Great. Good morning, everybody. I hope everybody had a good night's sleep. I appreciate that not always easy the second time you're in a different time zone. Today is really the business end of the visit. We have a very exciting, I think, presentation or set of presentations lined up for you today. We are going to do this in two parts. In the morning, you'll hear from Bold about the copper and copper product group. You'll hear from Deidré, our CEO of OT, and you'll hear from Amra, the Rio Tinto Country Manager. The top-down views of the business. There's a Q&A session. We leave here at about 10:20.
We look to finish at 10, maybe a bit earlier, then leave here at 10:20 to go to the Naadam Festival. Then we will be back here at about 1:30, and we'll kick off for the second session at 2:00. In that session, second session, you'll hear from quite a few speakers, Andrew, Oggie, Damian, Steffan, Sukhi, Tuka, and Phil. We'll talk about rocks, dollars, and our footprint. Rocks, dollars, and our footprint. I think, unfortunately, most of you are here for rocks, dollars, and our environmental and social footprint. There'll be a lot of content this afternoon. As I said, there'll be a Q&A session after each section. Please stick in the first Q&A session to the topics discussed in that first section.
We are not gonna go into rocks, dollars, or our social footprint in the morning. We're keeping that for the afternoon, and I'll be marshaling or policing that quite strictly. The good news is this is not broadcast. What we do is we are going to put the slides, I have already put the slides on the web. We have emailed them earlier, 10 minutes ago to you as well, so you have them in your inbox. We will record the discussion here and put a transcript on the web for those who, for those who cannot be here today. I will start with a safety share, by Phil in a second. Before we go there, I just want to quickly go to the speakers.
It's always good to have the technology issues straight away. Amar, can you go to the next slide, please? Amar, can you go to the next slide? These are the speakers this morning. You have them in your pack, in the afternoon, sorry. These are the speakers. The next slide, you'll have the here. Here are the people that are in the room, but are not speaking, and I would like to, obviously, they're all very interesting people to speak to. I would like to highlight one person, Battsukh, the Chairman of OT, is in the back. He's standing up. Welcome, Mr. Sukhi. Obviously available, everybody's available for Q&A if you wanted to. Great.
With that, Phil, I'll hand over back to you for the safety share.
Thanks, Benoit. Good morning, everyone. Happy Naadam! Welcome to Mongolia on an amazing day. I'm sure everyone's aware that this time last week, there was a fair amount of rain in Mongolia and in UB. Over the few days after that, there was significant flooding impacting over 138,000 people, 500 homes without power. It's quite an impactful event. The government obviously immediately responded, and we supported where we could. The risk of flooding continued over the next few days, and it was, even as of early morning yesterday, we were still determining was this the right and safe room to have this session in. There was a lot of planning went through on the weekend with contingency planning.
We don't rely on luck. As an organization, we don't rely on luck and go, "We just hope it doesn't rain. If it doesn't rain, we'll be fine, and if it does rain, we'll panic at the time." Throughout the weekend, we built what we call a Trigger Action Response Plan. We look at what are the conditions that would require us to change from a green condition, to a yellow, to an orange, to a red. Red being it's now kind of a full-blown disaster. Probably Sunday, we were close to getting into an orange condition. We were relatively concerned. As of yesterday morning, the predicted rain started to ease, and the actual rain did ease as well.
I wanted to make sure everyone in the room was aware that you're not sitting here because we were hoping you weren't gonna be in trouble. You're all sitting here 'cause we're confident that through the planning that we did as an organization and the contingency planning, the engagement with the National Emergency Management Agency , we're confident that as of today and going forward, that we're in a safe situation. I just wanted to share that with everyone, especially those that might be concerned, seeing that there are some clouds around today, and it's, you know, there is forecast rain for today. There is more rain coming, so it could be a damp Naadam for some. Just wanted to make sure that everyone was confident that there was no pressing risk or issue to you, your safety, and the events.
If there's an emergency, if the siren goes or one of the staff from the Shangri-La come in and tell us there's an emergency, everyone knows where the muster point is. I'm sure everyone on the way through the door read the sign, you all know where the muster point is? Not confident. Okay. You leave the building through the main front door, you turn left, keep heading to your left, and directly behind us here is the muster point. It's just around over here on your left, my right, out the front door and around here. If there's an emergency, that's where we will head. Obviously, we will make sure no one is left behind. Thank you, and let's have a great day.
Good morning, everyone. Love to be here, what an honor and privilege. I've joined Rio Tinto about 10 years ago, to this day, I feel like an imposter. The problem is, I take credit for other people's great work. That's credit for your job, that's what I feel like. I'm really honored to present and talk about on behalf of the whole copper family, which is about 8,000 people close to 20,000 contractors that work at our sites. What an amazing job they do! All the detailed questions are left for Dee in the afternoon, don't ask me about the underground shaft even for performance yet, that's for the afternoon.
When I talk about where we are in terms of our global copper portfolio. When I joined Rio, I joined the copper team, and at the time, we were about the same volume. Over the last 10 years, we haven't really grown. In fact, I was in charge of actually divesting Northparkes and Palabora at the time, and of course, there were different reasons for those divestments due to various stages of its CapEx maturity. In terms of the other point I would make is, last time I spoke to you didn't believe me, but I was underground, 1,300 meters below the ground, and you will see in past that actually drawbell tomorrow. You'll see that actually the Wi-Fi works, and make sure that you take really good, least real time videos.
We made a lot of progress, and you'll see that, you know, the drawbell, progress has been amazing, and the team has done a wonderful, absolute job in managing prudently the cave. I think we'll get into that in a bit of detail. The other thing I just want to highlight that, is that, we have, we have a significant supply challenge in the industry, and I'm actually pleased to say that, 25% of the new copper supply in the world that's in the models is coming from Rio Tinto. We are about building mines. We're adding about copper volumes to the market that is in high demand. We're also very excited about number of OT expansion options, because OT is not ore body bound or logistics bound.
I think there's a significant opportunity for us to do more in that space. We are looking at. Just go back to the previous page. Sorry, not yet. We also have a number of very attractive growth options, and as you know, the Kennecott Underground is a gift that keeps giving. There's significant potential in the underground, and we're just scratching the surface around where could we go from there. We're gonna be doing much more in that space, and actually, we are producing from that underground with over 3% copper from the Skarns project. The other point I want to make is, look, I think, we knew in the Paterson Province, we are taking the time and working with the traditional owners, who I'd like to acknowledge, the Nyangumarta people were in Mongolia.
They visited the site yesterday, they really saw firsthand our amazing partnership we have here locally with the communities and how we work in terms of making sure that we work very closely in getting our social license in order. We have made some mistakes, but we try our best to learn from our mistakes. We also have a number of greenfield projects, as you know, in Arizona, but also La Granja and our joint venture that we are in the process of setting up with First Quantum, try to advance that project in Peru. Look, I think, if I go to the next page, the one point I want to make here is I spent quite a lot of time, 2 years in a row with Daniel Yergin, going to CERAWeek in Houston.
As a mining guy, I don't usually go to oil and gas conferences, but I find the energy transition conversation in the U.S. very interesting. Obviously, we're seeing a massive demand, and obviously a supply deficit in the world. Dan calls copper, obviously the metal of electrification. Nobody argues about the demand side of the story, and obviously driven by the energy transition, but we are all puzzled where the supply is gonna come from. When I look at the last 20 years, the significant supply shortage was always filled by existing mines and the brownfields. There's still copper in our pits. It's just lower grade. That means brownfield expansions will shift the cost curve up.
The stripping, the OpEx will make the cost of that supply is gonna be higher than historically. That's gonna be the norm of the future 10 years as we look at it. Not all brownfield expansions can meet the demand, obviously we have to find a way to build new projects. We're also looking at number of technology options, I will cover that in a bit of a detail around Nuton. On the next page, this is the slide I spoke about, I think many companies talk about doubling volumes. Actually, we spend, as you know, and you'll see it tomorrow, which is we're 87% CapEx behind. When I talk about doubling copper volumes, I'm talking about OT ramp-up, primarily.
It's gonna ramp up from a roughly run rate of $150,000 to 500,000 tons. Today, on an integrated basis with TRQ, I think based on the numbers you know, we're at around 600,000 tons already, and with just OT, that will potentially get us close to over 1 million. Then, obviously, Kennecott, a number of other options could get us to doubling copper volumes by 2030, with a significant amount of the CapEx behind us. 500,000 ton copper mine is not a small task, and there's only four mines that ever have achieved the greenfield expansions of this scale in the history. Obviously, there's one that's being built in DRC, and it's doing very well.
Obviously, you know, it's more a rarity than a norm in the copper industry to build mines of this scale. In terms of the Oyu Tolgoi asset, Guy will get into a bit more detail, but I'm very proud. I'm very proud of the 20,000 Mongolians who work there 24/7 on a 5-4 basis, 14 shifts. As a number of them have, built the mine through very difficult circumstances during COVID, and despite the number of challenges, continue the progress. We have fully integrated TRQ. We always had control, so what's the big deal? The number of paperwork has reduced significantly. We dropped 50,000 hours of reporting, presentation, reconciliations, and the amount of discussion we used to have has just significantly dropped.
I think from an efficiency standpoint, it helped our teams tremendously. When we look at the growth options, one of them is obviously the Resolution mine, and we can, I can go through it in the Q&A. In my mind, first of all, that ore body is a twin of OT, deep underground block cave, potentially with high grades. I also think of Resolution in a different way than OT, because it is a brownfield expansion, in my opinion, because the Shaft Nine was built in the eighties, and Shaft Ten has already been sunk. We already have ventilation. We already have existing infrastructure, power, water, railway. We have a tunnel called Never Sweat Tunnel, which is Resolution. If you haven't been there, you should go take a look, but it's amazing.
It's, it is not building a copper mine in the Gobi Desert. It is building a copper mine in the Arizona mining triangle that already produces over 1 million ton of copper in the U.S., which, as you know, is copper short. That means that the supplier base is already there, that many of the existing business infrastructure is there. There's absolutely no question we have to work harder in working with the communities and wait for the land exchange and the permitting to take place. Very excited about Resolution, and when I look at our ore body endowment that the predecessor of this company has secured for us, it looks amazing.
I think we have the technical talent, we have - we're working on our social license in the U.S., but our expansion on the, on the copper side, from an organic standpoint, are very privileged position. I just wanna cover a couple of things on the U.S. side. U.S. has about a 2 million ton copper consumption, and of that, 1 million ton is imported, and they produce 1 million ton. With the energy transition, that 2 million ton is supposed to grow to 4 million ton. The U.S. copper supply potentially stays at 1, which means that the U.S. will become over 70% import dependent unless new copper mines are built in the U.S. Thank you.
As we look at our strategic position in Salt Lake as well as Arizona, we find there's ways to expand our business there. If you look back to the 1980s, the U.S. had 87 mines and 16 smelters, and now U.S. has operating 2 smelters, 1 of them, which is run by us, and the other one by Freeport. I think the Kennecott life of mine has always been a question mark in terms of how long can it go, and we're pretty confident we can extend it beyond 2050. The Kennecott pushback expansion, and we have recently approved the $500 million underground project to progress with the Skarns. One of the other interesting aspects around our U.S. presence is the downstream business.
Our downstream business, such as the Kennecott smelter, produces critical minerals like tellurium, which we supply to a company called First Solar, which is building solar panels around the U.S., and it provides a significant opportunity for us to get exposure to IRA and the energy transition. We're also looking at expanding on a smaller scale, these are not big CapEx dollars. I'm producing other critical minerals out of that ore body, such as rhenium. And, you know, we had the rhenium circuit there that we're looking to revive. Now, in terms of our greenfield exploration, our exploration teams are looking at projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, and Utah. Of course, there's the next chapter in our technology breakthrough, which is Nuton. We're very excited about Nuton because leaching is not something new, but it is new in primary sulfides.
I'm talking about recoveries that are achieving over 80%. This is grew out of necessity as we looked at the high arsenic content of La Granja, and we were looking to deploy Nuton technology in Peru. We think that this is a breakthrough technology that gives access to more volumes in the Andes of the low-grade primary sulfide ore bodies. We're working very closely with McEwen on the Lomas de Sala side, which is a 12 million ton copper deposit, and obviously we're working with that company, improving up our technology. We've also made some significant progress in column testing a number of the other projects, such as Regulus, which is the AntaKori project in Peru.
We also did a bit of column testing on a number of the other areas and have signed a number of JVs that you may have seen with Lion Copper and Gold, which is an old mine that was closed in Yerington, Nevada. We're pretty excited about this because this is not, for us, an R&D project. It's not a startup, it's a necessity. It's a necessity that our R&D teams in various parts of the world have grown to make La Granja work. We are very excited about this one and obviously can get into a bit more detail as well as we go for the remainder of the year. I think we just have to do a few more test works before we can give you more information.
So far, our models versus our column testing had a really good correlation and, actually, you know, we'll be looking at a significant reduction in CO2 footprint. The one particular area that I'm actually very excited about is, it avoids all this unnecessary processing and movement of waste. In order to extract copper, we have to process, let's say 1 tons of mineral ore body gives you 4 kilograms of copper. There's 996 tons of waste. Imagine that! What if you don't have to do that? What if you don't have to smelt it? What if you don't have to crush it to a fine powder, float it like a beer, like a bubble, skim it from the top, and that's what the concentrate is.
Imagine if you can just agglomerate and drop a bit of a copper-loving bacteria on top, and nature does its work. You know, you get 99% final cathode product. The SXEW capacity in the world is there. The oxide ore bodies are depleting. The next phase is, how do you get access to the primary sulfides ore body and push it through the SXEW circuits that are in place today? You know, you can always obviously build the next, the next one. Now, our ambition, doubling copper, is not really ambition. It's a step towards reality, out of which 80 % of that CapEx is behind us, and you'll see that, and thanks to our investors tomorrow, on where we are with that project.
We're being very measured and disciplined around how we manage the cave and, obviously we're looking forward to the ramp up in the years to come. I will hand over to Amra to talk about our license to operate, indeed, to talk about OT. Thank you.
Good morning, everybody. Happy Naadam. Just wonder, maybe people wondering that what is Naadam and what is Naadam celebration? Naadam is in the symbol of independence. It's the also the pride of Mongolian people, pride of nation. I would like to welcome you again to my beautiful country, Mongolia. You are here in Mongolia, very exciting time, when Mongolia is strengthening its position as an important destination for foreign direct investment once again. I'll take you through a bit of overview of Mongolia as a country. Shall we move to next slide? Mongolia is the second-largest landlocked country and eighteenth largest country in the world. Mongolia's territory equals almost entire Western Europe. The country's northern border is longer than U.S. and Mexico border.
In the south, Mongolia shares 4,600 km border with China, which is Chinese longest border. Furthermore, nominal GDP of the country is now reaching to $17 billion, and GDP per capita is currently about $5,000, first time in its history. The Global Freedom Score, which is world's most prominent index, determining democratic freedom, Mongolia is consistently placing itself free category. Mongolia is the only country with this score in the entire Euro-Asia, from border to North Korea, all the way to Scandinavia. Mongolia has 3 large city. Ulaanbaatar is the capital city, Erdenet and Darkhan. Oyu Tolgoi mine is located approximately 550 km south of Ulaanbaatar. I'll talk you through the demographic of Mongolia. Mongolia has 3.5 million population. That makes Mongolia one of the world's most sparsely populated countries.
Over 75% of the population is young, majority of them highly educated, but we are very proud of that. With young Mongolian population becoming this technology and social media, as you see that, the number of smartphone users is larger than population. Mongolian spends about 2-3 hours on social media. In regard to the belief, Mongolia is filled with diverse belief. Even though majority of Mongolians are Buddhist, country is open to all religion, and you will find churches, mosques, and other places of worship in Ulaanbaatar and the other parts of Mongolia. Mongolia is quite homogeneous in terms of ethnicity. In 1990, Mongolia peacefully transitioned to parliamentary democracy and market economy. The structure of Mongolian state is unique in the region. There are strong democratic checks and balances, which ensures democratic governance. Thank you.
Mongolia has always had peacefully transitions of different powers. Two political parties have dominated government over the last 30 years. It's, they've been alternating peacefully through the electoral process. In the recent years, the third political party voice is becoming more strong. Prime Minister, through his cabinet, runs the country on day-to-day basis. Harvard educated Prime Minister, Oyun, I think most of you probably met with him yesterday. He pursues a strong pro-FTA policy, and his relationship with Rio Tinto is seen as important achievement by Mongolian people. This enabled mine to begin underground operations in the Oyu Tolgoi mine, underground production, March this year. Cabinet has announced ambitious agenda called New Recovery Policy after Prime Minister's, the initiations of Vision 2050. This aims to solve six key economic constraints in Mongolia.
First one is commercial port, second, energy, then industrialization, then urban and rural development, green development. Lastly but not least, the efficiency in the government. Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene's Mongolian People's Party has overwhelming majority in the parliament that holds about 60% seats. All political parties recognize the importance of Oyu Tolgoi project and also support its success. The next parliamentary election is scheduled June next year. Recently, you may have heard that the in May last year, parliament passed constitutional amendment, which now expanding number of MPs from 76 to 126. 40% of the seats will elected by proportional representation party list, and the rest will be voted by majoritarian.
According to the government, the constitutional reform will intending to decrease the politicalization of issues that are key to a country's development. All major parties' key economic priorities include capitalization on success of OT and also accelerating other big projects beyond Oyu Tolgoi. I would like to talk you through a bit of Mongolian economy. Since the transition to free market economy in early 1990s, Mongolian economy has consistently grown, except two period. In global financial crisis in 2009, and also COVID-19 pandemic. As you see, rapid economic growth in 2011, Oyu Tolgoi played major role in this economic growth. During this time, GDP growth reached all time of 17%, 17.3%. The whole world is actually wondering in the maze by that.
The last couple of years were important in terms of recovery from pandemic. Despite global financial tightening, high petroleum and food prices, and also border restrictions, Mongolian economy has shown strong sign of recovery. Economic growth was driven largely by rapid recovery in exports and robust consumption as global labor market continues to improve. World Bank forecasts the growth of Mongolian economy for this year is about 5%. It could be bit over 5% as mining export expands in the post-pandemic recovery in the service continues. FDI is an important driver of Mongolian economic growth. OT is the single largest contributor at the moment. In 2022, inflows of country's FDI reached $3.5 billion, while outflow for loan repayments was about $1 billion. That's resulting net inflow of $2.5 billion.
The mining sector accounted the largest share in the GDP, which is 28%. Being a landlocked country, Mongolia has limited trade route, with China being the most important partner for both export and import. In 2022, mining industry made up vast majority of Mongolia's export, with 93%, while non-mining sector only made up about 7%. Within the mining industry, coal was the largest export, amounting about 52% of total country's export. On the other hand, copper is the second largest export product, accounting for 22%. That's combined from Oyu Tolgoi and Erdenet Mining Corporation. They are key contributor for Mongolia's copper export. As Oyu Tolgoi underground mine is expected to ramp up in the coming years, copper share in the Mongolia export will set to expand now.
Following the pandemic from 2022, increasing demand for imports, together with higher import prices, led to large external imbalance despite significant increase in exports. This year, trade balance pressures are expected to remain significant due to continued rise in export consumption and sustained public investment. Oyu Tolgoi plays major role in Mongolian economy, not only direct contribution, also it has a significant indirect contribution to Mongolian economy. Oyu Tolgoi, since 2010, Oyu Tolgoi has paid $4 billion taxes, fees, and other payments to the state budget. That also includes value-added taxes to Mongolian suppliers, which Oyu Tolgoi is not able to claim. Full economic impact of Oyu Tolgoi extends beyond direct impact.
The multiplier effect in the Mongolian economy was estimated at 1.43 in 2019 through local procurement, tax spending, generating the local businesses. Taxes, fees, and payments made by Oyu Tolgoi make up 2.5% of Mongolian GDP, 8.7% of Mongolian budget revenue, 16.7% of Mongolian export revenue. Oyu Tolgoi continues to have positive impact on its many local suppliers and their staff capability, and also organizational culture, and also influencing to ability to collaborate with other businesses. OT was key driver in overcoming some of the challenges during and after COVID-19 pandemic. As I mentioned, Mongolia is located between China and Russia. Due to its unique geographic position, Mongolia pursues stable relationship with both immediate neighbors, China and Russia.
