I'm sure, produce a very strong successor to me. Anyway, if we move on to slide five, Kenmare, the business is run on the basis of three strategic priorities: operating responsibly, delivering long-life, low-cost production, and marketing that production effectively, and then allocating the capital that's created efficiently. In terms of operating responsibly, we had achieved a Lost-Time Injury-free period of no injuries of 12 million man-hours worked up to early 2023.
2022.
2022. And then, unfortunately, we had some injuries that occurred then in late 2022, early 2023. But I'm delighted to say that we have now stabilized that situation, and we're somewhere around three million hours of operations without a lost-time injury. So we believe that that's back on, you know, a very, very positive trajectory, and so we're delighted with that. As far as delivering long-life, low-cost production, the whole focus and goal and objective of the project to move Wet Concentrator Plant A to the new Nataka zone and to equip it for mining in Nataka is to ensure that we manage to stay in the first quartile of the revenue-to-cost curve for the industry. And we believe that that is going to be delivered well by the project, and look forward to that.
As far as allocating capital efficiently, we're announcing our final dividend for 2023, which will make the full dividend for 2023 to $50 million, bring up the full dividend to $50 million. And that means between 2019 and now, we'll have distributed $250 million back to our shareholders, in a mixture of dividends and share buybacks. So just turning to the next page, page 6, 2023 was a very strong year for Kenmare. It was our second-best year ever. We had revenues of $437 million and an EBITDA of $220 million, which in my view is a good margin, giving us a net profit of $131 million. We did a share buyback of $30 million during the year, representing 5.9% of the outstanding shares. And we finished the year with $20 million net cash.
As far as our capital projects are concerned, the move of Wet Concentrator Plant A to Nataka, which includes the development of infrastructure, the upgrade of the plant itself, the development of a tailings storage facility, is all advancing according to plan. We're very happy with the project. We think it has been well designed, well engineered. We have a very strong project owners team, and the contractors that have been appointed are all contractors that have worked with us before and who we know to be capable of delivering. So, we're very comfortable with the way that that's progressing. So with that, I might hand over to Tom Hickey to provide financial review on 2023.
Thanks very much, Michael. I think as Michael mentioned, 2023 was the second-best year in Kenmare's history, delivering $220 million of EBITDA, slightly superior in comparison to 2022, which was, by any standards, a remarkable year. And I suppose the impacts that drove those changes between 2022 and 2023 were slightly weaker product markets generally, and we'll talk a little bit about that later on with Cillian, and lower production, principally influenced by a lightning strike that we experienced in Q1 last year. I suppose those two factors combined drove mineral products revenue down 12%, with pricing being the bigger impact there. And in reality, the reduction in revenue basically fell all the way down the P&L account. We did have slightly higher operating costs, about 4%. Our mine plan last year was quite a complex one.
It involved a lot of earth moving and river traverses, and that drove higher equipment rental and consequently a little bit higher fuel consumption. But there is a more complex and hopefully better story to tell about cost control, which we'll talk a little bit on later on. Our net finance costs were lower, reflecting lower debt burdens and interest income as interest rates increased, and we made debt repayments. We are showing a higher tax charge due to additional Irish corporation tax on intra-group dividends. We have spoken in the past about potentially doing a restructure to address this, but in late 2023, the Irish Department of Finance initiated a consultation process around this very issue, which, if progressed satisfactorily, would lead to no additional charge being incurred on these revenues or dividends when they're received in Ireland.
Now, that's currently the case in all other EU member states. We participated in that consultation process, and the outcome is expected this year. Could get first indications over the coming weeks. If adopted, that adjustment would remove the need for any amendments to the corporate structure. So we'll keep you posted on the progress of that, of this move through the system. Moving on to slide nine. The pricing, while not as strong as 2022, was still very, very strong. You know, $418 at the time was significant ahead of anything we would have realized any year except 2022. We had an 8% decrease in ilmenite prices in 2022, 5% decrease in primary zircon prices.
