Good morning and welcome to the Metals Exploration Plc update on recent activities presentation. Throughout this recorded meeting, investors will be in listen-only mode. The company will not be in a position to take questions today due to the current recommended offer for Condor Gold. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Darren Bowden, CEO. Good morning, sir.
Good morning, and thank you very much for that. Good morning to the listeners. I'm glad you're all willing to chime in and listen to our update on the recent activities and on some updates on what's going on within Metals Exploration. I'll flick through the slides. Hopefully, most of you have a good understanding of who Metals Exploration are, but we will give you a small update on that so that everybody's brought up to speed on the same basis. Hopefully we can move forward on the exploration activities, the acquisitions, and offer we've made for Condor. We'll finish with some of the sustainability and just some of the things we're very proud of in Metals Exploration. I will use some certain terms within this presentation. Metals Exploration has a subsidiary within the Philippines called FCF Minerals, and they operate a mine called Runruno.
Those terms will come up, and so please, just take them all as one because it's really just the subsidiaries of Metals I'll be talking about as we go through the presentation. Really, just so for people who don't know Metals Exploration, we're an AIM-quoted stock. We produce about 80,000 ounces a year. Year-over-year, Metals Exploration have been improving its outcomes, its performance, and its overall revenue streams, which has led us to the position we are in today, where we've been able to make the activities or start the M&A processes that we have with Condor. The turnaround of Metals Exploration started five years ago when myself and the team took over. We've lifted the production performance from around the 50,000 ounces at about 50% recovery, right the way through to 90% recovery and 90,000 ounces.
Which we are performing at around 80,000-85,000 ounces a year at the moment. With that, we've been able to reduce our debt, get into a position where we're debt-free. There is a small caveat here where we've taken on a small loan from one of our shareholders for this acquisition, just to ensure that the acquisition went forward smoothly. The proposed acquisition of Condor Gold, which includes the La India project in Nicaragua, is part of our development strategy. I'll talk about our development strategy as we get into this. The second acquisition, which we did a little bit prior to this, it's a small company, but it's a large prospective exploration tenement. It also fits very well within the strategy and the growth pipeline that we're trying to create within Metals Exploration going forward.
We have an extremely well-branded company, FCF Minerals, in the Philippines. We'll talk through our stakeholder and our ESG focus. For us, in developing countries, in all countries, our community is one of our key stakeholders, and we very much focus on our safety and our community as we go forward. Talking about delivering on our strategy, there's a couple of slides we'll talk about through here. The acquisition of Condor Gold, while we've just started that process and the finalization of that process looks like it'll hopefully be somewhere around mid-January. It is really step two or stage two in the process that we've been focused on and the four stages of growth that this company has been going through. The board really has the vision to move this company forward. We are cash generative. We have been for a couple of years now.
We fully drew down the original debt that was on the company when I started, which gave us the opportunity to be cash generative and to start looking at these acquisitions. We continue to focus on other M&A opportunities, but truly, we want to bed down what we have now, make sure that the company can move forward on those opportunities before we move to that next stage. We have an extremely strong management team, and I'll talk about the opportunity within Nicaragua, because people might think, "Well, here's a Philippine company," or Philippine-centric operation, AIM-listed company. Why would they move to Nicaragua? There's good reasons for that, and I'll talk you through those as we go forward. Really, in all aspects, we've set goals, we've talked to our stakeholders and our shareholders, and we've been working on achieving those goals as we've gone forward.
Our growth strategy, it's really four pillars. The first is to achieve the performance of Runruno as it stands. We've worked on that for five years. With the achievement of that performance and, look, on the back of that achievement with the growth, with the strong gold price, we've been able to pay down our debt, and we've been in the position to start considering these type of growth strategies. Once we paid down our debt, our four pillars were simple. We get the performance of Runruno into a position where it is not just cash generative, but gives us the basis to grow this company. Our second objective is to replace the cash flow of Runruno with another near construction or construction-ready project. That is now Condor Gold under this acquisition strategy. Condor, it is construction-ready. All permits are in place.
