Good morning and good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Rio Tinto's 2022 Capital Markets Update. Before we kick off, there are a few logistics items that I want to address briefly. There are no fire drills planned today. If you hear the fire alarm in this room, please leave the room via the emergency exits and follow the instructions of the fire marshals. Before we start, also, please take note of the cautionary statements on pages 2 and 3. Considering those read, I would like to discuss a couple of points on today's agenda. The break will be relatively short. Please be considerate to those listening online and return promptly to this room so we can start on time again. There are 2 Q&A sessions, one before the break and one at the end.
Instructions will follow, but please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. For those based in Australia and Asia, there will be another bite at the cherry on the 15th of December with an additional Q&A session in Sydney with a large group of the Executive Committee. This morning, you will hear a lot about our technology development and our R&D activities. If you want to see this in action, then please join us on Tuesday the 13th of December at our visit to our Bundoora research facilities in Melbourne. Okay, let's kick it off. As a start, we thought we would give you some insights into one of the practices at Rio Tinto. At the start of every group meeting, we usually have a safety share. That share covers physical, psychological, or cultural safety. It allows us to share learnings and trigger discussions.
Today, we managed to convince Angela Bigg, President and Chief Operating Officer of our Diavik Diamond Mine, to come here today and share with you the cultural and safety journey that took place at Diavik. Angela, over to you.
Good morning. My name is Angela Bigg, and I'm the president of our Diavik Diamond Mine in the Northwest Territories of Canada. I started with Rio Tinto in 2005 and worked in nine countries during this time. Safety, in all its forms, mental, physical, and cultural, is something that preoccupies us all across Rio Tinto. Whilst there's still a lot of work to be done, I believe that we are making tangible progress. This is what I'd like to talk to you about today. Let me tell you a little bit about Diavik, a feat of modern engineering in the remote subarctic where we mine diamonds below a frozen lake. A self-contained city, where to access the main buildings on foot, you need to use what we call the Arctic corridors, over three and a half kilometers of heated and protected walkways.
We provide all of our own services, from water and power, in part from our own wind turbines, to the ice cream in the kitchen, which is a surprisingly popular dessert when it's minus 60 degrees. It is cold like you have never felt the cold. It is dark almost all day in winter. Welcome to what feels like diamond mining on Mars. Although Diavik is an infrastructure marvel, it is our team of 1,200 people that make it a truly amazing place. With over a quarter of our workforce being Inuit, Métis, and First Nations, more than 15% being female, and with many different backgrounds. It's a very diverse workforce, all living and working together. 2020 was a tough year for many.
Not only did the pandemic kick off with all the uncertainty and worry that came with it, we also had Juukan Gorge and the aftermath. On a personal note, I really questioned whether this was a company and a culture that I wanted to be associated with, as I was really no longer proud to be a part of Rio Tinto. There's been a lot of coverage of the issues arising from the Broderick report. James will discuss these later today. I, however, would like to talk to you about our response on the ground. At Diavik, I spoke with each and every employee and rostered contractor about what everyday respect means for them. Most consistent feedback from the crews was how can they learn to treat people better than they were treated when they first started in the mining industry.
This is important as our teams are aiming for a future where everybody feels their voice is valued, regardless of any individual difference someone might have to the rest of their colleagues or supervision. We also did a facilities campaign across site and asked the question, "How can we find better ways to make life more comfortable for the team?" Empowered by ExCo and with capital approvals, we've been able to action a number of facilities improvements. These include upgrading shower and change room facilities, replacing aging gym equipment, and having a more modern overflow dorm arriving on the ice road in March. I'm also proud of an additional, more subtle change in regards to our facilities.
Our operators at Diavik are now prioritized in our main accommodation complex, and management, including myself, are housed in the secondary facility, which is accessible by walking outdoors and not through the comfort of the Arctic corridor. Sinead, our minerals CEO, was quite happy to stay there a few weeks ago. By her doing this, it was a clear demonstration to our front line that they take priority over anybody else, even visiting ExCo members. Diavik remains first and foremost home away from home for its workers. Miners about to head underground walk past pin-up boards with photos of their loved ones, and the words are displayed, "Why I work safe," a reminder of why they're in the sub-Arctic and what is waiting for them when they return home. As a company, we are progressively building a more caring community on site, as evidenced by our people survey.
I'm particularly proud of the improvement in how our team feels in regards to respect and belonging, critical elements to the well-being of our workers. For me, these are some of the most challenging and rewarding times at Diavik. There's a collective action towards improving things, fully supported by ExCo. We are tackling these issues and becoming a kinder and culturally safer organization. This is the Rio Tinto that I'm certainly proud to be a part of. Thank you. I'll now hand over to Jakob.
Good morning. Thank you, Angela. W onderful to hear that what we are doing is going the whole way out to the sites. I'm very pleased to be here with you in London. Thank you to all of those who are joining virtually. For some, I realize it's not the best hour. This is the implication of a global business. Before I start, I like to acknowledge and pay my respect to all traditional owners and First Nations peoples that host our operations around the world. A year ago, we launched our new strategy, setting a clear pathway to deliver long-term value, meeting the incremental demands of the energy transition, and ensuring local supplies of critical minerals globally deepens our relevance to the world and ensures our long-term profitability.
This strategy is underpinned by four clear objectives that are driving our actions day in and day out. By executing these objectives, we are creating real momentum, building a stronger Rio Tinto that is a platform for long-term success. Seeing early results gives me conviction that we have the right objectives, the right team, and the right strategy. Except for Sinette, who is on holiday, you will today hear from the entire executive team, a team working with urgency and intensity to improve our performance across all metrics. A team that is daring to address issues, grab opportunities, and make choices. We are proud of what has been achieved. There are early indicators that we are evolving our culture, and our employee engagement is moving in the right direction. We are turning the corner in our iron ore operational performance, and we are unlocking growth options.
As we solve problems, we learn, we replicate and we free up capacity to capture new opportunities. There will always be more to be done, but we are progressing with a purpose. The external environment remains volatile and challenging, but the fundamentals of our business mean we continue to perform well. We have a very resilient business and strong free cash flow. This resilience is underpinned by the quality of our assets, our people, and the strength of our balance sheets. It allows us to systemically address issues, build long-term strengths, and grab opportunities that create value despite short-term volatility. We are deploying our Safe Production System side by side to continuously improve our safety performance, drive employee satisfaction, and lift our operational performance. It is a multi-year journey, but we are seeing early and encouraging outcomes. This gives us confidence and appetite for more.
We're taking a different approach to cultural heritage. We are successfully developing partnerships with governments and society, creating value not only in a financial sense. Today, you will hear about these developments. Our objective is to transparently dive into the most complex part of our transformation. Consider this a glass box on Rio Tinto. We cannot cover everything in three and a half hours, so the focus today is on technology, decarbonization, and diving into our iron ore and aluminum businesses. I'm more confident than ever that we have the right objectives, the right team, and the right strategy. As an example of why, let me touch briefly on our iron ore business. For the last 3 years, we have failed to hit our production guidance. Relationships with traditional owners were broken and too transactional. We were not investing in the long-term health of our most valuable business.
Over the last 18 months, we have signed critical new agreements with the Yindjibarndi, the Yinhawangka, and the PKKp people, demonstrating a significant rebuild of those relationships. Operationally, our safe production system is delivering positive results. We are on track to deliver one of our best second half production results. We have commissioned Gudai-Darri, our first greenfield mine in almost a decade. We future-proofed the business for decades to come by unlocking the high-grade tons from Rhodes Ridge. We are moving ahead with plans to install 1 gigawatt of renewable energy. This demonstrates progress across all 4 objectives and our long-term strategy. We are fixing the issues and strengthening the business. This year, I've spent time engaging with governments, customers, and suppliers on the need to work together and address climate change with urgency.
It has reaffirmed me my conviction that putting climate at the heart of our strategy is the right thing to do. It is also the right business decision. Electrification has a vital role to play in the global transition, but it's worth noting that an EV needs to run for approximately six to seven years to offset the carbon emitted in its manufacturing. Minimizing the carbon footprint of the components of an EV is critical. We can supply these components. As these materials becomes increasingly vital, it presents both challenges and huge opportunities. Decarbonizing our assets de-risk our business. It also opens up commercial opportunities as we expand our role in providing low carbon materials. We have clearly stated that we will reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.
We are now just one year down into what is a 28-year journey and have already made real pogress. We have moved from ambitions to solutions. There's still much ahead of us. With the development last year, we have the confidence that there is a pathway to 2030 and 2050. It is doable, we can't do it on our own. To help us navigate this fast-developing space last year, we re-established the role of Chief Scientist. Nigel Stewart is here today and will discuss the opportunities he and his team see. Our insight in this area is a competitive advantage. No other mining company has as much research and development capability as we tend to. We're ramping up our technical skills, building competencies and capabilities, and setting out to solve the complex problems that will enable decarbonization.
We also focused on decarbonizing our products to meet the demands of our customers. You'll hear from Ivan, Simon, and Mark on the steps we are taking to reduce our carbon footprint. Alf will share customer insights, and Peter will explain how we consider the economics of these investments. A task of this scale needs partnership. Kelly, Isabel, and Alf have been working with governments and our customers. They have an essential role in delivering meaningful progress towards achieving the world's targets. One tangible example is the strategic partnership we recently signed with the government of Canada at our Sorel processing plant in Quebec. It builds on decades of research and development and positions the business well, strengthening North American critical minerals chain, while decarbonizing the processing plant. This partnership is an important vote of confidence in this world-class operation and its people.
Through investment innovation, we are transforming a 70-year-old asset into one capable of producing minerals of the future, like scandium. Through the course of the day, you will hear examples of how we are building meaningful partnerships and connections. All of these examples will be underpinned by our people and the culture journey we're on. Considering the threat that exists through these, something new has clicked to us, our purpose. By looking at what society needs, and then deeply considering our own strengths, we have found 10 words that capture our contribution to the world today, but also push us to evolve. Finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs. Finding better ways speaks to our drive for both innovation and continuous improvement. It also emphasizes how solutions are delivered with impeccable ESG performance.
We're striving for new ways to do things, create deeper partnerships to solve problems, and meet opportunities. It applies to big, meaningful innovation and smaller, everyday progress. To provide the materials the world needs connects our contribution to everyday life, making our purpose meaningful for our customers, stakeholders, and society. Fundamentally, it's all about satisfying the needs of society in the best possible way. To deliver our four objectives and strategy in service of this purpose requires a positive culture, one where our people are committed to our journey and to each other, and working together in a collective way. Our values of care, courage, and curiosity will be the foundation for this culture. James, Kelly, Bold, and Isabelle will now share their thoughts on how our culture is evolving in our first panel.
What I have seen in the last 18 months shows me that you can make genuine change happen when you stick to your objectives, focus on your culture, and keep your purpose in mind. This, for me, sums up where we are right now. We're progressing with purpose, and with that, I'll hand over to the team to give you more insights. Please.
Why are we so focused on culture? Very simply, we don't think we'll achieve the full potential of the group unless we build a truly inclusive culture. Why is that? Well, if you have an inclusive culture, people feel like they can be themselves at work. They make friends at work, their engagement goes up. When the engagement goes up, as we've seen across the group, safety goes up and productivity goes up. P eople are more willing to share ideas of how to improve things. They're better at collaborating with their colleagues. They're better at collaborating out in the communities. Over time, you become an employer of choice. That's why we're passionate about it. How do you achieve it? Three things. First, it starts with looking in the mirror as an individual.
Every single one of us can make a contribution to the culture change. What you see on the screen is some of our more senior leaders who have all committed to make Rio Tinto safe, respectful, and a better place to work. I'm looking to each and every colleague around the world. It doesn't matter what your age is, your hierarchy, your location. Every single one of us can live and breathe our values of care, courage and curiosity, and each one of us can make a difference. Second, we need to look in the mirror collectively, and that's where the study that Elizabeth Broderick led for us was extremely important. Her findings were sobering and upsetting, but I'm super proud of the fact that we put them straight out on the web externally on the 1st of February this year.
That surprised many. The transparency and honesty and openness really resonated with our colleagues around the world. It was an important moment to signal that we are serious about this change. Third, we can never give up, right? You can never get complacent, and this journey goes on forever. We're investing more than we ever have done in the leadership and training of all of our leaders and employees around the world. We're investing in Safe Production System, and you're going to hear more about that from Arno later, and also Simon's gonna talk about that. We're looking at every barrier that we might have to collaboration and collegiality around the world, whether it's around our incentives, our rewards, our recognition, and we're gonna be systematically dismantling those. This work will never end. Let me, how is it coming out?
I'm delighted to say that we do have some early signs and some green shoots that things are turning around. What you see on the screen now is the recent results of our employee survey that came in just a few weeks ago. There's been a noticeable jump up in satisfaction. When you dig under the surface, what's even more heartening is our frontline supervisors, they're three points ahead from where they were last time. As I've already alluded to, a happy front line and an engaged front line is a safe front line and a productive front line. We were also thrilled that an additional 9% of people participated in the survey. We're getting much higher levels of engagement, much higher levels of participation.
It's still not where it needs to be, but these are some signals that what we're doing is working. Let me now bring my friends into the conversation. We've got some interesting range of tenure levels here because we have Kelly, who's been with us, it seems amazing, 21 years. Then at the other end of the spectrum, Isabelle, who joined more or less exactly a year ago. Then Bold, somewhere in between, about 10 years from now. I'd love to hear your perspectives of what you've seen. May, maybe we start with the newest, Isabelle.
Thank you. Thank you, James. The newest always gets the short straw here and starts, huh? I'll probably give you some observations from my first year in as to what culture I found and some of, maybe some of the indicators of culture that I found. It's not always easy. You come in, I'm coming from a very different industry, manufacturing, consumer goods, chemical manufacturing. Coming into mining and processing was a bit of a jump. You come in with your eyes fresh and you ask a lot of questions. What I did in my first year is really go around the world and go and visit our employees, our front line, government herders in Mongolia.
Did a long trip in Mongolia to understand the culture as well. Went around everywhere just to listen and learn. What I found is probably four things that I can put the finger on, and there's maybe more as we, as we go in the conversation. The first thing was that I found that even as a newcomer, I was very listened to, and I'm almost my views are sought. When you see that, actually it tells you that the company is not stuck in the past in a way. It's actually wanting to learn from others, and that's what I found.
A company and people curious about others, wanting to learn about the customers, wanting to learn about the end users, wanting to learn about society needs. That for me is a very good sign of culture. The second thing I found, which wouldn't surprise many of you, is that it's an organization and people that are so used to dealing with difficult situation, a very volatile, complex environment. Things are happening all the time because of the countries in which we operate, because of the type of business we're in. People are very agile and able to navigate that complexity, and we've seen that with the work we've done in Serbia this week and again, Mongolia and Guinea. Fantastic work in meeting the people. They're just able to navigate that complexity easily.
The third thing to mention is probably the desire to do the right thing. That's very strong in safety, and we'll talk about safety later. When we talk about the safety, physical safety, it also moves into the psychological safety, and you've heard from Angela. What Angela was talking about, I've seen and heard in many of the sites, really wanting to do the right thing for the people. It's moving in, from physical to psychological. The fourth thing I want to mention is probably that desire to improve every day, and it's small improvement, big improvements, and that we see. You know, you'll hear from Nigel today on the innovation. You'll hear from Arno on SBS.
It is about every day making that improvement and going forward, which I think is very close to when we unearth our purpose. It was very much at the heart of finding better ways of doing things. Those are the things, my observations as a newcomer.
Yeah, that warm welcome really resonates with me, actually. I found exactly the same, also that streak of absolutely wanting to do the right thing and a sense of values. I think, Kelly, you really embody that for me, that sense of value. At the other end of the tenure spectrum, you've seen a lot over the years.
