Good morning and welcome to the Strategic Minerals Plc Investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press Send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Charles Manners, Executive Chair. Good morning, sir.
Thank you, Lily. Good morning to everyone, and welcome to our presentation. It's really good to see that so many people have signed in today to hear our update. I know that many of you are people who are long-term shareholders and supporters of the company, and I'm sure that many are also somewhat more recent arrivals. In both cases, you're most welcome, and we thank you for your interest in and support for Strategic Minerals. Now, before I go any further, I need to draw your attention to this disclaimer, which is on your screen. It's a very standard one, which I'm sure you'll have seen many times before. It is available for reading in greater detail in the presentation, which can be found on our website.
For those people who don't know me yet, I'm Charles Manners, and I'm the Executive Chairman of SML, as well as being a director of all of our subsidiary companies. Joining me today is Mark Burnett, who's our Executive Director, and he's also a director of all of the subsidiaries, including Cornwall Resources Limited, and Dennis Rowland, who's the Managing Director of Cornwall Resources Limited. I have no doubt that you're all aware that Cornwall Resources Limited is the entity through which we operate the Redmoor Project, which is the major focus of the company today and which is where today's presentation will be primarily focused. We last presented the company to fellow shareholders in this format on the 21st of October last year.
Since then, I can assure you there has been a huge amount of work done and a great deal of progress has been made on a number of fronts, which has culminated in the publication this morning of our updated mineral resource estimate, accompanied by an updated financial estimate. We are extremely encouraged by the results of this work, and we will now be working at pace to ensure that CRL plays its full role in the development of these critical minerals for the benefit of the supply chain in the West. On the 21st of October, our share price closed at 0.9p. It's around 5.5 x since then.
We also raised GBP 4 million at a price of 1.3p on the 22nd of January and a further GBP 4.7 million at a price of 3.5p on March. This funding, taken in conjunction with our ongoing profitable operations at Cobre and our already announced intention to sell the Leigh Creek copper oxide project, mean that we are now in a very strong position to advance the project at an increasingly fast pace, and you can be certain that this will remain the top priority and the full focus of the board. Of course, we have enjoyed a strong tailwind in the critical minerals space in general and in tungsten in particular.
In the six months of drilling that we carried out last year, we also saw a very significant increase in the size of the resource, and the metallurgical work has led to a considerable improvement in the recovery rate for tungsten. All of this has enabled us to disclose a very large uplift to the NPV of the resource, which we now state as $1.54 billion using our base case assumptions as set out in today's RNSs. Mark and Dennis are more than excited to share with you in a moment some of the further details of today's update. Before I pass over to them, I'd like to say a few quick thank yous.
Firstly, to the Cornwall Council and the Shared Prosperity Fund, the initial grant of GBP 750,000, which we match funded, really was the catalyst that unlocked everything. It can be seen as a textbook case of the benefits of public-private partnership. The impact has been enormous and not just in financial terms. Our increased scale has led to employment opportunities, both direct and indirect, and we've highly valued the chance to develop ever deeper ties with the local community. We're also very grateful to our many collaborators, but especially including Snowden Optiro, and in particular, Laurie Hassall, who has worked tirelessly to deliver the MRE on time and on budget. Finally, my fellow directors of Strategic Minerals and I would like to really thank and congratulate all of the team at Cornwall Resources, led so capably by Dennis and Rowan.
They have worked really hard and with great skill to get us to this position, and we as a board and as shareholders are enormously grateful to all of them and very proud of their considerable achievements. Now I'll hand over first to Mark and then on to Dennis to tell you more about this transformational update, after which we will be pleased to answer as many questions as time and regulation allows. Thank you.
Thank you, Charles, and good morning to everybody. I'm Mark Burnett, an Executive Director of Strategic Minerals and a Director of Cornwall Resources. I'd like to also extend my thanks, particularly to all the followers and supporters of Strategic Minerals over the last 18 months. We are delighted by the performance, and I hope you are too. Today marks really a threshold moment for the company.
