Thank you, Chris, and welcome to Channel Infrastructure's 2024 Annual Shareholder Meeting. My name is James Miller, and I'm the Chair of the Channel Infrastructure Board. I'm pleased to confirm we have a quorum of shareholders, and I declare the 2024 Annual Shareholder Meeting open. On behalf of your directors, the CEO, and all our people at Channel Infrastructure, I extend a warm welcome to you, either here with us or online. Moving on to today's agenda.
Ahead of the formal resolutions, I will talk to how our improved and more sustainable business model has delivered for our shareholders and enabled us to invest in becoming a world-class operator of our assets for New Zealand, and I will cover the new refreshed company strategy, which is focused on world-class operations, New Zealand's fuel security and resiliency, and the opportunity to come from decarbonization of the production of aviation fuel. Rob will then speak to the successful execution of our 2023 priorities, the critical role we play in keeping New Zealand moving, and the future of the business. He will also provide an operational update on the first quarter of this year. After that, we'll move on to voting and resolutions.
Voting online is now open, and the shareholders attending online may cast their vote at any time until I close the voting later in the meeting. I want to acknowledge that there are a number of people in person today that are passionate about certain issues. We welcome such engagement with the company and appreciate you being here today to advocate your perspectives. There will be ample opportunity to have questions answered at the appropriate time, and so I'd appreciate everyone being respectful throughout the meeting. Shareholders will have two opportunities to ask questions. The first opportunity will come when we discuss the resolutions and the notice of meeting, and the second will come at the end, where shareholders will be welcome to ask general questions.
Following a discussion on general business, which we anticipate to concluding around 3:30 P.M., we'll invite shareholders to join the board and management for further discussion over refreshments. Joining us here, joining us here in person today are my fellow Channel Infrastructure directors: Vanessa Stoddart, just wave up, Felicity Underhill, Andrew Brewer, Andrew Holmes, Anna Molloy, and Paul Zealand. In the past few years, as our business has gone through transition, your board has also been going through a planned period of succession and renewal. This has been done to ensure we have the skills and experience at a governance level to help take the company forward. Late last year, we farewelled Lindis Jones from the board. I want to pay tribute to Lindis, Lindis' six years of service to the company. He brought significant insights into the downstream fuels industry in New Zealand.
I would also like to acknowledge outgoing director Lucy Nation, who also departs the board today. I want to thank Lucy for her outstanding contribution over three years of service to the board. Lucy is a world-class expert in midstream fuel supply chains and emerging future fuels, such as SAF. We've all benefited from her wisdom, and we thank her for her generosity of support to the Channel team. Lucy has been appointed bp's Country Manager of Australia, and we wish her well for this next step in her career. At the same time, the board has recently appointed Felicity Underhill and Andrew Brewer, both who bring significant experience in areas of strategic importance to the company. Felicity joined the board in March and brings world-class expertise in emerging future fuels such as SAF.
As we farewell Lucy, we are delighted to gain the benefit of Felicity's extensive industry experience. Andrew was appointed to the board in December last year and is highly experienced in world-class fuel infrastructure, operations, and leadership. Shareholders may not be aware, but Andrew holds a deep connection to our company. Andrew was our Chief Operating Officer during 2020. I think it is fair to say that he is instrumental in developing the company's immediate response to the COVID-19 challenge. He worked to ensure we could continue to safely operate our high-hazard site in the face of an overnight collapse in fuel demand in New Zealand. Drawing on his extensive experience within the industry, Andrew led the development of a unique approach involving the cyclical mode of refinery operations. This operating strategy gave us time to work through the impacts of the nationwide lockdown.
Refinery equipment is not designed to be regularly cycled on and off, and to do so safely is an extremely complex task. Faced with the unprecedented situation, we had to respond quickly to reduce fuel production. Andrew's calm leadership and deep fuel sector and refinery experience meant we were able to develop this unique approach. In simple terms, this allowed us to alternate the refinery operation mode in order to reduce fuel production. Andrew's approach ensured the safety of our people, while maintaining the safety and integrity of the refining plant and equipment. We're delighted to have Andrew's expertise back within the company and now on the board. Both Andrew and Felicity will be subject to re-election by shareholders later in the meeting. To ensure an effective board, there has to be a balance of independent skills, knowledge, experience, and perspectives.
