Glencore Stock price
Compare with Peer Group
📊 Peer Group
📈 What is it?
The peer group consists of the companies with the most similar business model. They serve as a benchmark for putting a stock into context.
🧮 How is it selected?
Based on similarity of business model, meaning companies from the same industry with comparable products and a similar customer base. That's the only way to compare apples to apples.
🏛️ Why does it matter?
Whether a stock is cheap or expensive is best judged by comparison. A P/E of 18 or an EV/FCF of 20 can look cheap or expensive depending on the yardstick. The peer group gives you the most accurate one: companies with a similar business model that operate under the same conditions.
🎯 What does it mean for investors?
When a metric sits below the peer average, the stock is valued more cheaply relative to its competitors, and above the average more expensively. A discount to the peer group can be an opportunity, but it can also have a reason (for example lower growth). The comparison is a starting point, not a verdict.
AI Insights on Glencore
Insights
Invest better with AI
StocksGuide Unlimited – full access to AI analyses
👉 More detailed insights
👉 Exclusive perspectives on opportunities & risks
👉 Clear answers to your questions
Invest better with AI
StocksGuide Unlimited – full access to AI analyses
👉 More detailed insights
👉 Exclusive perspectives on opportunities & risks
👉 Clear answers to your questions
Invest better with AI
StocksGuide Unlimited – full access to AI analyses
👉 More detailed insights
👉 Exclusive perspectives on opportunities & risks
👉 Clear answers to your questions
Invest better with AI
StocksGuide Unlimited – full access to AI analyses
👉 More detailed insights
👉 Exclusive perspectives on opportunities & risks
👉 Clear answers to your questions
Is Glencore a Top Scorer Stock based on the Dividend, High-Growth-Investing or Leverman Strategy?
As a Free StocksGuide user, you can view scores for all 9,127 stocks worldwide.
StocksGuide Premium
StocksGuide Unlimited
Key metrics
📘 Market Capitalization
📈 What is it?
Market capitalization shows how much a company is currently worth on the stock market.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps classify companies by size (Large, Mid, Small Cap) and indicates their market presence and relative stability.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Large-cap companies tend to be more stable, often pay dividends, but may grow more slowly.
- Smaller firms may offer higher growth potential but come with more volatility.
- Market capitalization is a useful indicator of company size — but not a measure of whether a stock is undervalued or overvalued.
📘 Enterprise Value (EV)
📈 What is it?
Enterprise Value represents the total cost to acquire a company — including its debt and excluding its cash reserves.
🧮 How is it calculated?
(= Market Cap + Net Debt)
🏛️ Why is it important?
EV gives a more complete picture of a company's value than market cap alone and is used in key valuation ratios like EV/FCF or EV/Sales.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Enterprise Value shows the true cost of buying a company, including all financial obligations.
- It is more accurate than just looking at market cap, especially when comparing companies with different levels of debt or cash.
- Professional investors prefer EV-based multiples because they better reflect the company’s full financial footprint.
📘 Net Debt
📈 What is it?
Net Debt shows how much debt remains after subtracting a company’s available cash reserves.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It indicates how dependent a company is on borrowed money and how easily it can service its debt in the short term.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Low or negative net debt signals financial strength and flexibility.
- Companies with strong cash positions are better positioned in crises.
- High net debt increases financial risk — especially in environments with rising interest rates or economic downturns.
📘 Cash
📈 What is it?
Cash represents all liquid assets a company can access immediately — including cash, bank deposits, and short-term investments.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It reflects a company’s financial flexibility and resilience — enabling investments, buybacks, or buffer in downturns.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A strong cash position means greater room for maneuver and crisis resistance.
- Cash-rich companies can invest, pay down debt, or repurchase shares.
- But excess idle cash might indicate a lack of growth opportunities.
📘 Shares Outstanding
📈 What is it?
Shares outstanding represent the total number of a company’s shares currently held by investors — excluding treasury stock.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It’s the basis for key metrics like Earnings Per Share (EPS), Market Capitalization, or the Price/Earnings ratio (P/E).
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Fewer shares in circulation typically increase earnings per share — making each share more valuable.
- Share buybacks reduce the number of shares and boost per-share metrics.
- Issuing new shares does the opposite — diluting shareholder value and lowering per-share figures.
📘 Price-to-Earnings Ratio (P/E)
📈 What is it?
The P/E ratio shows how many times a company's earnings per share are reflected in its current share price — in other words, how "expensive" the stock appears relative to its profits.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The P/E ratio is one of the most widely used valuation metrics. It helps investors assess whether a stock appears cheap or expensive compared to its earnings power.
🧮 Calculation
📊 P/E (TTM) = Based on earnings from the last 12 months (Trailing Twelve Months):🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low P/E may indicate undervaluation — or signal underlying issues.
- A high P/E may reflect strong growth expectations — or an overvalued stock.
📘 Price-to-Sales Ratio (P/S)
📈 What is it?
The P/S ratio shows how much investors are paying for $1 of the company’s revenue – regardless of profitability.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
P/S is especially useful for evaluating growth companies or businesses not yet profitable. It reflects how the market values the company’s sales.
🧮 Calculation
Market Cap = £64.01b | Revenue (TTM) = £230.00b
Market Cap = £64.01b | Estimated Revenue = £237.69b
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low P/S may indicate undervaluation — or low profitability.
- A high P/S can reflect strong growth expectations — or excessive optimism.
- Especially helpful when evaluating companies where profits are low, volatile, or negative.
📘 Enterprise Value to Sales (EV/Sales)
📈 What is it?
EV/Sales shows how much investors are paying for $1 of revenue — considering not just equity, but also debt and cash. It’s the capital structure–adjusted version of the P/S ratio.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It’s ideal for comparing companies with different levels of debt. It reflects a company's true cost relative to its revenue.
🧮 Calculation
Enterprise Value = £95.45b | Revenue (TTM) = £230.00b
Enterprise Value = £95.45b | Forward Revenue = £237.69b
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- EV/Sales allows for capital structure–neutral company comparisons.
- A lower ratio may indicate undervaluation; a higher one may signal strong growth expectations or overvaluation.
- Especially helpful when evaluating high-growth companies with low or negative earnings.
📘 Enterprise Value to Free Cash Flow (EV/FCF)
📈 What is it?
EV/FCF shows how many years it would take for a company to "pay back" its enterprise value using its free cash flow.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It focuses on real cash generation, ignoring accounting noise — ideal for assessing profitability and value based on liquidity, not earnings.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low EV/FCF may signal undervaluation and strong cash generation.
- A high EV/FCF might reflect weak recent cash flow or aggressive growth expectations.
- Best suited for stable, mature businesses with predictable free cash flows.
📘 Price-to-Book Ratio (P/B)
📈 What is it?
The P/B ratio compares a company’s market value to its book value — showing how much investors are paying for each dollar of net assets.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
P/B is commonly used for asset-heavy industries like banks or industrials. It helps assess whether a stock is trading above or below its net asset value.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A P/B below 1 may signal undervaluation — or weak profitability.
- A P/B above 1 implies the market expects future value creation (e.g., brand, IP, growth).
- Best used for companies with tangible assets and strong balance sheets.
📘 Dividend per Share (DPS)
📈 What is it?
Dividend per Share shows how much cash a company pays out to shareholders for each share they own – usually on an annual or quarterly basis.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
DPS is the absolute value of the payout per share – crucial for income-focused investors and dividend strategies.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A stable or growing DPS often signals a strong, shareholder-friendly business.
- DPS alone doesn’t tell you how attractive the payout is – the stock price also matters (→ see Dividend Yield).
- Long-term dividend growth is often a hallmark of high-quality companies – like the dividend aristocrats.
📘 Dividend Yield
📈 What is it?
Dividend yield shows how large a company’s dividend is in relation to its current share price.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It allows investors to compare dividend payouts across stocks, regardless of price or payout size.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A stable yield can reflect reliable distributions.
- Comparing 1Y and 5Y yield shows whether dividend growth keeps pace with stock price appreciation.
- A low yield isn’t always negative – it can signal strong past performance or growth focus.
📘 Dividend Growth
📈 What is it?
Dividend growth shows how much a company has increased its dividend per share over time.
🧮 How is it calculated?
5Y: Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR)
🏛️ Why is it important?
Consistently rising dividends are often a sign of financial strength and shareholder orientation – especially relevant for long-term investors.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Stable dividend growth is a sign of sustainable earning power.
- High dividend growth can significantly boost your total return:
- If a company pays $1 in dividends and increases it by 15% annually over 5 years, you’ll receive $2 per share in year 5 – twice as much as at the start!
📘 Payout Ratio
📈 What is it?
The payout ratio shows what percentage of a company’s earnings (per share) is distributed to shareholders as dividends.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps assess whether the dividend is sustainable – especially in relation to the company’s profitability.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low payout ratio means the company retains more earnings for reinvestment – typical for growth companies.
- A moderate payout (e.g. 25–50%) indicates a healthy balance between returns and reinvestment.
- High payout ratios may seem attractive but can carry risk if earnings decline.
📘 Consecutive Dividend Increases
📈 What is it?
This metric shows how many consecutive years a company has raised its dividend per share – without any cuts or pauses.
🧮 How is it calculated?
(Special dividends are not considered.)
🏛️ Why is it important?
A long track record of increases reflects financial strength, consistency, and shareholder commitment.
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A long dividend increase streak builds confidence – especially in volatile markets.
- Such companies are seen as reliable and income-friendly investments.
- The longer the streak, the stronger the company’s dividend discipline.
📘 Revenue
📈 What is it?
Revenue shows how much a company earns in total from selling its products and services – the gross income before any costs are deducted.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Revenue is one of the key figures to assess a company’s size, market position, and growth potential.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growing revenue indicates rising demand and can be an early signal of future earnings growth.
- Comparing actual and expected revenue reveals trends in the market environment and analyst sentiment.
- Note: Strong revenue alone isn’t enough – margins and profitability matter just as much.
📘 EBITDA
📈 What is it?
EBITDA stands for “Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.” It reflects a company’s operating profit before the effects of financing, taxes, and accounting depreciation.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBITDA is widely used to evaluate a company’s operating performance – especially across capital-intensive sectors or international comparisons.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high or growing EBITDA indicates strong operational profitability – independent of taxes, interest, or accounting methods.
- It’s especially useful for comparing companies across sectors or geographies.
- Important: EBITDA is not a net income figure – it excludes key costs like depreciation and interest.
📘 EBIT
📈 What is it?
EBIT stands for “Earnings Before Interest and Taxes.” It reflects a company’s operating profit after depreciation, but before interest and tax expenses.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBIT is a core profitability metric that shows how well the company performs in its main business operations – independent of capital structure and tax environment.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBIT indicates strong profitability from the company’s core business – before financial and tax effects.
- It allows better comparison between companies with different debt levels or tax structures.
- Compared to EBITDA, EBIT already accounts for depreciation and reflects capital intensity more clearly.
📘 Net Income
📈 What is it?
Net income is the company’s total profit – the amount left after all expenses, taxes, interest, and depreciation have been deducted.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net income is the most comprehensive measure of a company’s profitability – showing how much actual profit remains after all business and financing costs.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growing net income indicates that the company is managing all of its costs efficiently.
- It directly influences valuation metrics like P/E ratio and the company’s dividend capacity.
- Over time, net income trends reveal how resilient and profitable the business model really is.
📘 Free Cash Flow (FCF)
📈 What is it?
Free Cash Flow shows how much actual cash remains after a company covers its operating expenses and capital expenditures.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
FCF reflects a company’s real financial strength – regardless of accounting profits. It shows how much flexibility a company has for dividends, share buybacks, or debt reduction.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- High free cash flow means the company generates real, usable cash – independent of reported net income.
- It’s often the most reliable base for sustainable dividends and buybacks.
- Declining FCF can be an early warning sign – even when profits appear stable.
📘 Revenue Growth
📈 What is it?
Revenue growth shows how much a company’s sales have changed compared to the previous year – both on a trailing basis (TTM) and based on forward projections.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected revenue ÷ Revenue in prior year − 1) × 100
Forward growth is based on analyst estimates for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Rising revenue signals growing demand, business expansion, and market share gains – especially important for growth-oriented companies.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growth is the engine of long-term value creation – especially in tech and growth sectors.
- What matters is not just current growth, but its sustainability.
- Forward projections reflect whether analysts expect continued momentum – or a slowdown.
📘 EBITDA Growth
📈 What is it?
EBITDA growth shows how much a company’s operating profit (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) has increased or decreased compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected EBITDA ÷ EBITDA from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate is based on analyst projections for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Growing EBITDA indicates improving operational profitability – regardless of financing or accounting effects.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Strong EBITDA growth signals operational efficiency and scalability – especially during growth phases.
- EBITDA growth can be an early indicator of margin and earnings expansion – but should be assessed alongside revenue and EBIT.
📘 EBIT Growth
📈 What is it?
EBIT growth shows how much a company’s operating profit (after depreciation, but before interest and taxes) has increased compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected EBIT ÷ EBIT from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate is based on analyst projections for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBIT growth is a direct indicator of a company’s business performance – taking into account capital intensity through depreciation.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Rising EBIT signals improving operating profitability – even after accounting for depreciation.
- It’s especially important for evaluating companies with significant capital expenditures.
- Combined with revenue and EBITDA growth, EBIT growth provides a well-rounded view of operational progress.
📘 Net Income Growth
📈 What is it?
Net income growth shows how much a company’s bottom-line profit has increased or decreased compared to the previous year – both on a trailing basis (TTM) and based on analyst projections.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected net income ÷ Net income from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate reflects analysts’ expectations for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net income is the ultimate measure of profitability. Growing net income signals stronger efficiency, cost control, and sustainable earnings power.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Stronger net income boosts valuation, dividend potential, and investor confidence.
- If profits stall while revenue grows, it may signal margin pressure.
📘 Free Cash Flow Growth
📈 What is it?
Free cash flow (FCF) growth shows how a company’s available cash – after covering operating expenses and capital expenditures – has changed compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Free cash flow reflects real financial strength. Growing FCF indicates more flexibility for dividends, share buybacks, and reinvestment.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Declining FCF may point to rising investments, increasing costs, or weaker operating performance.
- Especially for dividend investors, FCF growth is critical – since dividends are paid from actual available cash.
- A negative trend isn't always bad, but it deserves closer attention.
📘 Gross Margin
📈 What is it?
Gross margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains after deducting the direct costs of goods sold (like materials and production). It represents the company’s “raw profit” before fixed costs, taxes, and interest.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Or simply: Gross Margin = Gross Profit ÷ Revenue × 100
🏛️ Why is it important?
Gross margin indicates how efficiently a company can produce or procure what it sells. It is a key measure of product-level profitability and pricing power.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high gross margin suggests strong pricing power and efficient production.
- Falling margins may signal rising input costs or competitive pressure.
- Compared to peers, gross margin offers insights into the quality of a business model.
📘 EBITDA Margin
📈 What is it?
The EBITDA margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as operating profit before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.It reflects operating efficiency without being distorted by financing or accounting factors.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The EBITDA margin reveals how much operating income a company generates per dollar of revenue – independent of capital structure and tax effects.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBITDA margin reflects strong core profitability – before accounting distortions.
- It allows for effective comparisons across companies and sectors.
- A stable or growing margin signals efficient cost control and business scalability.
📘 EBIT Margin
📈 What is it?
The EBIT margin shows what percentage of revenue remains as operating profit after depreciation but before interest and taxes.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The EBIT margin reflects a company’s core profitability while accounting for capital intensity (e.g. machinery, infrastructure). It’s especially useful for comparing businesses with different levels of depreciation.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBIT margin shows that the company remains efficient even after factoring in depreciation.
- It’s especially relevant for capital-intensive industries.
- Stable or rising EBIT margins over time are a strong indicator of pricing power and business quality.
📘 Net margin
📈 What is it?
Net margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as bottom-line profit after deducting all costs, interest, taxes, and depreciation.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net margin reflects a company’s overall efficiency – across operations, financing, and taxation. It shows how much actual profit is generated from each dollar of revenue.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high net margin means the company is not only strong operationally but also manages financing and taxes efficiently.
- Peer comparisons reveal business quality and competitiveness.
- Declining margins despite revenue growth can be a red flag for rising costs or inefficiencies.
📘 Free cash flow margin
📈 What is it?
The free cash flow (FCF) margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as actual free cash after covering all operating expenses and capital expenditures.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
This margin reflects the true liquidity generated by the business – independent of accounting rules or depreciation. It’s especially relevant for dividends, buybacks, and reinvestment decisions.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high FCF margin means a company consistently generates strong cash flow.
- It’s a positive signal for financial stability and shareholder returns.
- The long-term trend is key – a declining margin may indicate rising investments or weakening operating efficiency.
📘 Equity Ratio
📈 What is it?
The equity ratio indicates what portion of a company’s total assets is financed by shareholders’ equity – in other words, how much it relies on its own capital.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
A high equity ratio reflects financial strength and stability, especially during downturns. It’s a key indicator of a company’s solvency and long-term risk profile.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Companies with high equity ratios are generally more resilient and less dependent on external debt.
- Low equity ratios can signal higher risk or aggressive financial strategies.
- Important: Always assess the equity ratio in combination with the return on equity (ROE). This shows not just how stable the company is – but also how efficiently it uses shareholder capital.
📘 Return on Equity (ROE)
📈 What is it?
Return on equity (ROE) shows how efficiently a company uses its shareholders’ equity to generate profit. In other words: how much net income is earned per dollar of equity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROE is a core profitability metric. It helps investors understand whether a company delivers attractive returns on the capital provided by its shareholders.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROE indicates that the company is using its capital efficiently and profitably.
- It’s especially meaningful for capital-intensive businesses or firms with high equity bases.
- Important: A very high ROE can also result from high debt levels – always interpret it alongside the equity ratio to assess financial health.
📘 Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)
📈 What is it?
ROCE measures how efficiently a company generates profits from its total capital – including both equity and interest-bearing debt.
🧮 How is it calculated?
It evaluates the return on all capital employed, regardless of how it’s financed.
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROCE is ideal for comparing companies with different financing structures. It shows how well management uses capital to create value for both shareholders and creditors.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROCE means the company uses its capital efficiently – regardless of whether it's funded by debt or equity.
- The higher the ROCE compared to peers, the more value the company creates with its invested capital.
- Especially relevant for capital-intensive sectors like industrials, energy, or infrastructure.
📘 Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
📈 What is it?
ROIC measures how efficiently a company generates returns from the capital invested in its core operations – regardless of whether the capital comes from equity or debt.
🧮 How is it calculated?
- NOPAT = Net Operating Profit After Taxes
- Invested Capital = Operating assets minus non-interest-bearing liabilities
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROIC is one of the most accurate indicators of capital efficiency. Unlike return on equity, it is not distorted by leverage and shows how much value is created for all capital providers.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROIC shows how effectively a company uses the capital that is truly invested in its core operations.
- Unlike ROCE, ROIC focuses only on the capital that is actively used to run the business – and that requires a return (i.e. interest-bearing).
- Especially useful when comparing companies with large amounts of excess cash or non-interest-bearing liabilities – giving a more realistic picture of capital efficiency.
📘 Leverage Ratio (Debt-to-Equity)
📈 What is it?
The leverage ratio indicates how much a company relies on interest-bearing debt (such as loans and bonds) relative to its shareholders’ equity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
This ratio helps assess a company’s financial structure and risk profile. High leverage can enhance returns – but also increases exposure to interest rate changes and financial stress.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low leverage ratio signals financial strength and independence.
- A higher ratio can improve returns in good times but increases risk during downturns or rising interest rate periods.
- 👉 Always interpret in the context of industry, capital intensity, and interest rate environment.
📘 Earnings per share (EPS)
📈 What is it?
Earnings per Share (EPS) shows how much profit is attributable to a single share – and is one of the most important metrics for evaluating a company's performance.
🧮 How is it calculated?
The diluted share count reflects potential new shares that could be issued through options, convertible bonds, or other rights.
🏛️ Why is it important?
EPS is the basis for many key valuation metrics like P/E ratio, PEG ratio, or payout ratio. It enables comparisons of profitability across companies, regardless of their size.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- EPS captures per-share profitability and is especially useful for comparisons over time or with analyst estimates.
- Rising EPS may signal consistent growth or share buybacks.
- Important: Always use diluted EPS for more realistic valuations – especially in companies with stock-based compensation.
📘 Free cash flow per share (FCF per share)
📈 What is it?
Free Cash Flow per Share shows how much free cash flow a company generates per outstanding share – after investments, but before dividends or debt repayments.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Free cash flow is calculated as operating cash flow minus capital expenditures (CapEx).
🏛️ Why is it important?
FCF per Share reveals how much real cash is available per share – useful for dividends, buybacks, or reducing debt. Unlike net income, free cash flow is harder to manipulate and often seen as a more reliable metric.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- High FCF per share signals strong financial flexibility.
- It shows how much capital the company can effectively reinvest or return to shareholders.
- Particularly relevant for dividend payers and capital-efficient businesses.
📘 Short interest
📈 What is it?
Short interest indicates how many shares of a company are currently sold short – that is, borrowed and sold by investors who expect the price to decline.
🧮 How is it calculated?
It reflects the percentage of a company’s shares that are being shorted relative to the total shares available.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Short interest serves as a sentiment indicator: A high value may signal skepticism or bearish expectations – but also increases the potential for a short squeeze if prices rise unexpectedly.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Low short interest usually indicates market confidence in the company.
- High short interest can be a warning sign – or an opportunity if sentiment shifts.
- Especially relevant in volatile markets or ahead of key earnings releases.
📘 Employees
📈 What is it?
The employee count shows how many people a company employs worldwide – offering insights into its size, structure, and business model.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps assess operational scale, labor intensity, and cost structure. Combined with revenue and profit, it enables key metrics like revenue per employee or productivity.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high headcount can signal operational complexity – but also significant growth capacity.
- Revenue per employee is a key indicator of efficiency.
- Especially useful for comparing tech, industrial, or service-heavy companies.
📘 Turnover per employee
📈 What is it?
Revenue per employee indicates how much revenue a company generates on average per employee – a key measure of efficiency and productivity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
The employee count is typically taken from the most recent annual report.
🏛️ Why is it important?
This metric helps compare business models – especially between labor-intensive and technology-driven companies. A high value suggests automation, operational efficiency, or strong value creation per head.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high revenue per employee indicates a scalable and margin-strong business model.
- A low figure may reflect labor-intensive operations or lower value-add.
- Especially helpful when comparing tech companies to industrial or service sectors.
Glencore Stock Analysis
Analyst Opinions
26 Analysts have issued a Glencore forecast:
Analyst Opinions
26 Analysts have issued a Glencore forecast:
Glencore Events
Past Events
|
AUG
5
Q2 2026 Earnings Call
about 2 months ago
|
|
MAY
28
Shareholder/Analyst Call - Glencore plc
4 months ago
|
|
FEB
18
2025 Earnings Call
7 months ago
|
|
DEC
3
Analyst/Investor Day - Glencore plc
10 months ago
|
StocksGuide Free
Glencore — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Glencore 2026 Half Year Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Martin Fewings, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for our first half 2026 results. A particular welcome to those joining from Australia. Speaking today are Gary Nagle, CEO; Steven Kalmin, CFO; and also joining us as our Chief Operating Officer, Xavier Wagner. I'll hand over to Gary.
Thanks, Martin. Good morning from Switzerland and for those in other parts of the world, good afternoon, good evening and maybe a very early morning for those in North America and South America.
We've put out our results presentation, so we'll take you through that. If we move into the presentation and start on Slide 4, which is a familiar slide -- it should be a familiar slide to all of you is our financial scorecard -- our half year financial scorecard, starting on the industrial side. Operationally, a very solid first half of the year. Our teams, our operational teams delivering production within the market guidance range. We continue to perform operationally 2 full years in a row within the guidance range and now through the first half year within our guidance range, we've we restated our -- or kept our guidance for the remainder of this year.
On the industrial side, a $6.5 billion adjusted industrial EBITDA. That's driven materially by a very strong metals and minerals contribution up year-on-year, primarily driven by higher prices. There have been higher input costs, and Steve will talk a lot -- a bit about that later as we get into the costs, but a very strong metals and minerals contribution. The energy and steelmaking coal contribution also very strong. We've seen higher prices through Newcastle energy coal, driven up by higher LNG prices and we've seen strong demand for steelmaking coal through the first half of the year.
Again, some offsets through increased, particularly diesel costs, and we'll go through those a little bit later. We've also seen some higher refining margins and given our refining exposure in both Singapore and particularly Cape Town, that's landed up allowing us to have a $6.5 billion adjusted industrial EBITDA for the first half of the year. On the marketing side, of $3.3 billion adjusted marketing EBIT, let's say, near record first half result. I think we've only had one other half, which has been higher than that. And that's larger as a result of disrupted energy markets, disrupted freight markets, and it's created significant arbitrage opportunities, dislocations and trading opportunities. Clearly, we all know what's driven that and therefore, an exceptionally strong performance from our energy business, and particularly oil and gas, but coal also contributing nicely towards that result.
On the Metals and Minerals side, also a very strong result, lower than last year, but you will remember that last year was a record year. So a very pleasing result on Metals and Minerals, but obviously not competing this year with a very strong oil and gas business. So the two together have allowed us to publish a financial result and adjusted EBITDA for the first half of the year of $10.1 billion adjusted EBITDA, and that's leading to a net debt of $10.2 billion. Steve will talk you through how that's made up and the contribution or how much of that is marketing leases and how we look at it.
A very cash-generative first half month from operations, up 158% to $8.1 billion. And as a result, we're able to declare a top-up shareholder return this year of $1.5 billion that's going to be $1 billion of cash, and the positiveness and confidence we have in our business, we're also declaring a $0.5 billion buyback of our own stock over the coming 6 months.
Moving on to Slide 5. It's a bit of a scorecard update of what we presented in December of last year at our Capital Markets Day, on our copper portfolio and our leading portfolio that will take production back up to a circa 1 million tonnes of annualized production by 2028. And then our growth portfolio, which will take us to somewhere around 1.6 million tonnes target by 2025. And of course, that could be higher, should we accelerate any of the project beyond what we currently planned.
So if we go through each of these in a little bit more detail. Starting on the top left with Alumbrera restart, and you would have noticed the photo or maybe on the front cover of our presentation, is the first blast in Alumbrera. The guys of the business have done a good job color coding that and color scheming blast in the colors of the Argentinian flag. So very proud of that. And so we are ahead of schedule, in fact, at Alumbrera, we originally were expecting to see first production in the first half of '28. We now believe we'll see first production in the back end of '27. So therefore, an improvement on the schedule at Alumbrera.
Moving on to the DRC, and we did announce this earlier in the year, but at KCC, we've secured the land package that was long-standing and something that we have been working for many, many years with [ Jakamine's ] to secure. We've done that in a very good manner with [ Jakamine's ]. As we explained earlier, that extends the life of mine of KCC improves productivity. There's certainly cost improvements as a result that comes out of that. And that gives us our pathway back to 300,000 tonnes of copper a year out of KCC, which underpins that 1 million tonnes a year by 2028.
At MUMI, we've gated the feasibility study for the sulfides at that was gated in April 2026. It will be followed by an investment committee review and that feasibility and project remains on track and on schedule. In Peru, Antapaccay, we have 2 boxes in Antapaccay. Maybe we can talk about them together. We did announce the acquisition of the Katcheland that's completed and fully integrated within our business. The drilling program on Kacha will start soon. And at the same time, on Coroccohuayco, permitting and land access is advancing.
Having both of those within the Antapaccay district gives us maximum flexibility we can develop Coroccohuayco first or we may pivot and develop Catchers and leave Coroccohuayco later. It's just a hugely mineralized deposit and having more optionality within the resource base gives us material flexibility and upside. Back to Argentina. The bigger project there, which is MARA. Feasibility engineering is underway. We will be submitting our environmental permit application in the coming weeks as soon as that's submitted, and that takes approximately 1 year to get approval. But once submission is done, there are no more restrictions or limitations in terms of being awarded the RIGI. Our RIGI application is in, and we expect a RIGI award soon after the submission of the environmental application.
Alpachan, which is the big greenfield projects on the border of Chile and Argentina. You would have seen that the Glacier Protection Act was amended and passed into law by the Argentinian government that removes any of the existing restrictions around the glaciers and our ability to now take that project into feasibility. A number of trade-off studies are being done, the drilling campaign has been substantially completed. We still do drill in certain areas to make sure we're not going to build infrastructure on areas where we may want to mine later. And we're targeting environmental permit submission sometime in the first half of next year.
Moving up north to the United States. The new range Copper Nickel project, NorthMet land -- or the NorthMet land acquisition package was secured towards the end of July. The federal Wetland Permit application has been submitted also in July, and we're targeting to gate this to feasibility in the back end of this year. On Collahuasi, and I know Duncan spoke quite a lot about it on his call. The leaching restart is underway, and we do expect first cathode out of that leaching facility by the end of this year as well. In terms of the fourth line, the feasibility study is also underway. We proved it -- the Board approved it in February 2026. That work is underway, and we continue to keep that on schedule.
Moving on to Slide 6. We did announce this morning that we are going to establish a secondary listing on the Australian Stock Exchange. We're targeting an October 2026 listing. And our ambition is to achieve a minimum ASX200 inclusion within 12 months. Now the ASX200 requires $1.5 billion or AUD 1.5 billion of stock held in the ASX line, we believe that is fully achievable. And ambition goes well beyond the ASX200. We believe soon thereafter, we can, in fact, get ASX100 inclusion, which requires approximately AUD 5.5 billion on the Australian line.
Why do we believe we can get there? If you look at the green wagon wheel below, you can see what we've done in South Africa. In South Africa, a little bit like Australia, we have a secondary listing there. And organically, and over time, we've built up a big shareholding in Australia -- in South Africa, we have approximately 8% of our register in South Africa right now held on the JSE line. That's equivalent to just under AUD 10 billion. So as a proxy for what we've done in South Africa, we can certainly see that as a read across to Australia, and there's no reason to believe why we cannot have ASX100 inclusion in a short period of time.
So why are we doing this? Well, the main reason we're doing this is actually a lot of reverse inquiry. Steve and I were down in Australia in the early half of this year, meeting with a number of investors, and there was a lot of interest in our company. Very much interested in investing in our company, investing in our copper story and our copper play. As you know, the Australian Stock Exchange material copper exposure, particularly with the -- with OZ Minerals and Metals Acquisition Corp no longer being listed there. There are some copper exposure plays. But they are limited now.
So there's an interest in our copper pipeline, our copper projects, our base copper business, but more generally in Glencore as a whole and the value creation that we're after in Glencore. We have a number of super funds who are invested already in Glencore, and we've had a number of them say to us that they are restricted in terms of how much they can invest in Glencore because of internal rules around how much needs to be invested on the ASX and how much they can invest in the offshore line. And they have said to us that if there was an ASX line, they'd be able to invest a lot more in Glencore.
So we see the ability to access these pools of capital. There are very deep pools of capital there. The way the structure is set up around pension funds and the super funds in Australia, where there's a mandatory contribution to the fund. These funds keep growing every year. And Australians are smart investors. They understand the mining industry, given the nature of the economy. They understand it very well, and therefore, they understand our business very well, and there seems to be a growing demand for our stock.
So the other benefit of the ASX versus perhaps some other exchanges around the world, is the ability to get index inclusion on quite a mathematical and simplified basis. And as I spoke through it earlier on the slide, our ability to get into ASX200 and ASX100 over a period of time. So that provides us enhanced financial flexibility, having ASX securities as well and it's really underpinned by the fact that we have a very large Australian business. We have over 17,000 direct employees contribute materially to the Australian economy. We produce coal, we produce copper. We produce zinc, we produce nickel, well known in Australia, and it makes a lot of sense for our company.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Steve to take you through the financial performance.
Thanks, Gary, and welcome all to today's half year results release call. I'll run through some slides, some of which should look very familiar to you as we've been through reporting cycles over the many years.
The first slide on Page 8 is really some high-level numbers, many of which Gary is actually covered on and there will be further detail at least on marketing and industrial and debt outcomes as we have later on. Maybe calling out a couple of numbers that won't be covered later on that tend to be less relevant in terms of cash and valuation, but net income, $4.4 billion. for the half was a very strong addition to the equity base within our books. We did have $700 million of significant positive items, and there was $600 million or so of gains on disposal of assets. We sold a small parcel of our century shares during the year to bring us down to 30% comfortable being at that level. It was around 0.3%.
We're also continuing to look at accretive opportunities around the parts of the portfolio, maybe end of life assets. We sold the kid mining operations in Canada, also in Q2. And with that structure, that also released some large rehab provisions that we otherwise had and that reported a gain of also about $250 million, $300 million. The other point just to call out on this first slide is increase in the readily marketable inventories as that doesn't sort of work its way down into net debt, but you would expect an increase in this environment.
Number one, prices is going to correlate with that particular we've got certain volumes. There were price increases across many of our key commodities in which we do hold reasonable inventory position. So price was a major factor and the major factor. Brent prices from the start of the year to June went up 20%. And into the $73 a barrel zinc prices from start to finish up 16%. Copper was also up 7%. There was also some higher volumes in some commodities.
Some of the disruption across Middle East conflict has created longer journeys, different freight routes, global trade friction. So that days on hand generally, in inventories has ticked up a little bit, as you would expect in this particular environment. The shape of the wagon wheel -- at the bottom is a good shape around the diversification contribution of the business. Copper on the industrial side was the strongest business, particularly now that we split steelmaking and energy coal into its own separate components. Marketing was obviously a large contribution as well. We're quite diversified and very solid copper existing and growing business, particularly as Gary said, with the expansions back to 1 million tonnes and ultimately 1.6 million tonnes.
On Page 9, if we just focus on the industrial performance. I'll look at the waterfall bridge on the next slide. which is most telling around the materiality of the various movements. But overall, this business was up 72% to $6.5 billion, high commodity price is the key feature offset by some input cost increases, not some quite material Middle East conflict, both direct and indirect secondary effects. We'll look at that later on, stronger producer currencies as well, we had across particularly Australian dollar and the South African rand.
The Metals business was the largest increase and is the largest aggregate industrial business, up from $2.4 billion to $4.5 billion. The higher metal prices, we'll see the impact of that on the next slide. Positively, we also had quite a strong volume performance, contributing a positive variance across the metals business, particularly higher copper and cobalt sales now that we are able to sell some cobalt given the quotas that are now working in the DRC and we're delivering into our quotas.
The copper business itself -- overall copper went up from $1.1 billion. We'll look at a slide later on to over $3 billion of EBITDA contribution this year. And pleasingly, the African business, which just 12 months ago, posted very little EBITDA of only $0.1 billion was up to over $1 billion -- it went from $0.1 billion to over $1 billion of EBITDA during this particular. And that was very much volume. You need the tonnes given the size and scale of those operations. We did increase production by 55,000 tonnes during the period out of Africa from 83,000 tonnes to 138, which was up 66% as well.
We are going through a period of lower gold production out of our zinc operation. It's transitioning to ultimately to an underground operation, it's also expanding deeper in the open pit. There is some investment. It's going through a low period. And at some point, that will snap back to quite material gold production, not dissimilar from where it's been in sort of historical period. We'll look at some of the offset from the landed prices for these sulfur and sulfuric acid in some of the next slides. The energy business made up of coal, but also our industrial oil footprint that we have as well. somewhat gets lost within the overall Glencore. But if you look at the bottom there, we did post a $300 million increase out of the oil industrial. There's a small upstream oil and gas portfolio, but we have the refining business, particularly down in South Africa around 100,000 barrels a day of processing capacity.
And overall, the oil business went from $164 million to $432 million. And coal benefited largely from increases in both energy coal as well as steelmaking coal, energy coal getting a bit also from the LNG availability that we had during this particular period. The industrial bridge, as I mentioned, before us at $3.8 billion to $6.5 billion. As often the case in the slides, price tends to out feature many of the other variances given exposure generally within this industry. So $3.8 billion positive price movements. Within that, our overall copper business was 1.8%. The zinc business was 0.5. Nickel, 0.2. And the other 0.3 million and the coal business added $1 billion of positive price variance.
You can see on the bottom left, we've noted some of the major contributors in terms of average price increases of copper up 39% year-period zinc 22 gold, 52% 100% and the various coal complexes as well contributed pleasingly, and we would hope to -- hope and expect to report increasingly positive volume variances, particularly as the copper growth moves through to the '28, '29 period and then into the 30s as well. period-on-period, there was a net $200 million positive volume contribution that was primarily out of the copper business, which was 0.6, the biggest contributors there being Africa, which I mentioned before as well as Antamina, which increased its copper production during the period, 50% at the expense of lower zinc, it's going through a higher copper, lower zinc period, so a large contribution from Antamina.
The zinc business was down 0.3% there, primarily the gold exposure that we have within the casing, which is a byproduct out of our Kazakhstan business and [ EDR ] dropped 0.1 of volume variance in that period with being lower on recoveries and yields. We expect that H2 recoveries we'll talk later on. The cost variance, as you expect in this environment, just given the nature and scale of our business was a negative 1.1%. Two major impacts to call out was the direct energy inputs, which is diesel. Mainly affecting our copper and coal businesses where you have some large scale, big fleet utilization, high open pit operations that we have as well. And you had also secondary Middle East impacts, particularly at our DLC assets in relation to sulfur and sulfuric acid.
We do expect much of what's in that cost variance to be relatively transient once there's resolution and came markets and supply chains normalize out of the -- out of what's happening within the Middle East, you would expect those prices across all those categories to return to some sensible level compared to where they're traded within Q2. To give you some sense on some of those price variances within Q2 Brent price, for example, that averaged $91.3 a barrel compared to 61 at the beginning of the year. So that's up 50%. That's just on the crude side. The products were actually significantly higher as it was a scramble to secure both feedstock as well as the demand that came from inventories and the like.
Within Australia, where we're big consumer of diesel. There was a record Australian diesel premiums, which is the premium both for refining capacity and physical delivery that was on top of the rent crude that we see on our screens all the time. within DRC asset prices compared to budget, which is when we would have thought around price points at the beginning of the year of cost points. DRC asset price is up 40% for us against budget. And sulfur price at Marin, which is a big user of sulfur as part of its HPL process against budget, we were -- it was up 67% sulfur prices.
So there has been a big cost impact, as I said, largely transient, how long this lasts for is anyone's guess at this particular point. I suspect for as long as it lasts, we'll see negative in cost, but we're going to be compensated more out of the price impacts as that supply is generally constrained within those businesses. Currencies were Australian dollar a bit stronger. It was 0.3% of that 0.4% and South African rand was 0.1%. They were both up around 10%. Positive variance within the other I mentioned before was the stronger refining contribution coming out of the oil business.
If we look at marketing on Page 11, very strong contribution, $3.3 billion, as Gary mentioned, up 142%. Largely the increased delta was out of our oil and gas business through its various products from crude to gas to refine products to freight and the likes. Just mathematically, we thought it's useful. I think the graph on the bottom right is very useful around the very long-term history, 19 years track record within this business is where we've been within that range.
You can see strongly and consistently cash generator over the cycle. It's allowed material distributions back to shareholders, reinvestment within growth in the business as well. A big spike out there, the $6.4 billion was back in Russia, Ukraine period 2022. What we've done just to plot a number, we've taken the half year of the $3.3 billion. And we've looked at the midpoint of the middle and top end of our current range.
So our range $2.3b illion to $3.5 billion the midpoint is $2.9 billion. So we picked the midpoint of that in the top end, which is $3.2 billion, and that's where you get the $4.9 billion. Just to put a mathematical placeholder, I think, as Gary mentioned, basis conditions, that's sort of a good sensible number that we think is neither conservative nor not necessarily aggressive. We'll need to see how the world plays out over the next sort of 6 months, July started off reasonably well as well. So you can see a very strong performance, more recently, consistently achieving above the particular range. If we look at the net debt capital allocation, again, the graph that we show from opening net debt to closing net debt of $10.2 billion, a reduction of $1 billion.
