Welcome, everyone. It's great to have you all here for our first Investor Day as Channel Infrastructure to share with you in a bit more detail our new business model and also the opportunities that come with it. Before we get started, I'd just draw your attention to the information on the second page of the presentation booklet. Most of you know me. I'm Naomi James, Channel Infrastructure's CEO. I joined the Refining team in April 2020, and as you all know, since then, we have undergone significant change. We are videoing this today to enable us to share the content with investors who couldn't be here. I'd appreciate if you could put your cell phones on silent. We'd like this event to give you an opportunity to answer all the questions that you have on Channel Infrastructure and to be interactive.
Some of your questions will be answered as we go through the presentation, and we also have two Q&A sessions scheduled through the afternoon. We hope that these, together with the afternoon tea break, drinks with management and the board at the end of today, and also the site visit tomorrow, will give you ample opportunity to have your questions answered. The Channel Infrastructure team has a clear direction and a path to get us there, and today is a great opportunity for you to hear more about this from our management team. We have split the afternoon into two parts. We're going to start with the future, looking at our strategy, the outlook for fuel demand, and our growth opportunities.
After a short break, we will dive into the terminal business we have today, looking at our Marsden Point operations, the status of our conversion project work, our contracts, and our financial profile. James Miller, who took over as Chair from Simon Allen at the start of this month, will then talk briefly to governance, and then we'll wrap up for the day. If you're able to, we would love for you to join us for a drink after that. You will have seen this slide before. We always start with it, as it summarizes really succinctly the strong investment proposition of Channel Infrastructure. Firstly, the critical nature of our infrastructure. We own and operate infrastructure essential to the supply of fuel to the north of New Zealand and New Zealand's largest fuel market in Auckland.
This includes the only supply route for aviation fuel to the Auckland International Airport. We have negotiated and are now operating under long-term customer contracts. These contracts are a significant asset for our business, with strong credit counterparts, a fixed and variable fee structure, which both incentivizes utilization of our infrastructure and protects us against market disruptions like COVID, and PPI indexation of all fees, which protects us in an inflationary environment. These contracts underpin stable earnings and cash flow with high conversion of both revenue and EBITDA to cash flow. Our tax loss position means no tax is expected to be paid for many years to come. We have a strong balance sheet, made even stronger by our recent successful bond offer, supporting a return to dividends for our shareholders in 2023.
Through our transition from refinery to terminal operations, we have made a significant contribution to the decarbonization of New Zealand's economy and have plans to continue to contribute as we work to decarbonize the fuel supply chain. Finally, with our transition, there are many exciting growth opportunities for our business, which position us really well to grow and diversify our earnings base and increase the utilization of the critical infrastructure that we own as New Zealand's fuel needs change. It's great today to be able to introduce you to our leadership team, who will lead our business forward. Jack Stewart, our GM Operations, leads our operations, maintenance, project works, and delivery of terminal services to our customers. You'll hear directly from Jack today about our first quarter of terminal operations and the conversion project work we have underway on-site.
Jarek Dobrowolski, our Chief Financial Officer, who many of you know already, was appointed on 1 April after six years with Refining NZ. You'll hear from Jarek today on the contract and financial profile of our new business and our refinancing program. Peter van Cingel is our Business Development Manager and is responsible for Channel's growth strategy and business development activities. Peter will share with you the latest insights around the outlook for fuel demand and the range of growth opportunities we have in front of us. Also here today are Chris Bougen, our General Counsel and Company Secretary, and Caz Jackson, our Chief People Officer. Not with us today is Steve Levell, our General Manager of our fuel testing business, IPL.
We also have a number of our directors with us today, James Miller, our new chairman, Anna Molloy, who joined our board earlier this year, and Vanessa Stoddart. Now, let's start with our strategy. This is our strategic framework that we shared with shareholders last year when we sought shareholder approval for the conversion to import terminal operations. Our vision is to be New Zealand's leading fuel infrastructure company. We have three strategic priorities to deliver value to our shareholders. To leverage our existing capabilities of safe, reliable, low cost operations and a high-performance culture. To transform, to deliver value through a competitive cost of capital, and realizing the full value of our infrastructure. To position our business for future growth by supporting the transition to low carbon fuels and growing and diversifying our earnings.
I'll step through each of these on the coming pages and highlight some of the progress being made. Starting with leveraging our existing capabilities. Even though we have a much less hazardous and complex operation as a terminal compared to the refinery, we have had a strong focus on maintaining our capability as a safe and reliable operator through the transition, and Jack will talk further to this later this afternoon. We've also had a strong focus on capability through our transition. The last two years with our strategic review process, simplification of our refinery, the decision to convert to import terminal operations, the execution of those plans, and doing all this through the COVID pandemic, has brought great challenge for our team, but also the opportunity to develop our talent.
Through our workforce transition, we have focused on retaining strong capability in our new terminal organization, as well as for the execution of our conversion projects that we have underway. Moving next to transforming to deliver value, which has two parts. First of all, having a really competitive cost of capital. This is essential for us as an infrastructure business to be the best owner of the assets that we are operating. Also to be competitive as an acquirer of new assets, which is something that we aspire to do in the future. Jarek will talk to our recent bond issue later this afternoon, and we have a new capital allocation framework on the next page, which builds on what we have previously communicated to the market about how we will allocate capital between dividends, deleveraging, and growth.
In terms of realizing value from the infrastructure we own, the long-term contracts we have negotiated with customers were key to us realizing value from our infrastructure through our business transformation. We are very focused on completing the conversion project work to budget, and Jack will talk more to that later this afternoon. With our new contracts in place and the transition from refinery to terminal behind us being the highest risk part of our transition, that underpins our confidence in a return to dividend payments in 2023. Today, we have announced Channel Infrastructure's capital allocation framework to grow shareholder value by delivering both dividends and growth.
Starting with dividends, we have been clear for some time that with the stability that comes from our long-term contracts, we are focused on returning to dividends with a dividend policy to pay out 60%-70% of normalized free cash flow. We have excluded growth CapEx and conversion costs from that, providing confidence in the consistency of dividends. Again, today, we reconfirm our expectation of a return to dividends in 2023, with the first opportunity for dividend payment in March next year. This dividend policy leaves the other 30%-40% of free cash flow available to allocate to deleveraging and growth. On deleveraging, we have said we are targeting net debt to EBITDA of 3x-4x , consistent with an investment-grade BBB+ rating.
Based on earnings in the next year or two, we expect this to translate to target net debt of around NZD 300 million. We do not expect debt to peak significantly up higher than this level. Finally, growth, where we have today provided our key investment criteria, being an above WACC return on capital and customer contracts that provide a good level of revenue certainty to keep our cost of capital lower than our customers. You will have seen the discipline around contract terms in what our team have negotiated in the terminal services agreements, especially the fee structures.
With a disciplined approach to growth, that in turn generates more cash flow from contracts to fund dividends and growth, driving long-term shareholder value. Now, let's work through the capital allocation framework in action. This slide uses the indicative financial metrics for FY 2023, which will be our first full year operating as an import terminal, which we released in May. An EBITDA range of NZD 76 million-NZD 84 million after CapEx, financing costs, and no tax with the significant tax losses we have, translates to free cash flow before growth CapEx and conversion costs in the range of NZD 46 million-NZD 64 million.
Based on this, we're providing an indicative dividend range of between NZD 30 million and NZD 40 million per annum, or NZD 0.08-NZD 0.11 per share. This leaves us with some NZD 15 million-NZD 20 million available to pay down debt and invest in growing the earnings base.
Our third and final strategic priority focuses on positioning our business to make the most of the growth opportunities before us. The first part of this is how we support the transition to lower carbon fuels. Very intentionally, one of the first steps that we took after the relaunch of our company as Channel Infrastructure was to issue our very first sustainability report, setting out our roadmap and our targets to contribute to decarbonization. The second part is to grow and diversify our earnings, and this will be a focus for Peter's section this afternoon, so I'll leave it for him to speak to. I just wanted to highlight two key themes up front.
Firstly, that we see opportunity to deliver significantly more value from the site and assets that we own at Marsden Point, and those coming on the site visit tomorrow will have a firsthand opportunity to see that. We see opportunity beyond Marsden Point to leverage the business model and capabilities that we have across other fuel infrastructure assets. As you'll hear from Peter, we see the growth opportunities for our business across short, medium, and long-term horizons. Before I hand over to Peter, I want to talk to the role we are playing to support the decarbonization of the fuel supply chain. We published our first sustainability report earlier this year, which was aligned to TCFD reporting standards more than a year ahead of mandatory reporting commencing in New Zealand.
Some of the key messages we shared in that report were that keeping fuel and energy affordable and available to everyone is a key part of this transition being sustainable. That to achieve this, existing infrastructure has a key role to play. While we don't have all of the answers for how we make future fuels, like drop-in biofuels and hydrogen affordable, we have set ourselves clear targets to drive our actions as an infrastructure company, as we work with others to make the transition achievable and sustainable for all. Our first target starts with the significant change we have undertaken at Marsden Point. It recognizes that the way we respond to climate change is about more than just bringing down emissions.
For this reason, we set ourselves the target of having at least 90% of employees impacted by the refinery closure to find new roles or be retrained within six months of leaving our business. I'm really proud to report our progress on this target so far, with over 70% of our staff, who have left the business so far, already having found their next opportunity. We have set ourselves the ambitious target of achieving net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. Our transition from refinery to import terminal operations has already delivered significant reduction in carbon emissions for New Zealand. Scope 1 and 2 direct emissions reduced by around one million tons per annum, or a bit over 1% of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.
