Welcome to the Central Asia Metals High Fine Interim Financial Results for 2025. We'll start off with a summary of production and financial highlights. You can see on the right-hand side of your slide there that we produced 6,218 tonnes of copper from our Kounrad operation in Kazakhstan. From our Sasa lead-zinc mine in North Macedonia, we produced 8,692 tonnes of zinc and 12,613 tonnes of lead. All this was done in a very safe fashion. We're very pleased that we achieved zero lost time injuries for the first half. These operations drove good financial performance. We generated revenue of $99.5 million and EBITDA of $39.9 million for a margin of 40%. Importantly, today we announced a dividend at £0.045 and supplemented by a $10 million share buyback program, which will commence today. That keeps our cash returns to shareholders consistent and comparable to the half one 2024.
We have a strong balance sheet and positive cash flow, $47.7 million in the bank, and that'll be boosted by returns received related to the New World Resources transaction of both the break fee plus also the sale of shares in that company. Kounrad maintains its position on the cost curve and the capital projects at Sasa are effectively completed for the year. That gives you the backdrop to the financials that Louise is going to run you through right now.
Thanks, Gavin. If we go to, yeah, market conditions slide. Thank you. If we just spend a minute looking at the market conditions which frame the results that we're announcing this morning. In terms of commodity markets, we saw a lot of volatility middle of the period due mainly to the Trump trade wars. Taking everything into account for the full six months and comparing that with H1 2024, we saw a 3% increase on the average copper price we received, a 1% increase on the average zinc price, and a 7% decrease on the lead price that we received. In terms of treatment charges, right now it's a good time to be a miner rather than a smelter. I think, as we've mentioned before, our treatment charge contracts run from April to April.
What we are seeing is a reduction in treatment charge for this year versus last year of around 40%. For the first half of this year, that translated into a reduction of treatment charges of around $3 million. Looking at foreign exchange, some good news for us, some bad news for us. Kazakh Tenge weakened by about 10% period on period, and that helps us when we come to report our costs in U.S. dollars. On the flip side, the Macedonian dinar, which is pegged to the euro, was stronger versus the U.S. dollar, and that adversely affects our U.S. dollar costs for the Sasa operation. Looking now at the income statement, as Gavin mentioned, we've reported revenue of $99.5 million. That was very similar to revenue for the first half of last year, just 2% lower.
That reflects lower sales volumes across all the metals, but that was impacted on the positive side by the lower treatment charges that I just mentioned. Cost of sales were up by 14% or around $7 million. Lots of factors at play there, really. A lot of those related to the Sasa operation. We had an increase in the revenue royalty that we pay North Macedonia for the metal that we produce, called the concession fee. That increased from 2% to 4% from January, and that accounted for over $2 million in fees, up from $1.2 million last year. We also had higher wages at both operations, although at Kounrad that was mitigated largely by a weaker Tenge. There was the currency effects that I've just mentioned of the weaker dollar versus the Macedonian dinar.
We also had some additional depreciation because now we've started using the dry stack tailings plant and landform that we completed in the first half. We also paid over $2 million extra for the silver that we buy for our silver streaming commitment. We see that effectively cancelled out on the higher revenue number as well, but that does contribute to an increased cost of sales. If we look at our admin costs, they look like they're up quite significantly at a 24% increase, but that works out at just less than $3 million. All of that really is related to our business development activities. $2.3 million of that additional BD cost was related to the New World Resources attempt to acquire that company. We also spent $1.1 million on exploration, both for CamelX and Sasa, and that was up from around $0.3 million the first half of last year.
We also disposed of Copper Bay, and we incurred fees for that of $0.4 million during the year as well. All in all, taking the revenue and costs into account, we've announced this morning EBITDA of $39.9 million at a margin of 40%. If we look quickly at the profit after tax, that's adversely affected by some quite significant non-cash share-based payments, which we changed the way we report those as effectively cash settled rather than equity settled last year. We had a $1.8 million swing on foreign exchange, and we also look like we've got a higher effective tax rate. That's really due to consistent taxable profit in Kazakhstan, where our CIT is at 20%.
