Good morning, and welcome to Central Asia Metals presentation of our annual results for 2025. A snapshot of the year shows a solid business with strong underlying operational performance, and producing a solid set of financial numbers. Group EBITDA for the year was $102 million at a 44% margin, and cash in the bank, we ended with $80 million. This was driven by a Free Cash Flow of $56 million, which allows us to intend to pay a GBP 7.5 final dividend, bringing the full year dividend to GBP 12 or 50% of our Free Cash Flow. This is the top end of our dividend policy range.
Production met guidance for all three metals, and with safety always a priority, we were unfortunate to have one LTI in the year, and we can always do better than that. Most of you know us pretty well by now, but a quick overview of our current operations is presented on this slide. We have the Kounrad copper production facility in Kazakhstan, and that remains the bedrock of our business. It produces copper cathode at very high profit margins, and has been doing so since 2012.
Sasa is a lead-zinc mine in North Macedonia, which we've owned since 2017 and has produced consistently since and has undergone modernization under our ownership. Aberdeen Minerals is a company that we've invested in. We own just under 33% of Aberdeen, and that is exploring for copper nickel mineralization in Scotland and CAML X and CAML XD are our exploration groups in Kazakhstan, where we have six licenses active with drilling this summer for base metal mineralization. At this point, I'd like to hand over to Louise Wrathall, our CFO, to take you through the financial results for 2025.
Thanks, Gavin. If we start by looking at the market conditions that informed our financial results that we've announced this morning. Looking firstly at the commodity market. Commodity prices were generally supportive for us in 2025. The lead price was a little bit lower year on year at 2%, but the zinc price was on average 3% higher and the copper price 10% higher, with the copper price on average being over $10,000 per ton for the year. Treatment charges, that was also a good news story for us. In terms of treatment charges year on year, treatment charges in 2024 were about $15 million, whereas in 2025, they were $8 million. A $7 million saving for us in treatment charges in 2025 versus 2024. Looking now at currencies.
Sasa was a challenge because we ended up with a weak U.S. dollar, 5% worse than the previous year, and that really has the impact of effectively increasing our local costs, which is the Macedonian denar, but that's pegged to the euro. In Kounrad, it was the opposite story. The local currency, the tenge, weakened by 11% against the U.S. dollar, and that eases our cost pressures in country. Inflation was still double digits in Kazakhstan, 12.3% for last year, whereas that was a more reasonable 4% in North Macedonia for 2025. We turn now to look at the income statement. We have reported revenue of $230 million. That's up 7% year-on-year, and that's driven by higher commodity prices.
As we said, 10% higher for copper, 3% higher for zinc, but also 50%, 55% higher for silver, which we receive from the smelter, but also have to buy to fulfill our, streaming arrangement in terms of the cost of sales as well. As I also said, our revenue is also positively impacted by these lower TCs, which are already netted off on the revenue line.
Cost of sales was also up. That was up by 14%. A few key factors in that number, $4.1 million additional silver costs to purchase that silver for the silver stream. There's also $3 million of additional depreciation in cost of sales, and that's for having commissioned the new dry stack tailings plant at Sasa during 2025. There's also an extra $3.5 million on royalties there.
The revenue royalty at Sasa doubled from the beginning of last year, and there was also higher royalties in Kazakhstan because of the higher copper price as well. All of that was overlaid by this strong operating currency in Sasa as well, which, as I said, is a sort of adverse impact for us. Our admin costs are up 12%. That looks quite high, but all in all, pretty much all of those costs are BD related. The costs were up $3.4 million year-on-year, but we incurred $3.6 million costs of business development that we effectively got back. We also disposed of Copper Bay in the first half of the year, and that cost us $400,000 in fees.
Also, because of our increased exploration efforts in Kazakhstan, we had another $400,000 of exploration-related admin costs as well, also related to developing our business for the long term. Taking all that into account, today we're reporting EBITDA of just under $102 million at a margin of 44%. Looking at some other key factors within the income statement today, we've also reported impairment for Sasa of $117.5 million. This was flagged to the market in our announcement on the 3rd of March. There's also a very small impairment to CAML X, which was an exploration license.