When we joined the board, we inherited a very strategic asset, but it was sort of hidden from view. Now we have launched it into the market and can confirm this really is a globally important critical minerals strategic asset in the U.K. Today's announcements were twofold. Firstly, we announced a new JORC compliant inferred 2026 MRE of 17.4 Mt at 0.49% tungsten, 0.17% tin, and 0.44% copper, with a tungsten equivalent grade of 0.65. This confirmed our status as Europe's highest grade undeveloped tungsten project, which we sort of knew all along, but we're delighted to be able to confirm that in the public eye. We also announced an updated economic assessment, to show that we have a base case NPV of just over $1.5 billion.
That's on a post-tax NPV8 basis demonstrating a 40% IRR. The base case is at $1,200 an MTU of tungsten, and as I'll show you later, there is still plenty of upside in the price and therefore plenty of upside in value. In terms of tonnage, we've increased the resource by just under 50%, and that gives us a 2.4 x increase in life of mine up to 29 years. If there's any doubt that this is a strategic asset, we've confirmed that this could be in production over the long term supporting Western supply chains. We also have some very interesting additions in terms of co-products, tin in particular, copper and silver.
Clearly, as we move forward into more drilling this year and into PFS, we'll be showing how these additional credits add further value to the project. Next slide, please. A quick overview on the company for those who haven't heard the story before or those who have, as a refresher, we have three individuals on the board of Strategic Minerals Plc, the listed topco. You've been introduced this morning to Charles Manners, the Executive Chair, myself, Mark Burnett, an Executive Director, and Philip Haydn-Slater, Non-Executive Director. Together, we provide a very strong capital markets focus to this business, and as Charles has already mentioned, we have an extremely strong technical presence in Cornwall at our lead asset and are delighted at the progress there and can only thank the team. Next slide, please.
As a refresher on the overall company, there are three pillars here. We have a cash flowing asset in New Mexico, U.S., and as we've previously messaged, that's an enormously unique and important asset for an exploration development company because it provides us with cash flow to support our topco operations and to some extent our development of our flagship project. We also have the Leigh Creek copper mine in Australia, which is currently under a sale process, and we are confident that that will close, and we can redistribute returns from that sale back into our flagship project. What I really want to focus on going forward and really want to message is that Redmoor tungsten, tin, copper is now our flagship. It is now our main focus. The other assets are...
We are extremely lucky to have the other assets, and they provide us with huge optionality and additional value, but the focus is very much on delivering a critical minerals asset of global significance in the U.K. market. Lastly, a quick corporate snapshot. We are listed on the AIM exchange in London, just over 2.6 billion shares outstanding. Charles Manners, the chair, is the largest shareholder, disclosable above 3%. I'm happy to say that whilst we have no other further shareholders currently, reporting above the 3% reporting threshold, we have some very significant shareholders in terms of single-family offices and some institutions and institutional shareholders on the register, which we have managed to gather over the last two fundraisers earlier this year. Now on to the flagship, Redmoor tungsten, tin, copper project.
This is what we believe to be Europe's highest grade undeveloped tungsten deposit and the second-highest globally. It really has the potential to be a strategic secure supply of Western world critical minerals, and that is the focus of the company going forward. As I've said this morning, we've announced our new JORC MRE. It's increased from 11 Mt - 17.4 Mt at 0.65% tungsten equivalent. I'm delighted to say that some of the exploration target that we previously messaged, we had converted very successfully into the new numbers, but we still retain an exploration target for additional upside, and Dennis will cover that off shortly. Why tungsten? Well, it really is the critical mineral of the moment.
It is an extremely important mineral for industrial development, used in high tensile industrial applications, the energy transition, high computational capability, and, of course, defense. There are strong demand drivers in any case of 5.8% CAGR year-on-year for the foreseeable future, and some very large blue sky demand drivers in terms of nuclear fusion and, of course, the impact that the defense has on the current Western climate. I would say that it's a constrained market. Overall, China controls around 80% of production, and the Western world really needs a sustainable and strategic supply in its own hemisphere. We provide that going forward. I think to note the price appreciation of tungsten has been quite extreme.
We're delighted that the demand drivers are there to support high prices going forward, particularly in those industrial applications that I've mentioned. I'm going to hand over to Dennis to give a real technical brief on the opportunity and the success announced this morning, and we're in very good hands. Dennis.