At today's carbon price of around NZD 70 a ton, that's worth NZD 70 million to the country each and every year. We've committed to using our infrastructure to support the decarbonization of the wider transport sector and facilitate customer Scope 3 emissions reduction by 2030. You can see the significant reduction in our Scope 1 and 2 emissions footprint on this next slide. We know that even with these changes, we continue to operate in a carbon-intensive supply chain. We're also focused on how we can use our infrastructure and capabilities to support efforts to decarbonize the transport supply chain. Peter will talk to specific opportunities shortly. Before that, I wanted to highlight the range of fuel products we support today and the range of fuel products that are likely to exist in 15 years' time.
While petrol and diesel demand will peak in the future and start to decline, it will continue to be needed for many years to come. As new fuels enter the mix, they will come with new and different infrastructure requirements. We see great opportunity to grow and diversify our business, assets, and earnings base as we use our infrastructure to support both emissions reduction and fuel security as New Zealand's fuel and energy needs evolve. Now, let me hand over to Peter, who will run through fuel demand and growth, after which we'll provide an opportunity for questions.
Thank you, Naomi, and welcome to you all. I'm Peter van Cingel. I'm the Business Development Manager for Channel Infrastructure. Today, I wanna talk about two things. First of all, about the future fuels demand through our assets, followed by a discussion on the growth opportunities for our business. Before I talk about future fuel demand, just wanna emphasize that we own and operate very efficient infrastructure to supply transport fuels to the Auckland and Northland markets. Part of the efficiency stems from our scale. We're the largest fuels import and storage facility in the country. On top of that, we have very high throughputs. In fact, we have as much throughput as the 10 fuel terminals in the ports of Tauranga, Wellington, and Lyttelton combined. To put into context, it's equivalent to filling more than two cars per second, every second, every hour, every day.
The bulk of the fuel that we handle go through our pipeline to Auckland, and we have sufficient capacity in the service capacity in the pipeline to handle all projected future fuels demand. We're the only supply chain into Auckland Airport for all jet fuel. We supply Auckland Northland markets, which represent about 40% of the country's transport fuels needs. On top of that, we're the only terminal in the country that can handle LR1 or long-range tankers. These are the larger type of tankers that carry about 40% more cargo than the medium-range tankers at other ports. This represents enormous value for our customers in terms of improved freight economics. You've seen this chart on the slides before. We've shared those with you previously.
They show the product demand forecast for our infrastructure as prepared by Hale & Twomey, New Zealand's eminent energy consultancy in 2021. That slide does not include any volumes for biofuels, which would be in addition to this. As you can see from my slide, petrol and diesel are expected to peak and then decline starting this decade. Jet fuel will continue to grow for many, many years to come. I'll go through the outlook for this fuel demand scenario in more detail over the following slides. Before I do that, just wanna focus on what the impacts have been of COVID and level four lockdowns on Auckland transport fuels demand. The chart on the slide pack shows the pipeline utilization or throughput versus the 2018, 2019 average for the same respective month.
You will notice the large dips in Auckland transport fuel demand during the level four lockdowns, followed by a rapid recovery shortly thereafter as we step down through level three, two, and one. Remembering, of course, that level four lockdown represented enormous constraints for mobility, with only essential services being allowed to operate. Looking at the charts, we see that diesel demand has been very strong throughout the period, other than those level four lockdowns. Petrol has also shown good recovery. If you look at petrol demand though, the recovery in recent times hasn't been quite so strong, and we think that an element of high fuel prices, and also some people are still working from home, are playing a part there. Now, jet demand tells a different story. With a huge step down in demand in March 2020 when our borders closed to international travel.
There's been some recovery since then from increase in the domestic travel and some air cargo, but the bulk of pre-COVID jet demand comes from international travel. We're starting to see a recovery now in jet demand, thanks to the borders opening up, and we're currently at about 50% of pre-COVID levels. Prior experience from SARS and the 9/11 event suggests we may see a rapid recovery from here. The historical growth for diesel has been strong, and the outlook for diesel is also strong. There's been steady growth for diesel demand over the prior 10 years, driven by growing economic activity, but also a growing diesel vehicle fleet. In fact, in the last 15 years, we've seen almost doubling of the diesel fleet in New Zealand. Part of it due to the dieselization of the light passenger, petrol fleet.
When we look at future diesel demand, we can see lighter diesel vehicles, and we're thinking here of utes, tradies vans, SUVs, decarbonizing by going electric. Heavy transport is much more challenging. This represents the bulk of diesel demand in New Zealand. If we think of buses, they can go electric. Well, they've got to carry 2.5 tons of battery on board and be plugged into a charger for at least four hours a day. Now, that can be challenging. If you've got a fleet of 100 buses, you've got to park them up at the same time, plugged into a charger, all at the same time, one location. A battery for a heavy haulage truck is about 7.5 tons of weight, and this comes straight off the payload.
Initially, biofuel, at a later stage, perhaps hydrogen, are likely to be the keys to decarbonizing heavy transport. Hydrogen is still quite some way from being commercially viable, with hydrogen fuel cell trucks costing about four times that of a diesel equivalent and also having higher operating costs. Because of that, we still think that this will continue to see strong growth in diesel for quite some time yet as economic activity, GDP continues to grow. Although we do, as you see on the previous slides, expect this to peak at some stage, this decade. The outlook for petrol isn't quite as strong, but remembering, of course, that petrol only represents about a quarter of our throughput. We've seen strong COVID impacts in the years 2020 and 2021, but we're expecting good recovery this year and next.
If we think of the outlook for future petrol demand, we think that petrol demand will be primarily influenced by the uptake of electric vehicles. Now, while EVs are available today, they are not yet affordable for many consumers, and the rate of EV uptake remains an uncertainty. Turning now to jet fuel, which we saw earlier was heavily impacted by COVID and the closing of the borders to international travel. We see this as having a very strong future, and this will underpin our future and long-term utilization of our assets. We think that by 2040, jet will represent about 70% of our, the product mix going throughout our infrastructure. When you consider more than three-quarters of all international flights departing New Zealand leave from Auckland, you can understand why Auckland Airport consumes 80% of the country's jet fuel needs.
All of this come through our terminal. Now, the key drivers for jet demand are the number of flights leaving Auckland and the destination. Clearly, having more flights means more jet consumption. The flight destination is a critical factor in determining how much fuel is being loaded onto the plane. We think for a second, a plane loading in Auckland to fly to Wellington might load about 3,000 L of jet fuel. The plane next to it, flying to LA, will be loading 120,000 L of fuel. That means one flight to LA is worth about 40 flights to Wellington in terms of jet fuel consumption. Now, historical jet demand has been fairly static over the years prior to 2015 because the increased demands on air travel have been offset by improving fuel economy on the aircraft.
That all changed in 2016 with a huge step up in jet consumption, and that is driven by increased air travel, more passengers. But also it was compounded by the fact there was a whole range of new long-haul and ultra-long-haul destinations, new routes. While there's a 25% increase in international passenger numbers going through Auckland Airport in the five years to 2019, at that same time, there was an almost 40% increase in jet fuel demand. That was all due to the flurry of new long-haul flights going to new destinations, like all the Chinese cities, to Doha, the A380 to Dubai, and other long-haul destinations.
Our forecast for jet recovery post-COVID is taking several years, and it may well be that recovery is faster than this, especially when we reflect on what's happened previously with SARS and 9/11. This rate of jet demand recovery will be influenced by a few factors, which will include the ability for the airlines to rebuild capability, the global economic environment, and the appetite for people to travel. We think that the high oil prices, and therefore the higher cost of travel, will lead the airlines to focus on the premium seats and premium routes, which are less price elastic to demand. These routes will underpin a more rapid uptake of jet fuel consumption. We're already seeing Air New Zealand announce flights to long-haul destinations like New York, Chicago, and Houston, and they're re-flying now to Hong Kong, Narita, Seoul, Shanghai, Taipei, and Singapore.
Over the longer- term, we expect the growth in middle classes in India and China to underpin growing jet demand for some time to come, as New Zealand remains a desirable tourist destination. In the longer- term, we expect that some jet fuel demand will shift towards sustainable aviation fuels or SAF. Now, while SAF hasn't been included in terms of factoring those volumes into our outlooks, our infrastructure can handle those kind of fuels as a second-generation biofuels, which leads me to my next slides looking at biofuels. Like I said, though, the previous outlooks for those volumes do not include biofuel volumes. Nonetheless, our customers, on the 1st of April next year, have to meet the new biofuel sales obligations. They'll do that by adding increasing amounts of biofuel to the land transport fuels that they sell.
Alternatively, they've got to pay a penalty. Now, the policy for domestic biofuel production and for aviation fuels are yet to be developed. In the near term, we expect the obligation for the emission reductions in land transport fuels will be met via imports because domestic production of biofuels is very limited. Even then, we think that the time frames to stand up new supply chains for biofuels, which may well require new infrastructure, is very tight. We may well be on track for a default penalty regime, with those costs ultimately being passed on to the consumer. We think our customers will start with the lowest cost first-generation biofuels first, likely starting with ethanol and then biodiesel. First-generation biofuels are only a short-term fix because of their low blending limits.