We did some work on spending just under $300,000 and decided that wasn't for us, so we've handed that one back to the state. Foreign exchange, that's worth pointing out because there's a swing of almost $10 million there, a negative swing. So that's been a factor comparing year-on-year in terms of our profitability. Tax, to flag there's an impact for the tax related to the impairment. So the tax is considerably lower year-on-year, and that benefits from a just under $11 million reduction in deferred tax because of the impairment charge that's gone through the books for Sasa. Then finally, just to mention our EPS. EPS was a negative $0.4256.
We've adjusted for that though to remove the impairment for Sasa, the impairment for CAML X, and also $1.2 million unrealized hedge loss. Towards the end of last year, we put in place two hedge positions. One was 50% of zinc for 2026, and the other was 50% of our Sasa operating costs in euros to hedge the euro versus the dollar. That's resulted in an unrealized hedge loss through the books of $1.2 million by the end of the year. We turn now to look at the cost for the two operations. This is a very positive story for Kounrad. Our costs at Kounrad for the year were up by $0.2 million, or $0.02 , from $0.80- $0.82 per pound.
That reflects strong cost control, but also the devaluation of the tenge that we've already discussed. In addition to that, just to point out some of the key line items, we've ended up with a lower reagent and electricity cost totaling about $0.4 million. Those are variable costs, and that really reflects the slightly lower year-on-year production.
We have got increased payroll costs of $0.2 million, sorry. That's partially offset by the tenge devaluation. We also have a $0.01 per pound increase in the Traxys offtake fees. Taking all that into account, we have delivered an EBITDA margin of 75% for Kounrad for 2025. We turn now to look at Sasa's costs. Sasa's costs were up $5 per ton for 2025, up to just under $70 per ton.
There's a few factors which are the key points to drive that. Increase in payroll costs of $2.5 million. We've also got higher costs for these new tailings disposal methods of $1.5 million for the year. That really reflects the commissioning of the dry stack tailings plant and landform towards the end of Q1, and so those costs have come through throughout the year.
There's also been a rise of around $1.6 million in some key cost inputs of reagents, power, fuel as well during the year. Encouragingly, we've ended up with our C1 with our C1 cost base in absolute terms being lower year on year by about $0.4 million. That really reflects those lower treatment charges that we've mentioned, which are within the realization line.
The realization cost was $6.6 million lower year-on-year, leading to this C1 cost base being below that of 2024. EBITDA margin for Sasa for 2025 was 26%. If we look at CapEx, we incurred CapEx for the year of $19 million. That was $1.8 million less than 2024. At Sasa, we spent $14.1 million, of which two point eight of that was on completing these capital projects. That was completing the dry stack tailings plant and the landform, and also $11.3 million of standard sustaining CapEx as well. Going forward, there will be some additional expenditure on the DST landform as we continue to expand that into the future, but we're gonna classify that as sustaining CapEx going forward.
At Kounrad, our CapEx for 2025 was $4.9 million. That's quite considerably higher than our normal run rate in the order of sort of $2 million-$3 million. A large part of that increase was related to us moving some of the material for dump fifteen, which I think we flagged at the half year stage as well. We spent $1 million on that. CapEx outlook for 2026 is gonna be lower than 2025, so we're guiding $14.5 million-$17.5 million. Also this year, we've got a larger proportion of capitalized exploration as well. $0.3 million of that is related to Sasa, but the increase really from 2024 comes from CAML X.
We capitalize exploration when we have specific licenses that we're doing increased work on, and there were three of those licenses in particular, Yuzhnoye, Shayandey, and Otyrar. We also incurred additional costs in admin as well as we move that whole business, CAML X, forward and advance that. In 2026, we're expecting to spend on exploration between $3 million and $3.5 million. Looking now at the balance sheet, the key aspect to point out really is the impairment at Sasa of $117.5 million. This obviously comes through our P&L, but it also reduces our PP&E on the balance sheet as well. We ended the year with a strong cash balance of $80.1 million. That includes the restricted cash of $0.4 million.
