We continue to hold our approximate 25% ownership in LanzaJet today. The recent equity rate by LanzaJet has been done in an unpriced round and is therefore non- deluded to LanzaTech at this time. Additionally LanzaJet’s recent capital rate does not impact the mechanism by which LanzaJet is issued additional LanzaJet shares to increase our ownership percentage as the original co-investors and others build their own plants using LanzaJet SAF technology. Moving to slide eight on our commercial project pipeline our total operating project count stands at eight, which includes both commercial scale and demonstration scale projects. Please note that for the purposes of the project funnel we have now separated out the LanzaJet freedom pines fuels facility from this illustration.
This LanzaJet project was previously in the construction category and going forward we’ll provide updates on the project separate from the LanzaJet biorefining project pipeline. The LanzaJet freedom pines fuels project is currently in commissioning and startup and is on track for production of fuel in the second quarter this year. The total installed maintenance production capacity across our license sheets operating through the six commercial biorefining projects is approximately 310,000 tons of ethanol per year with the ability to abate more than half a million tons of carbon per year that would otherwise enter our atmosphere. The four commercial plants in China continue to perform and will continue to make progress on the ramp up to full production capacity at Indian oil facility in India and ArcelorMittal facility in Belgium.
Our global services engineers are diligently working hand-in-hand with our customers to ramp up production and we expect that successful full scale operations will be achieved within 2024. Looking at the top of the funnel we have nine net additions of qualified project opportunities into the first phase of the pipeline in the first quarter and one net project addition into advanced engineering from early stage engineering. As mentioned during our last update we continue to expect that several projects in advanced engineering will achieve final investment decision and move into the construction phase in the second half of this year. As a result we expect revenues from the sale of equipment packages to materialize with respect to those projects along the same pipeline.
In addition to the significant depth of our commercial licensing pipeline, we’re working with our infrastructure capital partner Brookfield to transfer the first project under our partnership to them this year, while ramping up development of additional project opportunities. Additionally, we’re working closely with our joint venture partner Olayan on developing and financing a pipeline of project opportunities in Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East. In our CarbonSmart business we continue to negotiate off-state supply agreements with our partners in China and Europe to satisfy the growing CarbonSmart demand in 2024 and 2025. We’re focused on sales into the global chemicals market with a revenue in the first quarter from several of these customers.
We also remain optimistic about revenue outside for CarbonSmart ethanol in the low carbon fuels markets specifically in the EU once regulations are settled at the European Commission on how these first of their pine fuels are treated. Positive technical guidance continues to be provided by the Commission, but it is not yet final. With the latest expectations suggesting that the European Commission will approve the certified bodies this summer. Lastly before turning it over to Jeff, I wanted to share a brief update on the reorganization initiative designed last quarter. We’ve already begun to see the operational transparency and efficiency bear fruit with a more streamlined executive team driving greater accountability and enhanced execution throughout the company.
The reorganization and work reprioritizations announced earlier this year are now fully underway with the estimated cost savings associated now beginning to materialize. We continue to expect the annualized operating expense savings of $5.3 million to be realized over the course of this year. Additionally, we’ll continue to expect to end the year with our global headcount at or below 400 people, which is below the total headcount at year end 2023. As a global team we are focused on commercial growth in our core business and delivering on the financial results we’ve committed through the market. With that I’ll turn the call over to Jeff to provide details on our financial performance. Geoff, please go ahead.
Geoff Trukenbrod: Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning and thank you to everyone for joining us on the call. To see on slide 10, total revenue from the first quarter 2024 of $10.2 million grew by 6% year-over-year. It was right in line with our forecasts and the guidance we laid out last quarter. CarbonSmart revenue was approximately $1 million and JDA & Contract Research revenue of $4.3 million, both grew year-on-year in the first quarter. The CarbonSmart, sales from our current chemicals customers supported this growth and on the JDA and Contract Research side, the performance was driven by several customers and government grants which are typically multi-year duration. Biorefining revenue declined year-over-year in the first quarter to $5 million but saw strong contributions from engineering services revenue across projects of both early and advanced stage engineering as well as some startup services associated with the ArcelorMittal in Belgium.
Importantly, the decline year-on-year in Biorefining revenue was anticipated and is attributed to the uneven nature of revenues earned in the early development stages of each project which currently dominates Biorefining revenue mix. Notably, we expect the composition of a revenue mix will become increasingly smooth and consistent as we continue to add project opportunities and more projects come online building our current revenue as a larger percentage of our overall revenue mix. With respect to margins during the quarter, our focus on revenue quality continued during the first quarter grabbing gross profit improvement of 87% year-on-year to $3.5 million. This improvement reflects a higher mix of high margin engineering services work and JDA and Contracts resulting in first quarter gross margins of 34% of approximately 570 basis points over the full year 2023 gross margin.
As mentioned previously, we continue to expect gross margin to be in the mid to high 20s for the full year 2024. On the expense side operating expenses declined 14% year-on-year in the first quarter coming into $29.6 million largely reflective of the one-time expenses in the first quarter 2023 associated with our global transaction. Sequentially operating expenses increased due to slightly higher personnel expense and research and development in SG&A and reduced bonuses in Q4, 2023 and Q1, 2024 severance costs associated with the previously announced reorganization. As Jennifer noted, the executive reorganization that we announced last quarter simply and the newly reorganized functions are exploring, implementing efficiency and accountability improvements throughout the organization.