Strong cash flow generation, $8.1 billion. that we have there. We'll look at a slide on CapEx later on, but there was cash flow $4 billion expense during this particular period. There was some either one-off and nontraditional CapEx, which I'll talk to. There were certain payments that we made to affect the security of land at which we announced back in February that talked for many, many years has reached its resolution and that liberates and allows that business to reach its full potential as we go forward. And we're starting to also spend more money than historically around, as Gary went through those slides on the copper pipeline, something like an Antapaccay, we're starting to secure some land. And various other early works that's happening towards progressing those particular projects.
So we split out CapEx later on between what's the more traditional CapEx and then we got our copper growth projects, we're starting to spend a bit more money in copper growth, which I think is evident that there is both movement and momentum within that particular area. We generated $0.2 billion of net investment disposals. Primarily, there was $300 million small parcel of the century shares, which we sold in Q1. Increase in non-RMI working capital, this had to be very tightly managed and watched and controlled and monitored it clearly during a period of high commodity prices, increased volatility and very large margin call environment that we had as well. This was fairly modest compared to the big outturn that we had back in 2022.
And the big difference here is that it's been volatility more at the shorter end of positions and shorter end of delivery of oil and gas and metals and the like. Back in 2022 was very much on story where we had movements around TTF that was many multiples of what we've seen in this particular environment.
But at $0.9 billion, I think it's been quite well managed and quite controlled within that. $0.4 billion is non-RMI inventories. We've got some cobalt in Africa. I'll talk a little bit about that later on until we're able to ultimately export that and sell it into the market. $1.2 billion the net margin calls and physical forward transactions. We went to town across sort of how that all works in terms of the working capital cycle. That was quite well managed quite well contained. We'll see subject to prices and variations that may unwind, it may stay there. It's subject to obviously the trading book and the likes and volatility in prices as we move through.
But I think you'll all agree, given the marketing earnings of 3.3% and the volatility and how much has been put on the balance sheet that's been well managed and is relatively modest with good paybacks in terms of working capital. There's also a little bit goes through this category that doesn't necessarily still on the balance sheet, but it just sits in working capital in the cash flow statements where we spend rehab to deliver on our rehab obligations and bring down that provision, there was $0.3 billion that was spent there. That's not coming back. That's obviously more akin to an operating cash flow.
Pleasingly, it's worth noting. I know some of you track that. Our rehab provision, if you look at the balance sheet, actually came down $700 million, $0.7 billion. $4 billion of that did relate to disposals or subsidiaries. We had Kidd, we had Lady Loretta. With a Columbia port, all of which had some rehab obligations that we've discharged it over to the buyer. So I think all very accretive transactions, notwithstanding that they may not have generated upfront cash to bring down the rehab liability by $0.7 billion during the period and $0.4 billion just basis disposals and we'll continue to look for opportunities that may present themselves there.
Our debt was down to [ $10.2 billion ]. We just jump on to Page 13, we thought about capital returns is fairly consistent with how we've approached over the last 12 months, starting at the -- taking out the marketing leases and the second shareholder distribution from the one that was declared at the beginning of the year that would get our pro forma net debt, if you like, back to the $10 billion. But as we've done over 3 periods now, we do have the value of the Bunge stock. It's worth currently about $3.5 billion. It's out of lockup at the period do not expect us to be doing anything necessarily tomorrow or soon or anything that's disorganized or best we're looking for longer term or not necessarily longer term, but maximum value creation for Glencore over how that asset is ultimately monetized.
Working in coordination with the Bunge team. We're very supportive of Greg and John and the team in what they're doing. They posted good results the other day. The business looks like it's got momentum. There's good synergies. We like the thematics of everything going on. We're happy to sit on that stock for a while as we navigate the best pathway towards eventual monetization. But it's now -- it's liquid, it's a strong valuation. It's surplus capital in our view. And we think it's both conservative and appropriate from a shareholder perspective to be dispersing already or to be advancing some of the eventual monetization of that towards shareholders.
That's where the $1.5 billion, we've chosen $1 billion of cash, $0.5 billion buy back if you look at that in relation to $3.5 billion of value, 1.5, that's only around 40%. So that's quite conservative. That's roughly a thinking that I think is sensible. We'll continue to think around in advance of eventual monetization that 40%. So it still retains $2 billion of surplus capital beyond the $1.5 billion that we have announced today, split between cash and buybacks. We look at the capital within the business as well. The main thing to call out relative to guidance at the beginning of the year, which is $6.5 billion.
We've pushed that up 5% on average over 3 years to reflect the inflationary environment that we've been in. somewhat higher than, I would say, general CPI. You've had factors across weaker U.S. dollar, high energy cost, general industrial capital goods, if you go out there, secure Caterpillar machinery or your dose as your excavators, you want to put a construction project out there, civil engineering, you would generally find that you'd be looking at over a blended projects that we are some are more expensive, some are less expensive, some in different currencies, some have efficiencies.
But 5% is what is what we've applied across having done some thinking and some work and looking at some tangible tenders that have gone out for some of these projects. The first half of the year, the $3.9 billion has been capitalized on to industrial CapEx compared to $3.4 billion. something to call out, which is what I referred to earlier on, is that most of that increase was in respect to the copper portfolio investments, particularly to secured land access to support that copper growth and operational flexibility.
So if you look at the bottom down there, $0.3 billion was spent to secure the land access at KCC. That's all be done. It's all registered. We're wearing to go, and that's all part of the future sort of planning and we'll be delivering quite soon on that particular package that was secured Coroccohuayco also 1 of those projects as well. So it some ongoing spend across Mara Bishan and new range and the like. And you can see on the top right, copper is where the big increase period-on-period. It's a lot of it's to do with those copper growth projects but generally 5%.
A probably tracking similar annualized at the first half to where we are at the second half in terms of that -- in terms of the run rate of the $6.8 billion average, were always expected to be a little bit higher in the year 2026 over '27, '28 there is a heavier CapEx investment period, particularly at EBR, they finish up their water treatment projects that then tapers off in a year or 2 and finishing up a few projects, which we're wrapping up now around Onoping depth. And some of the Collahuasi growth projects that they've had in the past.
If we look across to Slide 15, I think it's important to just take stock of the results where we were for the first half. We'll then roll into cost evolutions and that may give you a 2026 full year illustrative EBITDA guidance. It's good at dissecting the $10.1 billion. Page 26 has all the details and the numbers within the appendix. With the copper business on the left, you can see we peer on-period went from $1.1 billion to the $3 billion. And volume also helped there, particularly wasn't only prices and costs that came down, but we're up 15% in volume within the copper business. As I said, Africa is plus 55% and to mine plus 28%, and we lost Mico, the Manesar copper operation, which shut around July last year.
Realized prices was up about 40%. costs actually both volume, and primarily on a volume basis, were actually were down at 208. We were down from 225 in the first half of last year. So strong margin and strong contribution on the copper side for the first half with good volume momentum coming through. The zinc business compared to 12 months ago is 0.9 to 0.9, notwithstanding that we had some volume reductions as well. Lady Loretta, another mine that part of the eye is a complex shut towards the end of last year through end of life. There was volume reductions down there, but higher realized prices costs sort of as you were, and that's with the lower gold prices as well.
The steelmaking coal and the energy coal, we've seen margin expansion across both realized prices, portfolio realized prices, 206.9 for steelmaking coal is up 24%. Energy coal was up 19% on 93.9. And EBR, we're still making coal tracking a little bit lighter in terms of volume. So you'll see a pickup in H2 when we look at the full year '26 outcrop as well. So all the details are back on Page 26, if you want to look at that.
I think your part to just focus on costs, and then we'll wrap up with a illustrative number across the zinc business very strong byproduct business, of course. Yes, it produces zinc, but we produce a lot of gold. We produce silver, we produce led as well within that business as well. Compared to the beginning of the year, earlier guidance was for a bigger negative. The main difference is to why it's still negative but slightly lower negative is to reflect the fact that the precious metals byproduct value has decreased in mark-to-market terms since where we're sitting here in February.
Gold prices were $4,854. They're now a little over 4,000, so was $82, now $58.7 as well. So that reflects in lower byproduct credits. And a slightly less negative cost per tonne of zinc produced within that particular business. What we have done is reflect in the full year number, the sale of Kidd on the first of June 2026 which actually implied a production upgrade because we didn't change our overall zinc guidance for the year, which was 20,000 tonnes of zinc. Both those extra zinc volumes as well as the fact that there is higher sales expected H2 over H1 all of that contributes towards actually lower full year cost for zinc compared to the first half.
You can see we've gone from pre-byproduct $283 million to $254 million. somewhat counterintuitive given cost evolutions, but strong volume benefits and the upgrade also the volume that we have over there. Within the various coal businesses, relatively modest increases from cost guidance from February, notwithstanding some of the higher prices, particularly on diesel. We haven't assumed -- we've assumed going forward that there is some moderation. Brent crude in the '70s. Q2 was obviously much higher than that. But that correlates with prices to some extent as well. We've had some favorable FX, particularly in Canada.
And in both businesses, steelmakers well as energy, there is some uplift in volumes from H2 to H1. So in both those commodities, you've got the full year cost performance coming below where H1 '26 is as calculated which 2026 forecast is an average for the year. So the actual outturn for the second half will even be lower to deliver that mathematical blend between the two. We'll look at the our turn on that also later on.
The copper unit cost, Page 17, a slightly busier slide, but worth just spending a few minutes on this, given where we've seen some of the biggest impact, particularly in costs having to be absorbed, bigger byproduct impacts, streaming impacts and a little change in what we're doing also around operational efficiency and value-add initiatives that we're doing within the Africa business. The first area just to call out, and we highlighted that both in the production report in Q1 and Q2 last week was that we increasingly not taking the cobalt production to its final saleable hydroxide form. There's multiple benefits in that. There is some variable costs in doing that, but there's also more energy intensive. It's reagent intensive. It's space intensive, the security concerns around bagged cobalt.
So we're leasing it more into a solution, which is quite far into the process. When we do come back and liberate that and produce a final hydroxide future call. That's quite easy to do down the track. That's also why we're seeing reported cobalt production much lower in the levels that we're going through. And you can expect that and why cobalt production, final cobalt production guidance was withdrawn a while ago because this is a month-to-month, quarter-by-quarter proposition as to what's the most value-accretive way of doing that. The implications of that is that the cobalt in solution, the balance sheet at least is capitalized as a much lower value than what hydroxide would be.
This has led to a temporary noncash increase in the derived costs of $0.11 per pound compared to the February guidance. This is clearly going to reverse as the material ultimately gets processed and sold. And when it does do, it's going to artificially reduce the cost that we then report at that point because we've really expensed the cost at this point and we're capitalizing at a very low level. So there was $0.11 impact there relative to guidance that we were at the beginning of the year. mathematically, that would have translated. That's about $200 million of increased of reduced EBITDA and a higher unit calculated cost on a full year basis of 810,000 tons of sales. The other key area which we've tracked the February guidance on a prebuy product from 230 to 277 is very much these transitory effects around fuel sulfur and sulfuric acid.
TLC assets for us incredibly exposed to these costs, both in its location, landlocked freight advantages, clearing borders, taxes, impasse, everything that's logistically involved in. securing and keeping critical levels of supply there. The other thing we produce in cathode and not selling concentrate. We haven't got the benefits of the low TC/RCs that comes through the Latin American portion as well that we have. So location processing methods are very relevant over there. We've shown in the graph at the bottom, $0.30 per pound of fuel sulfin-sulfuric acid. And the graph on the right shows how the evolution of those prices landed costs across what is fuel in Latin America, fuel in DRC, sulfuric acid and sulfur in those prices.
You get the triple whammy of the landed cost, not only product price, you've got to deal with freight, you've got to taxes and duties. There's all these elements that ultimately manifest. We think these are transitory. They are part of the cost base and the focus very much in Q2 was on security of supply. The instructions here from the teams, from copper and from the procurement teams was do what we need to do to make sure that this asset continues to focus on production, deliver production. There's no controllable losses, pay what you have to do, work out what you do, switch swap, whatever sort of was necessary at the time.
And clearly, the -- that was important to get through what was a very sort of unpredictable and sort of crazy period around raw materials and the likes. All of this, if you look at the copper growth we've delivered on tonnes, you look at the EBITDA performance in Africa, for example, first half 2025, $45 million. H1 '26 over $1 billion. the keys to get tonnes out the ground there. If it costs you a little bit more because you need to focus on the on just making sure that you secure these products and materials than that is what it is to some extent. Of course, we're not going to waste be wasteful, we're going to be thoughtful. We're going to be sensible. We're going to create competition in the market as much as possible, but it's had a large impact in where we are today, at least for a full year outturn of $0.02 or $0.03 a pound on mine cost and then you add a little bit of -- and then the byproducts and some of the streaming effect that does work its way up through the system.
We think that's given those costs, and the key thing out of this business in this environment, 14,000 copper, we want tonnes. In terms of how that how that translates then into the illustrative $226 million EBITDA. We focus just on the copper business off to the left. So this is baking in 6 months of actuals and 6 months of indicative results for '26 basis, the curve that prevailed around the end of June and the cost environment that we see for the rest of the 6 months as well. Production mix doesn't have as much of an impact around copper, zinc and energy coal. The 1 we'll see later on a task where second half, first half is 44 and 56, if you look back at our production report, which we showed as well.
So copper at 840 production, slight upgrade given there was previously some Kidd tonnes of around 10,000 that was in there at a realized price conservative now against 14,000. I think that was using 13,500 or so with price. So if we ran this at a true spot number today, you'd find some high numbers within the copper business. And overall [ 65 ] with a bit of development project coming through. On the zinc side, you're at $1.9 billion. On steelmaking coal, you're at $2.7 billion. That's much higher than what we were in the first half, which is $1.1 billion. So you got [ 1 6 ] in the second half, and that is very much a in H1, H2 split, where we had 13.5 million tonnes in first half, 17.5 million tonnes in the second half to give the 31 million full year. and energy coal is 1.1, again, a slight tick up in terms of volumes as well.
Annualized pretty much the other, which is the oil, the aluminum, the far alloys, the nickel and some corporate overhead. And that's where I spoke about the $4.9 billion EBIT number on marketing, which was first half plus half of the half of the top end, and that gives $5.6 billion of EBITDA. We were $3.6 billion for the first half, so you got $2 billion model for the second half, all of which this shows a sort of extrapolating out pretty much 1 plus nice to around $20 billion of that $10.1 billion. We do have a pickup within the industrial business, some in copper and some in steelmaking coal.
So with that, I'll hand back to for Gary, a lot of good momentum and cash generation in the business.
Thanks, Steve. Very comprehensive review. We'll finish off just where we sit for 2026, our priorities and how we're uniquely positioned. Sadly, we have had a regression in some of our safety measures and metrics. We've lost 4 of our colleagues through 2 incidents. This has been a real wake-up call for us in this business.
Safety is our #1 priority every single day of the week in everything that we do. We've made tremendous progress over the years. And having these 2 incidents and losing 4 of our colleagues has been, as I say, a wake-up very daring for us as management, very difficult for our operations. There is significant work being done to redouble our efforts to strive for 0 harm and 100% safe environment for our business. We're learning from these. We're working hard. We're doubling down, and this is not something we can accept. It is our #1 priority.
In terms of our business and our operational excellence. We continue to deliver operationally in a disciplined cost manner to make sure we get the tonnes out as we promised to the market, our first half production guidance or outlook output has been delivered within the guidance and on track for the full year guidance to meet our full year guidance. Costs have been impacted, as Steve took you through by some of the very higher diesel sulfur and the likes. But operationally, we're very comfortable with how the business is performing across the board, both on the box and the metal side.
Organic growth is a key priority for us took you through slide, I think, on Slide 5, on our copper portfolio, our leading copper portfolio, which we continue to derisk and successfully grow. We're well positioned to achieve 1 million tonnes of baseline copper production by 2028. And our 1.6 million tonne ambition by 2025. As I said, that 1.6 million can be higher if we decide to accelerate and do multiple projects at the same time, depending on market conditions.
And as mentioned earlier, and very pleasing that even the Alumbrera restart ahead of schedule, and we're hoping to see times in the back end of 27 as opposed to the first half of '28,so that's ahead of schedule. We maintained a very strong balance sheet and a commitment to a minimum investment grade credit rating. So a very strong balance sheet, very cash-generative business. And that will ultimately leads to what we have for at the end of the day, which is value creation for our shareholders. We want to deliver predictable base shareholder returns, and we top up when our framework allows that.
During the course of 2026, we've announced $3.5 billion of returns to shareholders. and to enhance our share registry. We've also announced today a listing in October on the ASX Exchange.
And with that, we'll turn it back over to the operator for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of Jason Fairclough from Bank of America.
2. Question Answer
Two quick ones for me. First would be just on your new BFF in the DRC, so Orion Critical Minerals and the DFC. I'm just wondering if we could get a bit of an update. Has anything happened since the nonbinding MOU back in Feb?
Thanks, Jason. Thanks for your question. On Orion, yes, we're making very good progress with Orion CMC. They've got a very good team working on the due diligence. We have had some a slightly slower process than both of us would have hoped for because of Ebola. Not that Ebola is impacting our operations. In fact, the Ebola area is nearly 2,000 kilometers away.
So it doesn't impact our operations. But as you know, there's some travel restrictions into the DRC for U.S. or people who need to travel to the U.S. If you go into the DRC, you cannot travel to the U.S. for 3 weeks afterwards. So the ability to get to site and complete due diligence and met management and things has been slightly slower than expected. But we are making good progress with them. We do expect in the second half of this year, this half of the year to be able to finalize that process.
Okay. Second question, just on trading and if you like your self-imposed risk limits. If we go back to '22, we had that extreme volatility on the back of the Ukraine war. And I think you ended up having to go to the board to get exceptions for exceeding risk limits. Now we haven't seen similar announcements at this time. I'm just wondering, is it -- how different is it? Have you changed the way you manage risk in the trading business at all? Or is it just a different situation?
We -- I mean, if you took a pure metrics of VAR, you haven't seen the extreme swings that you saw in 2022. We have had -- we've kept our Board fully briefed on where we are. There have been waivers, but at a much lower end and much less extent than we saw in 2022. The volatility hasn't been extreme, as extreme. If you remember, in 2022, you saw thermal coal prices hitting $400 a tonne. So you had much more extreme volatility in '22, which meant that these breaches of any VAR limits and the waivers that we received from the Board was something that was -- became more recourse in '22.
In '24 -- '26 yes, we've seen much higher VAR and implied volatility in the market. There have been certain areas where we've gone to the board for waivers, but it's been at a much lower limits and much lower breaches than we saw '22.
We will now take the next question from the line of Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank.
Steve. Two questions from me. First one on the ASX listing. Can you share any of your own analysis in terms of how you think this could improve your multiple over time? And how high do you think the ASX ownership could get over, say, the next 2 to 3 years?
And then the second one, just also on disposals. Any commentary on Kazzinc and what's going on behind the scenes there?
Not much we can say in Kazzinc. Liam? On the ASX, look, we -- as I said earlier, we've had a lot of reverse inquiry of of investors who want to invest in our share. They see the implied value in our share. They see the underlying value. They see the growth story. They see our copper portfolio, they see the cash generation of this business, the quality of the business and they want to invest more in our stock for various reasons within their own funds, they are restricted in what they can invest.
So very pleasing that we can put this listing down in Australia. And see that demand eventuate into holdings in our stock. And with that extra demand, we would naturally see a potential multiple rerate or multiple uplift. In terms of the volume or value, let's say, the volume or percentage holding of our stock in Australia, I mean it's not -- there's no hard and fast rule here or hard and fast goal. We do have an ambition to at least be ASX200 in 12 months, that's AUD 1.5 billion on the ASX line.
We do certainly believe we can get to the ASX 100, which is AUD 5.5 billion, give or take, AUD 5.5 billion on the ASX line. And what gives us comfort on that is, as I said earlier, is on the South African line, where we have 8% of our register in South Africa, which has close to AUD 10 billion. So there's no reason Australian market, which also have that same level of understanding of the resource industry, interest in mining and also for different reasons, some capital, which is restricted in some shape or form from being able to invest in us in the London line. So there's no reason to believe we can't get anything close to the South African line or even beat the South African line in terms of the amount of value sitting on the Australian line.
We will now take the next question from the line of Matt Greene from Goldman Sachs.
Congratulations on the results. Steve, if I can just ask you on the $1 billion cost-out program. How is that tracking? You've touched a lot on the presentation today on some of the external cost pressures, but I think overall costs were reasonably well contained. So how much of this has been external. And perhaps you could just touch on the controllable cost increases that you've seen and how that sort of ties in with the cost-out program.
Thanks, Matt. I'm actually pleased you raised that because it is a call out to the teams that have been focused also on that continued journey. It was 12 months ago, we were sort of had the target, and we said that half of that we'd expect to be delivered in 226 already. So they were relatively -- I mean, 225, they were pretty well advanced. So that was locked in. It was about $1.50 billion came through the business by the end of '25. pretty much at target around sort of where we are at the moment, 90% of the way there. So that would have been somewhat unfortunately sort of sort of outshadowed and outflank by some of these other sort of external factors. But those at least when the transit factors on cost and fuel and diesel reverse, those others have been permanently delivered and permanently embedded in the business as well. So that team has done a good job and now delivered.
That's great. And Gary, perhaps one for you, more for a hypothetical question. We're seeing, obviously, copper concentrate market has been incredibly tight and the spread between benchmark and spot TC/RC is pretty wide. Some of the miners seem to be -- there seems to be a bit of momentum here to move away from benchmarks. So I just wanted to ask what Glencore's view on where this market could evolve into next year? And on a net basis, what could it mean for your company?
I mean, yes, it makes sense given the dynamics that we're seeing in the market that these long-term benchmarks, and we've seen it in many other commodities, Matt, where you've seen, for example, the -- I mean it's a small thing, but the Chrome benchmark has fallen away. Newcastle Coal benchmark is virtually nonexistent anymore. Having these long-term benchmarks within a market that is -- which trades more and more in the spot market and is more volatile, it makes sense to come to actually trade these things more in the spot market than have these long-term benchmarks.
So not surprising for us, it's very -- we have no problem with it, given that we're a producer, but important marketer as well, where we can take advantage of the continued volatility and movement in these differentials and the TCRCs. So for us, we think quite beneficial.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Myles Allsop from UBS.
Maybe a few quick questions. The sales to Orion, if we annualize first half, it's 4.5x EBITDA. And yes, that's before we're seeing the Mutanda expansion and KCC operating fully. Are you sure that that's the right move to kind of lower kind of your ownership at such a low valuation? So the first question.
Good question, Myles. What we've agreed in the nonbinding MOU change into a process with them where they would buy 40% of our operations. And we give a -- I mean it was actually a rate there was a range of values and it was an indicative range in subject to them doing due diligence.
Now in that time, certain things have happened. The markets change, valuations change, you've seen cobalt prices move, copper prices move. They're obviously doing the due diligence on the comfort they get on our operations around having access to the land. As I said, we've got the tunasulfite feasibility through the process. So that was just an indication of value. It's not -- that's not a locked in value that we are going to see that.
We're -- and to the first question from Jason, which is a right question, update on it, it is progressing, but happens in the second half of the year, they have to finish their due diligence. And then we have to sit down and have a commercial discussion with them and agree something that makes sense for both parties. So that number that was put in the announcement is not a locked in number.
One has to look at all elements that feed into this is the due diligence, the market, the outlook, the multiples, as you right the say, Myles. But there's also the strategic element of having the U.S. effectively as a shareholder of this operations with Glencore, a joint shareholder and building out that business together. So all those will come into the mix when we sit down with Orion once they finish their due diligence to work out what the real commercial terms of this transaction look like.
Okay. So we could see more than 40% of $9 billion. And maybe the other kind of surprise in the first half is some coal prices, they really have not responded to the energy shortage. I mean what's happening there? Do you going to see potential for thermal coal to lift? Or should we live with 120, 130 type price for the foreseeable?
I think we have seen them lift. They are sort of 131, 135. They were lower pre the conflict. So you probably have, let's give us say, 15 or 20 back since the conflict. Yes, what's very different this time around to what we saw in 2022.
So your question is a good question. I did mention earlier to Jason's point, we saw, call it 400 back in '22. In '22, Europe was the driver of additional coal demand. where Europe used to import sort of 30 million tonnes of coal in '22 than for 82 million tonnes of coal, and that drove coal the [indiscernible] because they didn't have the gas online that could bring in U.S. LNG and regasify for use to replace North Stream.
In this instance, it hasn't been a European story. This has been a story about Asia and their ability to attract LNG. They have been paying higher prices for energy, but they have also been buying additional coal to be able to run their utilities using coal. So there is a -- we have seen an uptick in some demand, and that's why you would expect prices to increase like the half. But it's not to the same extent that we saw in 2022, we effectively if Europe didn't buy call any price, the lots are going off.
So that's why I think you haven't seen such a massive bras in coal process, but you have seen a rising coal process. What I think we have seen, and this is very interesting for the long term because everybody is -- of course, we're all fixated on the short term and if the car price is down $5 or $10 back, and then the share price goes down or if it's up $5 or $10, the share price goes up, we know that. But what we have seen is there's a clear recognition from both countries and utilities around the world that energy reliability and the ability to continue to provide energy through crisis is critical. And 2 energy crisis in 4 years has really sharpened their minds.
They -- and they're resolved. There's a view and it's becoming a much stronger view that putting all your eggs in 1 basket, as Europe did in 2022 with Russian gas they're putting all the eggs in one basket is a [ body ], it's not something 1 should do. So we are seeing that many generators are looking to extend the life of their coal fleet keep them running. It may be very nice to burn LNG, whether from a cost perspective or a climate perspective, but they want to keep their coal fleet going in the event that they don't know where the energy crisis is the next energy crisis comes from. So longer term for energy coal, there seems to be a step-up in base demand, which would obviously play into a higher long-term coal price.
We will now take the next question from the line of Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley.
A couple of them. I think the first question is Steve on Bunge. So you still have $2 billion in surplus capital. What does it take for you to move that into a different bucket that fits into your pro forma net debt and find its way back to shareholders? And as an extension to that, Orion Minerals, can you give us a bit more clarity on the structure that you're thinking about for the deal? Just to figure out if that also feeds into your pro forma in that calculation? That's the first question.
So what was the second part of that question, Alain, which -- are you talking about Orion?
Yes. Yes.
If we get the funds from that sale?
Yes.
Yes. I mean in terms of Bunge, it's -- I mean, like everything in life, you don't -- I mean our policy is around our sort of distribution is that it's largely going to be sort of money in the bank in terms of sort of distribution and not in anticipation of -- but Bunge was the one that we had put in a separate category, if you like, has been something that clearly long term is not going to be part of our business. It's something that has a day-to-day tradable, liquid benchmark that someone can look sort of towards and say sort of Glencore is paying out a percentage of that that's more sort of validatable and more sort of transparent.
So that sort of $2 billion -- I mean, all of it, ultimately, I mean, if we were to in, let's say, I mean, 12 months' time, we were to monetize half of that. well then sort of 60% of that because we're only paying out 40%. So there's still 60% clearly upper grams. But as sort of as the value or as part of that gets monetized in whatever makes sense over time in whatever fashion makes sense, well, then whatever haircut because we're taking a hack, we've been conservative. That haircut will then sort of translate as has delivered and earned. It's not there at the moment. That's why we are being conservative. But the full $2 billion is clearly up for grabs. So over time, as that gets monetized in the most value accretive way for us.
And for Orion Minerals?
I mean run minerals is the same like gating sort of some M&A. I guess, for us, it needs to see how it ultimately gets realized. And that, again, goes towards sort of mechanically bringing down our debt and with the sort of $10 billion caps from our perspective, at least with Orion would still be appropriate. To be able to fully consider that for distributions to shareholders. I mean the $10 billion cap as I've said on previous calls, that cannot be locked in stone forever.
There may be -- if our business significantly shrinks in size or at significant expand in size, then that $10 billion can toggle up or down base is an assessment of sort of financial strength relative to a strong credit that we have, we were to have spun out our coal business that was obviously something that was -- that was socialized a couple of years ago for the Glencore-ex coal, it couldn't have been $10 billion.
Now maybe once the copper growth comes through and be 1.5, then maybe 15 is the right number. So for a minority share in Orion, it doesn't affect the $10 billion, at least in our sort of consideration. So all of that would come back. But what needs to consider around the -- either the addition or sale thereof as to what potentially changes that over time, hopefully, directionally up because we want to be a growing business, not a shrinking business.
Very clear. And the second question is probably for Gary. There is some of your peers are increasingly active on managing their portfolios, more aggressively looking for noncore assets or monetizing infrastructure, just to be a bit more capital efficient. Do you see similar opportunities across your portfolio? Or are you contemplating formalizing a program similar to what your peers are doing in that sense?
And then we look at these things. You would remember in sort of '20 or was it '21, '22, '23, we went through quite an extensive period of sale of noncore tail assets we called at the time, things that were not fit for purpose for our business and didn't really move the needle match, whether they were short life or for various other reasons that make sense. So remember that, and we had that whole list of assets that we move through.
So it's not like we have a long tail of noncore assets. There are assets that do then ultimately do sell. And as Steve mentioned earlier, we sold the port in Colombia, we sold the Kidd mine and that we transferred with that quite a big rehab liability that goes with it. Lady Loretta rate we sold, which was more of a business development asset, the life that comes to an end, but by selling it to the next or neighbor, they could extend their life. We have some marketing arrangements over it. There is a small transfer of some rehab obligation. So those things do happen in an ordinary course, but we don't have the sort of long list of noncore assets to sell because we went through that process 3 or 4 years ago where we've tied up the portfolio very nicely.
With regards to infrastructure side assets, yes, we are looking at that, and there may be some opportunities in our business. Steve is over there is looking at a couple of options and ideas. Obviously, that's an issue around cost of capital, cost of funding and doesn't make sense for the business. We have spent a lot of capital at places like Case on the desal plant in EVR, on the word treatment plants. So we do have the types of infrastructure does lend itself to these kind of structures and transactions. Obviously, we want to do it not just blindly, but something that makes value sense, economic sense and if and the one couple we're looking at, and if they do come up, it makes sense for us, then we would execute on them.
We will now take the next question from the line of Izak Rossouw from Barclays.
Just a couple of questions. Firstly, just on the copper growth projects. You mentioned firstly on Collahuasi on the leaching potential to get to in Q4 this year. There seems to be a lot faster than the '28 time line. So I just wanted to get a sense of how has the scope of the project change, what production should look like over the next few years?
And then Coroccohuayco, again, it seems like the catch-up sort of opportunity and flexibility you were saying is exciting, but does that risk sort of delaying the FID decision, which I think you were still targeting for this year? And then just on the second question on the ASX listing. You mentioned sort of the opportunity for a valuation multiple. Just wanted to check, would you as a -- I guess, some of your assets in Australia paying ausitax, would you be able to pay a portion of your dividends as [ France ]? I mean, does that work for CDOs -- and maybe just does this impact your -- some of the reverse inquiries you've had from some of the listed Aussie mining companies you've spoken to recently?
On the franking not, we don't get a franking dividend. This is just a pure secondaries thing. It's not a dues thing like -- or some of the other competitors are. So they start ranking on that one. Just to go back to copper growth in the leaching. Yes, I mean that leasing project is slightly ahead of schedule, and we hope to see tonnes soon.
I wouldn't in terms of modeling the number of tonnes, it's going to be very small at this stage. There's obviously the ability to increase that with the low grade and oxide stockpiles that we have that we can feed through that. So it's not something that we would say we're accelerating massive amounts of volume. But what's pleasing is that project is proceeding ahead and we will see some tonnes sooner than we thought. But as I say, it's not material. We need to invest our money in that band to have to bring it up over time to be able to actually make that a material contributor towards the volume within Collahuasi.
On Antapaccay, Coroccohuayco. We're not looking necessarily to change timing or delay timing. It just gives us maximum optionality and flexibility. Now of course, maybe we do delay something 6 months. If we see something is a better value proposition by going to Petra versus going to Coroccohuayco and the delays in 6 or 12 months, well, I wouldn't. That's not the base case. We're not planning to do that at this stage, but we do have that maximum flexibility and optionality given the size of the or the extent of the mineralization of the region, this is not a -- it's not a race to bring on the tons. It's a race to bring on value for shareholders.
And if a delay of 6 or 12 months means you get better value to beginning on a deposit that may be lower capital intensity or higher volume or operating cost, that's fine. But as we sit today, we're not looking to change the time table. We believe that we can keep to that timetable. As I said, within that portfolio of leading projects that we have. We have a number of levers we can pull.
So even if we did decide to delay one, we can accelerate others. Alumbrera by itself is already going to produce tons in the first half -- the second half of '27 as opposed to the first half of '28. Maybe we accelerate them will turn to sell parts. So having that multiple project levers that we can pull across the board. If one is pushed out in timing through our own choice because it delivers us maximum value through optionality and changes, where we can always compensate for that if we want to somewhere else in the portfolio.
Next question from the line of Chris LaFemina from Jefferies.
I just wanted to ask on the trend over the years in RMIs, which have been trending higher. I mean I get it you're gaining market share, prices are higher, EBIT has been rising. So it's all good, but -- we also have a change in kind of geopolitical backdrop where you have deglobalization and distorted supply chains and moving stuff around the world is becoming more difficult.
So my question is, whether there's anything kind of fundamentally different in marketing that requires you to sit on higher RMIs going forward than you have in the past because of because of effectively deglobalization. I understand, again, that gives you a better opportunity to drive higher EBIT in that business, but should we assume RMI going to be higher going forward on average?
Chris, it's hard to be definitive one way or another. I mean, RMI is clearly working in terms of supporting a business that has -- and I like that chart on that sort of slide where you can see recent performance and how that's structurally been moving north and maybe going to revisit our range again. But the -- I mean in terms of RMI, the departments, it's not a free lunch. I mean, every minute of every day, they're paying for the stuff and it's there to recover sort of hurdle rates within the marketing business that is covering all costs and it's generating incremental return for the business.
If it makes sense to have that ton of copper sitting somewhere or a ton of aluminum or that oil and storage, it would disappear in a New York second. So it's also working pretty well. It's all quality. It's all you can kick the tires on all the material. It's delivering the sort of results. So I'm all kind of happy around the sort of fundamentals. Now to what extent is that for shadows a structural world where supply chains are going to be clicking more and the friction and days on hand and shipping routes and Section 232 has obviously been a big factor in what's happened around anticipation. There are U.S. copper stocks are kind of where they are. We're obviously participating in that as so everyone else does, that's sort of there for opportunity set and generating commercial outcome.
So it seems -- I mean, it's a I would think it's bullish levels at the moment. So hopefully, I'm not hopefully careful what you wish for, but it could come down if things normalize a little bit. But that's not our things we presented over the last 3 or 4 years.
Do you still get the same credit from the rating agencies? Like I think it was 80% of the value of the RMI as a cash equivalent. Is that still the case?
Yes. Yes, the same.
We will now take the next question from the line of from Ephrem Ravi from Citi.
Most of the questions have been answered, but a couple of follow-ups. Firstly, on the non-RMI working capital increase of $1.9 billion this half was much lower than the $7.8 billion or so, I think you had in first half of '22. You did touch upon a more focus on shorter end of the curve this time. I guess the question is, obviously, it was better managed, but there the market conditions on margin requirement in exchanges or counterparties in general, much lower this time around compared to 2022 and did you, as Glencore get better advantages or terms on that front from exchanges or counterparties in terms of margin requirements because you are proactive about it this time compared to '22 because it's a big delta in terms of RMI working capital increase.
Yes. Thanks, Ephrem, and it's well observed. I wouldn't say we were more focused on it this year. We were pretty focused on it in '22 as well. It's just that -- I mean, -- the main factors, frankly, back in '22 was on LNG and net gas.
So TTF at that point has gone nowhere near that. Now it's obviously a bit higher during the year, but it went up 7x. In standard deviation was sort of off the charts. And there was many billions of dollars that was tied up in hedging exchanges, forward value. So I mean our entire sort of physical forward book on LNG net gas today is maybe around $500 million. That equivalent number was sort of $5 billion to $6 billion back then, just given the standard deviations and you were having to then -- you're in a hedge situation, you tied up more variation margin.
The exchanges were -- there was more systemic risk. So of course, the exchanges were increasing the sort of initial margining that has come off a bit, but not where it was 2 or 3 years ago. At the same time, you had the nickel chaos back in, which is also happening at the same time where they actually stop trading and revoke to sort of 2 days of trading. So it was a very different systemic exchange issue and concerns around overall sort of system counterpart risk. That's somewhat subdued.
So there was a lot more money that was tied up just to bolster up that. We were sort of postage to that. So you just had to pay up. It was the ticket to play. Gas was a big factor that hasn't been as much of a factor this time around. So does gas come again and go crazy. That's the 1 part of our book and the overall industries book that does tend to have longer-term positions around management of risk and hedging both at the producer level, the merchant level and the consumer level potentially, but we haven't seen as much impact there. But that is a risk. I mean, if gas explodes in the next 6 months, we'll be sitting here in 6 months' time with an increase in working capital above in second half as well.
So -- sorry, another question on the coal profitability. The benchmark or the reference prices have gone up, for example, in thermal coal by about 20-odd from your first half spot illustrated, but your implied margin a combination of higher cost and portfolio mix adjustment has gone up only by about $11. So like the drop-through of that increased prices just about 50%, which is slightly disappointing. But would you say that like if coal prices go much higher from here, that drop-through could be bigger because you're not going to get the same amount of cost hit and probably a better portfolio mix adjustment benefit?
I mean part of the portfolio adjustment, and it's not a perfect -- I mean we have to give you such these qualities. There's different time horizons, there's premiums and discounts across the market. So we try in a 3, 4x a year give you the building blocks that you need.
Now of course, if headline new cater price goes up, we do a lot of domestic business as well, particularly in South Africa, some of that's fixed price at very crappy prices until that automatically inflates the portfolio adjustments because, of course, that you're not getting in sort of another dollar. So you're just having to spread your margin over a different sort of denominator we like. So we've always got to higher portfolio adjustments as that headline goes up. I think we'll be out of some of those domestic tonnes at some point, some of the Australian domestic, you still get export parity, but not often, fix price some of it. So it's the whole mix around qualities, low-quality markets within markets.
I think as Gary has mentioned, China markets, what Indonesia is doing, what whether sort of Japan and others are paying premiums, JPU tonnes to the extent that any of them even sort of exists these days. So the markets are almost changing sort of week by week from and we need to give you the tools to be able to do it because I mean we find it difficult to model sort of even here and it's impossible to model on your end. So we need to 3 or 4 time, give you the tools and either disappointment or enthusiasm for these numbers and just reflects the market as it's evolving.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Ben Davis from RBC Capital Markets.
A couple of quick questions from me. Firstly, just given that you wouldn't get franking credit benefits with the secondary listing, just wondering the value proposition of spinning out the coal, how that stacks up against the secondary listing and whether you've had any feedback from investors on that potential call bin out following the last results.
No, that's not been contemplated, Ben. We're not contemplating the coal spin out. We've had no suggestion from shareholders, shareholders are very comfortable with our strategy built on a world-class steam coal business, leading steelmaking coal business, a leading marketing business and a copper portfolio and pipeline that is terrific. So there's -- shareholders are very comfortable with the portfolio. They like the portfolio. We're rewarding them through returns and there's no view or intention to -- just for Norco. No one have said that, that's got to stay like that forever. If shareholders change their mind in 2, 3, 4, 5 years and they want us to investigate again. Of course, that's the shareholders own this company, and we'll do that. But that is not the intention.
Sorry, Ben, also in terms of the secondary listing. I guess now compared to maybe 2, 3, 4 years ago, where if you look at some of the white savings and new homes, their registers have also matured and absolutely changed over a little bit in the last 3 or 4 years. So in terms of the sort of both sort of investability appetite for interest in coal exposure rather even more concentrated or as part of a diversified portfolio can certainly improved and has increased over the years.
Got you. That's very helpful. Just quickly, you probably can't say much, but obviously, there's been headlines on Radio World over the past couple of weeks. Just in terms of how can we think about materiality if it was a liability, what level would require a separate disclosure. Is that a couple of hundred million dollars or anything like that? Anything you can share color-wise?
