Right. Welcome, everyone. I'm excited to be here today presenting to those with us in the room and those online about the work we've been doing over the last twelve months on developing the Marsden Point Energy Precinct concept, updating advisory's fuel demand outlook, and the progress we have made towards world-class operations. Here is our agenda for the day. Jack, our General Manager of Operations, will start by giving us an update on the work we are doing to ensure we provide resilient infrastructure for our customers and for the fuel security of New Zealand now and long into the future. Whilst I know often investors don't focus on this area, I can't underscore enough how important this work is to our license to operate, the resiliency of our earnings on a long-term basis, and our growth ambitions.
Peter van Singel, our Business Development Manager, will then talk through the updated outlook for fuel demand, developed by independent advisors and advisory. He will then talk to the key features which we think make our site at Marsden Point so strategic and we think unique in New Zealand. Then I'll talk through our vision for Marsden Point to be an energy precinct for New Zealand. But let me begin with a quick introduction. Today, you'll learn we have a long-term pathway to unlock value over time, as high-quality tenants are attracted to our 120 hectares of unutilized land and other infrastructure services we can provide. That our energy precinct could help New Zealand's energy and fuel security and resilience and create economic value for Northland and New Zealand.
That if we achieve these things, we'll position Channel to support the energy transition, that the energy precinct could diversify and grow the already substantial proportion of our revenue base that is fixed and independent of the amount of fuel that flows through our import terminal facility. And lastly, while in the near term, jet demand may be impacted by economic conditions and aircraft availability, our business is here for the long term. This is supported by the fuel demand outlook and the decarbonization pathway for aviation fuel through to 2060. I'm really proud of our leadership team, who, in a short space of time, have developed a proven track record of delivery.
Some of the key achievements to date include: delivering the NZD 220 million conversion to an import terminal on time and to budget to date, a great outcome for a project that commenced in 2021 before New Zealand's inflation peak. Putting in place long-term contracts that provide our shareholders with secure long-term cash flows and inflation protection, and delivering growth, including additional private storage contracts signed over the last few years, providing further security of earnings, all linked to the Producer Price Index, or PPI. The leadership team, all with me today, are Alexa Preston, our CFO, Jack Stewart, our GM Operations, Chris Bougen, General Counsel, and Company Secretary, Peter van Singel, our Business Development Manager, and Steve Lavall, our GM of IPL, or Independent Petroleum Laboratory.
Moving to the next slide, this is a strategy on a page that we articulated to you last year, and we repeat and will continue to repeat in all of our investor communications. It's a strategy that we talk about with our people, customers, and stakeholders every day. So if you ever want to know what Channel will do from a strategy perspective, if it's on this page, we're doing it, and if it's not on here, we're not doing it. It's as simple as that. A key part of the strategy we delivered to you last year was our vision of becoming a world-class energy infrastructure company and using that capability to grow and support the energy transition.
You will see that the Marsden Point Energy Precinct concept was a key part of that strategy, but one that needed further work and development over the course of the last year, which is why we're in front of you today. I want to highlight that it doesn't change our ambition or commitment to the other aspects of the growth strategy. These remain core opportunities for us that we hope to be able to deliver on in the coming years. I think it's really important to define exactly what our role is in the Marsden Point Energy Precinct. We're very conscious that shareholders invest in us because of the stability and reliability of our earnings, and I don't want there to be any confusion. In short, we'll continue to be an infrastructure company.
We're relentlessly focused on our Total Shareholder Return, or TSR, and therefore ensuring we earn above WACC returns and have contracted revenue is fundamental to any opportunity we deliver. We want to become a precinct landlord, so long-term contracted or lease income supplements our infrastructure income, earning an appropriate yield on our land. We want to find ways to increase the utilization of our jetty and pipeline through new assets and new projects that use the capacity that we have in those assets, and we're very interested in opportunities that see us delivering additional infrastructure and storage on our site. A good example of that might be additional storage for a potential biofuels refinery and ancillary infrastructure, operating maintenance services, which could form an overall part of a service offering.
Looking at the areas we wouldn't go, shareholders have quite clearly told us they don't want us to get back into fuels manufacture, so we won't be investing in the equity of the projects on our site. We're not interested in taking market or offtake risk. Rather, we'll invest if we have security of contracted revenue. Development and construction of new fuels manufacturing facilities also isn't for us. These are immensely complicated projects to deliver, to deliver, and we want to focus on our core capability today, which is delivering high quality, resilient pipeline tanks, that type of infrastructure. Construction of manufacturing plant on our site will be the responsibility of the tenants who we make our site available to. Moving to slide 11, I wanted to point out two Australian examples of ex- or current refinery sites that are also being repurposed into what they call energy hubs.
On this page here, we have the Kwinana Energy Hub as well as the Geelong Energy Hub. Their strategy is slightly different, in that at Channel we are looking to be a precinct landlord rather than a developer of renewable projects. But it does demonstrate that others also see strong opportunity in valuing these types of sites. This chart demonstrates the significant progress this team has made towards building a predictable and reliable revenue stream. The green portion on the bottom of this chart represents growth we have delivered through the private and additional storage contracts. The dark blue portion shows the fixed portion of our ten-year contracts, and the light blue portion above shows the variable terminal revenue which flows through based on the advisory outlook that we will present shortly. All our contracts are currently indexed to the Producer Price Index or PPI.
The green, light blue, and dark blue are not adjusted for PPI, but we have shown at the top of the chart what different levels of inflation could do for our revenue base. We've already achieved over 50% of our revenues that are completely unrelated to the amount of fuel that flows through our terminal on an annual basis. Our vision is the Marsden Point Energy Precinct will not only lift the total amount of revenue earned over time, but also that it increases the predictability and reliability of our revenues even more. If we can attract projects which require additional storage, jetty, or pipeline capacity, this could further enhance our contracted revenue profile. This is the opportunity we are articulating and focused on today. Now, I'll hand over to Jack to talk about the progress we've made towards world-class operations.
Thanks, Rob, and good morning again, everyone. As GM Operations, my role spans operations and management of our import terminal infrastructure here at Marsden Point, including our marine facility, tank farm, and also our multi-product pipeline to Auckland. One of the key pillars to our refresh strategy is maintaining a world-class operation. This work stream is foundational to Channel's role as a critical infrastructure operator, and I'll be updating you on the progress on this initiative over the next few slides. The pathway to our world-class objective is underpinned by a substantial program of work resulting from benchmarking undertaken in 2023. In assessing the standard of a world-class operator, we have looked not only to the best operations regionally here in Australasia, but also to the U.K. and Europe.
Through this benchmarking, we have defined Channel's full potential, both in terms of the underlying characteristics of a world-class operation, along with the level of performance achieved. Annual targets and improvement plans are set across nine different work streams on the basis of achieving our full potential on a three-year horizon. Targets forming part of our scorecard include topics ranging from incident reporting, preventative maintenance, and asset availability, to customer satisfaction and employee engagement, and these outputs are key deliverables for our team here at Marsden Point. Achieving the standard of performance not only supports the resilience of our critical infrastructure operations, but also ensures a high level of performance against our customer contracts, sustaining the all-important associated revenue and income streams.