You know, if you look at the mineral products bridge there, you can see that the reduction in revenue was pretty much broadly split between price, at half the impact, and the volume and mix at the other half of the impact. We had a slightly slower level of shipping volumes in 2023, slightly weaker customer demand. We'll talk a little later about where we see that going this year, which is perhaps a more encouraging story. Quite a bit of mix, particularly around the high-value co-products, such as zircon. Moving on to slide 10. We are showing here a significant increase in our operating costs, per ton. I think part of that is the fact that, as I said earlier, 2022 was a remarkable year, in terms of co-product revenue.
If we were to look back at 2021, that cash cost of ilmenite per ton was $95 per ton, which is perhaps a more realistic comparator. But we did work hard in 2023 on cost control and operational efficiency. I mean, there are costs that are external to us, such as fuel and electricity, which, you know, we focus on efficiency of and, you know, units per ton. There are costs which are internal, such as repairs and maintenance, travel and logistics, etc., etc. In fact, in respect to 40% of our operating costs, the cost base actually declined in 2023. And that's going to be a focus again in 2024. So in 2023, more heavy mobile equipment rental to principally to the mine path.
Costs associated with the lightning strike is about $2 million in there associated with the lightning strike, and materially higher diesel prices. You know, we spoke last year about the fact that in, in 2023, diesel prices for much of the year in Mozambique, departed from their historic correlation to, to global oil prices. They have since returned closer to that and, and are lower in, in 2024 than they were in 2023 at the moment. Moving on to Slide 11, Michael. Thanks. Overall, that gave us a, as Michael said, a very strong operating performance, very strong cash generation performance. We paid out about $70 million in, in, in CapEx, sustaining CapEx around our day-to-day operations.
The start of some of the development costs around the WCP A transition to Nataka, principally associated with contracting the two new high-powered dredges and some studies to support you know those programs and others. We had a draw on cash from working capital, principally due to Q4 shipments, which was very strong quarter per shipments with us, and slightly higher inventories at year-end. Again, Cillian will speak a little later about perhaps where we see inventories going and how we feel about the market. We spent or paid out over $86 million in shareholder returns between dividends of $57 million being last year's final dividend and this year's interim dividend, and the share buyback of 5.9% of our issued share capital. Interest, leases, FX at $4 million, reflecting lower debt levels and a little bit of interest income.
Retained a good strong cash balance of $21 million, but I think more importantly, a healthy balance sheet, where, you know, we have quite a lot of effectively stored value there, higher inventories that give us the opportunity to release that stock into the market over the course of the year, about $130 million of conventional trade receivables, which, you know, we're seeing flow back into the business now. And I suppose an important point here is, that we haven't, in the last 12 months, done any factoring. So effectively, all of this cash is available to the business. And we had over $100 million of eligible balances at year-end. You know, keeping a healthy balance sheet is important to us. One important component of that was renewing our debt facilities in 2023.
So, early this year, we announced the conclusion of a new revolving credit facility with our four principal relationship banks, Absa, Nedbank, RMB, and Standard Bank. This is, you know, significantly more advantageous to us than its predecessor term loan and smaller RCF in that it has a higher overall deposit, $50 million more of availability, no amortizing payments, so no obligations prepaid during the period, full flexibility to draw and redraw, fully available for the five-year term, pushes out the maturities to 2029 well beyond the conclusion of the current capital program. We closed that and made the initial drawing just after early earlier this month. That's fully in place and available to us today. Michael touched a little bit on shareholder returns. It's been a priority of the company since 2019.
We this morning announced a final dividend, bringing our total dividend payout for 2023 to $0.56 a share. 3% increase on 2022 reflecting the reduced share count following the buyback in October 2023. You know, this payout is 38% of our profit after tax. It's within our dividend policy of 20%-40% of underlying profit after tax. As we said, we expect over the coming years our payouts to be towards the upper end of that, all other things being equal. So looking forward, Ben will talk in a few moments about where we're going with our capital programs and production expectations. You know, we, I suppose, have two principal categories in terms of how we allocate capital. First are the obligatory core day-to-day costs and investments we make.