The lifecycle reductions for these first-generation biofuels is variable depending on where they come from and how they're produced. Some of these have reductions of up to 30% versus fossil fuels, while others may be 19% greater than the lifecycle emissions of fossil fuels. Another limitation for these first-generation biofuels, that they can't go through our pipeline to Auckland. That means Auckland volumes must be trucked to Auckland with an emissions footprint 10 times higher than if the fuel was being carried through our pipeline. As the mandated emissions reduction obligations rise with time, our customers need to shift towards second-generation biofuels or renewable fuels. These second-generation biofuels can achieve greater emission reductions because they can be blended at much higher blend ratios or even fully substitute fossil fuels. They can also be distributed via existing infrastructure, including our pipeline to Auckland.
Now, currently, there's very limited global supply of second-generation biofuels, and they're significantly more expensive. It'll be interesting to see how the biofuel supply chain develops in New Zealand. We are certainly well-placed to play a key part in it. Now I'll talk about the growth opportunities for our business. When we think about the growth opportunities for our business, we're excited by two key trends playing out right now in this country. First, there's a lot of change taking place in our industry in the commercial arrangements. Secondly, this country's on an energy transition journey. This means that the fuels that power the mobility in the future will likely to be different to what we're seeing today. Now, this is exciting for us because it creates huge opportunities. I'll talk about these two key trends over the next few slides.
Let me first begin with the first trend. There's significant changes underway in the New Zealand transport fuels industry. We see a growing industry trend towards open access for fuels infrastructure in New Zealand. When we look back at the 2019 government fuels retail pricing study, one of the outcomes there was terminal gate pricing, which provided access for any wholesaler to any tank in the country. We've also seen it in Mobil's application to the Commerce Commission for the jet infrastructure in Auckland, and also the subsequent submissions being made by industry stakeholders. This year, we've seen the sale of Z Energy to Ampol, with Z transformed from being a New Zealand-focused business to one where it's part of a much larger business with an Australasia-centric focus and core competencies in refining and trading as well.
We turn to all the legacy agreements for the product distribution and national stock coordination in the country, which are disappearing currently and being replaced by new commercial arrangements. Now, those all stem from the Marsden Point Refinery, where all the four oil companies operating in the country at the time had exclusive access to our refining capacity. This resulted in a joint venture shipping operation to take product from our refinery to the coastal ports in New Zealand, and a national inventory system where stocks were being coordinated across the whole country. Now that the refinery is no longer in production, these legacy arrangements are disappearing and are being replaced by new commercial arrangements. Other changes in the industry include the proposal by the government for increased domestic stockholding requirements and also the biofuels mandate.
Now, arguably, in aggregate, these represent the most significant changes our industry has seen since deregulation in the 1980s. This is good for us because these will represent opportunities for our business. We have the available capacity to grow our footprint on our site. As Naomi mentioned, our current contracts with our customers are structured to incentivize utilization. They also provide for open access for newcomers to use our assets post the COVID impacted period from 2025. These industry changes also create an opportunity for potential infrastructure acquisitions or consolidation. In the previous slide, I talked about the first trend playing out, the changes in it taking place in the industry. I'll now talk about the second key trend, which is energy transition taking place as industry decarbonizes. Currently, the key transport fuels are petrol, diesel and jet.
The options for fuels in the future will likely expand to include things like ethanol, biodiesel, sustainable aviation fuel, renewable electricity and hydrogen. These may well require new or additional infrastructure. When we think about how the energy can transition, it is critical that energy remains affordable and available to all. This is key to make it sustainable. There'll be choices that will need to be made between security of supply, fuel affordability, and the degree of emissions reductions being sought. Here we know that the production of drop-in biofuels, sustainable aviation fuels and green hydrogen are not yet commercially feasible. That's why we think that the use of existing infrastructure will be critical to making new fuels both affordable and secure in the future.
When we look at changes at play in the industry and in the energy mix, we look at what this could mean for our business. With the cessation of manufacturing at our site, we now have surplus land and surplus tank capacity that can be repurposed. This could be used to assist our customers to meet the domestic stock holding requirements being introduced by the government. This may require up to 50 million L or 70 million L of additional diesel storage capacity in the country. In the near term, opportunities may also come from assisting our customers with new infrastructure required to meet the biofuel obligations, but also for handling other products, whether they be bitumen or marine fuels. We also see potential for terminal consolidation and optimization resulting from these changes. We also see opportunity for us to leverage our capabilities across other terminal assets.
We have a reputation for prudent asset management and making timely investments in infrastructure capacity. We think this can offer value to our customers if we extended these traits across other terminal assets. I've talked about our near-term opportunities by growing our terminal footprint. I now want to talk about the midterm and longer- term opportunities for our business. These include electricity, sustainable aviation fuels, and green hydrogen. The electricity consumption of our terminal is much lower than what it was as a refinery, but it still represents about a third of our operating costs. Therefore, we'll be pursuing opportunities to provide an earnings uplift through a reset of those costs. We'll pursue a reset of the transmission and distribution pricing for electricity, which is currently based on our historical usage as a refinery. We may even consider going off the grid.
We'll seek to secure long-term electricity at cost, possibly by way of our Maranga Ra solar project. The Maranga Ra solar project was fully consented in 2019 for a 34 GWh per annum facility, and there may even be potential to upsize that because of improvements in panel technology since then. That project has the capacity to supply our terminal, meet our terminal requirements and export to the grid as well. You may be aware that adjacent to our site, Meridian's proposed a solar farm and a 100 MW battery project as well. Another growth opportunity for our business is sustainable aviation fuels or SAF. New Zealand's a long way away from anywhere, and as I mentioned earlier, the greatest consumption of jet fuel comes from long-haul international flights.
These flights cannot be electrified, and so SAF will be critical to decarbonize long-haul aviation. SAF is not yet readily available because there are a couple of key challenges to overcome for economically feasible SAF production. The first is to identify and source renewable feedstock of sufficient volume that doesn't compete with food production. Second is the cost of that feedstock and the high cost of the technology to convert that feedstock into aviation fuels. There's a process being run currently by Air New Zealand and MBIE, looking for industry proposals to set up a domestic production facility in New Zealand. Given the attributes of our site with our deepwater port, our consented industrial land, and a pipeline to Auckland, Marsden Point is the logical location for imports in the near term and for advanced processing in the longer- term.
Another longer-term opportunity for us is green hydrogen, which is a fantastic fuel in the sense that it's got a high energy density, fast refuel times, and zero tailpipe emissions. It does, however, have a couple of challenges relating to commercial feasibility. These stem from the cost of production and recognize that only about 30% of the energy being put into the process is available as an energy output after conversion losses are taken into account. There's also the current high cost of renewable electricity, even while recognizing the offsetting value from storage, electricity storage and abatement that the process enables. Then there's the safe and efficient transport of hydrogen to overcome as well.
We have the perfect location to support future hydrogen imports or production with our deepwater port with import and export capacity, proximity to significant future renewable production in Northland, and also the proposal to establish a Northland renewable energy zone. Of course, our proximity to New Zealand's largest market, Auckland. We therefore see green hydrogen as part of a longer-term solution that requires some of these challenges to be overcome. We're currently working with Fortescue Future Industries to understand what it would take to make industrial-scale green hydrogen production feasible at Marsden Point. Just to summarize the growth opportunities I've been talking about, there are a number of changes taking place in our industry relating to changing commercial arrangements, government directives, and the country's decarbonizing ambitions.
These provide a range of near-term, mid-term, and longer-term opportunities for us to leverage our capabilities and our strategic asset advantages to deliver more value for our customers and for our shareholders. As Naomi covered earlier, we'll take a disciplined approach to any new growth opportunities in line with the capital allocation framework that's been talked about. I'll now hand it back to Naomi to take questions from the floor. Thank you.
Thanks, Peter. That was a great run-through of the future opportunities ahead of us. As I mentioned up front, we're gonna have two Q&A sessions this afternoon. I encourage you, your questions on the terminal business, sort of the today here and now side and the financial side, to hold those for after Jack and Jarek speak in the second part of this afternoon. We try and focus this first Q&A session really on the future, on the industry, on the growth opportunities ahead of us as a business. With that, I'll open up to the floor for questions. Yes.
With the biofuels, I understand that you can't put them through a pipeline [audio distortion] . It sort of corrodes [audio distortion] . If you've got ethanol on-site storage, do you have to spend CapEx [audio distortion] ?
The question was around biofuels, the ability to put them down the pipeline and also CapEx potentially on site to add additional biofuel storage. This is where that distinction between first generation and second generation biofuels comes in. The key difference is, in really simple terms, the level of processing. With first generation fuels, like ethanol-based fuels, we can store them on site. They could be trucked from our site into the northern part of New Zealand. We have unutilized tank capacity on site available to do that.
What we can't do is put them in the pipeline down to Auckland, primarily because they would contaminate the jet fuel, which is the fuel that goes down that pipeline that we have to really maintain spec to the highest standard for obvious reasons. But with second generation fuels, because they are effectively drop-in fuels, so you can substitute them, they are suitable for going in the existing infrastructure and in the existing pipeline. There's not that same need for as much additional infrastructure as there is with first generation.
Will the initial SAF that Air New Zealand pumps to that 10% target, will that be able to go down the pipeline or does it have to be rerouted directly to Auckland only?
The question was around sustainable aviation fuel and whether that can go down the pipeline. All sustainable aviation fuel is second generation fuels. There is no first generation fuels that are suitable for aviation use because of the higher standards that requires. All of that is able to go through the existing infrastructure.
Support development of emerging fuels, hydrogen, the sort of things you're looking for partners.