Further, by demonstrating a high standard of operational availability or capability, we gain the confidence and support of our customers and stakeholders to pursue our growth aspirations as a partner of choice for fuels infrastructure beyond Marsden Point. We are making significant investments in our infrastructure through the conversion program, including over NZD 90 million spent on firefighting and bund upgrades as part of our business-as-usual capital program, and as part of our business-as-usual capital program, we continue to implement incremental upgrade and renewal of our assets to ensure they have the functionality to support the long-term resilient fuel infrastructure operations. A key example of this is the addition of floating suction arms to our jet fuel tanks, which help ensure product is maintained to the highest quality through the supply chain. Critical infrastructure needs to be highly available and efficient.
That is what our world-class standard reflects, and we're delighted to have achieved all of these targets year to date. Our jetty and tank infrastructure have achieved 100% availability year to date, and our pipeline has well exceeded the world-class performance of 99% availability. While this result is excellent, our focus remains on ensuring the systems are in place to sustain this performance over the long term through asset reliability and integrity work. And a great example of that is what you see here, being one of the intelligent inspection tools that we regularly run through our pipeline. Referred to as a pipeline inspection gauge or affectionately as a pig, these devices are run through the pipeline every few years and provide a comprehensive assessment of the condition of the full 170-kilometer length of the pipeline.
It is through these regular inspections that we have a fulsome understanding of the condition of the pipeline and the confidence that with continued careful operation and maintenance, this critical asset will continue to operate safely for many decades to come. Safety is intrinsic to the core role of a world-class operator, and while Channel already well outperforms the norm in the New Zealand context, Channel's approach is to relentlessly improve to match the best in the world. Through this year, we have centered our operations and safety management around the principle of operational discipline, and we're seeing strong leading indicator performance, supported by a renewed safety engagement program, along with a focus on reporting and continuous improvement.
A sustained leading indicator performance is important, as this will lead to an improvement in safety outcomes over time, and we are pleased this year to have achieved a strong safety performance among the busy conversion program. World-class means not only a safe, but also an efficient and cost-effective operation that meets our customer needs. Alongside our operational discipline objective, we're working with customers to improve ship turnaround times and now run regular customer surveys, which provide valuable insight on how we can lift our performance in order to provide a more efficient and effective infrastructure service for the Auckland supply chain. A world-class operation needs the support of a capable and engaged team. Building that team has been a priority for the business over the last year.
As the refinery decommissioning works have come to a close, and we have completed the transition to a new business, alongside the launch of the refresh strategy, we've seen a substantial and sustained lift in employee engagement, with an increase of over 26% across the workforce, which is now being sustained over two engagement surveys across a twelve-month period. Even having achieved this sustained lift, engagement remains a key priority for the business in order to mobilize our whole workforce in achieving the world-class objective. Alongside this, we are nearing the completion of the recruitment of a few key skills and capabilities to support safety, asset management, and maintenance functions.
This modest addition to our workforce, which includes the establishment of a new apprenticeship program, represents around 1% of total OpEx and improves our capabilities in the key areas needed to sustain the high level of performance for our infrastructure operation. To finish, I wanted to show you in pictures the transformation of the site through our conversion and asset upgrades program. Our conversion program is now over 85% complete, and the gradual transformation of the site as this work progresses is wonderful to see.
The most visual examples are those you can see here, being the installation of automated fire systems, which are in the process of being commissioned this month, the recent conversion of crude tanks to jet fuel service, with another conversion having commenced in September, following the announcement of a further storage agreement, and the upgrades to the bunds, a program which will run through to 2027. These bund upgrades bring our site up to the latest stringent New Zealand standards, and as they are progressively completed, will result in a significant transformation of the site toward a world-class import terminal. I will now hand you over to Peter to provide an update on the latest fuel demand outlook.
Thanks, Jack. As you know, we first commissioned Hale & Twomey to develop a long-term fuel demand outlook for our terminal in January 2021. This was ahead of the shareholder vote to proceed to converting to an import terminal. They updated that outlook again in January 2023, and today we've released to the market the latest review. This chart shows the updated view of the long-term fuel demand outlook for our site. I'd like to remind you that New Zealand's reliant on long-haul air travel, and demand for jet fuel is forecast to increase in the long term, driven by economic development and growing middle classes in China and India. You can see this trend very clearly on the chart, with the dark navy bars at the bottom of the chart.
The blue and the green bands, representing the diesel and the petrol, are in decline over this period, but there's still some use for those fuels into 2050 and beyond. Particularly for diesel, where there are hard-to-abate sectors like fisheries, agriculture, and earthmoving machineries. The advisory outlook sees fuel demand remain stable beyond 2050 to 2060, with any decline in petrol and diesel being largely offset by growing demand in aviation fuel. Our infrastructure here at Marsden Point is gonna be utilized for a very long term into the future. The red line on this chart indicates a previous fuel demand outlook. As you can see, we're now anticipating stronger fuel demand through this terminal through to 2047, amounting to an additional 2.5 billion liters of fuel coming through this site.
This equates to about 144 million liters per annum for the next 10 years. What Advisory found when they looked at the data this time around is that Marsden Point is now delivering a growing share of New Zealand's fuel requirements. This could be because Marsden Point is the only New Zealand fuels terminal port that can handle the large import vessels. Channel's deep draft jetties and large onshore storage facilities enable our customers to optimize the supply chain by bringing in larger parcels. Advisory hasn't tried to break out the sustainable aviation fuel portion of the aviation fuels because it's a drop-in fuel. The SAF, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, utilize the same tanks, the same pipelines, the same infrastructure as jet fuel, so differentiation isn't required.
What we do know is we're seeing some fairly weak economic conditions in New Zealand right now, and these may play out in the near-term demand for some of these fuels. If we now look at the fuels individually, I'll first look at petrol. The updated forecast is showing higher volumes of petrol versus the 2023 outlook, and this is due to a combination of different factors, some of which will increase petrol consumption and some which will reduce them. But the overall net effect is an increase across all the years. Looking at these factors, Hale & Twomey has noted, first of all, that there are fewer kilometers being traveled by the petrol vehicle fleet than pre-COVID, and they expect this trend to continue. At the same time, they've adjusted their fleet renewal assumptions. Weaker economic conditions have led to a lower rate of new vehicle purchases.
As older vehicles are less efficient than the more modern ones, this means a slower improvement of the fuel efficiencies of the petrol vehicle fleet, which therefore means higher petrol consumption in the longer term than previously forecast. On the chart on this slide, you'll see the mix of the live vehicle fleet between battery electric, hybrid petrol, and diesel vehicles. We can see the growing shift from petrol-powered internal combustion engines to more hybrids and more battery electric vehicles. The battery electric vehicle uptake was previously driven by government subsidies. Now that these have been removed and road user charges have been brought in, we're seeing a drastic decline in the number of electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles being purchased, as shown by the dashed line on this chart.