Our sustaining capital to maintain our operations, renew our HMEs, you know, keep our kit and equipment in good operating order. Then the big occasional nondiscretionary capital investments. And, you know, we're heading into a significant period of that in 2024 and 2025 with the WCP A transition. But I think that's sort of an important point to emphasize is that we anticipate this will be the last significant material CapEx investment of the business we're required to make for a number of years. Maintaining financial flexibility. I spoke about the RCF. Important to highlight also and just in terms of adjusting to working capital variations. We have invoice discount facilities in place currently unused. On maintaining shareholder returns, we have our target payout ratio of 20%-40%. This year, we achieved 38%.
Finally, then, we have, I suppose, discretionary or, occasional, investments, growth and improvements. You know, we spend a lot of time thinking about operational resilience. We're doing quite a lot of work on decarbonization. The RUPS project from a number of years ago is an important, component of that, but far from the only one. We've talked about our deferral of, of the WCP B upgrade project, but that's something that's, you know, the circumstances are right, we, we would be pleased to advance. You know, all focused around the fact that we have 100 years of, of, of reserves here, and, and making sure we're in the best, financial operating and, and capital condition to, exploit those in the most advantageous way is, is our priority. Above and beyond our dividends, we have done two buybacks in the past, you know, certainly something we'd consider in the future.
And it's, I think, it's always something we want to have in the locker. And finally, corporate development. You know, we're always looking at things to make, but I suppose we have a high bar in terms of requiring projects that we would progress or advance be strategically aligned and purely accretive to our business. We believe in the value of Moma. We believe in the value of the resource, and we would think very carefully before adding to that. Hand over to Ben now to talk about operations.
Good morning, everybody. If you can move to Slide 17, please. I'll start with how we are continuing to operate responsibly and advancing our sustainability goals. They have moved forward nicely in 2023, under the four strategic pillars that we have. Our safe and engaged workforce is now improving, and we're now at more than three million hours without a Lost-Time Injury at this point in time. Diversity and female representation in the business is improving. It's a 4x increase since 2016, and is now at 16%. And more than 40% of our senior management roles at Moma are now held by women. Regarding the natural environment, we continue to decarbonize, and our focus is on reducing diesel consumption across the mine. And last year, there was a 14% reduction in Scope 1 Emissions. And we continue also in improving biodiversity and future land use and rehabilitation.
That's signified by more than 200,000 trees planted during the year. We continue to develop thriving communities around us, and we've commenced the construction or the agreement for a construction of a district hospital in our local area. We're refurbishing water supplies, and more than, well, 385 people are directly benefiting from the sponsored microbusinesses that have been initiated on site and around the site. Regarding trusted business, we have now $79 million of local Mozambican spend, and improving supplier compliance with those new suppliers who are coming to work with us. And around our security, our Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights training is happening on a biannual basis. To focus on the next Slide, 18, focusing specifically on our safety performance, we now, as I said, at three million hours without a lost-time injury.
This is a return to a strong safety performance after an equivalent to six months since we had our last injury on site. That now follows a period where we did have other injuries in Q1, Q2, and Q3 last year. But we've changed that through the new initiatives that have been put in place to drive a stronger safety culture, focusing on leadership accountability, on improvements to the systems and protocols that we operate, and through our new Trabalho Seguro, meaning safe work, communication strategy around health and safety. On Slide 19, I'll talk about production. So we achieved our revised ilmenite production guidance and achieved our original guidance last year on co-products sorry, the revised ilmenite production guidance.
Final products were impacted in the year, and they were impacted predominantly at the mining of the heavy mineral concentrate by two areas. Firstly, a 4% decrease in ore volumes as a result of severe lightning, i.e., a severe lightning strike in Q1 and some continued power supply interruptions through the year. These various measures have been put in place since that incident to improve our power supply, such as distribution relays for all of the plants, more reliable ones that are better than the ones that were in place before, incoming breakers and an incoming breaker project, which will provide a second line of defense to the transmission grids, breakers, and then additional maintenance support that we've put in place through the year to support the transmission provider.