Yeah, absolutely. The question was around with some of the growth opportunities and future fuels, what might be the contractual terms we'd look to? I'll pass to Peter to comment on this as well. Just to upfront say the starting position is really looking for those above WACC returns and a level of revenue certainty to support the level of investment that's needing to be made. Peter, do you wanna add to that one?
Yeah. Look, I would just mention that we've come from an environment as being a fuels manufacturer, and our revenues were very volatile, very exposed to the oil markets, to the exchange rates. We're now consciously, we've changed. We stopped being a manufacturer, and we're now an infrastructure fuels provider with predictable and ratable returns. It's really important for us in any contract going forward that we protect that position. We also recognize that we are not and don't intend to become specialists in green hydrogen production or SAF production or anything else, and we'll certainly be partnering with others. I think it's an opportunity for us to leverage the asset and capabilities of others while achieving our own objectives at the same time.
David. Yeah. The question was around the electricity OpEx and the opportunity to reduce that. As we've talked about, electricity is roughly a third of our OpEx costs as a terminal. And there's really two halves to that. Part transmission, distribution, in effect, fixed, largely fixed costs, and the other part supply based for the electricity usage. On the transmission and distribution side, we have ongoing discussions underway with Transpower and with Northpower, which are follow on from the recent transmission pricing methodology changes, really aimed at resetting those costs to be competitive for a much lower supply base. And it's fair to say they're ongoing. You know how the system works, the costs gotta go somewhere.
That's why it's important for us to also have some alternatives, and that's why we're not constraining ourselves to the grid. We're also looking at how the off-grid options might look like. Excuse me. On the generation side, on the supply side, we know that today in New Zealand, market costs, spot prices are sitting very significantly above our cost of supply, certainly for renewable electricity generation.
What we're looking at there is really how whether by developing Maranga Ra ourselves or doing that in partnership with others, we can lock in a long-term electricity supply source at a cost plus pricing level, which really gives us a much more competitive price than what we could secure from the market structure as it is performing today in New Zealand. There's really those two parts that we want to go after. How much can we get off our electricity supply base? Don't know, but I think there's some significant opportunity there relative to where we are today.
When you look globally, are you seeing any regulatory costs that might bring forward some of those new fuels? models [audio distortion] .
Question was globally, are we seeing things that might bring some of the future fuels forward? Are you thinking there of global agreements that would bring new obligations into New Zealand or just steps being taken in other markets?
[audio distortion]
Yeah. Look, I think I'll ask Peter for his view as well. If anything, I'd see New Zealand as significantly lagging in its current regulatory incentives in place. If you look around the world, Europe, America, other places already have incentives for local biofuels manufacture. That's just recognizing that there's a bit of a race going on because there's a limited amount of biofuel feedstock. Countries are trying to accelerate development of their own industries to secure their own supply chains. New Zealand's a little bit doing it in an interesting order in the sense it's bringing in the biofuels mandate before it actually develops a domestic manufacturing policy. Hopefully we can get there. There is some good feedstock in New Zealand in terms of the wood sector.
Currently, we would see other countries providing significantly more incentive. It makes more sense for us to follow in effect rather than try and lead in a jurisdiction that just doesn't have the same incentives available for the supply of those fuels. Peter, would you add anything to that?
Yeah. The experience overseas has been that without regulatory support, whether it be through subsidies or whether it be through just regulation, that they actually don't have domestic production, that these things are just too risky or not even commercially feasible to invest in. The market can't solve it by itself. I think as Naomi points out that the world is decarbonizing everywhere, and yet the production capacity isn't really keeping up. There's likely to be quite an issue around pricing. That'll be a challenge for the whole industry.
What will be interesting to see is whether New Zealand remains dependent on those imports and having to source from the world in a scarce market for those commodities or whether we will see some intervention in New Zealand. If there is domestic production here, it needs to be competitive with imports. That'll still be a challenge with the cost of energy in New Zealand. That's one of the key focus there for us and an imperative to overcome is to have affordable and reliable renewable energy in New Zealand.
Just, you talked about the long-range large vessels. Do you expect that to be the norm going forward for really large vessels servicing [audio distortion] ?
Do you wanna take that one, Peter?
Because those vessels are significantly larger than the ones we've seen historically and the medium-range vessels going to other ports, the economic incentive is enormous for our customers to be pursuing those. With the storage capacity we have at Marsden Point, they're able to unload those cargoes. It does mean that the options for securing those vessels and the locations where they can load them may be slightly narrower than what they're used to today. Certainly if those vessels come to our terminal, they won't have the flexibility to then send it to another port because they probably can't handle them. There are some limitations and therefore I suspect they won't all become long range. A large proportion, I'd be surprised if they didn't become long-range vessels.
I think it's fair, Peter, to say that it's a big part of the scale advantage that Marsden Point has that it can both receive and fully discharge the LR vessels which other ports in New Zealand can't do. As Peter was talking about in his presentation, you know, up to now, before the refinery closure, there were no imports allowed into Marsden Point. Those who wanted to import into the north really had to go to Mount Maunganui to do that. That's really the industry structure that's coming to an end with the end of the refinery, the end of exclusivity, the end of coastal shipping.
We think there's probably quite a bit of optimization across the whole of the fuel sector, not just our three customers today, to get the most efficient paths to market happening for the fuel into the north of New Zealand.
It's worth reiterating our sense of scale, so we can talk about it, we can show you pictures, but it's pretty hard to share that with you. Therefore I'm really excited by you, some of you guys coming to site tomorrow, which will be good to get a sense of scale. Also I'll just reemphasize our throughput through our terminal will be the same as the next 10 terminals in New Zealand in those three ports of Wellington, Mount Maunganui and Lyttelton. It's significant.
Naomi, just the slide on capacity. What sort of throughputs are assuming, sort of 30% tank capacity, 30% terminal capacity as well?
The level of capacity we're quoting there, Hamish, as a question on what capacity assumptions and throughput assumptions we've got underpinning the utilization numbers in the pack. On the storage side, the capacity is in effect independent of throughput, in the sense that you can choose how much ullage you have in your terminal, which then just drives how bigger ships and how bigger discharges and the frequency to which you run. The 35% is based on the shared terminal capacity of 180 million L, plus the additional 100 million L of private storage that we have contracted.
That 280 million L of capacity is utilizing that proportion of the storage capacity that we still have available from our previous operations as a refinery.
Are you able to give a bit of color around your hydrogen project, what you wanna get out of it going forward and any kind of other projects around New Zealand as well?
Yeah, sure. I'll hand to Peter on this one as well. I think the first thing just to upfront say is obviously the critical thing with hydrogen is really low cost renewable electricity. And if you look globally, New Zealand doesn't have the lowest cost of that, and the north of New Zealand certainly doesn't have that. But what we have at Marsden Point is proximity to demand. And so that's really where we're focused on looking at how our location could support hydrogen as it comes into the transport fuel mix in the future and gets used in the north of New Zealand. Peter, do you wanna add to that?
Yeah. I would suggest, if you take a perspective, if you're a Fortescue Future Industries or you're a similar intending to be a large industrial manufacturer of green hydrogen, where in the country would you have access to a deepwater port for import or export? Would you have access to the largest demand center in New Zealand, and industrial consented land? Because the footprint for these facilities are significant. They are large industrial sites. By the very nature of the strategic advantage of our site, we're a natural fit. As Naomi points out, one of the key challenges is currently the high cost of renewable electricity. That'll be one of the key things that Fortescue be focused on. We're already.
We've been seeing lots of announcements through the media already around proposals for large scale and renewable production in Northland.
I think a key to getting hydrogen to work is that scale piece. While there's a lot of very well-publicized hydrogen pilot projects around New Zealand, they are very significantly subsidized on both the capital and the OpEx side. To get hydrogen economic, you've really gotta find a way to do it at scale. In turn, you know, that proximity that we have to market, as well as all those site attributes that we have at Marsden Point, we see as being sort of the key proposition for hydrogen at Marsden Point.
Naomi, you touched on material and reduction in emissions following the [audio distortion] . Do you understand emissions going forward? Bulk emissions are Scope 3. [audio distortion] ?
The question from Aaron was just around in adding to sort of the Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction that we've done, leaving us with predominantly Scope 3 emissions in our profile and whether we set a specific target for that. Step one is really getting to a point where those Scope 3 emissions are being measured and we are dependent on our customers for that. That is the first step, really to work with those companies, and they themselves have that challenge of measuring those Scope 3 emissions to get a clear picture of that. Some of that will come with the biofuels mandate, as people look more closely at what is the Scope 3 emissions footprint of their existing supply.
Look, I think as we prove up some of these opportunities, that's really what is going to allow realistic targets to be set. We know Air New Zealand's set their 10% target by 2030 for sustainable aviation fuel as a proportion of their jet supply. That's fantastic, 'cause we can support that with our existing infrastructure. The government's obviously setting those targets through their biofuels sales mandate coming in from next year, which is intended to grow over time. We know that really we have to get on to second generation biofuels. That's the only way to materially reduce emissions through biofuels.
That's really our focus with government, with our customer base, is how do we support that, and have those long-term infrastructure plans in place, 'cause that's key to getting it low cost. Yeah, a work in progress, but definitely part of that third target that we've set ourselves in our sustainability report. I can't believe you've waited this long, Andrew. Go.
I was just wondering, you outlined a whole range of opportunities here. Some of them are quite sort of big and bold, I guess. All of them have some sort of challenges that sort of are all peculiar to the type of company. Which ones sort of really, sort of excite you, I guess, and you sort of feel like they're really tangible, and achievable?