Investment in associate, that's our investment in Aberdeen Minerals. Post the period ending in January, we exercised warrants valued at $1.1 million, and we've now increased our shareholding to 32.6% from 28%. Final thing I wanted to point out on this slide is we have a restatement for our accounts for 2024. This is related to inventory movements between our two Kounrad subsidiaries.
They hadn't been being reversed on consolidation where they should have been. The restatement here has the impact of increasing our inventory, reducing our cost of sales, and then increasing our retained earnings by $3.6 million. That's because the retained earnings increase has added up over the years.
On an annualized basis, this is a very small adjustment of, in the order of $500,000. It's the retained earnings that's increased by 3.6, and that's within the equity and reserves line. Final slide for me, just looking at our cash flow, Free Cash Flow. If you go through this waterfall chart, we started the year with cash in the bank of $67.6 million. Cash generated from operations for us was just under $90 million. We paid dividends during the year of $31.4 million. That's the final of 9p for 2024 and the interim for H1 2025 of 4.5p. Tax we paid of $25.9 million. That was up from $19.6 million in 2024.
That's pretty much all related to Kazakhstan. About a $5 million increase in CIT tax and around about $1 million increase in withholding tax as well from Kazakhstan. CapEx and capitalized exploration, we've discussed. The BD gain there of $4.1 million, that was a break fee that we had on the New World Resources deal of $1.6 million, and we also made a $2.5 million gain on the sale of the shares that we'd acquired as part of the of part of the process. That totals $4.1 million. Share buyback we announced at the interim stage last year.
We announced a $10 million share buyback. By the end of December last year, we'd completed $5.2 million of that, and we've completed the entire buyback to $10 million, finishing that this year. We've ended the year with $80 million cash in the bank, and when we look at that in terms of our Adjusted Free Cash Flow, we've generated Free Cash Flow of $56 million during 2025. I'll now hand back to Gavin to run through details on our operations.
Great. Thanks, Louise. If we start with the Kounrad operation, which is our in-situ leach operation in Kazakhstan, that produces copper cathodes. We produced 13,311 tons of copper in 2025, which was right in the middle of the guidance range of 13,000-14,000 tons. This year, 2026, we're guiding 12,000-13,000 tons. In total, since 2012 when we started operation, we've produced 178,000 tons of copper, which I'm reliably told is enough to use in over 3 million electric vehicles. Quite a stunning performance from what is a relatively small copper producer in Kazakhstan.
You can see from the chart there, you know, consistent production after we expanded the plant in 2015 all the way through to 2024, 2025. Just a solid great little operation. We're exploiting an area in the top right of your slide, and it's roughly equivalent to almost 1,500 football pitches. That'll give you a sense of scale of the operation there. That, while it's a small producer, the area that we're exploiting and the 600,000 tons of waste that we're retreating does constitute a very large physical footprint, and a lot of effort goes into producing this copper profitably.
On the next slide, we were fortunate to receive very high copper prices at the end of 2025, which allowed us to leverage this strong operational performance into the financial results Louise has just been through. All the infrastructure at Kounrad is now built, and while CapEx was a little higher in 2025, and as Louise said, tailing off in 2026, we've set the plant up really well to make sure that it's, you know, the maintenance and all of the equipment in there is good enough to ensure smooth operations into the future.
Our solar plant in the top right there produced 15.4% of our electricity requirement and also generated a significant cost saving for us. Apparently, enough electricity was generated to drive an electric car 45,000,000 km. With those of you with range anxiety, I don't know how you'd deal with that. Most importantly on this slide is that leach curve that we're showing there. This is effectively the predicted leach curve in the dotted lines.
That's what we predicted before we started leaching the copper. The actual recoveries are shown in the solid line. Now, what we're seeing there is an outperformance. We're recovering slightly more copper than we predicted. And what this suggests is that there is potential to extend the life of this asset at some point, but that's going to take quite a lot of study work and applications to the government to do. So far, the indications are that the outperformance of the operation will continue into the future. Moving on to Sasa, which is our underground lead-zinc mine in North Macedonia.