These are set out in Channel Board's skills matrix aligned to our company strategy. Following the planned board's transition, we have a board size of seven, which we believe is the right size for our company. Six out of seven directors are now deemed independent, up from four out of seven in 2019. An excellent balance of skills and experience providing sufficient oversight across the company's activities and an impressive combined total of more than 100 years of experience in the refining, fuel terminals, oil and gas, and fuel supply chain sectors. We have the right board to support our management team to drive our strategy forward. Today, we're also joined by our CEO, Rob Buchanan, and the members of our management team, as well as representatives from our external auditors, Ernst & Young, legal advisors, Minter Ellison, and the share registrar, Computershare.
The transition to the import terminal model has improved total shareholder returns. If we look back to the period immediately prior to the strategic review, when we were New Zealand Refining Company, the business was under significant pressure. The cost of maintaining our assets had increased as we were trying to operate a subscale facility. This was relative to newer, larger, and larger offshore refineries able to operate more efficiently. At the same time, refining margins continued to fluctuate and our overall returns continued to decline. In response to the challenging environment, and with the additional challenges presented by the COVID-19 operating environment, the board needed to find a new way forward for the company. As many as you'll know, we took 18 months to work through our options. We consulted widely, publicly, and in detail with all those who would be impacted by any change.
Of course, that included you, our shareholders, but also the government, our local community, and our iwi partners, our customers and our suppliers and our people. This process was lengthy, and it was public, and at times we were accused of taking too long. But we provided updates along at every step of the way. I make no apology for taking the time to ensure we got this significant decision right. We're committed to ensuring that we could deliver a change that would be just and fair for those most affected, in particular, our people. In the end, your board presented shareholders with a comprehensive proposal that it believed was in the best interest of the company. This proposal to close the refinery and convert to an import terminal was independently assessed as fair to shareholders.
We didn't reach this significant decision without looking at this matter from every angle. This included taking account of the government policy settings of the day, particularly the signal that New Zealand needed to move past fossil fuels. We considered every possible option before us. The proposed way forward was overwhelmingly approved by shareholders, with 99% of votes cast in favor. This was a response to a difficult operating environment we were faced with and a recognition that the future of our refining business was unsustainable. Since the shareholder vote in 2021 and the successful execution and delivery of the plan we promised you, the compound annual total shareholder returns, that is, returns from dividends and share price movements, has been 28.9%....
Compared with the compound annual total shareholder returns of -6.8% over the 10 years prior to the vote, when we operated as a refinery. We are now positioned with steadily increasing and stable cash flows. These cash flows have not only allowed significant investment in our import terminal facilities, but also allowed us to return to dividend in 2022, ahead of our originally signaled plan. During 2023, we continued to perform strongly. The company declared ordinary dividends of NZD 0.105 per share, and with confidence in our future cash flows, and with the conversion projects being substantially behind us, the board declared a special dividend of NZD 0.015 per share. With total dividend of NZD 0.12 per share for 2023, we delivered a dividend yield of 8.3%.
Our dividend policy is to pay out 60%-70% of normalized free cash flow. The board is committed to delivering stable, ordinary dividends over time, while maintaining credit reference, credit metrics consistent with shadow investment grade credit, investment grade credit ratings of BBB+. We've also had a strong start to 2024, driven by strong jet demand, fuel demand, which Rob will talk about shortly. In light of this, the board has taken the view to lift the 2024 EBITDA guidance to between NZD 92 million and NZD 96 million. This is up from the NZD 91 million-NZD 95 million previously. Shareholders, Channel Infrastructure has been set up to deliver greater resiliency for New Zealand. Our new business model, with stable cash flows, has enabled us to bring online over 280 million liters of fuel storage capacity.
We have invested over NZD 100 million, and to deliver world-class terminal operations and improving the resilience of our assets. This includes the conversion of 100 million liters of additional fuel storage since conversion, and investing in improving bunds and firefighting systems. It is imperative that New Zealand's import supply chain is secure and reliable. Here you can see just some of the figures which demonstrate the impact that our business has, has had on supporting our customers to increase the resilience of the supply chains, which we believe this is good for New Zealand. We welcome the recent government announcements about investigating fuel security in New Zealand, and we are already working with the government in support of this. Given the strategic importance of fuels to keeping New Zealand moving, it is right that the government assesses its nationwide policy in this space.