The opportunity to move that to an operating mine pre-closure of Runruno is critical and is within the target of the strategy. Our third pillar in this strategy is looking for a three-to-five-year plan for the Runruno infrastructure and the Runruno assets. We're very focused on taking those assets, re-utilizing that capital to the best of its ability, in another project. This will give us a timeframe. It'll reduce timeframe for the recapitalization of a new project, and it will ensure that the capital value of those assets is realized into the future. We have a number of targets within the Philippines which we would like to do that. We're working on those targets. Some are within YMC, the Abra project. We are more than willing to look for growth strategies outside of the Philippines, Asia-centric, so that these assets can be deployed somewhere else.
Our fourth pillar is looking for that large growth strategy. Looking for that asset that can turn this company into a small to medium gold producer into one of those large producers. We do believe that the YMC project, the Abra project within YMC, absolutely provides that opportunity. Some of the targets we have there are significant, and we're very much looking forward to moving forward, drilling and exploring those targets for that growth pipeline into the future. The acquisition of Condor Gold. Just to give you an idea, Condor Gold, it's a Nicaraguan asset. It's about 2-2.5 hours outside of the capital, Managua. It is a significant opportunity in terms of the size of the tenement holding. There are a number of deposits that have already been recognized by Condor, over the last 15 years.
The key asset in that project is La India. There are others, Las Americas, Mestiza, and many others that fall within the resource profile of about 2.3 million ounces, which has been announced and provided to the market by Condor. We very much like the asset for the simple reason that it is a construction-ready asset. The Nicaraguan government is proactive in the mining sphere. Geopolitically, it is a proactive area for mining. Condor have a very good relationship, which they've built over the last 15 years. Myself, I have 17 years in South America. I've worked in countries such as Colombia, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, all around Nicaragua. I've actually got key contacts in Nicaragua myself. The team that I would bring to the Nicaraguan assets is the team that's worked with me in those areas in South America.
All are fluent in Spanish and have significant experience in these green fields and growth assets into production. We have the right team, we have the right experience. The benefit of taking on this type of project is we de-risk that country profile. Now, you say it's another developing country, and yes, it is. The size of our company and the type of performance we are looking for, the risk-reward for spreading our base to multiple countries, de-risks the overall profile of the company, but provides a significant upside in terms of the growth strategy. Condor made complete sense to us. It made very much sense to our shareholders and our board. The acquisition is moving forward under the basis that I will explain to you. We've made an offer to Condor. We're looking at a shares and cash offer, as the starting point.
The shares and cash offer, 70% shares, 30% cash. It's about a four-to-one share swap, with about a 30% cash carry for those shares in Condor. Which equates to exactly a GBP 0.33 share price for Condor. Condor's currently trading about GBP 0.29. When we started this process, it was around about GBP 0.21. It was a significant uplift in the initial instance on the initial offer to Condor at GBP 0.33. We thought that with discussions with the Condor management, Condor board, they felt that there was a future for Condor that they should be recognized for, given that they'd take 15 years to put this asset in place. We felt that that was something we could include in the offer. We have a deferred payment as part of this offer.
It's called a CVR, and it's Contingent Value Right. That contingent value right has two phases. The first phase is a guaranteed payment on production after the first gold pour of $14.4 million. That is associated with 800,000 ounces of discovered increased resources within the tenement holding. We've guaranteed that payment. That equates to about half of GBP 0.111 increase in that offer to Condor. The second half is a proviso on another 800,000 ounces discovery over 5 years. We have an agreed program of exploration in terms of total meters. Once we've discovered the first 800,000 ounces, if we discover another 800,000 ounces above the initial resource statement of $2.3 million, then there is a further $14.4 million U.S. payment. All of that equates to $18 an ounce.
Now, if we look at the reality of that, we're talking about 1.6 million ounces more on top of the current resources for $18 an ounce. While people might say, in terms of their share price, that's a significant number. In terms of the value that that adds to both companies, to both sets of shareholders, it's significant in terms of the value rather than the cost. We should look at this as a 1.6 million-ounce benefit to Metals Exploration and to the future shareholders, both Condor and Metals, within that growth strategy. Because that takes an existing mine of 10 years, through to 15 years or 20 years. That type of value at $18 an ounce is cheap value for all of us, and the benefit is for everybody.