Hale & Twomey still believe that electric vehicles will be cost competitive with internal combustion engines sometime between 2025 and 2030. Hale & Twomey don't believe that petrol demand will be materially impacted by biofuels, which for petrol means ethanol. They reckon electrification will likely lead to decarbonization of the petrol fleet, much more so than ethanol. Moving on to diesel, we also expect higher volumes for diesel than we previously anticipated. Again, there are different factors at play here, some of which push in different directions. The weak economic activity now and the reduced economic growth assumptions for the longer term has an impact on diesel demand. The assumptions for the annual economic growth rate in New Zealand, based on Treasury projections, have been reduced down from 2% to 1.5%, which then lend itself to reduced diesel consumption.
The reduced economic activity has impacted on the vehicle kilometers traveled, and also has resulted in the slowing of the fleet turnover, just like in petrol vehicles. Therefore, again, slowing down the fuel efficiency improvements of the diesel fleet and leading to a higher consumption across all the years. The impact of hydrogen and electrification of the heavy vehicle fleet remains uncertain, but neither are expected to have any material impact before 2030. For diesel, biofuel is seen as a premium niche product, and it's not expected to have a material impact on diesel consumption over the longer term. If we now look at jet fuel, Auckland Airport hasn't updated their long-term passenger demand outlook, so Hale & Twomey is still using the early outlook to determine the aviation task.
This is then converted into jet fuel demand by using updated information on the different aircraft being used on the routes and the fuel efficiencies on which Hale & Twomey now have more data. What we've seen over the last few years is a rapid recovery in jet demand post-COVID. In fact, a faster recovery than even Hale & Twomey had previously forecast in their base case. This is largely driven by the international routes, with a number of planes from American carriers being redeployed from China to New Zealand over the last summer. We expect to see the seasonal trend return for the summer season. Domestically, aviation demand still hasn't fully recovered to where it was pre-COVID. This has likely been affected by some reduced business travel, with people now doing more video conferencing post-COVID, and also the economic environment and the government tightening its belts and reducing travel...
Again, in terms of the substitution of aviation with electric or hydrogen-powered planes, there's been no change in the modeling assumptions, and no real impact on aviation fuel consumption is expected for quite some time. Auckland Airport is the primary arrival and departure port for long-haul flights in New Zealand, and it's these flights that account for the bulk of aviation fuel demand. These flights are also the hardest to decarbonize, as electric and hydrogen propulsion are not seen as feasible options for these routes, and therefore, the review remains that sustainable aviation fuel is the most likely means of decarbonizing these flights. The chart on the right on this slide illustrates the strong correlation between the jet fuel throughput at our Marsden Point site, which is supplying all of Auckland Airport's jet fuel, and the number of international flights departing from Auckland Airport.
International flights obviously fly longer distances and therefore load a lot more jet fuel than domestic flights, and they're therefore a much bigger driver of jet fuel consumption than domestic flights are. In the very near term, we do think that the current economic environment and the airline challenges with securing replacement engines and planes may provide some headwinds for jet fuel demand. Moving on from fuel demand, I'd like to have a talk to you about the unique attributes that we see here at our Marsden Point site. For those of you that aren't familiar with our location, we're a few hours north of Auckland by road. We service the Greater Auckland and northern regions, and combined, these consume about 40% of New Zealand's transport fuel demand.
The Ports of Auckland haven't received imported fuels for many years, and so the only supply routes into Auckland for fuels are either via the Marsden Point fuel terminal or via the Port of Tauranga to the south of Auckland. Marsden Point is certainly closer by road, and it also has, of course, a multi-fuel product pipeline that connects us with Auckland, and like I said, we supply all of Auckland's jet fuel through the pipeline. The beauty of this pipeline is it's the lowest emissions way to supply fuel to Auckland, with the pipeline being powered by renewable electricity and avoiding all the congestion and emissions associated with trucking. When we look at our site and the opportunity, opportunities that we now have to repurpose it, we can point to a number of valuable attributes.
It's a large plot of land, as Rob mentioned, 180 hectares, of which we're only using a small portion of the site. The land is zoned heavy industrial, and on top of that, there's a zoning overlay called an energy precinct, which I'll discuss in greater detail on a following slide. We have long-term resource consents for a range of industrial discharges. We have a 220 kilovolt electricity transmission grid connection at our site boundary. We also have industrial-scale connections for water and natural gas. And like I said before, there's always the multi-fuel pipeline to Auckland. If you look in the picture in the foreground there, you see we also have our own fuels jetties in a sheltered deepwater harbor. This slide is a zoning graphic of the region of Marsden Point.
The orange is our Marsden Point site. The dark purple area is zoned heavy industrial, which also applies to our site, but only the orange area has the Energy Precinct overlay, which I'll touch on later on. As you can see, there's lots more heavy industrial land in the region, but quite a lot of this has geotechnical challenges from a peat substrate, which our site does not suffer from. What's special about our site is that we have the Marsden Point Energy Precinct overlay. This provides very permissive zoning for the activities of fuel storage, fuel manufacturing, and electricity generation on the site. It specifically enables the main operations and maintenance of a refinery or variations of a refinery for fuel manufacturing. The zoning also permits the construction of tall structures, whether it be for processing equipment, vessels, or flare stacks.
This applies to all of our land, both the site that currently has redundant processing equipment and also our land adjacent to the site across the public road. On top of that, we also have a Marsden Point Port Zone, which permits us to operate and maintain our fuel jetties. Last but not least, we have thirty-five-year resource consents awarded in twenty twenty-one, which allow for the controlled discharges to air, water, and land. All in all, we have a very strategic piece of land with a unique combination of attributes that position the site perfectly for to enable renewable fuels manufacturing activities or similar activities to support New Zealand's energy transition. I'll now hand you back to Rob to introduce you to the exciting concept of the Energy Precinct concept plan.
Thanks, Peter, for walking us through the special attributes of our site. Now let's look at what this means for us. As we've said, over the last 12 months, we've been looking at what highest and best use growth opportunities for Channel's unutilized land, with an eye to how we can benefit shareholders, customers, our local community, and New Zealand. The three key areas: One is the opportunity for additional storage, and you've seen a couple of new fuel storage contracts come through already this year, which will, when commissioned, boost New Zealand's fuel resilience. Shareholders may be aware the government is currently consulting on increasing the minimum stock holding levels of diesel for fuel suppliers. We clearly have the capacity to provide some of the storage tanks to enable that, and this is certainly a key opportunity for us.
In addition to providing increased storage for our customers, we see an opportunity to repurpose some of our other tanks for low-carbon, bio, or renewable fuel storage. For example, if Fortescue or the Seadra Energy consortium, or another party, proceeds with the manufacturing project, storage will likely be a key part of that, which we're well-placed to provide as one of the ancillary services we've mentioned. Future fuels manufacturing is another opportunity for us. We've spoken for some time now about the opportunity for sustainable aviation fuel manufacturing in New Zealand. We also announced to the market a few weeks ago that the Seadra Energy consortium is looking at biofuels manufacturing on our site as well. In addition to these projects, we also see opportunities for other fuels manufacturing, such as green ammonia. I think an issue that's been very topical recently is energy security.