The second area of decrease in production came as a result of lower-than-expected ore grades when WCP B was mining through a wetland area in the Pilivili ore body. This was unexpected. Traditionally, the drilling work that we do ahead of all of our mining has delivered representative samples of the future mining areas. However, in this particular instance last year, we were mining wetlands for the first time, and that those grades were expected to be higher than we were able to achieve. Our investigation showed that it was due to the difficult access for the drill rigs in those wetland areas and also for an overestimation of the sampling grades. We've since redrilled those areas on a comprehensive grid and combined the results of that with our experience of 2023 to remodel the grades going forward.
Year to date, WCP B's grades are proceeding as per expect the new expectation. Second half of the year was a much better year, much better, and we achieved run rates of production greater than 1.1 million tons per annum. Moving on to the next slide, Slide 20, our outlook for the year ahead. Our 2024 production guidance is on track, and it's expected to be in line with the 2023 production levels. So this means that our ilmenite guidance is 950,000-1,050,000 tons. And this reflects higher excavated ore volumes that we expect, but slightly offset by the lower grades which I've mentioned. Production for the year is second-half weighted, and that's driven principally by the position of the dredges in the mine path.
The second half is a richer area than the first, but also that we expect and have planned for power interruptions due to the southern hemisphere rainy season, which catches us in Q1. This means that Q1 production for 2024 is expected to be broadly in line with Q1 2023. Thereafter, we'll see a significant improvement in the grades in the ground. And also, we'll have this additional operating time because of the better weather conditions, and less impact on the mining plants. So during this first-half period, we will be making use of the higher closing inventories at the end of 2023 and drawing those down to maintain sales volumes through H1 2024. Beyond 2024 and into 2025 and beyond, we expect production to be similar again to 2024.
This is in consideration of the moderated grades, but also that we'll be in project delivery mode in 2025 with downtime and balancing the delivery the downtime that comes with project delivery with the new capacity that comes with the delivered project. Then into and then beyond 2025, production will be subject to a final investment decision on the WCPB upgrade, which is currently in DFS phase. We expect that to be, once that decision is made, a 15-month execution time. And currently, our thoughts for that are around towards the end of 2026 that that production could come on stream. Moving to Slide 22 to discuss our capital projects. As Michael stated at the beginning, one pillar of our strategy is to deliver long-life, low-cost production. Our projects aim to secure this production at Moma and remain first-quartile revenue to cost.
The first area and the area where we're focusing most at the moment is on the Nataka transition for WCP A. We're marrying the large Nataka deposit, which is 72% of our resource base of heavy minerals, with our production plant that delivers the highest capacity. And that's how we expect to secure the production for decades to come at WCP A. There's an 18-month transition in our mining path to get from the finishing areas of Namalopi to Nataka - and that happens in late 2025 - and then we will be in Nataka for decades to come with that plant. And we see no significant relocation costs post this WCP A transition. Meanwhile, at WCP B, we're mining in Pilivili right now.
We expect to transition into the adjacent ore zone of Mualadi, and then that transition then eventually into the adjacent Nataka deposit. We've identified a pathway there that takes us through to 2050 with no further site and no further relocation costs. As you're aware, we have a DFS currently underway for the WCP B to take further advantage of this dredge path by increasing capacity from 2,400 tons- 3,400 tons an hour and increase production going forward in the future. Meanwhile, at WCP C, this is a smaller operation. It has a dredge path in Namalopi adjacent to the current mineral separation plant. It's expected to be there until at least 2030.
Thereafter, there is a developing plan of how it would move to Nataka. However, that relocation is expected to be relatively minor in cost as it will make use of the existing infrastructure that has been established with the moves of WCP A and WCP B. Also, it's a much smaller plant, so much easier to move. Moving on to Slide 23 and focusing specifically on WCP A and its transition, this project is really transforming WCP A's capability to mine in Nataka and deliver a high-volume, low-cost mine plant for Nataka. We do that by significantly improving the ability to manage slimes. This has been the thing that's held us back over the last few years in many instances. We know that in Nataka that slimes will be higher than we've received in our plant during its life in Namalopi.