If we look at that adds to a maximum contingent payment of 11.1p, adding to a total payment for Condor, 33 up front, an initial guarantee of $14.4 million or around about 5.5p, and then another 5.5p if more ounces are discovered above that. In the end, this deal, the Condor board, the MTL board, unanimously recognized the benefit of this deal to both companies and voted in favor of moving this deal forward. On the back of that, the board of directors in both companies, which are the major shareholders, both in Condor and in Metals Exploration, signed irrevocable undertakings to vote for this deal as it moves forward. We all look forward to it. There's about six weeks worth of paperwork, excuse my language.
Six weeks worth of paperwork all the way throughout to mid-January, maybe a little later, where this will go to finalization of the scheme document, and once the offer's fully accepted, the two companies will come together. The Runruno turnaround success story, just for people who are new to Runruno. If there's any shareholders of Condor or outside prospective retail buyers who want to understand where we come from. I also want to make just a quick note. There's a lot of slides we would've loved to include in this presentation. Given the period we're in within the offer period and under the takeover code, there's a lot of things we can't prospectively say that we would like to about our future and how we would like to deal with not just the assets that we would take on as part of the acquisition, but our current assets.
Please watch this space because this news flow's only just started, and mid to late January, we'll do this again, and we'll present a lot more information on the basis and the numbers around where we feel this company can go with all these assets and with how we're building these assets into the future. Looking at production, we have a forecast for 2024. This forecast we've put out in guidance only recently in September, of only 2,500 ounces. We have improving recovery. We have improving cash flow. Things are looking good. We had an excellent year in 2023 with 88.7% recovery, and very strong cash flows. The operational performance of Runruno is significant. It is sustainable, and it goes right the way through to 2027.
We will start to run down at the back end of 2026, and Q1 2027, Runruno, which is the FCF asset under Metals Exploration, will end its mine life. Now, there are other opportunities we are looking at to try and extend that, and I'll talk through those as we get there. We're having significant community and socioeconomic programs within the community, and a lot of those will be sustainable into the future to assist our communities as we go forward and as the mine runs down into care and maintenance and the rehabilitation and review period. As I should've mentioned in the first slide, if you look around the world, a company that can achieve 24 million man-hours without a lost time incident, that equates to eight years of operation without a lost time incident, is significant in anyone's forum.
We're very proud of the team that we've got and the culture that we've built around safety. Our processing facility, I won't go too much into this, but our recovery, as I said, is improving as we're going forward. We'll have results out at the end of the year, so we'll be able to present those in January. We're very happy with the results we're achieving this year. It is an interesting plant because it includes a circuit called a BIOX circuit. For anyone who hasn't been a part of our story as we've gone forward, that's a bio leach. It used biological technology to leach the sulfides out of the ore, so the gold can be presented to a CIL leach, which is a cyanide leach, which is a very standard process.
BIOX technology is used in around five to six plants in the world, and it's taken us a while to understand it, to develop the intellectual property around it, and to ensure that that can perform to the desired capacities and to some standards that it now does. The benefit of this is there is a lot of ore bodies in the world which are refractory ore bodies, i.e., that require this type of oxidation process, but there's not a lot of companies that can run it. We have the IP to do so. We have an opportunity to look at certain ore bodies that a lot of other people would probably not, or that are undervalued by other people because we can run this technology efficiently and effectively. That opens up a lot of doors to us. This plant, designed at 1.7, we run about 2.1.
We believe we could probably get a bit more out of it. We run right now at about 2.1 million tons, which is about a 20% increase on its original design capacity. Our rehabilitation. I've been asked a few times about our end-of-life costs, because rehabilitation is a key aspect of every business in the mining industry, where once you go into closure, you've got a significant cost at the back end. We have completed nearly all of our rehab in a progressive fashion. When we get to end of mine life, 90% of the rehab, which would have cost us at end of life, has already been completed. That includes the largest cost, which is the residue storage impoundment. That facility at end of mine life is completed and doesn't require any rehabilitation whatsoever. We're very proud of this.