And because we don't own the fuel that is imported through Marsden Point, we continue to look for opportunities to assist our company, customers with their supply chain resilience. This includes opportunities that would allow us to repurpose the approximately 400 million liters of unutilized storage capacity we have at Marsden Point. Having substantially completed the import terminal conversion and private storage projects this year, the board felt that 2023 was the right time to re-look at our strategy. The strategy refresh was driven around the need to ensure we could deliver the vision that your board has for the future of the company. We are clear the vision is to be a partner of choice, so that we can play a broader role in New Zealand's energy supply chain. We must become a world-class operator.
This is critical to improving our credentials and opening the door for further, new, and exciting opportunities. Secondly, we have developed a sophisticated understanding of the expected future fuel demand, including renewable fuel. It is our intention for Channel to play its part in supporting this transition. I'll now hand over to Rob to talk how we'll deliver on this strategy and to reflect on the past year.
Thanks, James, and welcome, everyone. It's been a big year, and I'm delighted to be joining you here today. Joining me from our management team is Alexa Preston, our Chief Financial Officer, Jack Stewart, our GM Operations, Peter Van Singel, our Business Development Manager, and our General Counsel and Company Secretary, Chris Bougen, who you met at the start.... Before I begin, I want to take a moment to reiterate to shareholders what James has said to you today. Here on this stage, we have over 100 years of experience at all levels of refinery and terminal operations. It is no exaggeration to say that the group of people who make up our board are the very people you would choose to run a refinery business if you were starting again from scratch. Refining was our core business.
I know I speak for the staff, past and present, as well as past board members, when I say that we were disappointed for our people and our community that we couldn't make the refining business model work. I watched the lengthy consultation process play out, and I knew many of those who were involved. I know I speak for them when I say that everyone worked incredibly hard to try and find a way to make that business model stack up. This decision, which I know the team agonized over, given its significance, was simply a reflection of the lack of a commercially viable model, future as a refinery. It would have been irresponsible for our company to have remained as it was.
So with that said, and the support of 99% of our shareholders who voted to close down the refinery, over the past two years, our focus has been on delivering on the very clear instruction we received from our shareholders: to convert our operations and establish our company on a more sustainable footing. This has enabled us, in turn, to invest in projects which are not only good for the company, but also good for New Zealand, such as increased fuel storage and safer, more innovative processes and equipment. I'll have a bit more to say on this in a moment. I'm proud of all the team have achieved in 2023. It was a year of execution and a year of delivery. Shareholders will be familiar with the company's 2023 priorities, and I'm pleased to report we have achieved them all.
This is due to the hard work and dedication of the entire Channel Infrastructure team, and I really want to pay tribute to their efforts. With our company-wide focus on safe, reliable, and cost-efficient operations, we now have our long-term asset management plan in place. In 2023, we conducted a review of site safety and introduced a new site safety culture program. The refinery decommissioning is now complete, and we came in within budget and on time. Our wider site conversion project is now substantially complete as well. Work with our customers on fuel resilience continued, and I'm proud of our efforts with the increase in fuel storage tanks brought online last year.
In support of the government's wider ambitions for a secure diesel supply chain, we submitted to the government's onshore diesel storage tender, and we continue to work with customers in respect of other supply chain enhancement and storage opportunities. We've made good progress on our growth opportunities, which I'll discuss in more detail shortly, and James has already spoken to our shareholder returns and the new business model, which has enabled our investment and resiliency. 2023 was our first full financial year of operation as an import terminal, with 2022 only including 9 months of import terminal operations. We delivered a strong set of results at the top end of our guidance range. Revenue of NZD 130.7 million, with terminal fees exceeding take-or-pay levels and private storage revenue increasing.
EBITDA of NZD 87.2 million and normalized free cash flow of NZD 61.8 million, representing a free cash flow yield of 11.3% and an EBITDA to free cash flow conversion of 71%. A total 2023 dividend of NZD 0.12 per share, including a NZD 0.015 per share special dividend, which represents a dividend yield of 8.3%. The 2023 special dividend reflected that the conversion project is now substantially complete, and we are confident that we can manage the rest of the terminal upgrades within our existing conversion budget. The board's confidence in our company outlook, including a free cash flow yield that is substantially higher than our dividend yield and a determination that we will be disciplined about the use of shareholders' capital.
Lastly, we needed to make sure that we balance the quantum of the special dividend against the developing pipeline of growth opportunities, which have strong returns and our desire to invest in supply chain resilience in New Zealand. This strong financial position has enabled us to undertake important work to bring our terminal up to world-class standard, which I will discuss in more detail shortly. Looking at all the work that has been undertaken on the permanent refinery decommissioning, I can report that the team at Marsden Point has completed this project safely and to plan. We have spent NZD 169 million on this important work to date to deliver the clear instruction of our shareholders to safely close down the refinery and convert our operations. At the same time, we've increased the resilience of New Zealand's supply chain by completing the commissioning of additional storage tanks.