Look, I mean, we're not going to go into details or all we can say the exposure in our books is not material. You can do your own materiality calc basis, our earnings basis, our balance sheet basis the company that we are. And it's as I say, on the books, this is not a material issue and not a material exposure for us.
We will now take the next question from the line of Richard Hatch from Berenberg.
Just a couple of questions. Firstly, congrats on marketing, but I was just curious, the EBITDA margin of vessels & Minerals at 1.8%. That was pretty low compared to industry, I think the 5-year trading average is more like 2.8%. So I'm sort of curious as to why it's so materially below. I wonder if you might just be able to help us out there.
And then secondly, just on EVR, we went out to site a couple of years ago, you talked a good story, but the mine seems to be underperforming. So I think H1 annualized, you're running at about 20 million tonnes, the presentation you gave us when we went to Canada was 26 million to 28.5 million I appreciate H1 had some sort of one-off issues, but I just wonder if you can give us and the market some comfort that you are going to hit those medium-term targets of at least 26 million tonnes from the EVR assets?
Thanks, Richard. I think we'll take them in reverse order. As we mentioned and what Martin mentioned earlier in the call, Xavier is here. So he'll take that question first and then you can take the EBITDA margin on trading.
Yes. As far as EVR production goes, I think we continue to see and make improvements to the underlying performance in that business. we're still very much committed to our medium- and long-term trajectory for we were doing a lot of work to do this that, one of which probably the most important is delivering the FRx project.
That permitting is going well. particularly at the north end of the valley there at forwarding operation, I think as we explained at the time between Ford and [ Glens ], business is significantly challenged from a permit perspective. as we have some of these short-term issues around both geotech, water, seasonality and so on. It means that we don't have the working room available to kind of absorb those. We will see some short-term hiccups. But really, the underlying trajectory is very good.
The business from an efficiency perspective continues to improve. So certainly committed to performing against the presentations that we gave to you guys when you were on site. And yes, other than the short-term interruptions, the fundamentals are very good and continue to improve for EVR.
In terms of the margins, actually, it's not a number that we tend to focus on because the revenue is line is somewhat irrelevant also within the marketing business. But of course, in higher price environment, you would expect that your derived margin percentage is going to shrink a bit because it's more about the absolute dollars of gross income and dollar per ton that you're able to generate on those flows.
So I'd rather have certainly a bigger increase in absolute dollars, if that comes at the -- it's sort of just mathematically, you have a lower margin than just an outcome. I actually don't even know what our revenue number is for the 6 months. It's not something that we necessarily focus on, which obviously important on the mining side, that's your EBITDA margin, that's your cash buffer, your 40%, 50% that we have within the marketing, I won't pay too much attention to the EBITDA margin percentage. It's more around gross income, return on capital.
Okay. I mean just to perhaps push you slightly it's just more like when you have a high energy price environment, the history shows that you've outperformed on a margin standpoint. And I would imagine the same ever say slightly for metal standpoint. But if you don't look at the margin it's been fair enough, I just thought it was an interesting point to call out, and I was curious as to why it was the worst it's been in 5 years.
It's just a function of the higher prices. The actual earnings in the metals in absolute terms is amongst close to our sort of -- it's upper quartile earnings. Last year was a record, so we're off a little bit from that record around the post sort of tariff and premiums and copper opportunities, the tightness TCRCs, it's all good conditions. It's business as usual at a strong level, I would say. But if your copper price is up 40% and your zinc prices is doing what it's doing, then that doesn't always translate into it. It would be nice if it was a -- well, I guess you'd have the reverse is true as well.
No, it's not -- it's an interesting statistic rather than one I would ascribe too much weight on.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Alon Olsha from Bloomberg Intelligence.
So just 2 questions. Firstly, on copper costs. At the full year results, you presented some kind of indicative guidance for 2028 and 2029 costs, C1 costs of $118 for '28 and $108 for '29. Just given your raised guidance this year, are you still fairly kind of confident in those numbers? Or could we see that drifting up? I appreciate the comments around a lot of the cost increase in this first half or the increase to guidance is transient in nature. But just if you could give some color on your thinking on costs into next year and further out.
Yes. Thanks, Alon. I mean we wouldn't have -- I think we need to -- let's get through to the end of the year where we have a better sense on the transitory nature of some of these costs where they've settled down once there's more clarity and resolution around some of those supply chain disruptions that we've seen, particularly these ingredients around the fuel and reagents.
So that is a factor that's impacted us short term. longer-term direction of travel, denominator is very important in those generation of costs as well as byproduct credits, which has seen since that period of time. We've seen some of the metals sort of metallic byproducts have actually increased. So in copper business, we've got zinc. We've got various other precious metals, which is also where the large exposure is actually contracted since then. So we'll need to sort of recap there.
It's going to be a function of sort of byproduct evolution, including cobalt, very important within our copper business. We've made some assumptions within that -- within those numbers as to what period of time, we'd be able to increase sales. And at what price that product was going to clear out in those outer years, which is sort of our own S&D and as much sort of trying to get into the heads of DRC a little bit as to how they were going to manage sort of quotas and prices sort of around floors and capsule or the likes of them being able to sort of influence that market in sort of a certain way. So we'll recalibrate all those factors, which are the most material in those assumptions around sort of '28, '29.
Got it. And then just a final question on thermal coal. So I guess not withstanding the comments you've made around the conflict in the Middle East and the tightness in energy markets kind of reinforcing thermal colors versus fallback fuel in the energy system. It does appear that the 2 biggest buyers in the seaborne market, China and especially India seems to be slowly withdrawing from the market. So there could be a scenario where the seaborne market actually shrinks over the coming years simply because they're boosting their domestic production. But at the same time, what are you seeing on the supply side because that's not growing either. So in terms of your kind of medium-term outlook, could you see the market still remaining pretty tight because while demand for seaborne coal might be coming off of but supplies isn't growing other -- and kind of how do you see yourself positioned in that market in terms of growing share?
It's always an interesting market and a difficult market to predict, Alon I mean, yes, Chinese domestic coal is growing, but it's been growing for the last 15 years or 20 years. They're now every year is a new record, 4.8 billion tonnes of coal.
So -- and that domestic coal doesn't always necessarily replace the imports. You've seen how imports they used to have that old cap of 200 million tonnes of imports, and that blew through that and they're still well over 300 million tonnes of imports these days. So the fact that Chinese domestic growth or domestic is growing is not necessarily an indication of less imports. They are still building coal-fired power stations. It's probably just under 100 gigawatts of coal power stations being built in China today. So they're still growing coal-fired power stations. And not only -- it's not only for coal fire, we've seen increasingly -- increasing growth demand for coal for coal to fuels and coal to liquids, maybe 0.5 billion tonnes of Chinese domestic production is used exclusively for that and not even in power generation.
So a lot of the growth is, in fact, going into other forms of use of coal. And therefore, the import of steam coal is still very important for the Chinese market. India as well, yes, Coal India is growing, but they're also building coal fire power stations and are still very energy hungry. You look at the growth of that economy and the trajectory of growth and how energy hungry they are and even now moving into the construction of data centers and the likes. They need all forms of energy they can get. That's not only renewables and coal, but it's not only coal domestically, but coal imports.
So on the import side for China and India, we're not uncomfortable. You will see seasonal variations, whether it be weather, whether it be domestic, whether it be accidents, whether it be what just economics will drive what makes the most sense. So we're not concerned with the demand profiles coming out of China and India. The supply side, and you raise a very good point on the supply side. There are -- in Australia, certainly no new mines being built and mines are shutting. We're shutting some of our mines as they come to the end of the economic lives or resource endowment. You've seen how we've taken tonnes off the market in places like Cerrejon, and would only bring those back on if the market actually needs those tonnes.
Otherwise, we're very happy to run Cerrejon at a lower rate, [ Truman ] run at their rate and they're not increasing any further. South Africa only constrained by the rail, up and down, a little bit 5 million, 10 million tonnes, but there's not a big change in South Africa. The interesting one is Indonesia, which has been the big supplier to the export market. And you've seen all the noise around restrictions on exports there. That's not driven -- that's driven around resource preservation for their own use. Like China, Indonesia continues to coal fire power station. It's a very strong economy that needs power. They're building a lot of our medium smelters.
They've got a lot of nickel smelters, they've got their water bill data centers, the industry, the general industry is very strong and growing, and they need to preserve the resource to provide power domestically. So from a supply growth perspective, although Indonesia has abundant coal, it's low quality coal that have abundant are now starting to intervene in terms of how much can be exported. Now we never know whether sort of how much, what that limit will be and sometimes the limits change and the restrictions change and the like. But there certainly is a move towards restricting some sort of export domestic use. So that does also bode well into the supply side of it, the supply demand dynamic for seaborne export coal.
We will now take our next question from the line of Patrick Mann from Investec [ Plc ].
I just wanted to ask on marketing. So on Slide 11, you said the indicative full year adjusted EBIT, if you purely mathematically take the second half, but as the mid- to the top end of your long-term range that you see $4.7 billion to $5 billion for the year, which obviously implies quite a big slowdown from the first half. and understand the mathematics of it. My question is, have you already seen a slowdown in the opportunities and the profits available in marketing? Or if the current situation poses is there still upside risk to that number? That's the first question, please.
Patrick, I think we're only one month in July, I would say, would be an above-average month, but certainly not to the same extent that we saw the sort of February, March, April period where things were very extreme in terms of supply disruptions, dislocations and changes. So yes, July, and that feeds into where Steve was saying, Steve's not even taking the half middle of the range, taking the top end of the range for the second half. And so that feeds into that narrative that we are looking to say, we're middle to the top end of the range. July was a good month, and it feeds into that mathematical calc.
Well, I mean, we sort of made some qualitative commentary around the fact that we expect given geopolitics and the like, sort of H2 and sort of some above-normal levels of disruption and volatility to still prevail, but nothing like what we've seen in sort of H1. And particularly the initial reactions to an event where you see the most opportunities as that sort of -- it gets ultimately, you find some sort of new equilibrium and trade flows.
So first 2 or 3 months, very disruptive, then it settles down and then you're more dealing with the smaller sort of ripples, does it de-escalatescalate? These are obviously the sort of important questions. So we just sort of qualitatively without specifically putting a sort of a projection or an estimate out there, which sort of giving some direction of travel and of course, it could be higher or lower depending on multiple factors.
Great. That's very clear. My second question is just on the copper price. I don't know if you guys are prepared to maybe just give a view on U.S. tariff potential and risk to copper price, both on the upside and the downside from here?
Everybody is waiting for the tariffs. And I think -- I mean, you've seen the run up about $14,000 copper. There is -- that's twofold. One, there has been strong demand out of China. But most of it is drawn comics and the [ Demant ] front run any tariffs. When did the tariffs come? We don't know. The -- or when the announcement comes, we don't know. There are some stories that may come this week, okay?
That's that is having a disproportionate impact on spot pricing, no question. The has been open for some time and that's why you've had the stock build in the U.S. Once those are announced, whatever they are, the tariffs are, whether it's 0, 15, 30, whatever it may be, it's likely to have some sort of pullback in pricing because the market then will have better knowledge of what -- of the situation, the Arbor closed, and you'll have these high stockpiles in the U.S., which, over time, will be drawn down for use in the U.S. to be exported again because the friction cost of exporting again make it very unlikely that they come out the U.S. But the U.S. then no longer becomes a buyer once you know what it is, and you've got the stock sitting in the U.S.
Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions today. I would now like to turn the conference back to Gary Nagle for closing remarks.
Very strong half for us, both on the production side and the financial side. Some nice announcements this morning around the ASX an update on our copper portfolio, which is looking very good, our leading copper portfolio. very exciting time for our business, and therefore, we've also announced an additional return to shareholders of AUD 1.5 billion. Our confidence in our company underpinned by the fact that AUD 500 million of that is in the form of a buyback AUD 1 billion in cash. So we look forward to another very strong half in the second half of the year. And as always, we're available for our stakeholders post this call. Thanks very much.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
Glencore — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
Strong H1: $10.1bn adjusted EBITDA, $8.1bn operating cash, net debt $10.2bn; ASX secondary listing and $1.5bn shareholder return announced.
📊 Quarter at a Glance
- Adjusted EBITDA: $10.1bn (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) driven by metals & marketing.
- Industrial EBITDA: $6.5bn, metals and energy/steelmaking coal strong on higher prices.
- Marketing EBIT: $3.3bn, near-record H1 from disrupted energy/freight arbitrage.
- Cash flow: $8.1bn operating cash (+158% YoY); net debt $10.2bn.
- Share returns: $1.5bn announced ( $1.0bn cash + $0.5bn buyback).
🎯 What Management Says
- Copper growth: Pipeline derisked — baseline ~1Mtpa copper by 2028 and a broader growth portfolio ~1.6Mtpa (timing flexible) with multiple projects advancing.
- Capital allocation: Maintain minimum investment-grade rating, deploy surplus (Bunge stake) prudently; announced ASX secondary listing to access Australian pools.
- Operational focus: Production delivered within guidance; safety priority after fatal incidents and work to redouble standards.
🔭 Outlook & Guidance
- Guidance: Production guidance maintained for FY2026; management provided an illustrative H2 mix and a midpoint marketing assumption for full-year modelling.
- Risks: Elevated input costs (diesel, sulfur/sulfuric acid), Middle East-driven volatility and currency moves are largely viewed as transient but could pressure near-term costs.
❓ Analyst Q&A
- DRC deal: Orion/DFC due diligence ongoing; initial non-binding terms not fixed — valuation and final structure to be agreed after H2 diligence.
- ASX listing: Target October 2026 secondary listing to broaden investor base; aim for ASX200 inclusion within 12 months and potential rerating from increased local demand.
- Marketing & risk: Marketing volatility and VAR were elevated vs normal but far below 2022 extremes; non‑RMI working capital rise was modest and better contained than 2022.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Takeaway: Glencore delivered a cash-rich H1, accelerated its copper development roadmap and moved to deepen its investor base via an ASX listing while returning capital; near-term profitability depends on volatile input costs and commodity price moves, but balance sheet and cash generation are strong.
Glencore — Shareholder/Analyst Call - Glencore plc
1. Management Discussion
Good morning. My name is Kalidas Madhavpeddi, and I'm the Chair of your Board of Directors. Welcome. It's now 12 noon. Let me just check, and I call the meeting to order. When you arrive here today, you receive a package of information. Please read it carefully. It has important information regarding your safety while you're here as well as procedures for the conduct of this meeting. Now it's my pleasure to introduce my colleagues on the Board and management here on the dais and on the line. First to my right, Gary Nagle, CEO and Director; Paca Zuleta, Director; Martin Gilbert, Chair of Remuneration Committee; Liz Hewitt, Chair of Audit Committee; John Wallington, Chair of HSEC Committee; Cynthia Carroll, Chair of Ethics, Culture and Compliance; John Burton, our Company Secretary; and on the phone with our apologies for not being here in person, our Senior Independent Director, Gill Marcus.
I'd like to start by highlighting a number of topics that the Board has been following, which are likely relevant to our shareholders. First, the health and safety of our employees is our #1 priority. We have improved safety metrics. We have decreased recordable injuries, and we reduced the number of fatalities. But I'm saddened to say that we still had 2 fatalities last year, and 3 of our colleagues in Kazakhstan perished just a month ago. Our hearts go out to their families and our colleagues in those locations. But management, the HSEC committee and the Board are laser-focused on our continuous improvement in safety.
In December, we hosted our Capital Markets Day. We outlined the compelling investment case for Glencore and the significant progress we've made on derisking our exceptional portfolio of copper projects. These projects are mostly brownfield and will be highly capital efficient. Our base copper business will go to over 1 million tonnes by the end of 2026 on an annualized basis and 1.6 million tonnes by 2035, making Glencore one of the largest copper companies in the world.
We also discussed our coal and our unique marketing business. All these components provide a portfolio that allows this company to be ready for the future in terms of growth. In respect of last year's performance, we announced a cash distribution of $0.17 a share, and we paid out $2 billion. In July, we completed the sale of our Viterra business and the Bunge shares that we received were the underpinning for an additional share buyback. We bought back $1.8 billion of shares at an average price of USD 4.40 compared to today's market price of $7.70 a share. Now I'll play a short video that captures who we are and how we operate.
[Presentation]
As, I've noted before the role of non-exec directors is not just complete by sitting round boardroom table. Last year, Board members visited the EVR facilities in Canada, the coal, oil and alloys in South Africa. When we go on these site visits, we meet with employees, unions, we see the community and we get a 360-degree view of what's happening in each location. With that, let me turn it over to Gary for his comments.
Thanks, Kalidas, and good afternoon. I think it is already. Good afternoon. Great to see familiar friends. Welcome. Nice to see you back here to those dialing in online. Good to have you as well, wherever you are. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Terrific to be back at an AGM for our shareholders. We'll just run through a few slides quickly before we move into the proceedings of the day. We've added a few extra slides to what we've had in previous years, just to put a context around some of the issues and topics that Kalidas raised. And it would be remiss if we don't start with safety. It is of all our values, the most important value within our organization. And Glencore has been on a journey. It's a journey that never ends, the ultimate elimination of all fatalities, but not only elimination of fatalities, but elimination of all harm, all injuries.
Sadly, as Kalidas mentioned, we lost 2 of our colleagues during the course of 2025, and we have had an incident this year that you know about. But as you can see from the hard work put in from our health and safety team, but not only our health and safety team from each and every one of our employees around the world, our progression to zero harm is unrelenting, and the improvement is clear. As a group, we continue to improve year-on-year. And in fact, we are now better than the -- our peers within the average ICMM membership, something that we're proud of, but not proud enough yet because until we get to 0 fatalities and zero harm, we have not yet achieved what we want to achieve.
Looking at our financial scorecard for 2025. Many would have seen this, a very pleasing year despite challenging headwinds and economic conditions. Adjusted EBITDA for the group of $13.5 billion, made up predominantly of our industrial asset base, just short of $10 billion and a middle of the range, very good performance from our marketing business of just under $3 billion of marketing EBIT. That marketing EBIT driven primarily through the metals business. Many of you who were here in previous years would have remembered outstanding years in our energy business. Last year, the energy business was a much smaller contributor because the trading set and marketing set in front of us it presented us with opportunities in the metal side. And that is testament to the diversified portfolio that we have in our business.
So a very pleasing result on the marketing business, middle of the range, middle of our new revised range or upward revised range. So again, a very pleasing result. Debt levels very low, below 1x adjusted net debt to EBITDA and over $10 billion of cash generated and allowing us to return $2 billion to our shareholders. So a pleasing financial result, very good to see that we started this year very well as well. You would have noticed some commentary around our marketing business in our Q1 production report. Commodity prices are higher. So as we go into Q2 and the remainder of the year, it bodes for hopefully a better 2026.
Our priorities particularly for 2026, as I said in the beginning of the presentation, first and foremost, safety. And that's not just a 2026 priority. That's a priority in everything we do and every day that we operate. We continue to strive to ensure zero harm in our business. The focus on operational excellence is key in our business. Last year, for the second year in a row, we met our production guidance across our key commodities and very proud of that because going back a few years, that was one of the challenges that we've had. We've refreshed management teams. We've refreshed processes and procedures. We've refreshed operating models and allowing us to deliver consistent operational performance through our operations. And we continue to see pleasing results into Q1 of 2026.
Kalidas also mentioned our organic growth, particularly in our copper business. We continue to progress all those projects. And we have a number of projects, mainly brownfield projects, largely across South America and a little bit in Africa, where we continue to grow our copper business through organic brownfield, low-risk, low capital intensity projects, something that is probably the envy of most of the rest of the industry and a lot of work happening this year to bring those to market.
From a balance sheet perspective, we remain -- we focus on having a very strong balance sheet. That allows us to lever this business towards developing these projects, investing in future business opportunities and very importantly, providing returns to you as shareholders. And that is what it ultimately leads to is value creation for shareholders. We've seen terrific returns for shareholders over the years through the form of share appreciation, through the form of buybacks and obviously through the form of dividends.
So the investment case for Glencore, which those who attended our Capital Markets Day in December will remember what this slide looks like, but just to take you through it in a few minutes. We have an exceptional portfolio. Firstly, copper, which is the commodity of the future, terrific supply-demand dynamics of that commodity, something that underpins the growth of -- underpins global growth, particularly around data centers, AI, energy transition and just basic -- and base economic growth. We, as Glencore, have a terrific base copper business.
Kalidas mentioned, we'll be back to a base business of over 1 million tonnes of copper by 2028. And the growth beyond that to beyond 1.6 million tonnes by 2035 and potentially higher than that. So very, very exciting times for us. In addition to that, we have a very exciting portfolio of copper -- excuse me, of coal, nickel, zinc, coal, energizing the world today as the world transitions, steelmaking coal, providing the metal that we need as the world grows into a more prosperous future.
Our marketing business is another key pillar that we always talk about, and this sets us apart. It is a leading marketing business that many of our peers would love to have in their business and don't. It's something that differentiates Glencore from its mining peers. It allows us to be in the market, buying and selling commodities every day, providing services to our customers. And this is a business that year in, year out provides terrific returns for shareholders and a great service for our customers. It's a leading business, and we continue to invest in it and grow it further.
Our portfolio is more optimized, more simplified, and our management structure has been changed around accountability. And that you've seen pay dividends through the fact that we've been able to meet our production guidance year in, year out. That operating model has been proved. It's been tested. It's reduced overheads, it's improved accountability, and we see the results in the fact that our performance is meeting market expectations.
And ultimately, like the last slide, what are we here for is a long-term value creation for you as shareholders, returning over $27 billion to shareholders since 2021. So terrific returns for you. That's what we're here to do. We want to do it safely. We want to do it responsibly and very excited for the years ahead. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Gary. I can now proceed to the formal part of today's meeting. Before taking a vote on the resolutions, I invite questions from shareholders. When seeking to ask a question, please raise your hand and hold your yellow proxy card as we may only take questions from shareholders. Gentleman in the front, please.
Thank you very much. My name is Emmanuel Adjei Danso, the Director for Mining and Energy Sector IndustriALL Global Union. I'm very pleased to be here. Just want to bring an issue to your attention. Yesterday, we met with our affiliates across the Glencore operations and among other issues they raised was the poor consultation process in the ongoing transition, particularly in Colombia. Also the fragmentation in your transition plan focusing on low carbon framing without the union integrated in the process. Also the increasing subcontracting across as a business model, especially when you want to reduce your liabilities, especially within the coal sectors. Another issue they also raised was that there was no equal gender mainstreaming policies across your operations.
Over the years, we realized that the AGM will not be the appropriate forum for us to seek resolve on all these matters. However, we choose to also come and attend the AGM because we don't have a structured dialogue. As such, we intend to seek a new path with Glencore in a more predictable labor relations that seek to protect shareholders' value and also bring better yield for Glencore.
In view of that, we want to ask Glencore, in this new direction, are you willing to institutionalize social dialogue from the global perspective and also a regional perspective around maybe good price volatility, just transition planning, standardization of gender midstream initiative, this may not necessarily be handled regionally, but would need some global perspective from your good selves and industrial in terms of policy direction.
Thank you very much. I think your question was regarding Colombia specifically. And we believe we have very good relationships at Cerrejon, for example, with our unions. We've reached agreements over a number of years with them. In terms of some kind of a larger scale that you're looking for, what we find is that each one of our assets is very individualistic. And the labor agreements are unique to that property. Our management teams that run those operations are in the best shape to deal with those issues. And that's why our agreements are set up the way they are. Gary, did you want to comment anything?
Yes. Thanks very much for your question, and welcome. I think we've had a very constructive dialogue with IndustriALL, and we appreciate that approach of being constructive. And I know you deal a lot with Derrick Crowley, our Head of Human Resources. Specifically around your question and the various topics that you raised, we do have policies that we set here from a global level around the issues that you raise, whether it be energy transition, whether it be gender policy, DEI and the likes. That gets delegated down to the sites and the sites then implement those.
So when the various unions at site level are dealing and negotiating and working with our sites, they are under the umbrella of the global policies around DEI, around energy transition, around subcontracting, around the various issues that you raise. So I think it's important to recognize that, as Kalidas said, in the various regions, which each have their own dynamics and their own labor laws and their own local laws, which one has to comply with, there is an overall umbrella that comes from head office, which sets broad policies around it, but cannot contradict what local policies and local laws and regulations are.
So it's finding that right middle ground to ensure that those policies and -- or the local laws are adhered to and global policies are implemented. And that's the approach that we take, and I think it has been constructive in the discussions that we've had with many of our unions and with industrial.
Lady on the left.
My name is Anna Leissing. I'm the Director of Voices, a human rights organization based in Bern, focusing on the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities. And I'm very grateful to be here and to have the opportunity to draw your attention to what we believe is a risk. And first of all, a risk to local communities in Brazil who live close to a mine called Mineracao Rio do Norte and who fear that the tailing dams around this mine might eventually break and destroy their homes and livelihood. And since Glencore holds 45% of the shares in this mine, we believe it is a risk to the company, too. And that's why we're here to ask what has Glencore done in the past and what will you do in the future to ensure transparent information about how these dams are built, about safety and security for local communities and about emergency measures that they ask for.
And before you answer just quickly, I know we have asked this question before. We have asked this question based on a study that showed that the communities do not feel well informed. They do not feel safe. They live in fear, and we know that these fears do not come out of nowhere. And today, we have a new research and findings that conclude that the risks of these dams are currently underestimated and that there is not enough safety measures. So that's why we insist and want to know what can you do, what do you do as the biggest shareholder of this mine to ensure transparency and safety for the local communities in Brazil. Thank you.
Thank you for coming from Bern to visit with us today. So first of all, let me just talk about overall how we manage tailings dams in the assets that we own worldwide. So there are roughly about 140-plus dams, and we publish actually detailed reports on each one on our website. So you can see how we're making progress in improving and running those tailings dams. In your specific question about MRN in Brazil. So MRN, as you rightly pointed out, we are one of the shareholders. And through our representation on the Board, whether it's a technical committee or some other committee, we pass on the same kind of ideas in terms of making sure that technical factors are taken into account and MRN is run by-- the folks that run MRN, and they can provide you more information on that issue. Gary, did you want to add anything?
Yes.
Gentleman there, I think, who raised his hand earlier.
[Interpreted] Well, we have announced that following the energy transition that has just taken place, Glencore has different mining operations that have to be closed, in particular, [Earon] in 2024. And for this procedure, we have had a plan. It was set with the participation of workers. Sintracarbon and 2 other trade unions have then drafted a document for the entire sector. And there were different motions that we have made, and we would like to kindly request that these motions be discussed with the company so that it would take responsibility regarding the workers.
On the 1st of May 2025, these motions have been sent out to the company. And ever since the company and Cerrejon have not shown any interest to come up with an agreement. Not only did they not follow our motions, but they also stated that Glencore now reduces its responsibilities. So to speak, they committed some work outside external labor. And between 2024 and today, we've seen that a lot of collective bargaining agreements points have not been met, which led to the fact that the situation of the workers is getting more and more difficult. So given the situation, the question is as follows: will Glencore commit to also include -- consider inclusive plans so as to make sure that the workers can also participate, workers that might be hit by these closures of the site.
Thank you for your question. So first of all, Cerrejon doesn't close until 2034. Maybe that was lost in translation came across as 2024, which is roughly 8-plus years away. The plans in terms of the closure of Cerrejon in 2034 will be something that the company works together with the government, with communities, with the unions and come up with a coordinated approach to how to address that closure issue, including rehabilitation and taking care of the property. So I think it's very important that we understand the time line as well as what the process is. And we need the involvement of the government, communities, other businesses before we can come up with a transition plan that helps all. Gary, do you want to add something?
No, that's perfect.
At Ulan Underground, Glencore workers have now spent close to 2 years bargaining for a replacement agreement. Gone without a pay rise since March 2023, endured multiple failed votes, industrial action, lockouts and lengthy legal proceedings only for Glencore to continue appealing and prolonging the process even after a Fair Work Commission declared bargaining intractable and rejected claims the union had failed to bargain in good faith.
My question is, why is Glencore so determined to weaponize delays against its own workforce at Ulan Underground? And what point does repeatedly extending bargaining, resisting resolution pathways, appealing decisions and dragging workers through prolonged legal processes stop being good faith bargaining and start being a deliberate strategy to financially exhaust workers into accepting less -- and if Glencore generally believes in the industrial relations system, why won't it accept the independent unbiased findings and work towards a timely outcome instead of using an avenue -- every avenue possible to delay the resolution while workers and their families continue to carry the cost.
Thank you for your question. I appreciate you coming all the way from Australia to raise the question. So as I understand it with Ulan Underground, the request for the agreement is based on comparing itself to other mines that are different in terms of work rules and in terms of compensation. So as you know very well, it's the work rules that dictate how the collective bargaining or employment agreements are structured in each region. And that's the basis of how the Ulan underground was set up. Gary, did you want to add anything more?
No. I mean, yes, I do. Thank you first for your question, and thanks for coming. We appreciate it. And we very much respect and appreciate the hard efforts and work put in by our workforce around the world, including in Australia, including New South Wales and particularly at Ulan. We've negotiated in good faith. These negotiations are not always the easiest negotiations. You know that. We've all been on both sides of the table over time. And sometimes they get a bit heated, sometimes they get difficult. But we certainly have negotiated in good faith. We want our workforce to have a fair wage. That's the right approach. And that's how we approach these things, and we want harmony within our workplace.
Obviously, both sides have recourse to various legal routes to the extent that one cannot reach agreement, and we respect the rights and the ability of the union to take legal action as we would like the union to respect our rights to take legal action when we believe that there's an avenue for either party. This, as I understand, the issue at Ulan is now before the Fair Works Commission. We support that process, and we'd like to see how that process develops to try and hopefully, in the coming months, settle on a fair agreement between both sides.
Anybody back there? Lady in front.
My name is Karen Larkins. I'm from Australia. I work for Glencore at United Wambo Joint Venture. New South Wales Minerals Council is pushing to dramatically reduce the length of time that coal mine workers will have protection from dismissal and access to accident pay when injured at Glencore and other coal mine sites in New South Wales, Australia. Is Glencore supporting this position to wipe their hands of workers they injure in the mine sooner and much cheaper? And what is the risk to Glencore's social license to operate of failing to look after these workers when they are at their most vulnerable?
Well, again, thank you very much for coming all the way from Australia to raise the issue. First, I think our agreements everywhere are based on UN principles. We're aligned with the different standards like the IFC, et cetera. And we try to make sure that we are respectful of all our employees with the right to unionize, et cetera. So I'm not sure about the specific issue that you're raising, but I'm happy to have our HR team, Derrick Crowley, sitting here perhaps to meet with you and answer the question.
Maybe I can just add something to that, Karen, and thank you again for your question. Thank you for being here. Certainly, our Chairman emphasized in his opening remarks and certainly our first slide of my remarks were about safety. And it is -- we have 6 values, but that is our #1 value, the safety of our people, and we don't pay lip service to that. So certainly, keeping people safe every day is our #1 priority. You raised an approach being taken by the New South Wales Minerals Council. As Kalidas mentioned, I'm not fully aware of what the New South Wales Minerals Council is doing on a day-to-day basis. We're very happy to take up your concerns and follow that up. Yes, Derrick here, as Kalidas mentioned, but we have Peter Sharp, who runs our Australian business in -- out of the Hunter Valley. I'm sure he'd be very willing to discuss these issues. But like all of us sitting up here in front of you, he ascribes to that value of safety first and looking after our workforce. I can assure you of that.
Thank you again. Appreciate it. Gentleman in the front.
Thank you. My name is Jeremy McWilliams. I'm a union official with the Mining and Energy Union from Australia. And this question is in relation to bargaining that's ongoing at a number of Glencore sites in the Hunter Valley in Australia. Australia's same job, same pay laws were introduced to stop companies using labor hire arrangements to undercut the wages and direct-- of directly employed workers. So why is Glencore now uniformly pursuing lower tier classification structures through enterprise agreement negotiations at multiple sites in Australia that would apply to no direct employees and serve no purpose other than suppressing the benchmarks labor hire workers are compared against.
Does the Board accept that this creates an appearance that Glencore is attempting to engineer around the intent of Australian industrial laws? And if not, what legitimate operational purpose does this approach actually serve? And given how popular these laws have been in Australia, has the Board considered the obvious brand damage that Glencore is likely to face in Australia in the aftermath of the enormous media and social media campaign that the Mining and Energy Union is now running.
Thank you again. We've got quite an Australian contingent here. So always good to see you and appreciate you bringing it up. I think you're specifically asking about Mangoola, where we're discussing the issue of same work, same pay. This is regarding paying somebody who's got 5 years' experience that can run a -- can do a cat-- skinning or can run a truck or a shovel and somebody with more skills and more training should be paid more than somebody with 1-year experience that's, say, a truck driver. I think that's where the difference comes from. We believe that people should get paid with the bigger flexibility they have and the training that they have. And we do not believe that contradicts the Australian law either in the letter or the spirit.
You rightly point out that, yes, there are some tiers that are being introduced through the negotiations that apply to currently engaged employees. There is an attempt from Glencore though, to introduce 2 new tiers that don't apply to any employees that are engaged directly by Glencore. They're engaged by labor hire companies on the job. The purpose of that new tier being introduced into the enterprise agreement is, in our view, simply for comparative purposes. So it drives down the comparative for same job, same pay laws.
Yes, Jeremy, I appreciate this is quite a complicated area of law in particular, labor law. First and foremost, be assured that we comply with all laws. That is our -- we do not try and break laws. It's one of our policies that we comply with the laws of the country that we operate. And in this case, all the labor laws of Australia. As Kalidas just rightly mentioned, between various operations, there's always differences, whether it be between the types of operation, the shift roster, the people, the skills, the types of jobs. And it's a delicate area to be able to navigate given that you're not comparing exact operations to exact operations.
With regards specifically to the issue of labor hire and tiers, now this is getting into the real weeds of the detail. Not to say it's not important. It is very important. And I certainly appreciate you bringing this to our attention. It's not something that any of us here have full details on other than to say there is absolutely no intention to skirt the laws by bringing in additional tiers through labor hire.
If we want to get into more detail on it, we're more than happy to do that. And the best place to do that, I think, is on the ground with Peter Sharp and his team in Australia in the Hunter Valley. They will be quite happy to meet with you, as I'm sure you've met with them before to explain their views. But just to reiterate, we're not about skirting the law or breaking the law. We want to comply and we do comply with all the laws.
Mr.[Sunil], do you have a question? Okay. I don't hear any more questions. So thank you all very much for coming. We will now proceed to the votes on the proposed resolutions. I ask you to exercise your vote on this meeting's resolutions by completing the poll card. When you have completed your poll card, please place it in the poll boxes, which the registrars will hold. They will stand by the exit doors. We will announce the results following completion of the count.
Thank you very much for attending today's meeting. Wonderful to see you all, and we'll see you right outside the auditorium. I look forward to meeting you all. Thanks. This concludes the business of the AGM today.
[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]
Glencore — Shareholder/Analyst Call - Glencore plc
AGM: Glencore touts strong 2025 cash generation and copper growth plans but faces repeated shareholder concerns on safety, tailings and labour relations.
🎯 Key Message
- Financial strength: 2025 adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) was $13.5bn, with low net leverage below 1x and over $10bn cash generated.
- Safety priority: Board and CEO emphasised safety as top value; metrics improving but the group recorded fatalities in 2025 and an incident this year.
- Copper growth: Management reiterated a low‑capex, brownfield-led plan to pass 1Mtpa base copper by 2028 and target ~1.6Mtpa by 2035.
⚙️ Strategic Highlights
- Copper projects: Focus on derisked brownfield expansions in South America and Africa intended to be capital efficient and industry‑leading in scale.
- Marketing edge: The trading/marketing arm remains a stable profit pillar (~$3bn marketing EBIT in 2025) and a competitive differentiator versus miners.
- Capital allocation: Strong cash allowed a $0.17/share distribution, $2bn returned, plus $1.8bn buybacks (at ~$4.40 avg) and continued emphasis on shareholder returns.
🆕 New Information
- No new guidance: AGM reiterated prior Capital Markets Day targets and 2025 results; management did not issue fresh numerical guidance for 2026 beyond qualitative optimism.
- Tailings transparency: Company said it publishes detailed tailings‑dam reports for ~140+ facilities on its website and uses board representation to influence co‑owned sites.
❓ Analyst Q&A
- Labour relations: Multiple shareholders and unions pressed for institutionalised social dialogue and better consultation in Colombia and Australia; management points to global policies but delegates implementation to site teams and offered local meetings.
- Tailings/dams: Concerns raised about Mineracao Rio do Norte (MRN) in Brazil; board said it exercises influence via reports and board/technical committees and pointed investors to published disclosures.
- Australia disputes: Questions on Ulan bargaining, labour‑hire tiers and same‑job/same‑pay laws; management reiterated legal compliance, defended negotiation practices and invited local engagement with regional leaders.
⚡ Bottom Line
- Takeaway: Financially robust with clear copper growth ambitions and a strong marketing franchise, but shareholders should weigh these positives against ongoing safety incidents, tailings scrutiny and persistent labour disputes that pose operational and reputational risk.
Glencore — 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Okay. Good morning, good afternoon. Thank you for joining us here today, either here physically or online. Welcome to our 2025 financial results. Presenting today from Glencore are Gary Nagle, CEO; and Steven Kalmin, CFO.
Gary, I'll hand over to you to begin.
Thanks, Martin. Good morning, those in the room, morning, morning and good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are dialing in from around the world. Thank you for joining us for our 2025 year-end results. We're going to follow a similar format to how we follow each year. Martin's got a good formula on the presentation, and I think it works very well. So we'll kick off as we normally do with our financial scorecard and where we ended the year.
A very good year, particularly how we started the first half of the year. We stood here this time last year, and we said the first half of the year would be a weak year or a weak half year. It was a weak half year. We finished off very strongly. Those who are here for the CMD will remember the presentation that we gave and some of the updates that we gave then. But we finished the year off very nicely, a $13.5 billion adjusted EBITDA for the year, made up across the business.
On the industrial side, close to $10 billion adjusted EBITDA, very pleasing result. The main thrust of that came from the metal side of the business. In particular, copper had a very good year. Zinc had a good year. You've seen in the second half of the year, prices were much higher, our production was much higher. I'd like to say that we did that on purpose, that we slow played the first half and got ready for the contango in the second half of the year. I won't take credit for that, though. That wasn't us, but it did work in our favor, so sometimes better lucky than good.
So a particularly strong year in metals, particularly copper, zinc, byproduct from gold kicking through in the second half of the year from our zinc operations. So a very pleasing results in metals.
On the flip side, the Energy side and Steelmaking coal, a bit weaker. We saw prices were lower, particularly the first half of the year. It has been a tougher environment we've seen for steelmaking coal. Fortunately, we produced a higher quality -- higher quality both steelmaking coal and energy coal, and we're still able to be very cash generative through that business.
The second, probably the last quarter of the year, things looking a bit better and even into this year. We've seen this year, things in both steelmaking coal and -- or prices in both steelmaking coal and energy coal looking stronger. Energy coal driven largely by Indonesian cuts on exports, which has lifted prices above $120 a tonne out of Newcastle. We're very pleased with what we're seeing out of Indonesia.
And in fact, as Glencore, we're always want to try to stay ahead, and we may even consider our own cuts despite the higher prices, we may even consider our own cuts to continue this momentum in the market. We're very happy to see Indonesia doing what they're doing.
On the steelmaking coal side, price is also higher. We've seen spot prices up to $250, the forwards in the $220s, all look very good. It's largely driven by some weather impacts in Queensland as well as stronger steel demand and steel production out of India. So that brings -- that resulted in a very good result for our -- on the industrial side, as I said, close to $10 billion of adjusted EBITDA.
On the marketing side, also a strong year. You'll remember our old range of $2.2 billion to $3.2 billion, and we're always at the middle of that range of $2.7 billion. Steve explained how we adjusted the range last year. We're now back in the middle of the new range, so higher than the middle of the old range. And remember, the new range or the new earnings excludes any Viterra trading profits that we had back in the day.