New Zealand's electricity grid is increasingly renewable, and with that comes the challenge of firming that grid for the days when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, or like this winter, when the lakes are low because we haven't had as much rainfall as expected. For a site that is consented for electricity generation and well connected to the national transmission grid, we have the opportunity to look at things like diesel peaking, flow batteries, LNG, green hydrogen, or green hydrogen carriers for import or export of electricity generation. I want to note that none of these projects are yet committed, and not all of these things will happen, but what this shows is our site is, it has a significant amount and range of opportunities. The benefit to Channel of taking the approach that we are is we don't have to invest in picking winners.
The best projects will be the ones that are ultimately successful. By positioning ourself as the landlord and enabler, but not the developer, we can provide shareholders with an opportunity for additional value without taking significant technology or development risk. This minimizes our need for CapEx and OpEx spend, while giving us upside and revenue growth opportunity. What does this mean for Northland and New Zealand? The development of the Marsden Point Energy Precinct has the potential to bring a lot of economic development benefits up here in Northland and to support energy security in New Zealand. Through the recent well-publicized issues our electricity system has had in delivering low-cost wholesale electricity supply, we've witnessed deindustrialization in a short period of time with closures of various manufacturing facilities. We're determined to find a way to reverse this trend at Marsden Point.
If we get the Energy Precinct right, it will significantly increase investment, employment, and economic activity in the Northland region, and the energy projects themselves provide additional fuel and energy security for New Zealand. As I mentioned, two weeks ago, the government confirmed that they were consulting on increasing the level of diesel that fuel suppliers would be required to hold in New Zealand from 21 to 28 days of demand, an additional seven days, which equates to around 70 million liters. Given the capacity of Marsden Point, and that we handle about a billion liters of New Zealand's diesel per year, and the significant unutilized tank capacity currently sitting at around 400 million liters, as well as the connection into the existing fuel supply chain, we're clearly well-placed to support our customers with this new legislative requirement.
We've already seen how getting closer to our customers and helping them deliver a more efficient supply chain can deliver win-win opportunities, like the Z Energy contract announced earlier this year. And finally, like aviation, which is pursuing SAF as a decarbonization opportunity, the shipping industry is also considering how it can play its part through lower carbon fuel, which could provide additional storage opportunities at Marsden Point. So where are we going to put this, and how is it all going to fit together? What you're looking at on the screen at the moment is a picture of Marsden Point, looking from the northeast to the southwest, as if we were sitting on a helicopter or drone above the entrance to Whangarei Harbour. Our current facility, which this year is expected to generate between NZD 92 million and NZD 96 million of EBITDA, is colored in blue.
These are the in-service diesel, petrol, jet, and fuel oil compounds. What I think is stark about this is how little of our current site land is used to generate the revenue our business currently earns, demonstrating the opportunity ahead of us for the unutilized portion of our land and infrastructure. In the orange, we see potential future diesel compounds, where we have the opportunity for diesel or biofuel storage. The government's minimum stock holding obligation, as well as potential biofuel storage, are some of the projects that could appear here. Also in orange is the jet and potential SAF compound. Here we have about 120 million liters of capacity. There's actually already 45 million liters converted. You can see this with the two tanks with geodesic dome roofs, and therefore another 75 million liters worth of opportunity for us.
You've already seen us deliver on part of this opportunity with the Z Energy contract we announced in August this year. Moving from storage opportunities to the manufacture of future fuels. As I'm sure you all know, we have an MoU with Fortescue, who are investigating a potential 60 million liters per annum eSAF project. To remind investors, eSAF is manufactured by running fresh water through an electrolyzer to separate it into its component parts, hydrogen and oxygen, before combining it with a biogenic CO2 source to create a compound that is chemically identical to traditional aviation fuel. The Fortescue project is a particularly complex project, combining several different processes: hydrogen electrolysis, Fischer-Tropsch, and refining activities into a world-leading eSAF manufacturing facility. Fortescue continues to progress the pre-feasibility, feasibility phase of the project and will do so into the next year.
While the details of the project are still being developed, we anticipate this would take more land than the potential biofuels project being considered by the Seadra Energy consortium. The key opportunity for us is for the rental income for the land this project would require, and ancillary infrastructure such as tanks and jetty infrastructure to store and handle any fuel, fuel that's manufactured. As investors will be aware, Channel sits at the entry point into the Auckland International Airport fuel supply chain, and our fuels pipeline is the only direct supply route through to Wiri and then on to the airport. So this potential eSAF project presents a real opportunity for us and Fortescue to help facilitate the renewable fuels transition for aviation and position Marsden Point at the forefront of the emerging global industry for SAF manufacture.
The recently announced potential Marsden Point biorefinery, proposed by the Seadra Energy consortium, is a very different project, but one we're equally excited about. The Seadra Energy consortium, which includes Qantas, Renova, ANZ, and Kent, is looking at acquiring and repurposing a significant amount of the decommissioned refinery assets in situ and building an additional new plant to become a biofuels manufacturing facility. So far, we've already received $4.7 million USD from Seadra Energy for the option to buy the decommissioned refinery equipment. If the project does go ahead, the Seadra Energy consortium would build, own, and operate the equipment and be responsible for sourcing the feedstock and electricity to run it, with our role as a landlord and ancillary services provider.
One of the key things about the announcement we made a month ago is that we were able to articulate, for the first time, the value that someone else has put on access to our strategic real estate. Should this project go ahead, we'll have the ability to lease between 18 and 20 hectares of land for the project, generating between NZD 6 million and NZD 7 million a year of revenue. The project remains subject to further engineering studies, further commercial negotiations, completion of financing, and a final investment decision by the Seadra Energy consortium. We expect the decision whether to proceed or not with the project will be made in twenty twenty-five, which is actually an incredibly fast timetable. Like the eSAF project, this also provides the opportunity to earn revenue through land rent, utilization of our jetty, fuel storage opportunities, ancillary services, and operations and maintenance.
This is one of the key ways we'll judge which projects we think deliver best value to our shareholders. It's not just about the ground rent we can earn, but our opportunity to earn additional revenue and improve utilization of our other key assets, the jetty and the pipeline. So where are we gonna put these projects? On the middle of the site, you can see all the old process equipment. This is where we're proposing to locate the potential biorefinery project, in the yellow box here. This would sit between the diesel, petrol, and fuel oil compounds and the new diesel and biofuels and jets and SAF compounds. Above this, we're proposing to put the potential eSAF project. Here in yellow towards the top of the slide. This, the reason why it is located there is because it's closer to our electricity connection.