Cool. Thank you, Mark. Good morning all, and thank you for joining us today as we announce the outputs of the last 12 months program. I'm Dennis Rowland, the MD of Cornwall Resources. The key highlights for the 2026 MRE as follows, at 49% increase in the tonnage from 11.7 Mt up to 17.4 Mt . It's also worth pointing out that only three of the nine boreholes that we drilled last year were pure exploration. However, we've continued to grow the resource both through the addition of the 1980s datasets, but also by increasing the metal prices which are supported by current market fundamentals. The significant increase in contained metals, which is across the board for all tungsten, tin, and copper, are significant.
We've also, for the first time, announced the inclusion of silver, which is supported by our metallurgical studies, which is about 270 g/t , per ton of copper concentrate, produced. What isn't included in here is that at the current prices set within our economic study, that's about $240 million worth of silver in-ground value. As you can see, there are significant and fundamental shifts in the way that the deposit has been modeled. The old model is on the left here, and the new model is on the right. The old model was modeled on a tin-equivalent basis, and the new model is split between tungsten high-grade zones, tin high-grade zones, and the resource shell, which includes the copper and the low-grade shell reported within the MRE.
The aims of the drilling of this year was to infill the portion of the exploration target, which was about 1-2 Mt of resource that we could add, plus testing the structural continuity of grade and structure within the deposit. The addition of the 1980s data through twin drilling, which we completed with three boreholes, and to investigate the addition of new zones of mineralization, including the new North Tin Zone, which is not included on one of these images, but it is included in on the one above. The new modeling has also significantly strengthened the resource and significantly added new zones of mineralization. The high-grade zones that were originally included in the old model have now been expanded and added to with the new model.
About 12 months ago, we announced the ability for the company to initiate the UK Shared Prosperity Fund through securing GBP 750,000 worth of grant funding. The company matched this one for one, and we set out very clearly during our application process the key aims and deliverables for that program that had to be delivered within 12 months. That included 5,000 m of drilling, including all of its aims, completing some of the historical core re-logging and sampling, a new MRE and economic assessment, the metallurgical test works, and some other activities which aren't listed here. I'm happy to say that we not only completed all of those, but we completed them on time. In some cases, like the drilling, ahead of schedule.
We completed everything on budget, and for every pound worth of grant money that we have spent, as of yesterday's share price, we'd added about GBP 100 to our market cap. Again, just going back to the drill results and how those pass through to the aims that we set out for drilling, but also how they feed through to the model. Every hole that we drilled had a target, whether that was testing short-space continuity of structure and grade, whether that was twinning, whether that was infilling, and in almost all cases, adding new zones of mineralization to the resource. Every hole was a success. As you can see, some of those holes reported significantly high grades, and I can explain later, how those pass through into the model. Mark, I'll hand back to you for the economic analysis.
Thank you. The second leg of our great announcements this morning was the 2026 updated economic sensitivity analysis. This is a firm indication of where this project could sit on an economic return profile as we move into PFS going forward. This is a detailed slide, which I'd encourage you to review at your leisure, but let me just highlight some key points. The headlines are that at a base case level, we can demonstrate a post-tax NPV8 of $1.54 billion with a post-tax IRR of 40%. That's based on a tungsten price of $1,200 an MTU of APT.
As you may have seen on the graph earlier on during my brief on the tungsten price, we're now well into the two thousands on $2000 a ton, an MTU, apologies, in the global markets. We can demonstrate there is going to be significant upside to our current numbers. As you'll see on the right-hand side, we do actually model a higher case opportunity, using $1800 an MTU, for a post-tax NPV of $2.7 billion. This will be over a 29-year life of mine at 600,000 ktpa production rate. Again, that is a significant resource, a significant production opportunity, and could really underpin one of the Western supply chains in terms of tungsten demand.
We'll be working into further studies, as we move towards PFS, updating this current economic sensitivity analysis as well as the more fulsome model, at a later date. What I wanted to really get across here is what we've messaged so far today is that there are two pillars really to understand with this resource and economic opportunity. Number one is that it's a highly profitable opportunity, and we've redemonstrated that this morning, with significantly higher metal prices. Also that it was always a low capital intensity opportunity. Absolutely vital in terms of getting to production quickly and also ensuring that there is sufficient financial support in the market. I can confirm that the CapEx on these current numbers has increased by 28%.