So if you look like-for-like, it's materially higher than what we were achieving previously. So $2.9 billion adjusted marketing EBIT for the year, again, that was driven largely on the metal side. Copper had a number of opportunities. There were trade dislocations. There were regional arbitrage opportunities. We had a very tight concentrate market. It's all playing in, and that was not only in copper, but in zinc, all playing into a very strong trading set for our metals business during 2025.
On the Energy and Steelmaking coal side, a weaker trading set available. It wasn't that -- it wasn't -- we know the prices were lower, but the trading set available to us was not there for us. So it was a year of more risk off. Pleasingly, we did see those opportunities coming back in the second half of the year and in particular, from about September, October, things came back. And second half of 2025 over the first half was annualizing closer to where we were for 2024. So -- and we started this year off nicely as well. So on the energy side, we're seeing things coming back nicely during the year.
Our operational scorecard, this is a new slide on our key commodities and where we've landed up. Very solid performance. 2 years in a row, we've now achieved our guidance across our key commodities. We -- Steve and I did our roadshow in August last year, our midterm last year, interim results last year. And needless to say, I think 99 out of 100 people would have said there's no ways we would be able to put up a slide like this.
So this slide is not a slide to say I told you. So, it's more a slide to call out to our operational team. Xavier is here in the room. Earl Melamed is here in the room. He runs our coal business. It's a shout out to Jon Evans. It's a shout out to Suresh. It's a shout out to Japie. It's a shout out to Colin, and our entire operational team.
They assured us, they assured Steve and I, they would meet our production guidance, and they did. So it's a shout out to them. I certainly hope other than Earl and Xavier, none of them are watching this, and they're out in the field doing what they should be doing. But I think this is important for us, where we're reestablishing ourselves as reliable operators, ensuring we deliver what we say we're going to deliver.
Moving on to our portfolio scorecard, and we're going to talk about copper first. We'll get on to some of the other parts of the business in a second. We were here in December in this room on these very comfortable chairs. We made you sit for 3 hours. We won't make you sit for 3 hours today, don't worry. But we just thought we'll give you a quick update on where we are and some of the projects that we outlined during the copper -- it was mainly a copper presentation. We obviously covered a lot of the rest of the business, but copper was the theme, the main theme of that presentation.
And we've had some nice advancements in many of those projects. You'll remember our graph that we put up where we'll see growth back to our base 1 million tonnes a year of copper production. We'll then grow to circa 1.6 million with the potential to go well over 2 million tonnes, depends on which lever we pull, and we have a number of levers we can pull, and that's the joy of our business. We're not relying on one or two different operations, multiple levers to pull, and we can be able to -- we are able to increase production far in excess of where we are now and even above the 1.6 million tonnes, if that's what we want to do by 2035.
So working from left to right through the various projects. Antapaccay, as you know, is our great operation in Peru. We've always spoken about the extension and expansion in Coroccohuayco. The entire region is a very highly mineralized region. We were able to complete the acquisition of Quechua, which is just adjacent to Coroccohuayco and Antapaccay.
And that gives us two benefits. The one benefit of that is it's very highly mineralized, and that could be an extension of Antapaccay in the same way as Coroccohuayco is an extension of Antapaccay. So we may choose to go into Quechua before we go into Coroccohuayco. That gives us huge optionality just within that area.
It also gives us optionality that if we do build Coroccohuayco first, we have access through the Quechua deposit back to the Antapaccay -- pit in the Antapaccay concentrator. So we no longer become ransomed around any land or issues around Coroccohuayco. It's a huge unlock for us, very pleasing result, very big step forward in the Antapaccay region.
In the DRC, we signed a non-binding MOU with the U.S. government-backed Orion, CMC. I was in D.C. 2 weeks ago to sign that. We had the Deputy Secretary of State there. We had the head of the DFC. We had a number of officials there. It's a very exciting opportunity.
What does this do for us? Firstly, it's a big confidence boost for the DRC. The DRC, we've always said is a good country to operate in. It's a good country to invest in.
Does it have its challenges? Yes, every country has its challenges. But this shows that this is a country that's open for business that companies are ready to invest in the DRC. It also shows how important the U.S. is or how important critical minerals are and the DRC is to the U.S. that they are backing a company like Orion to invest in the DRC. So that's great.
And lastly, it's a nod in our direction about the value and quality of the mines that we have there. We've got a circa $9 billion value on the two operations we have there, KCC and MUMI, which is something very -- we've always said because of the quality of the deposit and the great way those -- the mines develop, there's a long life, high value proposition for Glencore in it and this has proved through that time. So very exciting opportunity for us, still early days. It's a non-binding MOU, but work has already started on that.
The other thing -- the other exciting news out of the DRC is at KCC, we've been talking about land for -- Steve, 6, 7 years now? Maybe longer. Yes?
5-plus years.
5-plus years. We've been talking about the land. We've been promising it for 5-plus years. We've now finally delivered. Thank you to our partners, Gecamines, great partners. They were able to unlock the land packages that we need.
And what does that do for us? That allows us to be able to expand the mine, as we've always said and how we explained when we sat here in December. This takes the mine back up to around 300,000 tonnes of copper per year. It takes the life of the mine well into the 2040s. So very exciting opportunity. That land gives us the chance or the infrastructure, in fact, for dumping, for tailings, for power lines, all the sort of infrastructure that will support the existing pit, be able to push the pit back and make that operation or run that operation as effectively and efficiently as we can.
Moving to Argentina. We have two RIGI approvals in place -- underway at the moment. One is for MARA, one is for Pachon. Both are going very well, very constructive and good dialogue with the Argentinian government, sharing a lot of information. We expect the MARA RIGI to come through before the Pachon RIGI. It's just the way they're sequencing it in terms of resource and able to manage the number of RIGI applications they have. Very exciting.
We expect to have -- I mean, with some luck, we'll get the MARA in the first quarter, but we're being a bit conservative here and saying we'll definitely have it in the -- we expect it in the first half and Pachon will come soon after that.
We've also started our work on Alumbrera, which, as you know, is an enabler for the construction of MARA led and the development of MARA, and we expect first production in 2028 in Alumbrera.
NewRange is the joint venture we have with Teck or soon to be AngloTeck in Minnesota. Unbelievable deposit. The resource base through work that we've done and the extra drilling with Teck, we've increased that resource base by approximately 1 billion tonnes. This now is a bigger resource base than resolution. It's a bigger resource base in Pebble. It's -- in fact, not only that, this is a deposit that is lower capital intensity than both and quicker to market than both. So very exciting.
Like the others, it also has some permitting challenges. But fortunately, we're moving through those quite well. We've met with the Governor of Minnesota, very supportive of the project. We've got a good team operating there, and we expect to unlock. I think we've got 20 or 21 of the 23 permits we need for the first phase. So moving along nicely, and that will be a nice project once we get that fully approved.
Some of the rest of the business, we've done some monetization. We've done some portfolio optimization, some portfolio simplification. Century Aluminum for the Americans, Century Aluminum for those this side of the pond. We've sold a part stake of our shareholding in Century. It's a great company. Jesse runs a great company. We're very pro the company. We want to maintain a meaningful stake in the company. But we felt that owning in the 40s, 45%, 46%, whatever it was, didn't really make sense for us in terms of being able to use that cash and recycle it into other very high IRR opportunities.
So we've taken some money off the table with Century, but we do remain committed to the company at a reasonable shareholding level, but we'll be able to take that money back in, reinvest that at 20-plus IRRs, great for shareholders, great for returns, and you've seen the returns that we've announced today.
Portfolio optimization simplification, a number of initiatives underway. Japie in South Africa is doing a lot of work on the power tariffs with the South African government. The South African government is very supportive, great government to work with, looking to find a solution. We've announced that Lion has reopened under a temporary tariff relief, and we're looking to open two other ferrochrome smelters in South Africa, if we get this tariff relief from the government by the end of February. We're more than hopeful, we're confident that we'll get that. As I say, the government has been very supportive of that. And that would put our ferrochrome smelting business right up there being internationally competitive with the rest of the world.
Pasar smelter, we've -- you'll remember when we put that on care and maintenance, that obviously comes with a cost with it. We were able to sell that to a local Filipino business. We've moved that off the books. It means it takes less management time. And clearly, we don't carry any of the ongoing care and maintenance costs.
And even something that perhaps you wouldn't have known about, but we have a big port or we had a big port on the Cienega Coast in just near Santa Marta in Colombia. We built that port to service our Prodeco mines back in about 2010, 2011.
Given that our business now has moved entirely to the La Guajira and we don't have operating mines in Cesar anymore. This was a port that wasn't really -- was being underutilized, didn't -- costs were -- the normal cost of keeping these ports operating even for very small volume didn't make sense for us. So we've sold that, again, funds back into Glencore and reinvested into the business.
So that's left us in a very strong position. Balance sheet, very strong. We've declared a dividend today of $2 billion back to shareholders, very cash-generative business, very strong and very happy with the first half -- for the 2025 results.
And with that, Steve will take you through the financial side.
Good morning all here, and it's great to be back presenting I would say, very clean and positive results and very good momentum in the business. What we've done on this particular chart, and we'll cover almost all these numbers later on in the presentation, is to just separate out H1 and H2, just to show the significant momentum and positivity and performance that's now going through the business and continuing on into 2026 when we show some of the spot illustrative cash flow generation and EBITDA in the business.
We just ran out of a little bit of runway to catch up on 2024, another month or 2 months, and that minus 6% would have been zeroed out, would have gone positive at the rate of EBITDA generation in the second half. So you've seen a 50% increase half-on-half across the whole business. Industrial was plus 65% and even marketing, which expect that to obviously be a more constant business throughout, had a strong second half performance as well.
So very good across the business. We'll look at the variances and the like. Net funding, having been here 6 months ago at $14.5 billion, explained the bridges to where we were. So the pathway towards, sort of, back to $10 billion. Here we are back at that particular level where we started the year, notwithstanding having paid CapEx distributions during the year and continue to invest within the business as well.
RMIs, you would expect in this pricing environment has gone up. Copper would have been the biggest contributor there. Start of the year was at $8,600 on copper, finished the year about $12,400 or so. So that's a 44% increase. We do carry units across copper and aluminum and nickel and zinc, but that was the biggest impact across the $3 billion increase that we had across the RMI and then strong metrics generally, as I said, we'll cover off all these levers. But even second half annualized over $16 billion, and you'll see it spot illustrative numbers later on at $18 billion plus or so. So strong momentum across all parts of the business going into '26.
If we look at the industrial side, Gary has given largely the reasons it's well chronicled within the financials itself. It was a strong performance, particularly on the metal side as we picked up $6 billion to $7 billion. That was the zinc business, second on the podium. Both in its own right in terms of business, zinc prices and the likes, but gold definitely has a significant kick up, particularly at Kazzinc. But the year-on-year increase on zinc business of that $1 billion was $800 million just from zinc, of which $500 million was Kazzinc.
And the copper business having had a slow start for the year, both in the production and general contribution sense did pick up year-over-year in financial performance, notwithstanding the inability to sell much cobalt during the year, which does delay the generation of earnings, cash flow and contribution from that business. But it has been supportive for cobalt price itself, which will help even delivering units under the quota system, and we do produce some non-DRC cobalt as well out of Canada and Australia specifically. So that's clearly helping there as well.
The coal business, Gary had spoke about those. We'll see on there -- in the waterfall bridge on the next slide, you'll see where the different elements of the business come through. But the momentum clearly in the business is, you can see a $9.9 billion industrial EBITDA across the business. What we'll see later on, spot illustrative is at $14.6 billion, and that's all elements of the business picking up momentum in terms of production, cash flow and the like.
So our metals business at $7 billion is now spot illustrative at $11 billion. So we've got $4 billion plus there. And the energy business lagging in terms of that recovery, we do need prices to move a bit higher to have that sort of back kicking as it's done in the past clearly. And it is -- it's performing well, but it's an earning sleeper at the moment within the business, and we do see potential from that given some positive constructs in both those markets that Gary had spoken to. So $3.7 billion last year on the energy at the business, spot illustrative is now at $4.2 billion. So it is picking up and second half performance was a little bit better.
I think the waterfall bridge, if we go to the next slide, of course, there as well. So how do we go from $10.6 billion up to $9.9 million. The negative graphs, particularly on the pricing belies the underlying components of significantly weaker on the coal year-on-year variance, which was actually negative $2.4 billion. Metals was a positive year-on-year variance of $1.9 billion.
And we're closing sort of even at the half year when we're here, that was a negative $1 billion year-on-year. It's closed the year at negative $0.5 billion. So if you plot the two periods, you've had positive momentum build back into price variance.
Of the metals, $1.9 billion, the copper business contributed $1 billion of that. Copper prices -- average prices were up 9% year-on-year. Zinc was $0.8 billion. And even the little custom met assets, which were, not saying they're doing well, but there was a slight performance in the business through particularly zinc TC/RCs were a little bit better. And we do recover quite a bit of free metal out of our custom smelting business, and that free metal tends to be in the precious space. So whether it's some PGM, gold, silver, we do pick up. There's probably a couple of hundred million that got picked up year-on-year.
On the volume variance of $0.9 billion, that was effectively all on copper being down 11%. We'll see later on, Collahuasi the main contributor. We dropped 68,000 tonnes year-on-year at Collahuasi from 178,000 tonnes this year to 246,000 tonnes. I think Collahuasi's story during the next year or 2 years is being well chronicled. We're going through a low phase this year, pick up a little bit now in 2026, and then you see a snapback in 2027.
That is a high-margin business when it's clearly kicking in. So when you're not getting those tonnes, it does lead to quite a volume variance as well. The other impact was the lack of cobalt sales, which for us flows through as a volume variance, supportive for the market longer term, we support the initiatives of the DRC government in rebalancing and restoring value within that particular commodity given the sort of market share, we'll start seeing the benefits of delivering into the quotas this year significantly up on 2026.
The cost variance at negative, actually pretty pleasing, frankly. That's not easy to deliver an outcome there. There is inflation, just general inflation. There is some even input cost inflation that would exceed normal inflation levels. We see it in some of our Australia, the Murrin operation. You saw high prices across sulfur, ammonia. You've seen labor, energy, maintenance in place like Kazakhstan is a little bit up above normal inflationary levels, reagents, asset costs within DRC. It was also fairly sort of tight markets.
And of a $40 billion cost base that we have across our industrial business, just 1% on that is going to move you up -- is going to move you up $400 million. We've been able to neutralize that to 0 across our cost variance, and that's that $1 billion cost reduction program and initiatives across 300 sites that we also announced, that is effectively done, delivered more than half of that was banked in 2025. We'll have all of that fully delivered by the end of 2026. That was able to keep the variance at, sort of, breakeven. Would have been even positive, we've got a few quirks in the cost line, those ferroalloys businesses that Gary said that were in care and maintenance pending the tariff relief. They've been in a standing situation. They've been in care and maintenance. We've had to continue to pay workers and the like. So there has been a cost of carry there, compensated somewhat by the high oil prices across the business for some of the expenses get taken there.
And we did impair some of our custom smelting businesses last year, the Horne and CCR in particular. So even if you've got CapEx, we have to expense CapEx now, which goes through this OpEx line as well. So that was about $100 million in each bucket. So actually quite pleased with a 0 variance.
You've seen EVR. That will disappear as we move forward. This is just reflecting the fact that there was a full year of EVR compared to half year in the previous year.
Quite a busy slide, this one, but I think quite useful across all the business to give our cost, volume and profit by key department. I'll spend a bit of time on copper because we have changed a little bit of the presentation format to provide a little bit more granularity around two particular elements.
If you look at the -- let's start at 2024, and you'll see what I mean by 2025. We show the unit cash cost. This is after byproduct. If you look at '24, we're at $1.74. This is at the operating asset level itself. So this is the consolidation of all the businesses as they come through, the Collahuasi, the Antapaccay, the Antamina, the African business and the likes.
So you've got $174 and then we've had a few areas on top of that, that the overall Glencore business has then had to absorb. There's been the opportunity cost historically of having done streams across the business. It's been topical in the last week or so, Antamina and Antapaccay. It hasn't been a big opportunity cost up until this point. It's starting to bite a little bit more with gold and silver prices the way they are.
And we also had divisional overhead in the copper business that was above the asset level. All of that still went through copper, but sort of geographically, it might be worth if we just go to Page 26 quickly.
I'll come back. So, we've given the sort of buildup back of the industrial copper. This was showing how our $3.9 billion of $4.1 billion. Historically, we might have been more like $4.3 billion and then we would have had $300 million down in that development projects and other. Because streaming as well as divisional overhead was in development projects and other.
And in fact, even when we were here giving our spot illustratives in previous times, we did capture that, which just wasn't captured in the net cost post streams and divisional overhead. So we always had a number about $300 million. We've effectively pushed that extra $200 million now up into the unit cost. And now the only thing that's -- we'll look later on with the spot illustrative, the only thing we've got now in development project other is development projects.
The other has all been pushed up into the -- we've used it to sort of reflect the -- both the cost in absolute terms and to look at the unitization of those costs as well. So we'll get back. It will make more sense then as we work through the various numbers, but we thought that was a more transparent and granularity way of looking at the various costs just because it was becoming a number that was more meaningful, particularly on the streaming side of the business as well.
So on the copper side, so in 2024, it was really small. We had $0.10 on divisional. That is some of the savings of those organizational and the cost savings that we delivered across the business. On the copper, you've seen we've gone down from $0.10 to $0.05. The team when they did take over, they've effectively moved a lot of what was central overhead across regions, they pushed it down into the regions. And some of that $1 billion was delivered within the copper business and would reflect the $0.10 going down to $0.05. You can see streaming historically very little in 2024 was $0.04 across the business as well. So that was about $75 million or so that would have been in that development projects and other line.
As we go into 2025, $1.83 is the cost at the underlying operations. Now to get up to $1.99, there's been $0.11 on streaming. Gold and silver prices have obviously picked up. We have cut overhead on the divisional side, so that's only $0.05. So across those two elements, that's about $300 million, which is now captured in there.
Previously, it would have been down in the -- it doesn't change where we get to at the end of the line in terms of $3.9 billion, but we think this is a sensible way to present and to give that granularity around the business as well. And it will make more sense as we look forward, because we show cost '26 and then we look forward into 2028, '29, where our copper business is transforming, both in scale and in cost competitiveness around the business.
And whereas the other businesses, zinc, steelmaking coal, energy coal is more steady state over the next 5 years or so. So I think the rest is largely self-explanatory and how that's delivered the outcomes. The progression of $3.9 billion EBITDA in copper will roll into where the spot illustrative, but it's now a $6.7 billion business, slightly higher volume and obviously, better prices.
Prices has clearly helped some of these. The zinc was a $2.3 billion outcome in 2023. It's now $2.5 billion spot illustrative. Steelmaking coal, $1.9 billion. It's now also $2.5 billion. Pricing is helping on that based on spot. And energy coal, $1.5 billion, it's still about $1.5 billion. But you can see prices and variances, and I think it's well described.
If we look then marketing quickly, we will come back to a number of those slides. Gary has mentioned pretty much where we're at in marketing, down a little bit, but it belies the fact that year-on-year, it's actually quite similar across the aggregate of metals and steelmaking and energy. One is plus 4%, one sort of minus 4%. The base period did have $165 million of Viterra earnings. We stopped reporting that during 2025 because of the sale, which completed in July.
So year-on-year like-for-like is actually much closer, but a strong pleasing result, good momentum in the second half, better performance on the energy and steelmaking side as well and a generally good performance. We've got used to those numbers in the 3s. It's still a very solid, very strong, very cash-generating business as well as it converts into cash at the Glencore level as well.
If we look at net debt, we stayed still, good result stand still $8.7 billion of our funds from operation, that's EBITDA less interest and tax. Maybe you haven't had a chance to look through the financials, but I'm sure you will at some point. There was a big tax bill that was due, which we think will be -- we've been funding the U.K. government now for a bit of time. There was a $1 billion payment to HMRC for many, many years and legacy payments, you have to pay everything in advance. That's the way it works until ultimately, there's resolutions running through a U.K. Swiss bilateral resolution process around where it is.
We expect to get a significant amount of that back. They've taken the most conservative, aggressive position around how they want to send the bill and they have assessment rights that says you've got to pay and you've had to pay. And this was the year of reckoning around accumulation of quite profitable years in the oil business, which is where this particularly translate. So there was $1 billion of tax that does come through that FFO line. It's sitting as an income tax receivable. We expect a significant portion of that given the merits and our conviction in potential outcome there. So that's parked for now. We're lending -- we're sort of funding services in NHS here for a while. So we just, sort of, your thanks is well noted.
On the net CapEx, $6.9 billion. We'll look at the slide on CapEx. Investment profile was actually generating. That was primarily the cash portion of the Viterra into Bunge transaction in July, $940 million was the cash.
Working capital had a strong reversal from H1. We're sitting here with an outflow of $1.1 billion. It came back $1.6 billion. I'd say there is a bit of a sugar hit in that. I think some of that will unwind in 2026. So the Q4 price pickup accelerating, particularly into the end of the year, did create more of a receivables payables mismatch in favor of releasing some working capital. In a more normal environment, I would expect that some of that will go back into the balance sheet during 2026, but we'll take it for now.
Distributions and buybacks, cash was $1.2 billion, share buybacks, $2 billion, dividends to minorities, mainly at Kazzinc, was $0.3 billion in potential there.
So how does that translate into distributions and shareholder payments? We've done our normal calculation, $1 billion for marketing, 25% of industrial. That's come to $1.2 billion for the year. And what we introduced as well, and that if you just roll that forward, that says $10.2 billion. Pay out the distribution of $1.2 billion prima facie, you're not quite at your $10 billion. So, that's where we've got deleveraging required, $1.4 billion.
This is all on a pro forma 1st of January since that gets you towards your $10 billion, which is our long-term optimum target. But we did create the surplus capital warehousing, which I think is a neat concept around our Bunge stake, where we've said this is subject to lockup and the like that gets released in July.
This is something that is non-core for the business. We like the business. We think there's clear value. We're working with the team. We're sitting on the Board. We're supportive. They're performing well within their industry as well. But ultimately, this is going to get monetized in some way, shape or form for Glencore shareholders in whatever structure and form that makes the most sense to us.
So that will be something that's going to be part of our thought process over the next year as we take that forward. But there's no reason why we can't already ship some of that out the door in terms of the pre -- sort of preempting and distributing something in anticipation of that eventual monetization. So $4 billion was the stake as of Friday, up already $1.4 billion since the close. So that's performing very well.
Conservatively, we said let's reserve $1.4 billion towards the top graph and getting back to $10 billion. But in reality, we've continued to generate cash. So that $1.4 billion is not needed. But just graphically, you say it makes sense, let's just park it upstairs. But the base business continues to generate and then we're going to bring down our debt levels. So all of the Bunge stock is ultimately up for distribution to shareholders in due course. But for the purpose of just now and prudently, we have topped it up another $0.07, another $0.8 billion to get to our $2 billion and $0.17 at this particular point in time. Even with that more conservative, there's still that $1.8 billion, which we wanted to say that still represents 45% of the remaining.
So even if the Bunge stock for some reason was to decline in value, there is conservative prudent capital management around how we're setting ourselves up in this -- and we did that, and there was form in how we looked already post close to already do the $1 billion buyback that we did last year was to introduce that concept as well.
On the CapEx side, $6.9 billion was the net cash for the particular year. First full year of EVR, EVR is quite capital intensive, particularly during the next year or 2 years, water treatment, some reinvestment in fleet. I think if you look at the detailed sheet, EVR itself is a little over $1.5 billion. It does over the next 3 years, average out to more like $1.3 billion and then longer term tapers down more towards the $1 billion. But year-on-year, it's quite interesting even on the $7.5 billion is what's been capitalized onto the balance sheet, while there's a difference between cash and -- but that's -- there's some leases in there.
There was the big lease that we've called out over at Kazzinc, $249 million that was already there at the first half. We've signed, and this is not a multi-20th. This is sort of a 3- or 4-year lease on a hydro facility that we've been operating Bukhtarma in Kazzinc for decades, frankly. And previously, it was an OpEx and now we start had to capitalize that onto the balance sheet.
But taking out EVR as well as Kazzinc, the rest of the business like-for-like was actually 10% lower CapEx at $668 million. We've shown a bit of a wagon wheel around where some of that CapEx is. There's a slide later on, which shows it by commodity, by category, where some of the bigger spend that's in deferred strip costs, deferred mining, which is really just capitalized OpEx in some sense.
So this is through our big open pit operations. That was the biggest spend, 25% towards the left, that was $1.9 billion. A big part in water treatment, you can see in the sort of one of the blue bars at the bottom. That was $0.9 billion. It's primarily at EVR. They're going through really this year and peaks last year this year and then starts tapering off. There was two very large projects, which Earl is nodding in the background. He's confirming that we should peak out and EVR is going to normalize as we move forward.
In terms of CapEx guidance, '26 to '28, no change from CMD, exactly sort of as you were, 6.5 average the next 3 years. And that's including a lot of copper, including the Alumbrera restart, very capital efficient. There's only $200 million to $300 million there in the Alumbrera restart over the next 2 or 3 years.
We've also got the zinc business. We've got $450 million of the $600 million for the 80,000 the gold extension expansion, which is both in an open pit as well as an underground sense.
So there you've got you sort of -- that business in the absence of that would have been tapering off quite steeply in the next 3 or 4 years. You've got sort of quite meaningful life in the gold deposit, which is kicking in very well at Kazzinc. You can see EVR, $1.3 billion average over '26 to '28, what we expect. That is down from where we were this year.
Copper growth projects, we discussed this at the CMD. There's a real bookend of where this could come as we FID and look to bring some of those projects and what the timing sort of makes sense. So there's a hypothetical you get on with Gary's, sort of, chart that he put up there in December when we go up over $2 billion, that's staggering everything at the earliest possible opportunity.
You would have had $4.2 billion spend in the next 3 years, but you get to your $1.5 billion pretty quickly of -- $1.5 million of copper. With no FID, probably cumulatively spending $500 million just to buy the land and progress and do the studies and everything else. In reality, it's going to be somewhere in between, and we'll shed light on all that as we work through the business. But absolutely no change on that since the CMD.
Also no change in guidance, '26 as you were across all the businesses. This is the chart Xavier, I think, presented at CMD. There's detailed slides 38 to 41, which does shape all the different operations across largely steady across zinc.
Nickel steps up with OD being commissioned later on in this year, you've got your 70 towards 80 as you were across both coal businesses over this particular period. And copper, you've already got, although we're flattish on overall copper, the copper business itself actually goes up from $7.52 to the midpoint of $7.85 because we drop copper out of our zinc business, which was the MICO copper operation that did stop production at Mount Isa in the middle of last year. So we do pick up units this year on the copper.
And then you've got quite a big increase in '27, that's particularly Collahuasi as that snaps back. And Africa business, even more reinforced by the land package that we've now got was in the sort of 250,000, that's across both operations into the 300 -- about 300,000 next 2 years and then up to 360,000 by 2028. But just if you go back to all the CMD slides, it's all in there. There's no change to anything over there.
So in terms of the long layup earlier on around the copper -- copper has got its own slide now on costs, which I think makes sense as we want to roll it forward because it is a business that is in quite a bit of transition growth, and delivery across the business and the cobalt sort of shorter-term impacts that we are having as well. The '26, you can see the $1.85 is now our unit cash cost for determining EBITDA, and that's with nothing below it other than maybe $100 million, just those development projects because we've pushed the streaming impact that $0.24.
The reason we've separated it, it's not $0.24, it's not $0.11, it's not $0.04. If it was still $0.04 or $0.11, we might have kept that still down in the other area, but it was just more in granularity and financial buildup. We thought it made sense and transparency just to bring it all in there. So $1.56 is actually coming out of the assets themselves. That's where we would have been but for the streams. The streams have put $0.24 back in there. The overhead is nothing, divisional overhead. So $1.85, still a good cost structure across the business, generating $6.7 billion of EBITDA, which we'll see later on.
Direction of travel, which we thought is important by '28, '29, that $1.85 is down at $1.18 and $1.08. Why is it there? Now you've got higher production. Look at those numbers on the bottom right. You can see the step-up in copper production, including from the copper department itself. It tapers off more from nickel, zinc, but copper is sort of growing from the high 700s and then you're at 1 million tonnes 2028, '29.
Collahuasi, Africa, those are some of the main contributors, a bit of Alumbrera, some other tonnes, may obviously come through in there. You get the denominator impact. You're starting to get cobalt in our assumptions more normalizing that once you're out of the quota period in '26, '27, we do feel like the market that we haven't assumed that it's just back to kind of cavalier days and as much cobalt comes up. We think it's still going to be tightly controlled to make sure that there's almost sort of a price that works within a band. These are some of the assumptions that we use, which we gave those, I think, in the CMD as well.
And then even at current macros and 1 million tonnes in 2028, your copper business is now a $10 billion plus EBITDA business. If you just run same macros, same through that cost structure in '28, '29, it's the most transformative clearly of all the businesses as we look. And this is not in the never, never. This feels like it's tomorrow, frankly, by the time we start 2028. So that's pretty good.
Even on the streaming side, yes, it dilutes because of a higher denominator. We've also got Antapaccay stream, by 2028, we've delivered certain volumes that we actually step back up in terms of the percentage of spot gold prices that we get. I think we had 20%. There's a step up to 30%, even 10% of all that starts making a reasonable difference at that point.
So I thought useful slide on the copper, it will all figure -- someone's thinking later on. The other -- the zinc, steelmaking coal and energy coal, all fits onto the one slide.
Zinc continues to be a massive cash generator with these sort of byproduct prices and volumes that we have a negative $0.48. It's even lower than the CMD number that we put up here given the ongoing projection of macros, we were $0.26. We're now negative $0.48. So there's going to be a tick-up of earnings coming out of the zinc business.
And from the two sides of the coal businesses, we've got some cost increase because of currency tailwinds. So to give you some perspective, we've rolled forward Aussie dollar, we were at 0.65 early December, we've used 0.705. The South African rand was at 17.04. It's 15.74. It's weakened a bit. Some of these probably have given back some of their sort of impact. Canadian was at 1.40, it's now 1.35. So like-for-like at the CMD in steelmaking, we were at $118.6, -- we're at $122.9 now. So you're up about $4 a tonne across both steelmaking and energy. That's all currency tailwinds.
Not all of that has then found its way into prices. You'd expect some of that to also as cost curves move and respond to some of these prices as well. So Earl and the team, Earl is here, they'll work on making sure that they can continue to manage as efficiently and effectively as they can and deliver some good outcomes.
If we then just finish up, we do our spot illustrative slide in the usual format. I think it's useful 3, 4 times a year. We've given production, no change there. We've given updated costs of the copper business now at $6.8 billion or $6.7 billion after. That previously would have been exactly, as I said, we could have cut that as a $6.7 billion less $0.3 billion. But I think this is just a better way of presenting those numbers as well. You get down to the same number, $6.7 billion. That's increased quite a bit since CMD days with copper price I think it was $10,850 up to closer to $13,000 at the moment.
To put copper in the overall industrial, we're now getting to 50%. And I saw there was someone that put a slide up the other day. When you start being a 50% copper contributor in your EBITDA, you should start seeing ratings multiple and expansion and interest from our business. We're at 46% and growing back to that previous chart. You sort of roll that forward. We're going to be a copper company at some particular point in time in terms of meaningful progression portfolio shift as we go down.
So copper business, zinc has progressed from $2 billion to $2.5 billion. Given progression, again of pricing and metrics, we used gold of $4,200. It's now $4,900. Zinc was $3,000, it's now $3,300. So macro progression. Steelmaking coal is as you aware, $2.5 billion. We picked up sort of $4 in net realization of price and cost of $4 has taken that away.
Energy coal is down because of costs having eaten more into it than the price at the moment. But we're still at a reasonable Newcastle, a business that generates quite a bit of money given -- it's in cash harvesting mode. CapEx is quite efficient in that business as well.
The other has picked up a little bit. Nickel, of course, prices have picked up a bit. So it was $0.4 billion to $0.6 billion. But it's just part of the other bucket and overall $18.1 billion to $7 billion of free cash flow. So a very healthy start and good momentum across all parts of the business.
With that, I'll hand back to Gary to wrap it up.
Thanks, Steve. Very comprehensive. We'll wrap it up just a couple more slides. This seem to work here. Okay.
Our 2026 priorities, it's not only our 2026 priority, but our priority every year and every day is safety. It's what we do. We need to keep our people safe. Zero harm is what our business is about. Unfortunately, during 2025, we had two fatalities. It's two to many, and we continue to work hard through our Safe Work program, through rolling out new initiatives, to reduce harm in our business.
Not to belittle the gravity of having two fatalities. But just to put into a bit of perspective, it is the lowest number of fatalities we've ever had in this business on a fatality frequency rate and on an absolute rate. It's lower than the ICMM average. We continue to trend down from previous years. And I do believe this business will be multiyear fatality-free in the near future.
Operational excellence, it's been maybe a topic du jour for the market on us, particularly given last year's first half performance where we believe that we would. And we believed in ourselves that we would meet our full year production guidance across our key commodities. As you know, we did. That's our second year in a row we've done that, and we've started this year off nicely as well on the production side. We've delivered the discipline, the operational rigor that's gone into it from Xavier and his team, and that focus continues.
Organic growth, a big part of our business, given our pipeline that we have of projects, continue to derisk and successfully progress all these organic projects along the value curve. We've spoken about the copper ones earlier. We also have other projects around our business like BSOC in Queensland, a great zinc business, which is moving into the feasibility stage. So a number of organic growth projects that we have in our business and gives us those levers to pull at the right time when we want to expand.
Balance sheet, Steve spoken a little bit about that. We certainly don't run a lazy balance sheet, but at the same time, we run a balance sheet that is strong through the cycle, being able to generate cash, cash for our shareholders through dividends as well as being able to fund our business going forward. You'll remember the slide that Steve put up in December around our ability to fund our growth projects, organic growth projects, and that's consistent with a very strong balance sheet through the cycle.
And obviously, very important is the value creation for shareholders because that's what we're here for. We want to create value for shareholders. We want to deliver predictable base shareholder returns. You'll have seen our capital distribution framework. We keep to that. We top up where we can around our $10 billion net debt target or around the surplus capital warehouse that Steve's introduced over the last couple of years. That allows continual returns to our shareholders, been very exciting. We've returned over $27 billion of returns to shareholders since 2021.
And lastly, our investment case. We presented this in December, so we'll just go through it again quickly, just to remind everybody where we are. An exceptional portfolio of copper assets. It positions us amongst the one of the largest. Steve talked about another presentation he had seen. I saw the same presentation. A couple of slides look awfully a lot like some of the slides we put up in December. So terrific. It was well received. It's great. We're very happy with that. And we'll continue to see the growth of our projects up to that circa 1.6 million tonnes of copper and potentially higher, depends how we decide to use all the levers that we have in our business to become one of the world's largest copper producers.
At the same time, although copper, a huge part of our business, we still play a strategic role in the energy in needs of today and tomorrow, a high-quality steam coal business. It is the world's leading seaborne steam coal business, no question.
Our EVR business, which many of you here in the room were visited through the course of -- was it last year? I think it was last year. Yes, last year, terrific business run by Mike Carrucan, really high-quality business, multi-decade business, low-cost operations, high-quality coal, looking very good.
Water treatment plant CapEx coming to an end. I'm going to ask Earl to give a detailed presentation on water treatment plants later, but very good business. And given the quality of that material, something that's going to be needed for many, many decades to come.
At the same time, right here in this building, we continue to grow our energy trading business, LNG, carbon power. That marketing business is a strong contributor to the energy earnings in the business.
Our marketing franchise around the world, one of the best across multi-commodities, multi-geographies. For 50 years, we've been doing this. It allows us to arbitrage. It allows us to take opportunities in the market that others don't see because of the fact that we have such a big network. We're across the production side, the third-party side, sales, blending, freight, you name it. It's unique. We're the only major mining company that has this kind of franchise or has this kind of business unit. Year in, year out, it delivers something very exciting for our business. It's underpinned by a number of key strategic marketing assets that help us generate those high IRRs in the business.
The operating structure, it's optimized, it's simplified. Xavier spoke a lot about it when he was here in December, standing at this lectern. Jon Evans spoke about it. And you see how that is actually delivering.
Costs down, production up, safety getting better. So it's all putting -- sending us or putting us in the right direction around having -- making sure that we are a reliable operator, delivering on our guidance.
And then lastly, what does it all lead to? As I said on the previous slide, it's about constant focus on value creation for shareholders. We're here to make money for our shareholders. That's our job. We want to do it reliably. We want to do it safely, and that's what we're doing. Over $27 billion of announced shareholder returns since 2021.
Steve spoken again through the -- how we get to those numbers. There's additional cash generation coming out of the business at spot cash -- at spot free cash flow, the numbers Steve spoke about a couple of slides back, that places us very strongly to be able to continue delivering cash to shareholders while still servicing the organic growth options in our business.
And with that, we'll go to Q&A.
2. Question Answer
Ian Rossouw from Barclays. A couple of questions. Firstly, just I guess, Steve, you briefly sort of touched on it, but obviously, we've seen a big dislocation in copper -- what markets are willing to pay for copper companies versus diversified miners and particularly those with bulk businesses such as coal and iron ore? You've asked your shareholders 1.5 years ago whether they should -- you should spin out the coal business. They said, no. Do you think it's time now to ask them that same question again?
Ian, it's a two-way discussion. It's not only us asking them, it's them asking us or ultimately shareholders own the company. Of course, we own the strategy that we present. We've had zero incoming around an interest to spin off coal. They see the value of the coal business. I just spoke about the quality of both the steelmaking coal and the steam coal business. The fact that the world now is recognizing the importance of having cheap baseload power as we transition over decades. The world recognized the importance of steelmaking coal, and it's not going away for many, many decades to come.
There was a sort of a euphoria back in the early '20s around, well, we can get rid of coal, we don't need coal. And shareholders value the fact that we have these terrific businesses. They're hugely cash generative. They are a bedrock for these $27 billion of returns. And we haven't had any incoming or any questions, in fact, for -- since that decision was made in July '24, I think, August '24. Since that, I can't remember in any engagement with any shareholder an inquiry around spinning of coal. As we've always said, if the shareholders want us to spin off coal or want us to reinvestigate it again, that's up to the shareholders, but we've had zero incoming.
Okay. And then just a follow-up on the DRC. Firstly, just on this MOU with Orion. Do you mind giving us -- could you give us a bit more details on that? Just what the cash flow impacts could be once that is approved?
And then secondly, just on this land access. Obviously, this is 7 years from the previous deal. What makes this different? Some of the terms, I think you -- just how some of the terms changed versus the 2019 deal as well?
I'll let Steve take the first one. I'll do the second one. It's predominantly the same terms. It was -- it's changed structure. This was meant to be an acquisition of land. We paid some money upfront, and then the remainder of the money was going to be paid once we acquired the land. It turned out that Gecamines, despite their best efforts, were unable to sell us the land under some various regulations and issues in the DRC.
So what we've done is we converted to a long-term lease agreement, where the same financial impact instead of paying for the land, we're going to lease the land. It's the exact same financial impact as we would have had if we bought the land. It's the exact same access rights that we have. It's for the life of the mine. So it doesn't expire in any course of the mine. So like-for-like, it's virtually exactly the same. We just won't own the land, we'll lease the land, totally unencumbered, full for our use, no issue with that. So it's effectively the same deal.
So in terms of the -- it's still early days, Ian. I mean, I would generally position it as if there's the EV of number, it's been put out at $9 billion. Obviously, it will be what it is. And ultimately, it also -- there'll be an allocation ultimately between KCC, Mutanda. There's different ownerships clearly, in those businesses. I think our effective realization, monetization, value unlock or creation will be our sort of whatever share of our attributable share of those businesses. So whether, yes, there's debt and equity and the likes.
I think it's too early to know exactly how that's all going to shape up because it is early in the MOU and DD is going to commence in the structuring, and we need to get the accounting right. I mean, there could be changes in how we account for these assets as well. And again, depends on the sort of governance and operating, we'd certainly continue to operate. This system, Orion, is not an operating company, but 40% is not 0. It's a meaningful stake in these businesses and what sort of partnership and what rights and how that will work. So none of that sort of really left the starters gate in any meaningful sense.