If we look at the cost of the two operations, at Kounrad we had a very good result cost-wise for the first half, where our C1 cost base in absolute terms decreased by $0.6 million. That's mainly due to the Kazakh Tenge devaluation, but also there were some lower variable input costs, mainly reagents, and that was both usage and cost of those as well. Our C1 cost rose by $0.01 per pound, and that's just due to the slightly lower copper production versus the first half of last year. We did give our workforce an 8.5% wage increase, which was based on inflation figures, but that's largely been mitigated by the devaluation of the Kazakh Tenge during the period. All in all, we've reported a margin of 72% for Kounrad, which is exactly the same as H1 last year.
Turning to Sasa, our run of mine costs increased at Sasa during the first half of this year from around $60 a tonne last year to about $65 a tonne this year. That's about an 8% increase. We've already covered some of the reasons why that was. There was the weaker dollar. There were also increased salaries and pay rises. We also incurred some higher costs for the new tailings disposal method. We had a full period of operating the paste backfill plant, and we also began to operate the dry stack tailings plant and the landform as well. Our electricity costs were higher than the first half of last year by just under $1 million as well.
If we look at our C1 cost base, that was actually only a 3% increase from $31 million to $32 million, and that was positively impacted by the lower treatment charges that I've already mentioned. For the first half of 2025, we've reported an EBITDA margin of 26% for Sasa. Capital expenditure for the period, we've spent $7.4 million. Of that, $6.3 million was sustaining CAPEX at both of the operations, $4.2 million at Sasa and $2.1 million at Kounrad. That's higher than the usual run rate at Kounrad, but we've had a good program of replacing anodes and cathodes, and that cost us about $1.1 million there. We also, I think previously told you, were planning on moving some material called Dump 15 further away from a railway line so we could easily leach that.
We spent some additional money there moving the material in Dump 15, and we've since completed that post the period end. Our capital projects are basically concluded now at Sasa. We spent $1.1 million on those, and that was really finishing off the dry stack tailings plant and the landform as well. We are still expecting to spend the additional $11 to $14 million of CAPEX this year. We only just started the raised boring program that just commenced in the first half of the year, and that will carry on throughout the second half. We've got an extension to the landform that we're planning to get started on this year. We still have some additional underground equipment to buy and also some additional underground development. All in all, we are reiterating our CAPEX forecast and guidance for the year of $18 to $21 million.
Looking at our balance sheet, just a few things to pull out of interest for you there. PPE looks like it's increased considerably, notwithstanding depreciation, and that really reflects the weaker US dollar versus the Macedonian dinar. Our group cash balance of $48 million includes the cash and also $0.3 million restricted cash. It excludes $1.8 million of what through the audit process we clarified as being cash in transit. We had added that into the cash figure that we reported in the Q2 production numbers, so that's been adjusted for these results. It's worth pointing out that post the period end, we sold the shares that we had acquired in New World Resources to try to push ahead with that transaction. We sold those for $18.7 million.
We also received a break fee of $1.6 million, so our cash position has been bolstered by that plus the cash in transit. Bank overdrafts, we built up an overdraft to $6.6 million as of 30th of June. That's substantially reduced by now, around about $1 million as it stands now. One other small thing to point out, we did have a line in the balance sheet assets classified as held for sale. That was Copper Bay. That's now quoted as nil for the 30th of June position because we sold Copper Bay in April. Final slide for me, looking at our cash flow and our free cash flow. We generated $34 million cash from our operations during the first half of 2025. We paid $20.6 million in dividends. That was the 2024 final dividend. We paid taxes, that's income tax and withholding tax of $16.3 million.
That was $8.1 million higher than it was in the first half of last year. We spent $7.4 million on CAPEX that we've talked about, and we spent the $16.7 million on buying those New World Resources shares during the first half as well. We drew down $5.9 million of our overdraft, so we ended the period with the cash of $47.7 million. In terms of our free cash flow, we're reporting adjusted free cash flow of $16.2 million. Just to reiterate that post the period end, we have received the $18.7 million US dollars in cash from selling the shares, the $1.6 million break fee, and the $1.8 million of cash in transit as well. I'll hand back to Gavin now, who will run through the operations.
Thanks, Louise. To kick off on Kounrad, some of the highlights there were really, you know, just yet another consistent and reliable performance from Kounrad over the period with that 6,218 tonnes of copper that we produced. That means we're on track to meet our guidance of 13,000 to 14,000 tonnes for the year. As I said, steady as she goes, not a huge amount to report yet. The solar plant, though, if you remember, we built that and commissioned it back in November 2023. That's actually, you know, supplying around 17% of our power requirements at Kounrad now. That's really starting to pay for itself with some of the electricity costs going up there. We actually achieved a record in May where we produced 22% of our electricity requirement from that little plant of ours. That's all gone quite well.