Yeah. Thanks very much, James, and it's delightful to be here. Last year I was on a screen, and I talked last year about some of the difficult things that we were doing around listening to our external stakeholders, and Angela touched on it as well. You know, 2020 was a very difficult year, and people had lost a lot of pride. One of the things that has been driving me is to ensure that we build that pride back and that we, where people feel like, you know, they really wanna be part of work. The indicator for me, for that is that people start to wear their shirts again.
I was recently with an Aboriginal lady who said, "Jeez, I keep seeing the Rio Tinto shirts everywhere." I was like, "Yes, yes, we're getting there." It's great. I have the privilege of helping to run the Australian Advisory Group, which is external, mostly Indigenous people that help us stay sure-footed in particularly Australia with Indigenous affairs, but also wider Australian issues. One of the things, we've met four times, and every time we've met on site. We've been at Weipa, different sites. We have a thing called Chatter and Platter, which is where we allow employees and contractors and Indigenous business owners to come and talk to the Australian Advisory Group, completely unscripted. They can say whatever they want.
The Advisory Group debriefs with us, and every single time, they give us the feedback that people are just seeking to want to know what to do. How do we get better, how do we learn? They're really truly listening to the external stakeholders to say, "How do we improve, and how do we become better company and better people?
Bold, you've got an interesting set of stakeholders to deal with from spanning North America, Africa, Mongolia. What do you think?
Yeah. I'm the middle child, so I always go on the middle tenure. Thanks for that. I think, one of the things that I, when I, when I came into Rio from investment banking, I thought, "Okay, culture. Okay, what's that about? Like, okay, you know, we have a pretty healthy culture." I think my reflection was Rio has, if one word to describe it, is it had an achievement culture.
Mm.
We had objectives, and we went for it, right? I think it came at a price.
Mm.
I think that's what the Elizabeth Broderick report has shown, which is when we looked ourselves in the mirror, was that the right environment? Then you put the global dimension to it, right? I'm Mongolian, so we're very hospitable. Our 1 word of our culture is hospitable. I think the British culture probably is very stoic. You know? Keep calm, carry on. You know? That's kind of, you know, the describes the words. I think, you know, the U.S. culture where we have 120-year-old history at Kennecott is this amazing can-do attitude, right? They have no problem. Each country and each of those operations have their own unique culture because obviously OT is relatively new. It's, you know, believe it or not, almost 20 years, but it's still a relatively young business within our portfolio.
On the other spectrum, you have a 120-year-old mine at Kennecott, it's Salt Lake, which is amazing. What is the common thread? I think we're changing the common thread from achievement to caring, and it's becoming more humane, and that means more trust. If we have that, everything else around courage and curiosity will evolve, That's where we're talking internally about what are these triangles of culture, and we describe them in patterns of behavior that are unspoken, that you feel, whether they're encouraged or discouraged. I think there's the mechanical side, which is the systems and processes that we have, Then there's the symbols. I think the most difficult part is the patterns of behavior. Like, how do you create the caring side?
That's what I do as a leader to make sure that I'm talking to my teams and then cast the right shadow that indeed I am caring. Yes, you know, I still want to hit my objectives, but I want to do it in a caring way. I think that's kind of my reflection around some of the recent journey we went on on this.
Actually, I love your analogy that red thread, 'cause I've certainly one of the delights of this job is you get to travel to some really cool places. In my journeys around Mongolia, Saguenay, Kitimat, North America, you know, you think there's gonna be widely dispersed cultures, and they are in some ways, but there is... You can recognize a Rio Tinto person. I think one of the things that I've been really pleased about is how well the cultures have our new values have resonated, of care, courage, and curiosity. I don't know if you've seen that, Isabelle.
Yeah. I think the values resonate very well. They resonate almost in any culture. I think that's interesting.
Yeah
... because we've got the Rio Tinto culture in every asset, but it is also a reflection of society in which we operate.
Yeah.
I think the interesting thing is to continue listening as well to society. That shows also curiosity, care, and courage. Kelly mentioned about the Australian Advisory Group. We're also running what we call the civil society roundtables, which are listening sessions. That takes a bit of courage because it's not easy sometimes to have the mirror in front of you and see what is happening. We had one last week in London, which was very good, sometimes confronting and, you know, around some of the operations and some of the challenges civil society see. We're running one in Montreal next week, and then we'll have one in Australia. It's just about listening. That shows care as well.
It shows care for our people and it's wanting to do the right thing. I think that these values are in everything we're doing today. Of course, we can do more, and show and, you know, display it everywhere, but this is happening.
Look, I mean, this is just a short window into our culture journey. I really hope you take away from this that first, we're not at all complacent. We know there is a lot to do, and we're working hard on that. Second, we really think we're making progress, and we're starting to see some green shoots. You know, we don't do this culture in isolation. You know, as Jakob explained our new purpose, we're here to find better ways to provide the materials the world needs. I think it's worth giving you an insight on that from a macroeconomic perspective. We're now delighted to hand over to Vivek.
Thanks, James.
Well, thank you very much, James. T hank you for reiterating the purpose because today, Jakob identified our objective in 10 keywords: finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs. I'm going to build on this by making two main points in my presentation. First, I want to say that there'll be very large needs across our product portfolio from the traditional development drivers that we're all used to thinking about, but also from newer drivers related to net zero goals. The second point I want to make is that a key task for our industry will be to provide for those needs at pace, reliably, and with a low carbon footprint, and this will be challenging. Needs arising from industrialization and urbanization in emerging markets will continue to provide the base load for future commodity demand.
China is going to slow, but from a very high level, as its economic development enters a new era. Demand from India and ASEAN will strengthen as their early-stage development continues. In the past, it has usually been enough for people like me and my team to project this traditional base load along with technological assessments of cost curves, and that would be used to establish long-run scenarios for our commodity markets. Given the potential futures that we see, such an approach seems insufficient, and that is for two connected reasons. First, with the powerful geopolitical forces now at work, it is clear that interventions by governments are becoming as important as traditional market forces for commodity trajectories.
Second, and this is of course, where I'm going to focus my attention today, there is the energy transition, and that's being driven by the imperative to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions. The needs arising from this transition could add as much as 25% to total demand for our key products over and above traditional sources by 2035 on a copper equivalent semis basis. The outcomes of COP26 in Glasgow signaled a decisive shift in society's intentions, with all significant emitters affirming pledges to achieve net zero. Let's not be under any illusion. Governments will have to implement aggressive policies to induce the enormous investments, new technologies, recycling, and primary commodity suppliers that will be needed to construct a carbon-free economy.
We envisage emission penalties or alternatively, decarbonization incentives, eventually well in excess of $100 per ton of CO2 if warming is to be kept below even 2 degrees. More recently, COP27 took place against a backdrop of economic dislocation. Governments were constrained as they grappled with inflationary pressures exacerbated by severe commodity market disruptions. Of course, related to the war in Ukraine and the ongoing impacts of COVID. To me, these disruptions also highlighted a fundamental shift in energy market paradigms. The conventional wisdom is that the world faces a so-called energy trilemma. According to this view, it is difficult to balance the 3 goals of energy security, energy affordability, and environmental sustainability. It is said that you can't have them all at once. We believe that the world is moving past the energy trilemma toward an alternative energy tripod paradigm.
Under this paradigm, the three goals can be mutually reinforcing, and that's because the proliferation of low-cost renewables that are gonna be critical to achieve climate goals, and those are coming, will also increase energy security over time. Greater energy security will reduce the risks of energy market disruptions in a fragmented world. It's clear that an energy tripod logic is at the heart of recent U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which is providing very significant dollars to activate the links between energy security, price stability, and reducing greenhouse gases. It also seems very reasonable to assume that competitive pressures and the energy tripod will induce other governments to adopt their own IRA style frameworks.
As part of this, encouraging the development of secure supplies of critical and strategically important minerals will be an important aspect of the policy frameworks, that will have really critical implications for mining project economics and also for the regional premiums that we receive for our products in different parts of the world. I'd now like to turn to a more detailed discussion of the implications of decarbonization for our commodities. All of our products are needed in the energy transition. At last year's Capital Markets Day, I majored on copper and lithium. For those markets, strong structures will be driven by renewable electrification, the uptake of electric vehicles, and of course, the various difficulties associated with bringing on new supplies at pace. This year, as Jakob mentioned, I'm gonna focus on iron ore and aluminum.
The Chinese steel industry emits around 2 billion tons of CO2 per year. CISA, which is China's Iron and Steel Industry Association, has developed gradual, though ultimately very ambitious, decarbonization plans. The initial phase will focus on optimizing raw materials inputs in traditional iron and steel making. Essentially, this will mean less coking coal, less low-quality iron ore, and more use of scrap. CISA envisages that a shift toward up-and-coming newer iron and steel-making technologies, such as green hydrogen-based direct reduced iron, is only likely to gather pace after 2040. This timing would provide space for the large-scale development of high-quality iron ore assets. It will provide for a substantial greening of the electricity grid and also the technological breakthroughs that will be needed to decarbonize iron and steelmaking. Nigel Stewart, our Chief Scientist, will discuss these potential breakthroughs in detail.
The key observation is that ores with lower impurities, and more generally, ores with lower CO2 iron-making emissions, will increase in value in the transition toward decarbonization. This chart shows that Rio Tinto is positioning toward a well-balanced iron ore portfolio, which will be resilient to the various ways in which steel decarbonization could play out. Pilbara Blend fines will continue as base load for conventional steel-making processes, even as those processes improve their carbon footprint. Pilbara Lump will be increasingly valued as a low-CO2 substitute for sinter. Over the long run, further beneficiation of Pilbara ores, together with our technology partnership approach that Nigel and Alf will discuss later, those could deliver really significant value.
At the same time, of course, our IOC products are some of the highest iron ore grades in the market, while Simandou will probably provide a very large DRI feedstock complemented by premium blast furnace product. Simon will later discuss our portfolio approach in much greater detail in his presentation. I'll now turn to aluminum. The global average emissions intensity of aluminum production is around 12 tons of CO2 per ton of primary metal. Although our hydro-powered assets, of course, emit less than 2 tons. The sector as a whole will need to make very significant adjustments on its path toward net zero. These adjustments will be reflected in higher marginal costs, and therefore a higher structural basis for aluminum prices.
The Chinese industry, which produces over half of the world's primary aluminum, with an average emissions intensity of around 14 tons of CO2, has already published plans for reaching peak carbon by 2030 and full decarbonization by 2060. There's lots of policies, but as an example, there's an expectation that by 2030, 30% of the power used for aluminum production in China will be from renewables, both hydro and more expensive firmed intermittent sources. Now I'd just like to mention two existing policies supporting carbon emission reductions that are particularly noteworthy. First, there is the aluminum production cap of 45 million tons. China is only about 2 million tons away from this right now. Second, aluminum producers are being shifted away from using coal-fired self-generated power toward the grid, where smelters will benefit from sector-wide decarbonization.
The quid pro quo is that they will also face higher system-related charges. The chart that I've put up here shows the potential net effect of China's various reforms on the marginal cost of primary aluminum production. In this example, the cost curve steepens by around $550 per ton once all the second-round effects are taken into account. Later on, Ivan will discuss the implications of this kind of positive structural shift for our aluminum business in North America, where low-carbon metal is strategically important both for our customers and for governments. Wrapping up now, I will end where I started. Our purpose is to find better ways to provide the materials the world needs, and there will be substantial needs across our product portfolio from traditional sources such as urbanization and as people lift themselves out of poverty.
There will also be new drivers related to society's growing demands to address the threat of climate change. The key challenge for our industry will be to provide for those combined needs at pace, reliably, and with a low carbon footprint in partnership with society. I will now hand on to my friend, Nigel, who will take you through technology pathways. Thank you very much.
Many thanks, Vivek. It's a great pleasure to be here today talking to you about technology. What I'll talk to you about today is how we're gonna use technology to address three issues. How we're gonna decarbonize our business, how we're going to unlock growth opportunities that the energy transition offers, and also finally, I'll touch on green steel and the role that we play in that. Within Rio Tinto we have a really proud history of technology. We really launched the first automated mines around the world, delivering automated haul trucks, automated trains, and automated drills. Equally as well, we're a world leader in aluminum smelting and refining technology. Also as a 150-year company, we've really embraced digitization.
We're adopting AI, machine learning, and improving and creating more value out of our value streams every day through those technologies. We see technology as a true competitive advantage, this is what we want to build. What we've been doing in the past few years is building up our capability as an organization to support our strategy. We've doubled our investment in R&D to $400 million a year. That's twice what we had before, we've started to build a very strong and robust organization. My role was recreated after a 10-year absence to really lead, create, source, and implement new technologies that support our strategy.
Today, we have 535 people in R&D based in the U.S., Canada, Australia, France, and the U.S., and also South Africa. We're also bringing the outside in. We're partnering with universities, government laboratories, companies and startups around the world to accelerate the delivery of technology within the company. Arguably, today, we have one of the most important and significant R&D and technology efforts in the industry. Vivek alluded to the fact that our real purpose is to provide the materials for the energy transition, and if we're going to do that, we're gonna have to do that with a zero carbon footprint, with a much improved ESG footprint, and we're gonna have to do that safely and productively. This really reflects the 5 pillars that we have in our discipline strategy.
This is how we approach everything that we do. It's how we choose the projects that we work on. This is very much in support of the strategy of the company. Now to decarbonization. Our number one issue in decarbonization is decarbonizing the electricity that supplies our assets. This might seem strange, but 75% of the electricity that we use today already comes from renewable sources from our hydropower assets. That remaining 25% represents 45% of our carbon emissions. How do we decarbonize? What we see here is the trends that we see. Immediately, we're gonna see the adoption of wind and solar, those forms of renewable energy, and this is what we're doing in our business. In the meantime, those technologies aren't firm.
They don't deliver firm power. We're gonna have to stabilize them in some way. We'll do that using conventional technology. What we see emerging in the technology field are new technologies to firm that energy through storage, in particular, mechanical storage technologies and also thermal storage technologies. Beyond that, we're seeing renewed interest in geothermal energy. We're seeing the adoption of, or the introduction of small modular reactors. We're also potentially gonna see breakthrough in new batteries. In the longer term, we all hope that fusion works, that's more than, you know, that's like 2045, 2050.
I just wanna touch a little bit more now on the energy storage because it's very important for us and will be very important for the world going forward as we try and generate firm power from wind and solar, these non-firm forms of electricity. There are three basic techniques to do this. There's mechanical storage, electrochemical in the form of batteries, and also thermal. What we're seeing today is that mechanical storage is a very interesting technology for us. It's the only one that's out there that can firm power and firm energy storage at the level that we need from our very large processing assets and some of our larger mine sites.
Unfortunately, as you can see from the slide, it's too expensive today. There are startups out in the world who are working on bringing that cost down, and we're working with some of those. Electrochemical looks to be cheaper. Unfortunately, it suffers from that issue of scale. It can't store enough energy that we need for some of our larger processing assets, and in particular, our aluminum smelters. We can apply it to small mine sites, but not the larger mine sites, not the larger processing sites. What is the good news for us, however, is that thermal works. We can have very, very economic storage of thermal power. We will use that to generate steam, and in particularly, for decarbonizing our alumina refineries.
In the list of our climate challenges, our number two challenge is our alumina refineries, so this is good news. Now on to hydrogen. Hydrogen is much hyped, particularly as an energy carrier. We don't see hydrogen as being used as an energy carrier. We see hydrogen being used for its unique chemical properties, and in this sense, it's as a reducing agent for the production of green steel, as a reducing agent to reduce ilmenite in our BlueSmelting process to make iron and titanium, and also as a source of energy for calcining alumina in our alumina refineries. Today, hydrogen is expensive and it needs a breakthrough to get the cost down to make it economically viable in our industry. It's a very energy-intensive material.
It requires 4 times the amount of energy per ton to produce than aluminum. We think of aluminum as being very energy intensive. The electricity price that you pay is critical to getting low-cost hydrogen. The capacity factor is also important. Really the key driver where the technology breakthrough has to happen is in the CapEx intensity of this technology. We've invested in a company called Electric Hydrogen in the U.S. It's a startup company that's found a way to drastically reduce the capital intensity of green hydrogen electrolyzer units. They've done this by a factor of 3. We're working closely with them to deploy this technology. One last thing I'd like to touch on is leakage of hydrogen and the role of hydrogen in climate change.
