Throughout this period, we continued to enhance our performance across our priority sustainability areas and we’re excited about the opportunities our enlarged business presents to expand our contribution across the full value chain.

Transformation of Whitehaven

The acquisition of Blackwater and Daunia transforms Whitehaven into a predominantly metallurgical coal producer (on a revenue basis) and delivers a range of benefits arising from increased diversification and scale.

It more than doubles the size of our operational workforce and will see us double our annual production of coal going forward.

This increased scale and diversification helps de-risk our business and positions us to deliver sustained value for our customers, communities, investors and other stakeholders.

Importantly, our thermal coal business remains strategically important as we continue to support our customers to reduce their emissions by providing our high-quality and high–calorific value (high CV) products.

People

The safety of our people is our first priority and we believe everyone should expect to go home safe and healthy after work every day. This commitment is reflected in the continued improvement seen in our safety performance across FY24.

I’m pleased to report our legacy business, which excludes Blackwater and Daunia, achieved its best ever total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) of 3.3, compared with 4.7 in the prior year.

The new Queensland business recorded a TRIFR of 6.6 for the June quarter and we are targeting sustained improvement across these operations as we continue to integrate the assets into the broader portfolio.

These positive results are testament to our maturing safety culture and improved capability, including better identification and elimination of safety hazards, sharing of learnings and visible safety leadership in the field.

Our people remain our greatest asset and we’ve been delighted with the calibre of the transitioning workforce that joined us at Blackwater and Daunia. By their nature, transitions of this scale are inherently complex. The largely seamless integration of the operations is testament to the great teamwork and commitment to excellence demonstrated by our people – values that drive us each day.

Our ongoing efforts to foster a strong, diverse and inclusive workplace culture are continuing to bear fruit across
the business.

We have made significant progress against our female representation goals, achieving our targets two years early. In FY22, we committed to having women represent 20% of employees and 20% of leadership roles by the end of FY26. In FY24, female representation across our operations

was up to 22.7%, and 19.7% in our legacy business, while women represented 19.7% of leadership roles overall, and 21.1% in our legacy business.

We also continue to see strong representation of employees identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, with 10.6% across the business.

Strategy and decarbonisation

Whitehaven continues to play an important role in supporting economic development and reliable energy supply, particularly
in Asia, and demand for our products is expected to remain strong during the multi-decade energy transition.

Metallurgical coal is a critical component in steelmaking and remains essential for infrastructure growth and economic development. Our high-quality thermal coal will continue to support global energy security, particularly in Asia where there continues to be strong demand for its use in high-efficiency, low-emissions, coal-fired power stations.

At Whitehaven, we will always advocate for reasonable government policy outcomes that maintain the global competitiveness of Australia’s coal sector. Coal is Australia’s second largest export, adding nearly $100 billion to our economy in 2022–23, making it fundamental to the country’s economic prosperity and resilience.