We've won multiple awards in country for this, and it is a standard we have set that is not just beyond local standards, beyond international standards. Beyond that, the recognition, not just locally but internationally, for FCF Minerals, is critical for our brand and for our brand locally to make sure that we achieve the vision that we set ourselves five years ago, which is to be the most admired gold company within the Philippines. We believe we've achieved that. How can I say that? The highest award you can achieve in the Philippines is the President's Award. We've now won that three years in a row. We're one of the only mining companies that's ever done this. We were nominated for the first time ever in the Philippines' history to represent the Philippines in the ASEAN Awards in both mining and mineral processing.
We were runner-up and second runner-up in both of those categories. We are one of the best-branded and the most recognized companies for responsible and sustainable mining in the Philippines and in the ASEAN region. Add to this, we've won the Safety Award numerous times over the last five years, and we also win the Tree Planting and Forestry Awards as well in nearly every year, given the fact that we plant over one million trees a year. The company is doing. I'm very proud of the team, and I'm very proud of the achievements that they have achieved over the last five years. Our recent acquisition of the YMC Group. The YMC Group is an exploration tenement, an exploration company, and it holds tenements in the Abra District of the Philippines. The Abra District is an extension of what's called the Cordillera.
The Cordillera is a gold, copper-rich province, and there's probably been, in history, about 40 million ounces extracted from this Cordillera area. There's deposits such as Far Southeast, which is a tier one asset that's been discovered and targeted by many majors within this area. We're an extension to this province, further north of most of the previous discoveries. It's 16,000 hectares. It's about 20 kilometers. Really, the ground is incredible from what we see, the prospectivity, the types of mineralizations we're seeing. It's copper, gold rich, and we're very much looking forward to starting some of the drilling programs over some of the drill targets that we have found within this area. This acquisition was approved by the board in December 2023 and passed through final shareholder approval in late August of this year. Again, $1.6 million and 41 million shares in Metals.
It was quite a nice, simple acquisition for the company for that growth pipeline, matching those pillars and that strategy for us to go forward. We're very much looking forward to starting exploration in this area. If we look at the Abra drill targets, and there's also a near mine target within Runruno I want to talk about. Really, our strategy is to review all these different priorities as we go forward. Just to give you an idea, and you're looking at a simple graphic on the top right-hand corner. That graphic is showing you what a porphyry-style mineralization looks like. The porphyry-style mineralization actually starts with layers. It is very interesting because you don't need to see copper all the time to understand that it's porphyry, because each of the different layers in a porphyry are based on different thermal regimes.
Basically, a thermocline with different temperatures of zonation, where different metals drop out of the intrusives that bring all of that mineralization up. We got two key targets within our porphyry profile that we've currently recognized within the Abra region. One is called Dominguez. Dominguez is actually higher up in the system. It's in the lithocap arsenic zone, which sits a little bit above the copper zone. We've got Manikbel, which I've spoken about a number of times. Manikbel sits right within the copper zone of the porphyry target. Our priority three, and in no means a lower priority, but basically if we step down in terms of size and expectation is Dupax. Dupax is a priority which is actually only 20 km from Runruno.
If Dupax actually does prove to be economic and shows the mineralization we're hoping it does, it actually could be the first extension to the Runruno plant, giving us three to five more years of operations in Runruno, enhancing our cash flow and moving us forward. If I look at Manikbel, as I mentioned, Manikbel is within the copper zone of what is a porphyry target. It's also within a mag low. It's different. You can get porphyries that are mag low or mag high. Mag low is where the high magnetics such as pyrites, iron-rich, magnetites, iron-rich, are replaced by copper. In this case, we have a very strong mag low, which overlies a very high-grade copper target.