Much more traditional operation. There we produced 17,881 tons of zinc and 25,156 tons of lead in 2025. When I spoke to you last year, we said that the goal was to move the annualized ore production, or the annual ore production up from 760,000 tons- 800,000 tons. We have achieved that, and that's shown in that graph on the bottom left of your slide there. Unfortunately, through the year, we encountered, you know, quite strong geological variations in the ore body, and that impacted production. This was variability both in the geometry of the ore body and also the grade. Despite this, we hit the revised guidance that we gave, in the mid-year.
This is through a strong performance in quarter four. The annualized production tonnages exceeded that 800,000 tonne target that we had. Great work from the team to get over that revised guidance number. As Louise said, we've now completed our capital projects as well in 2025, with the dry stack plant coming on stream in March and the landform coming on stream shortly after that. Again, fully invested at Sasa in terms of large capital items at that project. Moving on to what we've been doing at Sasa. I think in September last year, we spoke about the comprehensive review that we'd undertaken at Sasa. 2026 is all about implementation of the recommendations from those various reviews.
We've made good progress so far in terms of controlling costs and managing staff levels, and the focus going forward is gonna be about improving production efficiencies and improving, as I said, the geological understanding of that ore body. We're doing that via infill drilling, enhanced lab performance, and we're also ensuring that we're using all the modern methods that we have at our disposal and digitalizing all of the geological information in order to inform mine planning a lot better and assist with that process as well. We do also have many technical projects in the pipeline for Sasa. Some of these are already underway. This has, you know, involved some of those production efficiencies I talked about using different explosives, etc.
Also looking at drilling extensions to the Svinja Reka ore body that we're currently mining and also to satellite ore bodies, Golema Reka and Kozja Reka, to see if we can add more to the resource inventory and therefore extend the life of the mine beyond that 2034 number that came out a couple of weeks ago in the impairment announcement. We're also looking at the application of ore sorting technology at all of the ore bodies. This will allow us to exploit the lower grade areas of the mine profitably and again add to the resource inventory and the reserve inventory going forward.
We are confident that with a lot of these narrow vein underground mines, that we will extend the life of the mine beyond 2034, but we need to do quite a lot of work behind that as well. As I said earlier, the capital projects are completed, and key amongst those is the dry stack tailings plant, which are there in the photographs on the right-hand side, but also the paste backfill plant.
Between those two plants, we've now deposited 75% of the tailings since we started operation of that dry stack tailings plant either onto the dry stack landform or back underground in the form of cemented paste. Exceeding our target of 70% of tailings disposal into those two methods. Which brings us onto our sustainability slides.
Now, at CAML, we concentrate on five key pillars of sustainability, mainly because it makes good business sense to do all of this. Now, clearly, first and foremost is health and safety. We want everybody home safe at the end of every shift. Now, in terms of helping us there, we have done an independent review of our health and safety systems and culture, and we're starting to implement the findings.
Generally, the review was positive on what we do as a business, and importantly, we've also installed an alarm system related to tailings, which is now integrated into the National Alert Network in North Macedonia. Clearly, we value our people through a number of initiatives there, including diversity pay, you know, all the good things around that.
What jumped out at me as CEO here is that we've spent over 44,000- hours of training to our staff. The sort of continuous development of our staff is first and foremost in terms of driving the business forward and making sure that we have the people and the right skills to execute on our strategy. Caring for the environment, again, should be fairly obvious and should go without saying.
There are several areas that we've set ourselves key targets for, and I mentioned earlier that the target of 70% of storing our tailings back underground or on the dry stack without increasing the footprint of the mine. This is a much more environmentally friendly way of storing your tailings. You know, we're already looking to exceed that target.
Moving on to the next slide, please. We create value for our communities through several programs, mainly funded by our foundations, where we commit 0.5% of our revenue into those foundations. These include educational programs, business acceleration programs, and some capacity-building projects to ensure that the investments we make there outlive the lives of both of our assets.
Last but not least, ensuring ethical practices across our business. You know, there's several elements to this, and the emphasis really is on policies, training, and regular reviews of all of these practices just to make sure that we are running the business in line with the strictest governance that we can. Moving on to the next slide, which is capital allocation and outlook.
