find that we are the world's largest producer of high-purity cellulose specialty products, products that go into a range of different end uses, which I'll cover in the next slide. We're also the sole producer of a three-ply paperboard that we produce here in North America. That goes into packaging, sustainable packaging, but also in things like lottery tickets. Then finally, we produce almost 300,000 tons of a high-yield bulk pulp, where we differentiate ourselves a little bit by concentrating on a maple pulp, which is prized by our customers. We operate four world-class facilities, two of them here in the United States, one in Quebec and one in France. Our focus in terms of growing our business has been on what we call our BioFuture, which is developing renewable biomaterials and bioenergy products that we believe we have a strong comparative advantage in. Next page.
So just to look at some of the products we produce. In our high-purity cellulose specialty business, that would be we service the ethers, acetate, and other CS products. And a lot of those products that you will find our fibers in are products that are consumed every day by most people in the developed world. For example, in ethers, if you consume any food that is fat-free, there's a substitute in it that's made from an ether that has our product in it that allows that substitutes for those natural fats in those foods. Also, in a number of industrial applications like dry cement and also in tile adhesives, you'll find our ethers. Acetates, a lot of natural plastics, for example, eyeglass frames made from acetate products, and also including LCD screens, for example, on your iPhones and on your iPads.
Other CS, tire cord and premium tires, sausage casings, a number of industrial filtration applications, nitrocellulose, the material that you find in explosives, you'll find our products in. We also make some commodity products in our high-purity business. Viscose, you'll find that in rayon, rayon-like fibers that you find in textiles. And then in fluff, which is tied to the absorbent material that you find in baby diapers and adult incontinence diapers and feminine hygiene. And paperboard, as I mentioned, strong megatrends around sustainable packaging is driving that business. And then high-yield pulp, which is a feedstock for our paperboard plant, but you'll also find that in packaging and printing and writing. Looking at our quick snapshot on our financials, if you look at our revenues, it seems relatively flat, given our guidance of around $1.6 billion-$1.7 billion, which is not too much different from 2023.
But there's a lot of things going on as you dig into those numbers a little bit. 2023, you see it a little bit being down versus 2022, and that's really due to the snapback from the congestions we saw in the supply chains in 2022. Customers then in 2023 went through a significant destocking period where they drew down their own inventories. We've seen in 2024 that most of that destocking has ended. Things seem to be normalizing, although some of our end uses at a fairly low level, particularly our ethers business. Now, what's interesting to see that even though our revenues is relatively flat, is that our EBITDA is moving up substantially, going from $139 million in 2023 to the midpoint of our guidance of $190 million in 2024. And what's really driving that difference is a change in sales mix and in production mix.
As I said, in 2023, going into 2024, the destocking activity that we experienced in 2023 has ended. As a consequence, we're seeing improved orders for our higher-margin cellulose specialty products. We've been able to back off on the production and sale of some of our commodity products. In addition to that, we announced that we were suspending operations at our HPC facility in Temiscaming, Quebec, which was primarily focused on producing commodity products. As a consequence, we've been able to; we'll see later this year a reduction in commodity sales and a corresponding increase in cellulose specialty sales. You can see all this activity really in the pie charts in the upper right-hand corner. We've got 2023 actuals. If you look at the orange segments, those are our commodity production. You see that we sold 15% in viscose and paper pulp in 2023.
In 2024, you see that that mix has changed substantially, roughly half the level we saw in commodity sales and production that we're expecting in 2024 due to this sales mix change that I mentioned. As a consequence, you're seeing margins expand. You're seeing EBITDA increase as a result of that, even though the sales volume isn't really changing that much. Next page. If you look at our initiatives for 2024, first start off a little bit with our guidance. Back at the first quarter, we gave guidance of $180 million-$200 million of EBITDA guidance. And the numbers I just shared with you took the midpoint of that and also free cash flow of $80 million-$100 million. I would tell you today that we're probably toward the upper end of that guidance now, probably north of 190 and closer to 200.
That free cash flow continues to hang in that $80-$100 million. Certainly, by the time we get to August, we'll probably have a better sense of where we are with that going forward. Using that as a backdrop of what our initiatives are and what we're trying to do to drive that guidance further is, first, a focus on our balance sheet. We understand that we've got a lot of debt that we're over-levered, and we've got to find a way to bring that back in line to a healthy level so that our investors and our shareholders will be comfortable with us. One of the top focuses that we have is to refinance our senior notes that mature in January 2026 and do that as expeditiously as possible. We're doing a lot of self-help.
We're reducing the debt and have told and announced that we're looking to target $70 million reduction through our cash flow and the sales of passive assets, but also increase our EBITDA to help us with respect to the ability to afford debt. I can tell you where we are with that right now is that we've retained Houlihan Lokey to help us through this process. We're doing a dual-track process, looking at public as well as private options. The expectation is that we're pursuing that aggressively and expect that we'll get this done well before year-end. Also, part of this process is we have announced that we're looking at selling our non-core paperboard and high-yield pulp business. We've been running this process now since the fourth quarter of 2023, so for going on now for a little bit of time.
