So it’s something we are monitoring very, very closely, but that is the broad external context. When we bring that into the company, you are all familiar with our strategic thinking, our three-dimensional strategy, the strategic foundation, the strategic essentials and of course, they are strategic differentiators. In a challenging environment, the primary focus has to be on strategic essentials. And that is where our focus is. And just to remind you, what does that actually mean? It means, first of all, we’ve got to ensure the safety and well-being of our employees. So safety first. Prospering in every region in which we operate. That means having good stakeholder relations, with all stakeholders in the regions we operate in. Achieving operational excellence and optimizing long-term resource value.
We’re going to cover a number of those aspects in this presentation. You saw increases, within our South African PGM business of only 4% in a high inflationary environment. I will get on to recently declared reserves and resources and show you how we’ve optimized long-term resource values. Those are some of the key assets within the company. Maintaining a profitable business and optimizing capital allocation. In this presentation, I believe I will talk about capital allocation. Charles will talk about capital allocation, and Richard will talk about capital allocation. But dealing with loss making shafts in a proactive way dealing with loss making parts of our business in a proactive way. Considering capital allocation and even rescheduling capital such as Burnstone and perhaps even Keliber is important.
Embedding ESG is the way we do business. That was the very first strategic highlight for 2023 that I covered. So that’s what we mean by strategic essentials. And focusing on the strategic essentials to protect the balance sheet is what is critical in a year like 2024. So let’s talk about the proactive actions we’ve taken to protect and strengthen the balance sheet. And I want to do that against the backdrop of the table on the right hand side. What we’ve got listed there is some of the restructuring benefits that have been achieved in our business over the last year and early into this year. I’m not going to go through it in detail, but you can see that our gross savings and CapEx deferrals from the period that we’re going to talk about now has amounted to R6.6 billion or $375 million.
And this, you do not do overnight. This has been a journey, and I will share with you that journey. So in February 2022 at our year-end results presentation, we noted the prospects of a global economic downturn post the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia. And we knew that was going to drive up energy prices. We knew that was going to drive up inflation. And of course, the only way central banks can really manage inflation is to raise interest rates. So we could see that coming. In August of 2022, we recognized that our U.S. PGM business could well be delivering additional palladium into an anticipated palladium price weakness in 2028. And that was the first round of restructuring at our U.S. business. In [indiscernible] processing plant from May of 2023, we started to protect the downside in terms of gold price at let’s call it significant levels, probably even record levels.
That is protecting the balance sheet. In November of 2023, instead of using our balance sheet to acquire Reldan, we raised $500 million through a convertible note to fund the Reldan acquisition. And that was actually raising $500 million at an interest rate of 4.25% in a time where interest rates were well north of that. Bond rates were sort of at 7%, 8%, 9%. Yes, you can talk about dilution, but there’s no — there’s no reason why this convertible note has to actually convert. In November of 2023, we closed Kloof 4 shaft, mainly due to safety reasons. In November of 2023, we went through a further round of USPG on operational, restructuring with the very fast decline in the 2E basket price. 2024, we completed the 189 process for the closure of Simunye shaft, the rightsizing of Siphumelele and Rowland shafts and conditional operations of our 4 Belt shaft.
That is in my mind being proactive and being on the front foot in dealing with changing economic circumstances. Our operating guidance for 2024 again, I’m not going to go through it in detail. But you will note that the U.S. region is now being pinned from primary mining at about 440,000, 2E ounces a year. Our U.S. recycling business excluding Reldan is expected to generate about 300,000, 3E ounces. Our South African PGM operations again solid performer at about 1.8 million ounces of production with costs around just under R22,000 of 4E ounce. Gold is profitable with an expected production of about 600 — just over 600,000 ounces. The Sandouville nickel refinery is unfortunately still going to be loss making but we are working our way to reduce those losses at the current nickel prices and of course minimize the losses as we progress the feasibility study to convert that plant into a pCAM plant.
The Keliber lithium project is ongoing. As we noted early on in the presentation, we are still understanding the impact of the court judgment and that might require a little bit of rescheduling both on the capital and the output side. The Australian region is profitable. And of course, we exercised as I said earlier our option on the Mount Lyell copper mine and we will continue to take that up to the value curve. As I said right at the beginning, I wanted to talk a little bit about resource stewardship. I did introduce the concept at the previous results presentation. And I think it’s really about saying that, if you are going to position yourself as a metals producer which, are designed to address climate change. You need to think broader than just primary mining.