So we'll sort of come back and that will sort of shape out both in a cash sense, accounting sense, deleveraging sense, commitment sense. There's a whole -- a lot of wood to chop as someone said the other day on a different transaction.
Jason?
Jason Fairclough, Bank of America. Guys, for a couple of weeks there, a few of us got excited about a $300 billion EV company in the sector. And then it hasn't happened. So I don't know if you're willing to share anything. It sounds like it was value at the end of the day. But I guess the fact that this hasn't happened, how does it change your plan A?
Look, yes, it was value. Ultimately, that's what it came down to. It has to work for both sides. It didn't work for both sides. So that's fine. I mean, it was a good interaction. Simon is a very decent guy to work with, good team at Rio Tinto. So -- but we couldn't reach agreement on value, and that's fine. We look after our shareholders, they look after their shareholders. In many cases, shareholders are the same. But different views, who knows what the future brings.
From our perspective, we could -- this is not a deal that we had to do. A deal that we'd like to do, and we would like to -- we would have liked to do at the time because we did believe we could create a $300 billion mining company, relevant, unbelievable assets, unbelievable projects, unbelievable management teams, that's what we wanted to create.
But without that, Glencore is an unbelievable company. You've seen what we presented today, you saw what we presented in December. We have what we believe is the best pipeline of copper growth projects in the world. Our existing portfolio going up back to 1 million tonnes by 2027, 2028, a terrific copper business. As Steve says, copper is becoming a much bigger contributor on an EBITDA basis in this business than anything else.
Backed up by a terrific coal business. We've spoken at length about the coal business, the best-in-class and biggest and best steam coal -- seaborne steam coal business in the world, what I believe is the best steelmaking coal business in the world, given it doesn't suffer from the royalties that Queensland does and some of the weather conditions that they do -- that they suffer in Queensland. What I believe is the best steelmaking coal business in the world.
And marketing franchise that's second to none. And then we have all the subsidiary businesses, which are real contributors, alloy, zinc, nickel, real contributors. So for many, many decades ahead, the business case for Glencore as a cash generative, returns to shareholder business is incredibly strong, and the re-rate potential continues right there as we develop our copper business.
So this is why this is not a deal that we had to do. It was a deal that would be nice to do on the right terms for our shareholders on the right terms to everybody. We couldn't reach agreement. So we continue running our business. And if another opportunity comes to us where we can create a big mega major miner on the right conditions for our shareholders, we would look at that.
How do you address investor concerns on your credibility in terms of executing on these projects?
The copper projects? I mean, if you go through the copper projects and there's always risk around execution, I agree with you. And every mining company has messed up projects. It doesn't matter who you are. You can name them all. We're included, Rio Tinto, BHP, Anglo, Teck, you name them. We've all messed up projects. So that's what -- that's unfortunately the reality of life.
When you look at our projects, and we went through and we had talked about this before. Fortunately, most of our projects are brownfields. They're expansions of existing operations, whether it be Coroccohuayco, which is just a new pit or in Quechua in the case of the land that we just bought, either Coroccohuayco or Quechua. It's a new pit connected to a concentrated plant a few kilometers away. That is earth digging. It's not new concentrators, it's not new projects.
MARA, same thing, a little further away from Alumbrera, but you know Alumbrera very well. We're restarting Alumbrera. That plant that we -- Steve and I have spent time there. It's in superb condition. We'll start Alumbrera. It's connecting another new pit to Alumbrera, a bit further away, a little bit of civil works, but that's something that is much lower risk than the traditional greenfield project.
Mutanda sulfides, same thing. The business is operating. It's a brownfield expansion of that business. Collahuasi fourth line, well, there's three lines next to it. It's the fourth line expansion of that. So the bulk of our business, the bulk of our growth projects is brownfield, low capital intensity. Of course, we need to make sure that we're skilled, resourced, properly set up to execute on these projects.
The one that isn't is the greenfield, which is Pachon, it's an unbelievable resource, and it has to be built. And there are a number of ways we can do it. We can partner up with another mining company just on the other side of the border, a terrific mining company. We would love to do that. That derisks it materially. We will bring in a partner for their project. And who their partner is, when we choose our partner, how much, that's to be determined. But we would like a partner that has execution skills. And in fact, not only has execution skills, but we'll back up the execution skills where they'll take a disproportionate share of the risk in execution.
And we see companies doing that now. We're dealing with companies in Indonesia, for example, right now, who are prepared to underwrite brand new projects, TAM, capital, quality of the assets. Now we can bring in a partner like that to say, they'll take a disproportionate share of the execution risk in return for certain returns or certain amount of equity or whatever it may be. That's a very nice outcome for us. It massively derisked the project for us instead of saying, "Oh, today, I've got a great project building team, and I'm not going to be like every other single project that's been built in this mining industry before." We're not going to do that.
That's not going to make sense because for us, we've seen what happened. My predecessor hated greenfields, I like them a little bit better, not much better, just a little bit better, but I'm certainly not going to fall into the same trap that every other mining company, including ourselves, has done before, and we will derisk it materially to make sure it gets done properly.
Chris?
It's Chris LaFemina from Jefferies. Maybe a question, Steve, for you. On the working capital variability, you obviously are very sensitive to changes in commodity prices and in a rising price environment. It's impressive that you had a working capital cash inflow in the second half of the year. But first question is how much of that unwinds, you said some of that would unwind over the course of 2026. And then secondly, as the business grows, should we expect working capital to continue to build? And is there anything that you can do to manage that, like account receivable factoring -- or what do you do to stabilize the cash flow impact from working capital in a growing business that's very leveraged to changes in commodity prices, which are highly volatile?
And the -- I mean, working capital is volatile and fine. And many of those sort of initiatives that you said we do, whether it's sort of receivable discounting. And we have payables rough sort of days turnover about 40 days and receivables is about 20 days, so you have a mismatch there. But then that's also a float that's funding longer-term prepays in some other parts of our business where we do target to have a marketing balance sheet that's basically receivables, less payables or non-RMI is basically balanced, and then you have the RMI.
The big impact of working capital in both the growing business higher prices is going to be in RMI, because the other two can largely offset each other within the business itself. So you've seen it happen now from '25 to '28. That was all prices that pushed us up. So then it's not a net debt factor in terms of how we look at the RMI. This is all the hedge, the nickel in warehouses, the copper in warehouses, the oil that's sort of moving from A to B. That's very fungible in a very sort of short period of time. So that, I mean, that's a good problem, if you can even call it that. So that's just a funding. It's not equity capital intensive. It's working capital-intensive. It doesn't have a net debt impact.
We have over $10 billion of liquidity. Our entire balance sheet is largely -- it's pretty much all unencumbered. We would have no problem funding another $5 billion, $10 billion. I mean, just to pick any number, if it was about RMI and working capital, I mean, maybe at some point, you would start saying those sort of sizes are starting to get sort of a little bit big. I mean, fine for us. But just as a sort of third party do you say, well, okay, your RMI is now $35 billion. Is there a level at which the sort of size of the gross and netting is just a little bit too high? Maybe.
But I mean, at that point, our $18 billion of EBITDA is probably $25 billion of EBITDA and your $7 billion is $12 billion, and your share price is 25% higher because you're generating so much cash. So this is a sort of a side show, probably in terms of working capital in the business. And I suspect in that environment, our marketing earnings are also going to be higher and you're proportionately getting the sort of returns on that.
So it's really about watching RMI, funding RMI, I'm pretty confident around receivables, payables that can be managed. You do have volatility within particular periods. That's why I said there was arguably towards the end of the year, I'm not claiming that as permanent. It was a bit of a sugar hit in terms of sort of release. And I think all things being equal, one should assume that, that's going to probably be returned back to the balance sheet in '26. It doesn't have to be, but I think that's probably a prudent projection for '26 is that there's going to be a little bit of working capital going back out.
Matt.
It's Matt Greene at Goldman Sachs. Steve, perhaps one for you. Monetizing infrastructure has become a bit of a theme. I think this report is, and you would have seen in some of those presentations of your peers, we're now seeing absolute numbers and targets being placed on this and some interesting structures out there.
Steve, I asked you at your CMD and your interims, I can't recall which one it was, you said you had private capital banging down the door. On your infrastructure, I think you referred to Collahuasi water treatments. So perhaps hoping third time lucky, can you give us some indication of what you're looking at? Is this -- and I appreciate your peers are looking at non-core asset sales as well. I'd like to isolate this into infrastructure. Are we talking a couple of billion dollars, are we talking $10 billion? Any sort of color you could think about?
I mean, these discussions are clearly more fertile and you're seeing outcomes that sort of translate into concept into actual announcements. And we have had some discussions and some indications. And this is across infrastructure. I mean, of course, I mean, streaming aside, let's park that, there was obviously a big announcement in the last -- in the last 3 days. And some of -- whether it's Collahuasi, whether it's even at EVR, some of the water treatments, some of those sort of facilities. For us -- and I think I said it back in December, we would entertain. We just need to -- they've got to sharpen their pencils. That might have been an expression that I used back then, and I still maintain that.
So we would be a willing partner on the other side on terms that sort of made back to saying, well, widened some bigger M&A discussions has got to be on sort of the economic terms that make sense. So we would be a willing partner on some of these processes for the embedded returns that we're giving up in terms of them being able to sort of annuitize those if it was on better rates for us. So it purely comes down to when there's a price and a structure that makes sense for us, we'll do it.
So would you look at infrastructure within the group, would you say the water treatment is the price?
No. There's a variety of things. It could be all infrastructure. It can be -- the water treatment is a thing. I'm just sort of throwing it out there because there's been a lot of money that's been spent. That's a good jurisdiction. It's Canada, some of the team there have looked at it. You can pick their brains on it, maybe during the coffee break or whatever the case may be, they have looked at some of these things with various other things, Collahuasi.
And again, maybe once it's up and like the desal pump gets up and running, I mean, your pricing also, depending on that risk sharing and these things, and once something is actually up and operating, you tend to get better pricing than during a construction and a risk-sharing phase as well. So maybe it lends itself down the track. But I wouldn't say these are -- I mean, these are certainly multibillion opportunities. I wouldn't say $10 billion, but single multibillion-dollar opportunities.
That's great. And Gary, your opening remarks, you suggested you may put back coal volumes. Could you please expand on what options you're exploring?
Matt, we've always been willing to be supply disciplined in a market that we see is oversupplied. Certainly, you saw what we did in Cerrejon last year, very successful cutback. And we believe, in fact, after that cut back, the market did react.
Was it all us? You'll never know. But we certainly were a catalyst for that reaction or that market or the market reaction.
Now, where we will look at now, we see what's happening in Indonesia. We don't know yet how these cutbacks or export restrictions will work, which qualities will impact. Given that big business we have in Australia, that will be probably your natural one to look at throttling. If we decided to throttle the business, Australia would be something, and it's always on the table for us. Because if we see a particular quality or a particular market is oversupplied, given our size, given our scale, we can pull some of that back if we see the opportunity.
It's more on energy coal versus steel making?
Yes.
Myles.
Myles Allsop, UBS. Just a couple of questions. Maybe for Steve. First of all, this time last year, when we were looking at your illustrative spot free cash flow of $5 billion, it turns out at $1.5 billion. And obviously, coal prices were the big step down, but then copper offset but didn't come through because of cobalt and stuff. When you look at the $7 billion illustrative free cash flow today, where do you see the biggest risks? So whether we actually see that flow into shareholder returns this time next year or whether there's going to be -- kind of is it commodity prices? Is it on the cost side? Where are the risks on that?
I would say, commodity prices, Myles. Back to those sort of variance analysis, it's -- I mean, cost fine. I mean production, of course, you need to sort of get there. Marketing is in the middle of the range there as well. We've been -- generally being there or thereabouts or even increased sort of over the time. This is in a notional interest and tax also. I mean it's actual interest, but tax is a little bit notable.
Last year, we were hit with that tax. So the $1 billion U.K would have not been something I would have necessarily positioned for and put in the number at the beginning of the year last year. So that would have impacted the thinking at the beginning of the year. There's nothing like that, that -- I mean, if anything, some of that could come back. I mean we have a big sort of tax receivables now across a couple of jurisdictions, U.K. being the biggest one, some of that in the next year or 2 years, it's kind of come back. It's not a multiyear sort of proposition. But that's kind of below EBITDA.
CapEx, it's an average of 3 years. I mean, you can sort of have swings and roundabouts a little bit if we've said the sort of $6.5 billion, this year $6.7 billion, and the next year is $6.3 billion. So that takes $200 million out in the short term. But confident around the average. But ultimately, pricing is going to dictate sort of 90% of the variation there.
And maybe just on Kazzinc has been in the headlines as potential sort of simplification, disposal, cash return? What's the latest with Kazzinc? And is the value of the gold getting recognized by potential purchases?
Kazzinc is a very good business. It's a core asset for us. But we've said before that if there's a transaction -- I mean, we have been approached previously on Kazzinc and recently, in fact, on Kazzinc as well. And if there is a transaction that -- and a value, along with sharing in gold earnings, of course, who knows where the gold price will be. I mean it's -- it goes to Steve's point in commodity prices. If there's a sharing of that gold price earnings and it makes sense for us and the value was very good for us, we would think of divesting. But that goes for any other asset in our portfolio. It has to be something that really makes up -- makes us set up and look at it. It's not an asset that we're out there selling or that we want to sell. But if there's a good value proposition around that, gold price sharing and any other marketing benefits that come with it, we would always consider it.
Liam.
First one on Bunge. I know you can't say when or how you're going to get rid of it. But do you think this time next year, you'll still own those shares? And linked to that, do you hope to return the buyback at some point this year?
I would say, it's hard to say, Liam. I mean, it will come down to what opportunities they are. We want to maximize value on for those -- for that stake. The lockup is until July 2. I don't think anyone should expect us out in the market selling these shares on July 3. We will work very closely with Bunge and Greg Heckman. He's running a great business. You see how their share price has reacted because of this transaction that we've done with them. The synergies are playing through. Steve pointed out, I think those shares are probably mark-to-market in our book today value to $4 billion.
So we would do something that made sense at the right time for both Glencore and for Bunge, whether that's this time next year, if it's in our books or not. Don't know. We're in no rush to sell it. We're in no rush to exit the stake. What we have said is over the short, medium, long term, it doesn't make sense for Glencore, a mining commodities marketing company, to own 16.5% of Bunge. That doesn't make sense. It's a terrific company, terrific valuation. We want to be able to return that to shareholders in a disciplined and correct manner, and we will choose the way we do it in the timing to maximize that value.
And then just a follow-up on Collahuasi QB. It's a very -- potentially very capital-efficient project. Any progress, changes in thinking on that?
Potentially, we do have our own route that we can go. We've discussed that we've now approved the feasibility study for the fourth line. We've yet to receive a proposal from Anglo. So until that, we continue down the road of the fourth line.
Or from AngloTeck. I don't know the other piece yet.
Alan?
Alan Spence from BNP Paribas. A couple of questions on the dividend. Interested to hear on the top-up portion of it, why you elected to make it a special dividend rather than a buyback? And then as we think about that surplus account, should we consider Century Aluminum being in there to be wound down in due course?
I'll take the second one first. Century, I mean, Century is a very good company, and we want to retain a meaningful stake in Century. We are not looking to sell out to Century. So whether we stay at where we are or we move around a little bit, that's to be seen. But certainly, we wanted to retain a meaningful stake in Century.
As I said, great business, Jesse runs a good business there. They're building a new smelter in the U.S. Midwest premium is very high, generating cash, good business. So I don't think you could expect us to sell out -- you wouldn't expect -- we were not looking to sell out our entire shareholding in Century.
With regards to the top-up and buybacks versus cash, we've done a lot of buybacks, and we get a lot of feedback from our shareholders, and we've taken on the feedback from our shareholders. And we've tried to, over time, get to a position where we're trying to please most of the shareholders most of the time. You can't please all the shareholders all the time. We all know that.
And we're trying to get, as Steve rightly puts it a Goldilocks solution. We've done quite a significant amount of buybacks over the previous years. Shareholders, some shareholders have sort of said, well, hold on, don't forget us. We want a bit of cash. So we've tried to pivot and get to a bit of a cash position now. But buybacks remain firmly on the table for us. We're just trying to get to that Goldilocks solution to please as many shareholders as we can.
Dominic?
Could I just ask you about the conversations you're having with Orion and the U.S. International Finance Corp.? Does that open up other opportunities for you within the group? Are you having conversations there about -- that they're coming in at different partners at different assets? So how -- does that open up a broader future relationship with the Glencore Group?
Yes, it does. I mean I was in D.C. to sign this MOU 2 weeks ago. At the same time, we had discussions about Project Vault, which we're part of. We had discussions about a number of other opportunities with the U.S. government and with various other counterparts.
Certainly, the U.S. is very active in doing -- in getting involved in critical minerals around the world. Where there's an opportunity that makes sense for us, a number of them are coming to us. I had a couple of calls from someone yesterday on a new opportunity. If it goes somewhere, great, if it does and doesn't. But there's certainly the flow of opportunities, the flow of ideas, whether it be Bolivia, whether it be Peru, whether it be Venezuela, whether it be DRC, whether it be Kazakhstan, we're seeing a big flow of opportunities, and we'll pick and choose the ones that make the most sense.
Ben?
Question -- well done on the land access, finally getting it. Just wondering how much of the deal with the Orion, how much with the U.S. was a factor in helping that getting it across the line finally?
Zero.
Zero. Okay. And then also land access, you mentioned you've got options at Coroccohuayco, MARA. Have you -- is land access issues totally sorted or what are the mechanisms there?
Yes. The gating items from MARA is not land. The gating item is environmental approvals and various other approvals around and getting our trade or studies have betted down around how we're going to access the tunnel. Are we using trucks, are we using conveyors, all those sorts of things. Those have progressed quite a lot in the recent months. We'll be bedding that down, I think, in probably the next 6 or 7 weeks, then we can progress to feasibility. That allows us then to have a definitive application around those environmental permits and other permitting that we need to be able to start that construction.
And get the one community over the line. There's one community.
On Century, they are a JV partner in one of the big greenfield projects in the U.S. and the size of the project is vastly disproportionate to their market cap. So in terms of funding, and is that a consideration in your -- consideration of the stake sale in Century? Or is that completely an independent decision?
Independent decision.
For Century? And just...
I mean, I'm not across the details, but I don't think that they're going to be committing huge amounts of their own equity to this project, from what I understand, but...
And then just a clarification on the streamings around Antapaccay. Does it include the Coroccohuayco and Quechua sort of lease areas or it doesn't?
It does not on Quechua. It does on Coroccohuayco. But by the time that, that's in play, we would have then stepped up. So I said one of the slides I sort of spoke to the fact that we would have delivered a certain number of ounces already at that point, and we will at least step up in terms of our participation in the spot market. But yes on Coroccohuayco, no on Quechua.
And then just lastly on streaming in general. Obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, the deal was not great at -- but then does this kind of put you off streaming altogether? Or is there like a time where you say, "I just want higher participation, and I'm willing to stream a small proportion as long as I get a meaningful upside from the gold or silver streams in assets like a zinc in the future."
There's so many things in hindsight, one can say good decision, bad decision. I mean we've done some fantastic things and some things you say that in hindsight. Obviously, at the time, it was fine. I mean, I'm not sure people would have quite projected gold and silver necessarily to come where they are. That's not our core business. It was having sold a -- effectively a gold or a silver mine, what's Glencore doing in gold and silver back in 2015, '16 when there was kind of the rest of the business and what looked like a pretty sort of good price in terms of sort of discounting at the time in hindsight, whatever.
But you can point to parallel sliding doors where we had that money and then what have we done with that money, and how you invested and the whole Bunge sort of transaction and Viterra and that did its thing and then you bought MARA, you bought out minorities in MARA, and you were doing all sorts of things with the money on the site. So okay, you got to run two different parallels.
So I think we've got enough streaming on the books at the moment. I think back to Matt's point, I'd probably rather do the infrastructure plays for now. So that's probably where we've sort of prioritized the more kind of sort of non-traditional financing revenues.
Alon?
Alon Olsha, Bloomberg Intelligence. Just firstly, on the DRC, it sounds like the government there is looking to enforce rights around local ownership. If you could just talk a little bit about that and what this deal with Orion, if that mitigates any risk around that? That's the first question.
Yes, Alon, we don't believe that -- we don't believe that impacts us. That's for new mines and new concessions issued post the new mining code from 2018, 2019, I think it is. Ours is existing operations from before, so it doesn't impact us.
Okay. And then another kind of more strategic question. You've spoken about the need for scale in mining, kind of to become more relevant, a big index representation and all the benefits that brings. But it also brings kind of a lot more complexity as well. Not every deal is going to bring the kind of operational synergies investors are looking for. So kind of how do you think about the trade-off there in terms of scale and relevance, which was historically not really a motivation to do big deals, but has become now, versus the kind of complexity and downsides of bringing two businesses together that may not have the level of operational synergies to kind of justify some of the premiums?
Yes. I think if I just look at our experience recently, operational synergies are important, but they're not the only source of synergies. We spoke about our marketing business, for example, the best-in-class marketing business. That provides meaningful synergies across businesses. Whoever we did -- if we ever did a transaction with somebody or we did a transaction, that's meaningful value creation. And that's not necessarily at the expense of a customer. That is just the way we run our marketing business, which just optimize logistics, optimize lending, arbitrage opportunities, just taking advantage of dislocations. That's not going to a customer and saying, okay, now we have more volume, we want to charge you higher price. It's not that. It's certainly not that.
And given what we do in marketing, so many mining companies, they trumpet that their operational excellence. Today, we trumpet it a bit of ours. They trumpet the operational excellence. But what I do see. And from my experience sitting in joint ventures with other mining companies, you can sit through mine numbing presentations for hours, learning about how wall can be adjusted by 1/4 of a degree and it's going to save you $0.04 of BCM. But nobody pays that kind of attention in the rest of the industry to marketing.
That's what we do, where we can save sense on freight, sense on logistics, sense on port use, sense on storage, blending opportunities, having qualities in the right areas of the world. We bring that to any other mining company. They do not have that in their businesses. Yes, they sell their product. And in some cases, they said it reasonably well, not always that well. So that's a huge part of synergies.
There's another part of synergy. And I mean if you look at AngloTeck, a big part of their synergies is just the fact that you've got two head offices and two this and two that and two HR managers and all those sorts of things, operational head office or overheads, procurement, all these sorts of things.
So there's no -- if I look at our recent experience, operational synergies are not the big ticket item. It's in fact, everything else where you can do things better, you can buy trucks better. You can sell your product better. You can have better -- less head offices, all those sorts of things or less offices, less people, less things and do things properly. So I think that it's not about -- you have to have two mines next to each other that we can integrate, and that's why we should do a big M&A transaction. No, there's huge amounts of synergies that come stand-alone even with very little operational synergies.
So to me, I still think it makes sense, comes with a rerate, synergies plus a rerate and a rerate on those synergies, I think there's still opportunity.
Patrick.
Patrick Mann, Investec. Just one clarification on the Orion investment. I'm assuming that goes to Glencore, it's not primary proceeds being injected into the Africa copper business. So I just wanted to double check.
And then the second question is across the industry, we're seeing companies approving or putting on the fast track path copper projects. At what point or is there a risk we get to the point where the industry sort of runs out of capacity to build these projects or at least we start to see capital inflation because there's just not enough EPCM, there's not enough concentrator components and parts and the engineering skills required. Is that a risk that you're seeing on the horizon? Or is it too early to say?
Certainly, for us, we don't see that risk at the moment, too early. As I said, take MARA. MARA doesn't need to concentrator components. It needs someone to drill a hole through a hill. That's what we need. That's fine, that we can do. Same for Coroccohuayco, doesn't need -- yes, it's an upgrade of the plant, but it's not -- we're not building a brand new plant. You could say the fourth line does need a new concentrator. We're only starting that feasibility now, but we've seen no headwinds around procurement of being able to bring in the skills or the plants and equipment.
I was thinking more around Argentina, you've sort of got this copper rush with 3D and everybody piling in at the same time.
Yes, of course. I mean, BHP will build the Vicuna district and First Quantum will build their operation Taca Taca, and we'll build ours. We're approaching it, as I said differently. We're looking at derisking it materially. And those issues that you raised, if they become issues at the time, of course, a part of that decision process for us around who we choose as a partner and how we execute on the project.
Okay. With that, we'll finish the Q&A and pass back to Gary for closing remarks.
I don't really have too many closing remarks. I just want to say, thank you very much. I appreciate the questions. We're always available. Martin and the team is available for follow-up questions. Otherwise, thank you very much for your time.
Glencore — Analyst/Investor Day - Glencore plc
1. Management Discussion
Good afternoon, good morning. Thank you for joining us wherever you are. Welcome to Glencore's 2025 Capital Markets Day.
Firstly, a bit of housekeeping. As you will have seen, there are quite a few slides. So we'll try and get through the slides first, and we'll call for Q&A at the end of the slides.
So I'll hand over to Gary to introduce the team.
Thanks, Martin. Welcome. Good to see everybody here. Thanks for those who are here in person, those who have joined us on webcast. Thank you very much for joining. This is our first Capital Markets Day since 2022. We're going to have a number of presenters today. Normally, you just see mainly Steve and I. We're going to have a couple -- a whole bunch of others joining us. Xavier Wagner, who many of you know, our Chief Operating Officer; Jon Evans, Industrial Lead for our Copper Department; Martin Perez de Solay, CEO of our Argentina business; Christoff Kühn, Head of Major Projects and particularly focused on the Argentinian copper projects; Steve, you know; Jyothish, I think you all know as well, who recently has taken over as Global Head of Marketing for Metals and Bulks; and Andrew Fikkers, our Senior Coal trade and Analyst, who will be presenting on the coal market.
We've also got a few others in the room, just particularly to call out Maxim, who's -- Kolupaev, who now runs our oil and gas business, our marketing business out of London as well. Colin, who runs the industrial side of that; and Warren Blount, who's our CFO.
And you'll see some other familiar faces around. We'll also have some guest appearances from Shah Chaudari on the technical side in Copper; Michael Farrelly, who's our CFO of our Copper department; and other Glencore people, you know [ Marc as well, Sean, Sarah, Charlie, Anne ] and the team who are here. So with that, we kick straight off.
I'm going to go to the whole slide. Okay. So what is Glencore's strategy? What are we going to do? Who are we? We have a clear vision about what we are and what we want to be, and we have the right elements to get there. So this is how it all fits together. We're a diversified miner across critical minerals, across energy needs and a world-class marketing business.
Our portfolio, in particular in copper is world-class. We have a base business of terrific producing assets and a best-in-class in what we believe are the best portfolio of projects in copper to grow this business.
Aligned with that, we have a coal business. The coal business supports the energy needs of today as we transition in the world. It's a high-quality, long-life business and associated with that is our steelmaking coal business. Steelmaking coal business supporting infrastructure needs going forward, both in decarbonization and general global growth. Our steel coal making business being low cost, high-quality, terrific geography, many, many decades of resources.
And pulling it together as the third pillar in that value creation strategy is a best-in-class marketing business, a marketing business that not only supports the assets that I've spoken about, these unbelievable copper assets and these great coal assets, but also provide to our customers services using our own set of marketing assets as well as levering off some of the other assets in our business like our zinc business, our alloys business, our nickel business, et cetera.
So this presentation is more focused on copper, and we're going to spend quite a bit of time on copper, in particular where we sit now today in copper, producing about 850,000 tonnes of copper this year, rebasing back up to 1 million tonnes of base copper production as we were a few years ago. And then the growth beyond that. And the growth beyond that really is going to be big. We're going to grow in terms of the what we can get to in terms of growth is approximately an incremental 1.5 million tonnes of long life annual production for many, many decades to come.
Moving across to the right, where we -- a key part of our business is our coal business. And why do we keep coal and why do we need coal? Well, it's not just because our shareholders said we should keep coal. We believe we should keep coal. It makes a lot of sense to keep coal. Look, if shareholders change their minds, they don't want us to keep coal, we can always re-look at it. But as we sit today, we're going to talk a little bit about the energy mix and the requirements for fossil fuels going forward. We believe there's a strong case for particularly high-quality energy coal for many decades to come, and we'll present you with some of the numbers and some of the facts.
On the coking coal side, that does set us apart from many of our other peers, where as I said, we're in the best geography for our -- in terms of where our steelmaking coal business is, low quality, very high-quality material and very long reserve life. Coking coal is needed, steelmaking coal is needed for the infrastructure needs of today and for tomorrow. And these businesses throw off huge amounts of cash flow through the cycle. Even in low coal price environments, we're seeing -- we're still seeing a lot of cash flow coming out of these businesses, which is underpinning the value we're creating for shareholders and giving that money back to you.
The third big pillar, of course, is our marketing business, a franchise that's over 50 years in the making, and it's one that simply would not work without the asset base or the marketing assets that go with it. It's a very high ROE business, something that we've been very successful with through the years. You've seen our track record since we went public, we put out a range, we always meet that range whether we're middle end of the range, the last few years top end of the range. It's been a very good ROI business for this company. And it gives us the necessary diversification using our marketing assets, using the commodities or the mines and industrial production that we have, both in copper and coal but as well as the other commodities we have to be able to service our customers. And the service of our customers, and Jyothish will talk a lot of that later, allows us to extract value throughout the value chain.
So that's the 3 big pillars. To achieve that, we've optimized and simplified our operating structure, which has promoted accountability and delivery. Now yes, we have had criticism from you guys in the room and many around our delivery of production numbers and our ability to deliver. We have changed. We haven't been sitting on our hands. We haven't been doing nothing. We've made substantial changes in this business. And Jon and Xavier will take you through some of the changes that we've made that allows us to be very confident that what we present today is what will be delivered.
And what does all that lead to? It leads to what we've always been here for, which is constant focus on long-term value creation for our shareholders. We've returned nearly $25 billion or more than $25 billion over the last 5 years to shareholders. And we believe with the market and our business set up like it is around these key strategies and this portfolio that we have that we'll be able to continue to provide great returns to our shareholders.
So moving down a little bit into some of the detail and why we're so confident in where we are. On the left-hand side, this is a slide that everybody would have seen in some shape or form. This is around the energy transition in the world and how much money has been spent. We know everybody has different estimates, but we know it's in the trillions and trillions of dollars. That transition is fed by our critical minerals that we have in our business. That transition is fed by the copper, the cobalt, the nickel, the zinc, the lithium, which we trade, all those sorts of things. A key part of the -- the key part of the growth that underpins why these operations and why this business is necessary.
On the other side, though, let's look at fossil fuels. And everybody says, "Oh, coal is dying. We don't need coal. What do we need coal for?" We look at fossil fuels across the business or across the decade. Since 2024 to down the 20 years, fossil fuels have lost 7% of the market share. That's true. But the fact is the world has spent nearly $10 trillion and the use of fossil fuels have gone down from 85% to 79%, that's all $10 trillion has done. And when you look at it on an absolute terms, the past has grown. So in actual fact, the use of absolute units of fossil fuels have gone up from 2004 to 2024. And thinking forward, you want to go build a nuclear power station today. We know Hinkley Point, whatever it's called here in the U.K., you're 20 years away at least. You want to build a gas-fired power station, you've got a 5-year wait time for a gas turbine.
So the need for fossil fuels, in particular high-quality steam coal in today's world is absolutely required. And that's where we feel strong, and Andrew will take you through it, our strong conviction that the demand for fossil fuels, in particular coal will remain for a period to come.
Now going forward, that $10 trillion, to be able to achieve what the world says they need to achieve is all of a sudden $300 trillion. That's how much needs to be spent on the energy transition. We've all been to see the numbers, the number of passenger vehicles, the number of solar panels, the number of wind turbines, whatever it may be, they need the commodities we have. It cannot happen without the copper, the cobalt, the nickel, the aluminum, zinc, vanadium and even the steelmaking coal. It cannot happen. And when you see that kind of spend to come, the need for these are absolutely critical.
Another graph on the left that most will have seen, this is the supply gap in copper to what is needed. Now different estimates around, this estimate is a 27 million tonne deficit by 2050. We've seen others that are much higher than this, others a little bit lower than that. But needless to say, when you look at this graph and you've got the existing production that we have in the world today. The announced and probable and possible projects that are coming on, the deficit continues to grow. And this is why we need the copper.
Now many people will say, oh, Glencore, you've told us you're going to build and you've told us you're waiting to see $12,000 copper or whatever it is that you're going to say, you're not really serious about building copper mines. You talk a good game but you don't really do it. Why today is a difference? Why today can we stand in front of you and tell you today, yes, today, we are going to build the copper mines. And it's not only because of the graph on the left, because that graph on the left has been around for a long time. What we consistently said is we want to see that, that deficit that is playing out of the market is being translated into price, consistent price increases that allows for the profitability of these mines not to cannibalize our existing business because we want to keep our existing businesses as profitable as possible, but feed in tonnes into a growing deficit to allow us to maximize value, both on our existing base business and our projects. That's what we want to do.
And what's given us comfort? Let's look at the graph on the right-hand side. You can see from 2022 beginning or middle of 2022, somewhere around beginning of 2022 to middle of 2024, prices weren't indicating that this deficit was there. Prices were showing that, in fact, the trend is going in the other direction. We did not have the comfort to be able to sanction and bring mines into production in a market that we saw the trend going the wrong way. The price was telling us something different. Now we don't sit on our hands and do nothing in that period. We were consolidating, buying things like MARA and doing a whole lot of work in our business. But we wanted to see price starting to reflect the fact that this deficit is coming.
Since the middle of 2024, we've seen prices start to grind higher, every year going a little bit higher. We don't like the spikes because we know spikes because of things in the market which are maybe unnatural. We want to see a continual [ ground hire ] of pricing to give us that comfort that we will reach that $12,000, $13,000, $14,000 because you don't turn on a copper mine in 5 minutes. It does take time. So since the beginning or middle of '24, or I think it's April 24, we've now started to see a trend change and a step change in copper pricing. And over that period of time, we've seen it. Buyers are getting used to it. There are no -- we do not see much demand destruction. We do not see buyer strikes. That's giving us the comfort to say, now is the time to sanction these projects. These projects have come in the market, the copper can come into the market and not cannibalize our existing projects and continue to feed in the deficit shown on the left.
So delivering our priorities, what are our priorities and the key priorities. And this is where the team will talk you through, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slide. Operational excellence, we've heard the market, we've heard you. We know there's some concerns. We made structural changes in our business. There are reasons for some of them. We're not yet to explain all the reasons in that and the likes. But we've made some changes, and you'll hear from the likes of Jon and Xavier around what we've done to ensure that there will be reliable and safe delivery and performance of our targets.
Portfolio optimization, we'll go into in a second, and derisking the copper growth, that is really why we're here today. And that's why we're going to do a deep dive later on with the team going through each of our projects and our existing operations to show you how we've derisked this and that what we're telling you today will and can be delivered.
Okay. So as I said on the previous slide, we'll go back into portfolio optimization. Since 2021, we've sold approximately 35 different assets or shut down different assets in this business, assets that either are not fit for scale, subpart, didn't fit in with our strategy or was a good ability for us to be able to recycle capital. So we brought in nearly $6.5 billion through key disposals. We've disposed of things like Viterra, Cobar and Mopani and a few others. And associated with that, we've also streamlined our operating structure and our leadership. And that's where Xavier will get into. Now that $6.3 billion, some of it has gone back to shareholders, some of it has been invested back in the business. But net-net, the business is better and bigger as a result of these disposals.
We've enhanced our portfolio materially buying EVR, and I've spent some time talking about it already, high-quality steelmaking coal business. We bought out the rest of MARA, which will be a key pillar in our copper growth strategy. And Jon and -- Martin and Christoff will talk about that. We have created a new range joint venture with Teck. We bought a Tier 1 alumina refinery in Brazil with a bauxite operation. And importantly, we bought back a lot of our own Glencore stock at what we believe is cheap. If what we saw last week at BHP, we're bidding 25% premium for Anglo for their suite of copper assets. We're buying up suite of copper assets much cheaper at a discount versus paying premiums for, in some cases, the very same assets.
Cost efficiency, we announced early in the year a $1 billion cost savings, over 300 different initiatives. We can update you a little bit on that, but that's going very well. More than $0.5 billion already implemented by the -- or will be implemented by the end of this year, and very confident to achieve at least that $1 billion by the end of next year.
Okay. So delivering our priorities and derisking the copper growth. Market fundamentals, I've spoken about. That is why we're here today, the market fundamentals have changed. We've seen a step change in how things are, and that gives us the comfort now through pricing and through demand and -- or supply-demand deficit to be able to bring these copper projects in.
Copper -- country risks are improving. Not only are they improving but having a diversified model across Peru, across Chile, across Argentina, across the DRC, that gives us risk mitigation as well. But we've seen improvements in Argentina. We've seen U.S. policy changes, which make things a lot better. Even the DRC have taken proactive measures around cobalt. That's a pro-investment sign for us to be able to continue running those operations and growing those operations.
As a result of those two, our project returns have improved enough so that we can sanction projects. And we built a team of people, and we continue to build on that team to be able to develop these projects on time and on budget in a professional way. So this is what you'll hear more about during today from the team. I'm not going to go through each one of these, only to say this covers our copper portfolio, best-in-class assets, both base business and projects across Peru, Chile, Argentina, DRC and NewRange in the U.S. This is what you're going to -- this is what you're here for today, and this is what you're going to hear about.
This is where we are. This is our current base business and what it looks like. Small dip in 2026, that's as a result of the closing of the MICO underground in particular, and then we kick back up into the 2026 -- back to our base business of 1 million tonnes. As you've heard, I think Duncan spoke a lot about it at the Goldman Sachs presentation or, what was it, the fire side that he had at LME week. He spoke about the challenges we're having at Collahuasi. We're not going to reventilate that. Jon and Michael will talk about Collahuasi, but there has been some challenges around Collahuasi, which we come back out of from 2027, 2028, and that brings us back up to our 1 million tonne a year based business. In fact, come the fourth quarter of this year, we're already running at an annualized rate of 1 million tonnes. You know the first half of the year was obviously much lower, and we always said the second half would be -- or production will be heavily weighted towards the second half. So we'll be back up to a 1 million tonne a year base business, largely as a result of the recovery of Collahuasi by 2028.
And then where do we go from there? Alumbrera restart. We announced the Alumbrera restart this morning. Alumbrera operated very successfully for many years in Argentina, even under Peronist government. And we announced that this morning, it's a low capital investment as a stand-alone business or stand-alone investment makes a lot of sense for us, higher IRRs. But the key part of Alumbrera, it readies us for the start of MARA.
We spoke about Collahuasi. They're investing in a low-grade stockpile leaching, that will add extra volume to -- for the long term, taking all the low-grade stockpiles and additional low-grade material that comes out of any mining and be able to mine that for a period up to 2045.
The Peru districts around Antapaccay and the extended district, in fact, is a huge growth area for us. And this is something we spend a lot of time on, very brownfield. We have existing infrastructure. These are satellite pits that just connect into existing infrastructure, upgrades, a huge amount of value and volume that are coming or that will come out of our Peru operations.
MUMI sulfides, very low capital intensity. In fact, it makes so much sense that we're even considering stopping the oxides earlier and going into the sulfides a bit earlier to be able to capture the value that we get out of MUMI. Then we bring on MARA, Agua Rica. That is the -- that will be effectively the extension of Alumbrera, 36 kilometers away. Christoff and Martin will talk you through that.
NewRange, JV with Teck, massive resource. We haven't defined the full resource. That's the first part of NewRange, which is the smaller part, which is the southern part of the resource that as you go further north, the grade improves and the ability to extract additional tonnage increases materially.
Collahuasi new concentrator plant, that's the fourth line. That will add significant value, significant tonnage, low cost, very high grade ore as you know.