There is also room for an eSAF project to expand over time, and if this occurs, phase two could be put on the land above Mair Road, the line running through our slide, on the slide. You can see with all of these projects done, we still have a significant amount of landholding to find an opportunity to repurpose. Energy firming has been topical for many of you, and there's been quite some chatter in the media around the potential for LNG terminal at Marsden Point. I think it's important to note that while the site would be well-placed for the delivery of the LNG terminal, with its suite of existing infrastructure, particularly the jetty, natural deep water harbor, and natural gas pipeline connection to the site, there are two important points to remember.
Firstly, the gas pipeline to the site is a relatively narrow gauge, so it'd be difficult to get the volume throughput of gas into the main transmission network that would be required to run a large gas-fired power plant. It's not an insurmountable hurdle, but it is a hurdle. Secondly, as I've said many times today, Channel is only interested in being an infrastructure provider. We have no interest in taking commodity or trading risk exposure... We would only start work on this project if there was the opportunity for a long-term offtake arrangement, which covered our cost of capital and provided us certainty of returns for any investment that was required. That being said, the site is pretty well set up for it, and we're open to all suggestions for maximizing the value of the significant land that we have to support resilience in New Zealand's electricity system.
We are able to accommodate gas-fired generation on the site, which is one way you could use the LNG. The other thing we could do, and we actually think would be much quicker than an LNG import facility, is diesel-fired generation. It'd be faster to build and a lower capital cost because all the necessary import terminal facilities already exist. The benefit of diesel generation is it could be stood up quickly to enable New Zealand's transition to 100% renewables, and then stood down once this had been achieved. Another really interesting opportunity that we see for our site is to repurpose one of our larger tanks into what's called a flow battery. Imagine this as a grid-scale battery that can help to firm the New Zealand electricity grid as it transitions to a greater proportion of intermittent renewables.
By charging up a liquid electrolyte that we could store in our tank, it's possible to start to store large amounts of electricity for use when needed by the grid. Flow batteries are not a new concept. They were first patented in 1879, but continued R&D in this space by a number of global parties may see this concept become more and more commercial. Vopak, a large global fuel storage business, is currently investigating repurposing it, of their decommissioned tanks into flow batteries with Elestor, a startup based in the Netherlands. Given that we already have several unused large tanks, an unused grid connection, and potentially some large electricity consumers on our site, we see a flow battery as a great feature for the Energy Precinct and something we'll look to develop further.
Again, we would seek to provide the infrastructure, but believe that others would be better placed to play in the electricity markets. So where would these potential energy security projects go? I've spoken about LNG. We could put a floating LNG receipt and gasification ship in the green box on the western jetty, and if we did receive LNG imports, we could receive them on the eastern jetty with a pipeline connecting the two. Any potential gas or diesel peaker could go in the green box at the top of the slide, closer to our electricity connection. How the energy transition will unfold is quite uncertain. It is not clear whether there will be any export or indeed import of hydrogen. To the extent that there is import or export of hydrogen, then this could occur via a Marsden Point site.
Hydrogen, being the world's lightest molecule and difficult to transport, is often transported long distances by converting it into another compound, such as ammonia or methylcyclohexane, or MCH for short. This could go in the green box at the bottom of our slide, along with other potential product imports, and there's still room at the top of the picture for flow batteries in green again, so there we have it, our Marsden Point Energy Precinct concept. It's a vision for how we could unlock the value of our site through a range of potential projects to deliver additional storage, future fuels manufacturing, and energy security opportunities, so what does this mean for shareholders? We have a significant land holding that we don't currently attribute any material value to, and we don't receive any income from.
We think if we can develop the Energy Precinct concept to its maximum potential, there's a significant opportunity for us to create value for shareholders from realizing value from this highly strategic piece of real estate. The current carrying value of the real estate is only NZD 15 million, which is substantially below that of even Northland industrial land. However, we think with the right tenants who could appropriately value access to our port, pipeline, zoning, and consents, there's a significant premium available on top of that. The potential Seadra Energy biorefinery project implies a land valuation of around NZD 550 per square meter, to 6.5% capitalization rate. With 120 hectares of unutilized land, you can see the really significant opportunity to deliver incremental value to shareholders from this Energy Precinct concept.
Part of the appeal for us at Channel, as you've seen today, is the broad range of opportunities and technologies that we've sought to integrate into the plan, all of which individually could have a significant impact on resilience for New Zealand, enhancing shareholder value and bringing investment to Northland. Not all of them will get there, and not all of them will get there on a fast timeframe, but each of them is exciting and demonstrates the capabilities we have here at Marsden Point. What this approach allows is for us to be technology and project agnostic, and to focus on seeking to attract the best projects to our site, which have the highest value, without us having to commit significant resource or capital to the development of those projects themselves. This means we'll take a long-term and considered approach to the site.
It's not something that's going to be realized tomorrow or next year. Take time to attract the right projects, and we're willing to be patient, because as we've shown you today, we've got a really attractive proposition for the right projects and the right opportunities. We need to make sure that we capture as much of that value as we can for our shareholders, which includes picking projects that increase the utilization of our other assets, like empty tanks, the jetty, or the pipeline, and therefore, take a considered, long-term, and patient approach.... So in summary, we've taken a highly strategic approach to ensuring we capture the value of our unutilized land.
As we've shown you today, there is significant value available over the longer term, as strategic tenants are attracted to the land, and then we can provide that ecosystem of infrastructure services, like the jetty, access to the pipeline, incremental storage. So we're not just earning additional money from rent, but we're actually better utilizing some of our other assets and earning incremental revenue from those infrastructure services, which we think we're really good at. The Energy Precinct concept is an opportunity to diversify and increase revenue that is fixed and independent, so that we don't have volatility for year-on-year changes in fuel demand either. As Jack has highlighted earlier today, we're on our way to our full, full world-class potential.
This is incredibly important to us, not only for our license to operate, but strategically important for acquiring other terminals and delivering the performance of the existing terminal year in and year out, and we've given you a long-term fuel outlook update prepared by Hale & Twomey, which includes a lift across the next 25 years for projected fuel demand for our business, underpinned by the growth in jet demand. I want to reinforce that Hale & Twomey view is a long-term outlook, and there may be economic factors which cause that to be under or over in any given year, and currently, we're focused on the fact that New Zealand is in recession, and we need to be about cautious about what the rest of this year and next year might bring. Thanks for your time today. We'll now open to Q&A online and for people with us here in the room.
If you are online, please type any questions you have, or wait for the microphone if you are here with us in the room.
Rob, um-
Oh, just if you could wait for the microphone, that'd be great. Thank you.
Hi, Rob. Just on jet fuel supply, I noticed you didn't talk at all about opportunities in Wiri, because in that recent review that talked about possibly lifting day supply of diesel from 21 to 28, they also highlighted the challenges in medium to long-term jet fuel supply and where that's going to occur. So in terms... I know it's not a direct land opportunity, but it is an opportunity. Is there anything you can add to that in terms of opportunities there or how you'll overcome the near-term challenges once we reach these higher jet fuel forecasts?