Now, included in that on the next slide is exploration. Louise mentioned a bit of this in the financials, and we're starting to see this sort of going through the financials, which is a good thing. In CAML X and CAML XD in Kazakhstan, we have six licenses now, and we have a good record of churning through them, including the one that Louise mentioned.
But in 18- months, which is, you know, which I think is really positive. In 18- months since we've started this program, we've already identified drill targets, and this is greenfields exploration from, you know, target generation, securing licenses, doing fieldwork, and establishing these. We're doing surface fieldwork and to establish the drill targets. 18- months I think is a stunning result there.
and at Yuzhnoye, we're looking to drill 2,000 meters each this summer. We also have a geophysical program underway at Shayandey over the summer as well, which should itself generate further drill targets. Starting to really move these projects along this conveyor belt and getting them more and more advanced, with a view to expanding our global resource base if we have success with these drilling programs. At Aberdeen, as Louise mentioned, we've increased our shareholding to just under 33% there. Those funds are going to be used for more drilling and hopefully lead to a discovery of a nickel-copper ore body. We know we're close. We've looked at a lot of drill core with a lot of mineralization in it.
This drill program that'll kick off in the spring with results coming later this year will hopefully lead to some excellent discovery news for us there. On the right-hand side, I won't dwell on this too much, but we are still looking for inorganic growth as well, and these are the targets that we've set ourselves. Most important for shareholders really is that everything we look at, we ensure that it is accretive to shareholders and that we can afford to buy it without stretching the balance sheet or diluting our shareholders too much. Getting onto the next slide. CAML has generated extraordinary returns for a small mining company. We've paid over $420 million in dividends and share buybacks since the IPO.
We've only raised $214 million in equity from the market since then, plus all that investment we've been talking about into both Kounrad, Sasa, and our exploration. Our full-year dividend of GBP 12 represents 50% of the Free Cash flow we generated in 2025, and we continue with our disciplined approach to capital allocation as a business. Moving on to the next slide, please. What we really have now is a really amazing platform to grow the business from. We have strong Free Cash Flow generation, which drives shareholder returns. That's 304% return since IPO.
The platform I mentioned for value accretive growth includes the exploration we've discussed, the strong balance sheet that we can leverage, and the experienced and capable team that we have in terms of identifying and executing on the projects that we hope to acquire. Most importantly, we're also in the right metals right now.
The wider community is now beginning to understand the importance of the critical minerals, and we see that across government, communities, various other things. You know, that should make not only the metals we produce right now attractive to investors, but also anything we add to our resource base through exploration and acquisition should be enhancing the value of the business as well.
If we look at where our valuations are on the next slide versus our peers, we're pretty much undervalued on many of the key market metrics, including EV/EBITDA, where we compare ourselves to the average of 4.7x. CAML's trading way below that. In terms of Free Cash Flow generation and our Free Cash Flow yields, again, a long way behind where our market peers trade. A good opportunity for returns for our investors there. If you look at that against our dividend yield, you know, our dividend yield well north of 6% is almost double what the average is from a FTSE 100 company. Again, in the context of the value appreciation available, plus also the returns that we're providing right now, CAML is an undervalued stock out there.
We're in the final slide looking at our summary and outlook. Just to reiterate, I think 2025 has given us, you know, a solid, financial performance generating, you know, guidance, you know, production hitting guidance, you know, generating an end-of-year cash balance of $80.1 million with zero debt on the balance sheet, almost zero debt. With guidance next year at Sasa, actually increasing back to our normal run rates there as we get above that 800,000 tons a year production rate I was talking about, copper production of 12,000 tons-13,000 tons.
Priorities for 2026, as I said, like it's, you know, really got to hone down on those improvements at Sasa, maintain the focus on production and efficiency at Kounrad, and identify and structure and hopefully close a material transaction in the next 12- months. Exciting news to come, hopefully from the drill programs in Kazakhstan and also from Aberdeen. In all of that context, we'll retain our sort of approach to disciplined capital allocation. On that note, thank you all for listening to us. Thanks for attending this morning, and we'll open the floor to questions.