El Pachon is next. Now we're at the top of Everest. I don't think we have enough space in the graph to see the top of it. So that's where we sit, Pachon. And then beyond that comes the next stage of NewRange, I spoke about the deposit further to the north. So we continue to grow this business, and we have multiple levers we can pull. This is not all dependent on one mine, one operation, one country, one process. This is multiple levers we can pull to be able to continue growing. Beyond that, the Antapaccay district has further growth opportunities. These are not [ pie in the scar ] stuff. This is stuff we know about, it's there, it's achievable, and it's just going to be bolt-on to existing infrastructure.
So as we stand here today and we have our growth opportunities and multiple levers we can pull, we're not going to sit here and tell you where we're going to go and build all at the same time, another 2 million -- or have a business of over 2 million tonnes of copper. Now it's possible we do. It is possible that we do because if the market needs it and we can derisk it and the price is there and the way we can do it is possible. But to stand here today and say we're going to build all of these at the same time and deliver them all on time, on budget. We've said we're going to target 1.6 million tonnes of production by 2035. That is our target. We want to get there.
Would it be -- could it be a little bit more? Yes. Could it be a lot more. Yes. But I think it's fair to say, given the amount of levers we can pull and the optionality we have in this portfolio across multiple countries, a 1.6 million target is probably reasonably conservative and certainly very achievable with the kind of headroom that we have.
So there, it is on the page as well, a little bit more detail. You will go through this. Dates of FIDs, dates of first production, some capital, some long-term sort of LOM production numbers, average production numbers. I'm sure you'll all go through this after the presentation. But that gives you as much information as you can get here. There's a lot more that can come, but this will give you a flavor of what the toolbox that we have to be able to bring the extra tonnage on this.
In terms of cost, very, very low cost capital efficiency. If you look across the business or across the portfolio, our brownfield projects are very low just about $13,000 a tonne, very low comprared to industry. And again, there's not one other -- maybe sulfide is very low and Antapaccay district very low, but there's not one that really outweighs the other and why we can pull the trigger on any of these in the order that we want. And even our greenfield, the Pachon District or the Pachon operation, despite the fact, in fact, it's actually quite beneficial that it's in an area that doesn't have much around, it allows us to develop it without the constraints of existing communities or whatever it may be is a relatively low capital intensity for a greenfield operation.
So the pathway. By 2029, we will be the fourth biggest copper company in the world. And by the time we get to 2035, and our 1.6 million tonnes of copper, we will be the biggest copper producer in the world. And that's excluding any additional optionality above that 1.6 million tonnes. Importantly, though, on the right-hand side of the graph, we will be in the low end of the cost quartile, first quartile cost producers of copper, the biggest copper producer in the world.
And with that, I'm going to turn you over to Xavier.
Okay. Thank you, everybody. Good morning, and thanks for joining us. I'm going to walk you through some of the changes that we've undertaken over the last few years within the business, and really trying to give you a sense of why we think delivering that from a production and a project perspective actually is achievable, notwithstanding anything Gary said.
The first slide that you see up there really talks to an improvement in bedrock processes. And why do we talk about this? There's a lot of focus on the structure and how the business works. But really, this is the secret sauce. These are the fundamentals any operating business should have. We've taken these processes over the last few years, really integrated them.
So we have a consistency of approach in terms of how all of these things work. We get better visibility of the risks and the resourcing that's required to deliver those plans. And we can see where the opportunities are. So ultimately, we can improve the underlying quality of these plans. There's the usual stuff in there around business planning, but also all the work we've done over the last few years and things like tailings, our approach to indigenous peoples and so on and so forth. We have a very robust performance review process across each of the business that we run on a quarterly basis that measures a number of performance points across all those elements in there. And of course, we have an assurance process, which underpins that to make sure that we're not just drinking the Kool-Aid.
When you look at it from a structure perspective before the reorganization, which I'll talk you through in a minute, what you can see there really reflects the classic Glencore federated model to running the business. Each of these commodity departments are structured slightly differently, and we don't have really a consistent approach to how we run each of those departments. We're not clear that we have the appropriate span that reflects the right level of work across each of those assets. And it's a structure. We had to play on mind, what is the right structure that lends itself to the ownership and accountability to give us the quality of the decision-making that we need? And we saw an opportunity to kind of improve that to allow us to fulfill our ambition.
If you go forward to where we are today in terms of the new structure, you can see, obviously, what we've done is simplified it dramatically. Ultimately, what we want to see is that the operating businesses operate and the bold is going bold, effectively that new horizon that we've just spoken about. And what that does is it drives focus on the right issues, importantly by the right people.
What you can see in there is obviously the prominence of Argentina, taking that out from copper and really elevating it to the same level as some of those other departments, and Martin will talk through that a bit later in terms of how we've done that. And then off on the right, you can see what we call, special projects. These are really areas that need dedicated management bandwidth to make sure that we take a structured approach to elaborating the value that's within that portfolio. The list is there. You see previously Pasar, [indiscernible] there as well, which we subsequently sold.
I think just as you look at that restructure, some thousand roles have been made redundant through that process. That's through removing duplication, capturing regional and local synergies and getting more focused assurance across the whole business. So that's everything from monitoring, checking, validating and so on and so forth. These are above asset overheads that we're talking about in terms of those roles.
If I go to the next one, this really kind of just explains what we did to try and inform how that model is going to work. Copper, Jon will talk a bit more in -- later on today to kind of demonstrate how optimizing that structure allows them to achieve better results, safe, reliable production. I think with nickel, as that portfolio has changed, we've come to the end of some mines, mine life and so on. We put KNS into care and maintenance, didn't have the scale to carry and implement the type of systems we need. And so we consider the scale of that business and what is the best way to ensure we get the performance that we need from it.
Similarly, in zinc, as we've had assets come to the end of their life, we've sold pieces of that business off. We could see that there's natural synergies between that zinc business and the nickel department, both in terms of geographical location, but also with the fleet of metallurgical processing assets that loathe in both of those departments, and we needed to capture those, hence, putting the nickel and zinc apartments together like you saw on the previous slide.
We spoke a bit about the collection of distracting sort of noncore assets. And ultimately, they have real requirements in terms of important stakeholder engagements. They have an opportunity set that potentially comes from business development opportunities for those sites. And then also, we've got revenue-generating businesses in there as well, such as Glencore Technology and XPS, which does a lot of sort of work both internally for us and outside to the market.
Projects, obviously, a key opportunity for us and delivering those projects, and Martin and Christoff will talk a bit later about how it is both in terms of the structure that we've put in place for that, and ultimately, putting the structure in place really gives us the opportunity on the platform by standardizing and harmonizing how each of these departments work to go and capture additional savings through efficiencies and through the way we operate. Ultimately, the idea is to take accountability and put it at the right place in the organization. And that's really what we've done. I'll talk a bit about what that means for the business on the next slide.
Really, once we've settled that structure, we wanted to leverage it to try and deliver the synergies and the savings and the reliability that we expect to see within the business, everything from how the departments function and all the way down to our group functions at the bottom so that we're not managing to the lowest common denominator, but that consistency of approach allows for repeatability and allows for consistency of results that we want to see. Ultimately, fixing the structure, however, it doesn't get us all the way there. We can have the right people in the right structure. It's how people work that makes the difference.
We looked across the business and try to determine where is it that we do, see evidence of this reliable repeatability that we expect within the business. Our coal business really demonstrated -- has demonstrated that over a long period of time. And what you see on the slide here reflects the acquisition of a number of businesses over a long period of time. There's also a number of projects, which we have built very successfully over a long period of time across that business. And we effectively looked at this and studied it and said, how is it that the coal department went through a process of integrating each one of these businesses as they went through that acquisition so that it performed in line with, A, the expectations, but B, could operate consistently with the existing business as these new businesses came in place.
What we did was, and this was really developed from -- initially in our Coal Australia business, but ultimately through the coal business. And I won't go through all of those. There's a set of key principles which are used to drive and define the way each of those businesses operate. If I call out just perhaps 1 or 2 of them in there, if creating your own space, if you're performing, you get left alone. But if you're not, you get help, whether you want it or not. We focus on running the business day to day every day. That's really what it's about. And ultimately, we're managing this business by the numbers. We forget the gut feel. We say this is a data-driven business. Data doesn't make decisions. We want our people to make decisions, hence, accountability is very important, and we expect them to make the right decisions using that data. So this really underpins that.
And when we took this through to all the industrial leads across all the departments, this really resonated as a tool that we could use to try and inform that operating mindset, the accountability model that is so important to us. So each of the departments have gone and taken this and harmonized it for and synthesized it into their particular operating context, but ultimately underpins what we were trying to do.
If we look at safety as a proxy for that operating discipline, we know that businesses that have the discipline to do safety well have the discipline to do everything else well. Also, this is our safe work framework that we use to ultimately drive that safe delivery. It's based on effectively a Deming Cycle Plan Do Check Act, which continuously improves. And you can see the key elements within that really underpin by things like our fatal hazard protocols and some of these other tools that we use, ultimately versus our approach to actually delivering those safe outcomes. And it goes hand-in-hand with all those elements around leadership, around structure, around decision-making and accountability.
You can see, as we've matured and implemented safe work through our business over a long period of time, a consistent improvement in our safety performance. This represents our fatality performance over that period. And you can see, as you progress through time, that performance has improved remarkably over that period. Of course, we still have a long way to go.
How does that performance compare to our peers? When we look at this from the ICMM perspective, if you look at the red dot that you see on the screen above clinker there, that is our TRIFR, our injury frequency rate relative to the average, which is the red line, dash line that you see on the screen, we do a lot better. When you look at it a fatality frequency rate, that's the green bar relative to the green line. You can see at the end of last year, we were bang on pretty much the average this year, we've halved that. So again, we expect to see that continuous improvement. And fundamentally, what that tells us is that this is an inherently safe business. We know how to operate it. We know -- we understand the complexity. We understand the culture and the way we approach accountability, decision-making really delivers us benefits.
Of course, we don't only manage by the lagging indicators. These are our history. We focus on leading indicators. You don't drive the car looking in the rearview mirror. And so we have a whole suite of work that I haven't covered here that really looks at what those leading indicators are like the rest of the business.
If we go to outcomes in terms of production, really, this is a high-level look forward of what that copper equivalent production profile looks like going forward. I think important to note, this is a steadily improving trend that you can see across that [indiscernible] underpinned by robust quality plans. There's no hockey stick. There's no click to fingers, don't worry, it will be right tomorrow. There's really a good quality set of plans, which informs that. Ultimately, you see that, if I start on the left-hand side, there's a bit of a dip in 2026. Really, there's 2 key things there on the zinc side. Obviously, Antamina goes into a different phase of the ore body. So we see a lot less zinc being produced at Antamina. Also, we've got some closures in there as well. MICO, which closed this year; Lady Loretta, which will close at the end of this year.
Ultimately, from 2027, if you look forward, our copper business continues to grow in line with that profile that Gary spoke about before, and really very important to see the detail of those plans as we go through Jon's presentation later on.
I think important just to contextualize what that looks like for copper specifically. I think to confirm, our view is that the low end of that guidance that we committed to will be met at the end of this year. That is where we're trending towards and we aim to deliver. Importantly, as Gary mentioned before, for Q4, we're running at that 1 million tonne annualized rate, which demonstrates to us that, in fact, the performance that we aspire to achieve, we have in the business today. Our processing plants can do it. We completed that production level. And so we expect to see the ability to lean into that production capacity going forward.
I think if you look at the graph on the left-hand side there, this really tries to say, okay, back in December 2022, where did we say we would be for 2025 production. We said we'd be at just over 1 million tonnes of copper production at that point in time. And here, we are saying, we're going to get to the bottom end of guidance at [ 850,000 tonnes. ] What's the difference from?
The first bar that you see there really relates to African copper and KCC, in particular. We are down at KCC, and this is principally in the first instance because of access to land at the time. We forecast this production level for KCC. The idea was that we had executed a transaction to get access to land. And unfortunately, that land was not delivered for us. What that does is it complicates the mine plan because it means that all the contingency that you have, you now have to suboptimize. I can't access the dumps I wanted to. I can't progress the pit in the way I'd like to. And so the whole mine plan gets deteriorated. Ultimately, what that means is that you don't have operating contingency within that.
We've also had other issues around power stability within the DRC that we've had to contend with as well. But principally, the key issue there is that lack of access to land really has impacted the quality of the mine plan that we've been able to deliver.
We've also sold Cobar over that period. Again, that was not in the plan back in 2022, and this forecast was made I think when you look at the performance of the joint ventures, Antamina has performed quite consistently and reliably, the bulk of that really sitting with Collahuasi, which I think we've spoken about for some time. Ultimately, when you look at the shortfall there of 31, that really relates to where we haven't performed and met our expectation. Part of that, probably 1/3 of that sits with MICO where we've come actually to the end of life. And the balance really is within the norms, you're talking 2022 for 2025 performance, and that's really the only margin of error.
I think when you look more recently and you say, okay, in February, where do we think we would be. The graph on the right really attempts to explain that. We said we would have a midpoint of 880,000 tonnes for this year. Where have we lost relative to the 880,000 tonnes that we were guiding in February, you can see Collahuasi has been a key contributor to that loss that we've sustained over there with the balance of assets effectively performing largely in line with the plan. And really, that's explaining what we've seen for this year's guidance.
If we looked at 2026 and what we said at the beginning of this year in Feb for 2026, we were guiding for a 930,000 tonne year. What are we saying 2026 looks like now, probably around the 840,000 tonnes. The first and probably the most notable thing here is that you can see our African copper business continues to perform in line with our expectations. We've bolstered that business significantly with leadership and routines, and Jon will talk through that in a moment. The key variance there really sitting with Collahuasi, which I think we [ ventilated ] now sufficiently, really slower production from Collahuasi. But of course, that's expected to recover, and we'll get a bit more detail on that later on. Really, the others have been largely immaterial relative to where we are, and that kind of explains it.
On the right-hand side, what you see is effectively the split H1, H2. And compared to this year, it's a lot even, a lot more even than it was this year. I think in the copper department in and of itself, it's closer to a 49-51, and the contribution from nickel, zinc clearly weighted slightly more to H2, but a far more balanced performance for next year. Some of the items in the Antamina has a more outage in the second half of the year, so that weight some of that towards the front end. And we expect African copper, KCC in particular, to continue performing.
I think when you look at the production scorecard, really just looking at the underlying copper business there, you can see that copper volumes are up for next year. The loss in copper volumes really coming out of nickel, zinc, in particular, MICO, as we mentioned before, you can see that in there. In the zinc department itself, you can see principally in the base business, we have the closure of Lady Loretta and a few other small losses elsewhere, but principally Lady Loretta. Antamina is a big mover in those figures, as I mentioned before, as Antamina goes and accesses different parts of the mine. They're principally producing significantly less zinc.
I think with nickel, there's a slight hiccup there, and principally, that's in response to where prices are. We use the opportunity to take some volume out and invest more in maintenance to improve operating reliability within that business. So ultimately, that is what the scorecard looks like, going forward basis there. But I think going into the copper presentation now, we'll hear from Jon, and try and get a bit more detail on what's in those plans. Thank you.
Thanks, everybody. Good afternoon. I'm going to explain today why we are ready for growth. And obviously, with Michael Farrelly, our CFO of Copper; and also Shah Chaudari, our Head of Technical, will take you through the reason why we are ready and positioning ourselves for the next stage.
Just before I go through all of the points, I'd like to sit on Point 1 first, it's simplifying the business and also build on what Xavier presented earlier. So we talked about a devolved and decentralized model, and what Xavier talked about was the principles basically of what we call the -- our DNA. We set a clear set of expectations. It's a smart philosophy. I know it's a back to basics approach. So it's specific, measurable attainable, reliable and time bound. So it's an accountability model, and we drive that all the way through our operations.
We also do what we say we do. We also walk the line -- we're line owned and line led. And that's all the way through our businesses, and that's why we will deliver. And so it's the accountability model driven all the way to the front line.
We lead by example, and we also create and encourage ownership. So that's, that small business mentality that's part of our DNA and also being commercially astute. So that's coming from the marketing side of our business and the way that we run, right?
We also manage by numbers. And so that's transparency of reporting. And everything that we do is performance driven. We have to drive performance to deliver the promise and also continue to grow. And so why does this matter to Glencore? Well, it builds high-performance teams that will deliver into the future. And that's what we need to do, right? It creates trust and support success. We build good teams, and we support the [indiscernible] all the way to the front line, and creates an environment of improvement and innovation in line with our entrepreneurial value.
On the second point, we also empower the regions and the assets with the right people and the resources. We have a small center. We've actually reduced the center to -- very similar to our coal business. So we've replicated the coal model. And that enables us to push resources back to the regions and the assets. So we're supporting the assets for success. We've standardized structure. So we've got the industrial model, the financial model and also the marketing model but also the technical model, and that's replicated all the way through the business, and that enables us to deliver on time and also be agile and simple in the way that we deliver.
We've also elevated the importance of the mine plans and expectations. And Shah Chaudari will take us through what we're doing on the technical side to make sure that we always deliver on time while we're sitting in the planning environment. And what we also do is that we're always onsite. So we're present on the site for all of our quarterly reviews, and there's no helicopter management in this business. We're going to be back to the front line, face-to-face, support the success and get some skin in the game in the way that we deliver, and high levels of operational visibility. So this team is always in the trenches and will be in the trenches. So there's no surprise objective, and we focus on absolute delivery. And that's the only way we will continue to grow.
On the asset side, it's plan to deliver. And again, Shah will take us through that. But it's making sure that we've got the appropriate structures onsite and professionally supported. So we're resourcing for the right capability and ensuring that we've got standardized planning systems and training and development of our people and dynamic planning tools. So we adjust quickly to anything, any variables that may come through.
And in terms of delivering the plan is the accountability model, as I mentioned before, and it's predictable and risk-based. So no surprise objective. And that way, we'll always deliver in line with our promise.
In terms of the improvement side, it's the operation. It's just a back-to-basics approach, right? We're going back to the way that we've always been -- we've always worked in Glencore and that operational discipline focus. And also, we focus on the high priorities. So we focus on the critical few and this is the stuff that matters.
So in terms of the team, I'd like to just introduce our Chief Financial Officer, Michael Farrelly, has more than 30 years of experience and obviously, and 20 years actually working in the team, and he's worked across Alumbrera, Lomas, Antapaccay, Antamina, and also 10 years as Chief Financial Officer of Collahuasi. And that's why -- and Michael will take us through the joint ventures today and intimately, across all things Collahuasi.
We also have our Head of Technical. Shah Chaudari is returning back to Glencore. And he's also worked across the geographies and commodities for more than 25 years, but also has a track record of establishing technical excellence and high-performance planning teams.
So we've assembled a team with a track record of delivery. And it's a combination of internal Glencore promotions and new leaders in building the capability that we need to deliver the future. Each leader is basically a subject matter expert, and we've got more than 330 years of experience in this team. So it's a high-quality team and focused on functional excellence and delivery and safe reliable production, as Xavier mentioned before.
Also walking across -- moving across to the right-hand side. And I'm not going to talk about the functions, but I'll probably focus on what we have in terms of our operators. So in Africa, we have Mark Davis and Marie-Chantal Kaninda, and they're driving our African operations. They also have experience across the globe in multiple commodities, but they're also driving enormous success. And this year, our African assets have been the best performance. And in particular, in the second half, where we've now been on the 1 million tonne run rate. The African assets are the bottom of the base of everything that we've achieved in the second half, and we believe we'll continue to build on that, and I'll explain that further.
Our Chief Operating Officer of South America is Luis Rivera, he's just returned back to Glencore and has 33 years of experience and worked in Alumbrera and Antapaccay. He actually built Antapaccay. So he worked in Tintaya and Antapaccay and actually developed the project, and him coming back is going to add value to us and what we do in that district, in that mineralized district.
And in that change that we made through the year. If you recall, we had issues in April in Antamina. And we were able to -- and at that stage, Abraham Chahuan was our Chief Operating Officer for LatAm. And he went back into Antamina joint venture. He was in there previously for 9 years. So we parachuted him back in to turn that performance around for the shareholders. We also parachuted 4 Glencore operators in, Vice President of Operations, Vice President of Planning, Vice President of Health and Safety, and also a Mine Manager to assist and support that turnaround in Antamina. And Antamina is now on target to hit all of its targets for the year, which is really impressive.
In terms of CEO, Collahuasi, one of our other joint ventures, we've talked a lot today probably about some of the surprises from Collahuasi, but what we can do is say that Jorge Gomez; and Dalibor Dragicevic, the Chief Operating Officer, they've got a record of delivery, and we know that, that will return very soon. So again, we know that we need to transition through some of the issues that we are facing, the primary, secondary on, and Michael and Shah will take us through the reasons where we are, but we're confident that, that will turn around really quickly. And it's a generational asset.
From my side of things is I've worked across Mount Isa. I was responsible for the Black Star open cut, as well Ernest Henry with some of the assets that we did divest and across -- I've worked 4 years in Argentina and 6 years in Chile between Lomas and Altonorte, and was President of Collahuasi for a short period, for 2 years, and also have experience across Peru and Africa.
I guess in terms of the new team, it's a combination, as I said, of promotions, new leaders and new blood. This, in the first half, was a slow start, and we saw that in the way that we performed. But what we have seen is green shoots. In the second half, we've delivered really well and we've come home really strong. So we're now on that 1 million tonne run rate, and it's been able to test the business. And what we have done is develop the teams below that and seeing real success coming through.
And on the right-hand side, obviously, Martin and Cristoff will take you through our growth objectives. What I can say is what we will do is, and you'll see the theme through this presentation, we're leveraging on our installed capacity and we bring ourselves back to the growth strategy that we've always had.
So just in terms of going through each of the operations. So through KCC has been the base of our operating assets, our recovery this year. Just to just to go through each of the numbers quickly. I know it's not easy to see. But if you look at what's in KCC, and I look at number 1 and number 2, that's our KOV pit and Mashamba pit, that's where we mine the oxides that we provide to the oxide of the hydro leaching plants and oxide leaching. And number 3, we've also got a KTO underground. So there's an enormous opportunity for further growth in this area. So it's got latent capacity. And obviously, we're looking to see what we can do is leverage that. We've got further capacity in [ roasting ] in the Luilu refinery, which is number 5, and that's what we're looking to do to grow KCC. We've got the KCC concentrator supplying Luilu refinery, and we're sending concentrates and also oxides through that process to then recover the Luilu refinery to 300,000 tonnes. We've been on a 300,000 tonne run rate for the second half of this year. So we're excited about what's going on here as well.
I just want to touch on a couple of more points on this. The Mupine TSF, which you can see at the top there, number 6, and the Near West TSF. Xavier touched on the fact that we have been restricted with land access, et cetera. And that does change sequencing a lot, but some of those things are being resolved at the moment. And we're looking forward to opening that mine up to breathe and sequence properly so that we can effectively recover the plant back to the 300,000 tonnes of installed capacity that we have. The other opportunity that we do have is number 8, it's basically growing the mine towards that T-17 area. So that's the opportunity that we do see with the KOV pit in moving and sequencing in that particular direction.
Just in terms of the life of mine drivers. Obviously, this is a long-life mine, 18 years plus with further opportunities. We have been constrained in the past, and we touched on that earlier, which has brought in some sequencing issues in terms of waste and delivery, and it's not the most effective way to plan. But we're now finalizing the land access package. And we believe we're going to be seeing further improvements coming through as a result of that. And obviously, unlocking the pathway through the 300,000 tonnes, which is the run rate we're sitting on at the moment.
We also have additional potential, and that's -- so we have more than 20 million tonnes of 1% copper in inventory sitting there. And so we're looking at what we can do in terms of ore sorting, et cetera, which we should multiply that by about 300% in terms of copper grades. So it gives us enormous amount of inventory to then provide to the Luilu refinery and move us back into that 300,000 tonne run rate.
We're also looking -- we've also renewed basically the entire leadership team, and we're seeing absolute demonstrated strong results coming through, which is really building momentum as we move into next year as well. So the recoveries, as I keep saying, it's come through our African operations, which we're very proud of at the moment and the team is doing really, really well.
So if you look at the graph below, the whole objective of what we do is bringing copper forward. As you can see, there's a trajectory from 2025 onwards in terms of moving back to the 300,000 capacity. We're doing everything possible to try and bring some of that forward. So that's optimizing those -- that inventory, as I mentioned before. We've got the underground that has further capacity. We've got roasting capacity in the Luilu refinery. And everything we do, we'll keep building on that.
So I want to hand over to Shah, and he'll take you through what we're doing on the technical side.
I'll spend a little -- this is on. I'll spend a bit of time on this slide because it highlights our planning concepts, which are common for all of our mines. And KCC is a very good example to talk through that.
So starting on the left-hand side here with our pit optimization. So for KCC, this is the footprint of public reported [indiscernible]. So the coloring is what we call, revenue factor. And so the red area, for example, this is the current void. The red area is what we say is marginal ore at 60% of what our long-term copper prices. So for our reserves, we're using $9,100 per tonne. And so obviously, this is the highest margin in this area and this area. And we have the subsequent cuts go through. So cut 5, cut 6 all the way through to cut 12.
So what we then do is we take the optimization of the sequencing. And this is the current base case, which Jon showed in the previous slide. And so what you can see here is we have opportunities that are in our base case that we can bring forward. So this cut 12 area, for example, is an option that we're looking at. The current pit here is a strip ratio of 1:14. This area here is 7:1. So what that means -- sorry, this is 14:1. This is 7:1. So what this means is we're currently looking at the opportunity to bring cut 12 forward into the 4-year budget.
The hauling efficiency is very important for our cost driving. So our haulage cost is 2/3 of our mining cost. And so we can almost, on real time, see how efficiently we're hauling. So industry average is that we have about 30% inefficiency in our haulage. So efficiency basically means that your truck should always be heading to its destination, which is the dump. If you're hauling away from the dump and you're not going up at a ramp at 1 in 10, you're leaving money on the table. And so currently, we're sitting around that average of 30% inefficiency because you can't always drive straight towards the dumps. But what we feel is that we could improve that by at least 10%, get to about 20% inefficiency. And so we're talking large amounts of dollars, which isn't in our current cost profile. So for example, if we reduce our hauling distance by 100 meters, for every 100 meters, it's about $25 million worth of OpEx you're pulling out and about $5 million of annual CapEx through reduced equipment replacement from less truck hours.
The next one is sinking rate. So the importance of sinking rate can't be understated. Sinking rate basically is saying, if we have a -- for every shovel, we need 150 by 300 meters to operate each shovel. It's the sinking rate is how fast or how many benches do we sink per year. So we're basically taking the volume that a shovel does and then dividing by the area that it operates in.
And so what we like to see is sinking rate over 100 meters a year. And so almost real time, we can see on a week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter basis on how fast we're sinking. And so a higher sinking rate means that we get to high grade as fast as possible. And that's basically how our pits are designed. We have a safe geotechnical angle, which is used to get to the highest grade ore in the bottom of the pit. So the faster we sink, the faster we can get the ore, and we have a constant supply of fresh high-grade ore to put into our stockpiles. At the same time, the faster you sink the less overburden in advance that you're carrying -- sorry, advanced stripping cost gets reduced.
The next one, number 5 is mining compliance to plan. So we report this weekly on every single site. We receive monthly reports. And then every quarter, Jon, Michael and I, we go to every single and we do a quarterly review, and we go through any noncompliances to plan with each of the sites to understand what drove those noncompliances.
And then getting right down into the operational, the final process of mining. We currently have about, at KCC, 15% dilution when we're mining our ROM ore. So obviously, any reduction in that dilution adds to plant throughput. So if we can reduce that dilution down to 10%, that means we're getting an additional 5% throughput through our plants per year on a metal basis.
So when we look at all of these opportunities, which aren't included in the base plan, there's significant room to actually bring that growth back to that 300,000 tonne per year run rate, which is our in-store capacity on our electrowinning plant. So Jon mentioned the low-grade sorting. So that's something we don't have in our base plan. So we currently have 20 million tonnes of ore sitting on stockpile at 1.1% copper. We have ore sorters being delivered. Our first 2 ore sorters arrive at the end of this month from China. And so we've sent quite a few tonnes away for testing. And what we're seeing is the ore sorters are taking that 1.1% low-grade stockpile, and we're getting at the back end of those sorters, which is essentially a [ C Container, ] 3.5% copper. And so what we're going to start trialing at the end of this month is each one of those units, we can run 100 tonne an hour through. If we can get that successful tripling of the grade, we intend to bring another 8 on. And then we intend to duplicate that at MUMI. And MUMI also has 20 million tonnes or 25 million tonnes sitting at 1.1% grade on the ground. And so none of that is included in our base plan.
Jon touched on the underground opportunity at KCC or KTO. We have 2 roasters in Luilu Lu. We have only 1 roaster running. Our underground produces about 800,000 tonne for this year, 800,000 tonnes at about 2.7% grade. The roaster capacity for that underground ore is 4 million tonnes a year. So we can easily triple the underground production, and we have roaster capacity. Hoisting capacity, we've got capacity of 6 million tonnes per year. And so there's enormous opportunity to improve our underground performance. We have the equipment, we have the capacity, and that's not in the base plan.
Back to you.
So just moving across to MUMI. So there's enormous opportunity that we're seeing in front of us at the moment. Obviously, we want to sequence that in the right way and claw that back for the future. So everything you see and what Shah has explained, we're applying that to all of our operations across the board. And then there's opportunities, obviously, to claw back to that 1 million tonnes that Gary and also Xavier talked about. And that's going to be our first and foremost objective back to -- in terms of clawing back into 2028 or even improve on that.
In terms of MUMI, I'll just go through the numbers really quickly. You can see the Central Northwest pit that we have. And these are all oxide pits at the moment, and then we've got the Central pit and East pit. So we've got sulfides also coming through the East pit, and this is going to help us with the transition. We got the SX-EW plant. The installed capacity at MUMI is 200,000 tonnes of plating capacity. So again, coming back to stockpiles, et cetera, this offers us an opportunity. We've got 200,000 tonnes of latent capacity that's sitting in Africa at the moment that we're going to go after.
We also don't have any issues with TSF, storage, et cetera, and further opportunities. So I'm talking 5 and 6, sorry, on the numbers. And we also have further exploration opportunities in the Kansuki lease. And you can see from a mineral district perspective, we've got Deziwa on one side and Kimin and Kisanfu on the other side as well. So it's mineral rich and offers us an opportunity to further advance and improve in terms of MUMI options.
Just in terms of the life of mine drivers. This, I mean, when we've actually restarted mining this year. It was processing ores from stockpiles previously. So it's ramped up to 60,000 tonnes or 58,000 tonnes in this year. So we've had a successful ramp-up in putting that back into operation. And so we're looking at all the asset integrity of bringing additional processing capacity back online and getting back to that 200,000 tonnes of capacity. And there's further options for sulfides. And Gary talked about, obviously, the trade-off between oxides and sulfides, and we're going through that process at the moment and looking at FID for H1 to 2027 in terms of looking at producing concentrate and then further down the track of roasting and leaching.
We also -- Shah has mentioned the stockpile opportunities that exist currently. We're looking at this across the board. It's just having additional installed capacity, and it's already mined, already costed, and it's just sitting there for us to process. And as I mentioned before, we got the Kansuki lease, which provides further exploration in the area. We would see an oxide to sulfide transition. And we're looking at to see we can do that in a streamlined manner. You can see the ramp-up between 2025 and 2029. And we're looking at further increasing that, if possible. As I said, we've got the installed capacity and we've got to keep clawing that back. And then we look at open cut sulfides and eventually, looking at the underground potential. MUMI's got enormous resource base. And we haven't talked about cobalt as yet as well, but we're focused on copper today. But obviously, we've got the cobalt by-product credits as well. And I'm sure Jyot will take us through the cobalt strategy for the DRC.
Shah, do you want to touch on this quickly?
Yes. So we took MUMI through the same process that we did for KCC, the planning process. When we commenced operations, we reoptimized the pit to target copper. Prior to that, it was all about cobalt. But now the shape of our pit is going for high-grade copper. And so what that's resulted in is on East pit, we have a very large cutback where we're getting high grade 2.5% to 3% copper. In the Central North pit and Central pit, we're now joining the 2 pits and going after this pillar. In the base of Central pit and also at the back of this cutback is where we're starting to see the sulfides coming in. So the timing of this will -- the installation of the roaster will incur as we start to finish this large cutback. And then eventually, this is where we'll have the underground coming off to target the underground sulfides.
Michael Farrelly to take us through Collahuasi. Thanks, Mike.
Thanks, Jon. Yes, as Jon mentioned, I spent a lot of time [indiscernible] and I've also been involved in Collahuasi continuously since 2006, almost 20 years. So a lot of experience there. As most of you would know, Collahuasi is one of the biggest mines in the world, one of the biggest deposits in the world. You can see in the picture on the following slide, it's located in the high [indiscernible] in the Atacama Desert. So that's the driest desert in the world. So obviously, water is key.
Good news this year, we're just finalizing the commissioning of the new desalination plant for Collahuasi. That was a $3.2 billion project. So a very significant project that had 10,000 people working on it at full capacity. And that's come in on time and a little bit earlier than budget.
What that does is that unlocks Collahuasi to grow. So as I said, waters keep Collahuasi and that unlocks it to grow. We've got a couple of projects that are happening. So we're in process at the moment of expanding our concentrator plant from 170,000 tonnes per day to 210,000 tonnes per day. We're currently at about 185,000 tonnes, 190,000 tonnes, and we expect to be at 210,000 tonnes by the end of next year.
But most importantly, we have a [indiscernible] project. And I'll show you on the next slide what that does in terms of production, but that would be a new concentrator plant located at the Rosario pit. So closer to the principal pit, and that would produce around 180,000 tonnes per day. So that would get our plant up to just under 400,000 tonnes per day and get us to around 1 million tonnes of copper. So Glencore share, 44% of that 440,000 tonnes of copper.
We also have -- you'll see over on the far right, a leaching plant. The leaching facility was closed down in around 2016. The ore at the time wasn't economical at those prices, but we're now looking at reopening that leaching plant next year to start processing some of the remaining oxide ores, but also to look at other technologies that exist. So looking at the low-grade sulfide stockpiles. So you've got the technologies like [ Jetti or Ceibo ] that could help us to take capacity out of that plant and produce up to 64,000 tonnes a year. All of the Collahuasi shareholders have just approved the [indiscernible] expansion. So that's great. So -- sorry, the fourth line expansion to go into feasibility, not the [indiscernible] expansion. So the feasibility study has commenced and should be finished during next year. So that's some great news.
In terms of tailings, you can see on the right also. We have a really simple tailings dam. We've got capacity for the life of mine, where if we see expansion or not, we can contain up to 6 billion tonnes of tailings. It's a simple tailings dam. It's a downstream tailings dam, and the tailings dam actually sits in a basin. So it's a really safe tailings dam, like if there was a breach, there's nowhere for the tailings to go.
The asset has been going through some complicated -- I guess some complicated times, that's been covered by a few people today, and what that's really been driven by, and you can see that in 2025, 2026, you see that dip and then we recover after that. What that's really been driven by is the ores that we've had to feed this year are some ores from low-grade stockpiles and there are some ores from the [indiscernible]. Both of those ores are oxidized. So they've both been exposed for a long time so they've oxidized and it's been hard to get the recoveries that we're used to in Collahuasi.
By the end of next year, Shah will go through a little bit more detail, but by the end of next year, we'll be out of those ores. We'll be into fresh ores. We'll be at 210,000 tonnes per day in throughput. And you'll see the production uplift that's very significant. You can see it's 200,000 tonnes on a 100% basis. So 88% -- 88,000 Glencore share.
So Michael touched on the recovery issue. So essentially, what happened is the part of the pitch that we were mining in during the last 2 years. We -- the geomet modeling was indicating a higher 85% to 90% recovery. The ore was oxidized and it wasn't picked up. So basically, they've done a lot more geomet testing, and we believe that we're currently sitting with a recovery around 83% is what we're using in the new geomet model. Currently, we're only getting about 75% recoveries. But what you'll see over the next 1 year to 1.5 years is that, that will increase back to around 85% recovery.
And part of that is the stockpile material that's currently going in is heavily oxidized and it's getting very, very low [indiscernible] down around 55%, 60%. And so that gets phased out by the end of next year, and we start coming into these fresh ores and these pushbacks.
Part of the issue getting access to fresh ore and what pushed us into the stockpile was the working room that was available. And so you'll start -- you'll see at the start of next year, we've got 3 kilometers of strike here on this bench, 2 kilometers, 2 kilometers. So each of the shovels needs about a kilometer, so have 300 meters of digging, 300 meters of drilling, 300 meters of loading. And so we have 3 to 4 shovels on this bench, 2 to 3 shovels here, 2 to 3 shovels here and 1 shovel down in the base. And so that enables us to have the sufficient working room to be able to sink at that 150 meters a year. to get down into this high recovery fresh ore in the bottom of the pit. So that's basically how we're going to turn around the shovel productivity and also access to fresh ore.
Mike also touched on water. So what you'll see as we move into the -- through the first half of next year is the diesel plant ramps right up, which enables the concentrator to run at full capacity by mid next year.
Now just quickly to talk about Antamina. So there's Antamina there. I won't go through all of the detail on Antamina. As Jon said, we had some difficulties in the first half of the year at Antamina. And fortunately, from a Glencore perspective, we were able to send in about 4 -- I think 4 of our really highly qualified operators and they've really managed to turn Antamina around this year. So we're expecting Antamina to come in on their targets and to meet budget.
You can see there, Antamina, it's a great deposit, it's a polymetallic mine. Negative -- often negative C1 costs depending on the byproduct credits from zinc, very consistent in terms of its production. As Xavier mentioned, there's a bit of a swing between copper and zinc depending where you're in the deposit. But it's a great deposit. It lasts for a long time. We'll see going well into the next second half of this century, I guess.
Yes. So the catalyst for bringing in the resources from our other operations was the incident that occurred in April. But what that led to was a management team, which basically applied the basics to mining. And so they realized that we were operating at Antamina in one phase. And what was happening was they weren't able to turn over the benches quick enough. And so they made some very simple changes to the operation and increase that sinking rate from below 100 meters a year to what they're running at now, which is annualized 150 meters a year.
And so part of those things was replacing the electric drills with diesel drills to reduce the management of cables, too. We approved the purchase of additional doses and graders to prepare benches quicker so that we could turn over the benches faster. It's just a very, very simple operating basics, but it's what enabled us to go from essentially an operation that was down for several weeks to being back on budget now.
So quickly, just covering Lomas Bayas, just quickly, just looking at the 1, 2 and 3 in the center there, we've got the Lomas number 1 pit, the 2 pit and the ROM leach as well. And number 4 and 5, we've got the Heap leach and the SX-EW plant. And then on 6 and 7, we've got the exploration areas.
So the objective for Lomas, so we like Lomas. I mean it's a low grade, it's [ 0.22 ] grade soluble copper and basically embodies the Glencore culture basically of taking the last ton of copper metal everywhere we can. So it's a great little operation. And also, it's a good place for us to train our leaders. But it exists on significant low grade, as I mentioned before, but there are options in the area, and that's in the spec on the Alice deposits, as I pointed out previously. Listen, we could see opportunities to extend. There's also sulfide resources in the area. So again, it's a good operation for the future. And again, it's cash generative across the cycle. So this is what we do basically. So we like this one.
I also want to talk about Antapaccay, and also in terms of a district basically, because it's basically a mineral district. And so if you look at the numbers, basically, we've got the North and the South pit, and looking on the left-hand side of the screen. And then we've got our Waste Rock dump adjacent to that. And then if you move across to the Tintaya concentrator and the older SX-EW plant, we've ramped up the plant this year. So we've brought that back into production, and that's a plant that has 40,000 tonnes of capacity. So we've got latent capacity for further oxides. And we believe we'll be able to access further oxides through the Coroccohuayco project, which we're in the process of building at the moment.
We've got the Tintaya pit or the old TSF at number 7. And so we're not restricted by sort of TSF infrastructures, et cetera, it's nice and stable, et cetera.