That's not unusual in an environment in which the original economic study was struck in 2020, and we've seen, broadly speaking, 30% inflation rate in CapEx up until this point. We still retain that low capital cost opportunity at $110 million. In the mining space, to build a mine, and to get into production for under $200 million is a real opportunity. I'm delighted to say that we've retained that key pillar. Going forward, I think we can find, as we've previously messaged, opportunities to reduce that cost even further, by looking at alternative processing opportunities, regionally and globally. Where do we sit now on the bubble chart, the investor bubble chart or the football field?
Well, to confirm that we are a small but mighty resource, grade is the real driver of this opportunity, as we've messaged before. I'm delighted to say, if you input the tungsten equivalent grade that we've restated this morning at 0.65%, we can move our bubble dramatically to the right to ensure that we are really at the top quartile of high-grade opportunities. Grade, of course, is really important for the economics. It's where the offtakers get comfortable. It's where the financiers are comfortable in terms of commodity price fluctuations. It also ensures that we can take advantage of all the other credit metals that we have within the resource and the production profile. As I said earlier on as well, there is still further upside within this.
We had successfully converted a lot of the exploration target, 4-8 Mt , into this new resource, but we still retain a further exploration target of 1.8-3.4 Mt . We're looking forward to delivering on that through the next drill program and through to PFS. Dennis, back to you.
Thank you again, Mark. Going back over just the mineral rights and the situation where we sit within East Cornwall. Cornwall Resources has three mineral rights licenses in place with three different license holders for a total of 91 sq km of exploration rights. The Redmoor Project sits within the Redmoor mineral rights license area, which is 23 sq km, and that license has been in place since 2012. It's further in place until 2037 but can be renewed at request. It can be automatically converted to an option for mining subject to release of planning permission and a feasibility study. The blue area on the map is our groundbreaking Duchy of Cornwall license area.
We were the first company in over 40 years to be able to secure a Duchy of Cornwall license area, and we are looking at ways of further strengthening this agreement. The entire license area has significant other prospects and so whether that is historical mining or prospects that were drilled in the last 40 or 50 years. We also have done exploration, including geophysics and soil sampling and regional mapping on other things that could be within the area, and we look forward to providing further information on these as we go forwards. The Redmoor license area sits within the remit of Callington Town Council, and we continue to receive significant support and help from the council, and we hope to continue that good working relationship in the future. Mark, I will pass back to you.
You're still muted, Mark.
Apologies. To summarize, today is a really threshold moment for us. We have demonstrated that we have a world-class, strategic minerals resource here, in Cornwall, and that will be the focus going forward. We have world-leading grades. We have an accelerated development pipeline, moving towards PFS and highly profitable economics. To give you a feel of where we sit, looking at our base case and our upper case, post-tax NPVs today, we are currently trading between sort of 6%-12% of potential value according to those numbers. Clearly a lot of value still to go, and we look forward to marching this project forward and delivering on that value going forward. As I said, we had inherited a very good asset.
Today we've confirmed that it is a brilliant asset, and now we move forward into some very exciting times in demonstrating further uplift in value into PFS. I'd like to thank you all for attending the presentation this morning, and now we will move to some question and answer sessions. I would just add that there's a lot of work going on in Cornwall at the moment. I know in the past we've been very impressed by the quantum and detail of questions that we receive on the project and it just goes to show how excited people are, along with ourselves, about the potential value here. But there are things that we just can't talk about. So please forgive me if we skip over some of the questions.
We will endeavor in time to answer those, but for your awareness, as a what is now a globally significant asset, there are certain things that we just can't comment on. Thank you very much. I'm handing back to the organizers for the Q&A.
That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and Mark, if I could just hand back to you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Of course. Thank you very much. In order, on the ones that we can, we can answer, I will paraphrase some of them because some of them are quite lengthy. Question number one, obviously a lot of time is taken up with Redmoor, but I'm also interested in hearing about Cobre and Leigh Creek. I think it would be good to update the market on a regular basis about these other projects. Completely agree. What I want to get across today is that Cobre is still very important for us, as I've mentioned. It provides us with cash flow that supports the topco operation so that you know any money that we raise in the market, which we have, goes into the ground, at Redmoor.