Extensive research has been undertaken through the PFS stage through the DFS stage; it has continued, and we have done trial mines to the point where we are very confident about the design of the new equipment and the procedures that we'll be using to manage slimes in the future. So the majority of WCP A will be new equipment. And that consists of new dredges, which are high-capacity, removing the need for the dry mining, which is more costly, but also providing the upfront capability to fill the WCP. That WCP will be fed through a new desliming circuit, screens, surge bin. And the back end of that plant will be completely new as per the diagram at the bottom there. Slimes will be transferred to a tailings storage facility. This will be commissioned in 2025.
That removes the need for the large paddock system that has proved now to be costly and cumbersome. We expect through that process of moving to the TSF to get higher, cleaner water back to the plants and higher recoveries in the future. This work is all underway now to be delivered in 2025 prior to entering the transition channel. So, because we will get benefits from these projects earlier, as early as we can. In terms of current status, the dredges have been ordered. Steel cutting for those dredges is about to take place. Fabrication of the desliming circuits has now commenced, with pontoons already in construction. The TSF is in detailed design phase, with community engagement well underway.
The definitive feasibility study for the latter infrastructure WCP A requirements in Nataka is expected to be completed in Q2 of this year. That's for things such as roads, stockpiles, pumping, and piping. Moving to Slide 24, the capital costs for the WCP A move to Nataka are in line with the expectations that we delivered in December 2023. The CapEx will be up to $341 million and is scheduled and the completion of the definitive feasibility study for the infrastructure component of that will be completed in Q2 of this year. The cost for the main the bulk pieces of equipment for the future are the dredge being the dredge, the desliming circuit, and TSF are estimated at $225 million. The infrastructure is weighted to the back end, in preparation for moving into the Nataka proper.
And there is a $10 million tail for that later infrastructure spend. The CapEx will be funded through the operational cash flows in the meantime and also through the new debt facilities that Tom mentioned. And with that, I'd like to pass on to Cillian to deliver the market update.
Thank you, Ben. And good morning, everybody. I'm going to start on Slide 26. What we can see is that 2023 was a relatively strong year for Kenmare's products despite headwinds in the pigment and the ceramic markets. Looking at what happened with Ilmenite through the year, I think what we saw was that Ilmenite pricing was flat in the first half before weakening in the third quarter as we believe our customers decreased their inventories to a low level. And then since really September, October time, we've seen the spot price of Ilmenite flatten out.
Zircon was a similar story that the first-half pricing remained relatively strong before spot price in Asia decreased in the second quarter and put pressure on really whole market pricing through the second half. On Zircon volumes, I think our customers remained committed to us, and we ended the year with low or minimal Zircon volumes in 2023. Moving to Slide 27, we'll look at the reasons why the market was relatively strong for Ilmenite and for us. And we'll look at two key markets for Kenmare Ilmenite in China. The chloride pigment market is one we've been focused on for a few years now. And we saw in 2023 strong growth.
I think it was almost 30% growth in pigment per chloride pigment production in China this year as or in 2023 as plants that were commissioned in 2021 and 2022 ramped up, but also new capacity was brought online. A similar story in titanium metal where we have been focusing on and actively marketing our Ilmenite products too. We saw another strong year strong record year for metal production in China. These two market segments require high-quality Ilmenite, and we continue to be a leading supplier to those markets. That was one of the reasons we saw strong demand for our product. The other is that Ilmenite have performed other feedstocks in 2023. And that was primarily as Chinese pigment producers gained market share off Western pigment producers.
Chinese pigment producers prefer to preferentially consume ilmenite, so they consumed more ilmenite in 2023, whereas Western pigment producers reduced production in response to market demand and therefore consumed less high-grade feedstock. So there was a shift towards ilmenite and away from other products, which benefited Kenmare as well. Moving to Slide 28, I think this slide re-illustrates our view that the market demand is set to recover in 2024 after two years of decreasing demand. What it shows is that the market is or the industry is gonna need significant investments to get new supply online to meet this demand. This is exacerbated by the fact we have large industry players that are depleting and reaching the end of their mine lives in the next year or next couple of years.