As democratic nation, Mongolia also fosters very strong relationship with third neighbor countries. That includes U.S., U.K., European Union, Japan, and Australia. Since 2022, Mongolia has consistently abstained from voting on UN resolutions on Ukraine and Russia. This allowed Mongolia has maintained its stable relationship with Russia. However, Mongolia carefully follows global sanctions on Russia. Mongolia is also implementing active foreign policy by ensuring regular high-level visits to China and U.S. and other third neighbor countries. Throughout its history, Mongolia has preserved its unique culture and way of living by finding balance between these two global major powers. Throughout history, Mongolia has ensured its sovereignty through careful balancing of major powers. Mongolia's foreign policy makers are merely adapted. Bold has mentioned about the acquisition of TR December last year.
Rio Tinto is now a direct shareholder in Oyu Tolgoi, together with Government of Mongolia. That has significantly simplified the governance process for Oyu Tolgoi. Our partnership is underpinned by two founding foundational agreement for Oyu Tolgoi. First one is the Investment Agreement, which was signed in 2009, and as well as the Shareholders Agreement. Investment Agreement establish tax and regulatory terms, and also sets out specific obligations for infrastructure development and also community and the environment and water. Shareholders Agreement provides terms for company governance and management, funding, and the local content. Over the history of Oyu Tolgoi project, we had number of extended discussions and negotiations with the government on many different issues. We continue to strengthen our relationship with our government and our stakeholders and move Oyu Tolgoi project forward to deliver on the enormous potential.
Last year, Parliament issued Resolution 103, which enabled our agreement with the government. The first 5 out of 6 measures have been fully implemented. Now we have 1 issue still under discussion with the government. We celebrated very important milestone early this year. Oyu Tolgoi underground mine commenced production. It's now on the track to becoming one of the world's largest copper mine in the world, with its peak production expected between 2028-2032. However, Oyu Tolgoi's mine life can go many years beyond that, given its many potential expansion options. Rio Tinto has long-term commitment to Mongolia. We are here to stay long-term partner with Mongolian government and the people of Mongolia. Our presence in Mongolia beyond OT. Rio Tinto's Mongolia Business Service Center is an integral part of our commitment to Mongolia.
We have about 200 employees, so the young, the mostly young Mongolian people. We provide IT and the business support services to over 1,000 projects Oyu Tolgoi, Rio Tinto team is currently running. Rio Tinto Mongolia Business Support Service has big ambition for future to expand in the number, in the different variety of services. Also, I would like to talk about a little bit the exploration. Rio Tinto Mongolia also looks after Rio Tinto's exploration activity in Mongolia. Mongolia is one of the 29 world's most resource-rich country, so that's actually identified the IMF and holds significant potential for mineral exploration. Most mineral wealth remain predominantly untouched by modern exploration and extraction methods. Currently, there are about 2,600 mineral licenses held by companies, so most of them local companies.
Majority of known mineral targets are actually in open pit, in open ground. Only about 4% of Mongolia's land mass is now held on the exploration license. Policy measures taken by government in minerals sector that includes promoting responsible mining and protecting interest of law-abiding locals and foreign investors. I'd like to finish with my discussion, talk about what we're doing in terms of supporting the local community in the social investment. With our long-term commitment to Mongolia, we want to deliver our commitment to address and help the important issues in Mongolian society. We run our own Rio Tinto social investment projects and partnerships, which is separate to what Oyu Tolgoi is currently doing. Our key focus is economic diversification and environment and climate change, education and cultural heritage. This slide shows specific projects we are currently implementing.
Our project as a whole directly contributes to 9 out of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goal. That's well aligned with government's long-term vision. Just this summer, we started very exciting project. That is reconstruction of the current park. It's next, right next to the Shangri-La Hotel, in the greening of the largest public space in heart of Ulaanbaatar city. Our vision is really that park is becoming important to Ulaanbaatar residents as same as Central Park in New York City. Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoyed the Naadam celebration. You will have bit of taste of Mongolia sweet culture and the heritage. I will give it to Deidré. Thank you.
Sain baina uu. Good morning. Baga Naadam, happy Naadam. I'm very happy to welcome you to both Mongolia and Oyu Tolgoi. My name is Deidré. I was appointed as the Oyu Tolgoi CEO in May of last year. What an incredible privilege to lead this amazing business. I have been associated and working with Oyu Tolgoi for about six years in a different capacity, also in Rio Tinto. I was born in Johannesburg, if the accent didn't give me away, and I've been working in mining, heavy industries, and smelting for about 25 years. I've worked across South America, North America, Africa, Europe, and Australia, and now this incredible country. I've been very, very fortunate that my jobs have taken me to far flung places and interesting corners of the world.
I have to say, without a shadow of a doubt, that what Mongolia has to offer far surpasses any of those experiences. It has been a very eventful first year, what is a standout moment for me as a leader of this business, was the start of underground production in March of this year. Like Bold, I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. Many people came in front of me and my team over the past 20 years to craft a pathway for an incredible business and project, what we'll do today is share a bit about that with you. In addition to this proud milestone, my team, of whom many are here today, they are very close to my heart.
They're an incredible bunch of human beings. We'll take you through the following, or what is on this slide in a bit more detail, but I'd like for them to stand up so you can just see them where they're dotted around the room. I'd like to start with the speakers, if I can. Andrew, Damian, Duka, Russell, Sugar, Oggie, and Steffan, who will join my team a bit later today. These individuals are going to take you through, as Mina said, everything around money, rocks, and footprint. I've got the easy job, hopefully, to paint the picture and set the context, and this team will take you through the detail. Also my extended team here. The rest of the team, if you could just stand up quickly. Don't be shy.
Yeah, we've got Claire, Slagwa, Amar, Tsegi, Melissa. I think Sina. Is Sina? Yeah, we've got Sina in the room. They are support team, and they will be working in support of the presenting team. Just to sketch out what we'll be going through, I'll set the scene, and then every single one of these areas, my team will take through in more detail. Firstly, we are on a solid pathway to becoming a world-leading, modern, safe, sustainable, and profitable copper business. To do this, for us, safety is firstly and foremostly, the most important, and we will not compromise on the safety of our teams as we progress on this journey. We are on a journey.
Moving from a surface operation, an underground project to an integrated business, definitely presents a evolving risk profile. I will go through a bit more of the statistics a bit later, and hopefully, when you go to site tomorrow, you'll be able to engage with the teams and understand what we are, what we're dealing with. It is at a mammoth scale. I also would like to say that whilst many of you, and I think many of us, are focused on the underground project, today, we shouldn't forget that Oyu Tolgoi has been a world-class operation with a proven track record for the last 10 years. We have been running a business, not just delivering on a project. We're now shifting, as I said, from a surface mine and an underground project to an integrated copper business.
This takes a lot of planning, a lot of forward thinking, to make sure that all the pieces are pulled together. For us, it's an incredibly exciting phase. I'm sure for you as well. As we ramp up and deliver the necessary infrastructure to support this, Andrew and Damian, that stood up a bit earlier, will provide you with an update on how the underground ramp up is going. Whilst the ramp up is a top priority, we're also very fortunate, as Bold alluded to in his opening presentation, that we have a very strong pipeline of options to grow, to sustain, and to improve the business. This is an incredibly fortunate position to be in, and a number of the team members will touch today on our incredible ore body. It is mammoth. It's the size of Manhattan, I think, as Dominic Barton mentioned yesterday.
The various studies and opportunities that lie ahead of us, but also the risks we need to navigate. We are not naive to the fact that ramping up to be the fourth largest player globally does not just happen by chance. It does take forward thinking and de-risking. I know many people define me as a person that is very caring. I do care about people, and I also care about us delivering the profit to our shareholders. That's very important. I care about the planet, and I care about strong partnerships. When I talk about care, it is the full scope of why Oyu Tolgoi exists. Close to my heart is our people and culture, and that is a key driver in our ramp-up to being in the first quartile of cost performance.
As we triple our production to an average of 500,000 tons per annum between 2028 and 2036, and to a peak of 610,000 tons per annum. We are making progress. We referred to the drawbells a bit earlier. We're at 54 drawbells as at 30 June. At the moment, we just keep going through those drawbells. We are ahead of the 25 drawbells in plan. This does not happen by chance. It's not just a stroke of good fortune that brings us ahead of plan. This is based on a continuous improvement mindset that we have inculcated in our teams. We always strive to be better, and many bright minds, as Amra said, we have incredible team members come together to make this happen.
This learning culture, in addition to ensuring that we have the leadership and technical skills to deliver on the business, is setting a really strong foundation for our future growth. Steffan and Oggie will talk through how we use this to drive and to optimize the designs of Panel 1 and Panel 2, and how you use data and technology to make decisions in real time. Based on the evolution of our business and considering the present and future risk scenarios, it also became timely for us to rethink early. We have a solid 10 years behind us, but now as we define an integrated business, we need to think ahead. This strategy was approved by the Oyu Tolgoi Board and the Copper and Rio Tinto leadership teams last month, this is a really big stepping stone for us.
Through this process, we identified three competitive advantages. I will go through it in more detail, but just to outline what those are. Firstly, as I've mentioned, our incredibly talented, proud, dedicated team members, our impressive ore bodies, and the power of very strong partnerships. Our strategy, this is a very important point because I'm sure we're going to touch on it a bit later, aligns directly to the Rio, but equally, it completely supports Vision 2050 of the government of Mongolia. Dominic referred to Vision 2050. If you haven't read it, please go read and go through it. It does set the scene for the future, it shows the role that sectors and companies like Rio Tinto, and specifically Oyu Tolgoi, will play in the future success of Mongolia.
A couple of examples of how we're building on our competitive advantages and aligning to our shareholder strategies. Please, this is not for this particular point here. We have noteworthy ESG achievements. We also have challenges, but we'll go through that a bit later in the agenda. We have first quartile water efficiency performance and recycling rates of around 85%. We are very proud of this. I myself working in water quality and quantity management, many years ago, but we do believe that we can do a lot more, and we can do a lot more outside the gates of Oyu Tolgoi. Paul will take us through that later today. We believe that partnerships provide strong and mutually beneficial platforms for us to deliver. We have identified partnerships as one of our competitive advantages.
Sugar is going to share more about that and examples of what we're doing in the local and regional communities. I believe, and data shows, that engaged employees and contractors are safe and productive. Our engagement efforts around safety, wellbeing, inclusion and diversity, recognition, which my team knows is very close to my heart as well, to name but a few, has resulted in Oyu Tolgoi consistently being top of the ranks in the Rio Tinto engagement survey results. It would be remiss of me if I didn't pay tribute and thanks to the thousands of hardworking men and women, some of which you will meet at the site tomorrow.
By building on these competitive advantages, actively managing our risks, my team knows what I expect of us is to always think five steps ahead and anticipate what is coming down, and what the opportunities and risks could potentially be, and seizing these many opportunities, and ultimately contributing to achieving our overarching purpose of being a partner in Mongolia's prosperity by being a world-leading, safe, sustainable and profitable business. Moving on to the next slide. Let's take a closer look at our ramp-up and cost position. Duka will provide more color on this topic in the second half of the presentation, so please hold any questions for her. She's far better at answering it than I am.
What is noteworthy on this slide is we expect average production from the open pit and underground to triple and reach an average of 500,000 tons per annum of copper in concentrate from 2028 to 2036, as I mentioned, and around 610,000 tons per annum at peak. The gold average production will reach an average of 350,000 ounces per annum and 450,000 ounces per annum at peak. What is good, a good story for us, and this is what makes this underground ore body so impressive, is that the copper head grade will increase from 0.5% to 1.24% in 2028. When fully ramped up, Oyu Tolgoi will be well positioned in the first quartile on the cost curve as production drives a cost-competitive position.
These shifts in our production and cost position demonstrate that Oyu Tolgoi is entering an incredibly exciting phase. In our short history, a very young business, but also including becoming cash flow positive in 2025 as we prepare for a successful long-term future. As I said, Duka, our CFO, will provide a bit more color. On the next slide, I'd like to talk about the pipeline of options that Bold alluded to earlier. Whilst, obviously we need to make sure we ramp up Oyu Tolgoi to be a safe, profitable business, and that is our ultimate aim, we are fortunate to have a strong pipeline of options to grow and to sustain the business. I'm gonna highlight but a few, and these options are different study phases.
Whilst these are listed, I need to flag that we do need to do more work to really understand these options in more detail. At concept and order of magnitude level, we are looking at longer-term options to continue to deliver 500,000 tons per annum beyond the current Hugo North Lift One, and continued optimizations of Panel 1 and 2. We are therefore in the process of studying Hugo North Lift Two and future phases of the Oyu ore body as well as Hugo South. Whilst we are focusing on growth, that is absolutely key, and it's aligned with the copper strategy that Bold shared with you a bit earlier, our priorities are not only focused on copper growth. We will continue to study ways to improve our water consumption and reduce our waste.
We are formally committed in the refreshed strategy I referred to a 50% reduction in non-mineral waste by 2030, and we are targeting net zero carbon emissions by 2050. We are studying options in renewables, in very close discussion and collaboration with the Ministry of Energy and with support from Rio Tinto. We are also looking at opportunities to grow our business, and Rio has signed a memorandum of understanding, and Amar alluded to this, with the government of Mongolia, relating to investigating the production of final copper products. Beneficiation is front of mind for us, and this includes nickel PGMs. The bottom line for me is, whilst we're in a really good position, the best is yet to come. I'd like to now provide you with a very brief overview of our competitive advantages.
As acknowledged earlier and highlighted in our chairman, the Rio Tinto Chairman, Dominic Barton's, speech yesterday, people's talent, passion, and commitment over multiple decades have contributed to the many Oyu Tolgoi successes. Safety remains our top priority. We are continuously focusing on making sure that we improve. Over the last decade, the all-injury frequency rate has reduced by half, despite the fact that we are dealing with more risks now that we have a surface operation and an underground business operation. Our all-injury frequency rate is at 0.2. This is one of the lowest in the Rio Tinto Group. Also, I think globally, anything below 0.3 is a pretty impressive safety outcome. We take the safety and health of our teams very seriously. Therefore, we stop work if it's not safe to continue.
We believe that this is an anchoring point to the performance that we have achieved so far, and will remain an anchoring point in making sure we sustain that performance going into the future. Beyond all-injury frequency rates, we are also focused on the health and well-being of our workforce. This covers physical as well as mental well-being. For example, this year, we have had campaigns focusing on heart health, blood pressure, and lung health, in addition to mental health. These are very real and relevant challenges within the Mongolian context. Our 97% Mongolian workforce, as well as the 3% expats, are energized by the fact that their efforts are contributing to the prosperity of their families and the nation. It is a job that really anchors you into something that's tangible and real, not just today, but into the long run.
It is a super block cave, Steffan will take you through that a bit later today, built largely by a Mongolian workforce, and it's the first of its kind in Mongolia. As I said, Steffan will share with you some mind-blowing statistics. We have developed very strong technical expertise with the support of Rio Tinto and in partnership with institutions like the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. We have the skills to develop and deliver mega projects, and we have shown this. We have geotechnical and block caving expertise, and you will see a couple of people this afternoon showing you that that exists. This is to name but a few, to run our minds and deliver on our projects, and we will continue to create the in-country expertise to support this ambition.
We have a long-term commitment to have a more diverse workforce. Just looking at this room, I think we can all do with a bit more diversity. We have set an ambitious target to have a 50% female participation in the long run. This ambitious target was recently formally included in our strategy performance measures. To me, that signals a big shift and a big change in where we're wanting to take Oyu Tolgoi. Where are we today? We currently have 23% female employees across our business. Importantly, we have 180 female operators out of the 996. These women are working across our value chain, operating drills, operating heavy equipment, operating the concentrator, waste operators, and other key underground equipment, underground and surface equipment.
We also have a strong pool of underground trainees who are keen to learn and to work underground. Considering females were only approved to work underground in 2016, this is a big step forward, but clearly there's a lot more for us to do. How does this look like at the leadership level? In leadership positions, and this came up yesterday, I don't know who attended the panel discussion by Jennifer Nason, where she said she was proud to be associated with an organization with strong female representation. You'll see some of the most incredible women presenting to you a bit later today. In terms of statistics, females make up 40% of Oyu Tolgoi senior management, and our board is now 33% female as well.
We have a lot of work to do in terms of females in supervisory roles, but we are doing very well in terms of women in management roles. I think the Rio Tinto Group has an average of about 28% of women in the leadership roles. How do we make this change? We are actively working on partnering with academic institutions and rethinking our programs, our recruitment programs, to support our ambitious targets. As highlighted yesterday, over 3,800 students have enrolled in our education program since 2011, and we are working on creating an environment that doesn't only attract female talent, but also retains it. We have a lot to learn, and we are learning from the publicly released Everyday Respect report that Rio Tinto commissioned and very bravely published.
We are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and psychologically safe environment. We have worked very closely and directly with Liz Broderick, the author of that report, and we have taken decisive measures to address the findings of the report. Some examples are improving our facilities, improving reporting channels. We have seen a vast increase in the reported incidents coming through, which in my mind is a really good thing. It means our employees and contractors feel that it's safe to speak up, firstly and foremostly, but also that these channels are available and known to our workforce. We have done a lot of training. We started with leaders. I think the change needed and the culture shift needed starts at the top of the organization.
Also worked with our board, Liz Broderick, worked directly with the Oyu Tolgoi board. This year we are training our entire workforce and also extended the training to contractors. There's a lot more to do. I think foundationally, having the right culture in place is what's going to drive this incredible business forward very strongly. Moving to the next slide. I just love this. This is the most impressive slide, I think, if you look at that ore body. We have four key ore bodies that make up our high quality, long life assets. In the diagram, you see the grades and resource figures of these ore bodies.
We're going to go through it a bit later today, but just to paint the picture for you, Oyu, which is the source of the O, our open pit operation, has been operating for over a decade, as I said. We are now tapping into Hugo North, as part of Hugo North Lift One, and this ore body has a significantly higher grade at around 1.55%, compared to the Oyu open pit at around 0.44%. If you look beyond Hugo North, we also have Hugo South, and to the top left of the picture, the more distant Heruga, which forms our life of mine plan.
Andrew and Oggie will expand on the ore bodies we are currently mining and our continued efforts to improve our understanding of the ore body and to convert a vast resource into reserves. Moving on. Whilst we are ramping up to be the fourth largest copper player globally, I often say it's not only about being the biggest, it is about making the biggest positive impact. Nothing makes me prouder to see the on-the-ground, tangible examples of the positive impact that Oyu Tolgoi has had and will continue to have, not only through being a profitable business, that does remain our aim, but also through contributing to the Mongolian economy, providing value to our shareholders and our stakeholders, and also through our local development efforts. Some examples of partnerships. The Gobi Oyu Development Support Fund invests around $5 million annually in local development efforts.
One of the first things I was involved in, with the broader team, was the establishment of the Oyu Tolgoi Humboldt Catalyst Fund, which has started investing $50 million over the next 5 years in Humboldt, in town transformation and sustainable development programs. A long life asset gives us the opportunity to make sure the decisions we make today and the efforts we are involved in as of today, will have a long-term positive impact. Sugar will share more. We are also partnering with government and the president's office to contribute to the national movement of planting 1 billion trees and securing water access for the nation. Paul will share more about the statistics around that. We are partnering with leading national universities to build capabilities as well as mental health programs.
One that is which is very impressive for me is the mental health programs in the Ger districts of Ulaanbaatar. $320,000 was spent to provide counseling for girls in this underprivileged area, benefiting over 30,000 young children and their families, as well as teachers. Sugar, in my team, shared with me at dinner a couple of nights ago how she had spoken to two young girls that came through this program as students and are now teachers. I think that's just an incredible example of how this effort pays forward. We have made good progress on our partnership with the government of Mongolia, as Amra referred to early, initiated by the relationship reset in January of last year.
I'm often asked: Well, how do you know that this partnership is actually being strengthened and moving forward? For me, a key anchoring fact and data point to support this is the approval of our strategy that was recently presented to the Oyu Tolgoi Board. As I said, this strategy aligns our shareholders on some of our long-term ambitions, including short, medium, and long-term measures of success around profit and production targets, objectives supporting the development of our people, objectives around partnership, including ongoing transparency and targets around caring for our planet. This strategy, as I said, is aligned to Vision 2050 and the Rio Tinto strategy. For us, and especially for me and my management team, this is a very important vehicle to ensure alignment with both our shareholders and to support ongoing strategic level conversations.
