Investor update

Dec 20, 2023

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tertiary Minerals plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just 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 will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to the Executive Chairman from Tertiary Minerals plc, Patrick. Good morning, sir. Good morning, Jacob, and thank you for the introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending. I'm here to talk about Tertiary Minerals, in particular, our exploration for copper in Zambia and Nevada. If I can just give the usual cautionary statements, this meeting will be recorded and available after the meeting, and I'd advise you to read those through in due course. It's obviously too detailed to read out just right now. I'd just like to introduce who's involved in the company. We think the company's in very good hands with a very experienced board. Amongst our small board, we have a diverse range of skills. My background is that I'm a geologist and many years' experience in mineral exploration and public company management, and founded a number of mining companies, both here in the U.K. and in Australia, which is where a lot of my background is. I'm joined on the board by Donald McAlister, who's a Finance Director, lots of African experience with Mwana Africa, Ridge Mining, Reunion, also by Dr. Mike Armitage. Mike is a hugely respected geologist and very experienced, many years as a career with SRK Consulting, which is one of the world's largest consulting groups for mining and geology. He's been Chairman of SRK U.K. and the SRK Group and is currently Honorary Chair of the Critical Minerals Association. We're very heavily involved in copper exploration, and I'd just like to take a bit of time just to explain why that is. Copper is one of the critical minerals, and a very important battery mineral. It often gets kind of overlooked in the excitement that has surrounded commodities like lithium and graphite. Actually it is equally, if not more important. It has a number of properties which make it absolutely essential in the clean energy transition. It's used very widely in all the energy transition parts, in wind farms, in electric vehicles, energy storage, solar technology. Just to give you some examples of the importance, if you look at, for example, electric vehicles, an electric vehicle uses four times as much copper as is required in an internal combustion engine vehicle. It's something like four tons of copper in every wind turbine, five tons of copper per megawatt power generation in solar technology. It really is a critical mineral. Whilst it has a good recyclability, which is good, it is not replaceable. It'll be interesting to see how as technologies evolve, how much lithium we'll be using future. Certainly essential now, but some of these new materials are amenable to a substitution. Copper very essential. There is a copper supply problem, and this graph is quite interesting. This was produced by one of the leading consultancies, management consulting group, Wood Mackenzie. If you look at this graph here in the light blue, you can see what is called base case capability of production. That shows declining mine production from the current mines, over time starting about 2024, because most of the world's large copper deposits have already been discovered. This graph allows for new production to come on from some small production from known projects, some which may be off the radar. Even so, you see that copper starts to decline again with these new mines coming in after 2032. The black line on here shows demand based on Wood Mackenzie's AET-2 transition scenario. That's the scenario for copper demand based on what is the most likely combination of technical innovation and policy drivers, which will be set to limit the rising global temperatures to two degrees Celsius by 2050. There really is a copper supply problem, and so exploration is going deeper and deeper. All the near-surface stuff has been found, and you'll see this becomes a theme within our Konkola West project, which was the subject of our announcement yesterday. Just some interesting statements as we go through this. BHP, their CEO, Mike Henry, has said the world's going to need two times more copper in the next 30 years than it's used in the last 30 years. That's quite an interesting statement, I think. Why copper? I think we've explained that. Why Zambia? Why are we so heavily involved in Zambia now? Well, very obvious reason. Zambia, with the Democratic Republic of Congo, is host to the Central African Copperbelt, which is the world's largest sediment-hosted stratiform copper province. The Zambian side of the Copperbelt has multiple world-class deposits, which produced about 760,000 tons a year of copper in 2022. Now, a new government came in just over 18 months ago and has set about to rationalize the mining regime, which was relatively unfavorable under the previous government. They've taken a lot of steps to make mining investment more attractive in Zambia. They have reduced royalties, made the royalties deductible, amended the royalty rates, and they have a very clearly stated goal to increase copper production to 3 million tons by 2032. Now, that is very, very ambitious. Whether or not they actually get there, it's the scale of the ambition that's important and the fiscal environment that they are creating, and we think that's going to continue to improve, and Zambia is certainly becoming a primary destination for investors focused on