As I said, you know, steady as she goes at Kounrad, producing really well. If we look at the next slide, as Louise said, that relocation of Dump 15, that's all complete now. We've had some additional CAPEX, and part of the reason for that is just to, you know, maintain production and keep the plant fully invested so that we can extend it all the way to 2034 and potentially beyond. If you look at that leach curve at the bottom there, the western dumps are outperforming and the eastern dumps have also outperformed over their life. All of that points to the original forecast of 79,000 tonnes that we still have. We're calling that now the minimum recoverable given the outperformance of both west and eastern dumps. That might lead us to think about extending the life of that license at some point as well.
There's quite a lot of work to be done around that. Sustainability activity is still a good part of our business. We think it's important to support local communities and we do that through the foundations plus also some other donations. Most importantly here, we've had zero lost time injuries at Kounrad since May 2018, which is a simply amazing achievement when you think about the various hazards that exist around mining projects and assets. Some of our sort of newer activities include a biodiversity management plan that's been put in place at Kounrad and we've also instituted a big safety and occupational health assessment there as well. As I said, local communities remain important and, you know, through cultural, medical, educational, and youth initiatives, we continue to support the local communities around Kounrad.
If we move on to Sasa, as we mentioned earlier, we produced 8,692 tonnes of zinc and 12,613 tonnes of lead. If we look at the table on the right-hand side, I'm pleased to report that the tonnages of the ore mined has actually gone up 8%. If you recall from last time we presented to you, that was one of the key targets that we set ourselves to get back up to that sort of 800,000 ton level. That's what we've been targeting. Unfortunately, you'll notice that the grades for both zinc and lead are lower. That's because we're still having a few teething problems with the new mining methods that's causing a little bit of dilution. We're also encountering variable geology at depth in the mine. We'll talk about that on the next slide.
You would've seen this was apparent through H1 with both lead and zinc production being down when we announced back in July. We've reduced our guidance modestly and are currently on track to achieve that guidance. Go to the next slide. What we've done at Sasa because of these issues is effectively implemented a full strategic review. We started this in about the middle of H1 just to have a look at the whole operation at Sasa. We expected the ore body to narrow at depth, which is one of the reasons we're putting these new mining methods in place. What we did encounter and what we weren't expecting was a high level of variability both in terms of geometry and also grade as we moved into the lower levels of the mine.
As I said earlier, there was a little bit of dilution from the new mining methods and as we get better at doing those, that'll reduce. We really need to understand that ore body better. We're drilling more holes, we're creating more drill platforms and making sure that we understand the ore body so we can plan ahead and utilize these mining methods to their best abilities. We're also tightening up on grade control and we're reviewing all aspects of the mine. This goes mining, processing, laboratories, admin, the works. In addition to a lot of internal initiatives that we've come up with, we've also had some external consultants just as a fresh pair of eyes over the operation as well to assist us with basically coming up with some recommendations. We've already started implementing some recommendations.
We'll continue to do that through H2, looking to sort of improve that performance at the Sasa operation. Sustainability again, you know, we got zero lost time injuries for the half, which is a good result for Sasa, much more complicated than Kounrad underground operations, lots of moving equipment and a full sort of mechanical, more mechanical looking plant plus two new plants as well. Really good result from the guys on site there. As Louise said, we've now completed our dry stack tailings plant and we've placed around 60% of our tailings during the first half either onto that dry stack tailings landform or back underground as cemented paste. That's getting us some way towards approaching our target of 70% that we're looking to achieve by 2026. We've tested an emergency alarm system that relates to the wet tailings facility, the TSF-4.
That was partly due to the GISTM conformance that we announced about this time last year, plus also some local regulations, and that's gone really well. We've also continued educational support both on site and in the communities around us, as well as starting a little Kickstarter program for businesses in the region to formulate some longer-term sustainable programs there. In terms of exploration, as you know, we've got two programs underway there. One is the investment in Aberdeen Minerals in Scotland, looking at their Arthraf Nickel Copper Cobalt project. Currently drilling what we call phase 2B, that's following up on phase 2A. Phase 2A effectively proved the geological hypothesis that there was mineralization at depth. Now it's basically chasing that mineralization and looking to sort of bulk it up into a, you know, and guide us towards resource development there.