This doesn't mean that those conversations will not be difficult. Ramping up the fourth largest copper business is not easy business. We expect both our shareholders, I expect both of the shareholders to keep me and my management team on our toes. For me, a robust conversation is exactly what is needed to make a success of this incredible business. We believe that working in an open and transparent manner with our shareholders and our stakeholders, and working together to make decisions that ultimately provide the best outcome for Oyu Tolgoi, is how we will be able to deliver on these promises. On the next slide, whilst we have growth ahead of us with ramp-up, and as I mentioned earlier, we are also well aware that we need to navigate risks, and we need to use our competitive advantages to navigate these risks.
I'm sure front of mind for everyone, is ensuring the ramp-up of underground production. The updates I've provided so far, the more detail you'll get from Damian and the team later today, should build the confidence that we are well placed to deliver on our operational performance as well as the underground project. Secondly, while people are a competitive advantage for us, we are aware that the skills we are developing in-country is in global demand. We will continue to invest in technical skills development and draw on Rio Tinto expertise. Our ambition is to establish a technical center of excellence in Mongolia by building on our existing partnerships. Thirdly, power and decarbonization. Power is critical for our business, and we have committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, in line with the Rio Tinto strategy.
Duka will take you through the power agreement in more detail, but I would like to highlight that we have secured a reliable power source until 2050. Lastly, as highlighted by Amra, Mongolia is a location that can bring numerous challenges due to its geographic location, one of them being supply chain challenges. The one thing I know, and I've experienced in my 14 months in this role, is that our teams are adept to forward-thinking. We have a proven track record in navigating multiple challenges, some of them all at the same time. I'm also proud of the efforts, the made-in-Mongolia efforts, that's underway, which is driving the purchasing and manufacturing of the goods and procuring the services we need right here in Mongolia, and very specifically in the South Gobi.
It's also worth noting that to date, Oyu Tolgoi has spent around $5 billion in national procurement, directly supporting Mongolian companies, and of that, around $1.2 billion was spent in the South Gobi. On the next slide, I don't want to leave you on risks. We have some fantastic opportunities, I've touched on some of these throughout the presentation today. My team will explore these in more detail with you this afternoon. In addition to the growth plans and becoming a profitable business, we're also investing in local and provincial development, focusing on minimizing our impact on the environment and ensuring that our care for the planet and people extend beyond our gates.
As I said, my intention today was not to take you through the detail, but rather to paint a picture and to set the scene for my very capable team to take you through the detail later today, and to show you why Oyu Tolgoi is such an incredible asset and investment. I'm humbled and privileged to have been given the opportunity to lead this incredible business, and I'm driven to set the foundations in place to ensure that continuous success is ensured through our expertise, our ore body, and our partnerships. I often quote Nelson Mandela, the late former president of South Africa. I was just elated last night when the Prime Minister also quoted Nelson Mandela.
He famously said, "Everything seems impossible until it's done." I've tweaked that quote slightly to say that everything is possible if it is done in true partnership, and Oyu Tolgoi shows how much can be done in strong partnership. I would like to thank the investor community and lenders once again for trusting Oyu Tolgoi and for investing in us. Before we go into the Q&A session, I would like to share a video with you. This video moves me greatly. During this video, you will experience the sounds of a piece of music by Morin Khuur Ensemble, and it's called Khanbogd Melody. Khanbogd is the town closest to our operation.
You will see the beautiful and vast Gobi landscape and our operation, both on surface and underground, and I hope it gives you an appreciation of the size and scale of our business. Importantly, you can see the proud display of Mongolian culture, talent, and creativity, and this is present in our business as well. Hopefully, this provides a prelude to what you will experience on site tomorrow. Thank you. Bayarlalaa.
Great! Okay. There's a roving mic in the back. Before I say, and we go there, that was a pretty impressive, clearly, video. We now have Bold present from 1,300 meters down below. We had a symphony or symphonic orchestra from down below 1,300 meters. I had a request from a few of you to be able to do some FaceTiming home tomorrow, and I've put that with Andrew, the Site Manager, and see if we can make that work, to prove to you that it really works 1,300 meters underground. All right. Please keep your questions to the session this morning. Speakers up here, who wants to have the first question?
Bold, I think you made a bit of a passing, sort of, simple comment that you're not, resource-constrained, nor are you logistics-constrained. Can you just to, sort of, finish that, so that tells me you're concentrator constrained, is that right?
We're always concentrator-constrained because I want more copper. The reality is, I think we're looking at an expansion of what? 120,000 tons per day. There or another expansion that's been already poured when we set up the concentrator. I don't think the concentrator expansion stops at 120. I really hope the team ramps up the underground safely, but I do think there's a potential, another 30,000-40,000 ton expansion that can be added within the existing concentrator footprint. At the moment, we're not at the stage of any studies, but the original sag mills, when they were installed, there was one line that's been already poured for the foundation to install another line. Once that takes to 160,000, then we're concentrator-constrained.
Thank you.
Thank you for the presentation. Just a question, for the government or your JV partners, do they prefer further direct investments, or they prefer earlier, shareholder dividends? Which one is the preference?
All shareholders want earlier dividends.
For this one, like, you know, the country is the JV partner, right?
I think the government is very clear when they were negotiating, that they're very sensitive about the timing of dividends, and so are we. We absolutely focus not to delay the timing of dividends as much as possible. However, we do have to repay the shareholder loans, and this is a commitment we made to project finance lenders and the maturity. I think as the underground ramps up, and if we're in a privileged position to generate free cash flow in a good, positive copper demand cycle, I do think it potentially helps everyone. The government obviously benefits from taxes they receive. They receive about $200 million to $300 million in total taxes per year. The future dividends of this business are gonna contribute even more, absolutely.
Thanks for the presentation. Just a quick one from me on the tax dispute. Can you provide a general overlay, but then specifically, what is the point of contention that's being debated over the, over the tax dispute? What is the current status of that progress there?
As I mentioned, we pay about $200 million to $300 million in annual taxes in various forms for OT, and the dispute is about $25 million to $30 million per amount. It's not on the $200 million to $300 million. On the $25 million to $30 million, it's about a withholding tax on the management fee and some of the other provisions. By and large, it's about withholding tax that Mongolia has, which is about 20% for distributions outside the country. With 26 countries, there's double tax treaty. Of those 26, 24 have a withholding tax of 10%. We're in pretty good position in terms of Canada, UK, jurisdictions in Mongolia have a very positive environment for about a 10% withholding tax.
We're in progress, process of discussions around how we settle that in the future and of course, making sure that the fiscal stability as per environment Investment Agreement and the regime is protected. At the moment, we are working with the government working group. It is an amount of about, I think, $350 million. I think the number may have moved around. That is covering six years of the tax calculation. That's roughly the details. I don't know. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, how to calculate the withholding tax amount? Yeah.
Good morning. Bob Brackett at Bernstein. Had a question on the pipeline of opportunity slide, a minor one, and then kind of a bigger one. The minor one, I didn't see Heruga on that slide explicitly. The major one, talk about the MOU and talk about perhaps you mentioned leaching. How do you think about downstream opportunities? How do you value or think about that? I'll leave it at that.
Heruga is definitely included, as I mentioned, so it might have not been explicit on the slide, but absolutely, Heruga is part of the life of mine plan. In terms of future opportunities, all of those opportunities need to go through, as we would do with any investment opportunity, the decision-making process, according to our investment decision criteria. And these opportunities then go through the different approval processes, both from a Rio Tinto perspective and at the Oyu Tolgoi Board. We're at early stages on leaching, which you referenced. We are currently in order of magnitude, but progressing that quite quickly. We will have a copper deficit, as we all know, within the next decade, so it's in everyone's interest to firm up on those growth opportunities. George?
Just to be clear, it's a low-grade oxide leaching and potentially a secondary sulfide. It's not a primary sulfide, it's a proven leaching technology on an existing low-grade stockpile that's been already moved to the side. It's not a pit. I think, hope that's helpful. I think I'm pretty excited about that one. It's not enough though, but I think, I think on your downstream question, as per the Investment Agreement we had signed, we looked at economic viability of a smelter and whether the actual returns work. In the past, they didn't. I think as we're looking at the future phase of a different price environment, but also the currently, as we sell concentrate, we don't get the VAT refund.
When we sell a cathode, we get a VAT refund, you automatically get about an 8% benefit from that. In addition, you may have heard that the French company called Orano is looking to build a uranium business here, and they will need sulfuric acid. If we can have an integrated market for sulfuric acid as well as potentially the VAT refund, potentially changes the economics, we haven't done the full calculation on that. That's what's, you know, I mean, of course, all countries want a bit of downstream in terms of their copper. The one benefit we have, which is, of course, we do have a smelting expertise at Kennecott. We are in the downstream business in aluminum, we have a lot of inside knowledge around smelting.
Hi, you mentioned bioleaching, not necessarily to do with OT, but the talk is of bioleaching or sulfide leaching ores, primary ores, at very large scale. I know historically, this technology's been around for a while, and it's been difficult to get the bugs to work in the right temperature zones, et cetera. What are the developments now, that now will enable this to be efficient, at much greater scale? I mean, what has been the, sort of, the things that have moved forward in the technology?
I think, Paul, what's driven this more is the demand side of the story, to be honest. I think, you know, I think the copper demand has not been as clear in the past in terms of doubling of potential demand volumes. Everybody's looking at how to add supply. That's creating urgency of looking at these technologies. I mean, as you said, this technology has been around. Now, economically, it was always made sense to go the concentrator route because you had a higher grade, and of course, it made sense to get, you know, credit for the byproducts, which you don't get with the bioleaching is the byproduct credit. As we're looking at the options, it tends to work at low grade, high arsenic, no byproduct ore bodies.
When you look at that, there's a very limited universe, and some of them are actually in tailings of the existing old mines and the waste. I think the Nevada is a case in point. That's kind of how we think about it as an opportunity. That it is at the scale-up study phase, so, you know, we just have to prove out it works.
Just a question from Lachlan Shaw, UBS. Just on the power agreement, can you maybe give us a little more detail there? Just to expand, how do you think about decarbonization? Obviously, the president and prime minister's presentation yesterday, some fantastic renewable assets here in Mongolia. Just interested in if you can give us some more detail there. Thank you.
I will give you a brief answer now, Lachlan, and we've got a specific section this afternoon on power, and we will talk about decarb. It'll be covered in more detail this afternoon. In short, on the power side, we have signed fairly recently with the Inner Mongolia Power Company, a power purchase agreement that's valid until 2030. That extends the current contract. It builds out on what we are currently doing in any event. That agreement takes into consideration our commitment to source power from Mongolia. Disregarding the fact that once power is available from Mongolia, we are committed to source the power locally. What is front of mind for us is making sure we have uninterrupted power supply.
So we have de-risked the situation, and it's pretty good terms of contract that was settled. Duke has got that in a section this afternoon, so I won't take the sun out of her presentation for this afternoon. On decarbonization, we have pathways to carbon neutrality. As I said, our ambition is to be carbon neutral by 2050. That is anchoring that ambition back into what Rio Tinto committed to publicly as well. There are different pathways to take to get to zero, and that depends on whether the Mongolia power supply is coal-based or not. There's a lot of work being done from the Rio Tinto side in engaging with government around large-scale renewables. It is work in progress. I don't think we've quite landed as yet.
If we don't take that pathway, we do have other options around, well, how do we offset? Ultimately, we're in the business of copper that's needed to electrify the world, and for us to make that claim, we have to be absolutely certain that our own house is in order. For that reason, we have multiple pathways. We also have Saina in the room. Saina, where are you? These are experts, so I think this afternoon, let's get stuck into the technical details, Menno, or do you wanna do it now? Okay.
One thing I would just add is that you see a good looking fella in a hat. That's Munkhsukh. Munkhsukh is our Managing Director of Growth and Development. He's based in Brisbane. He's in charge of number of our growth options at OT, but also Winu. Munkhsukh has built one of the first wind power generation projects in Mongolia more than 10 years ago, and we do have a, you know, it's 50 megawatts. He's done some recent reviews of the Inner Mongolia power grids renewable percentage. It's about 35%-40%. That is the existing renewable component of our existing OT power supply. I think that's one thing that people forget, actually, China is the leader in renewables, and in particular, in Inner Mongolia, in particular around wind.
That's where we already have certain exposure to renewable in our existing power contracts.
Hi, it's Cody from BMO. A couple of questions. On CapEx, the CapEx was $7.1 billion. That's two things on that one, is one, is yet to be ratified by the OT Board, you highlighted that the CapEx is subject to COVID-19 impact that has not been taken into account. Whether you have any update on the total CapEx numbers now and whether that has been approved by the OT Board? Second, on the taxes again. $356 million that was quoted at the end of December 2022. You mentioned that most of the dispute is on the management fee.
Since the structure is changed now, is it going to accrue now or is it's not going to happen, that it's going to be like a history?
I'll leave the second part to you, Bold. Starting on the CapEx. Sorry? Yeah, Duka, we're covering that both through the project lens as well as the financial lens. Can we hold that until this afternoon? Otherwise, we're just gonna get into divergent conversations.
I think on the tax, the key question there is, it's the calculation methodology on the withholding tax, and there's other things that are in that. There's management fees, there's interest rates, et cetera. There's a breakdown that provide detail. I think as far as, you know, obviously looking at how we look at the potential situation, there is, you know, things like Pillar 2, right, coming and then, you know, that is applicable to us as well. It's a quite complex subject. We're in the midst of a government negotiation. As we settle it down, we'll have to probably give you a bit more detail after that process is complete.
Hello? Tyler Broda from RBC. Boy, yesterday, I mean, quite clear that there's a lot of growth potential in Mongolia as a whole. I guess just with the numbers on OT and going up to the sort of revenue levels, the amount of GDP growth that's gonna cause Mongolia is gonna be quite high. I guess it sort of puts Mongolia at risk, potentially of the sort of Dutch disease, where you have one sector really moving ahead of the rest, usually comes with a strong currency and high rates of labor inflation. I guess in your sort of assessing of the situation, how do you see that potential impact playing through?
Yeah, one story that Mongolia is not appreciated for is coal. When you look at the coal revenues, you saw the historical increase in the last few years, in particular, because of price environment. When you're thinking about 20-30 million ton coal exports, price ran up to $200-$300, that suddenly became the $4 billion to $6 billion revenue line that came in suddenly. When you see that kind of historical pattern, as we're looking at Oyu Tolgoi copper, it's not dissimilar. In that space, we have not seen a significant appreciation of the tugrik, and that's because the government obviously is spending a lot of capital on infrastructure. Roads still need to be built, housing still needs to be resolved, still a lot of power questions.
I look at that kind of benefit that we had, but like one-off, potentially in coal, and how that potentially translates. The other thing to keep in mind is not all exports are GDP growth, because GDP, when you calculate it, is dependent on net exports. The question is, what is the import component of that? I think the government is spending quite a lot of time of capital on building certain things, such as a oil and gas refinery. There's a lot of equipment that they're bringing in with those. You know, it's not gonna be a country that is gonna be short of capital or investment needs, that will drive the import needs as the exports ramp up, and the net export is the contribution to GDP. I don't know, the economy sounds so across it.
Michael Lam from ANZ Bank. The government mentioned yesterday about increasing rail capacity in the country, and I know that the project's looking at potentially railing its concentrate to the border. Can you just give us an update on that particular option?
Yeah, thanks for the question. I'll take that. The government recently completed 2 railway projects. One is now about to be connected to the China side. As you may have heard that recently, Prime Minister visited to China, had a extensive discussion with the Chinese government on the connection for the Gashuun Sukhait railroad. That's about a bit over 200 kilometers of railroad has been built from Tavan Tolgoi coal mine to Gashuun Sukhait border crossing. That road, railroad can be connected to Oyu Tolgoi site. Team is now currently doing some assessments on this.
I think just the other thing to keep in mind is, what's our distance to the border? 80 km? We're 80 km from the customer, right? We have historically sent it by truck, and we actually have a paved road that we built. Andrew completed it last year. I think, you know, the railway capacity, of course, is potentially interesting, but we're sending concentrate at the moment that, does not require the rail capacity for logistics.
Yeah, Paul Young from Goldman Sachs. A question again on the government agreement, the other one you signed in 2022. We said you've completed 5 of the 6 measures. Well, can you just step through, just high level, what those 5 measures that have been implemented, what they are? Secondly, just on the management fee, can you just remind us, does it step up from 3% to 6% as the underground comes into commercial production?
Yeah. Parliament Resolution 103 has been passed end of 2021. We have been working very closely with the government working group and also Erdenes Oyu Tolgoi. Erdenes Oyu Tolgoi is the government shareholder of Oyu Tolgoi project. The Resolution 103 has six measures. From the government side, the Ministry of Justice, who's the lead of the government working group on the implementation of this resolution. As I mentioned, the five out of six has been jointly and successfully completed. First one is the writing of the $2.3 billion shareholders loan interest. Second is the termination of UDP, so-called new back payment. Also the audit, independent audit on the project finance expenditure.
Fourth is the improving the environmental protection commitment to Oyu Tolgoi and the water monitoring and the improving of the governance duty, and also the commitment to the. Basically, the improvement of the ESG and long-term power supply and the water monitoring. Those have been the extensive work has been on, especially on this space, by Oyu Tolgoi and Rio Tinto and Erdenes Oyu Tolgoi.
I think the other poor part about the five points is that the UDP agreement was about project financing, and that's largely complete. That was most of it. The termination of the UDP from a materiality standpoint, of course, it sent a very strong message in terms of our agreement with the government. That was all about getting the project financing in place, and that's why it's called the Underground Development Plan. Just to be clear.
Any questions? Very well.
Glyn Lawcock from Barrenjoey. Just a question on broader Mongolian politics. Last year there was the coal corruption scandal, which obviously saw some social unrest. What's the latest update in that scandal? Have any members of parliament been involved in that?
Yeah, that's actually a very good question. Corruption index in Mongolia is not very good at the moment. Government has been taking, currently taking many measures to fight with the corruption, especially with this prime minister, this cabinet. Not only the coal scandal, it's also the currently government working on the different issues to resolve the especially related to the corruption matters. I'd like to mention here that Rio Tinto, we are working together with the Transparency International, also Chamber of Commerce contributing to this important initiative to Mongolia fighting against the corruption.
We established a business integrity center, that's supported by Transparency International. That's be established in the Chamber of Commerce. This is actually the private sector contribution we are actually supporting the government, this initiative.
I can't really comment on whether any politicians were implicated, 'cause that investigation is still underway. Obviously, there's a massive effort to improve transparency. I think the digital effort, the e-Mongolia effort is gonna be a significant improvement, making sure all the contracts are actually very transparent and posted on a website. I think that's a, you know, clear step. As a vibrant democracy, I find that actually quite healthy. I think the social unrest that has happened in December was actually supporting the government to progress the cleanup of the, you know, potentially corrupt individuals.
Jason?
Jason Fairclough, Bank of America. Just can you remind us of the current balance on the shareholder loans, and where do those things rank in terms of repayment? Thank you.
The one culture of tea, so they without the khuushuur, it will not complete Naadam. Hopefully you will have a khuushuur tomorrow or at least tonight. That's the most important thing. Okay? My name is Sugar. There is called, look like a sugar, but it's not sugar. It's actually the sugar, and it means Friday and wins. Yep. I'm a General Manager of Communities. I have been working at Oyu Tolgoi for 18 years, always in communities. I was appointed to a General Manager of Communities 2 years ago. Tom, please. Yeah. Next one, please. Yeah. We have a strong environment and social performance, supported by integrated HSE management system, and that complies with the international, national, standard requirement, IFC, EBRD, Rio Tinto.
We also built a strong technical capability, talent pipeline in community social performance. Our priority is to start with the social, managing our social risk and impact proactively through the meaningful dialogue with the community. The second one, Ömnögovi Aimag, is our province that we operate then contributing to the sustainable development of Ömnögovi Aimag through a strong partnership and deliver our commitment. The next topic is supporting Ömnögovi Aimag Khanbogd development. The Khanbogd development is all the core of our business strategy. Lastly, we nurture our partnership with our community in Khanbogd and herders and stakeholder in the region. Last 20 years, we conducted the comprehensive first business baseline study on the Ömnögovi Aimag environment, community, and the economy in 2008 then comprehensive social impact assessment on the Ömnögovi Aimag.