copper. Industry is responding to these initiatives. Over the past several months, there's been over $10 billion of investment announced into the Zambian copper mining industry. Of particular importance, I guess, for us is the billion-dollar investment into the Konkola Copper Mine by Vedanta. Many, many mines in Zambia are being developed and expanded, and there's some details there in that table. What's not on there is a very recent announcement whereby the Zambian and Chinese governments have announced the building of a $15 billion copper smelter for the Northwest Province in Zambia. As we'll see, the Northwest Province is an emerging area for copper production in Zambia, with some very large mines now being developed and improved. Just moving on to look at our projects, we have a spread of projects throughout the copper prospective areas of Zambia. We were fortunate to acquire our interest through an agreement with a local company called Mwashia Resources. Mwashia Resources already had a portfolio of copper projects that they acquired largely a few years ago. They are spread throughout not just the Copperbelt, but also the Northwest Province and some of the frontier areas in the south of the Northwest Province. Our relationship with Mwashia has been very successful. They provide environmental services to ourselves and to other companies, and we have a very good working relationship which has been exemplified by the joint arrangement we made with KoBold yesterday, and which we can talk about as we go forward. There are a number of projects within that relationship with Mwashia, but we also have one 100% owned license called Mupala in the Northwest Province, which was granted in 2023. Within Zambia, within the Northwest Province and the Copperbelt, there is one particular rock horizon which hosts the copper mineralization. It's called the Lower Roan, and that's significant too, that our licenses, with the exception of Mushima and Ore Shale, cover this prospective stratigraphy. It's the main host for what's called stratiform copper deposits in Zambia. Konkola West, this was a subject of our announcement yesterday. We really are operating in the shadow of the headframe here at Konkola West, heart of the Zambian Copperbelt and adjacent to the Konkola copper mine and concentrator and the Lubambe copper mine and concentrator. The red areas shown here are mining leases held for those mines, and our license is shown in the blue hatch. Konkola, which is one of the major mines on the Copperbelt, a large history of historical production, and also is the location where Vedanta have now committed over $1 billion for the refurbishment and restart of Konkola. Together, these deposits that occur at Konkola, Lubambe, and then heading into the Democratic Republic of Congo, they had a pre-mining endowment of just three-quarters of a billion tons, so I say, of 2%-3% copper. New deposits are being developed here in this area all the time. A good example there is KoBold's Mingomba deposit, which is a joint venture with EMR and ZCCM, and they are currently drilling out a resource that was previously stated at 247 million tons at 3.6% copper. Certainly elephant country here. This is the same area shown, but with the geology. Now, I won't go into too much detail of the geology, but basically this is a stratiform deposit which has been folded over a period of time. The red dotted outline here shows the surface trace of what's called the Ore Shale within the Lower Roan horizon. That occurs further north at Lubambe copper mine. The red hatched area here shows the surface projection of the Ore Shale as it's been mined at Musoshi and Konkola and now being evaluated at Mingomba. That dips towards our license at depth. That's the target here, is the continuation at depth of one of the world's largest copper deposits. Very exciting, I think you'll agree. Really, that's what's attracted KoBold into our agreement, into this project. KoBold, having been working on Mingomba deposit for quite some time now, will have perhaps some of the best knowledge of the geology of this area. Their interest in our license is certainly a good evidence of the prospectivity of this license area. We announced yesterday that ourselves and our local partner, we did enter into an Earn-In agreement with KoBold Metals. Who is KoBold Metals? Some of you may have heard of them, some of you may have not. They are a private company. They're U.S.-based. They were established basically to search for the critical minerals needed for the clean energy transition and to accelerate growth in the production of electric vehicles. They are essentially a mineral exploration company, but they couple geoscience with data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. They're backed by various technology investors, of which the largest, I think, is Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which was initiated by Bill Gates and includes Jeff Bezos, Andrew Forrest, Ray Dalio as investors, and also backed by various Silicon Valley venture capital firms and institutional investors. They have over 100 scientists working within the company. All these guys have come from companies like Google, NASA, BHP, a very good spread of skills from data science, AI, mineral exploration, and mining. They have a huge budget. They spent $100 million in exploration R&D in 2023. We're very pleased to have them as a joint venture partner. This is the kind of structure of the deal that was announced yesterday. The objective of the agreement really is to carry