Yeah, I think. So good question. The presentation today has been really focused on taking you through the delivery of the Energy Precinct, so that's a very Marsden Point-focused presentation, which is why we focused on that aspect of it. I think it's important to note that nothing's changed from our core strategy, and you'll note in most of our investor presentations, we give you a picture of all the terminals in New Zealand and say, "We're open to acquiring those for the right return and outcome for our shareholders." So, you know, Wiri is another terminal, and that's certainly something that would be on our radar if there was an opportunity there, but it's owned by three other parties, so it's not in our hands.
I've got the microphone. You said we're allowed to sort of challenge. It's a great presentation, and obviously, success begets success, and you develop momentum. But the two projects you've got with Fortescue and with Seadra Energy are both highly conditional. Can you sort of talk to your level of certainty around that, either of those projects sort of developing? I guess in a worst-case scenario, if they both fail the feasibility study, what that does to potential land value and the projects you've talked about?
Yeah, so I think the first point is we've illustrated to you today a wide range of projects, different technologies, different end purposes, different timeframes. And so part of the plan here is to build diversity in the projects that we're looking at because, yeah, as I've said, not all of them will get there, and not all of them will get there quickly. I think what we are very certain of is the unique nature of this site in New Zealand. There's probably nowhere else likely that you could put many of these types of projects. And so, you know, if something falls over, then you can be assured we're working on other things in the background, and we'll continue to do that.
You know, our plan, for what it's worth, now that we've done the work on the site and launched the precinct, is to actually sort of be much more proactive around how we go and market the opportunity, 'cause I think to date, we've had opportunities that have come to us. So I think there's still... You know, if those projects don't get there, I think there's plenty of opportunity for other projects. Does that answer your question?
Probability of those projects?
I'm not gonna put a probability on those projects. I know you'd love for that. I think the thing about the two that I would say is the Seadra one's probably more near term and when you'll know, because we've talked about an FID in 2025, and the reason for that is they're repurposing some existing kit that's already here on site. Actually, a lot of the feasibility work has been done. So I think we'll know sooner than we'll know, for example, than for a SAF project. So I can help you that way from a timeframe perspective.
And just the last one, just going off reservation again. Opportunities in Australia, medium to long term, and at what point do you think you've established your credibility and ability to operate as a preferred partner?
I'll let you guys tell me when we've established our credibility, but we've got a lot to do here in New Zealand before we think about Australia, and you know, for us, like, there's plenty of opportunity for us to chase. We're a small team. The leadership team is the one that's sitting in front of you, and there's only so many hours in a day, and we're focused on those near-term adjacent opportunities that are high probability or highest probability for shareholders, and then when we've exhausted all of those, we'll go look at the next ones.
Thanks, Rob.
... David?
Thanks. Could I just ask, assuming the Seadra transaction goes ahead, is there a tax liability likely to be crystallized?
That feels like a good question for our CFO.
Thanks, David. No, there's not. It's the tax profile of that transaction's already been worked through, and so, no, no tax impact. There will be the well-traversed balance sheet unwinds to do with the divestment, but I think we've covered that on numerous occasions.
Thank you. And, one other: Could I just ask, 'cause it's difficult looking with my eyesight at the charts from here, in terms of what Hale & Twomey are assuming for jet fuel volumes in 2025, can you give some steer? Is that up, down, flat versus 2024?
I'll let Peter answer that one.
So the long-term outlook, which includes the near term, is certainly an uplift on 2024. Absolutely. What we're highlighting today is that a long-term outlook from Hale & Twomey. How the near term plays out is uncertain yet, just to see how the economic environment works out.
But the bar that you're showing, is that higher than 2024?
It's higher.
So we're expecting growth?
Yep.
But again, that's a perfect curve, the Hale & Twomey outlook, driven over 25 years, and what I can tell you is it won't be a perfect curve when we're looking back in 25 years' time. I think there's some well-known issues around fleet availability and engine issues with some of the airlines that are servicing New Zealand. So when we look at that outlook, that's why we just say, "Well, let's just see how that flows through and impacts next year.
Okay, thanks.
Question down here.
How should we think about the dividend payout ratio in the context of all this uncertainty?
I think the benefit of the Marsden Point Energy Precinct, as I said, is it's a low CapEx, low OpEx, if you like, vision for Marsden Point from a Channel shareholder perspective. We're not investing a whole bunch of capital or OpEx into R&D and the development of these projects. We're seeking to be the landlord and the facilitator, and so at the highest level, if you had a vacant piece of land, and you had a tenant go and occupy it, then there's revenue upside for not much cost. That's how we think about it. Now, the reality is the land, depending on the project or the nature of the opportunity, there might be some cost or capital in making that land available.
For example, if it's currently occupied by a decommissioned kit, and that needs to be brought down, which we've already provided for in our balance sheet. But there's no change today in terms of the dividend payout ratio and how we're thinking about the future, and, you know, if you think about everything we've said in the presentation, it's let's make sure we continue to be an infrastructure provider. We know that investors invest in us because of that regularity of dividend income and earnings, and so we wanna make sure we don't change that. Kim?
Thanks, thanks, Rob. Could you just talk to... Because of the timeframes of all these projects, you know, they're all different in terms of long life and different assessment periods and things, how do you approach the screening of them through-
Correct
... decision-making and the resourcing of that?
Yeah. I think a multifaceted approach. So one is, you know, the first one is an assessment of the probability of outcome. So, you know, if we're gonna invest resource, again, and we're a small team, we wanna do that in the highest probability outcome projects that we've got. I think the other lens that we look through is that infrastructure ecosystem. So somebody could build a warehouse down on the corner of our site, but we don't get any additional storage revenue. Our jetty's only 30%-40% utilized. We don't increase with the utilization of the jetty or the pipeline, and so it's not just what we can do in terms of additional tenant income or rental income, but interacting with that ecosystem of infrastructure that already sits on our site. So those are the two big lenses, I think, from our perspective.
What you see actually on that is the projects we've talked to you about today and the ones that are naturally attracted to the site, like biofuels manufacture or renewable fuels manufacture, by definition interact with all those other parts of our infrastructure, and that's why they're kind of there. Neville?
Just to expand on that point a little bit, so obviously, you've proposed this as an energy precinct concept. At what point might you consider things that are non-energy for the site, non-energy use of land?
I think the short answer is, and I'm not sure what you've got in mind there, but look, we're open to all opportunities. It's a big land holding. I think what we've put in front of you today, as we said, are the ones that we see as tending to be highest value from a shareholder perspective, 'cause they, as I said, utilize those other assets, so yep, there could be other opportunities out there that we're not aware of, and in fact, that's something we're keen to spend some next year working on, but these are the ones that we look at and say, "Well, we can see a lot of value for us in these.
... And just to get a flavor on the other proposals, apart from the two we know about, are you in discussions, like preliminary discussions-
We, we-
with people on flow batteries or?
We get approached all the time about various projects, and I think part of that, part of the reason you're seeing this work today is it's been a necessary development of our strategy to have a systematic way that we actually think about assessing what we do on our site. So as I said to you, it's not who's the last person that approached us with an interesting opportunity, but that we've actually got a framework to consider that by, and a plan around how these things might be located and interact on our site.