Social impact assessment wasn't required by Mongolian law, the international standard, Rio Tinto Standard, we conducted social impact assessment at the national level first time, 2008, through the consultative process. Since then, we've been updating our baseline and impact assessment every 5 years, including environment and community. We work together. Key them, as you can see, the cultural heritage, resettlement, water, the biodiversity, human rights, and community participation. Those are the key them. Probably you're wondering about the herders livelihood. In 2004, we physically displaced 10 herder households, and in 2011, during our first phase construction, we economically displaced 89 herder households. We made a compensation agreement with them and then delivered our compensation. Now, this compensation agreement is closed.
Now we are working on working with our community and herders to support a sustainable livelihood. Currently, 65 herder households involved within 6 sustainable livelihood project, agricultural project, we call it. They initiate it. So that process, we are trying to work with the herders to shift from entitlement mindset to toward more long-term sustainable livelihood. We partner with our community and stakeholders to deliver, including social benefit and outcome, maximizing positive impacts and development potential. In 2015, we established a cooperation agreement with the Ömnögovi Aimag and Humboldt Sum, and soon after, established Gobi Development Support Fund, where we invest $5 million per annum. This is, we are together with Omugobi, contributing to sustainable livelihood intangibly.
In that process, as soon as we made the cooperation agreement, our relationship is boosted. Before that one, it's more the impact mitigation. As soon as we signed off cooperation agreement, this is actually given a confidence to the community that we are here together for the long term, it gives a certainty for the community, and also they are participating in the decision-making process. In Gobi, since 2015, we implemented more than 300 development projects and programs, created 500 jobs in the community. That's not mining industry related. Under that, the Gobi Oyu Development Support Fund, we created strategic partnership with the UNFPA, UNICEF, to support the Omugobi education and health.
In 2018, when we conducted, updated our baseline study, that actually details really good story that the first time since 2008, the maternal mortality reached 0. Infant mortality, reduced it significantly, increased the school and kindergarten enrollment for the kids in the Omugobi. Also, the Omugobi is the unemployment, poverty rate in Omugobi is the lowest at the national level. This is indicated that how we contribute and how we are supporting Omugobi's development advancement.
Another one I just wanted to highlight. We have developed a few partnership platform at the AMEC level, local employment, working group, local procurement working group, because our community wanted to participate in Oyu Tolgoi project through the procurement process and so they better job. We here to, we have a mutual commitment to increase the local employment at Oyu Tolgoi. We have a joint target on to reach, we have a joint planning, and Melissa and HR team and our team work very closely. Our the performance is actually 21% of our local employment and 24% local procurement. Now 4,000 people working at Oyu Tolgoi from Omugobi, and 1,700 people working from Khanbogd where we operate.
About more than 50 or almost 60, Khanbogd business, supply the goods and service to Oyu Tolgoi. Yeah, we are on our mutual long journey to make a positive enduring changes in sustainable development, based on the robust strategic partnership. As Dee said that, without the proper partnership, we cannot achieve anyway, so we will achieve together. Khanbogd development has been, as I said before, center of our attention business strategy. The last 10 years, more than 10 years, 20 years, we have invested in Khanbogd's own social engineering infrastructure that enables their growth and expansion in the future. I do remember in 2013 and 2014. 2010, Khanbogd was the main power supply, was the diesel generator. We supported, we donated diesel fuel to the Khanbogd.
As soon as we built the power line to Hambot and to help them to connect to the central grid, there it was expansion. There was just 10 business, and 1 or 2 shops were there, and now several times increased, maybe hundreds and hundreds business already established in Hambot. I just wanted to tell that one. We believe Hambot starts, Hambot's prosperity begins with a good planning and strong partnership. Since 2014, we partnered with Ministry of Urban Development and Construction, Omugobi, and Hambot to develop the proper master plan. The last one is approved in 2019, almost 2020.
Soon after the sustainable production commencement in March 2022, Oyu Tolgoi Board approved our strategy to support Khanbogd master plan. Established Oyu Tolgoi Catalyst Fund. It will operate independently, and we're going to make a $50 million next five years. Sorry. I'm a bit nervous since it's held in different words. We are, our joint aspiration is to make Khanbogd a sustainable town by 2040, where our employee and community live in a decent quality of life. That's our aspiration. We endeavor enduring positive relationship with our community, herders and local stakeholder, where we are afraid. As I mentioned before, that we established several partnership platform. I just wanted to highlight the Tripartite Council.
In 2012 and 2013, after we consulted with the community, identified the impact that herder households, and then designed who's entitled, who's not, and then what kind of package will help the herders to improve their livelihood. We went through this almost 2 years nonstop consultation, and then we filled the compensation agreement. All of a sudden, one of my, our herders didn't satisfy. He wasn't satisfied. The link with Oyu Tolgoi lodge, lodged 2 complaints at the international CAO Ombudsman Office. They, the one is the compensation and livelihood, another one is on the river. We had the 2 choice, Oyu Tolgoi, because one is go through the compliance, another one is the dispute resolution.
Oyu Tolgoi deliberately didn't choose the shortcut of compliance, we went through the dispute resolution process. First, we wanted to understand, we wanted to learn from the mistakes, we wanted to restore our relationship, we wanted to have a established long-term partnership, we are here together forever until that we, until where we go. It turns out that council is actually the best practice where the mining company and the community have a sit down and have a honest dialogue, if there is any issue or complaint they receive, they can resolve it before it makes a grievance or a conflict.
The Tripartite Council is still effective. Key focus is the Herder Complaint Resolution Agreement implementation, the herders' livelihood and water, environment, and tailing storage facility. Phil and I, and all three of us work on that one. That's the one of the topic we discussed. Towards the end of July, we're going to have an extended community workshop on the tailing storage facility. This is the, again, that we're trying to create a venue, expand. We are here together. Yes, the things are not perfect, but we work here together. It's let's learn and work, have long-term journey and learn and support each other. Our business is expanding, our relationship is evolving. As many other mining companies, we face challenges to maintain our positive relationship.
There is no silver bullet or the secret recipe to stabilize any relationship. The key thing is we are committed, we are driven, we are learning from our mistakes, and we wanted to work together. Our Oyu Tolgoi, well, the way we, our community that we work is empowered, well-connected, well-informed, any small thing can easily escalate to the international level. This, that means Oyu Tolgoi operates under the increasing scrutiny. Our herders are all of us, of course, they're worried about their sustainable livelihood, water, pasture, climate change, and cultural heritage. What's going to happen? Importantly, we can do it.
Most important thing is what we do is nurturing our relationship with the community, improve the transparency and good governance of our partnership platform. Nonetheless, we are the together with our community, we keep finding better ways to resolve any emerging challenges and then unlocking potential for future sustainable growth. Thank you very much for your attention. I would like to invite my colleague, Phil, to give you update on the environment. Thank you.
It is on. Sain baina uu. My name is Phil Abraham. I probably should have introduced myself this morning when I first got up and spoke. General Manager, Health, Safety, Environment, and Security for Oyu Tolgoi. Been in Mongolia for three years. Probably the best job I've ever had, by far. Rio Tinto for eight years, and in the resource industry for a little over 15 years. As Sukhi said, today I'm gonna talk through a few of our, the aspects of E in our ESG, mainly water, biodiversity, and decarbonization. Mining in the South Gobi, obviously, water is not not abundant. We're cognizant, acutely aware of the fact that how important it is to be a responsible and efficient user of water. Oh, come back.
Oyu Tolgoi is in the first quartile, the top 25% of water efficient copper concentrate producers. We use around 0.55 cubic meters per ton of ore processed, and we recycle 85% on average, sometimes more, of all of the water in the system. We are essentially, from the process circuit, a zero discharge, so we don't have discharge from the system. What isn't recycled is locked up in tails or lost in evaporation. Our water source from Gobi Tolgoi, Oyu Tolgoi, Gobi Tolgoi. It's about 60 kilometers away from the site. It is a deep aquifer. It's about 400 meters deep. It's separated from the surface by an impermeable clay layer, it has no connectivity with surface water flows or legal water flows.
It is, it's hypersaline, it's not suitable for animal or human consumption. We use it in the processing plant, yeah, to use for human consumption takes a lot of treatment and filtration. I think really important thing to say about water, the use of water at Oyu Tolgoi does not impact the water availability to local herders in the local community. Our water is a separate source. There is no connectivity, all of the water used at Oyu Tolgoi has had no impact on water availability by the local community or the herders. That said, we don't just sort of rest on the fact that technically we're great, our water doesn't impact you, your water scarcity is not our problem.
We have worked with the local community over the, you know, since the start of Oyu Tolgoi. We have put in 50% more wells for herders than existed prior to us, starting operations. We've redesigned wells for herders to make them safer, and they perform better through the, through all seasons due to their design. We've also installed a water treatment facility in Khangai to ensure that the town has clean, safe drinking water. That's, that's our operational use of water and the impact to the community. Are we perfect? No. We've not always got it right. We did have some seepage from TSF-1. Most would probably be aware of that. It was reported within our lenders and formally to the government. All tailings dam seep.
They're designed to seep. You collect the seepage, the seepage goes to a collection pond, and is pumped back to the tailings facility. What happened in this case is, at the collection pond, There's a dam wall that stops it from migrating further from that. It's had some seepage in the pond. It's got out, and it's got about 50 meters beyond the boundary of the lease. It was identified through our own monitoring. We have monitoring bores. You always put in monitoring bores to check the performance of all these facilities.
The monitoring bores identified an elevated TDS. We investigated, identified that there was seepage, put in immediate mitigation measures to pump all the water back out. We're now just doing some further drilling and studies to understand the size, you know, of the extent of the seepage. We'll reclaim pump that. All monitoring in downstream, again, this water has had no impact to the availability or the quality of water used by local herders and local communities. Next slide. Biodiversity. Oyu Tolgoi operates in a region with some priority high-valued biodiversity, including endangered species such as the khulan or the wild Asiatic horse and others. It's the stronghold of that animal. We're committed to reaching net positive gain in biodiversity.
It's not just about offsetting our impacts and saying, "We impacted this, we've offset that." We're actually trying to achieve net positive gain in biodiversity. There's multiple programs we have running to do this. They include modifying railway fences across Mongolia to extend the rangelands of the khulan, modifying power line design to protect the saker falcon, a priority species in Mongolia. We've supported community-based anti-poaching programs to help protect the animals along in the rangelands. We've done saxaul tree planting to increase the range of the saxaul tree forest which are quite endangered within the Gobi region as well. We rehabilitate the impacts of our mining.
Yep, when closure might be 100 years away, or 80 years away, or a long way in the future, that doesn't mean we don't operate with closure in mind. What we do now is all focused on how do we operate to ensure that as we get towards closure, we're in a good state. To date, we've rehabilitated 1,771 hectares of land that we've impacted or modified. Of course, 'cause it's the right thing to do. Where do our native species come from? Our native plant propagation center. We've established a tree nursery in Khangai. It's community-run. That's where we purchase our plants from, we helped establish it, and now that's where our plants come from.
To date, that's produced over 1 million native species, many of them priority species, and the team there have perfected the propagation of some pretty rare species of plants as well. There's some really good work in the rehabilitation. It's not just focused in the South Gobi, the work we do is spread across Mongolia. The impact to the saker falcon and the khulan is not just in the local area, it's across broader regions of Mongolia. Next slide. On biodiversity, the president of Mongolia in 2020 decided that it would be a great idea to plant 1 billion trees, we wholeheartedly support that idea. We're committed to planting 100 million of those 1 billion trees.
It's a bit hard when you don't have all the seedlings to plant 100 million trees or 1 billion trees. It's not just about planting trees for Oyu Tolgoi, we really wanna make sure we help establish the foundations for successful reforestation. We're working on activities such as education and training for people to become forestry rangers and plant experts. We're building seed banks, more nurseries, we're really looking at building the foundational elements that will sustain a longer term reforestation, as well as planting plants. We're planting plants within the Gobi, but we're also planting right across other areas of Mongolia. We're doing them in UB, we've done them in multiple regions. We've also done significant work in an area to the north of Mongolia, in the Selenge Province.
These were artisanal gold mines that were mined in special protected zones. This is an area of high biodiversity value. Illegal artisanal gold mines that were basically, people came in, mined the gold, destroyed the rivers, and probably left. On the left-hand side there, you can see what it looked like. It's a pockmarked landscape. The river doesn't flow as it should. There's waste and spoil piles. That's what it looked like after the technical rehabilitation was done. The river is restored back to its natural flow, and we're starting with the biological rehabilitation. In this area, we're trialing a first for Mongolia.
Drone seeding is not new, but creating the seed balls that will actually propagate and grow in this environment with the plants we have is new. We're doing the research and development with partners to build those seed balls, and we'll be doing drone trials. Drones are amazing because you can seed massive areas quickly, and you can get into areas that people can't easily reach. If we can perfect that, it's gonna really help, again, enhance the reforestation in Mongolia. Last slide. Decarb. As Dee said earlier, we've committed to reaching net zero by 2050 and a 50% reduction by 2030. The biggest consumer of our power is the concentrator, and so It's electricity is where our emissions come from.
80% of our emissions are Scope 2, so it's our power imports, with 13% being diesel and coal for the coal-fired power stations on site. It's our Scope 2 emissions and our Scope 1 and 2 are in two areas on the site. Renewable energy is the obvious choice, but it's not obviously available to us right now. We have a pathway over a period of time, which starts with renewable energy certificates and small-scale renewable programs, isolated islanded on site. Over time, as it becomes available, as we work with our partners in government and others to start tapping into renewable energy, it will ramp up within the confines of our power agreement and working with the Ministry of Energy. Also, electrification of our heavy earth-moving equipment.
It's, it's a technology that's developing rapidly. It's a technology that we're, you know, very keen to take on as soon as possible. We've already have some battery electric vehicles operating in the underground mine, and as they expand and become more readily available and more usable, we'll take that across the entire fleet. For us, the ultimate aim is to end up with a mix that is a large percentage of our energy is renewable energy. Our vehicles are basically all battery electric vehicles, and in the mix, if there's what we can't make up due to being connected to a grid that is likely to still have some coal input into that grid, will be through renewable energy certificates. And that's me. I'll hand over to Andrew and Otgonbayar Togtokhbayar for the, for the operations. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone. Absolute privilege to be here this afternoon to give you some insights into OT. A bit about myself, 20 years, just turned over with Oyu Tolgoi, with Rio Tinto. Two years with Oyu Tolgoi. Prior to that, I was at Argyle Diamond Mines as prior to closure. Some time in salt mining, which is always a good business to be with, and then many years in iron ore, supporting the iron ore business. I have the privilege to having Oggie here with me today to support. I'll get him to introduce himself before we get started.
Yeah, I think that's a good one. Should work. Yeah, it's on? Yeah, my name is Oggie. I'm from Ulaanbaatar, rather long. Yeah, I've been working with OT for 20 years. As I started with OT as an exploration geologist and worked through all of different the stages of the Oyu Tolgoi. I was working in Australia for 3 years, but that's how I understand the Australian accent a little bit better. Thank you very much.
No worries. I've heard the impacts of jet lag about 3 x today since I've started, and I hear the 2 worst times are 3 o'clock in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I'm just checking the clock, who got it? I'll do my darndest to keep you awake. Before I get into it, I'm gonna ask you 2 questions because I know you're gonna ask us a lot of questions. Who's been to Oyu Tolgoi before? Oh, yeah, that's about 10-15%. Who's been into an underground mine before? Wow! Oh, this is gonna be a really good experience.
I think the opportunity to take yourselves underground tomorrow is an absolute privilege for us to be able to show you what Oyu Tolgoi has done and where we've got to in the last 5 to 10 years is a great opportunity. Oyu Tolgoi has, we have the opportunity to operate a world-class mine with a very diverse business. We are very proud of the culture we're creating at Oyu Tolgoi to ensure our people go home safe every day. There's a lot of work that we do to ensure that we can achieve that. We have a clear pathway to exceeding the 500 kilotonnes of copper by 2028 through a commitment to continuous improvement, which is foundation expanding our operations as well.
Our operation efficiency, especially our haul truck fleet, is comparable to our haul truck automated business unit as well. That's just as an intro. If we talk to the ore body on the next slide, this one covers our reserves and resources across the site. Now, our mineral deposits lie across the site over about a corridor of about 26 kilometers. And which you've seen the slice in various versions over the day. It's important. 4 deposits still sit in our resource case. Oyu, which is the bottom of the open pit. We have been mining the open pit in reserves over the last 10 years.
Hugo Dummett, which is north and south, which is where you're gonna be going down to tomorrow, down to the south deposit and on lift one. Also Khuruu, which is up on the other side there, which is a copper porphyry deposit as well. We're continue to do exploration and development of those reserves over the coming years. Oyu, which is the pit in which we're mining at the moment, is conventional drill, blast, load, haul, operation. Been operating for 10 years and has built a strong foundation for our business to be able to support where it is right now. The Hugo North deposit, which is the one we're developing in the underground at the moment, which is a block cave.
It's on a staged approach, Hugo Lift 1 and then 2. We're doing the feasibilities, and Steffan and Oggie are gonna tell you a little bit more about that one. Hugo Lift 1 is divided into 3 panels, Panel 0, Panel 1, and Panel 2, and the development at the moment, and we will see some of the extraction drives tomorrow is from Panel 0, which is our first point of workings. What have we got on the next slide in regards to supporting our business and some of the key supporting infrastructure? We now have 2 supporting sources of feed that come into our concentrator, so including the underground and the surface. Underground's around 10% of the feed at the moment, and is in a slow progress to increase over the next few years.
We have a heating plant, which is absolutely critical for support of our facilities during the winter months. If you know anything about the Gobi, it does get a little bit colder than what it is at the moment. We are transitioning from TSF-1 to TSF-2 over the next six months. TSF-1's been in operation for 10 years and supported us. It's now at getting close to capacity, and we've just finished the construction of TSF-2, and we'll be transitioning over in the next couple of months. We have one surface crusher. We have two underground crushers. One will be in construction over the next couple of years as well. Once the material has gone through the copper has gone through the concentrator, it goes through into a bagging plant.
We're running at around 120 trucks on a daily, just about, to across the border to support the 80 km drive into China to support the smelters. An important part of our business and is it's been managed very well, especially through that COVID period, where border restrictions had caused us a lot of challenges. We have 13.1 km of conveyor belt, which includes the surface as well as the underground belt, which is the conveyor to surface, which is still in construction. We're managing around 21,000 employees at the moment. About 4,000 are OT employees, which are part of our business, or everyone's a part of our business.
Just under 17,000 contractors, which are supporting the project, the development of the underground, and also a key component to our site services, cooking meals, and looking after our accommodation as well. Open pit has been a consistent feed over the last 10 years, and you can see from this graph, a 100-200 kilotonnes a year has supported us and has been a foundation for our business to be able to commence the underground mine. The open pit is in Phase V. We mine in phases, and we started that about 6-8 months ago. Augie will talk a little bit about. Phase IV was completed in 2021, and you can see the spikes in the gold.
On the bottom graph are generally related to when we get to the bottom of the open pit, and we see the higher pockets of gold that we're mining. In 2022 to 2026, our annual copper production jumps up. That is really driven by the grade in the underground being 3 x higher than the grade in the open pit. That's a key piece of driver for increasing that copper over that period of time. Great achievements in the operations, just before we go to the next slide. Great achievements in the operations in 2022 to achieve sustainable operations back in March this year. We'll continue, Steffan and Augie will continue to support that.
We did achieve 10 years anniversary in the concentrator this year, that was a great celebration for our employees as well, which we managed to celebrate as the Mongolians know how to celebrate very well. From 2028 to 2036, we are on that journey up to the 500 kilotonnes. On the next graph, just really is just covering off on the increase of underground material on the blue section of the graph. It really refers to the amount of growth that's occurring in the underground over the coming years. From 2024 to 2025, the concentrator conversion is commencing, and that is critical for the underground ramp up.
That includes an additional ball mill, and a series of other new equipment to be able to support the higher grade that is coming from the underground, mainly from Panel 0 to start with. The conversion work has already started. may not get to see that. You might see it from a distance tomorrow. That will be occurring over the next couple of years as the underground feed increases. Just really important to note that the concentrator conversion not necessarily increases the head grade in which we put it, not the head grade, the capacity of the concentrator. The conversion just supports the higher grade of the material.