Leigh Creek similarly is very important to us from a strategic sale point of view and redistribution of cash from rationalizing the portfolio. I'm confident that we're going to deliver on that. In terms of new customers at Cobre or in terms of timeline for Leigh Creek, I'm not at liberty to comment at the moment, but it is still a significant focus of us. However, what I really want to get across today is just how great the Redmoor asset is and where we will be focusing our efforts going forward. Question number two, what is the estimated timescale for completion and publication of the PFS? I don't think we can fully comment on that. Dennis, maybe you could give a feel for the next steps on the development of Redmoor.
Yep. The full schedule and kind of layout of both the PFS program and the infill drilling program will be released, hopefully fairly shortly. The drilling before the PFS. At this time, we won't be able to comment much further on that, but we will be releasing to the market an updated schedule.
Thank you. Similarly, are there plans to fast-track to DFS? Very possibly. We need to get into the meat of the PFS work going forward, but we can provide some form of comments and guidance on that going forward. Next question. What type of mine is envisaged at Redmoor? Will it be open pit given the depth of the deposit or more likely to be underground? I'll quickly comment on that and then hand over to Dennis. I mean, this will be an underground opportunity. There are enormous advantages to that in terms of capital cost, in terms of footprint, in terms of local support. This will be an underground opportunity, as there have been many historical underground opportunities in the region, supported by a rich history of mining in this particular part of Cornwall.
Dennis, maybe you could also give a quick comment.
Yeah. If I may just switch back to this slide, which shows the deposit under the ground. The top line surface there is the surface, and the dark lines are the drill holes. The pink on there is our granite body that we sit above. This is an underground mining opportunity, and we will use a traditional mining method, which is longhole stoping on retreat underground, which is very common in Cornwall and also very common for this type of deposit globally.
Thank you. Dennis, maybe you could also just quickly comment on the support from the local region and local population, 'cause there's a few questions there that I think would see some significant comfort from that.
Yep. It's actually one of the key contributors to our ability to have unlocked the Duchy of Cornwall license area. Obviously, they were very technically focused on our ability to deliver exploration success and advance the project. They didn't want someone just taking a license and sitting on it for years. One of the other key things that they were very interested in is how do we deal with our stakeholders? How do we message our project? What type of information is therefore passed on to the mineral rights owner? You know, is that positive? Therefore, how is mineral exploration viewed within Cornwall or in the U.K. itself? All of those.
In all of those cases, the Duchy were happy with both our responses, and they've been happy with, for the last two years, the work that we have done and how we've messaged that to them. That gives us therefore the opportunity to deal with them even further and look at other opportunities going forward. For the wider license area and for Cornwall itself, we continue to receive significant support from the local council but also local community groups themselves as well. With regards to the exploration drilling project, we're probably drilling closer to people's houses than any other project does, in the U.K. But we've never received a complaint about the drilling that we do because we take significant efforts to tell people about what we're doing, how we're doing it, when we are doing it, but we also take feedback very seriously.
One of those as an example when we were drilling last year. If I can just show you the drill pad that we drill on, 55 m in front of this drill pad is houses. We were requested to add extra straw bales for a visual impact. We managed to not only secure those but have them in place within a day. We take comments very seriously, but we take feedback even more seriously. We have significant projects in hand for the next 12 months and beyond to further lay out how we see sustainability, but how we see developing this project further forward.
Thank you, Dennis. Next one. How did CRL, so Cornwall Resources, come to be a member of the US DPA Title III Consortium? What benefits and obligations does membership bring? I think this is a really important question given the strategic significance of this asset in the Western world. Dennis, maybe you could comment.
Yeah. We actually joined about two years ago. It is a membership organization, so you have to submit member forms. There are no obligations, so it's free to join. There are symposiums and conferences that they hold on an annual basis. They also open opportunities directly to the Department of Defense or Department of War in the U.S. Those opportunities, which are called white papers, and one of those is currently live, allow you to submit project information for interest in support from the United States. As we have previously messaged, we've had both visits to the site and conversations with the State Department and the Department of Defense, and other key people within the U.S. government.
We will continue to look at opportunities to create synergies between both the U.K. and the U.S.