If we want to use hydrogen as an energy carrier, and we're gonna transport it around the world as liquid hydrogen, that's problematic because 1% of the hydrogen per day is lost to the atmosphere. Recent studies have shown that hydrogen actually has a global warming potential 5 to 16 times greater than CO2. What this means is it's better to burn natural gas than it is to transport hydrogen around the world and then consume it later. This is the reason why when we look at hydrogen, we're gonna produce it where we consume it. Now on to our mobile fleet. Our mobile fleet is our fourth biggest decarbonization challenge. It represents 13% of our emissions. Our preference is to move towards battery electrification to solve this problem.
We all know we have batteries in cars and they work very, very well. However, when we're dealing with a 350-ton haul truck, you have a slight problem. The battery's gonna weigh 19 tons, and it will last for about 90 to 150 minutes. You spend most of your time charging it and you're used to having very short haul runs. Nevertheless, we want to persevere with this technology and we've been partnering with Caterpillar and Komatsu to develop those technologies. We hope to have our first haul truck on site in 2024 with Caterpillar, in 2025 with Komatsu. It's gonna take time to develop. We're also exploring another alternative. If you think about the car, it's much smaller and the battery works and you get a decent range.
We asked ourselves the question: can we combine our automation technology with smaller haul trucks? We're bringing in smaller haul trucks. We have them operating today with Volvo and Scania, that look to be a, you know, a possible solution going forward. These technologies will take time to deliver and they're not immediately available now. The question is, what can we do now to get on with our journey? We're looking at the deployment of net zero fuels and in particular biofuels. We're trialing this year, biodiesels at Boron and also later at Kennecott as well. This is our first step. We can also use bioethanols and biomethanols, and we're working with startups to investigate those possibilities too. Of course, what we're learning here can also feed into the decarbonization of shipping.
I talked earlier about new revenue streams and how the energy transition can offer new revenue streams for us. We all know that in the world of the energy transition, we're going to have to electrify more and more, so we'll need more copper, we'll need more aluminum. You've heard about the ELYSIS technology. That's the production of more aluminum with a zero carbon footprint. This is the future for us. In the case of copper, we've created a new technology called Nuton. Nuton is fascinating because we can go back to our wastes, the wastes of other companies, and also unlock copper from ores that currently are impossible to process. Furthermore, we'll do this with a much, much lower water footprint, a much, much lower energy footprint, a much, much lower carbon footprint. The water in particular is an order of magnitude lower than conventional processing.
The energy transition is gonna require critical minerals. What we've been doing this past year is looking at where we can find these critical minerals within our processing plants. We expend energy, we consume reagents to extract the ores that we want. We asked ourselves, what else is in there? What we've managed to find is that critical minerals exist within our processing plants, and we can extract them. We've successfully extracted scandium from our iron and titanium business, and scandium is a very, very important and very useful and a significant alloying element in aluminum, and Ivan will talk about that later today. We've extracted tellurium from our Kennecott operations, and tellurium goes into high-performance solar panels. One of the last things that we're starting to think about is we know rocks very well. We're geologists, and we understand the science of geochemistry.
We've asked ourselves, how can we use that to our advantage in the future when we think about climate change? One of the things that we can do is take CO2 and react them with rock and chemically bind CO2 in rock for the future. This is gonna be important in terms of capturing CO2 from industrial emissions and storing it, but also going forward. To meet those Paris targets, we're actually gonna have to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and stock it somewhere, and this is the technology to do this. We're pursuing this with the DOE, with its Advanced Research Projects Agency at our Tamarack JV in Minnesota. We're doing this with university and government laboratory department laboratories and also some external companies. Now on to steel.
Steel is a very efficient material in manufacturing and construction. 8% of the world's global emissions come from the steel manufacture. The big question is, how can we decarbonize steel? Today we do it with carbon, that's where the CO2 comes from. We can also reduce iron oxides or iron ore using other materials like hydrogen, which I spoke to earlier. Aluminum, sodium, things like that, we can also do it electrochemically. On this chart here, you see all of the processes or the types of processes that we're exploring to look at how we can produce green steel. On the slide, you see the ranges of ore grade that are required for each one of those types of processes.
Today, we don't know which one of those processes is gonna win out or which combination of them will win out. We're conducting research on all of them. We're partnering with external technology partners and investigating which ones, you know, which ones might work. We understand the relationship between the ore composition and the technologies that are required. Going forward, what we need to do is match either the raw material quality with the process, or we need to make the process more robust so that it can take a broader range of materials.
One of the things that we've been doing ourselves is we've been looking at the use of biomass to extract iron and steel from our iron ore at the Pilbara, which we have a very broad range of compositions, and we've been successful in piloting that, and we announced that last week, and this is our technology called BioIron. This is one of the options that we're producing, that, you know, that we're pursuing. One of the most important things that I'd like to stress, however, is that we have strong capabilities in this area, our own internal capabilities and the partners outside. What we're going to be pursuing is the lowest CapEx, the lowest OpEx solutions that offer the greatest returns to our shareholders.
Technology can bring many, many changes that we can't yet imagine. We can't pick winners, this is why we're adopting very much a portfolio approach. What we've achieved so far is we've built a strong organization that's delivered its first results. I've shared with you some of the four breakthroughs that we've been pursuing. Despite the fact that we've got a strong organization today that's world-leading in our business, we're continuing to build capabilities, particularly in the area of biofuels and battery materials. We're also partnering more and more on green steel. We're rolling out renewable energy deployment. You'll talk about more, Mark will talk more about that later. We're pursuing growth options, particularly in the field of critical minerals.
As I said earlier, our aim is really to provide those materials for the future, for the energy transition, and to do that with a low carbon or a zero carbon footprint and a much improved ESG footprint. What we want to do is to be the fastest in taking these new ideas and translating them into sustainable business value. As Jakob alluded to right at the very beginning, there will be challenges in achieving net zero, but there's also significant opportunities for growth. We will need innovation to meet our aspirations. We won't go anywhere unless we have technology innovations. We've got to do things differently. We have strong capabilities in this area, and we're strengthening it. I'll now hand over to Mark, who'll take you more in detail through our decarbonization journey. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Nigel, and good morning, everyone. Rio Tinto has a significant carbon footprint across all of our Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. We've made real progress over the last 12 months and have set up abatement programs and dedicated teams to work towards delivering our 2030 targets in a cost-effective way. In contrast to much of the industry, our emissions are driven predominantly via our processing activities, with our Scope 1 and 2 footprint equivalent to about 31.1 million tons of CO2. Electricity accounts for 45% of the total, despite 75% of our consumption at our managed operations coming from renewables. The combustion of carbon anodes in our aluminum smelters emits about 2 tons of CO2 per ton of metal produced.
Together with the reductants used in minerals processing, this is our second highest contributor at about 21%. Emissions from our alumina refineries are third largest at 18%. Despite having one of the lowest carbon intensity aluminum businesses in the world, 70% of our total emissions are from our bauxite, alumina, and aluminum operations. Diesel represents about 30% of emissions, with more than half of this coming from the Pilbara. We set ambitious climate targets a year ago to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 15% in 2025 and by 50% in 2030. However, we have learned that implementing major decarbonization projects takes time. We need to engage with our traditional owners and secure approvals from regulators, and it's important that we get these relationships right. We also need to be disciplined about investing our capital.
We have not advanced our abatement projects as fast as we would have liked, so our emissions have stayed roughly flat and our capital spend on decarbonization is lower than we had anticipated a year ago. However, we now have a very clear understanding of the key levers and have set up six large abatement programs focused on renewables, ELYSIS, process heat and diesel. This accounts for 95% of our emissions. As I said earlier, we have teams in place and a pathway to significant emissions reductions by 2030 aligned to our six abatement programs. What you see here is the abatement resulting from execution at full potential and excludes any adjustment for risks. Offsets will play a role in our decarbonization strategy, and we are developing high integrity, nature-based solutions at and near our sites.
ELYSIS R&D is progressing well with the pilot cell operating at the ELYSIS Industrial Research and Development Center in the Saguenay since November 2021. As you'll hear from Ivan later today, we are working towards a small deployment of ELYSIS in our operations, which will enable net zero aluminum smelting. Some of the technology we need to get to net zero by 2050 doesn't exist today, we need to contribute, support and partner to make this a reality. That's why we've focused heavily on R&D, establishing the Office of the Chief Scientist, you heard from Nigel earlier today, and increasing our target spend to $400 million a year. I'll now give you some examples of the work that is underway both in renewables and process heat.
We've established a dedicated energy development team to enable renewables projects, both those that we develop ourselves and those we will purchase from the market. Far, we've completed investment of just under $100 million in CapEx, and we're progressing towards 1 gigawatt of renewable power in the Pilbara, with phase one planned to deliver 234 megawatts of solar and 200 megawatt hours of storage from 2023 to 2026. The first 34 megawatts has already been delivered at Gudai-Darri and long lead investment approved for the next 100 megawatts. We are planning to spend approximately $600 million in capital in solar, storage and transmission as part of this initial phase, which is proposed to displace approximately 30% of our gas usage by the end of 2026.
Planning for phase two is also underway, with expandable sites having been selected for approximately 600 megawatts of renewables. This will provide a credible transition towards fleet electrification once this technology is available and ultimately enable full decarbonization. These large renewable hubs are currently being progressed through approvals. It makes sense for us to invest and develop renewables in the Pilbara as we own much of the infrastructure and operate the grid as part of our integrated operations. In other locations, power purchase agreements are a better option for us, as other investors focused on renewables can develop solutions at a more attractive cost of capital, thereby offering us real operating cost savings. We've signed a 130 megawatt solar power purchase agreement for Richards Bay Minerals in South Africa with a further 200 megawatts of wind in progress.
We have partnerships in train to have RBM 100% powered by renewables by 2040. Finally, on the renewable side, we have an RFP in progress to secure 4 gigawatts of renewable power to provide a competitive future for our Queensland Alumina and Boyne Smelter s, where we are continuing to work with stakeholders aiming to deliver a 30% reduction in total emissions by 2030. On the process heat side, we are leveraging our extensive technical know-how from decades of innovation and operation to reduce emissions. We developed ilmenite smelting in Sorel in the 1950s and are investing $537 million to help reduce emissions by 70%.
We are working in partnership with the Government of Canada and supporting technological innovations, including BlueSmelting, a new ilmenite smelting technology that allows us to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of anthracite in the process. At our Queensland Alumina operation, our double digestion project can deliver great abatement but is also good for business with a positive NPV and potential OpEx savings of the order of $80 million a year from reduced bauxite, raw material and energy costs. As I mentioned earlier, in addition to the six large abatement programs, nature-based solutions will be a key component of our strategy. Earlier this year, we set up a small team to lead this work and have made rapid progress. We have access to more than 4 million hectares of land globally. That's roughly the size of Denmark.
With natural climate solutions, we can use it not only for carbon offsets, but for significant biodiversity and local social and economic benefits. There are two parts to our approach. The first relates to developing nature-based solutions at or near our assets, and the second is to secure high-quality carbon credits in the regions where we operate. This two-pronged approach recognizes that some of our abatement projects will have long lead times or require technology development, and we need a solution in the near term to ensure we meet our objectives in a cost-effective way. This year, we completed studies at five high-potential land holdings within Rio Tinto's portfolio, focused on Australia, Madagascar, South Africa, and Guinea. The scale of these projects is significant, with the potential for about 500,000 hectares of land under conservation, restoration, or sustainable management.
This first round of projects will generate up to 1 million tons of CO₂ offsets a year by 2030, with further reductions available in future projects. To ensure the projects are high quality, a range of activities, including restoration, livelihood, and conservation, are incorporated into the project designs. This also helps reduce social and environmental risks associated with our operations and is highly complementary to our work in Simandou and in Madagascar. We are now progressing this first round of sites while in parallel completing carbon and biodiversity assessments on the next round of sites. The projects are competitive and on average lock in a 30-year carbon price at less than $30 a ton, however, with some upfront expenditure.
Having spent some time with the team over the last week, I wanted to share with you an example of what these nature-based solutions actually look like using one of our small-scale early projects in Madagascar. In this case, we had 2,300 community members involved in growing and planting over 640,000 saplings across about 500 hectares of land. This project not only protected biodiversity and endangered forest habitats, but also addressed local community needs, with over 90% of the spend going directly to the communities for saplings and their planting activities. The species we planted also have a relatively high carbon capture yield of between 8 and 12 tons per hectare. Such an approach can be scaled to restore vast areas of degraded forest land.
These activities and our work to secure high-quality credits follow integrity criteria that we have developed based on international best practice. This aims to ensure that the eventual carbon credits represent real avoidance or reduction, and that people and nature are not negatively impacted by our projects. I will now hand over to Alf to discuss Scope 3.
Thanks, mate. Thank you, Mark. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. It's great to be here in person this year. I'll now shift the focus to Scope 3 emissions and how we are supporting our customers and our customers' customers in their decarbonization journey. As you can see, these are material emissions, especially at downstream Scope 3. Since we spoke last year, Jakob and I have seen a real sea change in the desire from our customers to enter into long-term partnerships and contracts with Rio Tinto to help address the challenges they're facing to meet their climate change aspirations.
The conversations we're having with these customers are around three key areas: providing materials necessary for the energy transition, as Vivek highlighted, providing low-carbon products like our Canadian aluminum and zero-carbon products like ELYSIS, which Mark and Ivan are touching upon, and supporting our customers in decarbonizing their processes, as Nigel mentioned. For example, on the first, we're seeing automotive OEMs reaching out to us further up the value chain to secure the materials they need for their EV aspirations, such as lithium, copper, and low-carbon aluminum. Our recent partnerships to develop more secure and sustainable supply chains with Ford and Volvo Group are prime examples. With Ford, in 2022, we formed a partnership for battery and low-carbon materials and to explore Ford becoming a foundation customer for Rincon. With Volvo Group, our partnership covers multi-commodity supply for their green transition.
As a customer of their trucks, we're also collaborating on developing small autonomous electric vehicle technology for our operations, as mentioned by Nigel. On providing low-carbon products, a great example is our partnership with AB InBev, with whom we launched this year a specially marked Corona beverage can with the lowest CO₂ footprint in the world, made from Rio Tinto aluminum, including ELYSIS. The cans include a QR code leveraging START, Sustainability, Traceability, and Assurance from Rio Tinto, a blockchain technology which we launched in 2021. This provides customers with 14 key ESG KPIs, and we now have over 110 customers signed up. Consumers can scan the QR code with their phones and be directed to a webpage to see exactly how the products were made from the mine to their hands and make more informed choices on what they buy.
Supplying our customers with low-carbon products is not only addressing our emissions at sites, but also those generated in shipping our products to customers. Last year, we committed to reduce our CO2 emissions intensity in shipping by 40% by 2025. That's 5 years ahead of the IMO deadline. We're well on track on delivering with over 30% reduction to date, and we have successfully trialed the fuel blend with biofuels, with a 26% CO2 emission reduction. We also committed last year to have net zero vessels in our portfolio by 2030. As the largest shipper by tonnage in the world, we have a role to play and are actively exploring partnerships. Currently, the end state fuel solutions are not clear, but we are focusing our efforts on green methanol and green ammonia.
In the third area, supporting our customers on their decarbonization journey, steel is the biggest Scope 3 contributor, representing over 65%. Last year, we introduced a new program working closely with Simon, Sinead, Bold, and Nigel and their teams around 6 main pillars, which seek to find the best solutions to process our iron ore in low carbon ways, while at the same time positioning Rio Tinto to be a leading participant in the market. These pillars look at the full value chain from iron ore through to producing green steel. Since then, our dedicated Rio Tinto steel decarbonization team has progressed significantly, advancing 49 projects together with over 30 partners with a spend of $75 million in 2023, providing us with optionality.