We expect to make a decision on whether or not we invest a further £2 million into the business by the end of the year. That'll be based on the results from that phase 2B drilling program. Early stage exploration in Kazakhstan, we've got four licenses active there. We've done a lot of surface work there, both in terms of geophysics and geochemical surveys, which have been completed on two of the licenses and underway on the other two. Those will hopefully lead to us being able to make decisions on whether or not to drill these licenses in 2026. Good progress in Kazakhstan as well. We have also set up an entity in Kazakhstan to look at more advanced projects than these earlier stage exploration things as well. There are some very interesting projects coming into that pipeline as well.
Getting onto capital allocation, which as I mentioned earlier today, there are a few changes there. We have the 4.5p dividend and we are compensating that with that $10 million share buyback. Total cash returns are around $21 million, and that is comparable to several previous periods where we have paid these dividends. That brings our total shareholder returns that we have announced to over $400 million since IPO. Over time, we are looking to revert back into our dividend policy of 30% to 50% of free cash flow, but we remain committed to capital returns to shareholders whilst the company is looking to find a future growth opportunity as well. There is a little bit of a change there, but similar returns with the ultimate goal of getting back into policy and setting the company up for future growth.
In summary, as I said, Kounrad is on track to achieve its full year guidance. Sasa is on track to achieve guidance, but there are challenges there, which I said we are basically looking to confront over this half and improve productivity and production at Sasa. Capital allocation, just talked through that. We have sustaining CAPEX at both projects now. Now that the actual capital projects are complete, we have that 4.5p dividend out to the shareholders this morning, plus that $10 million buyback, which is active right now. We are still looking for a material growth opportunity. The New World Resources activities over the first half, which I am sure many of you followed closely, basically prove a few things now.
I think as a business, we are able to identify these opportunities outside of usual auction processes or things like that. We are able to finance them and we also got really positive feedback from our major shareholders at the announcement of that potential transaction because we thought it was creative and a good thing to do. The timing of our withdrawal also demonstrated that sort of discipline and fiscal discipline that we have always shown as a business. Our balance sheet remains flexible with a strong cash position, as Louise talked you through earlier. That will allow us to access debt and to finance growth in future. At that point, I'll stop and invite questions from the floor. Thank you very much.
Submitted live. Just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please type them into the Q&A box situated on the right-hand side of your screen. I'll now hand over to Richard for any questions.
Thank you. All right. First question, you've cut the interim dividend in half. Is that just for now or is this how it will be going forward?
There are many questions on the dividend because we might sort of fill them all at once, but I think it is clearly, you know, one of the major features of the announcement this morning. Very happy to talk about it. I think the dividend is obviously a very important way of us returning capital to shareholders. What we're trying to do there is revert to policy ultimately. That policy is 30% to 50% of free cash flow. This particular dividend is outside of that policy. It's still much larger than the 50% upper threshold of that policy. Whilst it has been cut to £0.045, if you want to put it that way, we are sort of trending towards the policy again.
The compensation for our shareholders, and this is really partly in response to a lot of requests we've had from shareholders to consider a share buyback, and the board considered it very carefully. We also announced this morning that $10 million share buyback. The total cash returns are actually the equivalent or almost equivalent to what was paid in H1 2024 and also, funny enough, H2 2024 to make up that final £0.18 dividend there. In the absence of a material transaction, we've always said that we would provide our shareholders with cash returns. Putting that share buyback in place is a better use, we think, of the funds because that's more accretive to our shareholders. It also allows us a little bit of flexibility around how we manage cash in the context of our future growth ambitions.
Right. There's a couple of questions, technical questions on the buyback here. One is, do you have a target level for reducing the share count or is it simply kept at $10 million as announced? The other one is, will all the shares purchased in the buyback be cancelled?
The $10 million is the upper threshold, and we look to complete that buyback by March next year, that $10 million. We are somewhat, I was going to say we'd restrict it by some markets, but we're actually not. We are trying to play within kind of market rules about how much volume we can buy every day there. That's the timing that sort of comes out of that equation. We might well conclude the buyback well before that March date, in which case we'd have to then think again about the board, whether we implement another buyback or a supplementary buyback to that. The intention is, yes, to cancel the shares rather than put them into treasury.