We are looking at other options over the years to increase the plant capacity, but this conversion really is just supporting the high-grade material from the underground. I'll just ask Oggie to jump in now to talk through a couple of the other slides.
Yes, as Andrew mentioned, our concentrator is celebrating our 10-year anniversary this year. As we started by 2013, our mill, you know, rate were around the 20 million, and over the last 10 years, we achieved to making it in average, 40 million ton. Which is plug into the number of different initiatives, improvements that we are implementing. The first one is the technology one that we started with this take mill discharge, great improvement in magnet removals for the scrap metals and all those are introducing the new technologies and helping us to, you know, unconstrain our bottlenecks and then constraint in the mill.
Next part is we are working with our partners, vendors, and consultants more closely in order to improve, like example of the grinding media quality improvement and lot more in our flotation performance improvements. The other one I would like to mention here is the internal teams working together with the value chain in order to improve it, like a high-intensity blasting that our team initiated the high-intensity blasting in the pit, which helps us to increase our fragmentation in the mill. Yeah, that is puts us the that those improvements put us in our operational, milling operation best in class in the world. I'm going to talk some more initiatives in my next slides.
Yeah, in here, the mill throughput is information, even underground, it's going to be bottlenecked by design. However, our milling effective utilization is always remain in the above 94%, which is beating the industry benchmark. The ore hardness is always gets harder as we have our open pit mines get deeper and underground ore increases, which is showing in this top right corner graph. That is how the hardness is becoming harder. As a result of the continuous improvement, in this slide, we are maintaining our milling rate at a constantly 40 million ton per annum.
In the next slide, I'm going to talk a bit more about the open pit operation. Our open pit operation started by 2012, 1 year before the concentrator started, we celebrated the 10 years in 2021. As we, our TMM, it remain 100 million in ore for the last 10 years. As you can see, this continues over next coming years, even underground ramps up. During the last 10 years, as you can see the phases here, all it shows are the cutbacks. We've completed 6 different cutbacks, named Phase I, II, III, IVA, IVB. It's funny names.
We come up with the pit depth, which to the 450 meters. You guys will see it in coming days. As underground operation ramps up and the cave helps illustrated, obviously, we're going to have more material coming from underground. However, the open pit team continue focusing to access to the high-grade core, high-grade ore from the bottom of the pit, and also, open pit continue supplying the material to build out our future caving storage facilities. Yeah, our open pit mine technical and operation have been established well, and we use a number of latest international mining technology and systems. I hand over back to Andrew. Thank you.
Oh, sorry, next slide. One more slide there. This is just we try to demonstrate how we are operating in in our ore across all the fleets in the April or comparable to the other operations. The haul truck effective utilization, it's top on the world, and we are hitting with autonomous sort of mines in terms of hauls haul trucking. It is our pit gets deeper, that is challenge, but cycle time is getting longer. However, the our performance is still high. As you can see, the effective utilization, it is a lot higher compared to the previous years.
The other, you know, outstanding sort of demonstration I would like to say here is our payload. It's, it's based on our improvements initiatives, we always improve it. You know, demultiplying our truck trades and then including a number of other initiatives. We started with our haul truck payload is 285, and now it's 205, 305. Although it's ranking us in the, in the top, you know, quarter of the open pit mine, comparable to the other mines in Rio Tinto. Oh, there's no more slides.
We'll continue to focus on improvements in our surface and underground operations and processing. There's still more opportunities we can do. Close partnerships with vendors, R&D, will help lever in our technologies across the operations, and collision avoidance and some of the geotech work that we're doing is a leader in that. Significant potential also exists in the mine, and things like pit optimization. Sequencing is very important. Some of the geotech work around managing our pit walls is critical, that we keep focusing on that one. Mill intensity, mining intensity is also a key component. Make sure we're digging from the right areas at the right intensity.
Cut-off grades. Now that we're getting underground and open pit, we can really understand what levers we can pull in the concentrator support, additional material into the plant. The underground has still many opportunities as we phase and the startup of Panel 1 and Panel 2. The long-term planning for Lift 2 is commenced, as we'll talk about that in a little while. Some of the work that we're doing around acceleration in Panel 0 and Panel 1 and 2, is paying some dividends to supporting the business, getting additional copper. Fixed plant. Materials handling system foundation to the next steps forward. We've got another crusher coming on board. We've got a conveyor to the surface.
We've got concentrator, a conversion occurring, which are all key components to optimization of the underground feed over the coming months. Processing is also a key opportunity, reliability of a concentrator that's 10 years old. We need to keep supporting that with additional technology. Just on closing, our strategy is clear. On our investment pathway for the future, we're building the fourth biggest operating copper mines in the world. This is a long game and long-term reward. We will deliver our best to optimize the strategic plan and investing in our ore body. We'll continue to lever technology, learning continuously, and fully integrate the operations to improve resilience and stability in the supply chain across the product. Maintaining a strong focus on safety is fundamental to what we do every day. Thank you.
Now, I've got Damian coming up, and he's gonna talk through the project. Have we got a problem with the mic? Is it cutting in and out?
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Oggie. Good afternoon. How's everyone going after that Naadam Festival? Amazing, huh?
Yeah, good. All right. Hi, everyone. I'm Damian Rogers, the Project Director of the underground project. My background is in engineering and construction of capital projects. I've been with Rio Tinto for 15 years, and before that, with major engineering and construction companies in Australia. In the past, I've led the Resolution Project in Arizona, the construction phase of that, the construction work there, and various lithium, uranium, copper, and gold projects in Europe, Canada, and Australia. I also previously spent 4 amazing years here in Mongolia on the then greenfield Oyu Tolgoi project from the groundbreaking all the way through to the commissioning of that open pit crusher that Augie just mentioned.
Since the commencement of the underground project in 2016, and despite the challenges caused by COVID, and the sheer scale and complexity of the project works that we have at hand, the project has maintained a very strong safety record, as mentioned by Dee earlier, across our 81 million hours of project work to date. We currently have 6,000 people engaged on the project on rotation, we're actually at our resource peak now for the project, so we don't need to ramp up anymore. We're at the peak. We complete about 1 million hours of project work per month. By all measures, that's the super mega project territory. Look, just back onto safety. Where incidents have occurred, the project team and our contractors have responded immediately and effectively.
In Q4 2022, we did have a number of dropped object near-miss incidents in our shaft projects. They happened in quite close succession, resulting in us stopping the works there for several days. A thorough review was undertaken of all levels of the safety controls there, jointly between the project team, our contractor, of course, Rio Tinto experts from the Underground Centre of Excellence, and a couple of independent shaft sinking specialists came in, and all the recommendations from that period have been implemented. It's through that type of rigorous approach to safety that the project will continue to safely deliver on the remaining infrastructure in line with the operational ramp-up requirements. The project forecast at completion remains at $7.06 billion, and we only have about $560 million worth of commitments remaining to be awarded.
We've delivered on many significant milestones to date, and our overall progress is against plan is 86%. Just want to drop back one there, Tom. The project continues to actively support the OT people and partnership strategies, and we've significantly exceeded our agreed targets for Mongolian employment in the project and contracting. Actually, at this point of the project, pretty well advanced point of the project, we're seeing our skills being exported to other Rio Tinto projects like Kennecott Underground, Paul mentioned earlier, Resolution Project, and certainly some of our top people have moved across to Simandou project. Look, they'll continue to do that as we ramp down or continue the project to its completion. Some great talent here and really good experience on the OT project we're sharing broadly.
Overall on, on this slide, we're really well placed to deliver the remaining infrastructure for the mine in line with the mine's ramp-up requirements. I'll talk a little bit more about that. Look, despite the challenges and the imposed by COVID and the restrictions through 2020 and pretty much most of 2021, in Q1 2022, the project completed all the critical path infrastructure that we needed to for the commencement of production from Panel 0. As you heard, that occurred in March this year, a really big milestone, sort of a landmark for Oyu Tolgoi. In addition to the Shaft 1, and you'll get to see all these tomorrow, which will be great, we now have in place Shaft 5 for ventilation.
We have shaft 2, which is one of the largest mine production, people, material, and hoisting systems in the world. We have a full material handling system called MHS-1, Material Handling System 1, in place. We have all of the infrastructure in place to support the required ramp-up from Panel 0. It's a good position to be in. There are now 3 key infrastructure areas remaining on the project to support the ramp-up from Panel 1 and Panel 2. These are the ventilation shaft 3 and 4, and their associated mine air heaters and ventilation fans. These ventilation shafts are the enablers to make, firstly, the step change in the lateral development required for Panel 1 and Panel 2, and of course, they'll ventilate the mine all the way through to full production.
The second one is the concentrator conversion, which you heard about from Oggie and Andrew a little bit earlier. As you could imagine, for this type of brownfields work, it requires a really, a significant amount of detailed planning, and integrating with the operating concentrator team. It's reasonably specialist type of work. For example, installing a fifth ball mill is not something you do at an asset every day, so we have the right capability in place to do that. Thirdly, I sort of grouped these two at the bottom together. The conveyor to surface material handling system and the second underground primary crusher called PC2. PC1 is up and running. We're using it today. PC2 is the second one we're building now.
These key elements of the project essentially enable the, all of the panels of the mine to ramp up to full production. Right, onto shafting, my favorite topic. Shaft 3 and 4 are the largest vent shafts, currently being constructed in the world. Once commissioned, shaft 4 will exhaust 1,800 cubic meters of air from the mine per second. I've been around a lot of shaft construction. It's often hard to comprehend the scale of an 11-meter diameter shaft, like Shaft 4. When we completed the 8.5-meter diameter shaft, 10 at Resolution, it was one of the largest and deepest completed in North America at the time.
We quickly followed that up with the 6.7 meter diameter, shaft 9 there, and connected them in Arizona. In shaft volume terms or in cross-sectional area terms, both of those shafts would fit inside shaft 4 at OT. Same thing for both the Woodsmith mine shafts getting constructed in the UK now, or any of the 4 shafts getting constructed in Australia. The scale here is phenomenal. These shafts haven't been without their challenges to construct, for sure, and I'll just talk about that a little bit now. We are using a first-of-its-kind. If you go back one, Christine, Tom. We are using a first-of-its-kind sinking system here. It uses 4 VSMs in one shaft. Now, we really like this system. It's a good system.
The main reason why we like it is cause we can advance the sink without having people on the shaft bench during mucking operations. Now, I know a lot of you have been in underground mining, you know why that's important and why we like that. Really, as an industry, we've been working towards that for some time because this is the part of the sinking cycle that really presents, historically, a very high risk to people in the shaft, being around that mucking equipment. Our system, there's nobody on the shaft bench while we're mucking. It eliminates that risk. It was a totally new setup. It was the first time it was used, and we did have some equipment reliability issues in the earlier parts of the shaft.
We did, I think I just mentioned a little bit earlier, we did have some high potential near-miss events in terms of safety in the shaft 2. That really required us to stop, reassess what we were doing, and challenge every aspect of it, and then set some foundations really deep for the sustained improvement in our safety and equipment reliability, which flows through to shaft sinking productivity at the end of the day. Doing that slowed us down at the time, and we have shifted the shaft breakthrough dates by 3 months. On the next slide, not yet, on the next slide, I'll talk about how we've emerged pretty positively from that period. We're really seeing, definitely seeing the safety performance that we've been chasing and the productivity as well.
Steffan will, who's talking after me, will just talk a little bit about how the change in those dates for the shaft breakthrough have been mitigated by some really smart mine ventilation planning and development planning by those teams. You know, we've changed the date a bit, but we've mitigated the impact of that to any of our plans. Just on the right-hand side or left-hand side of the slide here, the construction of the surface facilities, so the exhaust fans and the mine air heaters, they're pretty significant infrastructure. Both of these continue to advance ahead of the plan with their cumulative progress of over 70%. Really no concern for these facilities. They'll be sitting there ready for when the shafts break through, and we'll connect them and turn them on.
Overall, commissioning of the full vent system from shaft 3 and 4 will be half to 2024. Those, like I said, those timings support the development needs and the production ramp up from P1 and P2. I get told I talk fast when I get excited, maybe I talked pretty fast there. If we go on to the next slide. You can see here that our shaft sinking rates have been showing sustainable improvement throughout 2023, as all of those initiatives I talked about have been embedded. A few of the key areas that we focused on, I mean, how do we do this? How do we fix this and set this up right?
We moved this contract to an integrated team structure, that really enabled us to work with the sinking contract on improvements in a much more integrated way. Particularly, we were able to really invest in the frontline leadership and the frontline teams, and how they best manage and coordinate their sinking activities and manage their critical safety risks. We enlisted, also enlisted some Rio Tinto and external productivity specialists, and we deeply analyzed every aspect of the sinking cycle. We focused on the real high-value areas, such as the shaft lining, and the mucking part of the cycles. We delivered multiple targeted improvements in those areas. They're repeatable tasks, any benefit there really adds to or improves the shaft sinking rate.
The final focus area that really saw us embed the improvement was the introduction of an upgraded maintenance and equipment reliability program, and that saw us reduce our top 10 equipment sort of delay events significantly, which also really made a quite a positive impact on these rates. Look, I don't want to harp on it, but just remember, these are really large cross-section shafts, and our last quarter advance is something that you might hope to see on much smaller shafts. They're really moving along in a quite a stable and predictable way now. In terms of progress, at the end of June, shaft 3 had advanced to 639 meters in depth against our latest forecast of 624.
Shaft four is the deeper of the two shafts, so that's down to 752 meters depth now, against a forecast of 740. If I move on to the conveyor to surface. As you already know, I'm sure, the twin decline development for the conveyor to surface broke through to the main mine in Q4 of 2021. Getting that 14 kilometers of large access drives to connect the surface to the underground mine was a real critical milestone for the project, and it basically lowered the risk profile for the rest of the underground project. That achievement, you can see on the side there, the layout. That achievement enabled many things such as mine ventilation, of course, the drive-in and out access, including transport of our large components.
for the conveyor transport, first stations, and the second crusher. The first crusher was built all going through the shaft piece by piece. Now we can just transport the heavy components down a decline. And even just more recently, just to be able to drive down a brand new road train from the surface down to the haulage level, where it's running around today. That's just a real huge enabler for the project. The C2S system itself, the conveyor to surface system, consists of a hung 2.4-meter wide conveyor in the underground, and this moves through five transfer stations and will enable the ramp up of production from P1 and P2 caves.
As far as construction progress goes, we're now over 50% complete, you can see an example of one of the main conveyor drives, in that middle photo there at transfer station 22. It's coming along nicely. The major civil works are all done for this work. Now it's really a program of structural, mechanical, electrical installations and then full system commissioning, which we have really good capability on the project now because we commissioned MHS-1. We've got all the resources we need. There's over 6 months float between the construction completion of this system and the required by date for production. The forecast is for half 2, 2024, turnover to operation. As I mentioned, this system, combined with the second primary crusher, allows the mine to ramp up to its full production.
Just in relation to the second primary crusher, PC2, the early work for that, construction has commenced in the tipple area or the top part of the crusher. This will include the installation of a heavy crane. We did a detailed lesson learned review of the PC1 construction and found that an early works design is a great opportunity to de-risk the main construction works, particularly getting the power in there early and getting the 90-ton heavy crane in there. It really simplifies the main crusher build. In terms of status for that, our mining teams are performing the mass excavation of the PC2 chamber now. The PC2 scope is also the milestone for the project completion, this is forecast at the end of 2025.
With PC2 itself having an operational required by date of 2027, so a bit of float in that program. We are actually evaluating opportunities for early access into the PC2 main chamber. This is a pretty simple case of earlier access would enable earlier completion of PC2 scope, which essentially just provides some more operational flexibility for the underground mine through having two large, major primary crushers. All right. As you've heard, the concentrator conversion will enable the processing of our higher grade underground ore. Our early works part of this program is now complete. Our civil works, which you may see from a distance at least, is proceeding as planned, the main construction works actually have commenced and commenced in Q2.
We've got a main contractor on board, and they've started in the concentrator. I think Andrew's already said this, but it adds a fifth ball mill, a process circuit, including additional filtration columns, rougher filtration, a thickener, and filters. As I mentioned, this is quite specialist work, which we're executing inside the operating concentrator facility. The key here, like all major brownfield work, is the fine detail planning and the real discipline execution of this, particularly when it comes to tying in the new equipment into the existing plant. We also know from our experience that an often underestimated success factor in this type of work is a really clear governance structure and decision-making process for any works inside that operating plant.
For us, between Andrew and I, we have a really good structure and a good program in place, and it's been functioning really well, between the project and operating teams. I guess that's, that's probably the key here. The last point I have on this, is the close integration that we do have between the project and the operating teams for the concentrator conversion. We're really working tightly together on this. We've been seeing this run really well to date on site, and we effectively just have one team delivering this work at the concentrator, and that's really critical for success. Thank you. I hope I didn't rush through too quick. I know I threw a lot of facts and figures at you. From here, I'd like to welcome Steffan Herselman, and also welcome back Otgonbayar Togtokhbayar .
Thanks, guys.
Good afternoon. Is it working?
Very good. Right, my name is Steffan Herselman. I'm the Chief Underground Engineer for Rio Tinto, and I've been with the company 5.5 years. Most of that time was spent on OT, either through the redesign of Panel 0, or the optimization of Panel 1 and Panel 2. Whether I was leading the work or I was supporting the work, I was there or thereabout. Before that, I come out of South Africa, the cave mines in South Africa. Augie and I will take you through the presentation. What we're gonna cover is I'll run through the redesign and optimization of Hugo North Lift One, and I'll explain the impact. It's really the impact of what happened during the COVID window on our Panel 1 and Panel 2.
S ubsequent impact on the ramp up. We'll then also discuss some of the exceptional performance at site. Panel 0 is just working like an absolute dream at the moment, and the team is really shooting the lights out there. We will just cover some of our cave monitoring systems, just to show you what the cave looks like and how the cave is presently performing. What everyone knows about it is that it's a world-class ore body. Everyone's seen the 450 million times, you know, 1.8% copper equivalent, and everyone's seen the size of it. We really only started to tackle Hugo North Lift 1. It's perfect for the ore body.
We've got Hugo North Lift 1, Lift 2, we've got Hugo South, all serviced by the same common infrastructure. I put a bunch of statistics up here, but that's not what's really important. What's really important is how we've been able to deliver this. This is the first modern, mechanized, Western-style mine in Mongolia. It's an absolute first. It's also the first block cave built in Mongolia. The team have really just delivered exceptional performance in getting the cave up and running and constructing it. If we sort of step back, why were we this good? Well, we took a real mix of expatriates. This is not an Australian mine copy-pasted into Mongolia or a North American or an African mine.
We took the best the world had to offer, we incorporated it into this one mine site. We had this exceptional group of Mongolian people who just stepped up. I'll go through a few examples of just exceptional performance from our teams. I'm gonna work from the back to the front. This will be the most advanced, most instrumented, most managed cave ever built. We've got more technology in this one cave than all of the others combined. It is something to behold. Every single pillar has got an EXO. Every single drive is monitored and measured in real time, all the time. Our cave is measured, monitored, we've got microseismics, we've got EXOs, we've got smart markers, we've got everything.
Eventually, when it does break through to surface, late 2026, ± a year, we've got the best technology available for surface subsidence measurement. What this does is it sets us up to become world leaders in caving. If you've got the information and you've got the understanding and you know what's going on, you can then start to design these caves so that they work as you expect them to work. I don't believe it'll be long before our Mongolian engineers become sought after throughout the world to design and run and operate caves, as they're currently being poached to go to go and construct other mines around the world. It's really just a testimony to the quality of the people.
When it comes to cave construction, our team, when we did the redesign of Panel 0, we effectively doubled the amount of development they needed to do in order for us to be able to start production. The team rose to the challenge, and they absolutely smashed it to the point that they were on the critical path, and they took themselves off the critical path. They did all of this with exceptional safety performance, exceptional quality assurance, quality control. Our under bracket is less than 10%. Our support compliance is 100%. No one installs as much support as what we install. It is exceptional performance. You'll see it when you're down there. If you can find anywhere to install any more support, we'll stick it in for you.
It is where they then really topped it up, so they'd had a bit of practice with development during the initial construction. So when we saw that performance, we thought, "Okay," then we asked them to build the cave. We started a little late, so we told them, "You need to build it in a hurry, so you can get us back on schedule." Just what exceptional performance. Industry average is 4 to 5 drawbells a month, and the team are busy smashing it out at 6 a month. It's almost unbelievable when you sort of see what the team is doing there.