On the blast furnace optimization pillar, we have extended our collaboration with over 20 customers such as Baowu, POSCO, Nippon Steel, and Shougang, working to achieve 20%-30% reductions. As Nigel previously mentioned, in a very exciting development, we have successfully proven the effectiveness of a BioIron pathway, which uses sustainable biomass as a reductant and microwave energy. This is shaping up as an attractive solution for producing near zero CO2 steel with Pilbara ores. We're now planning development of a large-scale pilot plant to further assess its potential. Hydrogen-based DRI continues to be a leading contender in green steel technology, and we're working with BlueScope on a pilot project to explore the use of green hydrogen to directly reduce Pilbara iron ore into a product that could then be processed in electric melter to produce low carbon steel.
My strong belief is that these partnerships with customers are at the heart of the added value Rio Tinto can deliver. We are in this together and need to work in partnership to address the challenges, finding better ways to provide the material the world needs. No one company will solve these challenges alone. I will now pass over to Simon.
Thanks very much, Alf, and hello, everyone. Now, I promise I am the last speech before the Q&A and the break. Menno's 15-minute break. I'd like to acknowledge the First Nations people on whose land our iron ore business operates. Reflecting on my own journey, I would like to thank all the traditional owners in Western Australia that invested so much of their time with me over the last 18 months. Their insights, their perspectives have shaped our approach and the team's approach to the reset of our relationships. Two things I'd like you to take away with you today. While we have the best position global iron ore portfolio, our recent progress in the Pilbara and the momentum that we carry into next year.
I'll start with the global portfolio. This is an amazing business. Today, we supply around 19% of the contestable iron ore market. Our flagship Pilbara Blend product remains the industry baseline. Our operations are complemented by our portside blending business in China. Three things that distinguish us. Firstly, unparalleled scale across this global footprint. Secondly, the growth and replacement options, including Simandou and Rhodes Ridge, which positions us to meet customer needs. We have the options across the full suite of products, both low grade, mid grade, and also high grade, which is particularly important as we transition to a green steel future. Finally, partnerships that provide ongoing market access. Partnerships have always been part of our heritage. From 50 years of the Robe River Joint Venture with our Japanese partners, Channa with the Chinese steel industry.
Simandou, which Bold is progressing, will help to facilitate another multi-decade partnership with our largest shareholder, Chinalco, and also Baowu, our largest iron ore customer. In the Pilbara, we're strengthening this with relationship with Baowu through the Western Range joint venture. This year, we delivered on the focus areas I spoke to you about at last year's Capital Markets Day. On best operator, last year, I talked in detail about the three parts of our operating system. In the mines, we were struggling to keep pace with depletion, and rail and port capacity was in excess of our mining rates, and that continued into the early part of 2022. We're now finishing the year strongly in the Pilbara. IOC will produce in 2022 more than it has for each of the last five years.
This is a great achievement by Sinead and her team, supported by Arno's team in SBS. On excelling development, securing a new joint venture agreement to enable the development of Rhodes Ridge, together with the environmental and the heritage approvals for Western Range, gives us much greater confidence looking forward. As Mark outlined, we recently approved works on a 100 megawatt Pilbara coastal solar farm. We'll begin construction in 2023, and when it's developed, it will produce electrons 90% cheaper than the gas turbines it replaces, around $0.15-$0.20 a ton using current gas prices. Probably the achievement I am most proud of is we've gone another year fatality-free in Rio Tinto. We've more work to do to reduce our risk exposure. There is nothing more important than our people going home safe each and every day.
Competitive advantage over the last 20 years has been about access to infrastructure. In the next 20 years, it's also gonna be determined by access to country. Our organization is better connected to Traditional Owners and the communities where we operate. Last week, I signed an agreement with the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people to create the Juukan Gorge Legacy Foundation as part of remedy for the destruction of the rock shelters in Juukan Gorge. This is a significant step forward on what remains a long journey for us. I would like to thank PKKP people, their elders, and the corporation for their guidance and their leadership in reaching this agreement. Turning now to how we're placed in 2023. The chart on the left-hand side shows the range of production levels by quarter over the last few years. The first half of 2022 was challenging.
Ongoing mine depletion was not being replaced, with delays to our new projects. Although the production was at the lower end of the range of the last 5 years, we maintained a disciplined focus on mine health to remove the waste we needed. This approach means we are now finishing the year with much better momentum. Ramping up our new projects, improved pit health is translating into reduced weight for feed in our crushers. In 2022, we will achieve our highest ever total material moved. Compared to the same time last year, our blasted in-pit stocks have doubled, and our run-of-mine stockpiles in front of those crushers has increased by 20%. In terms of mine production, last month was our best October ever for mine and rail.
We are seeking improvement quarter-on-quarter, and we're on track for one of our highest ever halves. We're still not operating as well as we know we can, and there are many areas we can improve. In 2023, we'll focus on ramping up Gudai-Darri and the Robe Valley to full rates. Over the next 5 years, we'll continue to drive productivity improvements with further SBS deployments, as well as executing low-cost creep opportunities. As examples, we're looking at extending the use of the incremental Gudai-Darri crushing and screening plant we installed to accelerate commissioning. We're looking at lump scalping to liberate 3 million-4 million tons of lump in 2023 and 2024, as well as road trading material from Brockman Four to Brockman Two to utilize available crusher capacity.
SBS is a structured approach that brings together cultural change to empower the front line, design best practice, and then replicate that across our system. In 2021, we piloted SBS at two of our sites, West Angelas as well as Yandicoogina. The success of these pilots gave us confidence to undertake full deployments this year at both Tom Price and Brockman, and you can see some of the results here. Those results are impressive. We've seen an uplift in engagement, safety, as well as key productivity measures. There's some here, but I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more on the upcoming panel. This systematic approach and a structured approach is yielding results. With that, we are now targeting 5 million ton uplift next year from SBS. Turning now to costs.
In 2022, our costs increased by around $2 a ton. The total increase was around $4 a ton. Around about three-quarters of this was input price escalation, which is mainly labor and also energy. The remainder is due 12% higher work index, as well as additional investment in maintenance. Those increases were partially offset by productivity, particularly in the second half, inventory movements and exchange rates. That offset around $2 a ton, resulting in 2022 costs of around $21 a ton. As we look forward, some of those headwinds begin to moderate. The rate of increase in our mining work index slows to 5%, and we're targeting to offset this with productivity. Our US dollar EBITDA unit costs will increase due to inventory movements. 2023 guidance of between $21 and $22.50.
As we look forward, more stability in our mines and that next tranche of mine replenishments provides a structural cost improvement. Mark's team has done an immense amount of work to deliver 120 million tons of projects during a global pandemic. Equipment defects and access to labor meant completion was later than we'd planned. We've learned a lot, and we'll carry that into the next tranche of replacement mines. Their capital intensity will be lower and more in line with previous similar projects. We've also begun an order of magnitude study at Rhodes Ridge, which we expect to complete in 2023, and we're considering how we simplify our other mine developments as we integrate Rhodes into our planning. Study work on Gudai-Darri Phase Two is ongoing.
With what we've learned about Phase One development, both the orebody, social surrounds, and the optionality that incremental tons plan has provided, we're revisiting the development pathway of the broader orebody.Risk to approvals timelines across the Pilbara have increased. Through the dedication of our teams and their commitment to partnerships, we're starting to find a way through. The chart here on the right-hand shows the product split in the medium term. SP10, as we've talked about before, provides us important flexibility in our system, protecting volumes and Pilbara Blend grades as we resolve resource access constraints. For SP10, the next few years will be towards the bottom end of the range shown. As we push past 345 million tons, SP10 levels will fluctuate depending on the timing of both the project approvals as well as overall production levels.
In 2022, we expect SP10 levels to be a bit below last year. In the second half, we brought a bit more SP10 to market than planned and conserved Pilbara Blend as product spreads between SP10 and the 62 index in China narrowed to around 10%. We are changing the way we work with traditional owners to better protect heritage. We acknowledge that we have a long way to go. Over the last two years, we've made major changes to our mining sequences as we work through the review of heritage sites in our mining footprint. These changes have had an impact. For example, when we compare the current mine plan for one of our largest sites, if we compare the 2019 plan with today, around about 20% of ore will be mined as originally scheduled.
The slide here is an example of a new model of working with Traditional Owners. Western Range on Yinhawangka Country is the first mine we've co-designed. Together, we worked through various mine development and design scenarios to really design that footprint and jointly develop the social, cultural heritage management plan. At Western Range, we've learned a lot. We've learned about a connectivity between sites of significance, and we're engaging Traditional Owners in the Pilbara on social surrounds, both for new mines and existing operations. Co-design leads to better heritage and environmental outcomes and better certainty for mine development. In October, we unlocked a pathway for Rhodes Ridge development and entered into joint venture agreements with our partners. These deposits are among the largest and highest quality undeveloped resources globally. Entry into new agreements was a very significant step for our business.
5.7 billion tons of mineral resources above 62% iron content, including half a billion tons at 64% iron content. The high grade at Rhodes Ridge is a perfect contribution to Pilbara Blend and provides us with green steel options as we position for the future. As I touched on earlier, we've commenced an order of magnitude study targeting 40 million ton per annum development before the end of the decade. Rhodes will transform our production base and under our business for decades. We're committed to working closely with traditional owners, Nyiyaparli and Ngarluma people, to establish a social cultural heritage management plan that protects sites of significance, minimizes impact during both construction and operation, and establishes return to country commitments. We finish 2022 with momentum.
We expect this year's shipments to be at the low end of our 2022 guidance of 320-335 million tons. This demonstrated level of 320 million tons falls at the bottom of our 2023 guidance. The top end is derived by taking this year's end of year's forecast, removing the impact of projected 2023 depletion of around 7 million tons, and then adding the incremental tons we expect to deliver next year from Gudai-Darri, from Robe River, and from SBS, which gives us that top end of 335 million tons. Longer term, the combination of our superior infrastructure position, coupled with an improved mine portfolio, has us well positioned to lift production 345-360 million ton in the midterm. In summary, we are making progress on our journey.
We're securing our future, connecting more closely with our communities, de-risking future cash flows by decarbonizing our business and positioning for green steel, progressing the development of Rhodes Ridge. These actions underpin our competitive position for decades. Our iron ore business has unrivaled scale, superior infrastructure, and a global resource mix from which to optimize value in all market scenarios. We're on track for a strong second half, we approach 2023 with momentum. The operational improvements we are seeing, combined with a values-based performance culture, will enable us to deliver in the near term and lay the foundation for a return to best operator. Thank you for listening, I'll now hand over to Menno for Q&A.
Thank you, Simon. The speakers come to the front, please, that'd be great. Great. First Q&A. Roberto, could you please provide instructions to those listening on the phone? While you do that, Roberto, we'll take the first question here in the room. Jason, you wanna kick it off?
I guess for Simon, it's interesting to see 360 back up there as a target. It's been a few years since we've seen that up there. Could you talk about the timeline from here to there? Is that actually a real we will produce 360 or is this a valet-style target, which is 400 maybe one day?
No, I'm not gonna talk about-
How are you, Jason? Probably just unpack that and maybe just split it into three buckets. In the near term, I touched on some of the productivity, I touched on some of those low-cost creep opportunities. That's the sort of the very near term, together with ramping up those new mines. As we outlined on the famous bubble chart, we've got that next tranche of mine developments, Bedded Hilltop, Brockman Syncline, and Western Range, which is being progressed currently. T hat gives us the mine platform that we really need. Longer term, Gudai-Darri and Rhodes Ridge come into play.
In terms of the here and now, next year is really about ramping up those projects well, and progressing that next tranche of mines to really push into that 345-360 range. Those subsequent developments to really sustain that at the sort of pro-grades that we need in the market.
Just to push you a little bit.
Sure.
3-5 years, or is it beyond 5 years?
The next tranche of mine development is 2025, 2026, 2027. We need those to really get into that range. That really defines the timetable, Jason.
Okay. Thank you.
All right. Roberto, give me the first question online before we go back to the room.
Yes. Just a quick reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. We are now taking the first question. The first question from Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley.
Cobbin team, thanks for the opportunity, good morning to everyone. Questions for Simon. Simon, on the iron ore business, I mean, one of your charts lays out how you've got an exit rate of close to 340 million tons per annum in the iron ore business this year. Yet your guidance sits below that for the full year next year. Could you help us square the circle on that? Also, as a follow-up for that question, in the Western Ranges, you put out the map, and if I heard it correctly, you said that only about 20% of what you initially thought would be mined if you compared it to the previous map.
If I heard that correctly, how should I think about the rest of your reserve base, as a company? What kind of threat do you foresee in terms of being able to mine that?
Maybe I'll, Rahul, I'll just take that last question first. The example I was giving was one of our big operating sites. It wasn't relating to Western Range. And it was when we look at the mine plan in 2019 and we compare it to today's mine plan, only 20% of the material was mined when we scheduled. Some of it was mined at different times. Some of it's been pushed out beyond that window as we worked through that heritage constraint. It wasn't that those tons have neces sarily disappeared. They just weren't mined as we scheduled. What that means is we've got to resequence.
What that means is we have faster lateral development, and hence some of the aspects you've seen over the last few years, including SP10, which we've used to fill the gap. In terms of your first question around the guidance, and I'll go to some detail in terms of how we've thought about that. We are finishing the year with really strong momentum, and we wanna make sure that we're building quarter-on-quarter. We've taken 320 because that's what's been demonstrated. Now, clearly, we're going a lot harder about that next year. As a team, we're chasing a higher number, but we're using demonstrated rate to set that bottom end of guidance.
We think that's the prudent thing to do, particularly given the context of the last few years. As we look at next year, you know, Gudai-Darri is on track. We'll produce a bit over 20 million tons from Gudai-Darri of the 43 million ton capacity. We'll produce a bit over 20 million tons having commissioned it in June. Similarly, the Rhodes Valley, we're seeing positive ramp up of those projects. The challenges we've had there are within the envelope of normal ramp up. Those projects are ramping up. What we wanna do is demonstrate performance and build on that each quarter, that's the approach we've taken with the setting of guidance.
All right. Thank you. Sylvain, please.
Sure. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you for your question.
Go ahead.
Good morning. Sylvain Brunet with BNP Paribas Exane. My first question is on iron ore, as you were alluding to your market share. Have you identified any market share gains at the time some of your competitors are facing high silica issues? Is that an issue you have to address also, and is there any technology available for that? My second question is on aluminum and on waste, the so-called red muds. In that field also, is there any new technology available to minimize that impact, please? Thanks.
Maybe I'll take the first one quickly and then pass off for the second one, which we're very interested in the answer of too. In terms of the market, look, our approach to the market hasn't changed. We take a value over volume approach, and we work with our customers to really make sure that we're meeting their needs. We're certainly engaging with our customers as they think about the products that they need. Now, Pilbara Blend gives us tremendous advantages. It gives us advantages because it is the industry base load. That's the product that we really see as the flagship of the business. SP10 does give us some flexibility around that, and we can place that to customers.
I think we've done a lot of work in the last few years, particularly in modeling and understanding all of our different customers and their needs, and then really targeting products that they value the most.
but perhaps with that I can-
Yeah, Nigel. It's actually a very interesting question, Nigel, so...
I think more broadly what we're doing is we're looking more and more at our waste and what we can do to extract value from our waste. You know, we talked about Nuton earlier in the presentation. We're doing some work on copper tailings as well, with a startup in the US, looking at how we can use copper tailings to make supplementary cementitious materials. That's becoming sort of quite advanced. We're doing similar things with, you know, with red mud as well. I think the key with red mud is, you know, bauxite residues is finding, kind of a suitable market at volume. That's always the challenge. We know, for example, that the that material contains rare earths, so can we extract some of those?