For these reasons, we see that the long-term fundamentals for titanium feedstocks and in particular ilmenite remain quite strong. Finally, on Slide 29, I'll talk through a little bit of what we're seeing at the moment and an outlook. I think as was touched on earlier, the year has started better than we expected, and that's coming from greater demand from the pigment market and for titanium pigment than was expected there as well. Sales volumes have been strong and pricing holding up better than expected. When we talk to our customers, we believe that inventories of ilmenite are low, and that means that as pigment producers are ramping up production, which they are in the first quarter, this will flow through quickly to ilmenite demand.
As a result of this, we've been drawing down the ilmenite inventories we built in the second half of last year, drawing them down quite quickly in the first quarter, and that will continue into the second quarter. As I mentioned earlier, spot prices decreased in the third quarter for ilmenite and then stabilized around September, October. These have been relatively flat the whole way through the first quarter and into Q2 at the moment. On our rutile products, we continue to experience higher demand than we can supply for this product, albeit prices did come down in the second half of last year. Zircon underlying demand is a little bit more subdued than what we're seeing on the ilmenite side at the moment, in early 2024. However, with our customers, we are seeing some brighter points.
The disruption to shipping lanes in the Suez Canal has led to less competition, impacting our European customers and therefore improving their demand situation. And in China, we've seen a strong rebound from the Lunar New Year, with increased demand for particularly for high-quality Zircon products. And our customers produce good-quality Zircon products from the concentrates we sell into China. And as a result, we've achieved a price increase in the first quarter for our Zircon concentrates. As we look further out, Zircon demand right now is exceeding our supply as well. So with that, I will turn back to Michael.
Thanks, Cillian. And Mike, if we could just move to Slide 31.
Slide 31, I think we've shown this, this slide before, folks, but it shows the journey that Kenmare has taken, from in 2013, where we were in the fourth quarter of the revenue to production cost curve for the industry through to our present situation where we are in the first quartile. The whole focus of the project that we're embarking on at the moment is to ensure that the company retains that position in the first quartile. We believe that we will do so, and do so very effectively. We are looking forward to that. So if I turn to Slide 32, please, Mike. So from my perspective, I think that Kenmare is ideally placed. I think we have a very long-life ore body.
We are investing at the right time to create an operating paradigm which will keep us as a low-cost producer. Cillian and his team have positioned our products very well in the market. We are in the fastest-growing segments of our market, with long-term customers who value our product, our value, our stability, and our relationship with them. We're in a position where we believe that there are low levels of inventory in the overall supply chain.
And so when interest rates eventually do turn to a downward trajectory throughout the world, that will flow pretty directly to the primary producers such as ourselves and that we'll see benefits flowing through to the company, which will in turn allow us to continue the strong returns to our shareholders that we have been providing over the last five years, I suppose, since we started paying dividends. So I think the company is very well set. So with that, perhaps I can transfer back to the operator controlling the conference call, and we can take questions. Thank you very much, everyone.
Thank you, Michael. And as mentioned, the floor is now open for questions. A reminder to press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue.
When called upon to ask your questions, please switch from loudspeaker to your device handset so you can be clearly heard. And again, that's Star one to join the queue and ask a question. Your first question comes from the line. Peter Mallin-Jones from Peel Hunt, your line is open.
Good morning, gentlemen. I just had a quick question around the plans for WCP B. I was wondering if you could give us, firstly, the sort of timelines for when the studies are due to be finished and therefore when you'll be sort of approaching a go decision on the B expansion.
And then secondly, if you can maybe touch on the factors that are going to go into, whether or not you go immediately on the B expansion or whether there may be a pause, just so that we can start sort of forecasting out when, you know, we may be able to take views on, on when that investment, is likely to come through.
Hi, Pete. It's Ben here. So, WCP B upgrade is currently in its definitive feasibility study phase. That work is coming towards its conclusion, and we expect to complete it in Q2 of this year. So, that will stimulate a conversation around what we expect to be a very strong business case to do that expansion.
And the decision to defer, though, the final investment decision on that project really comes around financial flexibility and making sure that we cover the risks around the nondiscretionary project of WCP A moving to Nataka. We need to focus on that project and make sure we get that project thoroughly over the line. So there is no absolute decision on when WCP B upgrade would be commissioned. We have it in our plans. We've tentatively thought about a one-year deferral at this point in time, which would mean that that production could come in the second half of 2026. But that's not a decision that's yet been made.