out that deep drilling to explore for the projected extensions that I've just talked about at Konkola, Lubambe, and Musoshi. They are already working in Mingomba, as I've already said. The agreement actually provides a commitment for them to start drilling no later than May 2024. That's not very far at all. Their drill planning is already well advanced. They've selected the first drill site, we understand, and they're committed to at least two deep drill holes. Whilst two holes may not sound a lot, we're talking about drilling that's going to be going probably to plus 1 km deep, and where the cost of each hole is probably going to be in excess of $1 million per hole. It's very bold. We're very pleased to see this happening. There's very few companies that would actually undertake this work, we believe. On completion of that drill program, we form a joint venture company. That joint venture company will hold the license. The initial ownership of that joint venture company will be KoBold 51%, we will have 39%, Tertiary will have a 10% carried interest. KoBold will meet Mwashia's earning commitments, and they will hold an option to buy that 10% at any time. KoBold can opt to increase its interest to 70% by funding a total of $6 million on exploration, after which we will hold 20%, Mwashia will continue to hold a 10% carried interest. Depending on what KoBold elect, we will either contribute to a 39% interest or a 20% interest. If we choose not to contribute, then we will dilute down to, and if we went down to a 10% shareholding, for example, then that would convert to a 1% net smelter royalty. A rule of thumb in the industry is that, you say a 1% net smelter royalty would be equivalent roughly to a 10% net profit interest. There is some kind of equivalence there. There's a couple of payments that we have to make between ourselves and KoBold to Mwashia, and the agreement's subject to some standard conditions precedent for government approval. We're working through those government approvals at the moment, but we are thinking they're just procedural. We are looking very much forward to KoBold starting drilling on this project. This is just a statement that was within our release yesterday. This is the Chief Executive at KoBold, just saying that they're looking forward to working with us on this project, and saying that they're going to start drilling as soon as possible, as I've already said. Turning from Konkola West to our other licenses that we hold with Mwashia, we had a mission in 2023, which was to complete the basic field work and soil sampling at all our licenses with Mwashia, with the objective is to find drill targets and to make copper discoveries in 2024. We've completed over 4,000 samples, collected in the field on several projects. We think that mission has been accomplished, and we are now looking forward to 2024 when we can start drilling. If I run through these projects individually, we'll talk about the Jacks Copper Project first, and this is perhaps the most advanced of the projects. We completed a drill program here in 2022, and we were drill targeting an area called the Jacks Main Prospect. This is where some drilling had been done previously and outlined a zone of copper mineralization. Our own drilling was looking at over a 350 meter strike length of that area, and we demonstrated that the mineralization is there. We demonstrated interesting grades and thicknesses of copper mineralization. The mineralization is open along strike, which we'll see. Importantly, the zone of mineralization is about within a 20 km zone of the strike length of this prospective Lower Roan stratigraphy. Some of the work we did at the end of last year following the drilling was to complete a soil sampling program at Jacks. We did soil sampling in four main areas, which we call A, B, C, and D. Not too inventive, but there we go. The soil sampling was designed to test areas where historically First Quantum had done some wide space sampling and got good, interesting soil anomalies, and to then infill on more detail so that we can define drill targets. That work was successful, and highlighted a number of areas, both along strike from the main prospect and in Area C particularly, that we wish to follow up by drilling. The tenor of the soil anomalies that we've identified there compare quite favorably with those that you see over current and past producing mines on the Copperbelt. We use scandium analysis here as a differentiator on soil anomalies, looking at copper-scandium ratios. Because we take those ratios to be indicative of sulfide copper mineralization rather than just enrichment within, say, the laterite profile with no underlying copper deposit. Where you have a high copper-scandium ratio, that's certainly very favorable, and that's certainly the case we see at Jacks and Area C here on the wider Jacks prospect. Through the work we've done, we've earned the right to a 90% interest in Jacks already. We are looking forward to drill testing along strike at Jacks and on Area C in 2024. You can see in the bottom right-hand side, you can see our drill camp, some pictures of the soil sampling process, and some of the drill core from the Jacks Main Project where you can see the blues and greens in that are secondary copper mineralization. It looks quite spectacular in the core when you intersect it. This is just a close-up of the drilling that was done, both historically and by ourselves. We drilled four holes here. It was important for us to do this drilling to actually relocate historical