I think that's sort of changed our direction and our focus. We're looking more now rather than sort of just taking that material and sending it to another industry and getting them to try and cope with it. This is where we find the kind of the supply, you know, the demand and the supply imbalances. We're looking at what we can do to extract more from it. The question for us is how can you extract it and extract multiple, you know, valuable materials from it? That's the subject of an R&D program at the moment for us. We're looking at that, looking at how what we can do with the iron oxide that's developed that comes out of it, the residual alumina, the residual titania, and also the rare earths.
Tyler, please. Behind you there. Carmen. Thank you. We'll go back to the line after this.
Thanks. Tyler Broda from RBC. My question's on Rhodes Ridge. Just wondering if you could provide a bit more color on sort of, you know, how that fits into the portfolio now that that agreement's been signed. Does that push out some of the projects in study stage? I'd assume capital intensity is likely lower. I guess maybe just as a follow on the chart, very helpful from Vivek on page 23, showing the intensity of emissions. How does Rhodes Ridge fit on that chart? Thank you.
On Rhodes Ridge, I guess one of the really exciting things about Rhodes Ridge and standing on the top of the ore body as we were signing, 60 kilometers across. Our current operations have spread over something like 800 kilometers east to west. That volume of resource, that sort of grade, and you can stand there and basically look at it all. The railway line cuts between two ore bodies. It's well positioned from a infrastructure point of view. We are certainly reviewing our development sequence now that we have the joint venture at Rhodes Ridge to really look at how do we streamline.
One of the things that we're working through in the Pilbara is just the volume of work, both in terms of labor, but also in terms of stakeholder approvals, et cetera. Rhodes Ridge does give us an opportunity to look really hard at some of those developments and think about that sequence in a different way. That's some of the work that we're doing currently. Vivek, did you wanna?
It broadly sits in line with PBS because it's gonna be used as to supplement PBS. That's the way I would consider it. As Simon says, there are options that we could look at in terms of the timing.
One question online first, and then we'll go back to the room. Roberto, next question online, please.
The next question is from Lyndon Fagan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Lyndon, it's you. I think it's JP Morgan. Lyndon, go on.
Thank you for that. Look, my first question was just a quick update on Simandou, please. Seems like the CapEx guidance has been brought down as that project's been delayed. I'd appreciate any sort of update. Back on the Pilbara, we're not really talking about Gudai-Darri Phase Two, which seems like an obvious project considering, you know, there's a workforce there or recently been there, and it's a brownfield expansion now. I'm wondering if you can explain why that isn't being sequenced a bit earlier. I guess further to that heritage delays, it looks like Western Range has been sequenced, not necessarily because it's the optimum mine to sequence, but it's simply the only one that's had approval. If you're able to talk to that issue. Thanks.
Right. Thank you. Let's start with Simandou. Certainly, Bold and I have had quite a few trips to Guinea. What's the latest status?
Well, the team is in Guinea today.
Exactly.
Look, I think, for Simandou, the key is to formalize the Transguinean Infrastructure joint venture with the government of Guinea as well as obviously our partners there. You may have seen now Baowu has formally come into the consortium of 1 and 2, and they're entering into the discussions as well with the government of Guinea. We hope to move and progress that, and we'll take, you know, the government of Guinea's pace on that. I think, they've appointed technical and financial advisors, and I think it's really important to set an agreement now that can actually last for decades to come. It's quite important to have that, you know, right level of expertise. We'll see where it goes.
I think in terms of CapEx intensity, I think we talked about, you know, I know the numbers are out there, but roughly $4 billion, Peter, is roughly our equity share of that number. It's obviously gonna be driven how fast we ramp up over the years. We're very pleased with Winning Consortium Simandou. They are absolutely in the country, and they have all the equipment on all the Chinese railway construction companies on the ground will accelerate the project. There's a timing advantage in terms of that partnership.
Thanks. It certainly hasn't disappeared for me, phase two.
In terms of our approach then, when we look at our development sequence, we structure it in a way that delivers the greatest value. Western Range is where it is because of value. Now Paraburdoo was declining, if you don't progress Western Range at that point, then you have an idle plant, but you also have a town and a workforce. To resequence that obviously comes with costs, and that played a part. Really excited with Western Range with the partnership with Baowu, which strengthens our connections with customers. It probably answers to some degree the Gudai-Darri phase two question as well. We're having a look at that project in terms of what is the development pathway that gives us the greatest value?
We have learned a lot about orebody. We have learned about environment. We have learned with the Gudai-Darri temporary crushing and screening that may provide a pathway that we're actually able to liberate greater value for Gudai-Darri. That's some of the work that we're currently progressing as part of an order of magnitude study, and we'll make those decisions and move forward. It will absolutely be part of our future. It probably just sits a bit beyond the ones on the bubble chart there.
Great. 2 more questions in the room here before we break for coffee. Keep in mind, there's another Q&A session at the end, and there's the break, and there's sandwiches after, so everybody in this room will be able to ask questions. Myles and then Dom, please. Myles here in the front.
Myles Allsop, UBS. Maybe Vivek, you could talk a little bit about your sort of long-term outlook for iron ore demand. Obviously, you've touched upon the growth that's coming in your future-facing commodities, but how do you look at overall iron ore demand in the context of scrap steel growth, in the context of the Asian, Indian demand potential?
We predict, in terms of total steel, which is the starting point for when we think about iron ore, broadly flat future growth, as India and ASEAN take over from China in terms of absolute growth. The scrap aspect of it will just keep the story relatively flat for steel. We have to translate that into iron ore. There's a couple of additional aspects that we need to think about when we're thinking about that flat line for steel, and iron ore's always going to be a little bit above that, or at least traded iron ore. Issue one is India and ASEAN, they're gonna grow. ASEAN doesn't have any iron ore of its own. That will add incrementally to iron ore demand above that flat line.
India, of course, has a lot of iron ore, but its scale of growth is gonna be enormous. Our expectation is that they'll begin to import iron ore, whereas at the moment they've been small exporters. That will add on top of that once more. The final point, the third point I'd like to add to it, is a key technological aspect. As we move in the future to greater use of scrap and indeed greater use of DRI in electric arc furnaces, that process is actually not very efficient at using iron ore, and you get yield losses. You need more iron ore per ton of steel used in the DRI electric arc furnace, and that will add yet another increment on top of iron ore.
We can see a number of very plausible scenarios growing demand for iron ore, even though the ultimate demand for primary steel might look flat.
Thanks. Dom? Yeah, just behind you there. Mic. There it is.
Hello. That was actually my question, so that's fine.
We take another one then.
Oh, fine.
No, Alain. Sorry.
Thank you. Alain Gabriel at Morgan Stanley. Simon, the question is on the unit cost. We have seen a big reset higher of unit cost in the last three years. Do you see any opportunities for reversing these trends as you accelerate decarbonization? Anything you can do better or faster than your peers?
Sure.
Great question.
Certainly escalation over the last few years across the industry, as the chart showed, has been above trend. Obviously this year you've seen energy prices, you've seen labor, you've seen some of those inflationary impacts. I guess what we're really focused on is making sure that we're driving productivity, that we're driving costs in the best way. We are breaking the trend line on some of those. Whilst work index increased at 12% through this year, next year we're expecting about 5%. A s we work our way through that next tranche of mine developments, that'll flow through. Obviously longer term, Rhodes Ridge will enable us to completely reset the business as well, and really position for the decades to come.
In terms of whether we can improve, absolutely. I think one of the really nice things we're seeing with SBS is some of the changes we're seeing both on safety, but also on productivity as well, and that will flow through into cost performance. We really needed to focus on stabilizing our front end. That's what I talked about last year at Capital Markets Day. We've seen some real improvements there. Stability means you can then really drive to optimize as well.
Follow up.
Thank you. 1 follow-up? Yeah, please go. Yeah.
Follow up on that question is... Nope?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Go on.
Just to follow up on that question is, as you decarbonize, as you spend more CapEx on renewables, are there any specific opportunities within that tranche to reduce your unit costs?
The solar farm that we talked about today, that gives you about $0.15-$0.20 in terms of reduction in your operating costs, because it's much lower cost as it's constructed. That does give us some real opportunities to reduce costs as we implement that program.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much. We now have a 20-minute break. 20 minutes, and as I said, please be back promptly. Those who didn't get a question will get the first question after the break. Thank you. The panel next?
Yeah, the panel next.
Yeah. No, no. Okay. Great. Welcome back, everybody, and thank you very much for coming back so promptly. We're starting the second part of this investor seminar with a topic that is obviously very important and very close to our heart, which is SPS. Hopefully you'll get some indication of the progress we are making, the plans for 2023, and the experience of our operators. Please, Belle.
Thank you. Welcome to our second panel. Whoops, just wait for everybody to sit down. Excellent. We'll talk about in the second panel about Safe Production System. We'll go a little bit deeper and zoom in into some of the discussions and that were already highlighted on Safe Production System. This is all linked to our objective of becoming best operator. It's a big program, a productivity program that we want to really drive over the next few years. It's a long-term, you know, we're looking at long-term benefits here in operational enhancement. We're looking at also additional benefits, including staff retention, engagement. We're seeing lots of things coming through there, including asset reliability.
With me on the panel, I've got actually a diverse panel, which will help us a little bit understand more, Safe Production System. Arnaud Soirat, our Chief Operating Officer, he's also our champion and have been the champion of this program for about 18 months. We've got Kelly, who you've met before, but Kelly's coming here also with her second hat of being our global lead for safety, because we've seen some big benefits here in safety. Kelly will share her thoughts on that. Simon, obviously, will drill down a bit more into what he's already shared in the previous discussion. Maybe to get us started, I'll ask Arnaud, you've been at it 18 months.
What are your key lessons, and what can you share in terms of also the chances of success of this program?
Yeah, thanks, Isabelle. We've seen it this morning on several examples. We'll go deeper into concrete examples. The Safe Production System is a key enabler to us becoming best operator. We've been making really good progress over the past 18 months. You may remember last year I explained some of the choices that we made, the strategic choices of how to better engage our people, how to encompass our approach into the cultural transformation that we're going into in Rio, how to create value to the triple bottom line with this. I know at times it could have been seen as surprising because it's quite a different approach compared to what we've ever done in Rio. For some people I can understand why the jury would be out.
The jury is coming today actually, and we're going to start to show you the tremendous impact it has where we're implementing SPS. We've been going, as you said, Isabelle, for 18 months, and we are going at a fast pace. We are now managing 30 deployments in 16 different sites. That's a very good outcome in 18 months. What we're seeing is, on average, across the globe, wherever we are implementing SPS, our people are more engaged, as James mentioned earlier on. Our people are safer, and they're running their operations better, and in a more stable way. Now, if we go to the next level of details, which is, I'll take a couple of examples of sites.
Maybe I'll start with Kennecott, because Kennecott was the first site where we implemented SPS at the concentrator. It's a good indication because now it's 18 months into SPS. The concentrator has been running extremely well, we've seen lots of benefits in people engagement, safety, cleanliness also of the site. What is really good, and it may be a first in Rio in many ways, not only have we improved the performance of the concentrator, but we've sustained it. As I explained last year, it's not too difficult to improve. It's a lot more difficult to sustain the improvements. The other example that I will take briefly is at IOC in Canada. One year into the deployment, the safety performance is going to be the best ever.
IOC is going to reduce its rate of serious injury frequency by a factor of five. That is quite remarkable. On top of it, they are breaking record concentrator production, you know, daily record, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. This year will be their second-best ever year in the consumption of their performance. You know, lots of tangible evidence of us being on the right track and making progress.
Thank you. Thank you, Arnaud. Maybe actually going to iron ore straight and what's been your experience, Simon, in the Pilbara, in iron ore as well and implementing on the ground? How difficult has it been?
A little bit of how Arnaud touched on earlier. One of the things I think is really good about SBS, it's systematic, it's structured, and it really empowers the front line. And maybe also just talk through some stories. Brockman last week. Brockman's in the central Pilbara. The greater Brockman area's about 80 million tons of our production base. And just talking to the team about the work that they were doing, and one team that had was looking at some of the delays in our with AutoHaul, and thinking about it differently and redesigning the way that we're doing haul roads. And they were, with great pride, talking me through, you know, 20 seconds on this corner.
They were starting to replicate that across that site, but then also across the system. At that site alone, calculated through the benefits they'd seen over a 3-month period, was around about 50,000 tons annual production uplift, just by taking out that 20 seconds on the corner. You know, the team that was redesigning the way that we were feeding one of our crushers, both in terms of the fragmentation and the way that we were doing that, but also in terms of the way we're using equipment and designing things differently. I guess the insight from that was SBS, in a structured way, was getting them to step in the shoes of others.
Not looking at drill and blast and their siloed metrics, but actually, how do I think about this in terms of helping my customer, which is the crust-crusher and the operations crew. The thing I loved about it the most, though, was a leader towards the end of the day, and he was talking about through SBS, and he was really applying it, and he was learning all he could about it and really motivated. It was a 20% increase in the engagement of his team. He was so proud that his team just loved talking about it. They were raising things they could do better, and they were getting dealt with.
They were raising irritants to their job that was holding them back, and they were getting dealt with, and that was different.
That's amazing. Actually, I've asked also the SBS team to come to my own team and to share their learnings on these mindsets and behaviors that can change, that can really unlock the solving of issues on the spot immediately and all that. It's fantastic. Kelly, maybe you can talk go a little bit deeper into that, the change in mindsets and behaviors and what you've seen from a safety point of view and in the functions as well, supporting our operations.
Thanks, Isabelle. We absolutely know that when people are respected and valued, their safety performance improves. We really, with SBS, really hardwiring this into our safety maturity model, so our safety model that helps us keep everyone safe. The mindsets and behaviors have been, this year, been put into our safety model. The safety maturity model is assessed at the end of the year to be able to link to our KPIs and our bonuses. We're about halfway through the assessment across all of the sites, and what we are seeing is a fundamental uplift in safety performance through the safety maturity model at a site that has SBS deployed. It's a massive change.
You can see it in the statistics very, very clearly on how the deployment is impacting safety. As Arnaud pointed to, just anecdotally at IOC, we're starting to see this replicate. It's really, really exciting to see, you know, how we've actually embedded these mindsets and behaviors. The checking of the rituals are still really important, and we know that that's what keeps people fatality-free and injury-free. How we go about doing that and how we get people to make safe decisions, really powerfully changing our business. The lessons that we're learning and the things that we're getting back from the front line is really making sure that we're hearing that in the functions.
We actually are, you know, setting the functions up in our business to actually make the assets the best they can be. What do they need? What does the front line need? How do we respect and value that front-line input and performance, and how do we help them really kick goals? Which is how we're realigning ourselves to really support this deployment and a significant change in our business.
Mm.
If I may, those leadership skills that are required to improve the safety performance are actually the same that are required to engage people and to help them to find better ways of working, more productive ways, less costly or cheaper ways of doing it. You can really see how all the work we're doing fundamentally on respect in Rio on the culture is actually helping influencing a much better safety performance and getting some great outcomes as well in terms of productivity and stability of our operations.
It's quite a rigorous approach actual ly to the deployment, but the question I'm getting often is that, but why don't we have any targets? Arnaud, why don't we have targets?
Well , rest assured, we do have targets. We've made a conscious decision. This is not a top-down target, because, we've seen it in Rio. You set top-down targets, sometimes when there is an emergency, it's perfectly appropriate.
Mm.
We get to that target, the issue is it doesn't stick and it doesn't last. Best operator requires a different approach. I'm absolutely convinced that we won't get to best operator through a succession of burning platforms and some kind of coercive control of some sort. That is completely a thing of the past. We'll get to best operator by convincing our people, by engaging them, by having a bottom-up approach and helping them to have their say on how they can run their business better. We're seeing some tangible evidence of this. We are helping the team to better understand the potential of their business and to go for it. We support them.