The situation in Kazakhstan for Kounrad, and if you're seeing any cost impacts for getting the sulfuric acid? Then the second question is just around energy costs and, particularly, energy at the Sasa and what's incorporated in your guidance? Thanks.
Take that.
Sure, Alex. Thank you. Good morning. Look, in terms of sulfuric acid, there's clearly a lot of news about that right now, and with the Iran situation. Fortunately for us, we purchase our sulfuric acid from a smelter which is only 17 km away from our plant. Given the distances involved and the efficiency of that contract, we don't see any risk to it, both in terms of supply and also price right now. In terms of energy costs at Sasa, we actually hedged our electricity cost until the end of H1, so we're good until then.
Keeping a close eye on the market, you know, from that point forward and looking to see whether we can secure another attractive price for the rest of the year as well, after, you know, rather than revert to spot. Spot markets are obviously very volatile at the moment, again, as a result of the Iran situation, and everybody's watching that closely.
Sure. I can add a couple of bits.
Great.
I can add a couple of bits, Alex, if of interest. In terms of other aspects that could come to the fore with the Iran side, I think we're in a relatively strong position at Kounrad. We don't use much fuel there at all. Electricity prices are very low and are state controlled as well, and there's a huge amount of power generation and natural resources, oil and coal in the country, so we don't expect impacts there on electricity. We do use two key reagents called LIX and Escaid. They're oil-based products. We spend about $2 million on them a year. So they, we could see some cost pressure from those, I suppose. But as Gavin said, acid, we don't expect to be impacted.
We only spend about $500,000 on acid a year anyway, so it's not a huge area of our component anyway. Yeah, Sasa, as Gavin said, we've locked in our prices for the first half. I think, you know, I am a little bit worried. You can see European electricity prices rising, so it could be the second half we end up locking in a higher price than we have.
As a kind of rule of thumb, if we had a 20% increase in electricity prices this year versus last year, it would be just over $1 million. That sort of order of magnitude. We're also probably gonna see some higher fuel costs. It's a relatively small operation, so we don't use a huge amount of fuel, but we could see some higher fuel costs. We have been focusing on cost control, and we've fixed our electricity price. We've fixed prices for tires and consumables as well, and some reagents. We are focused on trying to lock costs in, where we can at Sasa.
Perfect. Thanks for the additional color, Louise.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Kieron Hodgson of Peel Hunt. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Morning, everyone. Quick question. Gavin, you mentioned on life extension at Kounrad, subject to studies. Could you just sort of unpack that a bit, sort of talk about the studies implied, the costs involved and any potential timelines? Thanks.
Yeah, sure, Kieron. I think, look, we don't wanna make too much of this 'cause it is still very much as a concept, a conceptual stage at the minute. You know, so you'd need to effectively produce a robust study that you would present to the authorities to justify the extension of the license. So, you know, we're in the sort of starting gate on that at the moment.
There's no official time limit when you can put these things in. I think, you know, we've got until 2034 when the license expires, so there's lots of time to do this and do it properly. So that's kind of work that we're starting, trying to get underway now. In terms of costs, I mean, we do it all internally. We wouldn't need external consultants, so we can't see the study costing, you know, anything significant.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Will Dalby of Canaccord. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, Gavin. Morning, Louise. Thank you very much for the call. A couple of questions. First is on capital allocation piece. Maybe just digging in a little bit more as to your thoughts kind of coming out of the end of last year. You obviously finished the buyback now. You know, still very much kind of balancing building the war chest for an acquisition versus those shareholder returns. You know, looking at the share price now back down to GBP 160, so, you know, maybe putting another buyback could be a consideration. What, you know, we'd be interested to hear a bit more of your thoughts around that. That's the first question.
Morning, Will. Look, I think when we made the decision back in September to get the dividend back into policy, I think that is the, you know, the key thing, and that allows us a lot of flexibility. Paying the GBP 7.5 now allows us not only to generate substantial returns for our shareholders, but also to, I think you called it a war chest.