mineralization and to confirm the grades and things as it had been reported. This is old data, and the actual positioning on the ground took some work, both with soil sampling and careful GIS work, but we were successful in drilling and intersecting copper in all the drill holes we put down. That was a very worthwhile program. Worth mentioning, I think, also are the relationship we have with First Quantum Minerals. First Quantum is Zambia's largest copper producer from the Sentinel Mine and the Kansanshi Mines. We have signed a data-sharing and technical cooperation agreement for two of our projects, Mukai and Mushima North. The purpose of that agreement is to, basically for FQM to assist Tertiary with its exploration in these areas. FQM had done work, considerable amount of work at Mushima North and a considerable amount of work in the areas surrounding Mukai historically. There was a time under the previous government when exploration was unattractive and a lot of the companies, including First Quantum, cut back their exploration. We're talking about exploration that was done prior to that cutback, after which First Quantum lost their rights in this area. They've provided us with all their data. We have a technical committee that we've established which works collaboratively to review our exploration data and their historical data. They assist us in the interpretation of our data and also in recommendations on exploration. It's great for us because what it does, it basically harnesses the exploration department of a large multinational company that's been working in Zambia for many years. It basically catapults our exploration abilities in this area. I suppose someone may ask the question, I guess, and try and preempt this, so what's in it for First Quantum? Well, actually it's interesting because there is no first right of refusal here for First Quantum. We are still free to farm out or joint venture or sell licenses independently of First Quantum. It's a good working relationship, and from First Quantum's point of view, this is a relatively remote area and they are very well established both with the Sentinel Mine, the Enterprise nickel mine. Sentinel Mine has a plant that processes something like 55 million tons a year of ore. In due course, that will be a hungry mill. We understand their thinking here is that if anyone finds anything in this area, then it's likely to come to that plant for processing. We understand that and we respect the relationship and we also do our part within this relationship. We provide them with all the data from our exploration, so it also increases their knowledge of the area as well. That's the relationship. The two projects, as I said, Mukai and Mushima North. Mukai is in what's called the Domes Region of the Northwest Province. The mines in this area are quite different in some ways to the traditional mines on the traditional Copperbelt. If you look at these two separate areas, the mines in the Domes Region where the Mukai project is are very large, very low grade, so they're kind of three-quarters of a billion to just over 1 billion ton deposits with low grades, typically ±0.5% copper. Have the characteristics really of grade and tonnage of porphyry copper-style deposits, whereas the deposits on the traditional Copperbelt tend to be higher grade, as we've seen from the information we've just talked about at Konkola. Looking in a little bit more detail at the Mukai Project and the location, this map in the bottom left-hand corner shows our license area in blue, surrounded on three sides by FQM's Trident Project areas. First Quantum's Trident Project includes that Sentinel Mine, but also includes a newly developed Enterprise Nickel Mine. First Quantum have done exploration all around us historically, and that data's been provided. We're also very close to Arc Minerals' Anglo Joint Venture area. This is an area where Anglo are farming into Arc Minerals' ground, and they have the right to earn 70% there for $88.5 million of expenditure. It's a huge joint venture, so we're certainly in the right address here. This is a geology map, if you like. It shows our license boundary in red. It shows the location of soil samples. Those black dots are all soil samples taken by First Quantum on their surrounding ground. We know that First Quantum provide us data for what they call their Terrosa copper prospect, which is right on our boundary and occurs in stratigraphy which continues into our ground. We knew before we started work here ourselves that there was a historical soil anomaly within the license area, and we believe this is a continuation of First Quantum's Terrosa prospect. In 2023, we carried out a detailed soil sampling program over this historical area, the soil anomaly, and we collected over 500 samples on a 300 by 100 m grid, so covering a reasonably large area. We use a field instrument to analyze for copper called a portable X-ray fluorescence machine. That gives us real-time information in the field and allows us to infill samples where we have high copper values. That work defined a soil anomaly over nearly two km by 800 m, within which a smaller area, 1,300 by 400 m, gave us higher values in excess of 160 PPM copper. Very high values, comparable to those you find on the Copperbelt in other copper mines in the Northwest Province. We know that First Quantum have intersected copper in drilling very close to our boundary. From the soil sampling, we believe that the majority of the soil anomaly actually occurs within this license. Looking