Good afternoon and welcome to Kodal Minerals' Investor Presentation. I'm joined today by Chief Executive Officer Bernard Aylward . Questions are encouraged throughout this webinar and can be submitted via the Q and A box situated on the panel on the right-hand side of your screen. I would now like to hand over to Bernard to begin the presentation.
Thanks, Rachel. I reiterate that welcome to all investors and interested shareholders, and very happy to present this update to you on our activities in Mali. Let's just start with the basic reason why a lot of you are here and what's the investment case for Kodal. Clearly, we're developing the Bougouni lithium mine in Mali. We're up and running with continuing the optimization of the plant and commissioning of the DMS. We have achieved first production back in February this year, and we have over 20,000 tonnes produced to date, ready for export. The ramp-up is progressing very well. We're continuing to improve the plant and see increased production week on week and month on month. Kodal Minerals has a very strong cash balance. We have over GBP 17 million.
We expect to generate free cash flow from Bougouni during this year, and we are finalizing the commercial terms for the offtake agreement with our JV partner, Hainan Mining. Quick picture of what we've built, and this picture was actually several months ago, and continued improvements to the site since that. It is a DMS plant. It is a small-scale plant producing 1 million tonnes per annum, processing producing around 120,000 tonnes of concentrate. For me, when I look at this picture, it is an amazing development since we began here in 2016 to what we see today. It is a testament to our team and our partner that we've got this far. Speaking of that, Kodal has a very good management team as well as an on-site team. Myself as CEO, assisted by Steve Zaninovich, our Operations Director, Chairman Rob Woolridge , Charles Joseland , our Non-Executive Director, and David Teng representing Hainan.
Each one of the people on the board brings expertise and skill, and we've been able to manage through some difficult times as well as introduce new partners in the form of Hainan Mining that has allowed us to get to this production stage. What we have at Bougouni is a great project where we have built the first DMS plant in Mali, where we have demonstrated that plant operates successfully and continuing that commissioning. We have a strong resource base already in place with over 30 million tonnes of lithium ore defined. We're continuing to drill, and we expect to increase that resource through the results of this drilling. We're right now testing the Bumu prospect, which I think a lot of you know is a particular focus of ours.
We've had some fantastic results over the last few years, and what we're seeing in the drilling continues to give us confidence. With this exploration and work ongoing at the project, we expect to continue to expand the life of mine, where we currently believe we have 14 million tonnes and look to expand that over the results of this drilling. You'll see in that table below there that there's only three prospects which we've still defined a resource on, and we have multiple additional targets that we will continue to test. DMS, it's the technique we went with for the first stage one development. It's a well-known, well-exploited technique, cheap to develop. CapEx of approximately $65 million to build the 1 million tonnes per annum processing plant. We expect relatively low OpEx and all-in sustaining costs of around $650 a tonne.
We're looking to continue to make improvements on that. It's a simple mining operation, open pit, blast, and haulage, and the dense media separation, the DMS, is a simple chemical-free process. What we look at at Bougouni is one of the things with stage one is to provide the funding and support to extend the life into a stage two. Additionally, we're looking to expand the life of the DMS plant through the continued exploration, drilling, and identification of more coarse grain mineralization. What we're seeing at Bumu indicates some potential to deliver ore to the DMS plant, and we're continuing to do metallurgical testing and engineering assessment of that prospect. Quick graph on what we expect to produce and looking to have over 250,000 tonnes by the end of 2026. It's a very quick scale-up and move to a steady-state production.
I will say that this presentation will be on our website, so if I'm going through quickly, you will be able to download it and review at your leisure. A couple of comments on our JV partner, and I think you might have all heard me say previously that we spent a lot of time looking for the right partner to assist us with the Bougouni development, and there was a lot of interest in working with us. The reason we went with Hainan Mining was it was an experienced mining group, was a group we knew was well-funded and very focused on entering the lithium market. Hainan Mining are a subsidiary of Fosun Mining, so again, a partner, their owner, again, particularly well-funded. They were able to invest $100 million directly into the Bougouni asset level, taking a 51%.