Yeah. Look, completely agree with that, Ben.
It's a decision based on financial flexibility and operating bandwidth, not simply operating bandwidth for us but also for the contractors that are involved. We don't want to, by giving them too much work that they aren't able to effectively complete what they're doing. So, thanks. Thanks, Pete.
Thank you. That's very clear.
Your next question comes from the line of Richard Hatch from Berenberg. Your line is open.
Thanks very much for the call, Michael and team. And, yeah, just, Michael, all the very best for the future. Just the first one is just on WCP B. Just on the CapEx, I think it was $41 million + $2 million of additional CapEx, so $43 million, when you had your Capital Markets Day last year.
Is that number still fair, or do you think you've seen some inflation to that? That's the first one.
So, that number was a PFS number, Richard, and the 40—I think it was $43 million, you're right—was at that time. A lot of work's since gone in. And as you know and we know that projects tend to get a little bit more expensive, I do expect some increase there, but I don't expect that number to be a massive increase. So, but we will find that number out in the coming months, as we complete this DFS.
Okay. Thanks, Ben. And the second one is, I mean, the company's targeted 1.2 million tons of Ilmenite for a long time. Do you think that that's an achievable number?
You know, I kind of hear what you're saying about, you know, moving to high-grade zones. You've got, you know, a B upgrade which, you know, helps you get there too. But then I kind of look at the operational performance, you know, the power issues that have been a challenge, you know, over a number of years. And, you know, it’s I think you do a very credible job of producing in a tough environment, right? But is 1.2 ton actually a fair number to for the market to hang its hat on, or is it more like a, you know, like a 1.05 ton, 1.1 ton kind of number?
So I think that eventually, 1.2 million tons is an achievable number.
It requires that WCP A, the big ticket item after the Nataka delivery is that we do need to do that WCP B upgrade in order to deliver it. And I think, you know, when we look back over the years, we have expected that power would improve over the years, and we have expected and we and I think we also did not expect that slimes would have held us back in the 2018- 2022 periods as much as it has done. This project, the WCP A project is designed to get over that slimes hurdle and put us in a better place to be able to deliver on those and fill the mineral separation plant. So I'm not—it's not a lost goal.
For sure, it's not a lost goal, but I think we have experienced. It's been harder to get there than we had planned it to be we had expected it to be.
Yeah. Understood. Okay. Thanks. And then, the third one is just on the company just more strategically. You know, I kind of look at the valuation. It's incredibly cheap. You know, fast forward two years, you've got a good free cash flow generation. But the stock's, you know, been under pressure. You know, you've had a shareholder that's come out and called for a strategic review. So, you know, have you sort of thought about those strategic options?
Are you sort of, you know, undertaking a strategic review to sort of consider whether, you know, what your options are, whether a sale is meritorious at this point, or, you know, can you just update on strategy? Thanks.
We are not conducting a strategic review at this stage, Richard. Yeah, look, we believe the company is performing well, and that is not being recognized by the market at the moment. You know, I think our you know, I’m not a believer in fully efficient capital markets, but neither am I a believer in highly inefficient capital markets.
I believe as we continue to de-risk the move of Wet Concentrator Plant B, and as the Ilmenite price returns to, you know, a, a, an upward trajectory or upward gradient rather than downward gradient, you know, we'll eventually start to see that stuff being reflected in the market. We don't believe that it's the appropriate time to, sort of put the company up for sale, at the moment, specifically because prices are low. So we continually review, and continually look at all of the options. That's an ongoing process that the company does. But have we have we embarked on a formal strategic review? No, we have not.
Okay. Appreciate the color, Michael. Thanks. Then last one's just to Cillian on, on the Ilmenite market.