And then just touching on Coroccohuayco. We're in the process, obviously, land acquisitions, et cetera. That's moving along really well. And so again, heading nicely. And Coroccohuayco is about 11 kilometers away from the Antapaccay concentrator. This is a really simple project. It's just a crusher conveyor system. And you dig the mine, you send a crusher, you crush ore to the Antapaccay concentrator. And so I think we really believe there's further opportunities in the area. It is a mineral district. And so we're seeing further opportunities for additional satellite pits and further exploration. So we're excited about this as well. So there's multiple resources, and what that would do basically, and I mentioned in point 3 here, looking at additional upside from additional milling capacity. With Coroccohuayco line, we look at additional [ ball ] mill. That gives us another 3% on top for finer grind. But there's room in that concentrator for another line. So if we're able to secure another nearby resource, then there's further opportunity to add another line, and that should give us significant upside in this project.
There's also additional leaching opportunities. As I mentioned before, we've got the capacity installed, and we're looking at all aspects to try and recover the capacity. If you look at the Coroccohuayco project, it's at feasibility study level, and so FID is during next year. And then first production coming in 2029.
Just coming back to the previous slide, just quickly, if you look at Coroccohuayco at Antapaccay, as I said, it's a crush conveyor system. We can also put a [ haul road ] through as well. So we're looking at as quick as possible to shovel -- first to shovel capacity basically and then maybe haul there. And so that might give us some further opportunities as well. Shah?
So one of the issues that we were seeing at Antapaccay is what Axb. So it's basically an indication of the softness and the ability to crush the ore. And so what we started to see the lower the number on the Axb is the heart of the ore. And so this area in red here is we've been going through in and out. And so what we've now done is we've got access to a pebble crusher. So essentially, what happens with this hard ore is that we get hard pebbles and they stay in the SAG mills and they take capacity and they actually reduce the throughput of our mills. And so now what happens is the pebbles actually get spat out of the SAG mill, and then we'll crush them in the pebble crusher. It's not an ongoing thing, like the model we showed that it comes in and it comes out. So that's probably the main issue that we've been seeing at Antapaccay, and we think that's behind us now.
So just really quickly on NewRange. New Range is a joint venture we've got with Teck. It's located in Minnesota in the Iron Range area. The JV was formed maybe just a little over 12 months ago, and we brought together the NorthMet deposit, which was owned by Polymet originally, a public company that we own the majority in, and Teck Board in the Sunrise deposit. So the idea the Sunrise deposit has more ore, NorthMet was closer to permitting. So Teck hasn't started the permitting side there.
So what we're looking at there, we've got the potential to produce up to 300,000 tonnes copper equivalent. That's on a 100% basis. We have 50% of that. So it's a polymetallic mine. But the idea is to start small with the NorthMet mine, that's close to being permitted to get that up and running and then to see how we progress Sunrise into feasibility and grow the asset later. NorthMet's being designated on the FAST-41 list in the U.S. So that helps in terms of it being a project of significant importance to the U.S. There's potential synergies with our smelters and refineries in Canada as a feed source. And it's probably one of the projects in the U.S. that could have the potential to bring first copper in terms of critical minerals and projects that are there ready to go, albeit on a small scale upfront, but a much bigger scale potentially in the future. Just some details there. You can see the small start. That's our 50% share, and then if we're able to get the Sunrise growth into the future.
And just to finish off, I mean, we're really excited today, obviously, with the announcement of the Alumbrera restart. So I think that leads nicely into the Argentine growth strategy that Martin and Christoff will take us through very shortly. But it's -- if you look at the pits, we've got the back of the Alumbrera pit. So we're looking at Phase 13 and 14. There's further opportunities there and also in the Bajo el Durazno at number 2, up in the top right-hand corner, and then we've got the concentrator there as well. And then the TSF down below.
There's further mineralization in the area and also further opportunities also in the TSF for gold concentrates, high-grade gold concentrates. So we're excited about this one. It's a stand-alone project. So it will operate in its own right. But the big one here, and now it's approved. And obviously, we launched today. The opportunity that we really have is basically derisking the Agua Rica project.
What this enables us to do, the concentrator is in great shape. So we start the concentrator up every single week, all the mills are rolling, everything is in really good shape. And I guess, what we'll do is stress test the concentrate of the pipeline, et cetera, and get this ready for Agua Rica as Martin and Christoff execute our growth ambitions in Argentina. But very exciting today. And you can see the ramp up down the bottom over the next few years and then up to then bringing in Agua Rica.
So I guess just in terms of finishing, before I hand over to Martin. I hope you get a view today. I mean the key takeaway is that we're ramping up to 1 million tonnes as soon as possible. There's capacity. There's -- we've got capability to do it. And obviously, our growth ambitions is to get back to somewhere we're 1.6 million tonnes by 2035. And that's the opportunity that we have in front of us, and we're going to go after it.
So I'll hand over to Martin.
Good. Thank you, Jon, and thank you, everybody, for joining us this afternoon. We are going to talk a bit about Argentina. And I think Gary had increased the attention in Argentina when he showed our growth profile. When you look at the importance of Agua Rica and Pachon into Glencore's growth strategy, there are 2 very important projects. Jon has also mentioned Argentina with the restart of Agua Rica. I think it's what's going on with Argentina. And I guess we all know that Argentina is a great mining jurisdiction, it shares the Andes with Chile, and while Chile produces about 5.5 million tonnes of copper a year, Argentina produces none.
Argentina has roughly 7 projects today in advanced exploration status that could, over the next 7 to 10 years, put 2 million tonnes of copper in the market. And in a market that needs more and more copper, this becomes very attractive. But that's not all of it. Something else had to happen in order to make the country interesting on a jurisdiction where we feel comfortable to continue to invest. Argentina is a jurisdiction in which we have a lot of experience, not only as Glencore, but as a team, Glencore has operated Alumbrera for 30 years in Argentina and has been a very successful operation. And last 35 years in Argentina, you've gone through absolutely any possible economic regime you could think of. And even though we were successful in operating it.
The Milei administration has recently put out a new regime to incentivize large investment, which is called RIGI, and what the RIGI does, it provides fiscal tax and legal stability to the projects that makes us feel comfortable to locally invest in Argentina. So when you couple both things, a world that -- actually 3 things, a world that needs a lot of copper, a country that has it, a regime that incentivizes investment, the experience that Glencore has in the country, that tells you that we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this rise in the Argentinian mining industry.
As I said before, the first objective in a country is to have good assets. And when you look at our assets in Argentina, you'll come to the conclusion very quickly. Christoff will take us through the details that these are large assets, low operating costs and several stages of growth over time.
So with all of that and the experience we have in the country, the restart of Alumbrera that puts Glencore as the first copper producer from Argentina to be able to produce copper back into the world, that sets the tone of what we are trying to do there and what we are trying to achieve in terms of looking at our projects.
Here it goes. So this -- I'll tell you the strategy that we have for Argentina, it's derisking the projects over the next 2 years so that we can take them to a successful execution strategy that will also involve partnering at the right point in time.
When you talk about the risk in the projects, you have to talk about the risks. And this is -- beyond the typical 3 risks that the mining industry has considered throughout its life, that are how do we deliver a project on budget, how do we deliver a project on time and how do we deliver a project that produces what we expected the project to produce, those are the 3 key risks that the industry has been looking for years and years.
I would add to that risk the fact that the social license to operate is becoming more and more important as a risk factor in all of the projects that are being delivered. And Latin America is no different to any other jurisdiction in the world in that regard. And being Argentina, Argentina is a risk by itself based on all that we discussed before.
So the key strategy here is, how do we address these risks? I would tell you the first thing is, let's start from risk, ground zero of risk, and that is the assets. And as said before, the size of the assets, the ability to produce multiple expansions on these projects, the ability to produce high-quality ore at low operating costs enabled us to have very robust projects. So when you think of ground zero, we are well established in terms of our projects. When you think of how do we handle the Argentinian risk, we'll cover in a slide in a few -- going forward, what the RIGI regime has and how it minimizes and how it helps us handle the risks in Argentina.
But the most important thing I will tell you to handle the country risk is the experience that we have had in the country. It's not only that we operated in mining in the Alumbrera project for 30 years, it's also that we operate in the agricultural commodity business through the Viterra joint venture. It's also the fact that all of the team has been able to deliver and execute projects in country, and we do have a great track record in that.
When you think of the risk to deliver a project on budget, I think that is highly related to your technical work. It's having a well-established gated process that enables you to move from one stage to the other with discipline and deliver a robust product to a robust project is key in terms of being able to deliver a project on budget. And in that regard, we are setting up a great engineering team and leveraging on the large engineering companies like the [indiscernible] and the [indiscernible] of the world, supporting us on elaborating this detailed engineering process -- engineering projects.
When you think of what's key to deliver a project on time, what makes the difference is if you have a well-established local team that is well connected into the local supply networks that understands how to operate and build in country and that can deliver and commit to deliver the projects on time. And that is what we have through the 30 years of experience in Alumbrera. We know where the suppliers are. We know where the projects are. We know how to bring these contractors to work with us. We know how to control these contractors and deliver the projects on time.
The thirty-one is how do we deliver project or production target, and that depends a lot on the knowledge of the technology that we have. Lots of geomet studies have been performed on Agua Rica and Pachon. But what I would tell you is Agua Rica will leverage on the Alumbrera facilities that we will be restarting with the restart of Alumbrera. So we know those facilities inside out. We know how that plant operate. And we have all of the logistics sorted out for Agua Rica. Alumbrera is mined to put 100% unified project. We've got the concentrator plant up in Alumbrera. We've got the mineral pipeline down to Tucuman. We've got the filter plant in Tucuman, the train loading station in Tucuman, railway to Rosario and the ship loader in Rosario. All of that is working and all of that was part of our well-kept care and maintenance process, and that will help us to be able to very quickly bring our rig into production. Pachon's a bit more challenging, but the fact that it is a huge project gives us lots of opportunities in terms of dealing with logistics and other issues that are important.
In terms of the social license to operate, what we are leveraging is our relationship, a long-standing relationship with the local governments and local communities. Agua Rica is in Catamarca, a province where we have operated for more than 40 years now with the construction of Alumbrera and [indiscernible] present in Catamarca since 1993. So we know the province. We know the communities. We know how things are done there.
San Juan, Pachon with coal, the Pachon asset for quite a long period of time. We know San Juan very well, and we've got a great relationship with the provincial authorities. Also, we've got a great relationship with the federal authorities. We met more than once with President Milei at different levels, and the country is highly committed to support Glencore in this objective to deliver these projects. So the key objective is very quickly move into the risk in these projects and be able to move into the next stage, which is actually constructing the projects and finding the right partners to work along with us in the project.
In terms of how are we organizing ourselves, what I think is important is to highlight that we are putting together a structure that fits the strategy. If you look at the structure this way, I would tell you it's got 3 key to tell us. This part is -- deals with the technical risk, which is delivering the projects on budget, on time, on capacity. These parts deals with -- dealing with social license to operate, country risk, RIGI and everything else. And the last part, risk and finance deal with the appropriate project controls to ensure that what we are planning is being achieved on a weekly, daily, monthly basis.
The key part of the project, and Christoff coming to the team with more than 25 years of experience building very large mining projects in the region has set up a team that will focus on completing studies and bringing Agua Rica and Pachon to final investment decisions, and we will go through the detailed time lines and how that will work.
We're also setting up a project control function within the technical team to ensure that we follow up the time lines in detail, and we make sure that everything that we said is being achieved. And we're also setting up a commercial function within the team to ensure that we maximize our leverage with regional and worldwide original equipment manufacturers as well as maximizing the contracting leverage that we have with other companies.
In terms of the risks, we want to make sure that this project control function stocks daily to our risks and financial functions so that we're well aware of anything, and we're able to move forward in case we detect any variation with the expected performance. What is key is that -- the key objective of this is to have a team that clearly understands what the delegated authority is, what the responsibility level is, everybody is accountable for what they have to deliver. And we have -- that will enable us to have a team that makes the decisions in a timely fashion and enables us to move the project within the expected time lines that we have for that.
Haven't spoke about myself. Some of you may know me, I come from 25 years of experience in mining and oil and gas. Before that, I did 10 years of finance, which help me a bit to understand risks. I come from the lithium industry where I put together all the lithium complex, [indiscernible], the Orocobre, Allkem, Arcadium, all that stuff, and did a lot of projects in country, not only in the mining, but in the oil and gas industry lately.
In terms of what the RIGI framework brings, I think it is important to highlight how the regime works. I think a lot has been spoken about RIGI but we may not be fully understanding what it means. RIGI is a framework that the government has put together basically to attract long-term investment. It is same to be focused on the energy and mining and infrastructure sectors, which are the ones that require longer-term investment and the country was on table based on the last 30 years of performance to secure that those investments are going to have appropriate returns.
So the framework requires a minimum investment per project, which is a minimum of $200 million of investment, of which have $80 million to be invested in the first 2 years of the project since RIGI has been approved. We submitted RIGI applications for Agua Rica, MARA and Pachon in August of this year, and we're going through the approval process.
In terms of the tax advantages, it not only brings tax stability, but also reduces the corporate income tax from 35% to 25%, which makes the total government take for projects in Argentina comparable to what the total government take would be for projects in Chile and Peru. That was around 15% to 20% lower. And that is coupled with a reduction in the withholding tax on dividends from 7% to 3.5%. And the famous VAT, which in Argentina, you have to pay VAT when you bring in the investment, where you bring in your imports, you pay to your contractors. And that VAT traditionally was kept in pesos and very quickly devalued, and at the end of the day, became a cost. The news of this regime is that you can use fiscal trades to repay your VAT or you can sell your VAT credits. So that enables you to recover your VAT very quickly. And that is not a cost. It's actually a VAT.
The other thing that is important is the tax loss carryforward. Tax loss carryforwards has always [indiscernible] in country, but you can imagine the tax loss carryforward in pesos subject to a very large devaluation, it's worth nothing after 2 or 3 years. The news is that this regime indexes the tax loss carryforward by the CPI. So if in the long run, CPI and devaluation tend to work more or less the same, the production is quite significant, and it eliminates a 5-year limit on the tax loss carryforward.
In terms of foreign exchange controls, for which Argentina became famous of imagining all different ways of foreign exchange, the system is quite clear. It gives you full access to the official market to repay debt dividends or get your profits out of the country within 4 years from approval of the RIGI framework. All our projects will take us at least 3 to 4 years to be built. So this ensures us that we will have access to our effects.
In terms of legal stability, and this is seen by a lot of people as the most important thing, it's the previous regime's subject any claim under the regimes to the Argentine courts. The new regime gives you the right to claim into any international court, if there's any default from the government under the regime. So you can straight, go directly into an international arbitration court, which gives a lot of legal stability around the projects.
A wrap-up of what we submitted in our RIGI applications in August, when Gary and I met with President Milei. For MARA, we submitted a total investment of $3.5 billion to $4 billion, clearly north of the minimum $200 million limit that is required for the project. The target date to complete the investment, it's in 2031. And as you have seen in Jon's [ e-mail, ] this is when the extension of Alumbrera ends, and we kick in with the first ore from Agua Rica, and the end of the RIGI benefits of 30 years for each project.
In the case of Pachon, a similar case, but a larger investment and a lot larger projects with a mid-tier RIGI application between $8.5 million and $10.5 million roughly, $9 million is what we said in the summary application. This project encompasses the first development of the first -- the full development of the first phase of Pachon. As I said before, Pachon is such a large project that would go under different stages of development, and this RIGI covers only the first phase of Pachon. And we expect Pachon to be producing by 2034. This timing also matches the fact that we don't have to build a concentrator in Alumbrera. We are leveraging existing facilities, and we have to build a full concentrator in Pachon. So that enables us to distribute teams and risks appropriately.
So as a summary of key objectives, strategy and risks of Argentina that -- let me introduce Christoff Kühn, the Head of Major Projects, that will talk us about the details of the projects.
Thank you, Martin. So maybe just want to actually roll back to the slide that Gary spoke about earlier today, actually showing all of our growth opportunities because there's an underlying project storyline there that I think is quite important to and speaks to both Xavier's operating model that he spoke about, building our people, our processes and getting the rhythm that we need to actually be cognizant of from a project perspective in LatAm, and that's that we've got Alumbrera restart, which is our first step in order to actually make sure that we start building up that rhythm and the routine from a project delivery perspective.
We then move across to Peru with Antapaccay, and Jon spoke about our Coroccohuayco project that we're starting up there, which coincidentally, the scope is quite similar to what we're going to talk about with Agua Rica. And we then come back to Argentina for Agua Rica and for Pachon. So I'll quickly look at Agua Rica, and then we'll briefly discuss Pachon as well.
So Agua Rica, the key one and with Alumbrera restart that Jon spoke about and that we announced today, I can now formally actually say, it's probably the most attractive brownfields copper resource in the Americas. So with the restart, we are significantly derisking years in advance the production profile coming out of Agua Rica.
So we located about 35 kilometers away from the existing Alumbrera facility, which gives us that unique opportunity in order to actually make sure that we can ramp up successfully and just continue utilizing some of that existing infrastructure resources and logistic corridors that we've got available from Alumbrera perspective.
So what is Agua Rica? It's a 1 billion tonne copper resource. I think it's quite important to specifically highlight as well. Actually, we've got a significant byproduct addition actually coming through there with our gold, silver and moly, pushing us to north of 200,000 equivalent copper ounces -- tonnes per year, apologies.
The expected delivery or cost of Agua Rica is expected to be about in the range of $4 billion. And in order to ensure that we actually develop this in a structured and derisked manner, we are following quite a rigid and disciplined project pipeline development. So from a scope perspective, 35 kilometers, as I said. So what we're really actually looking at is a crusher facility with overland conveyor feeding into an existing facility, existing processing facility with tailings facility located in the existing pit in Alumbrera.
If we look at the project pipeline, so currently, we're sitting at in prefeasibility phase, the back end of the prefeasibility phase and the final selection processes. And we are targeting to actually have the prefeasibility complete together with submitting our [ TIA ] applications for environmental permits towards the back end of 2026. This would enable us to actually then commence feasibility planning for execution as well as importantly then expecting to have our approvals in place for final investment decisions in 2027. We've got about a 3-year construction sequence and expecting to actually have first production, and you would have seen this earlier in Jon's slides as well in 2031 and then starting that ramp up in 2032.
If we then go to El Pachon, so El Pachon is a significantly different resource. I think a couple of times today and the industry referred to copper districts nowadays. Best way to probably describe El Pachon is we've got a copper district within a single pit. It is probably one of the most beautiful resources located in the mining-friendly district of San Juan in Argentina, sitting relatively close to the Chilean border, which also provides us with opportunities to derisk our logistic corridors, which we're currently exploring.
The resource itself is currently sitting at 6 billion tonnes. One of my biggest challenges is actually to identify locations to place our concentrators because as we're speaking today, we're [indiscernible] across the site. And as it progresses, actually, the resources keeps on growing and growing and growing actually. So we've got a positive problem actually in terms of the size of this resource actually. And progressively, you'll probably see us announcing further growth actually on the resource basin with El Pachon.
Current first phase, 185 kilotonne per day operation is what we are targeting, and we've completed a number of feasibility studies over the years on this. If you look at El Pachon, the size of the resource really enables us to grow, and that growth will come at significantly lower capital intensity than any of your traditional greenfields project. So we've got the capability or the capacity actually in the resource to probably actually grow to 360 kilotonnes per day or further north of that, giving us the opportunity of producing up to 600 kilotonnes of copper per annum.
Key to that is obviously making sure we derisk our logistics pipeline profiles, and you'll see within our project development schedule. So while the project is in feasibility phase for the 185 kilotonnes together with completing some of our key environmental baseline work over the next year, we continue to actually explore growth opportunities and our development pathway for Pachon in order to actually drive that capital intensity as low as possible.
With that as the backdrop, we are expecting to actually get into final feasibility planning and execution planning in 2027, with the expected environmental permits to be in play in 2029, enabling first production in 2034. So Pachon is probably one of those true really, really magnificent resources, which I think will be around for quite a significant period in LatAm.
Okay. Steve?
Thanks. It's nice to finally have a little cameo roll at this forum following those speeches. So I'll keep things relatively quicker just to -- it's not a results release, it's not too much on the financial profile of Glencore. It's to highlight clearly the growth in copper, the sort of plans and the structures to deliver on those plans and some of that growth in copper that everyone has articulated, we'll go through.
If we just go through the -- I think it's a good chart just to show the -- I mean, the CapEx, $23.4 billion seems a big number to try and contextualize it relative to the scale of the copper business as it does ramp up. The Minecraft sort of colors on the left, as you can see that business, that's just a condensed chart, what Gary showed earlier on as it sort of narrows down.
Overlaying that on the -- in the middle of the chart is just the CapEx profile. So you would have seen the Slide 17, which is listed across those 9 projects that had the various capital amount. And that's sort of -- and that's sequenced and built out over those respective years and ultimately delivers those profiles. This assumes sort of that you're moving ahead at a relatively quick pace across all projects. But as Jon and the team had sort of mentioned, there is within the base business and some of these projects to look to bring some of those tonnes forward.
And then the key message is that the copper business itself, again, our marketing business and the coal business and the zinc business and the gold business and everything else generating all the cash, our coal business would be expected to self -- be able to self-fund this entire CapEx and move up through its enhanced volume, get through the CapEx cycle and ultimately be generating significant free cash flow within this business as it goes forward that discounted into those dollars at whatever rates appropriate is a significant value proposition for the business.
To show you what those lines mean. We've got the base business. We've explained the base business that's all in [indiscernible], it does include -- you've got the Alumbrera restart effectively, and they're a smallish operation, but really preparing and readying us for the Agua Rica expansion has come through.
We've adopted consensus prices. So this is after tax, free cash flow, CapEx fully loaded unlevered model. We've provided in the appendix, the various assumptions, which is just run through our various models. On the one hand, we've got consensus. I think Page 16, you'll see some of those numbers. It was [ cut ] by the middle of November. So that's copper at [ $99.21. ] You've got cobalt consensus sort of trailing or people clearly trying to see where the clearing price ultimately. But there was only a $12.60 hydroxide, spot prices is $22 or something at the moment. So there was a low payability at about $20 a pound. Zinc was at well over [ $3,000. ] Gold was $25.50 consensus. Obviously, spot prices is where then you see that big gap up, particularly as you bring in those respective tonnes and the various byproducts. You've got sort of $12 billion plus of free cash flow on a spot basis. You've got the various growth.
So great to note, self-funding and terrific business going forward. That's not to say we won't look at potential options to both derisk from a financial and operating, clearly in a value accretive fashion is how one would want to ensure that Glencore has been paid adequately, risk-sharing adequately to see if there's ways of potentially bringing in a partner with some other sources of funding that may be appropriate at various points in time.
The various axes, this here, it looks at some of the structures that we may potentially consider, and this is predominantly geared around the Argentina portfolio, whether that's through project scale as well as construction risk on the Y-axis. From the right through to a more passive minority, we still continue to operate the Glencore project that would just be more passive financial capital like a sovereign wealth fund or the likes that may look to invest with into one of the structures. That's the blue bar. The yellow bar where it might be a more active investor. It would still be a Glencore asset, but a more strategic or sort of Japanese style trading partner that's been quite common within the particular industry, move into more sort of strategic larger options as construction and project scale gears up. The green bar is -- would be strategic partners around the JV structure, Collahuasi and [ Tamina, ] maybe something like that.
All the other circle there is one that Gary has thought about more thinking out the box a little bit more. This would be more relevant for the greenfield project in El Pachon. Is there a way of ultimately getting some investor out there to underwrite some of the project risks and the time line, we're happy to take that given their own skill sets and their own backing and desire, frankly, to take some equity in the business where it wouldn't be just a straight, get the money in and just run it through some normal JV, that would be something, particularly in El Pachon. Other options off to the right would be areas where there could be a cost of capital unlocked through various infrastructure fronts. So effectively, you might swap CapEx for OpEx within a typical business. You've always got some of this stuff. You would have specialist funds or the likes that may invest into the logistics, into water and power, again, particularly relevant for the greenfield El Pachon, that may be relevant relative to different cost of capital and capital sequencing.
Where does that likely to be more relevant for our business as well. As I said, $23.4 billion of capital. These 9 projects. Some are within JVs themselves. Of course, we've got the JV funding structures that would generally play out, whether it's at the Collahuasi level through the smaller projects, new concentrator, fourth line and various NewRange projects. We've got all of those, we would just envisage being sort of funded through the shareholders, nothing particularly fancy. Within those JVs, they may look to do some sort of asset-backed or some of those infrastructure financing, that more that [indiscernible] off to the right that I had on the earlier.
The 2 Argentina projects lend themselves to thinking about some form of risk sharing, both operational and financial, Agua Rica, that's one that would be maybe more of a straightforward minority partner. We'd continue to operate it, consolidate it up, run the project, but just look to share some of the risk and capital, provide us value accretive, and you've got the right partner. That was the yellow and the blue circles on the previous one. And El Pachon would lend itself to any and all of the previous options as to just how best to think about that stuff. I would position for expecting Agua Rica, we may do it ourselves. From the MARA stuff, it's not to say that it will happen. It is something that we would potentially look towards, entertain, think about, given the size.
These are the 2 big capital projects as well that you've seen. We've got the $4 billion and you've got the 9.46 basis the various capital. So something that will -- part of how we're thinking as well in terms of those projects and sequencing and risk sharing and capital.
Just laying out some facts of a shareholder return. It's been a busy period and a material period over the last 5 years. We've distributed and made shareholder distributions of $25.3 billion in 2021. And a little less than 5 is $16.4 billion in cash by the base distribution. We know the formula through the $1 billion plus 25% of industrial free cash flow. There's also been $8.9 billion of buybacks, which has significantly shrunk the share count. You can see 14% during that period, which itself has obviously improved earnings per share, dividends per share, cash flow share. And hopefully, some value unlock per share that we presented today in terms of the potential within this business.
The green circle is the purchase of EVR. That was something that clearly came in and if you like, jump the queue around shareholder returns. Everything in this business, whether it's M&A, whether it's marketing returns, whether it's greenfields, brownfields, organic expansions need to compete with buybacks. We know where shares are trading at a point in time. We know what it's discounting. We'll have our models, we'll run some scenarios. It's all about probability of outcomes. You weigh things to a certain outcome and think, well, here's a project that needs to compete with what that buyback has done. We still think there's attractive elements within the -- within buying Glencore, which has been one of our significant capital allocations in the last 4 or 5 years, as Gary had said earlier on.
In terms of CapEx, as we do each year, just to update on that. We're talking towards a base business, I think it's good to segment it between the two, $6.5 billion across the business. This is excluding the various copper projects, which we'll talk to separately. What does that include. Last year's number was even a little bit higher. So it's actually tailed off somewhat, which is great, but we've added more capital that wasn't in the base case, which is generating returns for the business. Alumbrera is now in that number, not significant, but you got sort of $250-odd million within Alumbrera. And the zinc business further of the way down, you've got $450 million of $600 million because $150 million just tapers up into the year 4 of that average, it's some approvals and some work we're doing to extend the ATK Gold operation within the Kazzinc unit. That's both for additional pushbacks both in open cut and ultimately, some underground mining that will be the place that will extend that operation for many, many years.
It dips down a little bit as a base case in the gold production out of that operation into next year and the following 2 years, and then it ramps back up in 3, 4, 5 years to again get back to well over 500,000 ounces of gold per year as those projects are back in.
So full steam ahead there. That was not in those numbers last year. It is now in the $6.5 billion, and we'll spend that $450 million as we go through. Otherwise, fairly sort of steady eddy across the sustaining capital EVR, water treatment beginning of this year was the first time to bring that onto the books on a pro forma basis. They're running at about $1.3 billion average over the next 3 years or so. Water treatment investment, the bulk of it is coming to an end, '27 should be the last material year. We're through the back of that, that's working very well. But there is a phase of investment in that business through additional haulage, traditional sort of trucks and shovels just to get capacity within the business up to be able to sustain and grow through the various projects you were -- some of you were at the trip that we had.
So within a $6.5 billion, you probably roughly $5.5 billion to $5.7 billion is a sustaining level, and there's still about $1 billion or so of what we call key projects, major projects that are tailing off, they're not sustaining either a bit of growth or various replacement tonnes that we do have, including the [indiscernible] in the iron ore that should wrap up and get commissioned also next year that's been on this chart for a while.
Within the copper projects themselves, that's the -- just flowing through the numbers that we've seen on the previous chart and Gary's slides and my slide that we had before. If we full steam ahead, basis, that shape of that business, blowing through the 1.6 million tonnes of copper, as we would by 2035, you would be already spending $1 billion in '26, $1.7 billion in '27, $1.5 billion in 2028. And that would be predominantly -- you got your Coroccohuayco, Agua Rica, MUMI sulfides, El Pachon, Collahuasi low-grade leasing. That gives you the shape of where most of that. Now it's going to be a combination of various of those that's going to shape out basis, the timings of those particular projects. That's one book end, cumulative of 4.2 across those 3 years. I think it would be nice to be able to be on that path, and you'd see that shape of copper growth materialize over that period.
The other book end is just doing nothing and just continue to sort of nurture those projects through the studies and the various development work, which might be 500 cumulative. So you got your 2 book ends. We'll obviously make announcements as relevant as and when these projects get to more material phases within that particular project. And we're reporting them separately and how it's translating into those time lines and how the future copper growth project looks like.
If we look at cost structure then before we wrap up with the frequently updated spot free cash flow. This is 2026 cost guidance for the first time. This is reflecting midpoint of the guidance that Xavier put out on Slide 34. If we look at copper off to the left-hand side, you can see just what a year of 2 halves this really was for our copper business, shaped around the 40-60 in terms of H1. We were at just H1, we're at 280 pre byproduct, $0.55 of byproduct and cost structure, cash cost was 225. For the full year, we're expecting to be about 176. That means the H2 is way lower than that to average out at that level for the for the first half, material cash flow generation that we expect from the copper business in H2 as we roll out this particular year. And as Jon said, annualizing more recently at the 1 million tonnes of copper, with good prices and good byproduct credits.
As it rolls into 2026. We continue to see a lowering notwithstanding copper volumes on growing until about 2027, particularly with Collahuasi. We still got some lower costs coming through and slightly better byproduct credits. It's a function of notwithstanding lower zinc production at Antamina that normally would have a negative effect. It continues to go positive because you've got higher prices, you still got good units. And we're just following through the quotas on the cobalt at the -- these were prices that we'd used at around middle of November, they have improved. So all these would be post byproduct and even on the primary would be better cash flow generation at the moment.
The zinc business itself, again, you've got a year of not 2 halves because of production. It's more even, but you've got negative cost structures continue to build in that business, particularly because of the gold credits as it goes from minus -- from $0.2 positive, $0.18 negative and have continued to negative $0.26 next year, notwithstanding there is slightly less gold. You do it the higher prices before the ATK gold price continues to improve.
Pretty stable coal business. We are lowered on the average unit cost on the steelmaking coal given the first full year of EVR coming in. There was only a half year previously. So you've had a 116 step down into around 110. And the shape, there's a little bit of inflation and projections into '26, which we'll look at the next slide on the free cash flow illustrative. There is some revenue-linked royalties that depending on which price you're starting with headline, it's going to drive a little bit of cost structure either up or down. It's always nice to have your costs go up because of revenue-linked royalties, your margin is going to be expanding, as you can see on the various top halves.
So rolling that forward into the final, and then I'll get off the stage and let more interesting presenters come to the stage. Here's our updated illustrative spot cash flow. This is used -- this is rolling forward now to '26 parameters. So it's using midpoint of '26 production and those costs that are deployed on the previous page. That's copper rolling from the 840 take, got the 50,000 from the zinc. You've got a 473, or the footnotes are in there. We take a 96% realization through just quality grade and the likes. And you've got a $5.6 billion of EBITDA. Then there's just the normal running cost of projects. This is part of that $500 million, where I said if you spend nothing cumulatively, we've got the spend at the Argentina NewRange, just continuing those projects, and you had $5.3 billion.
This is cobalt at a little under $20 a pound, and just quota. So spot is a little bit higher than that. The zinc business, and this was using copper price of [ 10 850 ]. I say it's about [ 11 4 ] today. So that would tick up as well on a spot illustrative zinc at $2 billion, gold's really helping the negative 25.5, as you would expect, notwithstanding that there's a tick down in primary zinc production because of -- because of Lady Loretta, in particular as that step down. And the various coal businesses using a forward strip on prime hard coking of [ 216 ] and a forward strip on the Newcastle of 115 with the portfolio effects as we roll through the portfolio, we got [ 25 19. ]
The $1 billion across the rest of the portfolio, $16 billion then of EBITDA, $3.9 billion of interest and tax and $6.6 million of the CapEx as we normally do to a $5.5 billion illustrative free cash flow, preworking capital and pre any sort of rehab outflows if we've got some of those assets that's worked our way through the system, they're already provisioned within the business and they get amortized out.
So healthy business, copper can self-fund itself, even if we choose to go at it alone. And the rest, all the marketing, all the zinc, all the nickel, everything else comes back to you 100% of shareholders. So the balance sheet is set up well and can fund that growth as we move forward.
With that, I'll hand over to Jyothish.
Thank you. I think what I find is I spend a lot of time explaining what marketing is or what marketing does. So I'm going to do a little bit of a version of that again. We have a very unusual business model, and it's unique. And there are a bunch of large traders, there are a bunch of large producers, but there is no real comparable company like us. So I thought it's good to spend a little bit of time explaining how it all fits together. So like we saw, we have cost of industrial assets, which are generational assets. We had some discussions around the copper today.
The industrial assets, the production from the industrial assets form the base load that we do in our marketing business. Across the board, loosely speaking, about 50% of what we market comes from our own tonnes. About 50% of it comes from other producers we buy, so what we call third-party tonnes. It's a stream of multiple commodities.
As we secure these third-party tonnes, we look at what we call marketing assets. So some of them are infrastructure investments like we have in Peru, we have a blending facility, which we call Perubar, which is crucial to our concentrate operations in Peru, for example. So we have a bunch of infrastructure assets, which help us with our marketing. We have processing facilities like a bunch of custom smelters. We have zinc and copper smelters. We also work with multiple countries in terms of looking at smelting assets. So for example, when [ Adani ] built a smelter in India, we were one of the early supporters through concentrates through them. Saudi Arabia, we worked locally in Saudi Arabia with a local partner to investigate building a smelter there.
If we do something like that, we'll find out how to do it in a sort of sensible way in terms of funding. We'll look at funding solutions that makes sense. We're working with Codelco potentially to look at building a smelter in Chile.
So the smelters provide sources for -- provide outlets for concentrates that we have and also sources for the metal. So we have a whole bunch of processing facilities that we use that feed into our marketing business.
We also, as part of marketing look at minority asset ownership. So we have a minority stake in Century Aluminum. We have Alunorte. We've had stakes in [ PT Aman, ] for example, previously. We've had stakes in Champion Iron Ore. So typically, as part of marketing, any asset that has some need for funding, we've either looked at it. We have done some due diligence. We have explored it. Our industrial assets help us do technical due diligence on it. That also feeds our industrial assets because we have a fairly good understanding across the globe of all the cost structures, all the assets that operate across the globe. And that allows us to pick up industrial assets when they become available once in a while, like we picked up EVR about 2 years ago.
So these 3 sort of pillars of growth, they feed each other. The industrial assets feed tonnes to the marketing business. The marketing business gets involved with other assets around the world, which gives us information, which allows us to build our industrial asset portfolio.
We've done some sort of -- it's more evolutionary changes around our marketing business recently. Mostly, what we realized is instead of operating as independent silos, it makes a lot of sense to operate as teams because increasingly, most of these commodities are interconnected. So if I start from one and then just go around, like power markets, we have [ Maxim ] as a natural gas business. We have a power desk. We also have a thermal coal business that feeds the power markets, and there's a good intersection between them. There's a lot of information exchange. Thermal coal and met coal are connected, but met coal goes into steelmaking raw materials, where we supply iron ore, vanadium, manganese, a bunch of raw materials to the steelmaking raw material, the steel industry.
Similarly, in the stainless industry, we supply a bunch of raw materials to them. We supply nickel, molybdenum. Cobalt previously was like primarily going into high alloys in the stainless steel sector. And now with nickel cobalt, we have a battery metals division, which is sort of 4 parts to it, we have nickel, cobalt, lithium and battery metals recycling.
What we realized is structuring it around teams and focusing on the customer allows us to share resources, share information and be better prepared in terms of trends. So if you look at like the recent trends, you take like AI, for example, everybody talks about power. We see power generation coming through in multiple sectors. So we see through our power desk, our LNG, thermal coal, we see increase in power generation. Through our copper business, we see grid spending. Through our aluminum, we see copper and aluminum substitution in terms of grids. We see the battery segment benefiting from the power sector. So it allows us to better understand big trends and position ourselves better for it.
Similarly, when we source materials, we have a fairly extensive scope and scale. What we find is in most of these countries, you have similar producers producing multiple commodities. So organized around silos actually is not as efficient as organized around a single team. So if you look at Chile, we have a very strong copper presence, but Chile also has a little bit of iron ore. So the copper team can help secured the iron ore.
In Peru, there is zinc and copper concentrates, which are interlinked very integrally. In Africa, we have a whole bunch of businesses. We have a very strong copper business. We have coal, we have alloys. There's a lot of logistics that we can find synergies with.
So increasingly, we're finding that if we operate as one team, there's a significant amount of synergies, and we can do more with less. Basically, in terms of marketing, I'm going to give it to Andrew for coal.
Very good. Thanks, Jyothish. Good afternoon, everyone. This is the penultimate part of the presentation before I hand back to Gary, and he'll talk you through a bit of a summary. But this is the Coal business. I'm very proud to talk about the coal business. I've been part of this Coal business for 25 years. And in fact, this month marks 40 years since I first walked underground into a coal mine in New South Wales. So Coal has been all part of my life for a very, very long time. I'm passionate about it as are our employees.
Coal business has already been presented by Steve and presented by others, underpins this -- underpins the cash flow -- substantial parts of cash flow for this business. With the acquisition of EVR, we've added in a great district, a great mining district and a great product in hard coking coal, which has a great growth profile as we look forward into the future. EVR is amongst one of the best coking coal businesses in the world, and we saw it for that opportunity and I'm very proud to now have that part of our business.
The business generates huge cash flow, as I just mentioned. And Steve showed you that from a free cash flow perspective on the previous presentation. And that's going to continue to contribute for this business and to the supporting of the cash flows for the investments into the copper businesses that you just saw.
From a climate strategy perspective, we've told you about how we're going to address the thermal coal business. We do see a tailing off that business. It matches the way we see the longer-term supply-demand profile for thermal coal. We think it's the appropriate course of action, and we're going to stay the course on that strategy. This emphasizes just how significant an acquisition EVR was for the steelmaking portfolio. Significant growth into very, very long-life assets with substantial growth opportunities, either through extension -- life extension of existing operations or the construction and development of new projects adjacent to existing infrastructure. What we saw in this business is an opportunity. The opportunity sits in terms of steel demand is going to continue to grow.
On the right-hand side here, you can see a view on the growth of steel demand going forward. It comes from the IAA. It shows growth of 1% per annum through until 2040. We and others believe that China is going to gradually reduce their steel production. So if we back out that Chinese assumption and steel production, and we have the rest of world, the blue line on this graphic, and we actually see rest of world steel production and steel demand growth being far stronger than the world in total. Where is that growth occurring? That growth is going to occur principally in Southeast Asia and India and the Middle East. Africa may be sometime down the future, but we underpin the near term on Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East. So we see growth there at 2.3% per annum as we go forward through to 2040.
And then very importantly, underneath that sits what the profile is for blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace steelmaking. Blast furnace steelmaking is still the lowest cost form of steel production in many, many parts of the world and in particular, Asia. That form of steelmaking is not going away. And in fact, there's huge investments continuing to come into that sector. We can see line of sight on 45 million tonnes of new capacity being constructed in and around Southeast Asia. That's what underpins this forecast and what underpins the demand growth for steelmaking coal going forward into the future.