This process got slowed down due to the announcement of our suspension of the HPC production in Temiscaming as our suitors look to get comfortable with the idea of running that site without the HPC line. Still a healthy process. I can tell you that we've actually had a couple of new parties express interest in the process. We're bringing people on and into the process. That may drag things out a little bit more. But at the end of the day, the process remains healthy. I would believe that we're actually seeing increased competitive tension for those assets as a result of the suspension of the HPC line. With respect to the HPC line, one of the next priorities that we've been focused on is asset optimization.
This is really about reducing our exposure to the commodity business, where we can't control pricing, where we're a price taker. That volatility in pricing has translated into, in some cases, extreme volatility in our earnings. So we're looking forward to operating those facilities only when they're profitable. So to that end, we've been concentrating our commodity production and our commodity sales at the Temiscaming facility. And because of continued weakness, as well as other factors like the availability of affordable wood supply and so forth, we made a decision in late April that we would suspend indefinitely that HPC line, which was primarily focused on commodity production until market conditions improve and profitability returns. I'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide.
Then finally, we continue to keep a management focus on growing our biomaterials opportunities or taking our biomaterial investments to take advantage of the opportunities that are available there and where we believe we have some strong comparative advantage in there, given the co-profit economics that those opportunities have with our core cellulose business. The big news of recent time is that we've brought up and have started production at our bioethanol plant in Tartas. Came up pretty quickly and now is producing at expected levels.
We continue to go forward with a number of other biomaterial and bioenergy projects that we laid out in our investor day back in October of 2024, including crude tall oil opportunities at Jesup and also at Tartas, and also looking at doing the detail engineering on a bioethanol plant that'd be very similar to what we got in Tartas, but locating that at a Fernandina facility. So those projects are continuing to go forward. And most of the funding for that isn't from the equity of RYAM. We're able to fund a lot of that from very attractive financing that we've received from investors and banks in Europe. So a little bit more color on the suspension of the operations, the HPC plant in Temiscaming.
As I was mentioning earlier, most of this production capacity was focused on viscose, a commodity product of ours, where the EBITDA margin currently was negative. We didn't see, for at least the short-term to intermediate period, that that business was going to get profitable. There were other concerns around raw material supplies and some other concerns. We made the difficult decision to go ahead and announce the suspension of those operations starting July 2nd. We will mothball all those assets with the idea that when the market conditions become conducive, that we will have the option to bring back those assets into production in the future. This action, we expect it will only provide a modest benefit in 2024, given the noise around having to suspend the plant and to lay off individuals and so forth.
But from a cash flow perspective in 2024, we expect the benefit to be somewhere between $15-$20 million as the monetization of working capital more than pays for the cost of mothballing the facility. On a recurring basis, on an annualized recurring basis, we expect that the EBITDA benefit would be somewhere between $15-$20 million and that the full cash flow benefit will be around $30 million as we will also forego the CapEx or the maintenance spending for that HPC line. Looking at a waterfall cash flow for 2024, you see our guidance on EBITDA, $180-$200 million. And then you've got our interest expense of about $85 million and the maintenance CapEx of $80. The working capital benefit that includes the $30 million of benefit that we'll get from the suspension of operations in Temiscaming.
Then we expect to get some tax refunds as well this year. You have a couple of other minor changes. The sale of the passive asset, which is the lumber duty refund rights that we announced earlier this quarter for almost $40 million. So when you add all that up, that gets you to the $80-$100 million of adjusted free cash flow for the year. The final slide, a really busy slide. What we're trying to depict here is that one of our objectives is to reduce the total debt or the quantum of debt. You can see that we've been successful in doing that over the period of time, and that's shown in the bars. In 2024, our target is to get that down to $727 million.
And by doing that, the adjusted EBITDA will then be $3.3 if we achieve the guidance that we've given, which we're very confident we will do. Just our covenant EBITDA will actually show a net leverage ratio even lower than that, getting down to levels that are starting to get close to our 2027 target of 2.5. Our margins are expanding, as I mentioned earlier, because of the mix shift that we're seeing and that we're managing to by only operating the commodity businesses when they're profitable. So again, the key drivers of all this, we've kind of already mentioned all this. One is that our core business is very stable because of all the different end-use demand or end-uses out there. It's got a very diverse end-use market. The margins in that business are strong.
Now, one of the things I have not mentioned is that one of our focuses is to focus in on the value of those specialty products versus going after market share. And then we think there's further upside with this business, as well as ethers' demand eventually normalizes, particularly in Europe when the construction market begins to pick up there with the lower interest rates that we expect to see there. Biomaterials opportunities will continue to realize those. And by in the year 2027, the target is that we'll have $100 million of new revenue there and $40 million of EBITDA. Talked about the change in the sales mix due to the reduced commodity exposure. And one of the things to note there is that we should see an increase or an improvement in the stability of our earnings going forward. Exposure is significantly reduced there.