Look, there is a great example with Simon and his team at aiming for an additional 5 million tons of production in the Pilbara next year. That is not coming from Jakob. It's not coming from me. It's really us helping Simon and his team see the real potential. That's what we're going to do for 2023. We're going to continue to focus and go deeper and wider on our priority sites. We're going to bring other sites into SPS, and in some ways prepare the next wave of priority sites in 2024 and 2025. We're going also, as Simon mentioned in his presentation, to continue focusing on improving the health of our equipment and doing Kaizen. Last year, we committed to 80 Kaizen for this year, and we've already passed that target.
It's creating really good value and good pull from the operations as well.
Thank you. Simon? Yeah.
I think one of the things we really thought about and grappled with at the start was to Arnaud's point around making sure we had buy-in from the teams, because we've seen, you know, programs over the years, if you don't get that foundation right at the start, then the change actually takes much, much longer or you never get there. We probably took longer at that first phase than we would normally to really make sure it stuck. Once it sticks, then the teams are actually defining things themselves and really going after them.
Certainly, we shouldn't underestimate how much we have in front of us, because there are, you know, substantial opportunities in our business, and things we really wanna go after. Doing it in the right way with the right engagement actually means you go through it much faster, I think.
Yeah.
That's-
Also, now that we're deploying it across the whole world, there is a real benefit in people learning from each other.
Mm-hmm.
We do have our fair share of doubting Thomas in Rio, and people tend to believe what they see. Actually now they can have a chance to come and see.
Mm-hmm.
You know, talk to their peers, learn from them. How is that working? How are you really creating sustainable value with your business, with SPS? We're at that phase now.
It's wonderful to see the learning and learning across the group and the functions as well, and everybody feeding and then deploying it in the next phase as well. Thank you very much. I think our time has run out, but hopefully it's given you some additional insight into Safe Production System, what we're doing, the aim, and how we're systematically actually rolling it out to get the lasting long-term benefits that we want to see across the board. Thank you to the panelists.
Thanks.
Now I would like to invite Ivan to share an overview of the aluminum business. Thank you.
Great. T Hanks, Isabelle, and it was a great panel, and I'll just take the opportunity to call out Arnaud's birthday today. He had the joy of celebrating his birthday and talking about SPS.
A dream come true.
Look, good morning, good evening, everyone, and welcome to any other attendees who might have joined from North America. They're probably just waking up now as well. It's a great pleasure to be back here again this year to share an update on the aluminum business and some of the changes over the last 12 months. In the next 15 minutes, I wanna share some reflections on the attractiveness of the aluminum industry and also some of the short-term trends that we're seeing. I'll describe some of the work that we've been doing to improve our operations and bring some of our assets back to full capacity while also deploying the Rio Tinto Safe Production System. I'm gonna talk through the actions that we're taking around decarbonization. As you know, aluminum is a huge part of the carbon footprint in Rio Tinto.
Of course, the potential for growth in the low-carbon aluminum business in our North American region in Canada. Finally, I'll share a short update on the work that we're doing more broadly around Rio Tinto's positioning in North America and how we can help with the energy transition. Earlier today, Vivek shared some of the insights around the macro drivers that we're seeing around the world. The aluminum industry is heavily affected by these mega trends. We continue to validate our conviction of the structural shift in the industry. The demand for aluminum in green applications is driving most of the growth that we're seeing in our sector. This of course, includes things like electric vehicles, packaging, the buildup of the renewables capacity and power networks. We're also seeing customers becoming more and more ESG conscious in their purchasing behaviors.
They've introduced, in many cases, zero carbon emissions targets for their products. Some are committing to only purchase ultra-low carbon primary aluminum. Our customers are also starting to look beyond just the carbon content to also pursuing aluminum that is responsibly produced right through the value chain. We've been doing some exciting work on the development of scandium aluminum alloys. Nigel mentioned a bit of this earlier. The attractive strength properties of these alloys have been known for some time. The application's been limited because of the limited capacity or availability of this scandium material to alloy with our aluminum.
Now we can actually start to combine scandium from our iron and titanium business with our aluminum production, and we're seeing growing opportunity for this alloy in a range of areas, like aerospace, vehicle components, and power-related components. This is just one example of how we're finding better ways to meet the evolving needs of our customers in the energy transition. Looking at the supply side, we've got a leading position in the most privileged segment of this industry. Along with only a few other competitors, we've got access to low-cost, self-generated hydropower. This is a unique and highly constrained segment with little potential for growth. This segment, which reflects zero carbon energy at very low cost, is particularly attractive, and it's an exclusive club, even more so as we observe more and more of the market self-sanctioning the use of Russian metal.
More than half of the industry relies on coal-based power, particularly in China, this is becoming more and more constrained, as illustrated with China's 45 million ton production cap on aluminum. It's also a segment that is gonna face increasing economic challenges from the energy transition. Over the past 12 months, what we've seen is government starting to take real action to accelerate the energy transition, but also protecting growth and jobs. Of course, while doing that, they're looking to shore up supply of strategic materials like aluminum. Governments from Canada, the U.S., and Australia have all been clear about their support, but also their expectations as we decarbonize our operations. The combination of these demand and these supply trends is confirming our conviction in the future of the aluminum industry. Aside from this structural shift, aluminum is, and will continue to be, a cyclical industry.
There are strong relationships between raw material, energy cost, and metal prices, and the industry is currently facing a significant margin squeeze. The chart on the left here shows the correlation between the margins of the 75th percentile of the global aluminium cost curve and the relative size of metal inventories. Typically, aluminium producers would see higher margins when inventories are so low, but this is not true today. We see that current context as an anomaly, most likely due to the very negative economic sentiment that we see in key markets. The global energy crisis is also creating further impacts, and this can be seen on the chart on the right. The impact of energy prices has stretched the relationship between raw materials and LME prices to peaks higher than what we've seen in previous cycles.
Rio Tinto has a global portfolio of assets across the aluminum value chain, and we tend to look at these through four lenses. The first, and this is where we have real ambition to grow our Canadian assets. Highly competitive part of our business in a very, very attractive, structurally short North American market. The second, and by contrast, our smelters on the east coast of Australia and New Zealand carry much more difficult contexts. We're challenging ourselves to deliver more value as we seek to repower these smelters on competitive terms with green energy sources. As the industry's largest third-party bauxite supplier, we have developed significant presence in the seaborne bauxite market, and we're looking to maintain our options there. The fourth lens, the integrated bauxite and alumina value chain, this is the lens that links the other components together.
Through this and our asset base, we have a long Pacific and short Atlantic position, and we're looking to continuously optimize and provide secure low-cost feed for our smelters. Across each of these four lenses, we are working on strengthening our business. We are consolidating our position as the preeminent integrated aluminum business in the Western world. In 2022, some of our assets have continued to shine and really show their stability and strong performance coming out of a difficult period during COVID-19. Through this period, I've been so impressed with the team, their deep focus on safety, and their continued progress in controlling critical hazards. However, we've also had some challenges. In Boyne Smelter in Queensland and Kitimat in British Columbia, we're working hard to address these challenges and bring these assets back to full capacity.
The operational and instability issues that we've seen this year have reinforced our need to continue investing in our people and the health of our assets right through the cycle. Our work in implementing SBS will be a key part of institutionalizing high levels of productivity and strong engagement from our frontline teams. While we're just at the early days of our SBS rollout, we're already seeing an increase in employee engagement. Both VAP production and process stability have improved at our cast houses where we've deployed SBS. As we continue the deployment of SBS across all of our assets, we expect to see further improvements in reliability and the performance of our operations. Let me give you a bit more detail on our ongoing recovery and restart programs at BSL and Kitimat.
At BSL, we had a cell excursion at line 3 in the second quarter this year. The cause was a combination of underlying asset health issues and a decline in technical capability over the last five years. This excursion happened at a time of high absenteeism rates due to COVID, and also this was compounded by high levels of turnover. We stabilized the line, but lost 70 cells in that excursion. The recovery is now progressing well, and we're fixing the underlying issues. We expect to complete this work in the first half of next year. At Kitimat, since the end of the strike just over a year ago, we've been working diligently to ramp back up to full capacity and stabilize our operations.
We have experienced a variety of equipment-related issues during this ramp-up, and we now expect to only complete that full ramp-up later in 2023. A big part of the focus in Kitimat continues to be building a strong, respectful culture right across the site. We've been working with local union, and this transformation will take some time, but jointly, we're convinced that we will deliver a much better outcome with an engaged and more effective workforce. We've also taken time to review the bottlenecks and the health of the full suite of assets on the site, and we've got a program of sustaining capital projects to address these issues, ith these changes, we expect Kitimat to become a high-performing smelter and one of the flagships in our entire aluminum portfolio.
We are actively investing in our business to strengthen our leadership position in the aluminum industry. As I mentioned earlier, our access to self-generated hydropower is a source of competitive advantage, and we're working hard to protect and consolidate this. In Saguenay in Quebec and in Kemano in British Columbia, we have commenced a program to refurbish and lift the capacity of our existing hydropower stations. We recently finalized the Kemano Tunnel Two project which provides redundancy and ensures Kitimat continues to have some of the lowest cost power in the entire aluminum industry. Meanwhile, in Australia, we've identified a pathway to turn BSL into the industry's first large-scale aluminum smelter operating fully on firmed solar and wind renewable power.
We're making great progress working closely with governments and renewable developers to progress an innovative solution which would see us deliver over 4.5 gigawatts of renewable capacity. We've recently announced that we're increasing our billet production with a $188 million project at Alma. We've taken some initial steps expanding our recycling footprint with post-consumer scrap recycling and our Saguenay announcements. We're looking for opportunities to expand this further. We believe strongly in the need for recycled metal to complement our primary production. We're currently assessing the potential for growth in the Saguenay, and the first area of focus is replacing the existing production capacity at the Arvida smelter, which is due to close in a few years' time. When it closes, we're looking to replace that with the expansion of an AP60 smelter.
AP60 is the lowest carbon-intensive technology that we have ready now, implementing it will halve the carbon emissions from that site for the same metal output. Finally, last but not least, of course, we are continuing to make great progress with ELYSIS. This is truly a breakthrough for the aluminum sector. As Mark mentioned earlier, this is technology that helps us remove carbon from the entire smelting process. The construction of the large 450 kiloamp demonstration cells at Alma is progressing well, and we expect commissioning in 2023. In addition to this, we're also accelerating the first deployment of ELYSIS. We're working on a study right now and looking to commence construction in 2023. Advancing these projects requires us to have strong relationships with governments and First Nations.
With First Nations groups, we are working hard to ensure that our objectives and our pathways are aligned. In some parts of our business, these relationships have been fragile. Our focus is on deepening them, and this has been welcomed. Rio Tinto has a vision to become the leading supplier of green materials to support the energy transition in North America. We're already the largest diversified mining company operating in North America. We have deep technological capability and advanced critical minerals research centers right across this region. We have competitive energy access and port infrastructure in multiple locations. We have great partnerships with governments, and we want to work with their support to invest in meeting the demands for critical and strategic minerals.
We operate a set of privileged industrial sites right across Canada and the U.S., which would be very hard, if not impossible today, to replace, given all of the environmental constraints. Together, these factors mean that Rio Tinto has the foundation to grow and deliver materials that North America needs for the energy transition. In short, I am very excited about the potential for our aluminum business and more broadly, Rio Tinto right across North America. We have a fantastic suite of assets. We are focused on what it's gonna take to be best operator. We're delivering the recovery plans at our operations in BSL and Kitimat, and we're rolling out and deploying SPS. We're working on our capital intensity with a big focus on that first project in AP60, and we're continuing to invest in our people and our leadership.
Together, this is part of a broader vision for Rio Tinto to become the leading producer and partner of choice for green materials. Thanks for listening today. I'm gonna hand over to Kelly now for the last panel. They're gonna talk a bit more about our growth pipeline, projects, and further developments. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Ivan. With me on the panel today is Mark Alden and Simon, who you've all heard from. This is our third panel and most exciting panel, I should say. The reason I'm excited about it is that our predecessors made great decisions to allow us to have a really good business today. I'm really fortunate to be able to spend time with Leigh Clifford, Leon Davis, and John Ralph, who have made significant decisions for us to have a business today that is fabulous. Our job is to make sure that there's a really good pipeline of projects for the future, and we have got lots and lots of projects in that pipeline.
We do have some challenges, and we do have some challenges into execution. Maybe Mark, I'll hand to you, to sort of give us a bit of insight about what we saw in some of those challenges and what we're learning.
Yeah. Look, thank you very much, Kelly. There's probably 4 key challenges I think we've experienced in the sort of projects in the last 2 years. You know, firstly, I think it's around approvals. Secondly, I think around labor availability. Third would be productivity, and fourth would be ESG. If I just work through those quickly in order. Approvals, you know, we're actually having to learn to work in a respectful way with our traditional owners, with our communities, and incorporating that into our normal engineering process, which actually means that we have to change the way that we do studies. I think we've got some great examples. I think Simon referenced Western Range, you know, and working really collaboratively with our communities there.
On labor availability, we've seen some real struggles to get enough labor to build. I think one of our projects, we didn't get above 60% of the planned labor for structural and mechanical. What we're doing there is we're actually trying to learn some of the lessons that we've learnt really well in OT about really developing, you know, a local labor force. That's the only way we kept that project moving, you know, throughout Covid. We try to take that to Guinea and to Argentina and really build that local labor force there.
I think, on impeccable ESG, you know, we are really learning that the better we can build, the less impact we can have on the environment, you know, the better our chances of getting through the approvals process. This is really important around, you know, tailings. Tailings is often a real constraint on how we can build. It's also really critical on water. Rincon, actually, the full potential of Rincon is gonna be defined by how well we can optimize the use of water. Lastly, productivity. I mean, we've actually seen a 50% decrease in construction productivity across the world in the last, you know, 15-20 years, and we actually really have to do something about that. There's lots of tools.
We can, you know, really move to a far more modular type approach, and we're doing that on Rincon, because the more we can do in a factory, the better we can drive costs and productivity. The more we do on site, you know, the worse it gets. We're also really trying to learn some of the lessons from SPS and apply it into the projects. We saw a great example of this with Kemano, where we more than doubled the productivity of that TBM using some of those basic SPS techniques, and we're picking that up and taking it to shafts three and four at OT.
Excellent. Mark, tell us a little bit more because we've seen you, start to really think about how do we compress the timelines. How do we set up studies and a design component?
Yeah. Look, I think, you know, Vivek gave us a great reason as to why we're actually gonna have to build, you know, projects faster and cheaper. You know, the demands that society have for us coming out of this energy transition, the gap in supply means we're really gonna have to really build things differently. What we're trying to do is really look across the entire value chain, the entire development chain, really, from exploration through to studies through to projects. I guess there's some technical things that we can do. In exploration, we're doing a lot on, you know, really rapid core scanning, big data, how we drive exploration much faster and make decisions.
Most importantly really is around the mindsets and behaviors, the culture. There, what we're trying to do is really pick up, you know, some of the lessons that we've talked about earlier today and build a team that is really focused on delivering a business and building a business. Not, you know, working as one team. You have really much more agile and much more rapid ways of decision-making. We've tried to streamline a lot of our processes to allow that rapid decision-making. You know, that risk-based approach to development. Not ticking every box, but ticking the important boxes. I think Rincon is probably our best example. Rincon, I think, yeah, within about 2 weeks of the getting the keys, the team was knocking on the door saying, "If you wanna hit this schedule, you're gonna have to place long-lead items now. You're gonna have to order the camp, you're gonna have to order the evaporator." We went to Jakob and we placed it. As a result, you know, that camp was on the ground within 3 months of us actually taking the keys. We're looking to have the initial production out of there within 18 months of taking the keys. Looking at a really modular step-by-step, you know, ramping up as fast as our permitting will allow us. I think the glimmer of hope is there that we can do this faster and better.
Great. Moving to OT, which is our biggest project in execution. It kind of covers both yourself, Mark, and Bold. Mark, just staying with you know, can you give us a bit of insight into how we're gonna hit those technical milestones and ramp up to the design capacity?