Coking coal is a very technical subject. This is one way of illustrating the importance of those EVR assets within our portfolio. They sit at the top right-hand side of this graphic, the top right-hand quadrant. This graphic shows the coke strength, so a parameter that the steel mills absolutely rely upon in terms of being able to maintain safe and efficient operations. You need to be within that target box, blend box for a steel mill to operate safely. The weighted average CSR of global suppliers we see it today sits below that target range. So the industry has to find a way in which they can blend coals together to meet that target range, and they have a lot of different parameters that they can use. They can look at different blends where you get nonlinear outcomes in terms of CSR from that coke blend or you can use stamp charging, which adds 3 to 4 points of CSR as you go through that coking process to help you lift yourself into that target range. The reality is that's necessary because the weighted average portfolio doesn't get it there on its own.
Importantly also, as I said before, you're sitting at the top right-hand side of that quadrant where prices are highest. And what we saw happen during this year, and we've seen through previous cycles is a disconnect between the premium prices, so the prices for premium grade coals and the prices for lower-grade coals. Premium coals maintain a very high level. The lower-grade coals get discounted quite substantially. That reflects oversupply within lower-grade products and an absolute requirement to maintain a premium hard coking coal in your blend.
Looking at the industry from a cost perspective. This graphic shows the cost supply -- the cost of supply into the industry, into the market for each individual producer, but it's done on a quality-adjusted basis or a margin-adjusted basis. So it's normalizing all the producers with respect to the $216 coking coal price that Steve mentioned previously in our 2026 guidance. Through the course of this year, we've been down as low as 50% of operations globally being cash generative. That's not sustainable. We know that's not sustainable. It's part of the secular part of this industry that we've always been through. You go through high prices, you end up with low prices and then you come out the other side.
At the moment, there's still a substantial portion of the industry which is loss-making, and we're going to see adjustments to production as we move through into '26 and into '27 because of the underinvestment that's gone into the industry because prices have been relatively low. Our business sits at the good side of that cost curve. It sits at the left-hand side of the cost curve and right throughout the pricing cycle this year has been able to be cash generative because we sit at that end of the curve, and that's why we have confidence in this business going forward.
To pick up on a point I just made around the cyclicality of this business and the cyclicality of pricing within commodities. This goes back for 11 years or 10 years. If I go back for 20 years, you see this same profile occurring year in -- over a 5-year cycle. What drives this cycle? One reason is because we fall through the cost curve periodically. We go through a period of underinvestment to the industry, then the industry looks or the demand picks up and the industry is unable to respond. That lack of response from supply means prices spike. The other factors can come in is obviously weather events in Queensland. We've seen throughout history, significant cyclonic events, which impact operations, maybe we get impacted. But now we've got the Canadian business, which will benefit from the higher prices that are a result of a weather event in Queensland.
Similarly, if there's a weather event in Canada, where an avalanche may interrupt a rail line for a period of time, price spikes, we get the benefit from our Australian business. So we've now got this flexibility and optionality within our business that we didn't have previously. The other thing that comes into this is government-induced supply disruption. So we've seen throughout this period of time, the Chinese move in and out of production, driven by government policy. And in the last couple of years -- in the last 12 months, we've seen China overproduce coal, definitely in the first half of this year.
And in July of this year, following a review of that industry, they made a very conscious decision to say, you are overproducing, wind back your production, put the cost structure back into -- put the price structure back into that industry, which supports the cost structure of that industry because it was at unsustainable levels. Turning from steelmaking coal to energy demand and energy demand underpins our thermal coal business. This year, we saw -- or in fact, just last month, we saw the IEA published their latest World Energy Outlook. 2025 World Energy outlook is the first time in 6 years that they have published what they call a current policy scenario. That reflects where they believe energy demand is going to go under the current policy setting.
What the graphic on the left-hand side shows that, that same current policy scenario setting that they saw in 2016 and again in 2019, projected that global energy demand would grow linearly. It's been growing linearly for 40 years and the current policy setting that the IEA sees that linear trend continuing into the future. The ability to bend that line as we've seen presented in alternate scenarios is incredibly difficult. It's driven by population growth. It's driven by economic growth. And as energy becomes available, people consume that energy. As economies grow, they need that energy. It's a circular equation. It continues to grow linearly.
What does that mean for our coal business? We were committed to the coal business because we didn't see that coal demand was going to decline. In 2016, the IEA saw that coal demand in 2024 would be just around that 6 billion tonne level. under the current policy scenario. In 2019, they shaped that a little bit further and saw that coal demand might actually come lower. Then actually, we get to 2024 and coal demand lo and behold, was at 6 billion tonnes. Yes, there's been some adjustments. There's been a decline in Europe. There's been decline in the U.S., but there's been very, very strong growth in Asia where economies are growing fastest and where coal remains amongst the cheapest sources of fuel to power stations and provide electricity for those economies to grow.
Current policy scenario setting for 2025 from the IEA shows that, again, coal demand could potentially decline between now and 2035. But buried within the assumptions that are made under that policy setting is continued expansion of growth in the rate at which wind and solar come into power grids. This year sees the first time we're seeing a bit of a slowdown, and we are seeing in many economies where the integration of those technologies is becoming more and more difficult either because grids are not being able to keep up or because the cost of that integration is actually pushing power tariffs higher and making it more and more difficult for governments to fund. That differential, the IEA says is equivalent to coal demand is likely to be flat by 2035 if those targets are not achieved. So coal demand remains very strong. The requirement for energy remains very strong. That underpins our thermal coal business as we look forward.
An alternative way to look at the cost structure, this is now a margin curve for the thermal coal seaborne thermal coal supply. Again, our business sits at the right -- the correct part of that curve. On the left-hand side, lowest or top 25% quartile in terms of margins. This curve is shown including sustaining CapEx. It's using the same headline Newcastle price that Steve presented, $115. And what's also important about this graphic is that today, still 30% of global seaborne thermal coal supply is losing money on a cash basis. It's not sustainable. We're going to see further supply disruptions if these -- if prices do not recover.
And there's going to have to, therefore, be either a price spike or a supply response from an alternate region, which is cost effective. That will take time. Prices need to increase. And then just to illustrate, as I did in the steelmaking coal business, we've seen each time that the industry has experienced prices fall through the cost structure of the industry, we go through then a period of increased prices because businesses have not been able to sustain the CapEx. Businesses have reduced strip ratios. So they've taken costs out of operations in an unsustainable way and therefore, unable to meet demand or resulting in closure of production because it's no longer affordable to keep going. What we expect as a result of this is that we are going to see further production disruption during the balance of this year and into 2026, and that underpins this business going forward.
Thank you.
Let's wrap this up. Okay. I'm sure everyone needs a drink to eat, so we'll probably have a lot of questions. We've gone a little bit longer than we thought on the presentations, but I thought better to spend more time on that. Hopefully, that does preemptively answer many of your questions, but we still have time. And obviously, for the analysts, we have a dinner tonight where we can spend some time answering your questions then.
So to bring it home, our priorities for 2026. Xavier talked about safety, and he talked about safety in the context of how we approach it with a disciplined approach, a systematic approach. But the one thing that we haven't touched on, and it wasn't the mention for today, but it is the mention of every single day in our business is it is our #1 priority. And we continue to focus on it every day to be zero harm across our business. You've seen the results of the work that we've done. That same work is being done on the operational side.
But let's not forget that the first thing and the most important thing that everybody thinks about in this business every day is safety, and we continue to work on that every day. Operational excellence. The idea of presenting the way we presented today was to show you the skill that we have in our business. I didn't mention earlier that John, although 43 years of mining experience, probably started when he was 5 years old, but 43 years of mining experience across multiple commodities, multiple geographies. He's been in the copper role for coming on a year now. This is a change that we've made strategically to ensure that we have the right people in the right businesses to drive that operational excellence.
Xavier, been in our business for a very long time in the industry even longer, been in his role 2 years. This is a strategic change to drive the operational excellence. This is not where we're sitting on our hands, not doing anything, coming to the market saying, okay, we missed because of this, we missed because of that. We have been doing things. We have been changing with the right people in the right roles with the right systems, the right programs to drive it. People like Shah coming back to our business. This is why we are confident in our ability to achieve these results or these forecasts that we put forward. And it's around change and managing that change properly.
Organic growth, that was obviously the main theme of today. We're bringing in high-quality individuals, the likes of Martin, the likes of Christophe to drive that organic growth in our business. That doesn't mean M&A is completely off the table. It's always something that we're good at, we look at. But today it is about driving that copper growth. We have the right team, we have the right systems.
And most importantly, we have the right portfolio. And we will pull the triggers and the right levers that we need in that portfolio to get us to that 1.6 million tonnes of annual copper production or more in the future. Balance sheet, Steve taken you through the balance sheet, the fact that the business continues to throw off cash, illustrative free cash flow, very strong.
The marketing business, big supplier of cash or big generator of cash in the business. Balance sheet remains very strong, investment grade, and we continue to minimum strong BBB ratings and our dividend policy. And lastly is obviously value creation for shareholders. That's because ultimately, that's what we're here for. All of these 4 first pillars lead to value creation for shareholders. We bought back, I said earlier, 13%, it's actually 14% of our stock over the last 5 years. We paid back billions and billions of dollars to shareholders because that's what we're here for is to create value for each and every one of them.
So the investment case. And you've heard this, you've heard it in detail, so to run through just for the last time today, an exceptional portfolio of copper assets, some of the best in the world, a base business of going back to 1 million tonnes by 2027 as Collahuasi comes back and then the incremental growth after that. That for us is the exciting part of this business to be the world's biggest copper producer by 2035, and I'm absolutely certain we'll be there. One of the -- I mean, just as a side note, one of the things I didn't mention earlier in all the excitement about all the growth and the Everest of projects that we have is the mention of the Vale Glencore joint venture that we signed in Sudbury yesterday.
I know the Vale mentioned during their Investor Day, NRSE. We have a joint venture there where we're going to develop a project together in the Sudbury Basin, mainly copper focused. That's not on our chart now. We have some information on in the back of the presentation in the appendix, but another lever for us within this exceptional portfolio.
Our Coal business, as Andrew stood up, very proud to be in the coal business. Many of us in this room come from the coal business. We believe in the future of the Coal business. And the fact is it's a Tier 1 business, both our steelmaking coal business, our Energy Coal business, there's a need for coal, both of them for many decades to come and something that we'll continue to extract maximum value out of. That in association with our energy desk here, LNG, power and the likes, the synergies between those are something we extract daily.
Our Marketing business, Jyothish has just spoken through it again, a great presentation. I think many of you have been following us for many, many years, and you understand our Marketing business. Our Marketing business continues to get better. We continue to grow. We continue to evolve. Terrific business for us, very unique, as Jyothish said, and something that can only survive within a business that has such a strong industrial base, excellent marketing assets and a diverse range of commodities that we trade. Our structures, we've changed our structures. We've simplified them. Accountability is key. John spoke a lot about that, and that gives us the comfort that we'll be able to deliver what we presented here today. And what does that all lead to? As I said on the previous slide, delivery of value for shareholders.
So with that, I'd like to say thank you very much. Martin will take over and run the Q&A.
For the presentation -- pretty comprehensive. Two, I guess, related questions around the Argentine growth projects. So in terms of potential syndication, when do you think about the appropriate time to bring in a partner? So that's the first question. Second question, you've sort of introduced to some new people today, new old people. So that's your internal capability on projects. What do you think about in terms of external capability? So you say, we're going to tap into Fluor, we're going to tap into Bechtel. Do they actually have the people to build all these projects?
Okay. So timing, we won't syndicate until we have taken these projects up the value curve because we don't want to leave value on the table. So we want to take these up post feasibility and probably to FID phase or state.
Syndication at FID?
Most likely somewhere around FID because by FID, we are comfortable on the value and the price. If we syndicate too early, there's a fear that we leave money on the table. We want to know what the size of the price is. Christophe spent a lot of time talking about what Petron looks like. Right now, we do not know what the size of the price is. The only thing that we know is whatever we put up there, it's bigger. And to syndicate that now would potentially leave value on the table. So we want to -- and we can do the work. We can take that work up to FID when we know what this is, and that's when we can bring partners in.
With regards to engineering firms and the ability to provide skills, yes, this is a challenge. And obviously, the question you asked is the right question, Jason. There are challenges. within these companies, there are A teams and B teams, we're always focused on the A teams. But Steve talked about, and I'll come to the -- well, let me go first. When we spoke about a lot of our projects, a lot of our projects are natural extensions of existing mines, which are the Coroccohuayco, that's either a haul road that John can build in 5 minutes or a conveyor belt that Christophe can build in 7 minutes. That will decide. So these are not things that you need big engineering companies to do. John built haul roads every day of the week.
So a lot of our projects, a significant amount of projects of brownfield, which are actually mining extensions, mining expansions. These are things we don't need engineering companies for. So most of it, we don't need it. Then we go to the ones where we do need the engineering companies. Your point is right, do the skills exist? Well, there are skills. They do exist, not always easy to get the A team for those sorts of things.
However, Steve talked about, and particularly on the Pet side, the ability to look at different structures and bring in partners who take a disproportionate amount of risk around execution and capital rather than just everybody relying on Fluor or whoever the engineering firm is to deliver a project. So we're trying to mitigate the risk that you raise or the question you raised or the risk you raised in your question by looking at these alternative structures.
2. Question Answer
Two questions for me. So I'm really interested in the side on the copper growth options, but particularly the Collahuasi concentrator expansion. So no mention of a conveyor belt. So could you maybe unpack for us how you're thinking about that project optionality, the value option? And again, maybe unpack how you're addressing some of those conversations with Anglo at the moment about that concentrator expansion? That's my first question.
Yes, Dom, we're not ignorant to some adjacent potential synergies. We've had no discussions with Anglo on them. We're clearly aware of the challenges at the adjacent mine. And if and when the time comes to have a discussion with Anglo, we'll have the discussion. But at a minimum, the value proposition or the value attributed to the 2 assets has materially moved towards Collahuasi to what everybody thought it may have been 2, 3, 4, 6 months ago. So that's the minimum starting point.
The other point that we will be very firm on and is clear for us is that -- if we decide to not go ahead with the fourth line, which is something, as Michael said, we've already mandated and agreed to do the feasibility study. But if we do go ahead with that, and we don't do that, excuse me, and we do, do something on -- with a neighboring property, we won't become a junior partner. We will then remain as an equal equity partner that may put some cash in, whatever it may be, let's see. And as I say, the cash in will be impacted by that value attributable to each side, where now a lot more of it has gone towards the Collahuasi side.
Second question, the presentation makes reference to your credit rating, but you don't make any reference to your $10 billion net debt target. So just in the context of the growth strategy that you're outlining, are you -- do you still maintain that $10 billion intention? Or is there potential scope to run a slightly tighter, more risk-averse balance sheet looking forward or no change to the capital distribution strategy?
It's not mentioned in any of my slides, but there is still the appendix that shows very clearly how it's all been done and how we practiced that over the last 3 or 4 years now. We feel like that $10 billion is appropriate. Now effectively, it's all equity funding because that's how it kind of works. You need to -- I mean, this is post CapEx, you're generating the cash flow. We've shown that the copper business itself under a range of scenarios, either more tightly even more sort of conservatively can easily fund that just within its own parameters.
I think at some point, the trajectory on that debt level, once you have brought in some of these projects, I think the direction of that $10 billion is up, because the installed base of the business, you're at [ 1.6 ]. You look at some of those -- the right-hand side of where some of the cash flows that, that business is then generating relative to today under some debt leverage type ratio consistent with strong BBB ratings, even A3 where we're on the Moody's side, I think the direction of travel, once we have funded and get to the promised land, I think it's up and then the ability to then maintain a less conservative while still being -- meeting those parameters is very strong in the future.
Matt.
It's Matt Greene from Goldman Sachs. Gary, your opening remarks, you discussed simplification and enhancement of the portfolio. So my question is, how does Glencore define or measure what is strategically core to the company today?
Yes, Matt, I mean you would have seen the slide that I put up there where we've -- there are 35 different assets that we've divested, some of them for significant cash, which we've been able to reinvest and others just because it didn't make sense to be there. Now that doesn't include others that we may have shut down. We shut down Port of Vesme. It didn't make sense.
But you also heard Josh speak a lot around the marketing assets. And it's an interesting -- and that's maybe a misunderstood part of the business. And I've read your report where you sort of identified some assets that you feel maybe should be divested. But as you -- and I understand where you come from because when you look at it, you go, the ROI on that asset as it stands alone doesn't pass a certain threshold hurdle cash flow. And that is fair.
If you look at it and from your perspective, and I think your analysis is done is right. But what you don't see in your analysis is the value that -- let's take Astron refinery, the value that provides to, for example, Maxim over here. The ability to trade crude around that short is enormous. Now you don't see any of that value in Astron. Astron, you'll just see a pure refining margin. And if refining margins are weak, you go, well, that's not a great business. You've got weak refining margins, okay?
We've had great refining margins, too, and it's like anything else, but where Maxim makes a lot of money out of it is having that short. And many of the assets that fit into that bottom left-hand quadrant that you have or that you've identified are exactly those where Jyothish or Maxim or whatever it may be or Andrew are able to trade around those assets. And you don't see the return in that. Now -- when we look at the asset, to answer your question, we look at holistically, the returns, the cash flow, does it move the needle? Is it relevant? And that's the basis for us to decide on those 35 assets that we divested, what makes sense. It's not just because it sits in the quadrant there because of the stand-alone returns, it's how it fits in the structure, and that we look at as a group.
That's great. So perhaps question -- yes, another question. Just following on from that, you do have a lot of infrastructure in the marketing business, but also in the mining business. Steve, you've said that there could be scope to monetize some noncore infrastructure assets. Are you willing to put a number perhaps on what that could unlock and you could recycle into elsewhere in the business?
Well, there can be billions. They just got to sharpen their pencil. We've had some discussions, sharpen your pencil. Maybe there's a deal to be done at some point.
This is Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley. El Pachon is the biggest copper option within your growth portfolio, and you've touched on the different options you're exploring. How prominent is the adjacency option with mines that could lie on the other side of the border? And have you started any discussions with that option at all? That's the first question.
Look, we've got a very good relationship with Antofagasta. We have a commercial relationship with them. Jyothish does a lot of business with them. And there's a clear -- you don't even have to look at the map to understand how important or how relevant those 2 operations can be together. And there's certainly an interest -- I can't speak for Evan, and I'm not saying anything that's not public. There's an interest on both sides to be able to work together to see if there's ways to optimize both of our businesses for the benefit of all our shareholders. So there's certainly an opportunity to do something there.
And the second question is on Katanga. I guess, the last 3 or 4 years, there's been lots of issues with the land access, and you've touched on it as well in the presentation. Where are we in these discussions? How close are we to getting to a breakthrough? And what are the next milestones to look out for?
Yes. We've had to restructure the entire transaction. The entire transaction was an acquisition of the land, which due to legal impediments within the DRC, Jeckamans were unable to ultimately close that transaction. And it's taken a lot of time to get to a position where we can now restructure it. We've now restructured it. We are -- I don't want to put a time line on Elaine, but we're very close. I've said before, I hope we could get it done before the end of this year. We're sitting here at the 3rd December. Could we -- it still is possible to get it done before the end of this year. No, maybe not, and maybe it drags into the first quarter. But this is not years away anymore. We are -- we have made good progress.
Impressive pipeline of projects. Just wondering, obviously, balance sheet capacity is one of the things, just in terms of people capacity to do all these projects simultaneously. I mean, if we see a delay in one of them, does that mean the whole pipeline gets pushed? Or can Glencore really do these -- I mean, you've got 3 commissionings in several years happening at the same time.
No. I mean, just one -- I mean, I don't think no. The answer is no. We have -- firstly, we've got teams and John spoke about the structures where we've pushed capability down into the regions. So when you're doing MUMI, that has nothing to do with what you're doing in Coroccohuayco. You have a team and an empowered team in Coroccohuayco to do what they need to do while MUMI is doing what they need to do. Now you may have challenges in each geography. That's fine. That will happen, and we can staff it from the center to the extent that we need. But each one is not dependent on a single team or a single person to be able to execute those projects.
Okay. And just quickly, Century Aluminum, just curious what the plans are around that holding with the recent sell.
We're committed to the company. We're a long-term holder of the company. We used to own 47% of it. We've owned it for a very long time. It doesn't give us any marketing arrangements. In fact, sometimes it's a bit -- we held to a high standard sometimes when we have to get the marketing when we offer to do their marketing or we make a proposal to them. And there's no real difference between only 47% and 35%. And we felt given that price movements have been very strong, here's a great way to recycle some capital, take some money and put it into maybe one of these copper projects.
Alon Olsha, Bloomberg Intelligence. Just another project-specific question on MUMI sulfides. So $400 million for a new concentrate OSA plant seems pretty low kind of benchmarking against other projects. So could you kind of run through what's behind that number? And the second part of that question is, I think you alluded to potentially bringing that project forward kind of under what conditions would you consider doing that? I think first production currently is set at 2031.
Jon, do you want to take that...
We have. I mean we're looking at everything. In the way that we would see the project moving forward is to build a small concentrator and start producing concentrates and floating off the cobalt and then sending concentrates into the market and then we move to a roaster basically. So we're doing all of that work. We believe -- I mean, FID is 2027. That project is moving fast at the moment. We've got exposed sulfides in the mine. And so the transition to sulfides is really simple for us.
What we're doing at the moment is trying to figure out how we can maintain the oxides and the plating capacity and then move to the sulfides at the same time. So we're in that early study phase at the moment, but it's moving really fast. And as Gary said, we've got the capability that's there. We've installed the capability, and we expect that to move as planned. CapEx, we're still refining. So there's still some work to be done. But as a starter, that number is pretty close to where we think it will be.
What's the kind of rough size of that plant in terms of throughput?
It's a single-line concentrator, probably 40,000 tonnes a day type thing. Yes. And we've got to leverage from the crushing capacity that we've got on site as well. So there's a bit of tie-in sort of work that we've got to do. But yes, moving forward. And the team are pretty excited about it. So obviously, we're moving faster. As I mentioned before, we want to move faster, obviously, to bring all that stuff forward as well. But also leveraging from what's happening in the DRC in terms of smelter capacities and all of that as well.
Myles Allsop, UBS. I suppose just -- We've seen the pipeline of copper projects, and yes, it's pretty impressive. We've known about it for the last year, but we're getting more and more information. But the market is not pricing it in. And there's a risk that we'll be here in 2 years' time and the pipeline is moving forward, but the market is still not pricing in. And in 2 years' time, when CapEx goes up and cash returns will be falling as well and you'll be in that trap and still trading at the current level.
I mean, obviously, last year was they kind of looking at spinning out coal. Maybe one of the impediments with that is kind of the oil kind of marketing kind of business and the market being less comfortable with that. How much synergy is there between oil marketing and the base metal marketing business? And at what point would you revisit the spinout and potentially crystallizing huge value for shareholders?
There's a lot in that, but I'll try to get through it. I mean crystal balling Okay. Just in terms of the synergies between marketing and base metals, yes, I mean, Josh spoke about and he put up that graph where we're no longer talking about commodities. We're talking about thematics. And energy is the key thematic for today. If you want to oh, data centers, AI, that's not. That's copper. That's power. What is power? That's thermal coal, that's gas. So what is gas? Well, gas relies on -- in some respects, what is crude, what is carbon price.
So it is an interlinked thematic. And one has to -- and that's one of the great pieces of work that Jot is doing is making those thematics more relevant within our business that we can lever off that for customers, for value, for margin. So it's not just simply saying, oh, okay, the energy business and the spin-off was meant to be the coal business, not the energy business, but to say, oh, we don't need the energy business or the energy business is a drag on our earnings. I don't believe it the energy business, particularly the oil and gas trading business is a drag on our earnings.
In fact, it's better. It's a cash-generative business, does very well year in, year out. And as I talked about, those synergies. With respect to the coal spin-off, and I think what you were talking about is a drag on our share price. I think we've been clear. We listened to shareholders. Shareholders didn't want to spin off the business. Of course, if shareholders tell us they want to spin off the business, fine. But we believe in this coal business. We've stood up. We've told you we believe in it. We believe in the fundamentals of the business, the quality of the assets and the fundamentals of the supply/demand for both steelmaking and thermal coal. That's us as management.
If shareholders change their mind, they can change their mind and then we'll do what we need to do. But we have no intention to follow that path because we believe in this business. The argument that, that is a drag on our share price, if there is a Jagger on share price and we haven't rerated, well, we just bought back 14% of our own stock before it re-rates. So to front run the re-rate at a discount is far better than buying anybody else at a premium, and we're quite happy to do that. And given the cash generation that Steve pointed out, where we can fund our projects and pay dividends or pay distributions to shareholders, we'll continue to front run that rerate. And when we are the world's biggest copper company and we are trading at 15x EBITDA, well, I think the best piece of business we would have done is buying back our own stock.
Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. First one on marketing. There seems to be a lot more competition in metals trading. Is that a risk to margins next year? And if not, why not?
Size and scale of the business we have, it took about 50 years to build. So is it good that others are coming in? Yes. It's always good to have competition. I don't think it's that easy to build one of these businesses in a very short period of time. And there's a lot of intersections. It's -- you look at -- if you want to do just copper, you saw the world map, we sell copper all around the world. You have to start field offices everywhere, right? Where you source when we source, there is a lot of intersection between copper and zinc. So if you start copper, you probably want to start zinc. Then you think, okay, the zinc, maybe it's good to have nickel. You start building block by block. It's not easy. So can they succeed? Who knows, but it's not easy.
And we're generating record earnings in the metals business at the moment. So that is something to point to where this sort of competitive landscape has been in a certain evolving shape for the best part of nearly 2 years now.
Second one, another one on disposals, unfortunately. There's been press on Kazzinc and DRC in recent months. I mean, are they options, partial or full sale to fund some of this copper pipeline that you're outlining?
You know what I like about these approaches and the speculation. They're approaching us on core critical assets. They want our best assets. We've put up what we're doing in the DRC and movie today. We didn't obviously put up Kazakhstan because we're not doing a Kazzinc deep dive, and we're happy to do that. These are core assets. These are assets that add a huge amount of cash flow to our business, huge amount of value to our business, huge amount of marketing leverage to our business.
And the fact that we get people knocking on the door saying, we're interested to buy DRC, we're interested to buy Kazzinc is a complement to those businesses. It's -- maybe we take Matt Greene's bottom quadrant and see who's knocking on the door for what looks like not great assets. No, they're knocking on the door for the best assets in this business. These are core critical assets for our business. We have no interest in selling them.
We're going to develop them, grow them and extract value. But with that said, there's a price for everything. And if the right buyer for the right value decides to offer us for any asset in this company for the entire company itself, of course, there's a price. And we have to look at those seriously if we are serious about ensuring that we create the most value for shareholders. So that's how we see it.
It's Patrick Mann from Investec. One of the bull cases for copper is that it takes a long time to bring sort of greenfield projects to first production. But if I sort of look at the table, it's quite a short time in mining terms from sort of indicative FID to first production. Is there a risk that, that slips from environmental permissions or regulations? Or is this something because Argentina through this 3D program are pushing for this investment that you feel is fast tracked and maybe that gives...
Do you want to talk about -- You talk about the China.
A lot of support from the government in terms of approving and moving forward with projects as well. FIDs will happen with the approved and we know exactly what we are building and which time line. The time lines that we put for the projects are comparable to what we have seen in other projects evolving from FID to construction. So pretty comfortable about meeting those time lines because there's support from the government, there's support from communities and there's a local team with a deep knowledge of local market that can perform that. And Christophe done it, I've done it, we know who to work.
And these projects have not started work on last month. These projects years in technical and planning and...
17 years figure is from first discovery and you're way along that.
Maybe more than that.
Older than the average.
And then maybe just a second question, if I may. I mean, how do the cobalt quotas impact your thinking around allocating capital to -- it sounded like there's still decent enough returns on offer there and maybe you changed the pit to focus on maximizing the copper throughput. But does it impact it at all or?
No, these assets are -- these assets and these projects are stand-alone value accretive beyond our benchmark returns on copper alone. So the cobalt -- when we bought and we built these things, we didn't even know what to do with the cobalt at the time. So now, okay, we know what to do it and we just can't get it all out. But you've got -- if you go -- if you look at where -- what the quotas have done, I mean, the price is up 5x -- so the fact that value over volume is proof that it's not the end of the world. It stands alone on copper and any benefit we get out of the cobalt is probably even better now that they have implemented these quotas.
Richard Hatch from Berenberg. You talked to Game about the long-term growth in the business. Short term, if I look at the guidance, it feels like we're facing downgrades again, right? So there's some big cuts in some of these numbers. So I'm just trying to understand a bit more what's going on with zinc? Why has zinc come down so much? I see Antamin has come off a bit, but zinc has come down big. And then met coal, we went out to EVR earlier this year. Again, talk to your game, but are we cutting numbers at EVR? I'm just trying to understand why we've gone from [ 35 to 33 ] in met coal. That's the first one.
I mean EVR is a function. We could go more -- it's a matter of getting towards these permits, particularly at Green Hills, Kuga 8, 9 and ultimately leading into the Fording River extension. So you're sort of planning for a consistently that sort of range and managing the risk basis timing that at some point, you may have to go down and then sort of back up a bit. So it's better just to keep those rates running as per schedules. I mean Xavier is very close to it. I don't know if there's anything.
Before you say anything Xavier, I mean, to be frank, I mean, at $198 coking coal, what do we need an extra 2 million tonnes of coking coal in the market for? I mean, great on the margins, and you can say, yes, margin curve. But to take it 2 million tonnes out of the market, does it do anything? Maybe, maybe not.
The factor. We could be maintaining higher. And then at some point, you sort of say, well, what's the next, but we're kind of a little bit slow playing it. That's right.
Xavier, I don't know if you want to add something on that...
No, I think -- the underlying issue for EVR is permits. That is 100% the issue there. Obviously, there's a lot of underlying activity going into the water plants and all that, which provides some distraction. But from an underlying operating perspective, it's a permitting issue more than anything else. The underlying base business continues to perform well. The impact permits has is predominantly related to haul distance and so on.
And so you've got a decision to make about whether you invest in additional haulage capacity to maintain your volumes, which is only temporary because once you get the permits, you don't need that anymore. So what's the best way to manage that? As Gary says, given where prices are, like the incremental return on those tonnes doesn't make sense. And so you have to look at the economics as well.
I think it was really Lady Loretta was the main one coming.
Lady Loretta and then obviously, Antamina going through its phases.
I guess the thrust of the question is more, is this the low of the guidance, right? Is this the point where you feel operationally, you put a management team in front of us now, an ops management team in front of us where we can look at these numbers and say, these are the numbers and they're not going to be tweaked 5% lower. I get it. It's just more...
That chart that Xavier went through 3 or something...
Okay. And the second one is you made no mention of streaming in your financing package. Is that a consideration? Or is that something you prefer to do?
No.
Reason for that?
It's -- there's better ways to finance the business. We don't need the streamers. We can if there's a degree of sort of price management that you think that gold and silver makes sense to lock in some or a portion, one could do it once it doesn't need to be sold. I mean these things are not -- I mean, they are effectively primary gold and zinc and the likes. We're happy to take the tailwind from the precious now. But I think the industry has generally transferred more value to the streamers over the last 10, 15 years than the other way around. And it's not under consideration.
Ephrem Ravi from Citi. Two cynical questions, apologies. First one, like 2 years ago, same case, copper, we need growth, but the focus was on urban mining and recycling. Breaking rock was so previous century, right? Now it's more on greenfield projects. So in terms of returns or how much copper incremental you can get, is recycling still worse off than greenfield? Or is there any way to kind of ramp up the 1 billion you are going to spend per year on recycling to get the same -- bring the same amount of copper into the market?
We've got [ $1 billion ] a year on recycling, Ephrem. I mean what we said and you were on that tour, it's quite a good tour. Certainly the food was good, is what we said is we saw recycling as something that had potential. And we said what we would do we had a good recycling business. And we said, you know what, guys, keep -- and in fact, Jyothish was a key proonent of that, and he can maybe answer better than I can, but I'll give you my perspective. And we said clearly at that, we said, look, there's a demand for recycled material. And at that time, the demand for recycled material, there was a clear premium in some markets the recycled material. So we said fine, we have this recycling business. It's generating cash flow. I think it was $200 million, $250 million EBITDA every year.
We said then take it and reinvest it, like a venture capital because if recycling does take off like we think and can become a $1 billion a year business, we don't mind wagering that $200 million, $250 million a year. And if it doesn't work, it's fine because we have all the levers that we have on the other side of the business that while we were on that tour, we were still doing a lot of the derisking that you've heard around today, the studies, the land acquisition, all the derisking and the work that needed to be done. That hasn't happened in 5 minutes before this presentation. It's happened over that 2-year period.
There was a time that recycling was looking like it had potential. So we said, okay, let's have a look at it. Let's put a little bit of money towards it. Nothing that is material, certainly not in the numbers that you mentioned and see if it does go somewhere. I still believe personally that with time, recycling comes back and will be important. Why? Not just about margins, but it's just about sheer volume. Look at that deficit that we're all expecting, even half that deficit, you need to, whether it's -- you're thinking about responsible mining or urban mining, no, fill that gap and you need it from everywhere. And I do believe that recycling will come back. And I think some of the work that we've done historically in recycling and some of the infrastructure we have, actually, in time, will come back and pay big dividends.
And secondly, on disposals, there are core assets, but you've always had the view that at some price, even core assets are for sale. But given that you are now approving copper projects with arguably a higher sort of long-term price expectations, has your expectation for the price that you would receive for these disposals gone up materially if versus, let's say, 2 years ago, is it like 20%, 30%, 40%?
There's a price for every asset, Ephrem, at every point in the cycle.
And today versus 2 years would be 40%?
Yes, for sure.
Izak Rossouw from Barclays. Just a quick follow-up on the cobalt and the land access. Is any of the land access assumed in this guidance? Or what's the assumptions for that at KCC?
It's not particularly relevant in the shorter term. The long-term plan would sort of depend when we put the big KCC, but the shorter term is not -- and I think there's even a footnote that says through land acquisition, it's not required for a sort of 3-year period or so to underpin that.
Okay. And then just to follow up on the cobalt question in quotas. Obviously, the production guidance is still quite a bit higher than the quotas. Is the intention just to stockpile that for a number of years? How long can you stockpile it?
As long as we need.
Can you -- okay. And then maybe just lastly on Ephrem and Myles' question around sort of asset sales and disposals. I mean, do you think if you say anything is for sale at the right price, if you sacrifice a bit on the price, you actually get a much bigger re-rating for the business as a whole for some of these assets like Kazzinc or the DRC?
I'm not of the view that would be the case, to be honest. I don't think so. It's not about sort of -- and the strange thing about that is that, okay, but then you got to sell your shares the next day to actually realize that re-rate. So if we sell an asset at a 20% discount, we've locked in a -- we've left 20% of free cash flows, DCF, we've forgone that. That's cash gone. Now if the share price did re-rate, you have to actually sell the share to be able to capture the value. If you don't sell your share, there's no value creation. you've actually lost money. So that's under that example. I don't believe that is the case, to be honest. But if it is the case, you then need to sell your share.
Tony Robson, Global Mining Research. Easy questions, thermal coal. Can you remind us, assuming $140 a tonne sort of normalized thermal price, what major closures are happening in New South Wales in the coming decade? And Cerrejón in 2033, can you extend that if we still have coal at $140 or something?
2033, Cerrejón has billions of tonnes of resource. And when we do shut it or when the lease comes to expiration, it's a number of leases over 2033, 2034. We've said that we would then hand those leases back to the government at the time, which is the obligation in the Colombian Law. So when we get to '33, '34, that's what we'll do. What the government decides and what they want to do with it at the time, that will be a discussion then. But our intention remains that we will hand back the leases under the law under at the expiration of the leases back to the government at that time.
With regards to our Australian Coal business, most of the closures actually happen beyond 2030, 2031 and beyond or sort of the end of the economic lives. You've got the likes of -- the one that happened -- that's happening sooner is Claremont up in Queensland, that shuts in '28. Oak comes to the end of life towards the '29. New South Wales, Mount Owen comes to the end early 30s. What else Xavier is in...
Those are it...
Mongolia also around that time.
Mongolia is a similar...
Sorry, just a follow-up. I mean, if the current policy scenario is obviously assuming these efficiencies, you can't bend the curve, would you move away from your commitment to cut coal production by 50% by 2035?
Our intention is not to do that, and I think Andrew was quite clear. One can't just simply change what we tell the market and what our -- what we've said we're going to do just on a whim. But if we do get to 2035 and the world is screaming for the coal effectively. We're energy short. We're fossil fuel short, and we need the energy and the governments of the world. And we have always said that the governments of the world come together and say, listen, we understand this is the case, and Cerrejón is a perfect example. Please take -- continue with the lease. But this is going to be the governments of the world have got to say to us, we want this, that this climate change is important and the responsible rundown is great, but we do need these coal mines running for longer to be able to satisfy this hunger for energy. prices.
Prices have gone crazy, and we can't fill it with -- as I said earlier, you can't get gas turbines and nuclear stations or can't get built on time and renewables don't prove to be what many think they are. And the world says, please continue to mine. Yes, we will continue to mine. No, thanks very much. I mean, as always, we're always available to you guys. We've got a dinner tonight with the analysts. We can answer some questions then. I want to thank you for the time. I know it was long, but I think it was informative and appreciate all the support. Thank you very much.
Glencore — Analyst/Investor Day - Glencore plc
Financial data from Glencore
Revenue
Revenue is the sum of all sales generated by a company, e.g. for its products or services.
Revenue (TTM) metric explainedDirect Costs
Direct costs are the costs incurred directly in connection with the manufacture of the product or service.
Gross Profit
Gross Profit indicates how much of the revenue remains in the company after deducting direct production costs. If the percentage share of sales is calculated, this is referred to as the gross margin.
Gross Profit metric explainedSelling and Administrative Expenses
Selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A) include all expenses for marketing and sales as well as the general administration of the company.
Research and Development Expense
Research and development costs (R&D) provide information on how much the company invests in the research and development of its products. The costs are particularly interesting as a percentage of revenue and in comparison to direct competitors.
EBITDA
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) is the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The EBITDA margin is calculated as a percentage of sales.
Depreciation and Amortization
Depreciation represents reductions in the value of the company's assets (e.g. due to wear and tear on machinery).
EBIT (Operating Income)
EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) is the company's profit before interest and taxes, also known as the operating income. The EBIT Margin is calculated as a percentage of sales at
.
Net Profit
Net Profit represents the profit or loss after deduction of all costs.
Net Profit metric explainedStocksGuide Premium
| Jun '26 |
+/-
%
|
||
| Revenue | 230,004 230,004 |
32%
32%
100%
|
|
| - Direct Costs | 222,212 222,212 |
31%
31%
97%
|
|
| Gross Profit | 7,792 7,792 |
72%
72%
3%
|
|
| - Selling and Administrative Expenses | 2,139 2,139 |
16%
16%
1%
|
|
| - Research and Development Expense | - - |
-
-
|
|
| EBITDA | 10,282 10,282 |
34%
34%
4%
|
|
| - Depreciation and Amortization | 4,883 4,883 |
5%
5%
2%
|
|
| EBIT (Operating Income) EBIT | 5,400 5,400 |
111%
111%
2%
|
|
| Net Profit | 4,095 4,095 |
364%
364%
2%
|
|
In millions GBP.
Don't miss a Thing! We will send you all news about Glencore directly to your mailbox free of charge.
If you wish, we will send you an e-mail every morning with news on stocks of your portfolios.
Glencore Stock News
Company Profile
Glencore Plc engages in the production and marketing of metal, mineral, and energy and agricultural commodities. The firm serves the automotive, steel, power generation, battery manufacturing, and oil sectors. It operates through the following segments: Marketing, Industrial, and Corporate and Other. The Marketing segment includes net sale and purchase of physical commodities, and provision of marketing and related value-add services. The Industrial segment comprises the sale of physical commodities over the cost of production and/or cost of sales. The Corporate and Other segment represents Group related income and expenses. The company was founded in 1974 and is headquartered in Baar, Switzerland.
StocksGuide Premium
| Head office | Switzerland |
| CEO | Mr. Nagle |
| Employees | 80,423 |
| Founded | 1974 |
| Website | www.glencore.com |