That allowed us to be fully funded through the development of the stage one DMS, ongoing drilling, ongoing exploration, and other costs associated with that development. In addition, Hainan Mining were supporting Kodal Minerals and acquired just under 15% of the company through an additional investment of just under $18 million. Further to that, Hainan Mining has indicated the support for the project with their interest in obtaining the 100% offtake for the product produced at Bougouni. This is only initially for the stage one, and we will be looking to further develop the offtake agreement with Hainan Mining as we move into looking to the funding and building of stage two. As I said, the commercial terms for the 100% have been agreed, but we have not yet finalized. What we are looking to do is ensure that we have a buyer for the 100% of our product.
We're looking to produce between a 5.5% and 6% spodumene concentrate. What we are seeing is we're able to do that on the site today. We are producing a very clean spodumene concentrate, very low-level impurities, and it's ideal for the conversion for EV batteries. The initial offtake will be for over four years for stage one based on DMS initially. We're using that benchmark to the Shanghai Metal Market published price. As we said, we're selling a 5.5% concentrate. Why lithium? To start with, as Kodal, we entered this sector in 2016 through the acquisition of the exploration ground around Bougouni. Previously, completely underexplored for lithium, but we had identified the outcropping pegmatite bodies, recognized the potential for definition of mineralization that was clearly amenable to open pit mining, and entering a market that was increasing in significance worldwide.
You can see the graph there on the left showing that the forecast sales for EVs continues to grow, strongly growing in China and throughout Europe, Australia, and other countries. It is something that we have seen people talk about, perhaps it has stalled, but as a year-on-year growth, we can see that it continues to have quite a strong impact over the next 20 to 30 years. China's demand is actually leading the way with a very strong increase and outpacing the rest of the world as they take up and as they manufacture and take up a lot of electric vehicles. Again, continuing this theme, you know, why do we as a company still think lithium is the future?
As we've stated many times, we think lithium has impact on the green energy sector, on the improvements to the environment, and is supported both by population and government regulation. It is an industry we know has long-term future and support. You can see some of these little summary points we're making here that in the past, Europe perhaps has been the leader in vehicles and teaching other countries. Now the tables are turning, and you can see China is dominating the EV construction. This is a point that's reiterated quite a few times through there. I think we see as well that while there's not just single car manufacturers in China, there's multiple. They're also building and constructing plants throughout the world that will continue to ensure that they have this dominance. We're also seeing European, US companies also taking up the EV construction.
Again, some comments about lithium, and I expect that there's a lot of interest from our shareholders on our view and perhaps on multiple views as to why we're still believing that this is a great sector to be in. Obviously, supply versus demand is often a key driver for pricing, but in today's world, there's multiple factors. What we're seeing with the concentrate price, spodumene concentrate price, is evidence of improvement and strengthening. We're seeing a re-rating. We expect a re-rating of us after we commence production. We see that the price of the concentrate is a key thing for the share price performance, and we have been reasonably consistent and well-supported across the whole period of time, knowing that the whole sector worldwide has taken a lot of pain. What we see ahead for us is that increase in SC6 pricing, those concentrate pricing.
What we see is that the demand continues to increase year on year. Given the current state of the market, the supply has been falling and certainly has not met previous estimates. We still feel that we're coming into a good market for us. Number one, having secured a buyer for our product. Number two, financing and coming into a market where there's potential to grow. When we talk about our growth, number one, the stage one DMS is built, is commissioning, and has produced product, which we know is a saleable product in demand from our partner. We have over 20,000 tonnes on site at the moment. We expect this initial operation has been planned for four to five years of operation, but we are looking to continue the exploration and development of other prospects to continue the life of that DMS plant.