Thank you. Assuming finance is available, how quickly could Redmoor be brought into production, and what are the steps? I think we can't give any formal guidance, but we could give you a feel of the next work programs and how long it might take to get into production. Dennis, maybe you could comment.
The significant contributor to the pre-feasibility study is the infill drilling program that we have fully funded already. That is currently in setup. We have a drill rig on site. We aim to be drilling very very soon. And we are currently undertaking a planning application with Cornwall Council, which will be able to scale up this program. Last year, we had two drill rigs on site. We are looking at ways of scaling up the program beyond this. That is the major part of the program. Last year, we drilled 5,000 m. That means CRL have drilled 19,000 m in total.
The funding we announced in January was for 16,000 m, and we are again looking at ways, given the positive results that we have announced today, to not only capture the infill, but potentially more. I will release through the company further updates on the drilling program. Over the last 12 months as part of the program to get to an MRE and the economic case, we've also done a gap analysis between scoping study and PFS, which has delivered a delivery plan, full costings and options for that costings, and we are well advanced on being able to move very quickly into the PFS.
However, not only is that the case, but the metallurgical test works that we've done, the infill drilling, but also the testing of short space continuity has meant that we have sped up significantly some of the key things that we have to deliver as part of the PFS. We're about six months ahead of schedule, therefore, on the metallurgical test works that would be required for a feasibility study because we did them this year. The drilling that has proved short space continuity has been able to expand our drill spacing for PFS infill drilling, which means we can cover a larger portion of the resource for the same value that it would have been under the 2020 scoping studies estimates of infill drilling. Which means we can do things either cheaply, more cheaper or faster, and in all cases, better.
We therefore hope to be able to deliver the PFS at pace, and we also look at options to commence certain portions of the DFS work streams as early as possible. Thanks, Mark.
Thanks, Dennis. Next question. To what extent are you considering third-party processing options, e.g., regional facilities to reduce CapEx and accelerate development? All options are on the table. We are determined to get this project into production, into fruition. There are some regional processing opportunities. There are some global processing opportunities. I would say our focus now is to work out a plan of operations in line with the PFS. As I've already alluded to, there may well be some very significant CapEx savings we can make by utilizing some of these synergies in the regional or global context. Dennis, do you have any comments to that as well?
Yeah, just to add to that. Obviously, all options are studied as part of pre-feasibility study. That is whether we process on-site or we process off-site. The key factor of processing off-site is a piece of work that we've already started. Again, we demonstrated that recently with myself and Rowan going to TOMRA in Germany. We are ahead of the game with regards to PFS workflow for off-site processing or on-site processing because we've looked at ore sorting technology. We've given samples to TOMRA to look at the amenability of our ore to be processed via an ore sorter.
In both cases, whether on-site or off-site, the ability to pre-concentrate our already high-grade ore will have significant benefits for both either processing plant size and capacity or the amount of material that needs to leave the site to be processed elsewhere.
Thank you. An important question here, and I think will demonstrate even more upside. Can you explain in simple terms why after last year's drilling with high grades, the tons have increased and contained metals but grades have reduced slightly? I think that's an important question. There is a very positive answer to it and lots of upside, Dennis.
I'll go back to this slide again. The key differentiator there is, when you usually have significantly high-grade drilling results, statistically, one of the things you have to do with that is top cut the high grades, 'cause they just don't model very well within the deposit. We actually top cut the highest of grades that come out of the drilling program. That just gives us a fair representation within the deposit of what we are likely to see. However, those high grades plus additional tons would normally add to both a significant increase in tons, a significant increase in contained metal, and alterations in the grade. However, we have a fourth component, it's the metal prices.
Compared to the previous deposit and the previous version of the model, our metal prices have increased significantly. What that means is in blocks of the model that were previously sub-economic are not included for any reason, those have now been included because of the increase in metal price, those blocks become economic, they are added to the deposit. We've done this on a base case of $85,000 a ton for tungsten and the other metal prices used in the base case of the model, of the economic model. What that also shows with regards to the resource that's on the table here is previously the high grade zones were just done on an equivalent basis and there was 12 of those across the deposit.