The conversion project was a multi-year infrastructure project with an initial budget set back in 2021, and we anticipate its completion within the upper end of the original budget. This was achieved despite a pandemic, supply and labor shortages, major weather events, and a high inflation environment. This is a significant achievement that we are very proud of and underlines our capabilities delivering major and complex infrastructure projects and as a critical infrastructure provider. The remaining terminal upgrade and private storage conversion is also largely complete, with the firefighting upgrades expected to be completed this year and the bund upgrade work expected to continue till 2027. Alongside this, the refinery workforce transition is complete, with 100% of employees who left the business and wanted a new role elsewhere being supported into new opportunities, jobs, or retraining.
In September, we successfully completed the commissioning of an additional 45 million liters of private jet fuel storage at Marsden Point, which has more than doubled our on-site jet fuel storage. This significantly adds to New Zealand's overall jet fuel resilience at a time when we are seeing air travel demand, and therefore jet fuel demand, return sharply. In our first full year of operations as New Zealand's largest fuel import terminal, we successfully received and discharged 70 import shipments and delivered 3.4 billion liters of fuel to Auckland and Northland. This was ahead of the fuel demand outlook that we provided to shareholders at the beginning of 2023, driven by stable diesel and petrol volumes and a continuing strong recovery in jet fuel demand. We're now seeing fuel volumes overall approaching pre-COVID levels, with aviation demand reaching 96% of pre-COVID demand.
Two weeks ago, we released our Q1 operating update, which confirms terminal and pipeline throughput remains ahead of the envisory fuel outlook, with over 920 million liters of fuel delivered on 17 import shipments. The increased throughput continues to be driven by a strong aviation demand recovery, with jet fuel throughput up around 38% on the previous corresponding period. Supporting a resilient supply chain today, and tomorrow, is critical to all that we do at Channel, and a core part of our work is making sure we are equipped and ready to do that as the fuel demand profile changes. This is a graphic that shareholders will be familiar with. It is the past fuel throughput at Marsden Point, indicated in gray, and envisory's demand outlook into the future.
Today, I want to draw shareholders' attention to the back end of this graphic, where we see what is expected to happen to the mix of fuels consumed in New Zealand out to 2050. We expect diesel demand, which is in green, to remain strong over the medium term, given how critical this is to New Zealand's heavy industry and that diesel is harder to abate. Petrol, however, which is the light blue line, clearly tails off to very low future volumes. While there has been commentary recently that the adoption of electric vehicles is slowing in New Zealand, the trajectory over the longer term remains the same, and we expect the petrol market to be the fastest to transition to alternative fuels. By 2050, we expect that petrol will make up only around 1% of total throughput.
As many shareholders will know, a typical oil refinery is not able to produce only one type of fuel. It is an all or nothing facility, and that means that even if, by 2050, we only had a market to make jet fuel as a refinery, without substantial further investment in new processing capabilities, you would still be making petrol and diesel as well. Ultimately, if we were refining fuels at Marsden Point in 2050, our customers would then be faced with having to sell the surplus petrol and diesel back onto the global marketplace at a significant discount and at a time when it's expected that there would be an oversupply of petrol in the world.
The final point I would make on this is that when our facility was operating as a refinery, we were never configured to produce products solely from oil extracted here in New Zealand, and there was never adequate domestic crude sources to meet the country's fuel demand. So the country was always reliant on importing crude to fuel the refinery, creating a single point of failure risk. Today, our customers import a range of refined product from a range of refineries around the world, providing more flexible options for sourcing product to meet the country's changing fuel demand whenever it is in New Zealand. Shareholders, this brings me to the opportunities for our business in the aviation sector.
While land transport is already well on the path towards decarbonization, the aviation sector still has a long way to go to transition to lower carbon fuel solutions, and this presents a really exciting growth opportunity for us. Liquid sustainable aviation fuel is emerging as the most technically viable way to bring down aviation emissions for medium to long-haul travel. You may have seen the comments from Air New Zealand Chair, Dame Therese Walsh, just two weeks ago, calling on companies to go faster and further to increase the global supply of SAF to support the decarbonization of aviation. Others around the world are saying the same thing. We have a partnership with Fortescue underway to investigate the feasibility of creating and refining sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, at Marsden Point.