What we have flagged for a long time is we think that the full development of Bougouni requires a flotation plant, and that's our stage two, which will be fed from the Bumu and Sogola-Baoulé prospects initially. We look at this producing over 230,000 tonnes of concentrate a year from a 2.4 million plant. We are looking to make sure we can run the two plants concurrently for a while, giving us a production profile in excess of 350,000 tonnes per annum, making us quite a serious player. The stage two development requires capital in the order of $175 million. We're looking to fund that from our operation of the DMS. We're looking to fund that through our partner and looking to continue the growth of the project. As we know, this is a bulk commodity that we're mining.
Clearly for us, logistics plays a major role in ensuring that our project develops successfully and the operation continues to be a successful operation. We have Bougouni located in the south of Mali, approximately 180 km from the capital. Excellent bitumen roads from our project through into Côte d'Ivoire, two ports available, the Abidjan port, the major port in Mali, and San Pedro, a port used to handling bulk commodities. Our initial plan is to go to the Abidjan port, where we'll be transporting our concentrate in bulk bags to maximize the capacity and availability of trucks. It's approximately 900 km either way. They are well-established trucking routes with clear border crossings that are expecting and have multiple truck convoys per day. We think that we have the opportunity to successfully transport over 10,000 tonnes of concentrate per month to the port ready for shipping.
Clearly, at Mali, being a landlocked country, the importance of trucking, the well-established routes, and the well-established protocols for export are in place that we're working through and understand and know that we'll be able to successfully do this operation. In addition, we do know we have reserve and backup ports, if ever required, if there's issues such as Dakar in Senegal, Conakry in Guinea, and other ports in West Africa. A couple of images, and yes, that's me smiling, holding some of our concentrate, our plant in operation, producing the clean spodumene concentrate. Our team on site celebrating the first production. In the centre there in the white cap, that's one of our partners, Jerry Gao, who has been the lead developer on site of the plant, supported by our Malian team. Few extra pictures there in the background. That's actually the DMS processing plant.
You can see one of the pictures there of rocks showing very coarse grain mineralisation, again emphasising that we believe our decision for the DMS, particularly for the Ngualana pegmatite, is the right decision and it's proving through this process now. Obviously, with all mining and all aspects of our exploration work, we have a responsibility to the area where we're working, to the communities we're working with, and to ensuring an economic outcome for the people of Mali, that we're looking after the environment to the best of our ability and working with the community to make sure that we deliver results for them that improve the life there. We have a well-established team on site led by our ESG manager, Mamadou Dembélé , who actually was engaged with Kodal right from our early ESIA and has joined our team as the HSE manager, excellent with community relations.
In the role there, we've got governance, ESG risk management, strategy, and review of our performance. It's key and pretty well established, but we do like to emphasize and have for a long time, Kodal has always focused on relationships with its community, with its local government and federal government. That has allowed us to achieve the result of maintaining licenses, obtaining permits, and keeping good relationships with the government. In summary for this part, the investment highlights, we are a lithium project. We have a hard rock spodumene open pit mine at the moment, over 30 million tonnes of lithium oxide. We have excellent potential to continue to upgrade that resource from both identified deposits at Bumu in particular, Sogola-Baoulé, and other exploration targets. We had first production in February this year. It's part of our commissioning process.
We're continuing that commissioning and improvement of the plant. We're forecasting production of over 10,000 tonnes per month. We have a secured partner to purchase all the product, and we expect to start achieving cash flow from the sale of that product. I believe we have a clear, proven management team. Our team on site continues to deliver the plant on time and in budget. Our exploration team continues to delineate improvements in the resources and exploration prospects. We're well funded, and we have additional projects that we're looking to work on in the gold projects in West Africa, as well as opportunities to acquire other projects that we continue to review. I think that wraps up the presentation, and I know we have lots of questions pre-submitted, so happy to take them all now.
Thank you, Bernard. Thank you all for all of your questions. There have been a high volume of questions pre-submitted and submitted live. A number of them are on similar themes, and the first one being the offtake agreement. The first question is, could you provide more clarity on the offtake agreement with Hainan?