Then finally, one thing we're also driving is cost savings, particularly at our plants. We have a project here called Project Olympic. And in that project, we're looking to reduce the cost per ton between here and the end of 2027 to the tune of roughly $100 per ton across all of our facilities. Great returns exist there. We won't have to modify our investment hurdles. We believe we can achieve this by providing projects that have less than a two-year payback and a greater than 30% return on equity. They'll be very attractive for our investors as we realize those opportunities. So, Daniel, I think that's it. I'll turn it back to you and be available to answer any questions.
Perfect. Thank you so much, De Lyle. As a reminder, if you do have a question, please feel free to type it into the Q&A box, and I'll get to as many as we can. We've got a few questions already in the queue, but De Lyle, I wanted to kick it off just by asking, with the refinancing being a top priority by the end of this year, can you just briefly discuss what are the key operational objectives or what you need to do from an execution standpoint to feel really good about refinancing later this year? Obviously, the market has noticed your strategic initiatives and the progress that you're making. But is there anything else out there that you feel like you need to do in order to refinance on the best terms?
Yeah, I would say there's probably three or four key objectives that we're going to have to make significant progress on, if not achieve. So the first is obviously, well, it's to achieve the EBITDA guidance. And the $180-$200, we're feeling really confident about that. The CS demand book is looking really good. The costs are coming in line with what we had expected. And we're actually able to, we're actually executing on the suspension at Temiscaming pretty successfully. So looking like that we're, as I said, be on the upper half of that guidance right now. Another would be to pay down the debt. And we have a direct line of sight on how to do that. The sale of the passive asset was a big success and will go a long way in helping us achieve that objective.
The tax refunds, once we get that and a little bit of internally generated cash flow gets to that point. So we'll be able to be in a position to have the $70 million to pay that down by year-end. The third thing I would say is making significant progress on the sale of the paperboard and high-yield pulp business. I know there's a lot of impatience out there because people may think we're dragging our feet or we don't have a lot of interest in those assets.
And I can tell you that that is not right. There is a lot of assets, but the sale or the suspension of the Temiscaming production line and the entrance of a couple of new suitors obviously is causing us to cause that to drag out a little bit. So I would say that those are the things that I would say we need to be hyper or super successful in the refi, if we can accomplish all those things, then I think we'll be in the pink.
It sounds almost like the extension of the sales process has benefited you in the sense that you're getting additional interest out there. And I know one question on the previous earnings call had to do with investors feeling comfortable that the paperboard and high-yield pulp assets can, yes, in fact, they are profitable. They're good businesses, and they're capable of operating on their own without the HPC line. Is that kind of the feedback that you're receiving from renewed interest in the sale?
Yeah, exactly. And there was a concern by people or parties early in the process about looking at the whole site and taking on the HPC line with its significant losses in the commodity business. By eliminating that uncertainty, that I think has brought that forward, brought that opportunity forward with a couple of parties to say, "Well, we don't have to worry about the HPC losses anymore." And therefore, we now have interest again on the site. Still got some issues. We got to that we're dealing with a couple of our suitors around how the suspension impacts the union contract that we have at the site. And we've gone a long way to making people comfortable that at the end of the day, it shouldn't impact. And in fact, we believe it will enhance the operations at the paperboard and high-yield plant.
Yeah. And you've continued to make it very clear that while the sales process is ongoing, this is not at all a fire sale.
That's right. That's right. These are good assets. I believe very supportive megatrends around sustainable packaging that will drive this opportunity. I'm not interested in selling this at a fire sale.
Just a couple of questions from the audience while we have a few more minutes left. Are there any other additional uses of the cash that you're going to obtain from suspension of operations at Temiscaming other than working to pay down the debt load?
Yeah. I alluded to a couple of, I think, are very high return opportunities for the company and therefore its shareholders. One is around the whole BioFuture, biomaterials opportunity. This requires little actual equity from the parent to make real and to realize it. There's other opportunities there that we can begin to explore with additional capital. And so we will do that. And then the other was what I mentioned was around Project Olympic. We can make quite a bit of investments. We have a whole table full of them that we can provide or invest in that will provide a payback period of less than 2 years. So I don't need to just pay down debt. There's significant investment opportunities in the business that are well above the cost of my debt.
Perfect. And then with our 1 minute left, I will just leave it to you if you have any closing remarks you want to share. And obviously, the market has finally woken up to your story. Stock is up 25% since you reported earnings. And it looks like these strategic initiatives are progressing as you hoped they would.
Yeah. Again, what I would say is that I think we're getting traction, and I think we're picking up speed. I think the next quarter, a lot of things will, a lot of pieces will begin to fall into place as we go toward the end of the year. I think the business will be in a very strong position as we enter into 2025. So we're just beginning, in my opinion.
Awesome. Well, De Lyle, on behalf of Sidoti and everybody in the audience, thank you so much for participating in the conference and sharing your story. We really appreciate your participation, and we wish you all the best in the second half of the year.
Well, thank you, Daniel. Thank you again for the opportunity.
Goodbye, everyone.