When I say high grade, normally when you're looking at these types of soil geochemistries, if you've got a soil geochemistry that's around 200-300 parts per million, it's a very strong anomaly. We've got 3,000 parts per million, which is 0.3%, which is mineable grade in most cases for a large copper porphyry. In terms of size, a sizable copper porphyry can be 600 m-800 m. The actual zone of anomaly here is 2.5 km by 1.5 km, with the core being over 1.5 km by 700 m-800 m. The size and the scale and the grade of what we're seeing here is significant in anyone's terms, and we're really looking forward to starting the drilling program here. What we're seeing is this is gold poor, copper rich.
There's no gold to say, in this ore body, and it will be a pure copper target in Manikbel. We have mapped the porphyry on surface. It is standing up that porphyry does exist, because each of the stream beds that cross this porphyry as we look north to south along the porphyry, each of the stream beds, the porphyry is exposed for the whole length of the stream bed. It's a very exciting target for me. I like this one a lot. Dominguez is also very interesting. As I said, it sits a little higher up in the porphyry system. It's interesting in two ways. It's a mag high. We're sitting here looking at a mag low in Manikbel, but Dominguez mag high. Now, the interesting thing, mag highs from a porphyry point of view, normally come gold rich.
What we're seeing is a lot of high-grade gold on surface. We've had gold assays up to 30 gm a ton on surface near this. If you can see the arsenic anomalies, there's two significant arsenic anomalies. We don't know if they're separate or they have a central core to them. The grades of these arsenic anomalies, normally you're looking at about 15 parts per million as an anomaly for arsenic in this type of zonation. We're seeing 150-200. Again, significant grades. It doesn't tell you that the copper is going to be there, but it tells you that this is a significant target from a porphyry point of view. Just on your screen, if you look to the right, the target on the right is 600 m-800 m in diameter.
As you can see, the target on the left, which seems to wrap around a mag low, is over a kilometer long. There's also quite a strong copper anomaly on surface with the gold we see on that site. Also, really nice target. We're really looking forward to getting in and drilling this target as well. The last one I want to talk about quickly was Dupax. Dupax is what is termed a VMS, which is a volcanogenic massive sulfide. It's a sulfide ore body, which works for our plant as well. It has an extension in the main area. There's two smaller areas off to the side. The main area that you can see is about 700 m long by about 100 meters wide on surface. We've had gold grades up to 15 g, copper grades up to 7%.
A very nice target, only 20 km from mine. It's drill ready and we're just working through some of the aspects of the permitting with the MGB, which is the Mines and Geosciences Bureau here, to start the drilling in Dupax as well. All of these targets are permitted for drilling. However, as always in these situations, there's more than one entity we have to have agreement with, and we're working through the other government entities that we require approval from to finalize and start the drilling in all of these cases. However, very exciting for the company. It provides us with that five to 10-year growth platform in YMC and Abra and in Dupax. Hopefully, it can be the extension to the Runruno mine life, giving us time to bring on one of those other ore bodies where the Runruno infrastructure can move to Abra if possible.
I just want to highlight the last of the things that we do very well. Our sustainability programs, our spend in this area. We have a significant interaction and engagement with communities. Our team is very strong in this area and we have an extremely strong social license, and I'm very proud of the work they do. We invest about 1.5% of our operating costs a year. In 2023, that was about $1.4 million into social programs. We've established ourselves as one of the premier companies within this country, within this sector for responsible mining. I'd also like to say that the other aspect of Runruno, we're one of the first to bring women in to operate equipment. We now have over 28% of the workforce is female, operating from equipment operators all the way through to our legal counsel. The Filipino workforce is strong.
We're over 98% of our workforce is Filipino. There's only 11 of us on-site or running around here, helping out, where the rest of the work and the job is done by the local contingent of Filipinos who do a fantastic job. Very proud of them, very proud of the work they do. Thank you everyone. That's the update, and I look forward to talking to you in the near future once the acquisition has been finalized.
Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Please can I ask investors also to close the session? You may automatically be redirected to provide your feedback in order the management team can better understand your views and expectations. It'll only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure it's greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Metals Exploration Plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session, and good morning to you all.
Thank you.