Yeah. Look, the comment I'd make, Andrew, is 'cause it's hard to distinguish between them, but the thing I think is most exciting is you've got them across all the time horizons. The terminal growth opportunities, which we see everything from, you know, consolidation of the infrastructure at Mount Maunganui to bring more fuel through our facilities, what might come through open access, what can come through domestic stockholding, what can come through other products, they are all near-term, real, incremental opportunities for us. So in terms of here and now, we certainly feel those ones are. I think in the medium term, electricity is very exciting. While we're focused on the terminal's electricity requirements now, it doesn't need to stop there.
If you look at what's happening in Northland, that there's that real opportunity to partner and deliver even more value out of the land we have, as well as out of the supply, demand we bring. Through to the, you know, the longer- term fuels, which we know need to come into the fuel mix. We just don't yet have all the solutions. I think while we show you that demand profile that has petrol and diesel declining, what we're really looking forward to is, in the future, being able to show you that demand profile that has these new fuels coming in and replacing that, and that will come.
As the technology, and innovation, and New Zealand plan for these evolves and develops, we'll get out more and more certain around when and how that's going to come about. Okay, we might wrap up the first of our Q&A sessions there then.
Good afternoon. I'm Jack Stewart, General Manager of Operations at Channel. I've been with the business for 20 years in a variety of roles, traversing all aspects of Channel's operations and most recently led the conversion to import terminal as Conversion Project Director. This afternoon, I'd like to take you through our current business and give you an update on how our conversion project is tracking. For those of you traveling up to site tomorrow, I'm really looking forward to showing you around our terminal facilities. I'd like to start with providing you an update on our first quarter of terminal operations and help you get a sense of the significant scale of our terminal facilities that Peter spoke of.
After the safe shutdown of the refinery, we took our first shipment of refined fuel on the first of April, and have received a total of 19 import shipments during the quarter. Each of these shipments can be up to 40 million L-50 million L. That's up to 20 Olympic swimming pools of fuel on each vessel. Overall, in its first quarter of operation, the terminal supplied well over 500 million L to the Auckland and Northland markets. In that time, we've also seen an increase in jet fuel demand, increasing by 70% over the previous quarter, and now sitting at around 50% of pre-COVID demand. On the other hand, petrol and diesel throughputs have remained steady. Now, to put the significance of these figures into perspective, in those three months, we handled enough petrol to fill your car over five million times.
We transported enough jet fuel to fill 5,737 airliners and enough diesel to refuel over one million trucks. Despite these numbers, our assets have plenty of capacity to accommodate higher demand for fuel. Even with that increased demand for jet fuel, our pipeline utilization sat at only 68% in the quarter. Naomi earlier spoke of our strategic priorities, including to leverage our existing capabilities as a safe and reliable operator, and this is something that we are tremendously proud of. A huge amount of my focus this year has been to ensure the safe shutdown of the refinery, and I was very pleased to achieve this significant milestone as scheduled in March. This complex task involved over a year of planning and was critically important to ensuring a safe and smooth transition for the business and our people.
With this now behind us, we have substantially reduced the operational risk and complexity in the business. Despite this significant transition and the disruption of COVID-19, I was very pleased that we have been able to maintain an overall better safety performance than the prior refinery operation, with the only reflection in our performance being two very minor injuries this year. This performance has been supported by our peer-to-peer and leadership safety engagements and continued emphasis on the quality of our safety-critical controls. The good performance is a reflection of our team's commitment to these principles. Getting everyone home safely every day remains central to all that we do. We do still operate a high-hazard facility, and to demonstrate our ability to operate safely, we developed a comprehensive safety case, which was accepted by the regulator in May.
The new case reflects additional safety measures applied for import operations while retaining the same comprehensive underlying safety systems. In the environmental context, a key asset for the business is our 35-year resource consent granted last year to continue to operate a heavy industrial site. The consent covers both our past operations as well as our import terminal and provides for future plans we may have for Marsden Point. A critical part of the consent process has been engaging with local iwi. We have worked hard to build strong relationships with iwi and now have relationship agreements in place, and a framework for regular iwi, which enables us to understand each other's perspectives and work through issues. We're often asked by stakeholders about the state of our land and our plans for remediation of the site.
We do have a very good understanding of the condition of our site, and importantly, unlike other industrial facilities, we do not have stockpiles of waste or byproducts that we need to remove. What we do have is some legacy oil contamination of our groundwater. That is from a historic refinery operation. While the refinery has been shut down, we have not stopped the groundwater recovery network, which is continuously remediating our groundwater. We've made good progress over the last decade, and we expect to see a continued reduction in this legacy contamination over time. Through our consent and decommissioning studies, we've undertaken extensive independent assessments of the effects of past site contamination, and these demonstrate that there is minimal impact beyond the site boundary, including to our marine area. We work closely with regional authorities and our iwi partners on monitoring our surrounding environment.
To illustrate the magnitude of change in our operation, I'd like to step you through what has changed at Marsden Point through the recent transition. Starting with our past operation, this map shows our site with an overlay of how it was used when we operated as a refinery. At Marsden Point, we own a total of 177 hectares of land, while the refinery site itself was 100 hectares. As you can see, we use the whole site within the process of operating the refinery. The refining process demanded more area for storage of crude and feedstocks, intermediate components, and the refinery plant itself, along with the necessary utilities and services. In the refinery, we had a total of over 650 million L of crude and residue storage and 400 million L of product and intermediate component storage on site.
Today, as the import terminal, we're only using around 30% of the available capacity, as you can see by the much smaller footprint, and the terminal operation is also much simpler than that of a refinery. In the same way we offloaded imported crude from our ships at our two deep-water jetties, we now bring in refined product imported by our customers. Product can be imported through either of the two jetties and is tested to ensure quality before the import commences. Additives are dosed as it comes ashore, and the product is stored in the tank before being tested again before being released for delivery through the pipeline or to the adjacent truck loading facility. Our Independent Petroleum Laboratory business continues to have an important part to play for Channel and our customers in testing product before it leaves Marsden Point.
IPL is New Zealand's largest and most capable petroleum laboratory, and provides testing services to a wide range of customers across New Zealand through its laboratory at Marsden Point and in Taranaki. IPL has also established extensive biofuels testing capabilities, positioning the business well to support the coming transition to renewable fuels. Looking now to the future for our site. I'm really excited by the potential for Marsden Point, with the significant growth opportunities that Peter outlined earlier. Our site has the potential to support all of this activity and more. Alongside the import terminal assets, we have the capacity to provide additional storage over and above the already contracted private storage, and beyond this, the site is well-positioned to host hydrogen and biofuels manufacturing and storage facilities.
Of course, on our adjacent land, we have the already designed and consented solar farm, Maranga Ra, ready for potential development. I'd now like to turn to the conversion project and provide you with an update on this significant piece of work. Before I go into the detail of what has been happening on-site, I wanted to take you through how the project was tracking to timeline and budget. In terms of our timeline, we've now completed the refinery shutdown and are well underway with decommissioning. The main decommissioning works will continue until 2023, and the terminal upgrade projects are expected to take another three-four years to complete. Our workforce transition is now largely complete, and I'll talk about how we're supporting our people through this change shortly. The conversion project remains on plan and to budget.
As we communicated in quarter four last year, our budget for conversion is NZD 200 million-NZD 220 million, with an additional NZD 45 million-NZD 50 million for private storage. At the end of June, we have spent a total of NZD 70 million. In the detail, you'll see there's been a shift in spend from this year to 2023 compared to our last forecast. This shift has developed as we have matured our project schedules and estimates and reflects our better understanding of the terminal upgrade construction program. From the outset, we have been very mindful of the challenging environment and have proactively managed our supply risks through early ordering of long lead items and active engagement of our already site-experienced contractors. This means that significant portions of our forward work plan are now known and committed with contracts in place and rates established.
With this in mind, we've looked at our current inflationary pressures and remain comfortable with how we are tracking and the contingency we are holding to absorb the current market disruption. Looking now at the decommissioning works. We have now completed an intensive 24/7 phase of decommissioning. This was the highest risk phase of the work, and I'm really pleased that we completed this work safely. A result which is a credit to the commitment of the team at Marsden Point and the tremendous amount of planning and preparation they have put into this work. This phase included steaming and chemical decontamination of the refining plant, catalyst removal, and flushing and draining of plant and pipe work. All of this work is important to ensure that the refinery assets are safely prepared for the next stage, which includes the preservation of some equipment for potential repurposing or resale.
Noting that the decommissioning process for the refinery as a whole is permanent and there is no plan to provide for a restart of refining operations in the future. Over the next year, we'll be completing works required to leave the main refinery process plant in a safe state for up to 10 years, allowing time to work through repurposing and resale options before any demolition works commence. Work will continue on the remainder of the site for another 12 months to decommission tankage facilities. Alongside the decommissioning project, we're in the midst of executing a range of projects to facilitate the conversion to import terminal.
In preparation for commencement of terminal operation on the 1st of April, a number of key modifications were required to the refinery facilities, including the addition of safeguards for import operations, additive dosing facilities, piping reconfigurations, and modifications to utilities to remove dependencies on the refinery systems. Construction work commenced in 2021, and all of this work has been completed to schedule and budget. Quite an achievement in the current environment, allowing for a smooth transition to terminal operations. Future works include the commissioning of additional jet fuel storage for import terminal to cater for increasing demand, improvements to tanker unloading rates, and substantial upgrades to firefighting and secondary containment systems. The schedule for the secondary containment systems is the longest, and that extends out to 2026.