forward very much to this project being drill tested in 2024. We move on and talk about the Mushima North project. This is further south. It's in what we call a frontier area of Zambia. It's outside of the traditional Copperbelt, it's outside of the Northwest Province, but it is an area of very active exploration. It was the site of one of Zambia's highest grade copper deposits. It had a production of 2 million tons at over 9% copper. That's just over to the west of our license, which you can see in blue there. Now, one of the things that attracted us to this area was the fact that there was a drill hole put down within the license area by a company called Roan Selection Trust in the 1970s, I think it was. That reportedly intersected copper mineralization but didn't have detailed assays. We managed to relocate that drill core from storage, and we re-assayed the drill hole, and we had recovered an interval of nine meters grading 0.43% copper. A similar grade to being mined at Sentinel, for example, within a larger interval of 33 meters of lower grade. The copper mineralization was continuing to the end of the hole. Only a shallow hole, 155 meters deep, ended in mineralization and lies on the edge of a significant gravity anomaly which was targeted by BHP. It was targeted for what's called a particular style of mineralization called iron oxide copper gold mineralization. A good example of that is the giant Olympic Dam deposit in Australia. We think the project is also prospective for traditional style copper deposits in this frontier area. In 2023, we commissioned a consulting company, JW Consulting, which has a long history of working in Zambia, including with Anglo and BHP. We asked them to do a targeting report based on the historical data, including the data that we acquired from FQM. They defined six priority targets within the license area. I won't go into too much detail about those, but we basically picked three of these to follow up in 2023, C1, A1, and A2. C1 is a composite target that was targeted by BHP Billiton, and is a gravity anomaly and magnetic anomaly and soil anomaly. A1 and A2 are wide-spaced soil anomalies that were defined by FQM. To look in a little bit more detail the work we've done there and what we've targeted and what we're planning to follow up. You look at the left-hand image, the C1 target, what you can see with the blue and green contours is the contours around a gravity high that was defined by BHP. Gravity highs are often targets for dense mineralization of an IOCG style, an oxide copper gold style. The contours are the gravity, the pink to white shading are magnetic anomalies, and the black and red contours are the soil anomalies defined by our follow-up soil sampling in 2023. It's important targets there. The two yellow stars are drill hole locations that were planned by BHP but not drilled. They were not drilled because BHP withdrew from all exploration in Zambia under previous governments. We think they are really good targets. Also interesting, just a point target, I don't know if you can quite see this, but you can see the location here of the hole, RK800, which is the hole that we assayed, that sits within the soil anomaly that we defined. The soil anomaly is highest in copper, closest to that drill hole. We think that that copper anomaly in the soil may be related to that style of mineralization. Both the soil anomaly and the drill hole were anomalous in arsenic, so that reinforces that association. This is a really exciting target, which we plan to drill test in 2024. Target A1 and A2 were soil anomalies defined at a very wide spacing by First Quantum in their historical exploration. We went in and collected samples on a much closer spacing, and that confirmed the anomalies, defined them over and over, about 3 km by 1.5 km at Target A1. That becomes a priority for drill testing this next year. We do get a very good soil sample anomaly at Target A2 as well, but we think that is hydromorphic in origin based on its element association and the fact that the soil samples were very organic-rich. Despite the high values, we don't think that is a target that's worthy of follow-up, although we do think it may be related to Target A1 through groundwater movement. The final project to talk about in Zambia really is our Mupala Project. This was an application that we put in for a new license for ground that became vacant. There was a rush to stake that. We were the first in time. Anglo American tried to apply for that, but we beat them to it. It sits close to our Mukai Project, but right adjacent to that Anglo Arc Minerals joint venture, which I mentioned earlier, where Anglo have to spend a huge amount of money to actually earn their interest. Our license contains several kilometer strike length of this pale brown unit, which is the Lower Roan stratigraphy, which is the main host for copper in the Copperbelt, and out of the mines in this area. It's really prospective. It's a new license. It's 100% owned by our Zambian subsidiary, and we're just completing the formalities to start exploration and sourcing historical data. We're going to bring this project forward in parallel with our other projects too. That really exactly concludes that side of the presentation for Zambia. I do want to talk about Nevada as well briefly. We have a portfolio of a number of exploration projects in Nevada. We're very attracted to Nevada. It's ranked number one in the world as a favorable mining jurisdiction. All the major companies are working, looking for gold