We now have 18 of them within the deposit, but we also have modeled, and they are split between tungsten dominant with tin and copper within them and tin dominant with tungsten and copper within them. What we've also modeled, and this is another significant change between the old model and the new, is we've also modeled the kind of copper rich and other metal zone that surrounds these high grade zones, and you can see that in gold on the right-hand map here. In the previous model, when you were within the mining plan, when you are mining a high grade zone, any dilution that was captured within those blocks for the mine plan was counted as zero contribution for metal.
The new model estimates metal value within the blocks surrounding the high-grade zones because it is there, and therefore we are getting a fairer representation of metal that would come in as part of the dilution outside of the high-grade zones when we are in production. Which is why in the RNS also announced today, our actual 17 Mt resource within the mine plan itself is 23 Mt , and the 23 Mt is what will be mined, not the 17 Mt . Therefore, if you bring previously sub-economic blocks into the model, which are now economic, those are generally lower grade. So as you add them in, the average grade goes down slightly, and that is reflected in the table. Those changes are not in any way significant in my view.
It's the contained metal increases which is the significance. That is where the value is. Thank you, Mark.
Thank you. Dennis question, why go into the next stage which is the PFS rather than redoing the PEA indicated results? Well, I'm delighted to say that the next stage is drilling towards the PFS which will actually also yield indicated results. We're gonna run those two work programs concurrently, and you know, we're confident that you'll see some very promising results going forward. What limits the annual production? Surely if you could increase the offtake it would reduce the life of the mine but increase the NPV. That's true. We will be looking at options for expanding this opportunity.
If you look at the model that we've released today, in the background, and the calculations, a huge amount of the mine life value is not included because as you progress forward on a discounted cash flow basis, after 10-15 years the discount is so high that that value up to 29 years of life of mine doesn't come back into the model. We would be keen on exploring an expanded production scenario. Clearly that would be more attractive to our potential off-takers and potential partners and competitors. But it would also demonstrate significant value in a lift sense when we next publish the economics. Forgive me, I've lost my position because there are so many questions. I'm delighted-
May I, Mark, may I? 'Cause the next question actually covers.
Of course.
the previous one as well.
Thanks.
What would change if you were to have rerun the entire scoping study rather than just updating it? That kind of answers the last question also. This year's work was limited in most cases by the 12-month schedule that we had with the Shared Prosperity Fund. One of the key parts of that therefore was we didn't rerun the entire scoping study. There just isn't the time and also there isn't the need. We've done all of the work within the scoping study. It is robust. We have done the work of how to take the scoping study into PFS. That is robust.
All of the inputs that we've done this year, the drilling, the metallurgy, the metal prices and other changes, those bits and the CapEx and OpEx increases as well, all of those have fed into updating the previous scoping study model. That scoping study model was therefore based on 600,000 ktpa and there was a mining report that we have received in 2020 by Wardell Armstrong that laid out not only the production rate but also what machinery and processing plant you would need for that and the cost for doing so. That is the one thing that we didn't change is the capacity and the production rate of the rock. We have looked at some of those potential scenarios and we will run those as we move forwards.
That can be done basically from now, but it will be done in the lead up to the PFS and it's part of the PFS program to flex those production rates but also look at the cost implications of that, but also the financial gain that we would gain from increasing our production rate. Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. Next question which I think is important in terms of the small print and how robust our numbers are. How did you determine the $1,200 MTU for the NPV calculation?
I'll take that one, Mark. There are four cases that were listed in the economic case. Each of those comes with basically an expert opinion on what metal value should be used. In all cases, we looked at the six month average, the 12-month average, a forward projection for the next 30 years from Argus. We also used the expert opinion of an external tungsten market expert. He then went out to both global producers, but also global processors, both in the West and in China, to look at what their projections were, and he provided three cases for metal price projections. In all cases, his projections came back higher than our base case.
Therefore, through both consultation with our QP and our CP, so the person who signs off our mineral resource and the person who signs off the mining assessment, and with conversation with our external experts and using that evidence, we've come to these four cases, basically. The third case, which is the MRE case, is basically what would happen if the metal prices used to make the model is the metal prices that were used to make the economic sensitivity analysis. The low case is the Argus case, which is the long-term average for the next 10-20 years. The upside case is a taster, but a conservative taste of what would happen if these metal prices continue to increase as they still do.
The base case, therefore, is our most robust case, and it's the one that has the significant backing of all of our expert opinions. Thank you, Mark.