The only aspect of caving we still need to dive into is the production ramp-up. We're seeing green shoots of what the team can start to do there when we look at their run rates when we unleash the loaders. It's too soon to say, we've only really just started production in March. The production ramp-up is very much driven by the cave in the early years. Only once the cave breaks through, are we really, truly unconstrained. Why do I run us through all of this? We've completed 230 equivalent meters of development. Sorry, there's 230 kilometers of development to do, of which we've completed 100, just over 100. That 100 is predominantly the infrastructure in Panel 0.
The rest of the work to go is the construction of Panel 1, Panel 2, and the remainder of Panel 0. What we've got is a crew that have really shown us demonstrated performance and they can execute that work package moving forward, and that puts us in a good position, looking forward. The last sort of comment that I'll make on there is they make us mine planners look a little silly at times. We plan 4 to 5 drawbells, they smash out 6. We plan 1,500 meters a month, they smash out 1,800.
During this period where we've got a development constraint because of the ventilation, which is always there, we again said, "Well, they'll only give us about 1,150, 1,200." They're smashing it out, they're giving us 1,300. That's really just the team on the ground. It's our management operating center, it's our people in the field, just seeing opportunities to improve and just get the job done. We're gonna take you through a video. This is the video that we pulled together for the sustainable production in March. 3 things to note. The first is we have 54 drawbells, not the 21. Secondly, we were using conventional mine trucks for tonnage hauling. We are now gonna use the truck and trailer, 2 80-ton trailers. You'll see it tomorrow.
You're not gonna see it yet, but you will see it tomorrow. They've got it set up underneath the truck chute for you. The third thing is, we weren't ready to show the new 2023 mine design, so this is still the 2016 mine design. The team can hit play.
Rio Tinto, Oyu Tolgoi, presented by Oyu Tolgoi. The development of the Oyu Tolgoi underground mine started in 2005 in the southern Gobi, Mongolia. The underground mine holds the majority of the total reserves at Oyu Tolgoi, with the highest grade copper being found in the Hugo Dummett deposit. With an ore body stretching 2,000 meters long and 300 meters wide, the deposit is considered to be one of the largest deposits in the world in terms of copper and gold content. Considering rock conditions, geotechnical, and economic efficiency, the block caving method developed by Rio is deemed as the most suitable method for mining the Oyu Tolgoi underground deposits. The underground mine at Oyu Tolgoi underground is being developed 1,300 meters below the ground, which is 12 x the height of the Blue Sky Building.
Based on the structure of the deposit, the mining area is divided into 3 panels on Lift 1, naming Panel 0, Panel 1, and Panel 2. The first undercut blasting on Panel 0 was carried out in January 2022, and the first drawbell blasting took place the following June. Currently, a total of 21 drawbells have been blasted in Panel 0, with more than 120 drawbells planned for the future. The undercutting process involves blasting in rings from the undercut level to the apex level, forming a V shape. As a result of the blasting, a pressure-free zone is formed at the extraction level, and the drawbell blasting is then carried out at the extraction level.
The ore is extracted by loaders from draw points and transported to a fully automatic truck chute, after which it is transferred via heavy-duty dump trucks with a capacity of 50 tons to the primary crusher. The ore broken in the primary crusher, located 1,320 meters below the ground, is transported to the surface via Shaft 2 through a conveyor belt approximately 1.3 kilometers long. Once the conveyor to surface is put into operation, the ore will travel around 8 kilometers to the concentration plant to get processed. The underground mine is planned to work at full capacity by 2028-2036, producing up to 500,000 tons of copper per year. When fully operational, the mine will become the fifth largest copper producer in the world.
Thousands of people are dedicating every day to the development of the underground mine. The Oyu Tolgoi underground mine will make a significant contribution to the country's economy and help propel Mongolia onto the world stage.
Everything you saw in the video, you'll get to see in real life tomorrow. It's all there. If I just sum up where we are, on the right-hand side, we've got a layout of the ventilation system, on the left-hand side, the ground handling system. Where are we? We've got 1,000 cubes of air with the infrastructure we have. When shaft three and four come online next year, we'll have 2,000 cubes of air. 2,000 is all we need to ramp up to full production. From a ground handling system perspective, we currently have 30,000 tons a day through the two shaft hoisting system. Next year, C2S will come online, we'll get 45,000 tons a day.
The constraint will then become our PC1, our primary crusher, and that then allows us to unleash any excess capacity we can see in Panel 0. The following year, we will get the PC2, so the second crusher that then completely deconstrains our ground handling system, and we will commence Panel 2 cave. Then in 2026, we will commence Panel 1 cave. Once Panel 0, 1, and 2 are up and running, and the ground handling and the ventilation system are in place, there's nothing stopping us ramping up to full production. As I said, if one just extrapolates the performance in Panel 0, it should be looking good. I'll now run through the redesign process.
First and foremost, our philosophy is we don't wanna be fixing broken caves. When we design the mine, we design it to work. We want it to be resilient, we want it to be robust. The reason we install so much support, more than anyone else, is 'cause we only want to do it once. The reason we install so much monitoring and tracking of the cave is so that we can react the minute we see things starting to not behave as we expect. By getting that early warning, we can make the adjustments upfront, we can make the adjustments quickly. We don't have to wait for something to crack. I've got essays in pillars.
I know the minute that pillar is starting to take load, I don't need to wait like everybody else, a month, to see a crack in the wall when it's actually too late, you've already yielded the pillar. It's a lot of money being spent upfront, but the return is we should have a resilient mine that performs as planned, as expected. If we look at Panel 0 and what really happened there, whilst we were doing the detailed design of the ground handling system in Panel 0, the geotech engineers were updating the fault structures, and they were updating the rock mass strength, and we started to pick up a more extensive faulting pattern in between the lower fault splay and the lower fault and the lower fault splay.
Now, you can see there in Panel 0, the picture in the middle shows you see all the blue running through the center of Panel 0? That's fundamentally the difference between what the team was looking at in 2016 and what the team was looking at in roughly 2018, 2019. That extensive zone of weak rock mass material, that was a concern to us, that the ground handling system wouldn't be stable inside of that really weak rock mass area. We needed to move the ground handling system somewhere where it could be stable. We couldn't apply a band-aid, we couldn't apply more support, we couldn't move it slightly up or slightly down because of the pervasive nature of that faulting. We had to move it right outside the footprint.
You can see the red dot sitting on the southern and the northern side of Panel zero. We had to get it completely out the way. It was the only way to look after the footprint. A couple of other things we did, we increased the pillar spacing, we went from 15 by 28 to 18 by 31 to make the pillars stronger, especially where they've got faults running through them. We removed the mid-axis drive on the extraction and on the undercut level. That effectively doubled the amount of development the team had to do, it meant that we protected those pillars in those areas.
One of the benefits of moving the ground handling system out of the way, is you reduce the size of the excavations and the amount of holes you're putting in the ground, and then needs to cave. The other advantage of moving it to the side is, if something did go wrong, we have allowed ourselves enough space underneath Panel 0, that in a worst-case scenario, we could come in underneath and reestablish the cave. We have the benefit of not having any access infrastructure there. This then delivered a far more robust Panel 0, and our performance to date has demonstrated this. Make no mistake, we're building a cave in a shear zone. There are some cracks down there. It does talk to us every now and then, but it has behaved as expected.
Exactly the way we planned it, is exactly what we've seen down there. It moved where we thought it would move. We fixed it where we needed to fix it. In general, we're really happy with the way, with the way things are going, and, you know, we're starting to get kind of optimistic. We're halfway through, and we've had no real significant problems to worry about. A little bit of preventative support. The guys that are throwing a few anchors here and there, occasionally, we had to move the undercut a little bit faster. Outside of that, it's looking really good, and the cave is going to cave as expected, and we're starting to manage the cave go order, fatten that up so that we can get it to go through to surface.
The question would be: Did we overreact to Panel 0? The answer is no. We've seen enough to know we made good decisions. We made the right decision. It was a tough decision, but it was the right decision. Panel 0 is performing as expected. If we then go to the next slide. Essentially, the mine design was originally a long, continuous panel cave. The entire footprint was locked in so that it would fit together. When Panel 0 was broken out as a separate standalone cave, it presented us an opportunity to look at Panel 1 and Panel 2 and optimize it. They were now standalone, independent caves, and so you had an opportunity to look at them and see, could we do better?
Really, what we did is, if you take Panel 0 and you simply rotate it, you'll see that Panel 1 and Panel 2 are a carbon copy of Panel 0. We just took all the good stuff out of Panel 0, we applied it to Panel 1 and Panel 2. This time around, we had time, so we put the ground handling system in the country rock, which is barren. We didn't have to leave the pillars that you see in Panel 0, in the ore body, in the north and in the south, we didn't have to leave those pillars. Those pillars carry value, and it is our intention to mine them. We just aren't quite in a position yet with the knowledge we have, to put them in the mine plan.
We're either going to take them out on the Hugo North Lift 1 level, horizon. We just need to see how it performs. I need the pillars to yield. If the pillars yield, I can climb in there and get them. If the pillars retain stress and don't yield, we'll have to fetch them from the bottom. We're only really going to know this once we've ramped up all the caves, and we've had a chance to de-stress that pillar. Just some of the statistics, I'll put it on the slide. Panel 0 is our baby cave, so that's only 30,000 tons a day, which still makes it one of the biggest. Panel 1 will be 35,000 tons a day.
Panel 2 North and South is a very big cave, so you're looking at 45,000 tons a day coming out of those two. We need three of them running at any point in time to deliver our full ramp up. Really, what we've done is we've put ourselves in the best possible position to deliver Hugo North Lift 1. We've got four separate caves. We can construct them separately, we can run them separately, we can operate them separately, and it gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility. If I've got a problem somewhere, I can simply move to somewhere else. If we then have a look at the schedule, so we've retook that mine design, and we've now scheduled it.
The blue line on the left-hand side over there, that's a capital development program, and the black line is the Sussex development program. Panel 1, Panel 2 is Sussex, Panel 0, and all the off footprint infrastructure is Panel 0 and is the blue line is Panel 0 and off footprint infrastructure. What you can see is that COVID impacted our Sussex development. It pushed out Panel 1 and Panel 2. The team had already broken the back of Panel 0, and they had already brought it forward. Panel 0 wasn't impacted by COVID, but Panel 1 and Panel 2 were impacted by COVID. The critical enabling infrastructure for Panel 1 and 2, being the ground handling system, the material handling system, being the ventilation system, were equally pushed out.
Literally, our Sussex got lifted and shifted by a year because of COVID. That's as simple as it is. The dip that you see in our planned development rate, that was always there. Shaft 3 and 4 were always gonna come in after we've been running Panel 0 for roughly a year. We were always gonna do the dip in development, then we were always gonna step back up in the development. The dark black that you see above the gray, that's where the team have really performed very well. It's quite difficult in a vent-constrained environment to truly plan exactly what optimal looks like, 'cause you're trying to balance the air going to Panel 0 and the air going to the development section.
The team have just been able to really perform well there, and Augie will take you through some of the detail. What does this all really mean? If you look at the Panel 0, Panel 1, Panel 2, you'll see there's a slight kink in the production ramp-up. That's really our COVID kink. We still ramp up to full production. We still achieve nameplate as planned at the time we planned, but it now just ends up having this funny little kink, and then it shoots up to steady state. What next? We've now completed the panel, the Hugo North Lift 1 redesign optimization. The team is shifting their attention, the study team, is shifting their attention to the design of Hugo North Lift 2. We've already commenced the study.
We've already commenced the drilling program for Lift two. We're about to commence the program for Hugo South. Hugo North Lift two is the natural successor because of the grade for Lift one. As soon as we close out Panel 0, we'd like to start Panel 0, obviously, in Lift two. That's a bit fast, but that's the general idea. As you're dropping out panels in Lift one, you wanna be opening panels in Lift two. Hugo South could be an extension, or it could be a top-up, and the team's looking at that. Then there's also some low-grade extensions around it. I deliberately left Heruga off the slide just simply because of time. There's enough tonnage here for another. We already have a life of mine to 2035.
If I add what's on the screen, that's already another 20 years. Heruga then sits outside of that. Alternatively, we bring it forward as an expansion opportunity. There's lots of ore bodies. They're all suited to block caving, they're all suited to massive mining, big tonnages. I'll hand over to Augie. He'll take you through the detail of Panel 0's performance.
Yeah. All right. Hello again. you know, worked one hour longer, I might be one hour wiser. I try not to skip the slides this time. I'm going to talk about more operational than the execution stage performances. In this graph, you can see there is two things. The one is the construction progress in your left-hand side and our undercutting in the right-hand side. As you can see, last four quarters in row, that our undercutting rate is increases and is becoming a steady state. So far, we blasted 722 drawbells fired.
Yeah, also, our drawbell rating rate is increases from 2 per month from 2022, after we have first drawbell and increase it to up to 6. As Steve mentioned, that is the exception of the execution team performance that is beating with the industry average, which is 4-5 drawbell per month. The acceleration of the drawbells obviously giving us the chance to deliver the ore to the mid-area. That's why we celebrated our sustainable production milestone in March of this year. As you can see so far, by end of June, we blasted 54 drawbells.
Yeah, you can see this is the exceptional performance demonstrated by our operation team. Next slide, please. In this slide, I'm going to talk about the two things, the development of the Panel 1 and 2 on the left-hand side, and on the right-hand side, there is the production. The development delivers 4,000-5,000 per ton materials every day. As you can see from Q1, which is increased hoisting tonnage. That will increase over the more drawbells opened and production will be sustained. Left-hand side, there is production development rates.
As you can see, the first drawbell blasted last year, that 1,150 red line indicates we, you know, plan to reduce our development rate down to 1,150. Because of the most of the winterization has to be allocated to Panel 0 development and then production. However, we have a clever and opportunistic short-term plan in place that we enabled operation team to retain our development rate as the previous rate. The extraction level stability, cave growth, and propagation, including fragmentation, are expected in this early stage. In the next slide, yeah, there is two things in an underground operation, underground mining you will see tomorrow.
There is the 2 main levels, the undercut level and extraction level. So far in underground, undercut level, we completed 100% of all the developments. We 100% completed 9 plots that is in the Panel 0 mine. In extraction level, 56% of the drawbell development completed, the 50% of the 222 drawpoints that we plan to construct is completed. Now we are in a stage of the 45% of the 120 drawbells blasted. It's what we can see here is the almost the halfway of the mining construction is completed. Thank you.
Next slide, please. In this slide, I'm going to talk about our monitoring. The OT, as Steph mentioned, OT is the most sensors and equipment installed mine to measure our cave performances compared to the any other bulk mine we have. We have the monitoring of our pillars, panels, and then the extraction levels to measure the footprint stability. We have monitoring for our cave to measure the cave growth. We have monitoring to measure our subsidence monitoring. I'm going to show you video in the next slide, but before the video, in the last graph showing . This is our drawbell cave draw compliance graph.
As you can see from the south to north, from yellow to green, that is a very uniform drawing rate. You can see that we are keeping up based on our monitoring and performances. Next slide, please. This is the video which play. As you can see that those development tenants, the bottom of the mine there, and also you can see our cave draw back. And those couple of red and gray lines are indicating the fault zones of the mine, that low fault and low fault splice, represented by red color, and the gray color is the contact of our two main ore body of QMD and NVA.
re the green dots are the microseismic events that we registered throughout May, and blue is indicating the microseismic events in June. This is indicating that we know where is our cave draw back location, based on all our monitoring and technology we have, and where is the propagation zone growing, based on our microseismic events. Next slide, please. In our cave mine, we are have near digital twin of underground mine to monitor the real time, enabling to make a good cave management decisions and manage underground risk.
In this picture, the fourth picture is showing that our team working in underground is being evacuated, based on the live TARP hazard management system giving them an alarm. The second picture is showing one of our geotechnical engineer is looking at our integrated data management tools, which is enables all of data sources we have alive, and which helps them to making the right decision on the right time. This is our overall monitoring of the underground in the first picture. I would like to conclude here that I am showing a great performance of Panel 0 through the great performance of our team and using the best technology is available. Yeah.
Thank you very much, I would like to invite Duka on stage.
Okay. Today at the opening ceremony, we saw camel caravan coming to the stadium, and in Mongolia, we have saying that the last camel in the caravan carries the heaviest load. That's certainly how I feel. Before I start, I'd like to welcome you yet again to Mongolia and to Oyu Tolgoi. Please accept our sincere appreciation for making such a long trip to come and get to know us, to understand the country, and to understand the project. My name is Dulamsuren Begzjav , or Duka for short. I'm the CFO of OT, been in the role for last 1 year. I've been with OT for the past 11 years, mostly previously in the business analysis, strategy, and business development roles.
Prior to that, I was a CFO at the largest telco in Mongolia, and before that, I was a banker with BNP Paribas for 6 years in New York. As you can see from the presentations made up up to now, this is really exciting times for OT. We've put in place solid foundations to triple production of 5-10 years, as presented by Andrew and his operations team. This allows OT to rapidly move towards positive free cash flow. We are offering high-grade premium product to the largest copper market in the world, located just 80 kilometers from our mine.
I wanted to emphasize that the increase in the production, OT will be moving into the first quartile position in the cost curve, which further strengthens our competitive advantage. Lastly, as Deidré already mentioned, you know, power supply is secured until 2030, and we're actively managing our funding profile until we reach positive free cash flow. Is my microphone okay? It's just me. Okay. We've commenced our underground production in March this year, which we delivered ahead of our plan. With achievement of the underground sustainable production, OT has truly become now an integrated operation, integrating both open pit and underground mines.
In the years ahead, as we ramp up the underground production, we will maintain a relatively consistent mill feed to the concentrator. As I mentioned before, we will be feeding high-grade underground ore, 3x the copper grade versus the open pit. Accordingly, our concentrate volume will increase 3 x. Our production will ramp up to average 500,000 tons, you know, from 2028 to 2036. Gold continues to remain a valuable byproduct for OT. This is our current mine plan that underpins the financial forecast that we'll cover in the next slides. As Damian mentioned, the construction of infrastructure to support the ramp up to full production is well on track.
2016 to date highlighted the critical period of our investment in the underground mine. We spent $5.7 billion to date, of the $7.1 billion required capital. We have $1.4 billion of capital to go, reflecting how close we are to the finish line of completing our remaining scope of the underground mine. We continue to look after our assets, equipment, facilities, and we'll invest in average annual sustaining capital of $300 million to $400 million over the next decade. There's also a portfolio of other growth projects, including heap leaching, railway, renewables, that are at various stages of studies, as Deidré highlighted, which may require capital investments in the future. Given the early stages of these studies, we will provide update as appropriate.
On the cost side, we are maximizing impact in Mongolia while optimizing costs. We're doing so by shifting international spend to Mongolia, promoting value-adding domestic activities, and creating new skills and expertise. You know, for example, our concentrate bags that we use to, in transport concentrate to our customers, they are produced in Mongolia. Cast iron balls used as a milling process are now being made in Dalanzadgad, the capital of South Gobi province. Previously, we used to import these from Thailand. We're actively managing escalating input costs by substituting products where possible. We were also working closely with the operations and project teams to reprioritize and aggregate demand where possible. We continue to apply discipline across discretionary spend and headcount.
Whilst we're moving on from COVID, the supply chain challenges we encountered during COVID still persist. I think we see that throughout the world. Collective agreement between OT and OT Trade Union was renewed in April last year for a period of 3 years, from 2022 to 2025. This agreement incorporated the changes due to the new labor law that was implemented in the country at the beginning of last year. It also expanded employee benefits, including life insurance and retirement savings fund, to secure our employees and their families' future in the long term.
Implementation of the revised labor law, legislation of law, long roster, which we refer to 2 week on, 1 week off, in a 2 even time roster, 1 week on, 1 week off, in 2022, has impacted our costs. A total of 500 new roles were created for the 4th panel. We required 4th panel, additionally, in order to just to adjust to the even time roster. 610 employees, fixed terms, contracts were converted to permanent contracts, and 210 contracted employees who also worked under labor supply agreement, were converted to permanent contracts. These were all the implications of the changes in the labor law. On the power side. OT sources power from the Inner Mongolia Power Company in China.