There's been some sort of questions and chat around, kind of more informal supply out of Mozambique, and potentially the Mozambican government looking to restrict that or at least, you know, get a little bit more financial share from that. You know, can you just talk a little bit about what's going on in Mozambique just in terms of the informal supply, if you're seeing any scope for disruption there? You know, if that does happen, potentially that's positive for the ilmenite price? Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you, Richard. Yeah, I think there's been a lot of noise about the other Mozambican suppliers so far, well, late last year and early this year, about potential new taxes being introduced. And of course, that would affect their feasibility, some of them, and affect supply.
In other cases, we have seen the suspension of, I think, one of the mines, temporarily in Mozambique as well. All of that is playing into the ilmenite market at the moment. We hear that from customers, particularly in China where most of that material ends up, that there is uncertainty around some of that supply, and that does support demand for our product at the moment.
Okay. Cool. Thanks for your time,all Thank you.
Before we move on to our next question, a quick reminder. If you would like to join the queue and ask a question or a follow-up, please press Star one on your phone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Colin Grant from Davy. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, everybody. Thanks so much for doing the call.
I'd also like to echo the earlier comments, wishing Michael the very best. My question really relates to revenues. In the statement today, you break out the revenues you get from your four largest customers. And one of the things I was looking at there was just the trend in the share of what you generate from your four largest customers, which has declined significantly over the last number of years, which means your revenue base is becoming much more diversified and far less concentrated than it was a number of years ago. And I just wonder if you could give us a bit of colour as to how you're managing that. Does it involve particular marketing, developing new customer relationships, and whether or not there's any differences in terms of how those contracts are priced or shipped?
Or just give us a bit of color as to how you're managing, I suppose, the growth and development of the business in that area. Thank you.
Sure. I'll hand over to Cillian for that. Sorry, but just an overall comment from my perspective. We have always focused on ensuring that we have a broad customer base. And where we have had a situation where customers had, you know, a particularly strong position vis-a-vis us in the market, we have always sought to maneuver around that. And I suppose you're seeing the results of that in that broadening of the customer base. But perhaps I could pass over to you, Cillian, to give, you know, a more value-added answer than that. Thanks.
Yeah. No, I agree with that.
I think that is something important that we do consider. It's trying to make sure we're not over-reliant on any one region or any one customer. I think if you look at the last few years, something that's clearly been happening is the increasing share China's playing in our market. So we've obviously placed more product there with several customers. So that'll be one part that has grown and a reason for that. But another key part of our strategy is, you know, we have grown a lot in the last few years in terms of our supply, and we find it important to, sort of find the growth projects from our customers which we see as most likely and try and support those. So we have supported the ramp-up of, you know, several different, either pigment or ilmenite beneficiation plants, probably since the last five years.
So as they looked to start production, we made sure they had ilmenite available to them to start up their plant. And these type of plants don't like to change feedstock, so we have grown with them as they've ramped up. But they're probably the main reasons why that's occurred.
Great. Thanks very much. Maybe just one final question. Just on the Implementation Agreement, you've made a comment that discussions are underway. Can you give us a bit of color maybe on potential timings as to when you think that might get concluded, if, if at all possible at this stage? Thank you.
Yeah. Look, I mean, the Implementation Agreement is, it's time for renewal is the end of the year. I think 24th of December or something like that. And you know, there's a process underway.
There's a meeting scheduled for next week between the negotiation teams of Kenmare and the government. And it's progressing along. I would be sort of surprised, Colin, if it got fixed terribly early. You know, I think that these things tend to run towards their deadlines. And, you know, if it happened on, at 11 o'clock on the evening of the 23rd of December, I wouldn't be terribly surprised, you know? We have been encouraging the government for the last 18 months to get to it and address it. And they sort of have been, but have been slowly and bureaucratically. So, it'll get done, but, you know, it's hard to rush them. And there is an election in October.
Yeah. So I was aware of that. Yeah. Great. Okay. Lovely.
Thanks very much, Michael, and all the best again. Thanks.
Thanks, Will.
This does conclude today's Q&A session. I'd like to hand the call back over to Michael for closing remarks.
Yeah, this is Michael. Thank you very much. Well, well, look, guys, thanks very much for listening to the call, listening to our story. And I suppose this is the last one that I'll be fielding. So, thanks very much overnight. Thank you.
This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect.