Responsible for technical affairs, Sebastian Bartoś, who's responsible for commercial affairs. Robert Ostrowski, responsible for economics and finance. Artur Wojtków, who is responsible for employee matters. Up until middle of December, we were in this composition. We were joined by Wojciech Kałuża, who is responsible for development in our company. Last year for the JSW Group was the best year if we compare the results over the 30 years of its history. 2022 was a year of totally new challenges. I've been working in the industry for quite a while, and I've not encountered such challenges. The new geopolitical situation in Europe has led to drastic reductions in steel production. Glass furnaces were shut down. There were also logistics problems. April was a very difficult period for us.
We had dramatic situations in Pniówek and Zofiówka, and they left a deep impression. In order to face these dynamic changes, we continued to update the group's goals. We had to adapt to the constantly evolving market situation. Our record-breaking financial results, PLN 7.5 billion in net profit or our record-breaking EBITDA, more than PLN 10.5 billion, is primarily the result of the skillful maneuvering on the unstable coking coal and coke market. We can go on now to the presentation itself. I would like to share with you the top-line figures, the main figures, to enable you to evaluate the company. Each one of our board members responsible for the individual areas will make their individual comments. If we look at production, we had more than 14 million tons, 14.072 million.
This is an increase over last year by 2.3%. We have a decline in coke production. We'll talk about this decline during the conference. We had the events in the Przyjaźń coking plant, it was 2.16 million tons. This is down by 12%. We can see the number of active longwalls is a good signal. It's up by 3.9%, we have 24.1 active longwalls if we count the individual longwalls. We have an increase, this is not something. This is a great success. We have mining cash cost, which is up by 21%. This is due to material costs and labor costs. We're at PLN 543.81 per ton.
Last year, we were at PLN 447.12 per ton. We have a very major increase if we look at sales revenue. This is up 90%. We have PLN 20.198 billion. The average price of coking coal and coke was, of course, to the benefit of our company. We have PLN 1,510 as the average coking coal price. The average coke price was PLN 2,179. We have an increase of 143% in coking coal and an increase of 70% in coke. We have a record-breaking EBITDA, which is up by 325% in excess of PLN 10 billion, precisely PLN 10.564 billion is the net result.
As I said in my introductory remarks, the history of our company hasn't seen something like this. This result is PLN 7.593 billion. This is an increase of 697%. Last year, we defined our targets through the period of 2030 in our strategy. I'd like to ask our management board member responsible for development to go ahead and tell us a little bit about the KPIs.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. The current strategy of JSW, including its subsidiaries over the period from 2022 to 2030, was adopted in February of 2022. This strategy lays down the directions of development for JSW. It also points to the strategic areas where the group is focusing its attention. One of the very important elements for the group is to align it to the regulatory provisions, especially with respect to climate.
At the beginning of 2022, we also have the environmental strategy for JSW running through 2030 with an outlook to 2050. Of course, the main objective is to reduce the carbon footprint to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then we have projects with emission up until 2030, and then we want to have continuation of neutralizing that impact all the way through 2050. On subsequent slides, I would show you the targets and the measures adopted in this strategy and what has happened with their fulfillment in 2022. The EBITDA margin was 52.3%. Our strategy was to achieve an average of 25% over the period from 2022 and 2030. This is linked to the record-breaking prices for coking coal and coke. This was a level not seen previously.
This is because of where we were in the market condition cycle, and we also had the current geopolitical situation that contributed to that. We also have a stable funding structure. It's at 0.94 without including the funds in our closed-end investment fund. If we include that, it would be 1.26, and that means that the group has a very good financial standing. If we look at the efficiency of the group, and we measure this through the mining cash cost and the cash conversion cost, having in mind the geopolitical situation, we have in mind the war in Ukraine. In 2022, we saw that material prices shot up. Materials, steel products, we also saw fuel costs moving up. We're talking about the transportation and services.
This led to coke cost increases in coal, coking coal production and coke production. We had an increase of MCC of 4%. MCCC is up by 5%, and this is lower than the inflation for producers. In December of 2022, we had consumer inflation CPI of 20.2% year-on-year. We want to reduce the carbon footprint. In 2022, we reduced this by 8% tracked against 2018. The target is to reduce it by 30% by 2030, and we're on a good path towards achieving this goal. If we think about the revenue diversification, we're moving in the direction of achieving our key goal. We are opening up new resources and new mining levels. This is very important in terms of the continuity and stability of our operations.
In 2022, if we look at the resource base, we basically invested nearly PLN 350 million . We would have stable quality parameters in coking coal and in coke. We have high-quality production parameters, which you can see here on the slide. If we look at coal and coke production in 2022, we did not achieve the targets. This is primarily linked to the events that took place in the mines and the coking plants. This has happened directly on the production line. We want to reach the 16 million run rate in coal and 3.5 million in coke. If we look at coking coal being above 90%, well, it was around 78.1%. We want to achieve that 90% threshold by 2026. Thank you very much for your attention.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I will go ahead and show you the operating results of the JSW Group, especially if we look at coal and coke production. Let me remind you that JSW is a typical producer of coking coal, which is type 34 and type 35, which is orthocoke. We also have other types of coking coal, things like type 36 and 37. Generally speaking, if we look at production and processing, we can see that we have a significant portion of coking coal, but we also have a portion that's used for steam coal purposes. You've heard already about some of the mining events that were very difficult for us in April of last year in Zofiówka.
If we look at the geodynamic thing that occurred there in terms of the release of methane, and then we had in Pniówek an explosion of methane, and this affected our production. In April, after analyzing these events, we estimated that the volume of lost production across the year may be as high as 400,000 tons. We also had the difficult mining and geological situation in the Bzie section. There was a parcel where we had to adapt or alter our approach in terms of how that deposit was being prepared, and we needed to do some additional analysis to be able to excavate or extract coal from that section. We have a couple mines that are integrated. We have seven mining sections.
The biggest production is done at the integrated mines, so Borynia-Zofiówka , Knurów-Szczygłowice, and then later we have the individual mines. If we look at mines as independent sections, we can say that the largest amount of production, the largest volume, comes from Pniówek, followed by Budryk, and then individual sections which basically topped up our production performance. Ladies and gentlemen, if we look at coal production comparing the last quarters of 2022, we can say that we were above 3.4 million tons. It was a little bit higher than in Q3, 1% higher than if we compare year-on-year basis. We were able to surpass the threshold from last year when we had 13.7 million tons, and we were close to what we estimated in April. We didn't overrun that level.
We were 317,000 tons above what we had seen in 2021. We had more than 600,000 tons in the coal storage yards. If you look at the active longwalls in Q4, we had 23.6 active longwalls, so slightly lower than what we saw in Q3, down by almost 3%. This is because we had one longwall that had completed its mining operations a little bit earlier, and so then it was being shut down. If we compare on a year-on-year basis, we can say that in 2022, the overall figure was 24.1 active longwalls, so it was up by 3.9% over 2021 when it was 23.2. We prepared new longwalls for 27 of those cases, and we also liquidated 28.
We look at the corridor works, comparing Q4 to Q3 in 2022, we can say that we were highly mobilized, and we did some 26% more. We did this with our own in-house resources as well as with external parties' help. If we compare year-over-year, the tunneling works, we did less. As a result of the events, this applied not just to production on the active mining walls, but this also affected our preparatory works. We had to wait for certain things. We had to wait for the commission to make some decisions, and this also resulted from the necessity of regrouping our wall phases and preparing parcels earlier. We did more than 74,519 running meters. This was some almost 3,000 fewer meters than in the previous year.
As a result of these events, there was a lot of mobilization. We looked at the opportunities we had to uphold and sustain our mining pits. Each longwall has its own mining pit, and then basically it's eliminated as you move forward on the wall face. In some cases, you can do work where you can sustain the mining pit for the next longwall without having to do any additional work on subsequent wall faces. We had this organization in place. We were able to maintain more than 5,225 m. If we add to the tunnel meters, this is some 80 km. Sorry, 80,000 m that we're using. Basically, the intensity ratio is 5.3 of preparing new longwalls. We have a large number of wall faces as well.
If we look at coke production. We have three production plant, coke production plants. Radlin, Przyjaźń, Jadwiga. Jadwiga does the highest amount of production. It was above 100% of its production capacity. The others were 86%, 87% of capacity utilization. The largest volume of production of coke was in Przyjaźń, despite the events that took place in September 2022. If we compare Q4 to Q3 of 2022, we were at 675,000 tons. We were down by 13.4% from Q3. As I mentioned, this was as a result of an event in the Przyjaźń coking plant. As a result, we had to reduce the production capacity to some 65%, and that affected this quarter.
If we look year on year, we can see the production of coke was more than 3.216 million tons. This is down from 2021 by nearly 442,000 tons. The main reasons for that is not just it's just not the event that took place in September of 2022, which reduced the production capacity there at Przyjaźń Coking Plant, but we also had some technological downtime linked to the construction of battery number four. There were some technological breaks, and it was necessary to shut down some of the chambers. We had been using blast furnace coke production more than 74%. Industrial coke was more than 24.3%, 24.4%.
We had other types of coke, met coke and so on and so forth, and this is around 10%, and foundry coke, which is, you know, 1/10 of a percentage point. This is more or less what our results are for 2022 in the production of coke and coal. Thank you.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to say a few words about my area, which I'm responsible for presenting the market environment, what's happened, what's been happening in our surroundings, in our midst. I'd like to reflect on what the CEO, Mr. Cudny said, and I can say a little bit more. Having worked for some 22 years in the group, in JSW Group, I've always been in the sales department.
Last year, 2022, is a year that we've never experienced, and we have to be aware of that we're functioning in a highly volatile environment, which is unpredictable. We should maneuver to ensure that we extract benefits for JSW, but we also have to look at the world surrounding us and our business partners, their position, their standing, also define what we're gonna be able to do in the future. This is just one year of operations. It's a record-breaking year, and we're pleased with that. Our strategy goes much farther than this year, and we're looking at more than just one select year. Those are our main goals, and this is the direction we're going to continue following. The numbers cooperate what we said about what's happened up to now and how this was an exceptional year.
The last two, three years have been extreme, totally different since COVID. 2022 is probably the most unpredictable year. We had a relatively good situation in the first half, good prices for coke and coal, $300, $400 per ton. This is very advantageous to the company. In March, a new reality appeared. Military conflict broke out. This had a myriad number of impacts on us. There were non-military issues as well, which continue to affect how JSW operates. We're talking about last year here. There was the trade war between Australia and China. This affects the price level for commodities. A shortage of coal we had, especially in the first half of the year. The breakout of war, which exacerbated fears about the accessibility of raw materials.
As a result, our prices shot up above $600 on 18 March. For a few days, we had prices for coke and coal of $670. This is not a natural number, a natural figure, nor is this a healthy price for raw materials, because if one of the parties greatly benefits, it automatically adversely affects the other party, and that type of situation can't last forever. That was obvious to us. Just as things shot up in the air quickly, they fell down quickly. Then we had more problems, more difficulties as a result. The price of coking coal is only one small part of this picture, because after the conflict broke out, all of the parties running big companies, and this applies to us as JSW, we have an unnatural increase in energy carriers.
In looking at where we are as JSW, we have large steel mills. They have integrated coking plants. Having in mind what happened last year with unnaturally high prices for gas, our business partners made good decisions to tap into their coking plants 100% because they could produce coking gas because it was much less expensive than what was available in the marketplace. This affected what was happening on the European market. There are other factors at play here, difficult logistics, both in terms of all of the ports in Poland as well as the rail transport, because we had much more steam coal when the decision was made no longer to import coal from the Russian Federation. Basically, all these things coincided, and this showed us two totally different half-year periods.
The first half-year period was very good, unnaturally good, and in the latter half of the year when we had more and more difficulties and troubles, especially in our coking segment, which utilizes some 5 million tons of our coking coal. These are the type of situations that we had to grapple with. To maximize profit and maneuver through this year and cooperate with our business partners and continue working with them, that's the overarching objective. This is not a one-year, one-drop shot, and that's the most important thing. Having made these prefatory remarks, I would propose that we walk through the data we would like to show you, and I'll give you some color. If we look at steel production, what was happening last year?
Generally, around the globe, we saw world steel production down by 4% from 1.9 trillion to 1.8 trillion tons. We saw the same in the EU, the same trend. We had a decline of more than 10% from 152 million to 136.6 million. What I said at the beginning about a totally unpredictable year, destabilized year, the decline primarily took place in the latter half of the year. We had an 18% decline in the latter half of the year in steel production. We had 12 blast furnaces shut down temporarily of some 75 operating across Europe in the steel concerns or companies.
Of the 140 million tons of steel, well, in just the half of the year, this was the major decline. This is 60 million tons of steel disappeared from the production market, and this will have an impact on our operations. This also led to oversupply of coke on the market. You'll see this data. What are the relations between coking coal and coke? This is primarily a result of the prices. If we look at the European Union prices for steel, if we have a decline of 18% for hot rolled. If we look at the construction steel, it's up by 18%. This is a really strange behavior. The flat goods are primarily used by the automotive industry, which was affected by this crisis situation.
All the way through today, we have problems with the delivery of semiconductors, which means that producers, manufacturers, large automobile manufacturers, aren't able to produce at 100% of the production capacity. That's one thing. The second thing is demand. We have to face the fact, generally speaking, that making decisions to buy these type of goods in terms of individuals, private individuals, this is something they're going to analyze. What is the purchasing power of money? This is inflation. This is the increase of cost of energy. Is this a good point in time to buy these type of goods and services? This is affecting the internal demand in the EU. A lot could be said on this subject, but I would focus here on our core business. This is an environment that does affect JSW, at least directly.
If we look at spot prices. The market is destabilized. We had prices ranging from $300 - $670, and the major differences between the first half of the year and the second half of the year. Well, this means that we had additional funds, additional revenues, and this is where we've had that profit above all. We have the premium coal grades. We went up from $221 to $360, and the semi-soft, which is lower quality coal, slightly is lower quality, as opposed to the premium coking coal. Here you can see that increase is $155, where in the previous year it was up to $285 in 2022. Why do we have such a big difference?
After the outbreak of war or the conflict, there was the psychological effect in terms of having access to raw materials. We should know that a ban was issued on cooperating with the Russian Federation. Basically, we can say that supply got disappeared in terms of access to lower quality coal grades, where there were some 4 million tons of that coal that historically had been exported from the Russian Federation into Poland. This is the type of coal that's used for PSI. This needed to be replaced with something quickly, and that's why we had an abnormal increase in coal prices higher than amongst the premium coal grades. I mentioned at the beginning, we have a diametrically different situation on the coke market in Europe. We can say that the increase is less than 18%.
We have the same level in the Chinese market. I can reiterate what I said. We have an evident oversupply, and certainly in 2022, that was the case. For a very simple reason, gas was so valuable, it was better to produce gas, not use it, and then be able to sell it. To this day, it's not being used, it's being sold. The next slide shows you how JSW maneuvered the market. We'll start with coking coal. In Q4, we have an average price of $259. We always show you the reference window, which is the most recent five months based on our contracting system, 'cause we have two different pricing formulas, whereas some of them are buying on a spot basis. The price we have shows that we're at 98% of the benchmark.
This is probably the highest level we've seen. As Mr. Pazdziorko said, we had some tragic, unexpected events in our minds. Some of the premium coal was no longer sellable, and we continued to work with our buyers to catch up, even in subsequent periods, even subsequent year, to ensure that we don't lose those volumes because the market situation is so volatile that we could find ourselves in, on a different side of the market. Some of the volumes we didn't deliver in Q3, we delivered in Q4. We can see the price differential between the two quarters. We had higher prices in Q3. Why is this ratio so high? This is FX rates. FX rates reversed in our favor, and we can say that the current FX rates are much more favorable to us.
If we look at coke prices versus market quotations, we had a difficult situation, especially in Q, in H2, and the bulk of the difficulty was in Q4. The current situation continues to be demanding. Even so, the ratio versus the reference benchmark in China, well, it's higher than in the previous quarter, and it's around 80%. We can say that our price is around $370, and this is something that pleases us because in Q4, despite the difficult market, we were able to sell more than we produced, and you'll see that at the end in the form of declines in inventories. The last thing is steam coal price. As we say about our core business, the coking coal business and the coke business. On top of that, we have a slight portion of our business located in steam coal.
We are present at, on the steam coal market. Well, the quality is in place from, you know, the other players in the marketplace like PGG, Bogdanka, and so forth. After the first half of the year, as the prices shot up for energy, we had prices of $300-$400 per ton, which was in line with the price of PLN 60 per gigajoule. We can say the contracts for commercial power sector are defined on an annual basis, and this is a distinct nature, a factor about this market for many years. This year was so distinct that in the middle of the year, we renegotiated the prices, and we bumped them up.
JSW got higher prices. We can see that in Q3, compared to the national price index, we're much higher than what had happened in previous periods, and we're above the average in the market. This is 180% and even 114% in Q4. Why is that the case? Why are our prices higher than the average? Unfortunately, this is a result of the tragic events where some of the volumes of type 35 coal were lost. We did everything we could as a company to catch up in other mines, in the northern mines, where we have an automatic machinery to produce coking coal. We're able to extract additional volumes. They were able to place that on the market on spot market conditions. We didn't use the pre-determined contractual prices.
We were able to generate higher profits by selling those additional quantities or volumes. The next slide shows you the sales of coal produced in the group. If we look at the sales of coal to external and internal customers, generally speaking, we see quite a bit of stability. The contracts we've entered into are long-term contracts for multiple years with nearly all the players on the market up until 2029, and in some cases, up to 2030. This gives us a guarantee of stability in terms of selling the products. That was the idea behind signing these contracts. The differences you see between Q3 and Q4, where we have a decrease of 1.6%, this is a symbolic change. If we compare the two years, we have a decline of 2.5%. Those figures are very comparable.
There's one change in terms of internal customers. We have Q3 and Q4 when we're selling this product to our integrated mines. We have a decline of 15%. On an annual basis, this is down by 5.6%. We delivered 4.4 million tons of coal to our coking plants. This was already presented, and as he shares with you the production data for the coking plant or segment, there are two reasons for this to have occurred. The first one is that the coke plants are highly advanced in terms of their work on the replacement of battery four, and this means there are certain technological barriers.
Some of the chambers had to be shut down, and up until 2022, or in September 2022, we basically had an explosion, and this meant that we had to reduce production in the Przyjaźń coking plant. As the CEO mentioned, in certain weeks, we were at some 65% of capacity, and that's why we had to reduce, of course, the volume of sales to the coking plant. If we look at the external customers and the prices we stated as market prices, the ones we commanded on the marketplace in Q3 and Q4, so we had a decline of 17.5%. That's what happened on the marketplace.
If we look at the annual average prices went up by nearly or even by more than 124%. We had the price formulas, and then we had contracts negotiated on the marketplace. This market gave the company some opportunities, and we totally tapped into them. We have a similar situation. The internal customers, we have the transfer policy, price transfer policy in place in the group. This is basically a mirror image of the overall situation, what we have elsewhere. The next slide is the sales of coke.
If we look at Q3 and Q4, even though we had a difficult situation, even though we had lower production and some of the coke after Q3 was in the storage yards, we were able to increase coke sales to external customers by 8%. Some of this was done on the spot market, sometimes in the EU, we had some problems in Polish ports, we were able to do that. If you look across the year, 2022 versus 2021, we can see that we're down by more than 10% in terms of coke sales. This is due to what happened in Przyjaźń coking plant, you saw the 3.2 million tons there, which were produced. You can see we have the 3.2 today, 7 million tons we produced were actually sold.
Even though it was a difficult year on an annual average basis or an average basis for the year, we can say that this was related to the loss of coke we had available to our disposal. If we look at the average coke sales price in Q3 and Q4, we can see that things were similar to what we saw in the coal market. After a major increase in Q2, Q3, then we saw declines because those levels were initially high. Then we come down from PLN 2,385 as the average price to PLN 1,704.
On the course or across the entire year, in comparing 2021 to 2022, we can say that there was an increase of 72%, and this is something that padded our results as the company, as the CEO published that officially today. If we look at the revenue on sales of coke and hydrocarbons to external customers, we have very comparable trends. You can see a decline in the last quarter of the year. If you look across the four quarters, it's clear those prices moved up strongly by some 56%. The last slide in my section is the inventory of coal and coke. If we look at coal first, from Q4, we can see that there is an increase to 614,000 tons after a long series of declining that.
Up until now, we used all of the coal yards that we could. We wanted to pair them down to the minimum technological level. We should have around 500,000 tons always in order to be able to serve our customers efficiently, having in mind that logistics don't work entirely well. The end of the year, we do have some additional inventories, basically, we had planned to deliver this coal to our coking plants, because of explosion that took place in September, they had to drop their production capacity utilization. This is not an exceptional amount of excess capacity. This coal is being sold in the current period of Q1 and will be sold in subsequent quarters, that means that the inventory bump will be decreased.
If you look at coke, Q4 enabled us to reduce our inventory to 246,000 tons, and we can say this is the minimum level. The only difficulty or drawback we have is that bulk, the bulk of this is in Polish ports, and this gave us an opportunity to operate smoothly on the marketplace and get the opportunity to enter into spot transactions. This is actually in Silesia. We can't actually store this in the Polish ports. Of course, this is obvious and it's clear why there's no room in these ports. If we look at the volume of inventory, it's nothing particularly divergent from the past. This is stored in Silesian storage yards.
This means that we're gonna have to deliver it to the Polish ports, or we're gonna have to find an alternative direction, and we'll have to send it by train, especially as we see that the coking market is changing, and it's clearly getting started. That inventory has been pared down a little bit and been delivered, of course, to our European customers. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, now I'd like to say a few words about the investments of the JSW Group. Usually, we show this in our two major segments, in the coal segment and the coke segment, and then other investments, which is grouped in the other segment.
Our CapEx in JSW Group, without consolidation, eliminations on an accrual basis, Q4 2022, we had more than PLN 1.8 billion. This was up compared to Q3 by some 60%. It was at PLN 1.018 billion. We saw increases across the segments. If we compare 2022 to 2021, we can see that there's a major increase in excess of 56%, generally speaking. That's some PLN 900 million more. It's nearly 50% in the coal segment and more than 125% in the coke segment. Roughly 10% in the other segment. I'll give you information about our two core segments and what that CapEx looked like. Of course, this has a direct impact on CapEx investments in our group.
This includes the repayment of the principal and lease payments in cash. If we compare 2022, Q4, we had more than PLN 720 million, and that was 16% more compared to Q3. If we compare year-on-year, 2022, it was more than PLN 2.048 billion. This was some 38% up over 2021. Now, we can say a few words about the expenditures for investments in our major segments. We have the coal segment on a quarter basis, Q4. We had more than PLN 805 million, so this was some 75% higher than what we saw in Q3. We can say that in all of the subsegments, investment, construction, long-term purchases, also for mining pits, capital expenditures for mining pits.
If you look at the characterization of these expenditures in 2022, we spent more than PLN 2.02 billion, and this was up by some 48% versus the CapEx we had in 2021. If we look at the subsegments, starting with leases, generally speaking, this was because we had higher daily rates for lease. We're looking at the road rail shear machines and longwall shearers. We had eight such machines in Szczygłowice and four in Pniówek. In the next segment, in terms of our expensable mine pits, we saw an increase of PLN 106 million. Again, here, this increase was linked to the growth in the use of materials, the cost of energy, or the cost of labor. We have the next subsegment, which is the purchase of ready-made durable goods.
The growth was in exception of PLN 23 million. Above all, this was linked to the modernization of the mechanized shields. This was primarily pertaining to the Zofiówka section of the Borynia mine and also some of the other machines. We had the long wall shear machine in the Budryk mine and then in Pniówek. We also made some capital expenditures for the transportation equipment, conveyors, and on the walls and on the ground in nearly all of our mines. If we look at the subsegment of investment construction, here, nearly PLN 87 million year-on-year. The increase in CapEx and the mining pits, where we're gaining access to newer mining levels, or the CapEx for environmental protection, more than PLN 55 million, everything else in terms of investments.
If we look at our second segment, which is the coke segment, especially on an accrual basis, Q4 to Q4, we can say the increase was nearly 17%, more than PLN 24 million. But if we compare year on year, what's important here is nearly a 125% increase in capital expenditures, and it's up to PLN 511 million. We've had nearly PLN 228 million more. Well, this was primarily because the strategic investments, we spent more for modernization, for upgrading the battery and coke at Przyjaźń Coking Plant. We also had an increase in the capital expenditures to build the Radlin Power Plant. We had the rest of investments across the other coking plants. Thank you very much for your attention.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.
We have a fistful of information about revenues and about the results. My colleagues have already talked about those results, and many statements were made to summarize where we were in 2022, which was a very distinct year, not just for JSW, but for the overall economy in Poland and across the world. Maybe I could just add a few words from my side about the subject. If we look at the post-pandemic situation, we had the energy and raw material crisis precipitated by the conflict in Ukraine, and this is caused by or we have a lot of pressure on the prices of raw materials, including coking coal. Mr. Bartos has talked about that in the various quarters of last year. Basically, this had impact on the revenue generated by the group in JSW.
We can say that we were capable of benefiting from this crisis, we can say it way. If we add, you know, the global prices here, and this impacted, of course, our contractual relations with our buyers. Nevertheless, we were able to generate record-breaking results and revenue on the other hand. There was inflationary pressure across the economy because electricity prices were increased, and that meant we had more production factors, and then we had decisions about paying higher salaries to employees in the company and then across the group. This situation had a dimension that generated higher operating expenses for our group. Let me remind you, if we look at the revenue and the results for this was stated, but I want to come on to the results and the factors, the contributing factors.
If we look at revenue, if we go back to the previous slide, here are the financial highlights. We had revenue of PLN 20.198 billion. This is in 90% increase over 2021. You can see here clearly that in Q4, there is a negative growth rate, and this is because the prices were declining. We had the highest prices in Q2, in Q3, in Q4, the prices gradually fell. If we look at steam coal, the prices had a different, slightly different trend, and the prices continued to grow over every subsequent quarter. The accounting event in 2022 was PLN 10.56 billion. We had the one-offs I'll talk about to a greater extent during the presentation. The adjusted EBITDA is more than PLN 11 billion.
In 2021, the adjusted EBITDA was PLN 2.9 billion. EBITDA in Q4, just like what happened with sales, was lower than what we saw in the same quarter of the previous year. Quarter-on-quarter, we had a different dynamic. That means this had translated into the net result of the company. We had a result of PLN 7.5 billion. With the two quarters, we saw net results with profit. If we can say a few words about what happened in net working capital. We had PLN 354 million at the end of last year.
It doesn't take into consideration the liquid funds that we have in our own closed-end investment fund. The value of that fund is more than PLN 5 billion at the end of 2022. I'll ask for the next slide, please. This slide shows us the bridge in sales revenue from moving from 2021 to 2022. If we look at the products that are sold by JSW. Here we can say that two of these adjustments are negative because the volume of coke sold was down by 10%, some 300,000 tons. That had an impact of PLN 485 million. We also had the impact of smaller amounts of coke and coal sales volume. We had adjustment of the price by PLN 304 million.
All of the other factors had a positive impact, whether bigger or smaller, in terms of what happened with our sales revenues. This was primarily driven by what was happening with the prices of coking coal. The average price was PLN 1,500 per ton. In 2022, the next important factor is the increase in coke prices. Our customers were paying more for coke, and the average price was PLN 2,180 per ton. The third factor is the impact of revenue on other sales. Here we're dealing with hydrocarbons. This is up by PLN 418 million. We have the sales of electricity from JSW KOKS, where this was up by PLN 205 million. The next factor are changes in steam coal prices.
We purposely speak about coal for steam coal purposes, as opposed to just saying steam coal. This is a difference of 97% year-on-year. The last factor requiring commentary is the increase of volume of selling coal for steam coal purposes, and there's an increase of 113 billion. 238,000 more tons year-on-year, and so we sold 3.5 million tons last year. As a result of all of these other changes in terms of volume and prices, the value of the revenue, we can say that we had total revenue of PLN 20.1985 billion sales revenue.
We have costs on the other side, and here, above all, on the expenses by nature, we can say year-on-year, the costs grew by nearly 26%, and we're at PLN 12.099 billion. We also saw growth in Q4. This is up by nearly 16%. The biggest changes are when we compare employee benefits. We have a total increase of PLN 1.07 billion. Materials had higher prices because of the higher coal production. We talked about that previously. There was also inflationary pressure on materials, and this is PLN 732 million year-on-year more than in energy as a result of the overall global situation here in Poland as well. If we look at the volume of electricity purchased and the unit price of 1 MW hour, this is up by PLN 346 million.
As a result of pressures on wages, we had an increase, of course, also of external services. Maybe I would say a few words of detail about the individual costs. In 2021, costs by nature, it was PLN 9.6 billion. Well, the biggest cost increases came from employee benefits, and this is a result of raising the base rates, not only in JSW, but the other companies belonging to the group. The management made the decision at the beginning of 2022 to raise salaries by 10%. That meant that employee benefits rose by PLN 317 million, including Social Security. This took place in July, based on people employed as at the end of June. This had a specific financial impact. JSW KOKS had similar decisions being made as in JSW.
There was a one-off bonus, and that was a layout of PLN 32 million. As a result of the salary agreement with the Social Party, this increased cost by PLN 16 million. Last year in total, we had an increase of cost by nearly PLN 1.7 billion. On terms of costs, the cost of materials are also important. This is a natural effect and outcome of extracting coal. At the same time, we have inflationary pressure on materials, and it comes down to our mines. There's a whole line of materials that are used not only for steel production, but we also have chemical things, foams, glues, adhesives, where we saw increases of even several 10s percentage points.
In this category, we have the cost of coal that we're buying in imports, where we have small quantities, relatively speaking, in order for our coking plants to work, and this is because we can't produce that type of coke quality to our coking plants. So, there is a figure, PLN 100 million for that purpose. If we look at energy consumption, so we have PLN 346 million. This is a result of the average purchasing price cost increase on the market. In JSW, we can say this was PLN 170 million for every megawatt hour. Then we have external services at the end, and this is primarily because of inflationary pressure, wage pressure amongst service providers to our mines. We saw that there was an increase of PLN 312 million.
The next item on the cost side, which I'd like to refer to, is the mining cash cost. This is the cost of producing one ton of coal at JSW. In 2021, this is PLN 447, and it grew to PLN 543, almost PLN 544. There is one major item that raised that cost, and that's the quantity of production. Having higher production would have amortized these costs, mining cash c osts to a greater extent. We can say that the MCC was mostly impacted by the increase in employee benefits, along with social security expenses. We talked about all the salary items previously and the deductions and the one-offs. Another important thing here is materials and energy. This affects our MCC.
I talked about that previously. We also had external services, renovations in our production operations, and also removal of mining damages. All of these things contributed to that. At the end of the day, this had a total impact of PLN 19.25 million. If you look, we have the cash conversion cost for 1 ton of coke, net of the input in the form of coal and transport. Here, the most important factor that affected the cash conversion cost. We have mining cash or cash conversion cost of PLN 252.32 per ton. The volume was down by 12% compared to 2021. That's 400 and somewhat thousand tons of coal that were produced to a lesser extent. I mean, less coal was produced by that amount.
We have employee benefits that had an impact of PLN 18.95 as a result of the salary decisions to give one-off bonuses and change the pay grades. We had the cost of external services with the exception of transportation and the coal input. Basically, we had an increase of PLN 13.38. This is renovation and this would include the unloading cost. We also have the coal input. I won't talk about all of the cost inputs from the. Anyway, there was an increase of PLN 13.33 in terms of the feedstock. We had the energy consumption, so we had to buy more electricity from external parties. This is 11,000 MW hours.
At the same time, we had the increase in the purchase cost per megawatt hour. That led to PLN 7.71 million in additional cost. We had admin expenses, less depreciation, amortization, this is PLN 5.51 per ton. You see two graphs summing up the impact of production volume and costs. The mining cash costs in 2022 per ton, this was the difference, PLN 106. It was nearly PLN 10 in the negative because of lower production. In the coke segment, we had the impact of expenses was PLN 55.42, the impact of volume was PLN 23.8.
We had the total cash conversion cost of PLN 252.32, where the impact of expenses in mining cash cost was PLN 106, and the impact of volume was PLN 10.9. The next couple slides show us the impact of the EBITDA drivers in 2022 and 2021. On an accounting basis, it was PLN 10.564 billion. Here above all, the volume and price, the total impact was PLN 6.3 billion. I won't reiterate the breakdown there. The same is true of coke, had PLN 2.46 billion. The other sales, PLN 779 million. This is electricity as well as other. The costs by nature grew by PLN 2.486 billion. This is a downward impact.
We had the impact of the result of other activities, which was PLN 244.6 million. These are the impairments. We have basically some impairments for Jadwiga and Pniówek as a result of what happened in April of last year. If we look at the other categories, PLN 746 million, this is the value of non-current assets. This is a difference of PLN 444 million above all, and then a change of inventory of PLN 400 million. The other corrections were in minus. We had the one-offs in 2022. This is the result of one-off bonuses. That's PLN 100 million. We had the impairment of non-current assets at JSW Pniówek.
Next to what happened when Pniówek and Jadwiga, what we are saying about Pniówek, if we compare the value of the shares versus the recoverable amount, recoverable investment amount, we came to the conclusion that there is a loss of the value of PLN 28 million, and that is recorded or posted here. That's why if you incorporate the one-offs, the EBITDA in 2022 is PLN 11.319 billion. If we look at the impact of operating segments on EBITDA, so if we look at the coal, overall coal segment impact, this increased EBITDA by PLN 8.269 billion almost. The coke segment had a negative impact of PLN 661 million. We had consolidation eliminations, PLN 552 million. After every reporting period, we talk about that.
This is an effect of eliminations, consolidation eliminations in terms of settling the result on inventories for intergroup transactions as a result of sales between JSW KOKS and JSW. We have a few bits of information about the balance sheet and looking at net working capital. Total assets of PLN 26.96 billion, we have some corrections. We have other short-term liabilities or current liabilities. We have tax liabilities for corporate income tax. Based on what we reported to you previously, we have the simplified method of calculating income tax in 2022. We paid less than PLN 12 million on an ongoing basis. Our obligation is more than PLN 1.3 billion. This amount will be paid in cash in 2023.
We also have employee liabilities, lease liabilities, commercial liabilities, F two, so on. PLN 2.9 billion. We have loans and borrowings on the current side. This is the PFR, the Polish Development Fund, and a group of financial institutions financing JSW, so nearly PLN 540 million. If we look fixed capital and provisions, it's PLN 17.9 billion, plus the provisions, which is PLN 1.28 billion, and the current provision of PLN 227, almost, million. We have the correction for property, plant, and equipment, which is PLN 10.37 billion. We have intangible assets and other non-current assets of PLN 8.6 billion. The net working capital is PLN 354 million. This doesn't include the liquid assets that we have in our closed-end investment fund called FIZ.
We have two other graphs with some indicators. We have the fixed capital to non-current assets ratio based on the balance sheet data, the accounting data. We're at 0.94 at the end of December of last year. This doesn't incorporate the funds we have in the closed-end investment fund. 1.26 shows you what the result is if we include that FIZ. We have the net debt. We have the PLN 2.9 billion based without including the FIZ. Including the FIZ, it's PLN 7.8 billion, and this more properly reflects the financial situation of the company. A short summary of cash flow in the group. We had cash a little under PLN 1.3 billion. At the end of 2022, we have PLN 4.8 billion.
If you look at the taxable income, so profit before tax is PLN 9.3 billion. We have costs, changes in inventory, changes in trade, all that sort of stuff, we come to that figure. Depreciation of PLN 1.2 billion. I don't think we need to comment on that. We have the change in inventories, which is a negative correction of PLN 337 million. We had nearly 615,000 tons of coal produced in the group, and then we had 247,000 tons of coke of PLN 210 million. We saw that those inventories moved up at the end of the year. We have change in trade and other receivables, and we have a negative correction, PLN 120 million almost.
Change in trade and other liabilities. We had basically PLN 1.8 billion previously. We have investing flows. Here, it's very impressive of PLN 6.3 billion. This includes the PLN 4.8 billion set aside in the FIZ. The other PLN 2.2 billion is a result of purchasing investments for our subsidiaries. We had repayments of PLN 732 million. We made the decision to pay down the revolving loan, PLN 360 million. We maintain this line, but having in mind the current financial standing, there's no need for us to use it. According to the plan of paying down the debt to PFR and the bank consortium, we paid down the liquidity and the preference loan. This is nearly PLN 245 million. The preference, PLN 200 million.
The debt to banks is being amortized according to the schedule. We did all this on a timely basis. If we look at the National Environmental Protection Fund, we had, you know, differences in the high millions. The other financing cash flows and FX differences, PLN 114 million. That means at the end of the year, we had a cash balance of PLN 4.8 billion. I would only add, in reference to what it said about the commercial income tax liability, the cash we have on bank accounts this year, we assume there might be. We don't have any detailed data about windfall tax, about how to regulate that legally. We feel obligated to secure funds for that purpose here.
We do not assume that we'll convert any certificates from our fees, nor will we take down any external liabilities due to that. That's it about what happened in 2022 in JSW and the JSW Group. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, JSW sees ESG in its operations. We take a number of efforts on a daily base. We have dialogue, regular dialogue, and direct dialogue. Sometimes it's difficult with the local government units, and we of course, remove mining damages. We spent nearly PLN 108 million to repair those damages. There are also ownership issues related to properties in the Group, as well as in the various local government units. We also have the JSW Foundation. We're also spending money to support health, culture, and sports.
In 2022, we had more than 250 undertakings, we spent some PLN 6 million. We support amateur sports and professional sports, we have a professional team in the volleyball league and in the soccer league. We provide support to hospitals as well. We also offer scholarships to young people who are students, we're looking for the most gifted students. We also are running campaigns for needy children and children in the areas where we operate. In 2022, as part of our My JSW Knowledge project, so we have the CSR team, we had scientific picnics, workshops on the environment and sporting events. If we look at the financing made available to the local communities, PLN 9 million. As a result of the operations we conduct, we also are the largest, well appreciated, well-regarded employer in the region.
We have some 31,000 employees working for the group. In JSW itself, we have some 21,000 employees. If we look at our financing of entrepreneurship, so the suppliers of goods, some 61% of our spending goes to the local suppliers of materials and services. If we take into consideration related entities, this is some 86% of the funds we spent here. Thank you.
I'd like to say a couple words about this subject that my colleague just mentioned. This is something that's very important in terms of our neighborly attitudes and where we are in terms of our production. There are certain changes that were announced by the European Commission. Some information is incoming, and there are certain dates that are being targeted. There's the directive, which is CSRD. We're not waiting.
We think that managing sustainability is very important to us, and that's why this year we ran the ESG project. This is an area where we want to define and research certain things. We want to anticipate them in terms of how they'll be reported. This is in the CSRD directive, and this will state specifically what directions will be followed by all of the EU member states. We're doing all of this to satisfy the needs of our stakeholders. There are certain areas that we're not pushing to the side, and we're basically preparing ourselves to handle them in advance. Artur Wojtków talked about this a moment ago. Today, if you look at the natural environments, corporate governance, we have made accomplishments that we're proud of. We have the Methane directive is on people's lips very frequently.
We started working on methane emissions reduction. We know what we want to achieve. This is in our environmental strategy. We know what we want to extract from that. We want to have electricity. The work we've done has been duly noted. We received a grant from the European Commission while working together with several scientific groups, including the mining authority. It's EUR 11 million, this is a grant we received in order to be able to recover methane in Pniówek. We're working together with the technical department. We've defined the rules where we wanna replicate or basically deploy the ethics of that work to the other mines. We have certain metrics here, the carbon footprint is also very important to me. The regulations didn't call for that, we have been showing this since 2018.
We had CO₂ equivalent of 802, now we're down to 758. We actually are looking for solutions. We work together with the scientific community very strongly in order to achieve that. Our efforts have been duly noted. We've joined the CDP rating project, and we have a very high rating compared to other state-owned mining companies. This is the very elite, and we're pleased to see that how we've been treated. Then we can go on to corporate governance because certain things here in the current situation were very important in terms of the safety certificates, what's happening in cybersecurity or other threats. We're seen as a group with the proper position that wants to regulate these affairs.
We wanna do that here in Poland and across Europe. We received some awards in various competitions where they analyze how work is organized. Everything has been written down on the slide. As of 2024, we have to incorporate what we're doing in these areas as of 2024. That's not gonna be everything. This is something that we're gonna continue doing in the future. Thank you very much. We have completed the presentation, ladies and gentlemen. This year, ladies and gentlemen, we'll celebrate our 30th anniversary. This is not the 30th anniversary of the mines. These mines have much longer histories. We, of course, do not forget about the histories of our mines. We're very proud of them. This is something. Our various mines have great jubilee celebrations. If you look at these last 30 years as JSW.
We can say, if you look at the meters of roadways that have been executed, that's 2,241,705. If we were to build a subway, this would take us all the way to France. The same is if we look at extraction. We have a total of 425,995,914 tons of coal, and this is used to produce steel. This is to develop society. We have 760 million tons of steel produced as a result. We could build 76,000 Eiffel Towers with that steel. The work we do is visible and is needed for society to develop.
The last 30 years of the operation of JSW has led to a change in the Polish mining sector. In 1983, when the company was set up, 'cause there was the Katowicki Holding, today in various configurations, some of the business entities continue to exist. As JSW, we have the same business form as we did when we were set up. This is a great achievement. Over these years of development, JSW has become a modern mining entity, a mining operator. It's a very important player, not only in Poland but across Europe. We have a group of companies, we have daughter companies. We're the most important coking coal producer and a very significant coal producer in Europe. We're proud of everything we've done. Thank you very much for your attention.
Now we'd like to go on to the Q&A session. I'm gonna read out the questions that we received. The first question is about methane. Looking at the review of methane, we made a roadmap for the methane drainage investments. How much will they cost, and what sort of energy will they produce, and what are the savings, and how will they reduce methane emissions?
To respond to this question, the European Parliament, as we know, is looking at this regulation in terms of the methane emissions. This is primarily on steam coal production. Of course, we're incorporated in within the framework, a realm of this regulation in subsequent years. I think it's worth mentioning, and the CEO mentioned this himself a moment ago, that in 2018, we started the program to utilize methane for economic purposes, and its development is the methane reduction program.
What does this production program assume? That will improve the efficiency of methane drainage. We have a target of 50%, then we want to utilize it later because we'll drain it in the methane drainage stations, and we will have the economic utilization of some 95%. The question was posed about that. Basically, this is to be done over the period from 2005 to 2006. This is where we want to fall. We're generating or preparing cogeneration units, power generation units. In terms of the roadmap, we want to be able to. This is 60 MW of electrical capacity, and this would enable us by increasing efficiency, we would be able to reduce methane emissions by 100 cu m , 100 million cubic meters per year.
Having the cogeneration power generation units in place, we could have self-production, self-generation, and this would reduce the costs of purchasing electricity by 120 million watts a year. Thank you.
The next question is about methane. What's the current level of methane emissions, and how much of it can be captured and used, and how much energy is generated from methane and over the three to five years, and what sort of capital expenditures will be allocated to this?
This question is kind of further to the first question. If we look at the mines in JSW, we have mines that have the highest amount of methane content. As a result, mining work was done much earlier in those conditions.
We're monitoring the emissions of methane from ventilation shafts, and then we have a system of monitoring this at the methane drainage stations. To sum up, in 2022, this is a period where we can state this data during our operations in all of our mines. We had more than 363 million cubic meters of methane. We were able to capture 123 million tons of methane. In the production at methane reduction program, we assumed that its efficiency will improve, and we have nearly 91 million tons used. The production of electricity from that 98,000 MW hours. Pursuing this program, as I said previously, will enable us to reduce emissions by 100 million cubic meters.
As we produce electricity from methane, this will increase that to 400,000 MW hours per year. What's the CapEx? In the program, we embraced a budget which was not only about the amount of funds, but also the timeline for running the program. This budget from 2022 to 2025 was estimated, and this is around PLN 311 million entirely in terms of the cost of pursuing this program. Thank you.
What was the impact of the methane regulation in terms of the assets, production assets and potential penalties? What sort of penalties should we anticipate?
Today, as I mentioned, there is discussion of adding coking coal mines. We're pleased by the fact that we're on the list of strategic critical resources.
The production of this raw material is very important. This is true when it comes to emissions and other things. This production has to be balanced by other types of production. The regulation today doesn't talk about the amounts for coking coal mines. It's very difficult this time to estimate what threat may be generated by this regulation. In the proposed penalty, it's talking about severe penalties. As I said previously, we consistently have been pursuing this program. We started to work on implementing this much earlier. We have our own policy in terms of methane reduction into the atmosphere in order to improve the efficiency. As I said, we're endeavoring to reduce methane overall. Thank you.
One other question. To what level can JSW reduce its methane production per period of production to 2025 into 2030?
We're looking at the implementation of the methane reduction program. We assume that we should be able to reduce this ratio. Thank you.
Now we have many questions about there being no recommendation on the dividend payment. Can we say something more and whether or not after you get the syndicated loan for PLN 1.65 billion, do you intend to pay down the PFR loan, which could make it possible to pay out a dividend?
I assume that these questions, these two questions are to me. First, as the management team of a listed company in terms of the published dividend policy, we intend to respect that policy. The fact that we don't recommend to the shareholder meeting a motion to pay out a dividend for 2020, that doesn't mean that the policy is not still in power.
We are, of course, aware what the expectations are of the shareholders in a broad sense in terms of sharing the extraordinary profits from 2022. As we informed you previously, having in mind the contracts that are in place with PFR, and we had highly preferential financing terms from PFR. We're able to maintain the continuity of business of the company and the group. The management board took on some obligations towards PFR, and that meant that we had a ban on recommended dividends until the last installment of these loans is paid. Right now, we still have to pay PLN 620 million onto those two loans. Of course, examining, and we thought about this as a management team, the debt that we have is the least expensive money we have, and it's far from the marketplace.
We're now finalizing the new financing structure, and we have a very good understanding of how much money, debt money will cost in the mining industry. Replacing inexpensive money with a symbolic cost from a new financing structure or hypothetically considering retirement of units, share units in the closed-end fund, where we generate some income from that or from our own funds on the bank accounts. We have higher interest paid than what the costs we have on the PFR loan. We'd like to avoid that. We have been looking for an argument that would enable us to rationally, from the point of view of the interest of the company, make a decision to repay in advance the PFR loan. Honestly, we didn't find any such arguments.
At the same time, in reference to the resolution, the last resolution of the extraordinary shareholder meeting, which talks about the security of the collateral for the new financing. There is an idea that perhaps that money could be used to pay down the loan from PFR. On one hand, we have in mind that in the near future, we'll have the final installment to be paid to the syndicate of financial institutions. Having in mind this good market position with high prices for coking coal and coke. If we look at the development of mines, we believe that this is a point in time, up until 2030, we could partially obtain that financing based on the good financial position of the company and the group at present. This is what we've done.
Please remember that our strategy up until 2030 assumes that we'll continue mining activity and develop our mines and coking plants. It also emphasizes our ESG factors and corporate social responsibility for environmental issues. We've made commitments to the country on a technical side and on the environmental sustainability's point of view. Some money will be spent on that. That's more than PLN 4.5 billion That will be spent in prices from last year. The money we're going to source, having in mind the money we've set aside in the FIZ and the money that's available on the bank accounts. The total CapEx budget up until 2030 is more than PLN 24 billion. The PLN 1.6 billion of new financing is not consequential, having that in mind.
The sentiment of the financial market to the extraction industry, especially with respect to coal, is worse and worse that looked at the market. According to the proposal in the European Commission, that we'll be able to continue operating as with coking coal as a critical raw material. We continue to be seen as JSW as a company that operates in a sector that's not really liked by the financial sector. Should be emphasized under that structure. Some of these lines are in euros or zloty dollars. On one hand, we'll have lower interest rates in some of those currencies, and we also have natural hedging when we talk about paying down installments of loans in foreign currencies. The most important thing is the form of financing based on a sustainability-linked loan, and that means that it's predicated on the sustainable development of JSW.
A large portion of this money will be spent for not corporate purposes, but for sustainability. The last thing that needs to be commented on, the collateral package. It's the same as the one that's in the current package, and in some cases, they're more favorable to the company, especially if we look at sureties given by companies in the group. The level, expected level is much smaller or lower. We have the PLN 1.65 billion. We have the same collateral package that we have in the financing agreement with the current syndicator banks. That's a more extensive response to those questions, and I hope I was able to exhaust.
I think so. Thank you very much. We have another question.
What's your idea to use the money and what type of investments should investors expect over the next three months? The plan of the company was to spend PLN 2.4 billion per year, with most of the money being spent in 2022, 2024.
Perhaps once again, I would speak. In terms of the usage of the cash in the FIZ as well as in the. Well, this gives us the feeling of safety for the company's operation in upcoming years. The market is highly volatile. Prices are all over the place, volumes, demand changes. We have natural hazards. There's a lot of force majeurs from last year, this year. If we look at the volume of production, the uncertainty on the financial market, all of these factors are in place. At the same time, we need to operate normally in our mines.
We have to have in mind, of course, the interests of our stakeholders, counterparties, and employees. The money is to pay for taxes and other liabilities, possible new liabilities, such as the windfall tax. There's also the cost indexation of OpEx and some of the CapEx. This means that the normal values of these streams will grow. If we look at the most recent crisis, which was between 2020 and 2021, we really felt that gap. We had a liquidity need of more than PLN 4 billion during the most recent crisis, and we had to cover that from a variety of sources. From the FIZ, from loans from PFR, then we also had loan tranches from 2019, we also had cash pooling, and this ensured our financial liquidity.
Having in mind the risks that are out there on the horizon, they'll either materialize or not, we as the management team should ensure a liquidity and the ability of the company to operate on a technical and operational basis. These are things that we have to do, based on the monies that we've generated in 2022.
We have a chat question. What does the management think about the possible windfall tax from the Ministry and the European Union for 2022? Maybe a couple words of commentary on that.
The question is spot on. A lot of talk, more, discussion has been out there in the media space and Ministries working on that in terms of this idea.
We saw the conceptual framework in the European Commission. Now there's a in parliaments, national parliaments, and basically we haven't implemented that, so we don't know the specifics yet. As we listen to what people say in the media, the information that's out there, what the government's saying today, the company has to incorporate or account for the possible payment of such a windfall tax.
Does the management consider in 2024 the possibility of doing a share back after buying back or after paying back the loan to the PFR? Having in mind the possible monies that you would earn in 2023.
Now at the beginning of 2023, a year that will also be full of a variety of variables, which can affect the results of 2023.
I think it's a little premature moment to give any type of statements on that subject. Thank you, Raj.
We have a question about production. What will production look like in 2023?
The production in 2023, as we mentioned previously, especially after in 2022 after those events that took place, still impacted by these events. In February 2022, we defined the strategy all the way through to 2030, and the level of production was defined there. The various years where we saw those events taking place, and certainly after the mid-year period, after we had the results in place for the first half of the year, and we said that these events would affect our run rate.
We wanted to regroup our mine phases and continue operating in order to be able to pursue the targets we had in the strategy.
Is it possible that you will revise your CapEx figures up into 2030 because of inflation? If not, why not?
Our entire group is analyzing today the overall market environment, the market context, and looking at the changes that have been identified in our financial models. We can see the offers, the bids in various tenders. We also have the public procurement law and procedures. This in place where it's above six months, and then you have evaluation clause. We'll take into consideration changes in the key price-sensitive factors.
Last year's accidents last year, will they call for additional capital expenditures in order to open up new deposits?
Last year's accidents in our mines, these events were very difficult and were a test of the time. At this time, this will not make it necessary to raise the CapEx for the years referred to in your question. We don't see that we'll have to do a lot of additional tunneling work because we're following and fulfilling the targets we had defined in the strategy and having in mind what's happening in the various mine sections.
Has the committee or commission produced its final report? Its conclusions and what are the takeaways from that? What kind of impact could there be for the future? In the mid-year report, you talked about the significant adverse impact even in the midterm.
In terms of these proceedings, well, there are two commissions that were appointed by the head of the mining authority.
In the Zofiówka section, that first commission has completed its investigation in explaining the causes. The events themselves don't affect the operations domain because it's usually in reference to a section of the mine. As long as the commission is working, you stop doing work in a certain section of the mine, and that's what happened for both commissions. After that is completed, you can re-continue work. We'll think about doing operations not only in that parcel, but we've regrouped our preparatory works and the impact on production. Over the period from 2023 to 2024, there will be an impact. If we'll be able to come back to the assumptions for the strategy in subsequent years, if we look at Pniówek, we can say that the commission has not completed its operations.
Explanations are still being gathered, and this is linked to the mining works that we have to do. During the second stage of the campaign or the efforts to reach that longwall, and after the commission, the second commission completes its work on Pniówek, we'll be able to gather those conclusions. Thank you.
Does the management plan to or sustain, maintain its plan to raise the run rate to 15 million tons per year?
These events have verified what's gonna happen in the upcoming years because this does, of course, affect path to achieving the targets we had by certain timelines. We're regrouping in order to be able to revisit our strategic targets that were defined and approved in the strategy last year.
What are your operating assumptions for this year, your CapEx, mining cash cost?
Can we say something about the production figures for this year?
These are assumptions. They're operational metrics, and according to our policy, we don't publicize them. The strategy has been published. That's all I can say on this subject. Thank you.
The next question is about the planned are in the works.
Ladies and gentlemen, on 8th February 2023, a salary agreement was signed in JSW between the management and the representative trade union organizations. Under that agreement, the salary fund for 2023 versus 2022 was increased by 15.4%. As a result, this is in force. As of 1 January 2023, we have new base rate tables.
In the middle of the year, the parties to the agreement, the management and the parties, the trade unions, will do some analysis to understand to what extent that salary increase agreement has been fulfilled in the first half of the year. Thank you.
We have several questions about the market environment. There's a question that appears. What level of prices should we expect this year for coking coal and coke?
That's a question to me, but we can't respond to that question directly because we don't produce forecasts, we don't produce that type of information for public consumption. Thank you.
Will the company consider diversification of its operations to think about doing a joint venture or working on graphite itself in the motor industry or perhaps in some other industry?
This is a question to me.
JSW has been observing the changes on the marketplace for several years, if we look at graphite or graphite. This is something that's been analyzed in the past, and we saw difficulties in terms of access, market barriers, entrance barriers, and it's highly capital-intensive, and basically, the company isn't doing any work on that subject. I would like to say that we constantly observe this. We're looking. We're a member of the Association for Carbon and Graphite Products, we're exchanging knowledge and skills, competencies to extend the data we have, and this will enable us to make subsequent assessments in this area. Thank you.