Okay. Another capital markets question, which is, would you ever consider dual listing on either exchange for broader investor access?
That's a good question, and it is something we have contemplated. We need to look at it in a little bit more detail over the next few months to see whether there is any value in doing that. Markets seem to change in terms of their popularity from time to time. You know, you look at things like the TSX, ASX, main board listing, for example, all have their benefits and drawbacks. What we'll try and do is look at something that makes sense in the context of our current business and our requirement for additional capital.
Okay. Let's look at some questions on operations here. Do you see any scope to extend mine life at your current operations, or will new acquisitions eventually be needed to sustain production?
I think the key for any mining company is that you're sitting on the depleting assets. Every day you're reducing your asset base and depleting the resources that you have. Now, with something like Sasa, you've got the opportunity to make up for that depletion by exploring for new areas of the ore body, extensions to the ore body, and so on. There is potential at Sasa to extend the mine life, whereas at Kounrad, what you really have there is a finite on-surface and above-ground resource. That's really a bit of a different beast. What we are seeing at Kounrad is better performance than we originally expected when we put the feasibility study together back in 2009, 2010. The hint there is that whilst we're talking about 79,000 tonnes of recoverable copper remaining, that's on the original plan. We're likely to get more of that out.
When we get it out is a little bit more of a tricky question to answer, but it may well necessitate extending the life beyond 2034. In order to do that, we'd have to put a study together, present that study to the authorities, and get the blessing of the authorities to extend the license as well. We've not started that process yet.
Okay. Some questions here maybe for Louise. How sensitive are your margins to currency movements and energy prices, and are you doing anything to hedge that risk?
Taking those two things separately, looking at Kounrad, 60% to 70% of our costs there are basically Kazakh Tenge denominated, and the Tenge has weakened during the period, which is effectively a positive for our operating costs. Historically, since I've been with the business, the Tenge has actually weakened pretty much year on year. That does seem to be a trend, and that has led to us actually reporting lower costs for this half versus the first half last year in U.S. dollars. If we look at North Macedonia, the majority of our costs there are either dinar or euro denominated, and the challenge there has been that the U.S. dollar has weakened versus the strengthening euro or therefore dinar because the dinar is pegged to the euro. We don't hedge currencies. It's something that we have talked about, but we haven't done that.
We are not experts on currencies, probably the best answer, but it's something that we do discuss and mull over. With electricity prices, electricity has been a challenge as well in North Macedonia. In fact, versus the first half of last year, we've spent about $0.9 million extra on electricity than we did last year. That is a challenge. We do talk about trying to lock in an electricity price, which I guess is a hedge. The problem is we haven't been able to lock in a price that we like well enough to take the ups and downs of the electricity. Obviously, time history would prove that possibly we should have done that, but it does really move up and down quite frequently as well.
Again, it's a discussion to be had, but pretty much we have just taken the spot electricity prices because what's been offered for a longer-term contract hasn't been attractive for us.
Right. Also on finance, how resilient are your margins at current copper, zinc, and lead prices? Related to that, another question, is Sasa currently profitable?
Kunrad, very straightforward. We've got over 70% margins there. We're very resilient to pretty much any commodity price that you could anticipate in terms of the copper price and the Kunrad operation. Our costs there are very, very low. It's because we don't move any material. We really just got processing and admin costs. That's an extremely resilient operation. At Sasa, what we've found has been, as we explained in the presentation, we've found that there's been on-track tonnage, but with a lower grade. Therefore, our metal production's been lower. A bit of a double whammy for that has been that some fundamental costs have increased. These are largely, I suppose, outside of our control. One has been the currency that we talked about. We also had a material tax increase.
It was called the concession fee, which is effectively a revenue royalty that we pay for the metal we produce. That doubled from 2% to 4% from January this year. We also gave pay rises there of 10%, which sounds very high, but we were pushing against civil servant pay rises of 30% in country. There was a lot of pressure on us there. We've also obviously completed the dry stack tailings plant and landform, and then we started operating that plant as well. There have been various factors there that have led to our margins being squeezed. We have reported effectively a small loss for the first half of the year, but the operation was still cash generative because we have quite a chunk of depreciation there as well.