Just about 2 months ago, OT successfully completed power import negotiations with our Chinese supplier. With a new extension, you know, as we've already announced, we've secured the power supply for OT until 2030. Under the new extension, OT adopted a new pricing term with a floating component as opposed to the fixed tariff in the past. This was primarily to reflect the changes in the regulatory environment in the energy sector in China. Despite this change, OT's price tariff remains relatively stable. In January 2022, which shortly before then, we did the underground undercut, OT signed the electricity sales and purchase agreement with the government of Mongolia. Under this agreement, we will source majority of future demands from the Mongolian grid.
However, Mongolia is currently unable to supply this power to OT, and the Electricity Supply Agreement will only become effective once the local grid has sufficient capacity. Until the local grid is fully developed, OT will continue to source power from the Inner Mongolian supplier, as it has done since 2012. Now, power will play a significant role in OT's future decarbonization initiatives, as it accounts for over 80% of our of OT's total emission as Scope 2. As Bold mentioned this morning, 34%-40% of Inner Mongolian Power Company's power generation is already composed of renewables.
You know, once the Mongolian grid comes in, since Mongolia is heavily dependent on coal, switching to local grid is challenging from decarbonization point of view. In the short and to long term, OT will focus on 2 main strategic initiatives for reducing Scope 2 emissions. In the short term, we will collaborate with the Government of Mongolia, Ministry of Energy, to develop the, you know, the local renewable energy certificates and possible acquisition of locally sourced green energy certificates. That's in our plans in the immediate term. In the long term, we'll continue our efforts to develop dedicated, large-scale renewable energy generation for OT, with the aim to fully abate OT Scope 2 emissions. As we ramp up our underground production, we continue to focus on our operations for the long term.
We do so through continued focus on costs and ongoing optimization of our operations. As an example, we run Business Full Potential programs that identify improvement opportunities. BFP that ran last year for Panel 0 identified significant opportunities to accelerate the development of Panel 0. And we were able to deliver an underground sustainable production ahead of schedule. We just completed another Business Full Potential program for underground operations in June. The program involved over 70 of our team members from underground operations, business improvement, business analysis, finance areas, and we identified over 70 improvement initiatives and programs. Coupled with the increased production, OT is well placed to move into the first quartile position in the cost curve by 2030. This is on the logistics and marketing.
Since OT's open, you know, OT's open pit operation has been operational for the last 10 year time, we've successfully established commercial relationships with key Chinese smelters, with no concentrated exposure to any one operation. We sell majority of our concentrate under multiyear long-term sales agreements. Our customer base is diverse, with core smelters located in northern and northeastern China. We see significant expansion in smelting capacity in China, including many of our customers aligned with expansion of OT. We're well placed to supply this increased demand from China. Our high-quality concentrate will be in demand as our customers seek to blend our concentrate with that of that's coming from, you know, Latin America. On the logistics front, you know, we transport concentrate on trucks via the Gants Mod border .
We have about, you know, 100 - 120 trucks crossing the border every day. We are looking at other options, such as shipping via international border crossing, Erlian, as well as rail options, tapping into the rail developments undertaken by the government. As the underground ramps up, you know, you know, we just need to increase our truck flows from about 100 to 100 trucks to triple that. But however, we are looking at other alternatives, particularly tapping into rail. On the funding side, Oyu is a super mega project, as Damian said, here.
To build this project, our shareholders invested $12 billion through equity and shareholder loans. We were able to secure $4.3 billion through project finance, which was signed in 2016, involving a large lending group, including two policy lenders, IFC, EBRD, export credit agencies, and about 20 commercial banks, many of whom are here in the room today. As of today, we have an outstanding project finance facility of $3.9 billion, which we will start repaying from 2026, and $12 billion of shareholders' investments, which is also expected to start seeing returns from late 2020s, as our underground mine continues to ramp up and our cash flows and financial position strengthens in line with this.
We will be securing further debt of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion to fund the remaining development of our underground construction for the remainder of 2023 and 2024. I would like to note that, as I mentioned before, that 80% of the capital spend is already incurred, and we're almost there at the finish line to complete our underground mine construction. Oyu Tolgoi's long-term forecast is founded on executing the underground development, continued optimization of our operations, both for open pit and underground, and effective management of costs. Our commencement of the Panel 0 production in March this year was a critical milestone as in the development of the Hugo North Lift One.
The performance of the underground continues to be strong, as we continue to ramp up, we expect to be a cash flow positive business in 2025. The period of 2025+ will focus on ramping up the underground by bringing production online for Panel 1 and Panel 2, as a result of which we anticipate very strong revenue growth. Our gross revenue will increase from an annual $1.45 billion to the range of $4 billion to $5 billion in the next decade, while our annual costs will range between $1 billion to $1.2 billion. The 2025+ period marks completion of the phase II underground construction expenditure. This is shown as a development CapEx in the slide.
While the CapEx numbers exclude the expenditure for the future ore bodies, we are investing in our drilling and studies programs. For example, drilling is still ongoing for Hugo North Lift Two, to improve our ore body knowledge and understand our future growth value. Now, I'd like to close off with the statement I started at the beginning: We are at an exciting time for Oyu. With a relationship reset between our shareholders in December 2021, Oyu Tolgoi is charging ahead with our underground development. All of us at Oyu are working hard to make Oyu one of the largest copper businesses in the world, and deliver on our commitments made to our shareholders and to our stakeholders. I joined Oyu because I know Oyu is a nation-building project. It is a catalyst for the growth, development, and prosperity of Mongolia.
I want to ensure Oyu's success so that I leave a better place for my three boys and their children. After 11 years with the company, my purpose still stands strong, and I will not be amiss to say that our 21,100 workforce all feel the same as I do. We're in it not just for Oyu Tolgoi, but for our shareholders, for the country, and the generations ahead. I would like to thank you for being with us on this incredible journey. Thank you.
Great. That ends the second part of the presentations, I'd like now to go to Q&A. Can I please have the speakers here up front? Maybe, Deidré, you can come up as well, again. Bold, Justin, there's a question for you still. If you can sit here on the front row, if you don't mind. Please. Eh? No. All right, let's focus on operations, obviously, and finance. Alain, you wanna kick it off? Please introduce yourself and your firm.
Thank you. Alain Gabriel at Morgan Stanley. I have three questions, hopefully quick ones. For the remaining funding for Oyu, would it be in the form of a shareholder loan? Will it therefore need to be paid back before the Oyu starts to pay the dividends?
Yeah. The remaining funding would be senior loan from Rio Tinto, that has already been secured with it.
Will it be subject to the same terms?
As the project finance lending, yes.
Okay, thank you. Second question is on the budget. You've recommitted to the $7.06 billion. Where do you see the biggest risks to this budget from here until completion of the underground?
Thanks. Are there any question?
Yeah, I guess that's me. Look, we've seen a lot of risk go past us in terms of supply. Supply chain's really eased up. We're getting everything we need. We monitor it every day. The COVID risk is well behind us. We're fully ramped up in terms of resources. It really turns to a risk of construction productivity. You know, how quickly can we install the steel cable and commission our equipment? It's probably the best position I've been in terms of a project director to deliver a project with a lot of the major risks behind us. Our major contracts are all committed to. The spend to go is either to existing contracts or sort of indirect costs, like flights and camp, things like that. Yeah, it's probably around the construction productivity.
Can we deliver it in the time that we've got? Probably looks reasonably good. With the shafts, as you heard, I think we've really ironed out a lot of the bugs there, and they're performing strong. I mean, that took a lot of energy from the project for sure.
Thank you. Third question is, on the remaining, so basically on the capital budget, are there any big-ticket items you would expect in the next 5-10 years that is not in the $7 billion, neither in the maintenance CapEx? For example, a TSF expansion, TSF-3, any major refurbishment of the concentrator, any fleet replacement?
Well, I think, you know, for the question around 706, Damon just answered, yeah. He does not see any blowouts on that one. On the TSF, 3, 4, Andrew, any comments there?
No, look, that's built into our annual capital program and will be consistent moving forward. I think any other projects will just go through a normal approval process and visibility through that.
Yeah. Paul McTaggart, sir.
Hi, yeah, Paul McTaggart, Citi. It's a question of ESG, and I just wanted to ask whether when native herd of people get relocated, do you see some of the same social issues with those indigenous communities that we see in other regions where communities get relocated? I'm just thinking, you know, alcohol, et cetera, that comes from social displacement. Is that an issue here, or is it not an issue? I just wanted to know the effect, really.
She maybe should try.
Maybe I will start with that. The Mongolians we don't consider as indigenous, and so we're Mongolians. Just wanted to start with that. We're Mongolians and living in a Mongolian country. Yes, we have a community's challenges in terms of relationships, and then there's underground and subsidence, and then there will be definitely impact, but not a resettlement or any physical resettlement, as I said before. We will keep focusing on the sustainable livelihood and the communal, if you wanted to call it compensation, community compensation, and so that's actually the community to sustain their livelihood and then they diversify their incomes. Do you want to add?
At the beginning, you mentioned the mine started at a time when the herd of families were, can you repeat?
Oh, yeah. In 2004, we physically resettled 10 herd household. Until we will not our, as per IFC standard, EBRD is standard, so we avoid any physical displacement.
I just want to repeat one point, though. When you go to Germany and you build a mine in Germany, do you consider Germans indigenous? You don't. I think it's quite an absurd concept because this is not part of the ethnic concept. I mean, we do seek absolutely consent as much as we can. I try to achieve it in all of communities, but this is not the UNDRIP protocol. I think that's just pretty clear. I think that's quite important. The other thing I would say is that when we're talking about resettlement, we're talking about nomadic families moving their grazing location. They haven't moved to the city. Is that correct? They're moving the grazing location that's impacted, so there's still thousands of kilometers of sparse land to move around, just to be clear.
Jason? One of you.
I'll keep it quick. Jason Fairclough, Bank of America. Just in terms of the shareholder loans, this question from earlier, what is the outstanding balance to date? Again, does that get paid back first, or does it get paid back and amortized very fast with the other loans?
$12 billion, Jason.
$12 billion. Okay. That's separate from equity. The, the other thing is, historically, you've had 43-101s when TRQ was listed. Should we expect any kind of an update to a document like that, or is that slide 86 all we're gonna get from now on?
Should I answer?
I think you should go.
We are listed in the States. Our ADRs are. Under SEC regulation, you have to file technical report summaries. If there are material changes in the future of the asset, normally defined as changes in reserves and resources, then you'll have to file an update. Otherwise, the previous 1 is still valid. If you go on the website to the sec.gov.edgar, you will find technical report summaries, and that's the 1 that you see the data from here. If there is fundamental change to that, and that will come through in the reserve and resources, then you'll have to update that. Otherwise, you can voluntarily do it. Maybe, Stephanie, you can talk a bit about Panel 1 and Panel 2 and the redesign there and what the impact is.
Yes, from a resource reserve perspective, it has remained exactly the same. Even the year-on-year is less than a 10% variance. The physicals are the same as what everyone would've seen would have been the FS 20 mine design. From that perspective, we're not expecting any changes. Okay, thank you.
Basically, the TRQ that stands is very close to. Any reason?
There was just one slide. Paul, go on.
Yeah, Paul from Goldman Sachs. completely different discussion now since the, you know, since the slide was in 2016. Fantastic to see the underground, you know, ramping up now. We're gonna have a completely different discussion, which is, which is great. Just a question on the, on the ramp up itself. You know, block caves typically take, you know, anywhere between sort of 5-6 years to ramp up. What you presented is in line with sort of other block caves around the world. It's good to know where the, I guess, the critical path items are, and it looks like shaft 3 and 4 are sort of it, and that's where the focus is, 'cause the conveyor decline is not on the critical path, which is great.
Question, though, on Panel 0, and the ramp up Panel 0, and you're obviously taking the ore from Panel 0 up through the shaft, correct me if I'm wrong, which is 28,000 ton a day capacity or thereabout, so 30,000 ton a day. The fact that you're ahead of schedule on Panel 0, it seems you're pretty excited about where you're at. Is there a situation where you actually have to slow down, you know, firing of drill points because of the fact that you actually don't have the haulage capacity? Great position to be in, but could we be facing this?
One second. Chris?
One of us three.
I'll start here and we'll roll down. Operations, probably from the operations side of things, we're doing a lot of work, as Oggie and Steffan has indicated, to try and improve productivity, and our key driver is acceleration. How can we get there faster? And we're seeing from drawpoints, four and a half up to 6. So that is going to get us there earlier to where we need additional infrastructure to support that. So the touch points for Panel 0, we're pretty well right. We're right with the shaft. We can get most things, most of the material up shaft 2.
It's when we're pushing into Panel 1 and Panel 2, that we need the additional infrastructure with the conveyor to the surface and the supporting ventilation and also the conversion to the other trio. Yes, we're putting pressure on the other side of the project delivery.
Yeah. Great, that's good to know. Next question's on, I'm not trying to get ahead of ourselves here, but on Panel 1 and Panel 2, the design of the mine, which is 95,000 tons a day. Again, you've got Shaft 2, which is 28,000 tons a day. It's used for many materials, however, so, you know, there's a constraint there somewhat. Why is the design 95? Is it purely just on the conservative assumption on the conveyor? Second to that, is it too early to start talking about, you know, the copper price you used on the reserve is $3 a pound. We're sitting at $3.80 now. Is the footprint constrained, that you cannot pull this halo of low-grade material in the insert into and actually mine more? Can the mine inventory, bottom line, question, can the mine inventory grow on Lift 1 at all?
You know, you know. Yeah. Yeah, we have a hanging wall and a footwall concept that are barren. Everything within that area is ore, essentially. We don't really have a low-grade halo. It's either ore or it's waste. In our mine plan, after we've completed Lift 1 and Lift 2, we do have a low-grade panel, which we call, Panel 4 and Panel 5, towards the southwestern sector. That is in our longer term planning strategy, and the team are drilling and studying it at the moment, because it will have an impact on infrastructure. If we wanted to bring more online sooner, that Panel C4 on Lift 1 would be the first, fastest, easiest to come online.
We would be looking to chase Hugo South, 'cause that's right next to C2S, so we just shoot two drives in there, and then we would look to get lift 2 up and running so that it can pull the gap. In terms of the 95,000 tons a day, that's simply just our steady state belt rate. If you look at the footprint and you look at a reasonable rate of opening of the footprint, you end up with the 95,000 tons a day. You know, give or take a reasonable margin of error.
Thank you.
Liam? Sorry, come back in.
Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. Just switching to the power sourcing, a couple of questions. Firstly, on these renewable energy certificates, could you just explain to the layman, how they work? Then in terms of the new renewables capacity that you're committing to over the medium to long term, will Rio be constructing and funding any of this, or is the intention that it's all kept off balance sheet?
Manuel, can I refer this question to Musuf? I think he may be better placed to talk about it. Musuf, please come on over.
Yeah, Musuf, take that one. Yeah, thanks.
Hi. On the renewable energy certificates, it's essentially a product designed to make sure that claim for renewable energy or o nce renewable energy goes into a grid, you can't really tell the electrons of whether it's coming from renewables or coal. Mongolian grid does have actually a bit of renewable energy. There's about 150 megawatts of three wind power plants and a couple of solar plants, and that's actually feeding into the current grid. Once we actually start taking more power from the Mongolian grid, we want to actually help the local industry to develop a renewable energy certificate market, where the claims for the goods can be actually freely traded, so that actually generates an additional source of income for the renewable energy generators.
At the moment, such mechanism does not exist in Mongolia, and we're actually working with a couple of companies to develop that option for ourselves. It doesn't necessarily add new renewable energy generation onto the grid, but it allows us to actually claim the attributes and then also generate additional revenue for the gen, the IPPs. The second question on renewable energy development, there we're talking about actually establishing new generation sources. We haven't gotten to a point where we have decided whether we're gonna pay for it or somebody else is gonna pay for it. Certainly, power market is pretty well developed for developed for IPPs, so we'd actually very much welcome a solution where a third party comes in and builds a facility for us.
The key thing that we're working there is in alignment with the Government, because Government is, at the moment, has a very high preference for a coal-fired power plant generation. Hope that answers the question.
Thanks, Luke. Is that okay, Liam? Yeah. Great. Coming here to Rob, please. One second.
Hi, Rob Stein from Macquarie. just one on your long-term plan. noting that you are a 20-30-year company, once you run out of Panel 1. Sorry, once you go from Lift 1 down to Lift 2, what sort of CapEx are we looking at? Obviously, it's out of your forecast, but are we looking at, I don't know, 30%, 40% of the initial CapEx? What's the sort of benefit that you get from all the existing infrastructure?
Just to preempt that, maybe to turn it around a little bit, then, but talking numbers is not very sensible at this stage, but I understand your question.
No, just a ballpark.
The question is, how much infrastructure in place today can you use for lift two? That's your question, right? I can organize it myself.
Yes.
The way that we've designed Lift 2 and Hugo South is off the primary infrastructure that we've already built. It's gonna be an expansion. It's not gonna be a brand-new setup. Heruga is different, it's too far away. That'll be a brand-new setup. Hugo South is essentially just gonna be twin declines of C to it, and we'll do a tap into one shaft. That'll give me the air that I need, and I've just gotta put in a vent hole somewhere. Then, essentially, it's just normal cost to build a cave. It shouldn't be too complicated. Lift 2 gets a bit more complicated because I've gotta go 450 meters down, and I need to reestablish ground handling and all of that. You know, you could run the numbers yourself.
If you just look at what we spent around the ore body, drop it down 450 meters, extend C2 and the 2 crushers, and that's kind of where we'll be. You can take those numbers and extrapolate them. That's roughly where you're gonna land.
Cody from BMO. Just a couple of questions.
Please speak in the mic there, Cody. Sorry.
Couple of questions. On water, how much is the fresh water? Where are you sourcing the fresh water? The second question on the water is, you know, recently, commission a new mine in South America, they are actually, they are saying that they were sourcing the water, that's not a non-potable water, they are using it, but actually, there are some issues with the local communities because that they are relying on that. Do you have any kind, some kind of issue that the locals are using the water or the local people?
Can you just repeat your first question? I just want to understand.
Yes. Where are you sourcing the fresh water?
No, we're not. All of the water used at Oyu Tolgoi is from Gunii Hooloi . We have a reverse osmosis filtration treatment plant on site, and that's where our potable water comes from. I've lost my mark for it. It's back. No, because our water's contained on site, all the processed water comes into the site, it's maintained on site. There's no discharge. There's no issue or risk with anyone else accessing that water, thinking it's drinking water and using it. No. Yeah, I mentioned in the presentation that the water used at Khanbogd is through a treatment plant that we provided, so it's a different resource as well.
Oh, yes, sir.
Austin from Macquarie. Just two questions. The first one is, the team has done a fantastic job. Sounds like, they've been delivering results exceeding the initial plans. Do you see any other opportunities to, you know, accelerate the development and bring volume or ramp up quicker, based on the track record? The second question is on the pillars. With the improved understanding of the underground mine, do you see you need to, just as a precaution, to install some additional pillars in Panel 1, too, given that they will be eventually recovered in the second Lift term?
Just our way we think at OT is continuous improvement. If there's opportunities to pull forward, accelerate additional options, we'll continue to re-reviewing that as a part of the way we operate, as we've seen the improvement. We have several programs that support that. Duka made a couple of mentions of Business Full Potential. With programs to be able to get the right people in the room, to think of improvements. We are looking at the strategic production plan, over the next 18 months to see what opportunities also feed into the longer-term journey at OT.
Concerning pillars, we're in the business of removing pillars now. You'll see there's a small pillar between Panel 2 North and Panel 2 South. That's not a real pillar. It will break between those two, and it's just a stress breaker between the two undercut fronts. Our real focus is actually mining the pillar that sits on the other side of Panel 0. The way that we've designed Panel 2 is to allow us to bring the undercut over. That's the most important pillar, the southern pillar. Right now, our intent is to mine that pillar off of the first lift. We will no longer require the southern ground handling system by the time P2 North gets there, if all the stars align, we'll take it out through there.
If not, we'll drop down a bit underneath. The northern pillar doesn't worry us too much. That one we can fairly easily take out the lift 2. It's a much shorter height pillar, much easier to extract. There's no other pillars planned anywhere else. We've finished the zone. We're not looking at lift one for anything other than opportunities. Yeah, anywhere we can sneak in another drill point, anywhere we can expand into the pillar areas, we're gonna grab that.