Thank you. Dennis, another one for you. Where do you plan to explore next and why? I think this is a great question where we can bring in some of the potential upside we've identified, but also some of the work we've released to the market but didn't make it in this particular case of the model.
With the drilling this year, we obviously have highlighted mineralization outside of the sheeted vein system that is both in front of or behind the sheeted vein system. The model, for the vast majority of the model, it captures the sheeted vein system only. The only bit that is included separately to that is within the tin high-grade zones because it is basically a tin deposit. The North Tin Zone is currently included as part of the Tin Zone portion of the resource. This will be further strengthened and separated at a later stage once we've completed a stage of re-logging and sampling of some 2017 drill core. We have finished the 2018 drill core.
However, the model and the new deposit model and the geological model has also highlighted a significant number of additional grading zones outside of the sheeted vein system, which the team are now taking additional samples of, and we will obviously come back to the market later with updates on those. Outside of Redmoor, the wider Tamar Valley license area is very prospective. There are a number of historical mines which were mostly copper tin mines or in some cases, lead silver. Between these mines are a significant number of unexplored zones or like the Plantation vein, which was drilled by 12 drill holes in the 1970s, targets that have just been left.
The Plantation vein itself is a key portion of our focus, and we have a team member who is quite well advanced on a piece of work with that, and we will again come back with an update as we advance that. Thank you, Mark.
Thank you. Given the importance of your work to Western supply chains, what could policymakers do to make your life easier? That's a great question. I mean, the world has completely changed in terms of government support for mining in the last five years, really prompted by the turning on of the U.S. budget to secure critical minerals. We would be a huge beneficiary of government support, be our own domestic government or indeed other governments from the Western world. Governments are seeing projects now in the mining space in all sorts of ways, whether that be cash investment, whether that be underwriting in some form of agreement or indeed grant funding, of which we've already been massively supported by grant funding, as Dennis and Charles have highlighted.
We, I believe, are very good custodians of public funds because we've generated enormous value for every pound of current government money that has gone into this project. I hope that we are in a position as we walk towards feasibility study and really firm the numbers up for our development scenario, that we're in pole position to speak to key governments about support. You'll be pleased to know we're already in those discussions early stage, but we are still in those discussions. Support could come from the R&D aspect of this project through feasibility indeed in terms of supporting the eventual mine build. Couple more questions. I know we probably have about 10 minutes to run. Let me just see where we are. When do you consider securing land for processing and the mining sites?
Dennis, could you just give a bit of color on that?
The considerations for that are already underway, but one of the main focuses of the PFS is that options model. Where do you put a mine? What does the mine look like? What are the key considerations with regards to our local stakeholders, planning and permitting, and environmental permitting as well, but also just for access to the mine. The key focus of the PFS and the work going into it will be on looking at what is the best options for this, and at what point do we put either options on it or other ways of securing that property.
Thank you, Mark.
Thank you. I think we probably have time for one more question, which I think is actually an important one. Will the silver be banked as profit or for funding the project? I think it's an important question because it highlights the upside we're seeing. When we inherited the project, we knew it was very rich in tungsten. But I think in the last 18 months, we realized that there are copper and silver credits. Clearly having a precious metals component, extremely attractive in the current metal price environment. There are all sorts of leveraging that component as we move forward to development, whether that's through internal cash flow or indeed to support some form of structured financing.
I think you'll see that we've got really exciting news coming up with regards to additional metals, both within the actual Redmoor footprint, but as Dennis has indicated, as we extend out laterally and in-depth. I think that's it for questions. I want to just thank you very much indeed again for the volume and the depth of questioning. We enjoyed this last time and we've enjoyed it again. I hope we've given you a very good overview of our latest news. Again, we're very grateful for your support. I noticed a couple of the comments on the chat rooms are in support of how the project has gone. You know, we're enormously grateful. I think I will now bring this session to a close. Maybe I can hand back to Charles.
Yes. Well, thank you very much to everyone for attending today. I hope you've found it useful and interesting. As a board and as a company, we're very much looking forward to advancing this project at pace now. You can be certain that we'll keep investors updated at regular intervals as we move along. Thank you for your attendance today.
That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.
Thanks.