Yes, I think this is one of the key points that we've been asked a lot about. We have, I think, been very clear. We have an agreement in place with Hainan to finalize an offtake agreement for them to purchase 100% of the product from the DMS plant. That price that we will achieve is benchmarked against the Shanghai Metal Market, a published price that clearly is an arm's length price to ensure that we achieve the best possible market price. We're delivering over a 5.5% product.
We will be delivering to the port of Abidjan initially, and from the loading of the ship, Hainan takes responsibility for the product. We will receive payments in stages, initially on delivery and loading to the ship, and a final payment from arrival in Hainan. We're looking to finalize that agreement as soon as possible. We have input as well from Hainan and from their refinery to make sure that we have the proper testing regime in place to deliver the product that they're looking for.
Thank you. The next one is on the offtake agreement. Could you please provide more clarity on the loan from Hainan? With the current low level of spod price, is it viable to pay for the loan, and how does this affect your plan in recovery for stage two flotation plant?
Okay. A good detailed question. Partly we had been talking for a while with Hainan about a prepayment for product. As we have not finished the offtake agreement, we spoke about a loan agreement to be put in place. As we said in our announcement at the time, we think this was a prudent move to make sure that Kodal Mining U.K. and our subsidiary lithium companies do have significant financial backing. As we said in the announcement, we still maintained funds within KMUK, but we were looking to ensure that we have support over the next few months to make sure that we can move into production and sale of product successfully.
We do point out that part of the funding that we received from Hainan obviously built the plant, but in addition, took the open pit mining, and we have created a stockpile on the ROM pad, and we have over 20,000 tonnes ready to ship out. Thank you. The next question is also on the offtake agreement. Can you provide an update on the expenditure completed by KMUK? Is the plant on budget and any additional expenditure? Okay. I think I might have answered that already, but let me just summarize that again. The plant, we believe we are under budget, actually, but again, close to budget of $65 million. We have built a camp and continue to have the open pit mining. We started the mining back in June.
That has allowed us to build the stockpile of raw ore on the ROM pad, ready for production, and has allowed us to have 20,000 tonnes of concentrate ready for export. When you look at that, on top of the exploration drilling we have undertaken last year and then continuing to undertake this year, I think that summarizes in full the cash flow. We have paid the government for the MoU in relation to the settlement of dispute and transfer of the mining license to the 2023 code and subsequent transfer to our mining company. In addition, we cleared the path for 100% of offtake agreement to be taken by Hainan Mining through the payment to Ganfeng Lithium to settle and for them to release their rights to any offtake on the project.
Thank you. That is very helpful. The next questions are around Ganfeng Lithium. Updates on the status and relationship with Ganfeng Lithium. Any possibility of Kodal or Hainan Mining buying out their share rather than dumping in open market and suppressing the share price?
Okay. I like these multiple phased questions. So number one, our relationship with Ganfeng Lithium has been long-standing since their first approach to us in 2016 and investment in 2017. They were very supportive all the way through our exploration and development, undertaking the testing of our bulk sample, undertaking metallurgical testing and financing. Ganfeng Lithium were interested in approaching us to support the development of the operation, but the Hainan Mining transaction was clearly better. We support, we maintain that good relationship with Ganfeng Lithium and recognize that they are in a position now where they're looking to sell their shares. I will say that they are not dumping on the market. They've been very careful with the way they're selling.
I do not think they are actually one of the major sellers in the market as far as I can tell. Kodal will not be buying those shares, and nor will Hainan. There have been some approaches, I believe, to Ganfeng to take out their shares, but we are separate from that, and we are not looking, we are not involved in negotiations around that. We have been very happy to have worked with Ganfeng in the past and very grateful for their previous support.