and base metals in Nevada. We hold several projects for copper and precious metals. The priority there really is the Brunton Pass Copper Project, which we did quite a lot of basic work on last year, and which we have budgeted for drilling in 2024 as well. Just in a little bit more detail, the Brunton Pass Copper Project, this is located in the Walker Lane Mineral Belt, which hosts several world-class epithermal deposits and copper porphyry deposits and iron oxide copper gold deposits. We have seen mineralization in the field here, copper mineralization spread over about 1 km by 0.6 km. We have done soil sampling and we've done trenching. The soil sampling defined multiple copper, arsenic, and mercury anomalies. The trenching intersected wide intervals of copper skarn mineralization, which can occur as a halo to porphyry copper deposits and form copper deposits in its own right. We're getting very wide intersections, 50 m-80 m, over 400 PPM copper. In addition to that, there's a second zone where we have found very high arsenic and mercury anomalies, both in the trenching and in the soil sampling. The alteration that we're seeing in that zone is similar to that we see at the nearby Paradise Peak mine, which has 1.6 million ounces of gold in past production. Our trenching has intercepted very wide intervals of arsenic and mercury. Why is that significant? Well, arsenic and mercury are commonly found in the upper levels of epithermal gold deposits. The gold values tend to then occur slightly deeper. This is defining a very exciting drill target for gold. We see those same elements enriched in Paradise Peak. We're quite excited about this copper project. Resources permitting, we'll certainly be looking to drill there this next year. Just looking to next year, we've had strong flow this last year. We expect that strong news flow to continue. We think we need that, obviously, to maintain investor interest in the company. We're seeing KoBold's drill planning now advance for Konkola West. We expect to drill in Q1, maybe stretching into Q2, but hopefully Q1. We have drill programs planned, as I've explained, to test the various key targets we've generated at the other projects held by ourselves and Mwashia. We're continuing our cooperation with First Quantum. We're also looking, of course, at Brunton Pass in Nevada. Some statistics there on shareholdings. That was current as of Friday, I believe. Sorry, Monday 18th. Shows the shares on issue. Market cap at that time, GBP 2.8 million. That's increased slightly, of course, since the announcement yesterday. Shows our share price range, even before that announcement, was up to GBP 0.002 within the last 52 weeks. This is not our last slide, but just interesting to throw in another comment here on copper. Jeff Currie, Head of Global Commodities at Goldman Sachs, his view is that the copper is in the single best position over the next year when it comes to commodities, because copper is the new oil. Interesting statement, I think. This is our last slide. I just really want to point out that we believe that Tertiary Minerals is very, very undervalued. Obviously, that's for the audience here to make their own decisions. Just leave you on this slide to look at in your own time. When you look at other companies working in Zambia and comparable countries, then we feel that we trade at a substantial discount to companies, our peer group companies. Yeah, so we're looking forward to keeping the news going. Yeah, I will just leave it at that. Thank you very much. Perfect, Patrick, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while Patrick takes a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already, I would 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. Patrick, we obviously did receive a number of pre-submitted questions ahead of today's event. As you can see there in the Q&A tab, we've also received a number of questions throughout your presentation this morning as well. Firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. Patrick, if I may hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. One of the pre-submitted questions here is that everyone seems to agree that copper shortages are looming. Why have we seen copper prices pull back in 2023? Until recently, there was talk about a surplus in 2024. Well, just to answer that, I guess what we do have to do is draw a distinction between short-term effects and long-term trends. Copper prices have pulled back slightly in 2023 but are now recovering, partly because of the economic situation that the world sees itself in. What we have seen, as I say, is a total change in what was talked about as a surplus in 2024 to now people are talking about a shortage. One of the main reasons for that is the closure of First Quantum's Cobre Panama mine in Panama. It was closed by the government against First Quantum's will and against an agreement that was already in place. That produced 1.5% of the world's copper, and that mine going offline has basically changed that short-term outlook. The long-term outlook that we discussed at the beginning still stands. One of the interesting signs of a looming copper shortage is that the smelters have recently reduced their treatment charges. They are competing harder for copper concentrates, which basically shows that those copper concentrates are in tight supply. Hopefully that answers that question. Another pre-submitted question was why so much emphasis is placed on the Zambian projects when we've been longer established in Nevada? I think that