Should we be surprised if a flow battery or a peaker turned up on the site within the next five years, or should we really be thinking five to 10-year timeframe?
I think, as I said, different opportunities have different timeframes. I think, you know, if you were to ask government today, they would say electricity firming is a high priority item, right? They've made that very clear. Whether that's a flow battery, whether that's LNG, whether that's LNG here or somewhere else, or whether that's diesel peaking, well, that's dependent on sort of how those opportunity sets develop.
Great, thanks. And last one from me. Obviously you're setting this up as an Energy Precinct, serving New Zealand's wider needs. Just to give us kind of the constraints or the boundaries on that, what is the export limit for power in or out of the Northland region and gas in and out of the Northland region?
Yeah, so the 220 kV line, which comes to the south of our site, we think has a pretty significant amount of capacity, like a very large amount of capacity in that line. Think about the end of that transmission line as much like the end of the beautiful motorway you drove up that terminated in Warkworth, to then be on a road all the way up to Marsden Point, that is a lot less capacity, and that's the nature of that transmission, particular transmission line. Oliver?
Thanks, Rob. Look, just in the sunshine and unicorn scenario, if you did have and a key, obviously, key capabilities around land allocation use. So if you did have more opportunities than you could poke a stick at, what is the opportunity for you to look at some of the other heavy industrial zoning land that Peter outlined before and have access to that land?
Yeah, so the land's there. One of the challenges that Peter articulated is that it's actually got a peat substrate, which actually proposes some geotechnical challenges around building. So I think, you know, it's a bit like the question before around, you know, would we go into Australia? We've got a lot of opportunity on our existing perimeter, and I think our team's focused on delivering that first, and then if we do a great job of that, then we can look beyond the perimeter, but it does get a bit more challenging with some of that land.
Thank you.
Just got an online question I'll take. So, this feels like one for you, Peter. What does advisory assume about the impact on demand will be from the materially higher prices of SAF, likely leading to the requirement of higher EFS?
Yeah, it's a good question. When we look at the production volumes expected from this site, if these projects were to go ahead, we're still talking in the order of only a few percent, less than 5% of New Zealand's jet fuel needs. So I think that the proportion of SAF that goes into the fuel on a vessel on a ship, and therefore the impact on price will be very, very small, certainly initially. If I look historically at aviation costs, what we were seeing, the cost for long-haul travel from the '80s all the way through to the 2000s were fairly static, despite inflation. Where effectively, continued improvements and optimization of the aviation fleet meant that the costs were basically suppressed.
It's not clear how this will play out in the longer term, but certainly in the near term, the quantum of SAF being blended into fossil fuel, into fossil jet, will be quite small, so therefore impact expected to be quite small.
Andrew, then I'll take a few more online.
I'm just hoping to ask some of those hard questions maybe a slightly different way, but, just thinking about some of the-
Getting the same answer.
Yeah, well, hopefully not. The milestones, just thinking about the milestones-
Yeah
... you need to go through for each of these things, and I guess, first of all, taking the biorefinery one, the sort of the near-term key challenge, I guess, is around the feedstock-
Mm-hmm
... and then securing that supply. Will we, when will we find out whether that milestone has been achieved or not? 'Cause that's obviously a key hurdle.
My expectation is that, and a lot of the other aspects of the project will be run in parallel, and so we've talked about a 2025 FID, so I think that's your most likely time about hearing about it. If we've got something to say earlier, and we can say it, you know, absolutely we would. You know, for example, if there was a showstopper and, you know, it wasn't gonna work for some reason, then, you know, we would say that. But I'd expect that and a number of the other work streams like financing and funding and finalizing the engineering studies to all happen in parallel.
Okay. And then in terms of the Fortescue opportunity, do they have exclusivity over that site at present while they continue to sort of work through their pre-feasibility work?
Yeah, we've had an MoU with them for quite some time, so many years, which started actually looking at hydrogen itself and then transitioned to be SAF, which is ultimately just trying to find a use case for developing that hydrogen. So, within that, there are some kind of mutual obligations to each other around how we work together and sort of timeframes, but we're pretty comfortable with how that's tracking.
Okay. And I guess if you do have all of these plethora of other opportunities, I guess the question is, are you able to put a bit more pressure on Fortescue to move a bit faster if some of these other opportunities are looking more interesting?
Yeah. I think what we've shown on that page today is there's plenty of land out there. So a lot of the other ones, you know, if they develop faster, I don't think they're necessarily mutually exclusive.
And I guess the last question is, I mean, just looking at the slide you have up there, and you talk about the 400 million liters of spare capacity, it does look like the SAF manufacturer goes over a chunk of that, and I'm assuming you couldn't use the full 400 million liters and then still do some of the other stuff. Is that right?
Yeah, that's right. So a couple of the tanks you're referring to there are very large tanks. One of them is, I think, 90 million liters, one of them is around 60. And actually, the problem with them is they're almost too big for New Zealand because if you have a 90 million liter tank and it's full of jet fuel, that tank's got to have an outage at some point to give it a maintenance birthday. What do you do with the jet fuel in the nine months that you've got to have that maintenance outage? So that's one of the reasons for the larger tanks, that the team started looking at things like flow batteries and other repurposing opportunities that don't have that challenge. I was going to take one from the...
I know we've got another question over there, but we'll just take one from the online. You gave Viva Energy as an example for what you want to look like, but Viva themselves have stopped most of these projects, similar to the ones you're looking at, like hydrogen FSRU. So that's a good question and a good challenge. I think it speaks to the fact that we've got a diverse range of projects and a very long timeframe. If you think about something like hydrogen, right now, there's hydrogen projects that are being stopped or delayed all over the world. I encourage you to do a Google, and you'll, it'll all come up, and that's 'cause the challenge is, well, what do you actually do with the hydrogen once you've made it?
And one of the things that the SAF project or the eSAF project, or one of the reasons it is SAF project, is that that's an end outcome for the hydrogen, which has a use case in a New Zealand context. Likewise, LNG is something that government's speaking about, and we thought we should address here today because it's been, you know, well discussed and traversed in the media and by investors, so felt like it was the right thing to do to give an update. I think the point we, we'd make is there are alternatives to LNG to support electricity firming, like batteries, like diesel, and, you know, not all of those things would happen. Question over there.
Thank you. Maybe a question for Alexa. If the Seadra deal goes through, have you done any initial assessment in terms of the remediation costs you can save? Because, from where I can see, on the picture, you've got the Seadra project pretty much covering the current decommissioned refinery assets, right?
Yes. So thanks, Ryan. I think we've been quite transparent at the half year in our interim financial statements about the proportion of the demolition provision that would be unwound based on the previous iteration of the Seadra option agreement. And that saving on demolition, if you like, was NZD 8.1 million. Offsetting that is the value of the equipment Seadra were looking to acquire originally is held on our balance sheet as scrap, and the value of the assets that were held on the balance sheet as scrap were NZD 5.1 million.