Thank you. The next couple of questions are on the spodumene price. Hi, Bernard. Congratulations to you, Steve, and all of the team on progress to date. With the current spod prices being so low, how does this affect the timescales for phase two plans now, also with the increase in Mali government holding?
So thanks, yes. It's always nice to get recognition for the team, for the good job that they've done. I reiterate that Steve did a great job with the feasibility and through this development. What do we feel about the spodumene price? It is a very immature market in lots of ways, the spodumene concentrate market. When we first started the Bougouni project, the price was sub-$600 a tonne. It went up to over $700, fell back to $500. We saw that remarkable period from 2021 to late 2022 where it hit extreme peaks of $6,000 a tonne. We knew that was unsustainable. We think in a way it has overcorrected now down to around $800 to $820 a tonne for SC6 at the moment. Our view is that we will see a more steady and longer-term increase in the price.
I guess the question is really relating to how do we feel that this affects the profitability of Bougouni, and we're still confident that we have a robust and profitable operation that will have cash flow. It's probably not the record cash flow that people may have anticipated with a price of over $6,000 a tonne, but it does generate cash for us and our team. The Mali government has taken a stake in the operation. It has increased in the 2023 code from where it was 20% for the government and 5% available for Mali and investors to now be 30% for the government and 5% for Mali and investors. That has all been taken up in this transfer to the 2023 code.
It does impact on funds back up to KMUK, but our funds have gone down as shareholder loans that will be repaid through the operation of the project prior to dividends being declared.
Thank you. Another question on this topic. What are your views on future demand for the product/mineral, and what's your predictions?
In our presentation, you'll see that we're very confident of ongoing support for lithium, improvements in the EV market, take up of the batteries both into large-scale grids, into batteries for people's houses. We still see it as a really strong growing market. In terms of prediction, I'm not really the right person to tell you anything about where I think the price is going to be other than we see strong growth underpinning future price rises.
Thank you. We've had a number of questions submitted on the share price. The first one is, with the recent huge achievement on the DMS plant and license transfer, the shareholder doesn't really feel the real impact on the share price. Most sadly, the SP is in downward trend. Is there any timing on resource update, gold exploration?
Yeah, I think we're all looking at the news that Kodal has been releasing in terms of the plant, the production, the success of our development, the fact that we have finalized discussions with the government, we have transferred the mining license, we're looking to complete that export permitting as soon as possible. The share price is clearly, I think, reflecting something in a greater macro scale. If we look worldwide, for a long time, it's been clear that Kodal's share price has outperformed just about every other lithium explorer producer in the world.
We've been able to maintain support from shareholders and see a reasonably steady price. Yes, it has come off recently, and again, we think that reflects more volatility in the market, and it's very hard for us to beat that in some ways other than through our performance. We're still very strong in our belief that the performance and move to the sale of product from Bougouni will start to underpin the value of the company and hence the share price.
Great. Thank you. Another one on the share price. It appears that the share price has been hammered by SC selling. What are your views on this?
I actually don't think that the share price reflects selling by Ganfeng Lithium. Having had discussions with them, we know that they're carefully managing their sales. In fact, for quite a long period, they have not been selling anything. The share price, as I said, I think is affected more by volatility in the general market, by uncertainty of possible government regulation and the impact that may have. Our view is it is still underpinned by strong demand and growth of the lithium sector.
Thank you. Just one final question on the share price. As the mine is operational, the mining license has been granted, you have a stockpile ready to export and future loan funding in place. Why do you feel that the share price has been subdued despite being in such a positive position?
I think that is another version of the same question, but really, I think that question highlights that Kodal is in a very strong position. We have managed to achieve what a lot of other companies spoke about but did not. We have achieved financing, we have achieved construction of a plant, and we have material ready to sell. I do not think that there is a reflection directly onto Kodal for anything that we have control of or have been demonstrated to have done something wrong. It is a tough market at the moment. I think people are aware that I am a reasonably significant shareholder of Kodal. Obviously, I am working to make sure that we get the best value for our company. By that and our team focusing on the best we can do at Bougouni, I think we will underpin that future growth and support of our share price.