I think it's just to sort of keep our powder dry in terms of acquisitions and, you know, programs going forward. I think we've got the right balance there. The buyback, as you say, yes, is complete. There are no plans at present to do any further buybacks but, you know, clearly, you know, having done, I think that was our second one technically, back end of last year.
You know, it is another way of returning capital that we will keep in our armory. Look, I think our share price has, you know, clearly moved down with the entire complex. You know, two weeks ago, we had maybe some additional movement there around that impairment announcement. I don't think we, you know, until we have clearer visibility on what the geopolitics are and what the impacts are gonna be on the macro and share prices across the board. You know, what we don't want to be doing is, you know, fighting an ebbing tide in this case, I suppose.
Yeah, makes sense. Thanks, Gavin. Maybe just a second just on costs at Sasa really, whether you, I know you don't give guidance, but, you know, whether you can give a little bit of a steer on what you're expecting C1 unit cost-wise at Sasa this year. I guess also over the next few years, if you can give any color on that, Louise, that would be very helpful.
Sure. Yeah. I think, I mean, as we've flagged, you know, we've been through a business review at Sasa last year using some external consultants as well because our margins have been squeezed there over the last year plus. We've got a big focus on cost control. Part of that has been the things I mentioned in Alex's answer really, was focusing on locking in costs where we can. In general, costs go up in the world. There's 4% inflation last year. Costs continue to go up, so what we want to do is try to arrest that increase. Are we going to be able to deliver savings in absolute terms?
Maybe a little overall this year, but I think a lot of that will be related to the retrenchment program which we put in place last year, which was a painful experience but necessary. By the end of last year, we had reduced the workforce at Sasa by around 9%. That number's now closer to 11%. We have pushed those numbers down.
That's where the bulk of our savings will come through. There is a cost associated with retrenching people, so we'd start to see the full fruits of that in 2020-2027 effectively. That's one key area, locking in the prices that we can. We've also big discussions underway with two of our main service and goods providers, Epiroc and Metso as well, with a focus on what we can do there.
We've got targets that we've set the team at Sasa to reduce inventory as well. That's one main focus that we're looking at. We've hopefully got some improvements to come through, a change in explosives usage this year, which we're waiting for some permits on, but we should be putting that into place towards the second half of this year as well.
We're controlling what we can. Probably to flag, there will most likely be another small increase in the cost of our tailings disposal as well, as we have a full year of operating the dry stack tailings, and as we prioritize putting our tailings into the paste backfill and dry stack tailings. Netting all of that out, if we could keep costs similar this year to last year, that would be a good result for us.
Yeah, very helpful. Maybe just last one around treatment charges. If you could, you know, remind me what you realized in 2025 and kind of what you're budgeting for 2026.
Treatment charges is a good news story. We ended up with treatment charges in total of about $8 million for 2025. What we're seeing for 2026, our year for treatment charges is April to April. What we're seeing is an increase in zinc treatment charges for the year from April to April 2027, but a significant reduction in lead treatment charges. All in all, we'd expect possibly $3 million-ish lower treatment charges for 2026 financial year versus 2025.
Super helpful. Thank you, Gavin. Thank you, Louise.
Okay. Pleasure, Will.
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Laura Chan of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Morning, Gavin. Morning, Louise. Thanks for the call. My question is more around the company's overall strategy. How do you think we should think about your kind of near-term priorities? If we think about the first bucket being, you know, stabilizing operations at Sasa, the life extension at Kounrad, etc , or are you still really focused on finding, you know, a new opportunity just given where, you know, given the competition for the mines out there and valuations? Thanks.
Morning, Laura. Thanks. Look, I think in terms of overall strategy, we discussed this at board level obviously, quite a lot, and sort of reiterated and sort of reinvigorated the strategy here. You're quite right to break it into two sort of time horizons. One is short term and one is longer term. Now, you know, clearly short term, we've spoken a lot today about, you know, what we're doing at Sasa and how we're going to not only improve the current, you know, operating efficiencies there, and hopefully, as Louise says, keep costs under control.