The deal has now progressed and encompasses more assets, and so that saving will increase, but we expect both the demolition saving and the scrap metal unwind to be in the order of a couple of million NZD, additional to the 8.1 and the 5.1 I spoke about.
Okay, thank you. And then, for Rob, so for the flow battery, which is interesting, if you use the 90 million liter tank, what sort of storage capacity would you expect out of it?
I'm going to hand that one straight to Peter.
So for us, the flow battery is still in the early stages of the concept. The amount of energy storage depends on the electrolyte, the chemical you use. And a lot of the work taking place around the world now and R&D, research and development, is around what's the best chemical to use? How can you improve energy density? So we have some rough numbers, but it's too early to share those at this stage. But it'll be significant. So when you drive in, for those that come to our site, that there's a grid scale battery park being built adjacent to our site. That's a significant battery. A flow battery like this would be probably a higher capacity than that.
Thanks. And a different, just to add to that, a different discharge profile as well. So it's, you know, the batteries that are being built today tend to be discharged over a couple of hours. Flow batteries is maybe a couple of days. Online question. Data centers are known to be energy intensive. Is there potential for a data center combined with external power generation on the site? Alexa, why don't you take that one first, and then I'll go for it.
Thanks, Rob. Look, I think Rob has done a really good job of articulating the types of projects we think create the best value for shareholders, and those are projects that make use of the strategic elements on our site, being the jetties, the pipeline, the additional storage, the electricity connection. So while a data center might utilize a lot of electricity, the underlying land rental value probably isn't quite as high as, say, the land rental that the Seadra biorefinery is proposing to attract. And so at this point, it didn't quite meet the highest and best use criteria.
I think one other thing, just on data centers, for what it's worth, is, they are incredibly energy intensive, and notwithstanding, you might tie a data center to a solar PPA or a wind PPA, I can assure you that data center is not switching off overnight. Therefore, you know, you need to think about actually what type of energy they're using. It's not just the renewable energy that's often associated with them, but the energy that's needed to firm them and keep them going twenty-four hours a day. One of the things about an electrolyzer, for example, for an eSAF project, is you can dial that up and down in half an hour or an hour to demand response.
It's a very different proposition and actually creates its own value in terms of, you know, think about what Tiwai done for the electricity sector this year. Question over here.
Hey, Rob, just on the negotiating on the ground rents, do you feel like you have enough options on the table that you have your way in negotiating, or those earlier projects, do you feel like to ensure the success of the whole concept, you're more of a kind of a price taker?
That's a great question. I think, the way we think about it is for the right projects, and by definition, they'll be the right ones if they meet this, they probably won't be able to be located anywhere else very easily. And I think that creates a, you know, a good negotiating dynamic between lessor and lessee.
Just a question on technology. You say you're agnostic on technology, but there is disruption if, like, the technology doesn't survive and get lapsed and you have to repurpose. Do you have some views if there's two kind of technologies on the table?
Yeah, I think, I think that's the benefit of positioning ourselves where we have in this, right? Which is, we've seen through decades of ownership of a refinery, what can happen to the economics of that over time, right? As you've got domestic cost pressures, scale internationally, that can change a project that once was, you know, really economic into something that's quite marginal. And so from our perspective, we're very comfortable we were signaling that we're going to be playing from a value chain perspective, which is, in the infrastructure side of it, rather than exposing ourselves to those merchant returns. So in many ways, we do want to take a long-term view on what the right technologies are because we want the projects to be there for a long period of time, but also we want to de-risk ourselves by playing in the right part.
Any more questions in the room? Probably take one more from the screen. Probably a question for you, Peter. What are the notable challenges to the site location as an energy precinct? Is distance to sources of biogenic CO2 a challenge?
I mean, the first case is it depends on what you use. So the general question, which is what are the challenges to the Energy Precinct, it's almost like a unicorn. There aren't many challenges. There are a lot of things in the site, and there are a lot of attributes that make that very achievable and feasible for the site and which might be challenging elsewhere. Specifically, the question on access to feedstocks or CO2, that isn't one that we're busy with simply because we aren't investors in those projects. So that's really a question for those consortiums, whether it be Seadra or Fortescue. They're certainly working hard in that space to ensure those feedstock supply lines are available. It's always a question for these kind of projects as to where you locate them.
You need lots of things. If you're a renewable fuels manufacturer and you want to do this in New Zealand, what are the things that you need to site your manufacturing facility? You need a large plot of land, you want to be heavy industrially consented. You want to be near the supply chain or the demand center for those fuels, and you'd like to have minimal risk to your project in terms of consenting requirements, and so if you imagine yourself as wanting to build a large-scale billion-dollar piece of kit with those attributes, it's very difficult to find a site near Auckland, which is New Zealand's largest demand center for fuel, particularly aviation fuel, and so you work yourself up along the supply chain, which is our pipeline, and you end up at Marsden Point, where we have all those attributes.
The question around feedstock is: would you locate that billion-dollar piece of manufacturing kit near the feedstock, source of feedstock, whatever that source may be? And the answer is yes, you could, but then you need to get your products to that demand center. And you still need all the attributes of the consented land and things. So, so again, coming back to the question, do we see the challenge? We don't, we aren't looking into the feedstock supply chains. We aren't even aware exactly of what the Seadra feedstocks may be and where they may come from. We do know that we have good roading, we have a port next door to us.
If it's liquid, we've got a fuel jetty, and there's a rail spur being talked about in terms of coming to the site over the next number of years. So there are lots of options. So are they challenges? I think I'd see them as being things that are being worked through as many other parts of the project development.
I think one of the important lenses that we look through on this is, let's make sure we work on things where as much of it's in our control rather than somebody else's control.
I don't think we've got a lot of appetite to go, "Well, we're gonna work on a project assuming that a motorway is gonna be built to our front door, or that a rail siding is gonna be built to our front door, or that the port expansion next door is gonna go ahead." Our working assumption with all of these projects and the work we've done with the developers is, let's utilize those things that we know we've got, and we don't have to worry about, you know, large uncertainties like those things, and it narrows down the range of things that might go wrong and bring in a project from development into actual execution.
All right. One more question.
Just check on one last one. You've obviously got a number of ex-refining assets which are still sitting there for sale. What's your sort of timeframe are you thinking before you actually deciding on, "Let's just sell this for scrap and move on?
Yeah, look, a number of those are now subject to the green light procedure, substantially more than three weeks ago. So we need to let that process play out, and then I think we'll decide when we move on. I think what we've learnt through that sale process is that there's a lot of people who kick tires on these things, but actually bringing them home and, you know, turning them into, you know, value for shareholders is really hard, and actually, what we've probably learnt is the best use for them, given the complexity in disassembling them, putting them in containers, and moving them offshore, is to try and find a way and use them if you can in situ. 'Cause it massively lowers the cost and complexity of trying to sell the asset.
So that's actually one of the other benefits or opportunities of doing what we're doing.
All right, I think we'll bring Q&A to a close. Thank you all, for participating-