Thank you. Moving on to gold projects. Can you please let us know a bit more about us becoming a gold producer when the gold update will be provided?
Number one, we do not see moving to production in any short term because we need to undertake quite a lot of drilling and development work prior to any idea of moving to production. Clearly, our project Fatou in Mali is something we are looking to do some work on in the near term. We like the opportunity of being able to demonstrate a large-scale resource and system at Fatou. It shows continuity to some of the high-grade mineralization across the border in Côte d'Ivoire that we are looking to do some work on. In Côte d'Ivoire, we have the Nielle project. Again, early work on that demonstrated potential for a resource potentially to be defined. We need to do some more drilling, and we are looking to advance what we have as applications in Côte d'Ivoire to granted ground to allow us to undertake the work. We are looking to provide clear guidance on the strategy of our gold projects during the course of this year.
Thank you. We've had a number of questions submitted with regards to the project update, export license, and company re-rating. The first one is, is there any issue with obtaining the export license, particularly as the mining license is fully updated and transferred to the mining company?
We do not think so. We acknowledge that the mining license transferred, that there was quite a deal of discussion with the mine commission regarding that. Part of this discussion regarding the export permit is to clearly demonstrate that arm's-length pricing, to demonstrate the arm's-length negotiations around the offtake agreement, and ensuring that it is delivering a fair result to Mali. As I mentioned earlier, we still see that lithium concentrate, spodumene concentrate selling is a relatively immature market.
Our process of discussion with the government is actually in part working with them to understand the market and the volatility of the pricing and confirming that the pricing we will receive is the market price.
Thank you very much. The next one is, previously you have stated you expect a re-rate of Kodal post-production. Is this the case? Please, can you provide an updated timeline?
My view on what we are doing is that the work we are undertaking at Bougouni, what we have done to date and what we demonstrate the future will be, I think should underpin the share price and the confidence in our company. Yes, I expect that we will be re-rated, particularly once we move from development to production and generation of revenue through sales. In terms of timeline, we have stated that we fully expect to be exporting by the third quarter this year. I'll stick to that for the time being, but that's a sort of plan we're working on.
Thank you. The next question is, is the MoU from January 2020 with Mali Lithium to Goulamina and thus now Ganfeng Lithium still valid? If so, on which points is there effective cooperation?
Yeah, that's an interesting question because while there's been significant changes in the ownership of Goulamina, there's obviously been significant changes with our partnership for the Bougouni development. We still have communication with the Goulamina development team. We still look to try and develop some of the opportunities through the MoU that we signed at the time, which we thought particularly may offer us some focus on transport and logistics.
I note that Goulamina is still working through its logistics, and at the moment, we feel that we have a good relationship with local transport companies that we'll be looking to work with separately. Given the nature of where we are, companies operating in the same area, doing the same mining, I think it's only fair to say that we will continue to try and look for opportunities to benefit both companies. The MoU was with Mali Lithium particularly, so we haven't revisited with Ganfeng Lithium.
Thank you. We have a couple of questions around resource updates and project expansion. Is there currently drilling in process for resource expansion? If so, how many rigs and when will results be communicated?
As I said in the presentation, and sorry if I preempted some of these questions, we are currently drilling at Bumu. We have two diamond rigs going. We expect that to be ongoing for a few more weeks now. Results will follow in due course with the diamond work. As we stated before, there is a lot of geological testing and assessment that goes on prior to the sampling and assays. We will be looking to update our resource, but part of what we have been doing at the moment is ensuring that we have maximum value from our drilling and information to make it a meaningful resource update.
Thank you. You just touched on this, but in particular, when will the resource upgrade results be known?
It is a little bit of a piece of string question, I am sorry. We need to complete the drilling, undertake the interpretation. I would probably look to say in the third quarter would be a timeline that is reasonable, but not to be hung out to dry on that one.