Projects to provide additional private storage to customers are also well underway, with the first private storage tanks already in service and the remainder to be commissioned over the next year. The largest of the works involve conversion of crude tanks to jet fuel service, which, due to the strict product quality requirements for jet fuel service, involves substantial modifications to the tank, including installing new roofs. Alongside all this physical work that has been taking place on site, we have also been working hard on our business systems to get them up and running to support the new terminal operation. I've already mentioned the safety case and why that has been a priority. We've also been working through contract updates, and that includes termination of contracts for by-products that the refinery used to produce.
With the reset of the business, we've also taken the opportunity to update our business management and information systems to better align with terminal operations and are implementing a strategic asset management plan to ensure the repurposed assets continue to serve the needs of the business. A big milestone for us has been our significant workforce transition through May and June, as many of us farewelled our long-serving friends and colleagues. It has been really important to me that we do everything we can to support our people through this change, whether they are leaving the business or continuing on to new roles at Channel. For those staying on, we have modernized our employment terms and conditions, aligning to the new terminal operations and organization. Of those that left the business, over 70% had their next opportunity secured before they left us.
We have a target of at least 90% of those who leave being supported into new roles, training, or other opportunities within six months of their departure. To back up this commitment, the business has provided extensive support to transitioning staff, including financial planning workshops, vocational training, increased redundancy provisions, and facilitating connections with new employers, including through a job expo to which 28 prospective employers attended. I'd now like to hand you over to Jarek, who will take you through the financial position and outlook.
Thank you, Jack, and welcome everyone today. It's good to see so many familiar faces in the room. Before we go into the financial position and outlook, let's just remind ourselves of the key features of our long-term contracts that we have now in place that will really underpin our financial performance going forward. There are three key features of those contracts, and hopefully none of this will be new information to you. Firstly, those are long-term contracts, and all are with BP, Mobil and Z, now owned by Ampol, and who, as you know, are strong credit counterparties.
Secondly, take or pay commitments that we have guaranteed under those contracts of between NZD 90 million-NZD 100 million per annum over the initial six years period of time will underpin our earnings, but also will provide protection against any market disruptions like we have seen from COVID. High level of fixed fees that we have guaranteed under the contracts also incentivize utilization of our infrastructure assets by our customers. In fact, from 2025, we will be able to bring in new customers on board to use any available capacity at this point in time. Those two points are really important and relevant to the industry opportunities that Peter talked to a bit earlier.
Finally, all fees under those contracts, including fixed fees, take or pay commitments, and private storage fees, are subject to indexation. Talking a bit more about the indexation mechanism. Our contracts have an agreed level of fees for this financial year, 2022. In 2023, all fees will be indexed based on nine-month inflation, in effect capturing the benefit of operation as an import terminal for the period from 1 April to 31 December this year. Beyond that, from 2024 onwards, all fees will be indexed based on 12-monthly inflation. The indexation is based on the producers' price index, or the PPI, for all industries' outputs, which as you would be well aware, measures prices of goods and services from private sector enterprises.
That includes electricity supply sector, construction, transport, or professional and financial services, just to name a few. While we are in an inflationary environment, we don't know exactly what the PPI will be this year that will apply to 2023 fees. However, if for illustrative purposes, we use the actual nine-month inflation to the end of March this year, which happens to be 6%, that will translate to an additional revenue in 2023 of NZD 6.5 million. We will obviously always aim at managing increases in our cost base at below inflation.
Even if we assume under this scenario that the costs increase at the same pace of 6%, the bottom line impact will be additional free cash flow of NZD 4 million in 2023, which is an equivalent of NZD 0.01 per share of additional dividends. What that really highlights is the value upside from our contracts that is particularly visible in this high inflation environment. Now at the time of recent bond issue, we provided some indicative financial metrics for FY 2023, which is the first full year of operation as an import terminal. The revenue range there largely remains unchanged and really reflects the potential ranges of the PPI indexation outcomes, but also the phasing of private storage tanks that will be brought into service through 2022 and to mid-next year.
I will talk to the operating costs in a moment, but just would like to note here a significant 65% revenue to EBITDA conversion given relatively small cost base for import terminal. Capital expenditure range is relatively wide, and that's because it really depends on tank maintenance schedules. We are, at the moment, working on a strategic asset management plan, which will provide us with a detailed long-term view of the import terminal asset maintenance requirements. Now turning to OpEx, majority of operating costs is fixed and really covered with the fixed fee that we have guaranteed under the terminal contracts. Key variable cost there is electricity, which presents a third of total OpEx. As Peter referred to earlier, that's an obvious opportunity for our business to be pursued in the midterm.
We are working currently on resetting our transmission and distribution costs to align with the much lower load for import terminal compared to a refinery. Over and above, we see opportunities to lock in more affordable supply of electricity, and definitely at a lower cost than what we're seeing currently in the market, through exploring options such as solar farm project Maranga Ra. In terms of other operating costs, as I said earlier, those are largely fixed, and that provides us with great operating leverage from increased volumes in the future. Really, in the current environment, we are focused on managing cost base to ensure that any inflationary impacts on our costs are below the PPI. Now moving on to what is a significant value to our business tax losses.
You would be well aware of the benefit of those tax losses, particularly from refining assets write-offs. Those are significant, and by now largely crystallized with the transition occurring on 1 April. Having now delivered the transition, even if there was a change in shareholding leading to the shareholder continuity test not being met, we expect to be able to meet the business continuity test, which provides us with confidence in terms of being able to utilize those losses in the future. Based on our current earnings profile, we are expecting to not pay income tax for nine years. Noting that any growth opportunities that are ahead of us, that Peter talked to, can only accelerate the pace at which those losses will be utilized. Also, following the acquisition of Z Energy by Ampol, we have reassessed the risks associated with imputation credits.
The balance of imputation credits that we currently carry forward is an equivalent of nearly NZD 55 million of fully imputed dividends, or NZD 0.14 per share. We are very mindful that the best way to pass this benefit to our shareholders is through the resumption of dividends. Now turning to the balance sheet and specifically funding, our current net debt position is approximately NZD 215 million. As we deliver the conversion project and the private storage related tank works, we are expecting our debt to increase, and in fact, peak in 2023. We continue to maintain a significant borrowings headroom of NZD 160 million as of today within the total facilities available of NZD 375 million. No significant near term maturities.
Significant liquidity buffer above the expected peak debt, and positive cash flows from day one of import terminal operations altogether provide us with certainty in terms of our funding position, which is so important in the periods of volatile markets that we are currently in. We have also strong protection against rising interest rates. As of today, virtually all debt that is drawn down is fixed. Fixed either through fixed interest instruments such as retail bonds, that I will talk to in a moment, or fixed through interest rate swaps that we have currently in place. Currently, we maintain NZD 75 million hedges with further NZD 40 million coming live from the beginning of 2023, the timing of which aligns with our debt profile.
For me, personally, stepping into the CFO role, as of 1 April, it is important that we ensure that our refinancing strategy is executed well to deliver desired outcomes, being diversification of funding, competitive funding costs, and increased tenor of our funds. The first step towards this goal was issuing our inaugural corporate bonds, which we now have successfully completed, and this increased our funding sources through debt capital markets to nearly half of our total available facilities. We have seen a strong support from retail investors through the process, which gives us confidence ahead of the bank refinancing process that is the second step of our refinancing strategy this year. Our current bank funding is relatively expensive as we pay high facility fees and have significant undrawn lines.
We are expecting, however, the effective interest rate to reduce over time as lines are drawn down. Through the bank refinancing process, though, we are expecting to reset our cost of debt to more closely align with the infrastructure nature of Channel's business, and that will contribute to our overall reduction in funding costs, but also cost of capital for our business going forward. Last but not least, our existing covenants provide us with flexibility in the balance sheet to both fund growth opportunities, but also to fund dividends, which positions us well for the growth opportunities that Peter talked about earlier. Now something that probably most of you have been waiting for, today dividend update.
With the equity raise to fund private storage, our first opportunity last year, our peak leverage has significantly reduced, and now we are expecting to be able to recommence the payment of dividends after the end of this year, provided that debt is at below 4.5x EBITDA. The first opportunity for dividend payments will be in March 2023, following our FY 2022 financial results. This is really in line with what we talked to you all at the time of shareholder vote last year, when we announced our intention to resume dividends within one-two years post conversion.
As Naomi discussed earlier, the capital allocation framework that we have announced today implies a dividend range of between NZD 30 million-NZD 40 million for FY 2023, which is an equivalent of NZD 0.08-NZD 0.11 per share. This capital allocation framework also provides cash flow to fund growth as well as for deleveraging to the target 3x-4x EBITDA and net debt level, which is consistent with investment grade rated infrastructure business. Lastly, we are confirming today our guidance for FY 2022, which was provided to you back in February with our FY 2021 results. The key change there is to expected average borrowings for this year, which we now expect to track lower due to the shift of some spend related to conversion projects from 2022 into 2023 that Jack covered earlier.
I will now pass back to Naomi for our second Q&A session.
Thanks, Jarek. Again, I'll open up to the floor for questions and at this point, really on anything, 'cause this is the second of our Q&A sessions for the afternoon. But I know there's been a lot of more specific detail shared in that last session with Jack's run-through on how the terminal operations are going so far, that detailed update on the conversion project, as well as what Jarek's stepped through on the contracts, the balance sheet, the dividend position and the tax position. Open up to the floor for questions. Chris?