Look, we're on track for hitting sustainable production in the first half of 2023. Really due to an amazing effort by the Projects team and Bold's Operations team. You know, COVID was pretty difficult. I think on the project side, at one point last year, we had 180 people out of a plant, 3,000. You know, the only way that we got through was, you know, huge amount of dedication from our teams. Looking forward, I guess we've got three critical things that we really have to deliver. You know, shafts 3 and 4, which is 2 of the largest shafts in the world, are critical for ventilation, for the development of panels 1 and 2.
We have to drive those, you know, with as much productivity as we can and learn the lessons, you know, from our previous experiences. We also have to deliver the concentrator expansion to make sure that the concentrator can deal with that increased tons of high-grade ore coming out of the underground. We have to deliver materials handling system too. The second crusher and the second materials handling system necessary to ramp up. Those are the three critical things for us to be pushing through next year.
Bold, how's the team on the ground getting ready for this to be able to operate and think about what it looks like? I know you're, you and Mark have done a lot of work to bring your teams together.
I'm biased, right? Every time I go to OT it gives me thrills because the 20,000 Mongolians underground is like horde. You know, like, you know, I think we're actually making a huge difference. I mean, 97% local Mongolian content and, you know, just teams are amazing. I mean, we grew from 14,000 because there was a new mining law, you know, this labor legislation that added the fourth shift. It is the safest operation at Rio at the moment, the highest engagement score at Rio. It's, it's a young organization relatively speaking, but it's massively engaging. You know, the biggest challenge now we have is, you know, some of our global friends are poaching our people.
There's an amazing talent of people going into the U.S. and Australia, and it's great to see that. I think, you know, take a huge pride in that. I think in terms of, you know, underground development, I just discovered you actually never finish it, because you continuously dig tunnels. I know that, you know, we just wanna have a phase where we finish OT, but Mark is gonna finish maybe the shafts and then obviously the concentrator expansion. We'll need to have continuous underground development. Next year, 2023, is just the beginning of a ramp-up, and it's just panel 0. After that, we have panel 1 and panel 2, and as soon as Mark delivers ventilation, we're gonna look forward to, you know, expanding into panel 1 and 2. There's a lot of work still ahead of us.
I mean, underground block caves are most difficult, technically complex ore bodies. This is our 2023 focus, just making sure we have the best, as far as we can, the preparation ahead of the caving. We're a bit ahead of schedule so far. I think, you know, in terms of, you know, the developments of the drawbells. Can we predict exactly how the cave is gonna work? I think we do have some good ideas. I mean, one of the things that we've done is, through the IT organization of Peter Cunningham, we actually have a digital twin with Palantir. We're actually using Silicon Valley technology and partnering, making sure that we're trying to get ready as far as good as possible. The first half 2023, that's our target.
You've also got some really other great projects in your pipeline. Nuton has been talked about already, but you've got Kennecott Underground and resolution also.
The other part I really get excited about is the U.S. I think, you know, the part about the U.S. is the Kennecott, which is 120 years and amazing history with Jackling coming and, you know, really, you know, developing that mine. You know, for me, it's about actually 40-plus year mine life of Kennecott. Underground characterization has started only this year. The integrated scans project, there's more to come on that. The ore body is showing quite a lot of promise. I think for us, Resolution is, you know, again, the next OT-like super ore body, right? I mean, in copper, you don't get large 30 million ton ore bodies. They don't lie around, you know, there's only few, and this is the largest in the U.S.
I think when you look at structurally the U.S., U.S. uses about 2 million tons of copper, but it imports 1 million tons, and it produces 1 million tons. The energy transition is gonna force the U.S. to go to 4 million tons of annual copper consumption, and unless there's new mines developed, not only just concentrator, but smelters, the U.S. could potentially face a 75% import dependency. From a critical minerals standpoint, supply chain security, there's a lot of focus on copper in the U.S., and obviously we're very excited to have one of the only 2 smelters that are running. You go from a concentrate of 25% to 99% copper, there's only 2 smelters in the U.S. We're one of them. We get very excited about obviously our smelter shut next year and then getting that up and running.
Nuton is, you know, Nuton is actually something that the R&D team has been working on for 20 years. This isn't like new invention. This is just a legacy of the predecessors and how we kept that project going. Actually, it started with La Granja because it had high arsenic content, and we needed to crack that code. Now I think there's more to come on Nuton, but it's early.
Exciting.
Exciting.
We've already Simon already talked to about Simandou, Diavik. We've talked about Rhodes, which I'm very excited about, having worked in the iron ore business, knowing that Rhodes is always gonna be coming. It's very, very exciting. You know, Gudai-Darri is now commissioned, and it was pitched as the mine of the future. What does the mine of the future really look like, and will it sort of apply to Rhodes?
Rhodes gives us the opportunity to really step back with a clean sheet and design something that will really take us forward for the next decades. It does give us a real structural shift because of the closeness of the ore body and the nature of the topography there is a bit easier than some of our sites. You touched on it, actually, Kelly. I was reflecting on what you said at the start. It's one of the things we talk about as a leadership team. We've got to leave our jobs with more options than we came in with. That's got to be part of the role, and that's really exciting with Rhodes because excel in development, you gotta have options to be an excellent developer.
You go break holding options too, you gotta be really good at execution, as well, which is, which has been talked about. You know, if you look on all this year, you know, the supply from the majors is about where it was in 2018. That points to some of the difficulty of supply and progressing projects. That can be a core competitive advantage because it's true in iron ore, it's true of a lot of our commodities where there is supply-side restrictions. This work is about finding a pathway, finding a pathway through that, and that is a core competitive advantage. I'm very excited about what our future is. Like you say, Simon, it's about setting up options for the future and building on what the giants of our industry and our business left us to operate and how do we set that up for the future. With that, I'm going to hand to Peter to give you the financial implications of all this excitement. The commitments that we've made. Thanks very much, guys.
Thanks, Kelly.
Thanks, Kelly.
Thanks, Kelly and team. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Over the last few hours, the teams outlined the very dynamic changes in our business with significant progress delivered in the last 12 months. My role is to bring this together through the financials. Critically, we will continue to allocate our capital with great discipline. We remain committed to attractive shareholder returns underpinned by strong and resilient cash flows and our balance sheet. Let's start with capital allocation. We will continue to invest consistently through the cycle, balancing near-term returns to shareholders with reinvestment and de-risking future cash flows. Essential CapEx remains our priority for capital allocation. It includes sustaining CapEx to ensure the integrity of our assets, high returning replacement projects, and decarbonization investment. This is followed by ordinary dividends within our well-established returns policy.
We attest investment in compelling growth against debt management and additional cash returns to shareholders. Turning to our capital expenditure profile, we expect to invest just under $7 billion this year compared to our original guidance of $8 billion. This reduction reflects a stronger US dollar and updated phasing of decarbonization and project spend. We still expect a disciplined increase in capital expenditure. Our annual spend on sustaining capital is stable at around $3.5 billion on average. Although we will have some years with one-offs, such as the chemical smelter shut in 2023. Our replacement capital, which delivers very attractive returns, remains in the $2 billion-$3 billion range.
We expect growth capital to be around $2 billion in 2023, putting total CapEx in the $8 billion-$9 billion range, with the major source of uncertainty being the ramp-up of spend at Simandou. In 2024 and 2025, we still expect capital in the $9 billion-$10 billion range as growth projects progress. Our best estimate of CapEx to decarbonize our business remains at $7.5 billion until 2030. Including about $1.5 billion over the next three years, which will be backend dated. We also require new long-term power contracts for our aluminum business to meet our targets. Looking ahead, our incremental operating expenditure on building new teams and energy efficiency initiatives remains around $200 million in addition to the R&D investment that Nigel went through.
We believe that $3 billion remains the right amount of annual growth capital for us to target. Over the next 3 years, our largest project is expected to be our equity share of Simandou at around 45%. At Oyu Tolgoi underground, our spend will start to wind down following first sustainable production in the first half of next year. We expect the remainder to be invested in copper and lithium and potentially aluminum as we progress studies on our new AP62 smelter expansion, as Ivan outlined. As I've mentioned before, investment in growth is highly dependent on the timing of commitments as we prove up the value of opportunities. If we cannot develop value-accretive options, we will follow our capital allocation framework. Simandou is a clear example of this.
It's in our capital guidance, but is dependent on us reaching agreement to commit to the project with our JV partners, the government of Guinea, and WCS on the infrastructure pathway. To drive long-term value, we're also spending more on exploration and evaluation. Our budget for greenfield exploration remains around $250 million, mainly focused on copper with a growing battery materials program. Spend on our evaluation projects is gathering momentum as we advance studies where we expect near-term investment decisions. We're also focused on longer term studies, such as the Rhodes Ridge Iron Ore project, as Simon talked about. This disciplined spend is critical to ensure we have the right portfolio to keep creating value for the decades to come, benefiting from the energy transition.
As Vivek mentioned, we see a significant uplift in new demand from this transition, adding as much as 25% over and above traditional sources of demand on a copper equivalent basis across our key products by 2035. When I think about decarbonization, it's an absolute positive for our industry. The world will need more aluminum, more copper, more high-grade iron ore, and more lithium. This is where we're focusing our growth investments. However, we will only invest in quality assets which give robust returns under a range of economic, geopolitical, and carbon scenarios, creating a resilient portfolio with a significant upside to the energy transition. We're applying similar approach to our decarbonization. It's about de-risking cash flows for the longer term while remaining very disciplined. We'll also be well-positioned to benefit from any carbon incentives if these are rolled out more widely.
Our framework guides our decision-making. These projects can have very different technical risk profiles, from tried and tested to pioneering technology, and trade-offs between transitionary and long-term solutions. Many require a carbon price to compete at the challenging internal hard hurdle rate we set for investment. The framework has five key elements: value, materiality of abatement, maturity of emission reduction, competitiveness versus internal and external benchmarks, and alignment with the net zero 2050 target. This ensures our investments are phased in the most logical way, prioritizing near-term work around energy inputs and where we already see attractive economics. Up to 2030, there are six buckets with different economic characteristics. As Mark Alden outlined, the most important contribution will come from commercial solutions, predominantly the repowering of the Pacific smelters.
As these are grid connected, we will be seeking to achieve this through strong government partnerships and long-term contracts without using our own capital. We will need to be convinced that the assets will remain competitive over the coming decades. The second and third components relate to capital solutions. Here, we see technically deliverable projects at two ranges of carbon price with around 30% of our decarbonization CapEx to 2030. The analysis shows that economics, capital, and carbon abatement are not always closely correlated. The economics of investments in bucket three benefit from other value drivers. Many reduce our exposure to volatile input costs. The renewable spend in our Pilbara system is a significant component of our decarb CapEx at around $3 billion by 2030. However, it comprises two distinct phases.
Phase one is no regrets and competitive at a carbon price of less than $40 per ton. More on that shortly. Phase two is a large build-out to 1 gigawatt by 2030, with significant investment in transmission infrastructure. This will support full decarbonization post-2030, for which we estimate will require close to 3 gigawatts. 2030 is clearly a key year for our targets, it is an artificial cutoff, with full build-out beyond this point, leveraging phase two infrastructure. We will keep optimizing this plan to lower the or change the timing of spend. This is where the work of our global diesel team and the renewables plan intersect. We need to time our investment in renewables to align with battery technology solutions for our heavy mobile equipment.
The fifth component, solutions under review, is reliant on technology development. This is where we see the economics firming over time. You heard Nigel talk to these earlier. They include heavy mobile fleet electrification, minerals processing, and the removal of the more complex parts of process heat in alumina refinery. We anticipate that up to a third of our decarbonized CapEx to 2030 will be invested in these projects. We continue to look at a range of pathways. The sixth and final component relates to nature-based solutions, as Mark referenced, where we will develop high-quality assets at or near our sites at an average carbon price of around $30 a ton. Let's take a closer look at two of our near-term projects.
Phase one of Pilbara Renewables comprises around $600 million investment in 200 megawatt hours of storage, in addition to our existing 34 megawatts Gudai-Darri Solar Farm. We expect this to abate around 300,000 tons of CO2 per year and reduce annual gas costs by $55 million at current prices. The second is at the Queensland Alumina Refinery, where we are working on converting its three high-temperature digestion units to a double digestion configuration. By investing around $250 million, we save around $80 million in annual operating costs, and CO2 emissions reduce by 350,000 tons a year on a 100% basis. Implementing a flow sheet change at a complex brownfield site is, of course, not without risk.
There is also potential production upside at QAL, and the process could be replicated at the Yarwun Refinery. Let's turn to costs. We've experienced cost pressures from COVID, the commodity cycle, and broad-based market inflation. Our focus has to be to remain as disciplined as possible, recognizing the pressure has been broadly equal across industry cost curves. As you can see from this chart, our EBITDA margin has been very resilient over the longer term, with revenues and costs moving in tandem. Cost rises and declines can take more time to flow through. We are experiencing this right now, particularly in aluminum. Looking through this volatility, it's the quality of our assets and our position on the cost curve that ensures the resilience and consistency of our cash flow margins and returns throughout the cycle. Let's now take a look at the balance sheet.
We were in a modest net cash position at the 30th of June, but we expect to move to a net debt position by year end following payment of our $4.3 billion interim dividend in September. We've chosen not to have a net debt target, but have adopted a principles-based approach to anchor the balance sheet around a single A credit rating. This enables us to run our business consistently and maintain investment regardless of where we are in the cycle. We've remained very consistent with our shareholder returns policy, with the payout ratio giving us some flexible to the macro environment. It remains a core part of our equity story. Over the last six years, we have paid out 60% on the ordinary dividend, with additional returns, taking our annual average payout to 74%. Our approach is about creating long-term value for shareholders.
In the short term, that means delivery of strong and resilient cash flows from our quality portfolio of assets, which we're strengthening further through our SPS program, as we've outlined today. Over the longer term, we're set to benefit from value-accretive growth in those materials that will be privileged in a decarbonizing world. At all times, we will continue to pay attractive dividends in line with our policy. With that, let's move to our final Q&A session.
Great. Second session, I'll take 2 questions in the room. There were 2 outstanding from the previous session still, and then we'll go online. Ephram, you were, yeah, there you are. Ephrem Ravi. Thank you.
Thanks. Three questions. Firstly, on the iron ore business, how are you thinking about your customers' decarbonization, you know, pathways, with sort of higher grade iron ore requirements and your own business grade, how it's aligned? The question is basically, if everyone requires 65%-67% and the preference of magnetite in HBI, how are you going to sort of fix that issue given your current portfolio, which is more like 62%, in terms of overall? Are you investing in beneficiation, et cetera? The second question related to the decarbonization framework, that, was presented, in terms of capital allocation. I mean, I'm thinking of how best to answer this question.
If carbon prices drop below $20 per ton for whatever reason, in theory it makes sense to defer all these decarbonization expenses as far as possible to kind of, you know, get into time value of money. If carbon prices drop, will you kind of rephrase these decarbonization expenses again, i.e., as happened this year, will you kind of push out your decarbonization CapEx, you know, in outer years as well? Sorry, third and final question. Now that growth of $3 billion per year is back on the table, obviously your ROCEs have gone up significantly over the last 10 years. That's a good problem to have.
Mm.
The market now expects you to make 30%-40% ROCEs going forward rather than 15%-20%. How are you thinking about that in terms of your return requirements when you are approving new projects? That was quite a lot. I'll ask Nigel Stewart and Peter Cunningham to answer. But I just wanted to make the point, because isn't it beautiful that we finally seems to be able to progress Simandou because the world needs it more than ever? If you look very carefully on the footnotes on the slides about Simandou, you will see that it's, what is it, 40-45%. It's of so high grade that it can go straight through a DRI, electric arc furnace. That's actually, if you do the math, the biggest contribution we can make to reducing the Scope 2 Scope 3 emissions. It's massive. On top of that, also at the same time unlocking Rhodes Ridge, which is very high grade.
It's, you can just see that we have done some super tangible steps towards meeting the needs of the future. Your question was deeper and more complex. Nigel, I need your assistance here.