Thank you. Tyler Broda from RBC. Just as a follow-up on the pillar question there. The pillars, as I understand it, are relatively high grade versus the rest of the period. When would you expect to get that pillar into the mine plan, if you could?
We wouldn't touch the pillars until we completed Panel 0, 'cause the pillars are protecting the ground handling system. Only once Panel 0 trains to 0 tons, would we then touch those pillars. The southern pillar would be mined at its earliest, if the stars align, at its earliest, at the end of Panel 2 North, 'cause we would simply tack it on to Panel 2 North. The P0, P1 pillar, we would mine opportunistically once we've completed that side of Panel 1. You're looking at sort of the mid-2030s. It would be towards the end of Lift 1.
All right, thank you. Just the question I was actually gonna ask, if that's all right, Menno? Can you remind us of the royalties and how they work? Also, I note that there's some JV lands that are next, that possibly could be brought in over the next few years in terms of, I think, it's the Lift 2, perhaps, where it's not all in the same block. Just wondering if there's any different terms on that. Thank you.
Yes. on the royalties side, we pay 5% royalty. It's on the net revenue. on the JV side, you know, you're referring to Entrée. We have a JV with Entrée. Yeah, those, you know, the negotiations are in place. We're nearing the close of the negotiations, Mostafa, would you like to add anything more on that one?
Thank you. There's a couple of licenses that actually go around OT license, so one in the south and one in the north, and that's actually owned by a TSX-listed company called Entrée Resources. We have a joint venture concept that was. You know, this actually, the ownership of the license predates the AIA, and the license extends to Heruga and then lift two, as you mentioned, and also part of lift one as well. The economics, the JV arrangement is essentially 80-20 split, so OT actually develops, mines the resource and enters 20% of the economics in. That deal is, has been actually in place since 2004.
Just 1 second, sorry. Given that it's an ASX-listed company. You can only talk about what's in the public domain.
Yes, like, no, this is all in the public domain.
Good. Sorry. Exactly.
This is all in.
Yes.
We're just finalizing the final touches on the definitive agreement at the moment. Yeah.
Thank you. Ian Rossouw from Barclays. Just on follow-up from a previous question on Hugo South and Lift 2. When do you need to spend money on some of that development CapEx to maintain production at 95,000 tons a day?
As I said, we really just thought of the concept and order of magnitude studies on those 2 respective ore bodies. If you use a general rule of thumb or 10 years to get something up and running and subtract from 2035 when we start the ramp down, you sort of get a feel for when we want to start. In addition to that, more importantly, we've learned you need your ore body characterization. You need to get in there, touch, taste, and feel it to make sure you get the design right. We would really be looking to go as soon as we could, as soon as we were ready, which would really only be after we deconstrain.
2, 3 years from now, we'll be deconstrained, we'll have ventilation, we'll have the ground handling system, and then drive twin drives down to Lift 2 and across to Hugo South. From there, establish a characterization program, get a better understanding of the ore body, make good decisions, and from there, expand into a mine.
Thanks, Lachlan Shaw, UBS. Just a very quick one. Would Hugo South and Lift Two need additional ventilation shafts or not?
It's very much dependent on the timing. Every now and then, we're asked for more. If the answer is more, then, yes, I'll need more air. If it's to maintain steady state production, then the answer is probably not. Maybe one for Hugo South because of where it's located. But the rest of Lift Two is just the expansion of Lift One. All the current facilities, we simply drop them down 450 meters, and it would just be that expansion. Hugo South, we can run out of Lift One infrastructure if it comes off the Lift One. If it's gonna come concurrent at some stage, then we might need to drop in another vent shaft. It's really shallow. It's half the depth, very possible.
Bob Brackett at Bernstein again. A follow-up on the renewable energy certificates. Footprint for you all is around 1 million tons a year of CO2. Is there a way to think of those renewable certificates in terms of a cost of dollars per ton?
We don't have the cost data at this point on the renewable energy certificates yet. We're just trying to establish the market at the moment. It'll be really a combination of 3 things. 1 would be sourcing renewable energy certificates in Mongolia, sourcing renewable energy certificates from China, and then establishing additional dedicated generation source. All those things are, we don't have the pricing yet at this point yet. Too early.
Michael Lam from ANZ. 2 questions from me. 1st one for Phil. In terms of the seepage from TSF-1, does that impact on the use of the TSF itself? Is that going to sort of resolve itself when you transition to TSF-2?
In answer, no, it doesn't impact on the use of TSF-1 because the TSF-1's working fine, it's the seepage. We've put in a new seepage collection ponds and sumps. That was the first action taken to almost decommission the old ones, to put them in next to them and pump from there, so no. Second part of the question? Sorry, the construction of both TSF-1 and TSF-2 meet all requirements. It is, it's audited once a year with an independent ore body, independent body, not an ore body. The construction is good. It's just managing that seepage. As Phil said, it's being managed. We're right at the last stages of TSF-1 in the next 2 months, 6 months, and then we'll transfer over into TSF-2.
Second question, was for Duka. You said that, when the underground comes on stream fully, I suppose that's at 500,000 tons per day, the transport trucks you'll need will be up to 3 x the current levels now, at 300-360. Is that gonna be in from 2028 onwards, I presume? Would there be enough capacity on the roads to handle that many trucks?
Yep. 500 kilotons a year of copper, that was. The reference we used, the 500. We're currently using about 120 trucks today to support getting about 5-6 lots across the border each day. We've got 3 x as many concentrate that are coming through over the next 5 years. Our options are to truck and truck and truck, or we are building a rail option into a s Deidré talked about this morning, there is a rail spur that's about 18 kilometers away. We're in feasibility stage to understand if we can connect into that and use that as a secondary option for the business.
Andrew, I'd like to just add to your answer. We currently have a dedicated road that runs from OT to the border, and that road is dedicated for OT. There's no other traffic there. If we were to increase the capacity, the infrastructure is already there.
Hi, Tim Bell from Azay Asset Management. Just for the benefit of someone that has no mining experience, engineering experience, can you talk about what can go wrong in a block caving? What are the sort of contingency plan you have to minimize, I guess, the, you know, the stoppages or disruptions, any disruptions? Thank you.
All right, essentially, there's three areas we keep an eye on. The first is footprint stability. If I don't have the draw point, I can't load the tunnels. We need to look after the major mine apex, pillars and the tunnels. When you're walking around tomorrow underground, you'll walk down one of the extraction drives, and you'll see the draw points on your left and right.
Grab one of the geotechs and ask him, "How are you checking to see how strong this thing is?" He'll show you the extensometers inside all of the pillars, and he'll show you where we do our convergence monitoring. If you can keep the foundation, solid, and you can keep the foundation strong, you then give yourself the best chance possible to pull out the tons. That's what we did with the redesign. We tried to make the foundation as strong as we possibly could, because essentially, it's like a house. The foundation is the extraction level, and we've got 450 meters of ore that we wanna pull out. If the foundation is solid, we can get to 450 meters. The second component to all of this is the cave then needs to cave.
If the cave stalls at any point, if the cave necks in and it leaves ore resource, still hanging up there uncaved, we then lose that material. One of the things the team's doing at the moment is, we could hit it harder, but then we could live in regret. What we're doing at the moment is we're using all of our sensors and all of the information, all the feedback, to try and get that cave to grow as fat as possible in the ore body. The first 450 meters is pure ore, and we need that cave to be set in 300 by 300 wide. We want it as wide as our footprint so that we get all the ore liberated, all the ore available, so that we can load it out.
We'll be very careful in the first phase of caving to make sure that we get that cave to grow as much as we can over the entire ore body. The second phase, however, is there's 850 meters of barren material that lies above us that is stronger than the ore body. We're not worried about the ore body caving. The ore body is caving as we speak. It caved a little bit faster than what we expected. Cave ability doesn't worry us, and the fragmentation doesn't really worry us. What we've got to keep an eye on is that 850 meters of harder rock material that lies above us going through to surface, and making sure that that caves through at a sustainable rate, and we manage the air gap.
If we get those two things right, if we mobilize the 450 by 300 by 300 ore body, we get all that material to flow and to be mobilized, and we keep all of our draw points open, and we pull it down in a controlled manner, we will have a very successful outcome and just keep an eye on that air gap.
I know that probably confused you more. Do you just want to explain simply how we track the cave out?
That is the technical version.
That was it. That was as simple as I can.
He's awesome. Through really technical people like this, we've developed a set of rules on how we run the mine. There's how much we draw from each drawpoint, how much ahead the undercut is from the extraction level, how fast we do all those sort of things. We're reading the information from all the geotech work, and we're building a regular report that we look at on a weekly, monthly basis to verify that we have them meet. That is our first call to be able to support the business and really understanding it.
As AuggiOggie explained, earlier, we've got a new digital twin of the mine. There's real-time data to enable the operational teams to make the quick decisions, which is hugely important. Do you want to add to that, Oggie, or are you okay?
Sorry, just a quick follow-up. I guess my question is, if the one section of block caving having the issues, right, does that mean that that section gets isolated, that, you know, the rest will continue to produce?
Yes. So that's the big benefit of going for four separate caves rather than the one cave. If you've got a problem in one area, you can recover it. Let's talk about if it goes wrong. If it goes wrong on the footprint, in general, that depends on how badly it goes wrong. If we can keep the tunnels open and we can keep every second drawpoint open, we'll still get what we want out of the cave. If you get catastrophic failure, if you get tunnels completely closing, complete sectors of that initial cave closing, the best thing to do is to come in underneath to the recovery level, and we've allowed that on all four of those caves.
Generally, once it's starting to fail, it has no rock strength, so persisting with rehabilitation and trying to force your way through is a complete waste of time. We've all learned this thing caving now. It's better to rebuild at the bottom. If you lose access to draw, rebuild at the bottom, if it's catastrophic. If it's minor, just plug 1 or 2 draw points, it's fine, it'll be okay, and keep going. The other aspect of loss is if the cave doesn't cave. If we end up losing ore on the sides. In general, you get an erosion factor, so it might come with time, and the other option is hydro fracking. We do have a hydro fracturing rig on site, and it is ready to deploy if we need it.
At this stage, like I said, we're not really worried about the ore body caving. We're more worried about the bit, above us, and that's really our contingency for that bit.
What's a hydraulic fracturing mean?
Hydraulic fracturing is basically you drill a hole into the rock mass, and you pump water into it at extremely high pressure, and it basically forces the water out. It just cracks the rock. You pump the water at a pressure higher than the rock strength, and then you force the rock to crack and break out.
Like oil and gas, right?
It comes from oil and gas. That's the origin of hydraulic fracturing, yeah.
Ian, just to follow up on the trucking, when you expand to 300-360 trucks per day, I understand that the bottleneck seems to be more the bilateral ports. Is there plans or sort of what do you think is the capacity or bottleneck there, for that port?
Just to answer the question. At the moment, the capacity of the port is about 1,500 trucks a day. That's what has been pre-COVID. I think lately, we've probably seen around 1,100-1,200 a day. You know, as Andrew said, about hundreds of that is our trucks, copper trucks. The rest is all coal trucks.
That's what is up right now. The, you know, what's coming up is that what I mentioned to you guys and what Amra also mentioned, the rail, yeah? The rail is really going to be the game changer there on the logistics side. Right now, the government has already constructed the rail from the Tavan Tolgoi to the border. 250 km of rail has already been constructed. The only thing that's waiting to be done is now the connection between the Chinese rail and the government rail, that's what's, you know, that's what's in the works right now. In anticipation of that coming on board, Andrew mentioned that we are undertaking the rail study.
How can we connect and how can we jump onto that, you know, possibility?
Thanks. As the rail ramps up, should those coal trucks actually fall over time, so there's more capacity?
Exactly.
You don't need to actually have rail access? Is that the thinking? It's just an option.
It's an option.
Okay.
Absolutely, yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. Jim Xu from Barrenjoey. When should equity holders start to see dividends? Did I hear incorrectly that you said it's the late 2020s when you expect the shareholder loans and project finance to be repaid?
That's right, yes.
Okay. late 2020s, equity holders, including the government, should start to see a dividend?
No. Not the government, t he shareholder loans need to be paid back first.
Okay. The late 2020s is when the shareholder loans start to be paid back.
That's right, yeah.
Okay, understood.
That's right.
Just on the technical issues, have you experienced any issues with ore recoveries from the wider drawbell spacing? Also, Panel 1 and 2 were impacted by COVID, shifted back by a year. Was that included in the 2020 43-101 update?
I'll start with the last one and work backwards. In 2020, that was before COVID, so it's not part of that. If you look at those schedules for what we released in 2020 and the TRS, because the TRS is based on the 2020 feasibility study. We had not completed the work to provide an update on that, and we had not yet had it as 20 to be approved. That's still going through an approval process as we speak. It doesn't include that COVID impact. You'd have to make that adjustment, but we include it in our forecasting. You can actually see it there.
When it comes to the recoveries, there are lots of schools of thought on caving, and some people have weird and wacky ideas. What we've gone and done is we've just instrumented the hell out of this cave, and it's the first one. We're the first cave that's gonna know what's going on inside of this cave. 'Cause we've got enough flow markers, beacons, EXOs, and you name it, microseismics, and analysis tools, so we can sort of figure out what's really going on there. There's an old school of thought that came from Laubscher, that the draw points had to be close together so that you could get interactive draw, and that was completely blown away by the South Americans and Australians.
One just needs to be a little bit careful of, you know, the old theory from Castle and Laubscher's days in the sort of 1990s. If you go to any modern cave now, our draw point spacing is close. 31x 18 is still considered close in the modern caving era. We're not seeing big problems being picked up at the other sites because of the draw spacing. Some of them are picking up problems, but that's because they're being naughty. That's a different problem. That's called not drawing to the plan. That's a different issue. Where the draw has been to plan, they're very comfortable with the draw point spacing. We're not worried about the 31 X 18.
We would really still be considered as narrow space in the modern mining era.
Before we go to the next question, Steffan will be happy to explain what naughty in block caving terms means over a drink, I think, not here. Secondly, just to answer your question. So, you heard Steffan, correct me if I'm wrong. You heard Steffan say that there is no material change in the physical from that Panel 1 and 2 study and an update compared to what you saw. The physicals obviously, we've given ranges to. There's no material change in the Panel 1 and 2 redo or update. Okay?
I can, I'm gonna follow that one up as well. This isn't Steffan. We've got the world's best people looking at this. There is no one that hasn't looked at Hugo North Lift 1. No 1. We did a complete study on flow, and we used all the usual tools, all the usual people. There are these 3 world experts on it. When I tell you there's no real difference, it's based on what we've been learning from industry and experts in the industry, not just from us. That goes across the board. From our rock mass characterization to our mine design, we use the world's best people. We have a geotechnical review board. Everything is checked, double-checked, triple-checked.
There's been no material difference in the flow. Principally because the ore body is not as weak as initially expected. If you go back and read the old published technical reports, it's not as weak as that. You can see the new numbers, and you're comparing to the old numbers. We are expecting better fragmentation and better flows. We're gonna have that deep technical conversation if you want, trust me when I tell you, we've had the best people look at it.
Just let's Ooh! Sorry. Just slow down for a second. We have Paul, Jason, and Lachlan. Then I suggest we call it a day. It's been very, especially the team. It's Paul, Jason, Lachlan, and that's it. Clearly, if you buy them a drink, they may give you some more answers. Okay?
You don't need it now. What is the potential for regional exploration over time? Are there more Hugo Dummett ore bodies to be found? I mean, I'm trying to get a sense of, can this be another South American kind of copper belt? What are you doing in regional exploration?
Working on it.
Cool. I'll make that. Well, keep it. Good update. Yeah, yeah. It's on private.
Jason.
I'll keep it quick.
As a geologist by profession, I truly believe that we can discover more Hugo Dummett type of deposits. Yes, there is potentials. We have geological settings similar to the South American deposits, but it's a bit older, you know, normally 200 million older, but there is a potential to find more deposits.
Why haven't they found them?
I think it's a one. We have to use the different exploration methodology. It's no longer just walking out the surface and picking up the rock, and, "Oh, okay, there is a copper deposit." Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That sort of method is no longer viable. The surface, close to the surface kind of deposits, kind of depleted. It's, people, we need to explore deeper. We need to study deeper, using more advanced, like the geophysical technologies that is, you know, becoming available in the market. In all those things, we need to basically just go deeper.
Just to come back to the what could go wrong. If you go back in time, there were a couple of pretty ugly accidents. I'm thinking Northparkes, where you have these air blasts. How do you avoid that? Because you're particularly mentioning that the rock above the deposit was much stronger. Is that something that you're tracking and sort of driving to force the gate?
Yeah. That's one of the hazards that we do manage. That's why what Oggie was showing in that video, that's our extensive cave tracking system. We've got a number of open holes, so we can actually stare into the cave. Tomorrow, if I don't think there'll be time, they could actually show you a video of our cave. They could show you a camera pointing down into the cave. That's what manages the air gap. Right now, we've got five holes in that area that are either staring into the cave or cracked and broken, so we can't actually get the camera down there, which means the cave is there. We've also got Smart Markers.
A Smart Markers basically sends a signal home that says, "I'm over here." We know where the cave back is, and then we do mass balance flow from the bottom. Essentially, there's a formula where you calculate what the air gap is, and you calculate how much material you've left between the drawpoints and the air gap, and you never exceed that. The first answer is, we have cave management rules that are industry tested, and then we've got an extensive monitoring system to see where everything is. If it does stall, you've then got to initiate caving, so you then hydrofrack. As happened at least 2 in recent memory. Hydrofracking works, so you'll get it about through.
Thank you.
Just a question, longer term. The MOU on final copper processing and products, so just what's the latest there in terms of that process, and what are your thoughts on how that might look?
It is something that we are seriously looking at. It's pretty early stages of study. We don't know if it's gonna work or not, but it's something that's important for government, and we're actually taking it quite seriously. It will require quite a bit of a close coordination with the government in terms of picking location, sizing and whether it includes refinery and such. We're not at a point where we've decided that, it, you know, there will be smelter or not, but we are going through the process to come to that conclusion together with the government.
Remember what Bold said this morning about impurities and other things, and Bold and some other things. VAT claim back if you build a smelter, et cetera. Great. Look, before we all get up, a couple of things from my side. First of all, I think on behalf of this group, I would like to really thank the OT senior leadership team. I mean, they've all given up their holidays. Thank you so much. Obviously, there's not only team, and who said to me, it was Bold, I think, was it? No, who said something?
Somebody said, "I rest shoulders of others." There is a huge support team, many of them are not in the room, but maybe we can give a big clap of hands for that support team as well. They had a lot of difficulties. They dealt with the flooding last week. We were really worried about the flooding this week, as you heard from Phil, they all gave up their Naadam, which is unbelievably special, clearly. Two other things for me. Tomorrow morning, the exciting stuff, the really exciting stuff. We're going to site. Can everybody please be downstairs at 5:15? I appreciate that's a slightly unholy hour. That's what has to happen. 5:15, checked out with your luggage. Checked out with your luggage, please.
Unless you come back to Ulaanbaatar, and you kept your room, you can keep your luggage here. That's up to you. Please check out. Secondly or finally, dinner is at 6:30. We understood that you had too much Mongolian culture. I heard that earlier, we decided to book it in Brussels. Yeah, don't ask me why. Anyway, the restaurant's opposite the road. It's the easiest. 6:30 in the Brussels restaurant, and maybe one or two of the SRT team will be there as well. Bold, final words?
No, thank you. I echo thank you, management team, because 96 pages of publicly disclosed presentation on OT is the first time I've done this at this detail, so took a lot of rigor and preparation. Great, great job, and always very proud to speak on your behalf. I also wanted to just say thank you for coming. I know it's been quite a journey for many, many parts of the world and many different stakeholders, investors, lenders, and of course, our research analysts that. Thank you for coming to my homeland during Naadam. I know July is a peak holiday season for some of you, and it's you've given up your personal time as well. I really hope it opened your eyes, Jason, what is Mongolia?
I think, you know, it's not, I know you asked me this question this country between two big giants and how do you survive? I think hopefully you get the answer that they've been around for centuries and intent to stay around. I think, you know, these neighbors are well respected, and we have to balance. It's obviously very important for the government, and Rio Tinto is a very important part of the third neighbor policy that the government has as its primary objective in diversifying its relationship with Western countries and investors all around the world. It's very much part of that strategy, and we're proud to be a partner with them. Just wanted to say a immense thank you for coming and look forward to reading your insightful reports. Thank you.