Assuming the facilities are drawn, what's the weighted average cost of debt including swaps?
Jarek, do you wanna talk to that one? The question was, what's the, assuming facilities are drawn, what's the weighted average cost of debt including, swaps? I guess, Chris, that's kind of current facilities post the latest retail bond issue.
Without giving a number, there's probably a few relevant reference points there, Chris, to consider. Obviously, the coupon we are paying on the existing retail bonds and subordinated debt is publicly available information. That's really readily available. In terms of our overall funding costs, we do provide guidance of what the financing costs will look like for FY 2022 and 2023, as well as we provide an average debt position for this year. Those three pieces of information can be quickly put together to come up with what the effective funding cost is as of today and going to be in the near term.
I was hoping [audio distortion] .
I think, Chris, obviously the one on the retail and the sub bond, it's fixed and known. We do expect to continue to carry a level of liquidity, particularly probably higher than we would long term through the period of the conversion project. Just as we go through that period of peak debt, we can then pull that back and reduce those undrawn line fees. I think we'd be with those hedges we've got in place hoping to get that back in line or below where we've just placed the retail bond.
I've just got a couple questions, Naomi. Can you just give us a balance of dividend and growth? You talked about wanting to produce both. Where does it actually mean?
The question was the balance between dividends and growth and producing both. I guess showing the intention and being quite explicit on the capital allocation framework is that we're clear on where the cash flow gets directed. Intentionally dividends is the top line. The first allocation, if you like, out of the free cash flow before growth, before conversion cost is to those dividends. From a growth perspective, there's obviously a portion of funding left over, which for some of the smaller opportunities, so in that sort of terminal expansion space, that Peter talked to, we'd expect those opportunities to probably be funded within that.
There's obviously a size of step-out growth, particularly when you get into new assets or completely new plays where you wouldn't have sufficient cash flow to fund and obviously you need to look at equity in those cases. I think really what we're trying to say is the intention is to prioritize dividends while also having capital available for growth and for deleveraging and run between those, you know, train tracks that we're sort of setting for the next period of time.
Just a follow-up question is, could you perhaps provide a weighted average cost of capital range [audio distortion] ?
If you have a look at our cost of capital that was used in the independent valuation of the terminal assets at the end of last year, I think it was a range.
Seven.
6.7% average with a range of 6.2% to-
Four through 7.1% .
7.1%. Yeah. That's obviously, you know, the calculated version. We've seen some shift in certainly cost of debt since that time. But to give you a feel for what we'd look at as threshold sort of hurdle rates, it's in that 10% order. Obviously dependent on the project, the level of risk that we see. That's very much tied back then to those co-contract terms as to making sure it's not just the cost of capital, but making sure we got confidence in making an above cost of capital return.
In the revenue guidance of NZD 116 million-NZD 120 million, can you just kind of give more color on the phasing of the private storage, the NZD 9 million, and what the low point and the high point, what is the range of the private storage?
I'll just recreate the question before I hand it to Jarek. In terms of that FY 2023 revenue guidance range, just talking to the you know what's driving that range, including what we're assuming around private storage.
Yes. Following all tanks from private storage tanks being brought into use and becoming fully operational, per annum, we are expecting the revenue there to be in the order of NZD 9 million, pre-inflation, pre-indexation. The private storage tank works are currently underway. Those tanks, as I said earlier, will be brought into service successively through to mid-2023. Those tanks will be sort of half year for the second half of the 2023, fully operational, and some of them may be already operational prior to reaching that mid-2023 date.
If you sort of assume a meaningful portion of that NZD 9 million and apply inflation to it, that will be, you know, probably close enough estimate of what's included in that 116-120 range for next year.
The two key drivers in that range are really, you know, in terms of driving the reason for the range are really PPI, because we don't, you know, until later this year, know exactly where that might end up, and then also just the rate at which that private storage comes online. The first lot of that is already in operation. We already had some tanks that didn't require work that are in operation. But the balance is progressively coming online through back end of this year and into next year. Particularly those large crude tank conversions are into next year. You're at full run rate, we'd expect by the middle of next year, but we're just 'cause you don't get paid until the capacity is online.
We're just giving ourselves a little bit of range in those estimates to take account of that. Yeah.
The 19 ships that came out, just for security of supply, are they all coming from one original location or is that a sort of full portfolio of [audio distortion] ? [audio distortion] .
The question was, in terms of the 19 ships we've had into Marsden Point in Q2, what's the range of locations they're coming from? The three fuel companies all source from different locations and different refineries. That's a combination of their own refineries as well as traded product and procured product. Coming from a range of refineries around Asia. Just to talk further, I guess, to that sort of security of supply question. We haven't to date seen any disruption in fuel supply chains with the global supply chain issues that have occurred. We have certainly seen an increase in shipping costs, though. That is driving part of the higher fuel costs, that increase in shipping costs.
We have so far seen pretty reliable discharges and deliveries to our site. I guess the key thing from a security of supply perspective that I think is still being worked through is really that government policy around domestic stock holding, because we've now drawn down and used all of the crude that we held at Marsden Point as a refinery that was equivalent to about 17 days' worth of fuel cover for the country. Finalizing that new policy to have an adequate degree of domestic fuel is an important step with the government to close out and something we're very keen to support and able to support in terms of the available storage capacity that we have at Marsden Point.
David, did you have a question?
[audio distortion]. [audio distortion] that's not accepted straight or paying for the value of the slip that's in the ground up of storage, that's got to be query [audio distortion] and currently in other. Can you give me any detail on what you think that other number would be for 2020 [audio distortion] ?
That'll be around, to be correct. David, I think in previous guidance, we provided an indication of Wiri fees of around NZD 6.5 million per annum. The other would be sort of the balance to the 10.
Paul.
You've done the storage. Is that another equal rate? What's the timing of bringing that online?
The question was around domestic storage to support the domestic stock holding policy and what's the quantum of that and potential need for funding. Very dependent on the size of storage required. We've estimated it could require an additional 50 million L-70 million L of diesel storage because diesel has a higher requirement under the policy that's been proposed. I guess the best reference point is probably the private storage we've done so far. The 100 million L of storage that we've contracted through to February had an upfront cost of NZD 45 million-NZD 50 million. It is a bit dependent on the size of tank you're using and the specifics of the upgrade works that are required for that.
Also to remember that spend is spread. It's not in a single year. It has a very similar profile to the terminal projects spend that Jack spoke to, where things like the fire system upgrades, the bunding upgrades are sort of spread over a number of years. You know, potentially able to accommodate that within the capital allocation framework. We have that alternative if equity were needed. Yeah.
Are you making any savings from the project and the grade OpEx guidance?
The question was whether we're assuming any cost savings on electricity and our OpEx guidance. One of the key reasons for the range in the OpEx guidance is electricity. You know, how far we're going to get, particularly by next year, in addressing the transmission and distribution pricing, as well as where we'll be able to contract the supply side. Because we're obviously seeing very high electricity prices in the market at the moment in New Zealand. We've given ourselves some room for that. I'd say electricity is one of the key reasons for that range. Not all of it, but one of the key drivers of that range.
A key focus for us in the second half of this year is looking at how we can get those costs down to that lower end.
Would there be any savings from doing the solar farm and low cost of capital to do that, or would that reduce that number as looking out to 2024, I guess? Would we take this to spend that, kind of the runway?
Yes. I'd view it as, there's savings available over and above the bottom end of that range. I think that's probably the question you're asking. That very much comes down to how, where can you drive those transmission and distribution costs and what long-term, all-in cost can you lock in for a Maranga Ra, plus something firm supply base for the business. Yeah, we do see, you know, good operating leverage opportunity there, in the near term.
Just in regards to follow on to that. With Maranga Ra, with the older technology versus where we are today, does that mean?
The question was just with the progression of technology, does Maranga Ra provide us with the opportunity to be a net exporter to the grid? It certainly does. We don't today, Aaron, to be honest, have a good feel for that because the project was really wholly engineered three years ago now. What we will do is as we progress that, be going back and looking at how we can in effect scale that up with the progress that's been made in technology. That should give us a feel for how much bigger that might be.
The other really important thing I think as well is, and you'll see this if you come up to site tomorrow, just the proximity to those other developments in the area. The Meridian Ruakākā project is literally across the road from us. That's a very big battery that's being put in there by Meridian. I think one of the things we'll be looking at, not just Meridian, because others are looking at storage in the region, but what's the optimal way of developing sort of our solar opportunity in combination with other things that are happening in the region to minimize, you know, get, lock in that lowest cost price for us, but also maximize what's available from supply to the grid as well.
Perhaps just on the residual conversion projects, you said that's the biggest project is the jet fuel. Is that the biggest residual risk? Can you perhaps just give me the risk around the residual conversion component?
Jack, do you wanna talk to that one?
Sure, yeah. I guess there's three big parts to it. I guess there's the jet tank conversion, as you mentioned, and the firefighting and secondary containment upgrades. The firefighting upgrades are over the next couple of years, and the bunding is the longest, three to four years. To go on those and, you know, relatively equal spend between those three.
Okay. Nothing that you can see a wide range of outcomes in there. Broadly normal.
Yeah. All three of those pieces of work are well advanced in terms of design and engineering and you know contracting works as at the moment. Yeah, high degree of certainty around the work that we need to do. At g ood portion of that committed too. Yeah.