Right. Some questions on BD. These two are fairly related really. What is the state of the search for business development opportunities beyond your existing assets? Are you actively pursuing acquisitions?
Look, I think our stated strategic objective is to grow the business. Yes, we aren't necessarily looking outside of Sasa and Kounrad for further opportunities. We've got the earlier stage opportunities in the form of Aberdeen Minerals, the investment there, and we've got the option to increase our stake in Aberdeen Minerals if we like what we see coming out of that drilling program we talk about. Secondly, CamelX, we're again encouraging results from early field work, would establish drill targets potentially even as soon as 2026, and that would then show us whether we're onto something or not. In terms of nearer term or more advanced opportunities, we are looking at a couple of those in Kazakhstan, and that'll be put into another vehicle over there with a similar team, same team in fact.
We still aspire to doing a transformational transaction to add to the portfolio, and we've spoken quite a lot about this, but jurisdiction-wise, we're still talking the European time zone plus Kazakhstan. We did stray beyond that into North America, into the U.S. with the New World Resources because we are actually there by asset quality ultimately. That was a high-quality asset, high grade, with execution risk being fairly low. We liked that one a lot, disappointed it got away, and we'd love to find something of that ilk again. Louise and the BD team have been working very hard to repopulate the pipeline. Some things we've looked at and already discarded, other things we need to do a little bit more work on. At the moment, nothing is advanced enough to warrant any kind of excitement, but it's going to, we're back on the bike and we're pedaling away.
Okay. Another finance question. Talking about selling the New World Resources shares, was the cost of buying the New World Resources shares recouped in full?
Basically, yes, it was, and we will end up having made a little bit. You can't see that fully in the first half because the cost that we reported for BD of $2.3 million, there were still some costs incurred in the second half as well because we only pulled out of that deal at the end of July, and we still have some bills to pay in H2. We made $2 million on the shares. We also had the break fee as well of $1.6 million. All in all, we expect to have made a couple of hundred thousand dollars, that sort of order.
Yeah, that's covering all the costs of the BD looking at.
Yes, covering all the costs. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Right. How is management incentivized? Is remuneration linked to production, commodity prices, or total shareholder return?
It's a good question, and the short answer is all of the above. If you are interested, you can delve into the annual report, into the remuneration report in our annual report, which details everything. Effectively, there's three elements to our compensation. We have our salaries, which are set up, and that's easy to understand. We have what we call a short-term incentive plan. That's the bonus, and that is measured against a few key metrics. One is production, another's cost, one is sustainability metrics, and we have our personal KPIs, which are set by the Remuneration Committee every year. We are measured against those KPIs and achievement against those KPIs, and that's around 20% to 25% depending on the year of our compensation.
The production in the last round was counting towards 20% at Kounrad, 20% at Sasa, and costs a similar number, and the rest was on the other metrics. That is key. The long-term incentive plan, which are share options effectively, that is 75% of the LTIP vesting conditions are related to total shareholder returns. We hopefully are fairly well aligned with our shareholders, and shareholders get a vote on that plan every year, and we've never had a problem getting that plan voted through.
Right. Finance question, how much debt remains after recent repayments, and what's the target leverage level?
At the end of June, we just had overdraft facilities drawn $6.6 million. We've since paid that down. We're at around about $1 million now. No real target on that. We've got facilities up to $10 million, and at any given time, we might draw a little bit, we might pay a little bit back. $6.6 million was probably historically a little higher than normal, and we had that for some flexibility while we were buying the New World Resources shares. Probably more normal is close to almost no debt, but we're still there or thereabouts pretty much debt-free.
Right. Just a couple of technical questions left. How stable is the tailings facility? I assume talking about Sasa there, and what progress has been made on the dry stack tailings project?
Sure. TSF-4, as we call it, that's hopefully our final wet tailings facility. That has been the subject of quite a lot of work over the last few years. If you remember, I think it was in July last year, we achieved what's called conformance with the Global Industry Standards for Tailings Management. That is a voluntary thing, but what we're doing there is aspiring to run that tailings facility to the highest possible standards. We effectively conformed with that with a few other items that are on track to full conformance with GISTM. From that perspective, we know we're running the tailings facility well. We've also had a dam safety review done by an independent technical expert, and that dam safety review came through, passed that with no real kind of negative comments on that at all. That is good as well.