This mock-up of Marsden Point shows you just how well-suited we are to support a facility like this in New Zealand with our surplus land that is already consented for heavy industrial uses, the industrial electricity and gas connections we have, surplus tanks to store product, and the critical pipeline to Auckland and onto the airport. While we are in the early stages of assessing the feasibility of this project, it is exciting that we are at the forefront of an emerging global industry. This could be transformational for our business. Our local community would get the benefit of investment and new jobs, and New Zealand would become one of the first movers in transitioning its aviation sector to lower carbon future. As James noted, supporting long-term asset resilience and positioning Channel as a partner of choice for fuel infrastructure is our strategic ambition as a company.
Delivering world-class operations is critical to unlocking this growth strategy. World-class recognizes that our customers operate globally and interact with terminal businesses all over the world, so they know what good looks like. In under two years of operation as an import terminal, and due to the stability of our new business model, we have already made good progress towards achieving a world-class operating standard, lifting our customer focus and focusing on operational discipline. We have clear objectives across our infrastructure, systems, processes, and capabilities to drive us further towards the standard of our international peers. As a high-hazard site, we are committed to ensuring that we get everyone safely home every day. Operating a safe workplace is foundational to our ambition to be a world-class operator of our infrastructure.
We're really proud of our efforts at site to deliver on the clear instructions of our shareholders to convert our operations to this new model and invest in facilities that are adding to New Zealand's overall supply chain resilience. Rather than tell you about it, I'd like to pause now and show you a quick video from site, which demonstrates the world-class facilities that we have been investing in at Marsden Point.
Channel Infrastructure is focused on delivering a world-class fuels import terminal operation that New Zealanders can rely on. That means tanks that can store more of the fuels that New Zealand needs to keep moving by upgrading our facilities to meet the latest industry standards. Utilizing modern innovations, such as geodesic dome roofs on our tanks, floating suction arms, and quick-flush tanks, all ensure fuel is always at optimum levels. Installing firefighting and secondary containment systems helps to keep our people and the environment safe. This matters because it all provides resilience for New Zealand. A resilient fuel supply chain keeps New Zealand moving forward. Fuel connects us to each other and the world, to our vital export markets, and it enables our tourism industry to thrive. Channel Infrastructure has a key role to play.
It starts with being world-class in the management and operation of our critical infrastructure, and it means investing in our extensive tank capacity to allow our customers to store more fuel. At Channel, we're investing to become a world-class fuels import terminal operation for New Zealand.
I think we can all agree that the contrast between the old facilities and those that have been upgraded is immense. The part that stands out most to me when reflecting on all the work that has been undertaken at site recently, is the bund upgrades and firefighting systems, which draw on the very latest technology to not only keep our people safe, but to make sure we can respond quickly and efficiently to an emergency situation. This investment in our site is important as we strive to reach world-class, and we could not have made these important investments if it were not for our new business model.
As we prove our credentials as a world-class operator of terminals and fuel infrastructure, and with our low cost of capital positioning us as a strong infrastructure partner, we are willing and able to invest in projects beyond our site, where there are parties looking to partner and where we can provide a valuable contribution in support of fuels infrastructure for New Zealand. The New Zealand energy markets are undergoing a transition, and to the extent that other parties may be looking for a partner to invest in their facilities, or new partners may be seeking support in standing up additional energy or fuel storage capacity, Channel is open to owning and operating other terminals beyond Marsden Point.
The greatest growth opportunities, as we know, lie in aviation fuels, but the forecast decline in road transport fuels could also present an opportunity for us to consolidate terminal infrastructure around New Zealand, which could benefit our customers through the energy transition. These are opportunities that we are open to, but that we expect to be playing out over a longer timeframe. We have a proven track record as a critical infrastructure provider, and we are committed to investing in New Zealand fuel resilience. So, shareholders, I want to acknowledge that there are people here today who would like to see an oil refinery reopened at our site. We assessed every possible way forward to make that business model work. We have a depth of experience that is unrivaled in this space, and these are the people that you would want advising you on matters such as this.
We're very lucky to have the board instead focused on delivering our vision for the company that aligns with where New Zealand is going, and as committed as I am to making sure we deliver supply chain resilience to our customers and the country. With that, I'll hand back to James for the resolutions and voting. I look forward to answering shareholder questions and on our company strategy later in the meeting.