Yeah. I think what we've found, Shane, in terms of a lot of the work that's already been done, both on terminal upgrades as well as on the decommissioning side, is just the importance of early ordering of long leads. You know, you can't assume things are available or that you can get product and equipment into the country quickly. That's really been a key focus for our project team to make sure we're very well-planned and very a good long way ahead of when we're needing things. Provided we can do that, we've, you know, managed to manage those longer supply chains that we're seeing into New Zealand at the moment.
Has there been a saving from inflation of NZD 200 million-NZD 220 million decommissioning or shutdown costs? Is that transition from being a 2021 cost to a 2022 kind of bill? I guess what I'm trying to get at, has it got it? Are you still quoting at NZD 200 million-NZD 220 million kind of saving plus?
I think if the question was, is NZD 200 million-NZD 220 million a real or a nominal number in effect? It's a hard dollars number. It's not a subject to inflation. We obviously need to manage inflation, and part of what we were looking to do in those charts that we included in the pack is to give you a feel for, within each of the buckets, how much is either spent or committed, i.e. We've kind of locked in the cost, subject to just execution risk, versus how much is still yet to be contracted. You would see across the three buckets, workforce transition is largely known and fixed now because, you know, we know the redundancy entitlements, we know the timing of that.
We don't see significant risk there. Terminal projects is probably the one that's got the longest lead time, and so it has a smaller proportion that's been contracted so far. As Jack mentioned, we're stepping through that, you know, every week. In another quarter, I'd expect that to be another significant way along in terms of that committed portion. Decom's a long way through now. You know, we've completed the most intensive period of decom, and then a lot of the work for the balance of this year is in effect committed. Yeah, we've definitely de-risked, I think more than half of that spend.
The other thing that we've talked about previously is we have contingency, and so what we're constantly looking at is you know, how we manage that contingency. It's fair to say there's been unders as well as overs as we move through contracting and execution of the conversion project works, and we continue to be comfortable with the level of contingency we're holding. Paul.
The chart on page 17, how do you think you'll redo those?
Yeah. The question was on the chart we have on, I think the page 17 if you wanna bring it up. You probably noticed that they are still our original 2021 forecast. When we've thought about the right timing for redoing them, we've really viewed that as being when we're coming out of COVID, because until that happens, we're kind of just guessing. We didn't see a lot of value in redoing it sort of end of last year or start of this. Right now, we are looking particularly on the jet side at doing more work on that in the second half of this year with others who have an interest in that supply chain.
I think we think there's certainly potential for a much faster acceleration in that jet recovery. It's really today's capacity constraint in terms of how quickly the airlines can bring capacity back on. We'll be doing some more work on that. I think in the second half of this year to bring back an updated view on it.
It might be worth mentioning also that while there's been new developments since the forecast was done, like as you mentioned, the feebate scheme and things, those kind of initiatives weren't unforeseen. In terms of having too rosy an outlook, they didn't just assume the same old, same old. They could see the growing political pressure towards decarbonizing New Zealand. Although they weren't aware of the specific initiatives that might evolve, there was a certain expectation in the premises that there would be initiatives, which would lead to faster uptake of more fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrids and electric vehicles.
Yeah. I think to Peter's point, that's all in the forecast already. I don't think the things that have played out sort of in the last year are inconsistent with anything that was assumed up front. Sorry, David. The question was on the private storage contracts with the NZD 9 million real revenue and whether that assumed full capacity utilization. The structure of those contracts is different to the main terminal services agreements in that they are structured as fixed rental agreements. Whether they're used at all or fully, that doesn't drive a difference in the revenue for the private storage.
Obviously, more throughput through the facility increases our base terminal services agreement revenues with the variable portion of those fee structures. A big part of those private storage agreements was really about creating the ullage for our customers to be able to bring in the larger ships. If new customers come through the facilities, if new customers are looking for those freight synergies, they equally need the ullage in the facility to maximize those shipping savings.
Look, we think there's probably more private storage ahead, but we'll let the private, the domestic stock holding policy sort of play out and just this and, you know, the private storage coming online and the shipping arrangements to sort of reach a more steady state, to form a more specific view on that. Any other final questions before pass to James to talk to governance? Okay, I will hand over to our new chairman, James Miller.
Yeah. Hello all. My name's James Miller. Most of you know me, but for those of you who don't, just call that out. It's really great to see a good turnout for the first Investor Day as Channel Infrastructure and the first event I've attended as chair of the board. I'm honored to be taking over from Simon Allen, who stood down last week. Now, I'm well aware I stand between you and drinks, and I'm talking about corporate governance, which is known to be dead boring. There's some landmark changes that have happened last year, and I do think it's important that I run through some of those for you. Yeah, good.
I asked for this picture to be put up, 'cause it tells a thousand words for us. On the left there you've got the refinery and the skills matrix that was needed for that is, you know, a strong capability in process safety management, you know, the energy industry and oil product supply chain and obviously super complexity. Going forward, the new skills matrix focus around infrastructure, midstream fuel industry and the future fuels, and we've repositioned the board to take account of that. Now, reflecting this at the AGM, we said goodbye to John Bourke from ExxonMobil, who brought first-class refining expertise to the board and had expertise on the transition from Alton's experience.
Following the completion of the corporate governance review, Simon Allen stepped down from the board as chair. I'd like to acknowledge his leadership through the intensive transition process. At the AGM, we elected two new directors, which I'll talk to shortly. We continue to maintain a strong independent board with five of the seven directors being independent directors, and we've ceased the historical practice of inviting nominations from the three customer shareholders of candidates for appointment to the board. The corporate governance review included changes to the board subcommittee structure and support of the board oversight and financial and non-financial risks with climate change and ESG matters enhancing the board charter. Let's go into the board. So I'm capable.
We've got a strong and capable board with the right skill set to support management to drive the strategy forward, providing the infrastructure to support New Zealand's decarbonization and lowering our cost to capital. Each of the directors have critical skills we need. We have a number of experts sitting around the board table, so just go through them, call out some key points for you guys. Paul, he brings exceptional operational expertise, and his health and safety and asset management knowledge is second to none. Accordingly, he chairs our Health and Safety, Environment and Operations Committee. Now, Vanessa over here, she is the best REM chair in the country and combine her with Caz over there, makes a formidable team for us. As such, Vanessa's chairing our People's Committee. Next up is Lindis.
Most of you guys will know Lindis, obviously deeply knowledgeable in financial matters and the oil industry in general. Now just to mention Lucy. When we appointed Lucy, we were looking from BP to get expertise in midstream and future fuels expertise, and she brings that in spades and outstanding talent. Two new directors. We brought on Andy Holmes. He was CEO of Global Fuels UK from BP. He's retired from there. That's NZD 30 billion in revenue, 55 countries under his management. He's an expert in avgas and the hydrogen fuel development for the future. Of course, Anna Molloy over there. Finally we can put her chemical engineering degree to use.
She's probably well-known to most people in this room, but she's obviously got financial analytics and listed company governance. As such, she will take over from me as chair of the Audit and Risk Committee. Now just going to what we're focusing on. It's important you know this. You don't really need a PhD to work out what we're focusing on, but it's important that we're clear on it. First of all, it's completion of the conversion project on time and on budget. Continued safe, reliable and cost-efficient operations and maintenance. Continue to improve our ESG performance and of course, continuing the work to lower our cost of capital. Then ultimately, the returning of dividends and investing in growth to drive long-term shareholder value.
Thank you for your time today, and I look forward to catching up with you guys over drinks and after Naomi does a quick wrap up.
Thanks, James. We're in the home straight. I'll just wrap up with a quick summary of some of the key points from the day. And going to that, you know, investment proposition we have at Channel Infrastructure again, taking you back there again. Peter has taken you through really the critical nature of our infrastructure, being the only supply route for jet fuel to the Auckland Airport and the outlook for fuel demand. Near term, we see jet fuel growing strongly as international travel returns, and over the long term, we see aviation continuing to grow and underpinning our long-term asset utilization.
Jarek talked to our customer contracts and the protection those contracts provide with their fixed fee structures, incentivizing utilization, and providing us with protection from market disruptions as well as the PPI indexation of all fees, which both protects us but also provides value upside in an inflationary environment. Jack's update confirmed a successful first quarter of terminal operations and that the terminal conversion project works continue to track to budget. Jarek talked to our FY 2023 guidance and refinancing plans, which together with our capital allocation framework, provides a clear pathway for the return to dividend payments in 2023, with the first opportunity to pay in March 2023. We've also today reconfirmed our FY 2022 guidance as well.
I outlined the significant contribution the company has already made to decarbonization in New Zealand, and our plans to continue to contribute, and work together with our customers to decarbonize the supply chain. Peter took you through the key areas of focus for us in terms of growth, with a range of realistic short, medium, and long-term opportunities ahead of us. With the disciplined approach to investment set out in our capital allocation framework, we are focused on delivering increased shareholder value through the opportunities that are open to us at Marsden Point and beyond. With our new business model, we have an exciting and sustainable future. We've got a clear direction, a strong and capable team, to deliver on this strategy and ultimately drive shareholder value. That concludes today's presentation. Thank you all for attending and for your questions and interest today.
Hope we've been able to answer all the questions you have, but please do raise them over drinks if we haven't had them answered. We are really looking forward to seeing a number of you up at Marsden Point tomorrow. It would also be great to have your feedback from today's presentation and on our investor relations program generally. Anna and Jarek will be in touch to hear from you on that. If you are now able to join us for drinks out in the lobby area, we look forward to speaking with you then. Thank you.