But, you know, clearly there's some opportunity to, you know, start adding to that resource inventory again, you know, having written down some of the reserve. You know, well, the reason we did that was to ensure that we were profitable all the way out to 2034. With those initiatives I was talking about, with more drilling, with looking at things like ore sorting and other technologies, bringing, you know, some of the lower grade portions of that, of the known ore bodies into profitability as well.
You know, that'll be ongoing over the next year or two. You know, clearly at Kounrad, you know, we're always looking to see whether we can, you know, add to efficiencies there. You know, whether or not there's more material to add, you know, in the region, we don't know, but we're certainly on the lookout for those sorts of things.
As I was saying to Kieron earlier, you know, that Kounrad life extension that's a longer term sort of project for us, right? That's not gonna sort of, you know, catalyze anything in the next 12- months, I don't think. In terms of acquisitions, yes, we're still very much looking at that now. You know, when we last spoke to the market in September, we were, like, bitterly disappointed that the New World Resources transaction had gone away from us.
We think that was a great template for us to populate that area between the exploration we've spoken about this morning and the operations with a significant growth project that is value accretive and allows us, as a business to impose our own operating ethos onto it, plus our engineering smarts and all the experience we've gained over the years and build a project exactly the way we want to. At the same time driving it up the value curve for our shareholders. That is still the goal. We're looking for things, and I think since our sort of misery in September, everyone's bounced back really well. Louise and her team have identified some prospects.
You know, we continue to work on things, sign NDAs, attend site visits, and look at assets, you know, through the lens of all of those things that are on one of the. I can't remember what number slide it is, but I won't go back to it now. You know, the key things there, you know, it's got to be accretive for shareholders. We've got to be able to afford it without stressing the balance sheets or the share register. You know, we continue down that path as well because we think that is a, in terms of significant value accretion, it's gonna provide a lot to us and our shareholders doing those sorts of deals.
Okay, great. Thanks so much, guys.
Thanks, Laura.
Thanks.
Thank you. We'll now take our follow-up question from Will Dalby of Canaccord . Please go ahead.
Yeah, hello again. I just thought I'd hop back in for one more. Just on this ore sorting project at Sasa, obviously that's interesting to hear. Be helpful maybe just to get a bit more color around that. You know, I guess that's more like presumably scoping study at the moment, but, you know, can you give a little bit more detail on the work you're doing on that? You know, maybe what you think it could do in terms of grades and sort of timeline-wise, potentially when that could start coming into the operations?
Yeah. Well, again, you know, it's quite early stages now. We've got samples in laboratories from the Svinja Reka ore body. Starting to get some of the results out on that and starting to get our heads around what those results mean. And then we've got the satellite ore body, the Golema Reka ore body, which is a little lower grade than Svinja Reka. And we're looking at ways to access that ore body and get fresh samples to the labs from that. That's probably an H2 program for us. You know, getting access into that ore body.
In terms of timelines here, we're probably looking at scoping study early maybe. I'm really guessing now, but I'd say H1 2027 on those where we can actually talk sensibly about what the results are and what the veracity of that particular technology is. But it's an intriguing technology, and I think a lot of people are implementing it. A lot of projects we look at, you know, have it as part of their flow sheets because in a declining grade world, you know, you've got to do everything you can in order to make things profitable. You know, I think in 2025, you know, the whole market could see, you know, when at Sasa, you know, where we could make money.
That was part of the reason we had to rejig the mine plan, you know, to take us out to 2034 profitably, as I said. If ore sorting can help by adding to resource inventory or allowing us to, you know, increase throughput at a similar head grade, then fine. But we haven't got anywhere close to sort of giving the market any proper results on that.
Yeah, got it. Thank you very much. Helpful. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Thank you. With no further questions on the line, I will now hand it back to Gavin for closing remarks.
Okay. Once again, thank you to everybody for attending this morning. Hopefully, you're taking away from us that, you know, solid financial performance in 2025 sets us up nicely for 2026. We continue to confront the challenges positively at Sasa and looking to implement a lot of these improvements there. With the balance sheet we've got and the team that we have and the returns that we're giving to our shareholders, I think this is a fantastic platform, you know, for investment and growth. Thank you very much to all of you for attending today.