You're quite right. The iron ore quality that goes into direct reduced iron furnaces today, the shaft furnaces, requires, you know, high grade ore, above 65% iron. The challenge that we're gonna face collectively as an industry, as a, you know, iron ore supplier, and also as the steel industry is, how can we get that scale down? How can we go to sort of lower grades? This is what we're doing with our customers. Al spoke to the fact that we're doing this with BlueScope. The key thing is, it's not that we can't actually reduce the iron ore in a shaft furnace with a lower grade, it's what you do with the gang, the slag that forms afterwards.
You can't put that directly into an electric arc furnace, you have to have some other form of melting technology. There are melting furnaces that exist in the world that we can use. What we'll do is we'll tap that slag off at that stage, and then the iron then goes into, you know, conventional steel making. That can be, you know, through an electric arc route or some other route. This is the way we see it. It's really important that we work with our customers and work with technology providers to prove all of this out. This is the pathway that we're taking. That's just one.
There are other technologies that are out there that are being explored at the moment, and we're keeping an open mind, and we're exploring all of those. They're actually addressing this issue as well about how do you go to sort of broader iron ore qualities and still make high-quality iron and steel.
Great. Allow me, Peter, it's for you. I've been a CFO for 25 years, so I simply have to answer 1 thing. It really is super irrelevant whether a company have 40% return on capital employed or 5% in terms of investment decisions. What is absolutely great is that we have seen an improved profitability, and that means we have a super resilient business. Our responsibility is that every forward spending is value accretive, independent of what our return on capital employed is. I hope you see this was the key thing of today, is that we're not wasting any shareholders' money, neither on growth investments nor on decarbonization. Peter, over to you. I'm not CFO anymore.
I completely agree. No, I just really answer the first question about carbon price. I mean, fundamentally what we're doing is for the long term. It's to de-risk the assets for the very long term. We're doing it in a very logical way. Hopefully, what you took out of today is that we're progressively moving through the project sort of curve, if you like, to really make sure we're taking those opportunities that are there that present attractive economics now and set us up for the long term. Some of those near-term opportunities actually take away volatility of the business. By deploying, you know, renewables within the business, we're taking out some of those exposures to sort of gas prices and coal prices within the business.
I think we're just taking a very logical but long-term view of this, and making sure that our plans really sort of link together the technology pathways and the economics in a very disciplined way. On return of capital, Jakob, I think you said it all.
Super. Thank you. Danielle, you had a question before the break.
Yeah.
In the middle there, Danielle.
Thank you. Danielle Chigumira from Credit Suisse. A couple of questions from my side. I'll start with the first. On the decarbonization spend, given you're running almost a year behind in terms of the near-term spend objectives, is the 2030 target at risk? Just on the slide 39, you had 2.4 million tons of other reduction, of which 1 million tons is nature-based solution. Should we assume that the rest, as in the 1.4, is like carbon credits that you'll go out and buy in the market?
Yeah, Mark, why don't you...
I think in reality, I think there is a pathway to that 2030. And we can work through it with those 6 levers we identified. In terms of that 2.4 gap, the 1 million on nature-based solutions is just the first 4 projects. Obviously, there's a second round of projects that we are progressing now that will add to that. It also in that other bucket includes things like energy efficiency, et cetera. Those smaller projects that don't fit within those 6 big buckets. It's not all gonna be going and buying credits on the market. There's a bunch of other options that we have.
I will say just a couple of things. First of all, yes, we have not spent as much capital, but we have actually spent a lot of operating expenditures, and that's kind of the phasing of it. We're getting an awful lot, and I hope you can see that from the presentation. We're getting an awful lot done, but it has taken a little bit longer to spend the capital. Capital is the back end of the, of the project. We are absolutely committed to the 2030 target. I wanna say one last thing because I didn't have the chance for presenting this nature-based solutions. This is something that's becoming really, really big in the world.
Two weeks ago, I hosted one of these civil society roundtables. All the civil society people, they're just super excited about we're doing. Given the fact that we have so much land, we can actually make a real difference there. I would argue one of the ways of de-risking our 2030 targets is actually that we have that. You know, we have the six work stream plus one. The plus one is an amazing offset really for the benefit of the planet, plus achieving our targets.
Thank you. One follow-up.
Yeah, one follow-up. Yeah, please.
Just taking it back to the beginning of the day, talking about culture and the desire to create an environment of safety, psychologically, physically, et cetera. Obviously, part of that is reducing sexual harassment. What tangible steps have been put in place to reduce that? Is there a move towards thinking about incidents of sexual harassment in the same way that we think about other injuries, as in you kind of down tools and you do an analysis? Is that part of the way that you're thinking about it?
Kelly?
No. Anything to do with sexual harassment is intolerable. We are treating the reports very, very seriously. There's been an absolute increase in and a change in the way that we hear these reports and ensure people are staying safe whilst they get cared for. There's been a significant change under leadership, the leadership of Isabelle around how do we actually investigate and how do we actually take things forward and what do we learn and how much we need to change in our business. In the iron ore business, Simon's been leading some work around actually stopping for respect, so actually totally stopping the operations and talking about respect. We're actually really continuing to build in what is appropriate behavior.
How we take things forward around our facilities is really important as well. We've done urgent work, urgent safety rectification work around our facilities. This is about lighting and ensuring people have got safe facilities. They've got locks on doors and those sorts of basic things of dignity. There's still a significant amount of work to do in our facilities. I look at our facilities as a reflection of how we respect people. You know, Angela talked about, you know, the changes that were happening in Diavik. It's really important what you see in our sites is how we respect people.
The changes will continue to go, but, you know, anything that's, it's bullying, sexual harassment and racism is intolerable, and we'll continue to focus on it.
Allow me to just make 1 additional comment because sometimes it's the intangible that has the biggest impact. The fact that we have put things transparently forward, every time I go to a site, there are people who comes to me and saying, "Thanks for doing that. We're now talking about something that we did not talk about before." It's only through that dialogue that the change will happen, that the intolerable actually really becomes unacceptable and not... and people will intervene. I think that is the change that is happening now.
Thank you. I think there's one more question online. Roberto, can you get next question, please?
There are no question from the phone. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one one.
Great. Jason, please.
Just ask one question. It's Jason Fairclough. Thank you, Mark. It's for Ivan. On aluminum, you're talking about a new line of AP60. Your partner in ELYSIS, Alcoa, has said they'll never build another Hall-Héroult smelter. What do you think about building an asset that's obsolete on day 1?
Thanks, Jason. AP60, I mean, this is technology that's grown up inside our business from Aluminium Péchiney, and it is the best smelting technology, conventional smelting technology we've got available out there. Yes, it's not zero carbon, but it is extremely low carbon. In fact, the lowest of its kind in that conventional technology. This is about finding that balance between meeting the demands of the energy transition. North America's got, a big ramp up in demand for aluminum. We don't wanna miss that and wait for ELYSIS, which we are working as hard as we can on. It's a fine balance, and we completely appreciate that.
That challenge, which is why we're studying and judging what's the right sizing for that investment and how does that fit with our ELYSIS ramp up. I guess we have that optionality because that technology is something that IP is in-house, and we can choose to apply it as makes sense.
Sorry, just to follow up. Could you talk about the potential to retrofit ELYSIS to existing facilities?
To retrofit ELYSIS to an existing facility is something that we are looking at and studying as well. I think at this point, let me give you a fairly high level answer, I think it's gonna be challenging. You know, you've got to look at a couple of issues. One, most of these smelters are aging. Kitimat's a newer smelter, and it's, you know, it's already coming up to 10 years. Alma, which is, you know, one of the best in our fleet, it's more than 20 years old. You know, these assets, yes, they're maintained and sustained over a long period of time, putting large scale investment into one of these smelters from a retrofit point of view has some question marks on it economically.
The other big challenge, though, is what you do with the workforce while you actually take the smelter down. It's very hard to do it in a staged way. Now, I'm not saying we can't, but something we're gonna have to look at hard. You saw in Mark's chart, you know, 20, 30 plus the abatement that could come from ELYSIS on existing smelting. That's why we're gonna keep pursuing it. In the first instance, I see ELYSIS as a growth opportunity to add new zero carbon aluminum.
Great. There is a question online, David. Roberto, operator, please.
Now taking next question. Next question is from Raul of Morgan Stanley.
Raul, you're hard to hear.
Hi. Thanks again for the opportunity. I think I can hear myself through the line, so there's a bit of feedback. Look, I had a couple of questions. The first one was around the conversation about the U.S., and the renewable metals demand. Have you seen a change on the ground at all in terms of permitting with new projects? And I'm trying to talk about resolution here.
Mm-hmm.
Then the second part of my question or my follow-up, is around ELYSIS. Peter, you talked about the value accretion carbon price for a lot of projects that are coming up. Have you done a carbon price that makes ELYSIS value accreted?
Peter, you take this.
I'll take the first one. Look, time will tell. When it comes to resolution, ultimately, it's not just about a process. It's also about us finding a solution that is acceptable to all First Nations in Arizona. I will tell you, and I've spent quite a few days in Washington, there is a sea change happening there. You've seen the IIA Act. I mean, the U.S. is super alert to addressing climate change and what the needs come from that and the geopolitical tension that actually they want to have more supply chain security. All forces, I would say bipartisan forces, are working in our favor, but, you know, time will tell.
I just think that the external environment is actually enhancing our business development opportunities in the U.S., and I think that's all I can say. We're working diligently on resolution. Thank you.
Look, on the economics on ELYSIS, I want to take a look from two ends. Let me start first. Alf's team, on the commercial basis, are engaging with the market and trying to understand how they would value zero carbon aluminum. That's, you know, something that we're thinking about is more than just a carbon price. It's the value premium that we can generate for that very unique material. The other side of it, this is, I guess, more fundamental, you know, the economic decision is going to get driven on foundation principles like the energy cost that goes into the smelter and the capital intensity. You know, ELYSIS can stand on its feet on those factors if you get the parameters right. It doesn't require a carbon price for it to be value accretive.
Dom, please here in the room.
Hello, I'm Dominic, JP Morgan. Could I just maybe ask for some clarification on the Simandou gross CapEx? I think, Simon, you mentioned $4 billion of equity share. What does the equity share actually mean? Is that the joint venture 42.5%, and therefore Rio's underlying true equity share is about $2 billion? Then maybe could you also maybe just give us an indication or give us a steer at what that $4 billion looks like? Is it towards the mine, the rail or the port?
Yeah. Thanks very much. I can take that. I mean, first of all, you know, that CapEx is effectively what's in our three-year guidance, which was on my slide. That's what that sort of frames it up. We haven't given all the details on Simandou because we are still in negotiations around exactly, you know, how that project will firm up. We haven't given the total sort of envelope. That's what we expect to spend in the next three years. We said it could slip depending on, you know, when we actually reach agreements. That's why it's the, probably the major sort of source of uncertainty, particularly in our 2022, 2023 guidance on capital.
You might talk about the accounting consolidation.
I'm sorry, yes, the accounting. It's actually, it's just Rio Tinto's equity share that we're reflecting in those numbers. Our, you know, our share of the 53% share of the capital in our joint venture, the Simfer joint venture, and our share of any infrastructure spend, our Rio Tinto share. That's all we're reflecting there.
Great. Thanks.
That will be our process going forward to reflect that.
Final question from Liam. Don't worry if you don't have any questions, Liam's here come to comment. Thanks. There's sandwiches after the break, so everybody in the room, you can speak to people here. Obviously in Sydney, we'll see you on the 15th. For those who are really keen, 13th of December in Melbourne on technology. Last question from Liam.
Thanks, Menno. I'll try and make them exciting. If I can do two. One for Ivan on green aluminium. You know, we hear a lot about kind of low carbon products, but not much about green premiums. I mean, do you think the industry needs to change its mindset in terms of how it pushes these projects or these products, sorry, from a kind of price taker to trying to get customers to actually pay for the low carbon content? The second question is on M&A. Has been any real mention of that throughout the presentation slide? If we're looking beyond TRQ, is this still a key plank of the growth strategy? How do you want the market to think about it?
Is it kind of early stage opportunities or could you have, you know, bigger goals? Thank you.
Let me start with the M&A question first. Look, I hope you can see today that we have embarked upon quite a significant transformation. Large scale M&A tends to completely derail what you're doing. I think that would be really sad for us if we embarked upon 2 large scale acquisition. I do think when I look back, all the deals we have done so far, in my view, have been super value accretive. Small things like we bought 50% of Diavik or 40%. It's been super valuable. We were a bit lucky with the diamond price. We have sold things that we can't add any value to, like the, what is it called? Cortez gold stream, which we're not the right owner of that.
Somebody else have a much lower WACC. The Rincon project, of course, is early days, but it looks like we are adding an awful lot, and it fits perfect into our strategy. When we can find assets at the right price, at the right can be development, can be operating, it's part of achieving our objectives. I must say I'm very reluctant to 2 large scale M&A because there are unintended consequences, which you tends not to get into your evaluation when you get excited about it. There are unintended. We are on a pathway that creates, in my view, a lot of value, and I'll do everything I can to avoid us being disturbed from that.
The smaller assets fits us super well, and we need to keep our project organization busy, and that was exactly what we needed with Rincon. Yes.
Look, yeah, on green premiums, as I said earlier with regard to ELYSIS, Alf's team's working hard, engaging with customers to understand their needs there. I think a couple of reflections. One, we're starting to really segment our products. In the aluminum sector, there is ELYSIS, so zero carbon aluminum, and that's obviously still emerging. There's our primary metal, very low carbon metal, 2 tons in a smelting sense. Then, of course, there's recycled metal. Customers are starting to think and differentiate these, and we're sort of starting to position that accordingly. Not every application can take that universally either. We have some applications that have to use primary aluminum, and obviously in other cases, they can use recycled. We start to look at the market and how we actually then position the products accordingly.
The other piece of the premiums that's really important, that's been very relevant in the last 12, 15 months is in the product premiums. You saw our investment in the billet center that we announced. You know, we need to freeze metal, and as we grow the metal production in the Saguenay, we've got to do something with it. Having the right ability to cast and form that into the products and the alloys that our customers want, and I go to an example like scandium alloys, that's where we think we can really start to differentiate and drive incremental margin on our products. Lastly, I'd say just generally in terms of green premiums, how they're emerging.
I mean, it's been very modest now for the last couple of years, but we're just starting to see, you know, some uptick there. Of course, in a depressed market, that's gonna be more difficult. As we get through this period of the economic cycle, I think that's a time to start looking for more movement.
I want to end on because it's quite a nice question, actually, just to elaborate and end on that. Think about the following. First of all, we differentiate ourselves from other mining companies for having more processing activities than other miners. If you look historically, it might not have been the most profitable part, I have to admit. Think about it for the future. It's exactly what is needed right now in terms of the requirements from final customers to have lower carbon products. We are extremely well-positioned. We are extremely well-positioned with all our processing activities in North America. I can tell you, Alf and I, we have had so many conversations with CEOs of automakers, beer makers, whatever, who are using our products.
There is an enormous appetite to start securing up longer term contracts. We have a very open debate saying, "You want ALYSIS, we have to invest, it's gonna cost." I mean, absolutely. I don't worry about not being able to get extra price for ALYSIS. The most challenging things about ALYSIS is the technical one. Is to it works at small scale, how do we industrialize that? Unfortunately, it takes a little time. I mean, it is a revolution of the aluminium industry. It will happen, but it will take some time. I'm absolutely convinced that it will be a very, very good business for us.
What I want you to leave with is that I feel that the last 12 months, there has been a sea change in terms of since COP26, actually, where all the produced manufacturers of final consumer goods suddenly have to stand up and explain what is the CO2 content of what I'm producing. That plays to our strengths, particularly because we have so much processing, activities as well. Thank you.
On that note, thank you very much for turning up. Rio team, thank you very much. Everybody, thank you very much online. See you next time.
Mm-hmm.