Part of the whole GISTM and tailings management thing is there's an independent tailings review board that's been established to review both the operations and the safety of that dam on a periodic basis. The first report has come back positive on that as well. We are confident that we're running that facility as well as can be. Clearly, we've got all the monitoring in place. We've got piezometers, we've got cameras, we've got all sorts of systems to monitor the safety of that dam as well. Also importantly, over the last six months, we've put together, put in place an emergency response system and program for any issues related to that dam. That is in conjunction with the government authorities that look after safety of these sorts of facilities across the country.
We did a really successful test of that, which is a load of claxons up and down the valley, signage to tell people where to go. The response from the community was really positive around that as well. Clearly after 2020, when we did have a small leak of that tailings facility, we've really concentrated on making sure that we are operating that to the highest standards possible. Also with that independent review happening, giving us the additional comfort that the stability of the dam and the safety of the dam is as high as it possibly can be.
All right.
Sorry, the dry stack tailings was the second part of the question.
Yeah, what's the focus on the dry stack tailings?
Yeah, so we completed the construction of the dry stack tailings plant in March this year. If you remember, we were slightly let down by some late delivery of some key items of equipment. Those then arrived and were installed, and we went straight into commissioning and ramp-up of that facility. Clearly, the first few bits of filter cake were off spec, that's to be expected. With a third-party consultant helping us and sort of watching progress along there, we've got to a point where we're producing really excellent quality filter cake that has been now deposited on the landform. By the end of the half, I think we put about 60,000 tons of filter cake on that. I might be wrong on that number, but a significant amount of tonnage. I think we're up to 160,000 tons of tailings that have gone onto that landform now.
That is performing really well to the extent that we've had to have dust suppression and various other things with a thing that is actually quite a moist product that goes onto the tailings landform. That's going really well, and we're going to hit our target of achieving 70% of tailings either onto dry stack or underground by the end of 2026.
Right. It's another technical question, which I'm assuming is aimed at Kounrad. How is production affected by seasonal factors such as winter temperatures and irrigation rates?
That is a good question, and it probably does relate to Kounrad, but I can talk about Sasa a bit as well. Kounrad, you're quite right who have asked that question. It is seasonal. Now we have temperatures with wind chill down to minus 40 and even lower in certain cases over the winter in Kazakhstan. What we do is we winterize the dumps. We lay sheets of PVC on top of the dumps to keep the heat in and to ensure that solution keeps flowing even at very low temperatures. We also ensure that the kinetic energy in the pipes is kept to a certain level to keep the solution flowing as well. What that means though, because we've limited the area that we can exploit during the winter, is that we have less flexibility.
If we see, for example, lower grades coming out than we've expected or heading towards the end of a life of a cell, whilst it's under what we call winter operations, it's not as easy to then switch on another cell to supplement the grade and the flows coming out of the cells that are effectively maturing. We lose a little bit of that flexibility, and the consequence of that, and you'll see it from these histograms we put in some of the materials we put out there, is that the winter months production is lower, summer months it's way higher. The plant capacity is actually 15,000 tons per year. We only really approach that capacity limit during the summer months because in the winter months we're far lower. The average is lower, and this year we're looking at 13,000 to 14,000 tons of copper coming out of Kounrad. We haven't had, what was the other problem?
The other part of the question is about irrigation rates.
Yeah, irrigation rates, we try and keep as consistent as possible. That's a kind of learn as you go thing. I can't remember the exact numbers, they're probably in the annual report now, but we have targets of the amount of liters per square meter per second that we put onto these dumps to achieve the optimum copper recovery. That is a function of more of the solution flows through the dumps. What we don't want to do is let them percolate through the dumps too quickly because we'll miss some copper and potentially channel things. We also don't want them to go through too slowly because they end up not getting to the outlets as quickly as possible and will reduce our production that way. The flow rates, we try and keep as consistent as we can throughout the year.
Right. That's all the questions. We've managed to cover all of them. If there's anybody with any more questions, now is the time. Nothing coming up on the screen, I guess that's it. Back to the moderators, please.
Thank you to Gavin, Louise, and Richard for joining us today. That concludes the Central Asia Metals Investor Presentation. Please take a moment to complete a short survey following this event. The recording of this presentation will be made available on Engage Investor. I hope you enjoyed today's webinar.