Thank you. We've had a number of other questions come through. This question is, as the Mali government have a 35% stake in LMLB, will they contribute to phase two and the cost of $175 million, or is phase two solely for KMUK to finance?
Phase two is solely for KMUK to finance.
Thank you. The next question is, is the MoU from January 2020? Oh, we've already touched on this. Apologies. The next one is, what are current recovery rates and grade?
While we're still working through the commissioning, we are looking at recoveries over 55%, and grade we're seeing close to 5.5. We're still working on ensuring that we get an optimal result there. We have seen grades as high as 6% being recovered from the spodumene concentrate, but other grades down below the low five. Still work in progress. Recovery we expect we can improve.
Commissioning is one of these times where we're improving the crushing, we're improving the circuit. We are seeing a fair bit of movement at the moment.
Thank you. The next question is, how will wet weather affect the machinery processing raw materials? Will there be additional downtime because of wet weather?
Look, it's an interesting question because most of the time that we've seen in West Africa, mines continue to operate throughout the year. One of the key things we have done is make sure we've built up a stockpile on the ROM pad for processing. We are several months ahead of the processing plant, and we expect to continue that with the open-pit mining. Wet weather won't really slow down the operation because we're prepared for it. I think some things more like the exploration will probably be hampered because it doesn't have that infrastructure support.
Export of our product will continue because the transport routes are well established, and we expect that most of the transport will be on bitumen road.
Great. Thank you. The next question is, are you currently in Mali, and can we expect an official opening involving a state visit?
I am currently in London, but I will be in Mali later this week. One of the key things I will be doing is going to the mine site, reviewing with our mining team the Bougouni operation and the exploration at the Bumu prospect, and continuing these discussions with the government for our export permit, plus the potential for an official opening. Yes, we expect to have that with at least ministers and most likely the president of Mali.
It is one of the things that we emphasize that the opening of this Bougouni lithium mine is a big thing for Mali. It will be the second lithium mine opened, and actually the second lithium mine in West Africa. I think the people in the Bougouni region are very proud, very happy to see this development, and we are able to participate with the community. We have over 350 local residents currently employed by the mine, and that has a very strong impact on the community.
Thank you. We're running out of time, so we'll just have two final questions. How is your unit economics forecast affected given the continuing reduction in lithium spot price?
Look, interesting question because as we said in our presentation, again, we think that our all-in sustaining cost will be below $650 a tonne, and that was from our feasibility. We're seeing some improvements in our costing in the mining and in the transport that we expect to have. At this stage, we're not saying a significant change to that price, but it still demonstrates that we'll be able to generate cash from the operation. There are things that we can control, and that's our on-site performance, our cost management, ensuring that we run the plant in the optimal fashion to lower that unit price. We do not control the bigger market.
Thank you. The final question is, what is the latest AISC forecast?
That's the same question. As I say, we're sticking with what we had in the initial feasibility for the time being. We do believe we've got some improvements through our negotiations with contractors that will at least meet that price estimate.
Thank you, Bernard. Thank you for all of your questions. I will now hand back over to Bernard for any closing remarks.
Okay, thanks, Rachel. I appreciate obviously a number of questions from shareholders and again highlights what we have seen for a long time, that we have a strong supporter base, a lot of interest in the development of our project, and a lot of support for our company. I always appreciate that. You will see that we have an up-and-running operation. We expect to finalize the commissioning shortly. We are looking forward to an official opening and commencement of sales. We think Kodal Minerals is in a very strong position, both with its cash, with the development of the Bougouni project, and future upside through the gold projects that we currently have and potential for additional projects given the strength of our team and history of our company. Thanks very much for your interest today.
Thank you for joining us today. That concludes the Kodal Minerals Investor presentation. Please take a moment to complete a short survey following this event. Please be aware that the recording of this presentation will be made available on Engage Investor following this event. I hope you enjoyed today's webinar.