Having in mind the statements about transformation of the steel industry in Europe, and this is becoming more and more realistic, and the government aids given to the companies, what will the company do having in mind upcoming changes?
I can tell you, I'm an advocate of keeping our feet firmly on the ground. As JSW, we analyze the overall market environment, we know all of this stuff the EU, and we also deliver to companies outside of the EU. Generally, everything boils down to one thing, reduction of carbon footprints. There are three possible ways to do that. Either we can use hydrogen, which is very expensive, and it's not available on a massive scale. There are some investments and attempts being made, but these are individual decisions, and they're very expensive. The second thing is working on the blast furnace process to reduce, to make it more efficiency. This doesn't rule out, you know, using coke and coking coal as ingredients. We can think about, you know, electric arc furnace investments.
The current year or last year very much show what that meant. If the market's so unpredictable, the prices of electricity are unpredictable. Steel mills making decisions to shut down production, with the exception of some blast furnaces which reduced their output for a while, the easiest thing to do would be to shut down these electric arc furnaces, and then they don't produce anything. Two or three steel currents made that decision before because it was the most expensive technology to use, before they even looked at blast furnaces. Thinking about the realism of this topic, we have a clear strategy all the way through 2030. We're also thinking about the green side of things and reduction of CO₂ and methane and so on and so forth.
We believe that coking coal and blast furnaces will continue to be needed and taking a realistic approach. Even today at this conference, the numbers that you saw show you the magnitude. Europe is producing 150 million tons of steel, of which 70% is in blast furnace. Roughly 70 million tons of steel needs to be transformed into a different model without using coking coal and coke. It's easy to see, and it'll incur how much energy would have to be expended in order to be able to do that in an economically viable fashion on a continual basis. This gives us a bit of a response. Some of the biggest companies have some plans, and because of the conflict in Ukraine, this seems to be something that's been pushed back in time.
It seems to me that in the short to medium term, this is unrealistic. The European Commission believes and recognize coking coal as something there's a shortage of, we're the only producer, and it's incorporated on the Critical Raw Materials list, and there were certainly reasons for that. On top of that, if we look at these type of activities being continued, I assume that they will be continued, we can still use our coal and coke. Please imagine two other aspects. With the last country investing in coking batteries. We have a full awareness of what's happening in Western countries, what's happening when they have integrated coking plants, and how old their coking plants are, what's the wear and tear of those plants. In those countries, there will be no consent to invest in those type of assets.
In the near future, we may be a partner who has a good geographic rent, can deliver coke, and these steel plants will not be closed from one day to the next. This is a complicated process, a lot of topic. These talks will be held at the European Commission level, and this is linked to a large number of branches and sub-branches of the European industry. I'm not only thinking about the construction industry or infrastructure or automobile industry, where this is, you know, treated as something very important. Realistically, I don't see any threats up until 2030 that something negative would happen to us. There's gonna be turbulence. The conflict that's out there, other things will lead to difficulties and turbulence, but I can't imagine that these products would be replaced.
If you look at this realistically, not even thinking about just replacing the technology or, you know, shifting 100 million tons of steel production to some other method of production. They're also importing some 40 million tons of coking coal because it's not available in Europe. Even if this is going to be continued, I personally believe that we'll have the ability to sell our products. The best proof, it's best to talk about facts, that the counterparties, the biggest steel producers, entered contracts with JSW for the longest period of time. These are contracts going to the period of 2029, 2030. These are very long-term coal supply contracts. There are investments being made in green steel, but today nobody is simply going to withdraw or retract from producing steel on a conventional basis because that's the most viable means of production.
If we look at the value chain, if we wanna move in the direction of green Europe, if we want to build electrical vehicles, and we're thinking about everything that utilizes electricity, above all, we should think about how to build the source of energy to make sure that we have continual access and for it to be. This is we should think about first. We need to make huge investments, not just to upgrade the energy infrastructure onshore, offshore. Basically, a lot of steel will be needed for that. We're talking about the military conflict, what might happen when we talk about the rebuilding of Ukraine. That's something that's in the future. There's a large number of questions. If we think about the transformation, steel will be needed.
It's the steel that's produced here to make sure that at the end of the day, we're going to have green energy. It needs to have an economically viable price to be able to produce steel in a pure setting without CO2 emissions. We're talking about a period of 2040 Union. This is the timeline for it to happen, not in 2030. We have a very clearly formulated strategy. Honestly, when we think about JSW products, I think we'll have our place in the market for quite a while to come. Thank you very much.
One analyst is thinking about the ArcelorMittal asset. If that company decides to leave Poland, would you be interested in taking over its steel assets and coking plant assets? Then you could do even more vertical integration.
I can tell you that's a question that's highly theoretical.
What would happen if something would happen? ArcelorMittal is our biggest customer. We work with the management of ArcelorMittal Poland, also their head office in London. We've not heard anything of the sort. We certainly analyze, we will analyze in the future all scenarios, regardless of what's going to happen on the market. Since we're playing at this level, we have to have a full reconnaissance because everything affects our operations. As today, this is a very theoretical question. There are no signals of that sort. As I said previously to the previous question, if these type of discussions were to be held... Well, we published a current report recently that ArcelorMittal made a decision to sign a contract with us for the delivery of coal all the way through 2029. Thank you.
We have a question about an investment power block done by Rafako.
Well, I can try to respond to that. In Radlin, this is strategic. Last year, we had the general construction work along with the technological facilities, and we did the assembly work. Finishing work was being done in the buildings. Based on the information we received from the management of JSW KOKS and the project manager, the work is highly advanced at 68%. In terms of how far along we are in the project. We anticipate the work will be completed by the end of June of this year. Thank you.
The next question, when will the company update its strategy, having in mind the changes in the steel industry? Are you working with the Polish State Assets Ministry on that subject?
Well, in terms of what the CEO, Mr. Cudny said, and Mr. Bartos said quite a bit more.
Well, the company is consistent in pursuing its goals, the strategic goals haven't changed. Having in mind the volatility on the marketplace, the company, of course, observes and monitors the current situation. If there will be reasons for us to revise the major tenets, the company will advise the shareholders of that. Thank you.
We have a question about the revenue on sales of benzol, coke, and gas.
Well, this is part of the revenue in the coke segment. This is roughly 10% of total revenue. If I remember correctly, last year, this is a little bit less than PLN 1 billion, PLN 0.9 billion. That's of the side products. Tar is the biggest portion. Coking gas is 30%. The first one is 50%, 20% is benzol. We also have sulfur.
The volume and price is basically less than 1%. That's more or less the revenue from hydrocarbons. Thank you.
What's the demand for coke in Europe, having in mind gas prices falling?
This is what I spoke to during the presentation of the results, and I think we already responded to that in part. For the mark, it's at the end of last year, fourth quarter was already difficult. First quarter of this year features a continuation of that because a lot of the volume, a lot of that inventory is still out there. What's good information for us, and we've talked about that for the second quarter, some of the closed blast furnaces will come back, will be reignited. This more quickly. We can see some recovery there. That natural price difference between coke and coal is starting to get eliminated.
One of the final questions, maybe it's the last question because of time limitations. Teck concern , which has decided to sell its coking coal business for a price at less than $150 per ton, according to the management team, is that the target price for coking coal?
In terms of the decision of the management board of Teck, we don't comment on the decisions made by other entities and businesses in terms of our evaluation of price. I think we already talked about that. We're not an entity that specializes in giving forecasts. We have our vision in the way we understand the market that's in our annual technical and financial plan, but we don't publish.
Those are all of the questions. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Questions. The end of the conference will be responded to by the investor relations team.
I'd like to thank all of the employees of the group who made a contribution to the results that we've been able to present today. I'd like to thank and enabled us to walk through this conference so efficiently. Thank you very much.