is a good question. I think the explanation lies basically in the fact that in Zambia, we have expenditure commitments both to Mwashia as our local partner and also to the government in the terms of any license that are issued. There are expenditure commitments and the clock ticks on those. We meet all our requirements. In Nevada, of course, when you have a mining claim, you can hold that indefinitely. The priority, the pressure is on exploration in Zambia rather than Nevada. The two jurisdictions are strangely complementary because in Zambia there is a very defined wet season when exploration is more difficult if you're not in an established area. You have difficulty with roads washing out, with river crossings being difficult. Whereas in Nevada you can work year-round. They are complementary in that sense and it allows us to work in Nevada when perhaps we can't work for a short time in Zambia. That would explain that, hopefully. Another question, David H., should we assume that a 10% free carry will be the same over any future deals on the other four Mwashia licenses? I can't really answer that, actually, David. I think the difficulty there is that when we look at other deals, they'll have to be looked at in their own merits. I think it's a principle, but it depends to some extent on where we are with those particular licenses with Mwashia. For example, at Jacks we have already earned the right to 90%, whereas other ones we're still earning that right, that percentage. That was the case with Konkola West where we were still in the earning phase. That's as much as I can say on that one at the moment. A question from Eddie M. Do we expect any more joint ventures to be signed in the next few months? Also, have the conversations opened up with the Swedish government regarding the fluorspar project, and how hopeful are we to be able to develop the project in the future? I guess it's three separate questions there. One of these actually ties into one of the pre-submitted questions about the fluorspar project. I'll take those as they are set out. In terms of joint ventures to be signed in the next few months, we can't give advance notice of those unfortunately. What I can say is that there is a lot of interest. People are scrambling for ground positions in Zambia. All the majors are back in Zambia having left under previous governments. We'd like to think there is a high likelihood of that happening. We'll just have to wait on that to see what happens. Going on to the fluorspar project, this is our Storuman fluorspar project. You'll have noted that we didn't have a slide on this project. We really wanted to focus on the announcement yesterday and what we're doing in Zambia. In fact, those who follow the company will know that we had a decision made on our Storuman fluorspar project in Sweden on an appeal that was submitted to the government over four years ago against the grant of a mining license for our Storuman fluorspar project. The Storuman fluorspar project contains a defined resource of 28 million tons approximately at 10% fluorspar. That is something like just under 3 million tons of fluorspar in the ground. Fluorspar sells for $450 a ton. We're looking at around $1 billion worth of fluorspar in the ground. That one project supported a market cap for the company that was several times the current market cap of Tertiary Minerals. The reason that we haven't put anything in here is because it is very much a sleeper for the company. The government has stepped in on our appeal to say to the mining inspector, "You have to revisit your decision to overturn the grant of our mining license." Reasons were given why they had to do that and gave guidance on how they should approach that. Now, the guidance that was given we think favors the reinstatement or the grant of our mining license there. That's certainly a hopeful point. This project has been tied up with the government decisions for many years. If it is reinstated, it's still open to objection by the Sami reindeer herders, and we have to do environmental work to be able to move forward to a mine decision. We're watching what's happening. Obviously the dialogue is back open with the Swedish government. There's not a lot that we can do while we await the decision from the Swedish government. We are not spending money on this project at the moment, but we're following developments with great interest, of course. Another question, one Thormann I think we've answered. Arthur P has asked, is there an order priority for drilling regarding the various targets generated over the recent field season? The answer to that really is not particularly. I think the terms of the license will probably require that certain ones happen before others. Just, for example, to do drilling at Mukai and Mushima North, we need forestry approvals for the drilling, whereas we don't need those for Jacks. We could probably start drilling at Jacks earlier than we could start drilling at Mukai and Mushima. I think, just those sort of administrative issues will dictate the order in which it's done. Question on Storuman again. This is Jane. Could we claim compensation if Storuman is rejected again? I think the short answer to that is probably not. Hopefully that answers that question fairly briefly. There have been a number of questions. Jane S. is also asking, "There's a rumor of another placing. Can you comment?" I can comment that there is no placing currently planned, so we can scotch that rumor, hopefully. Just looking through additional for any questions. I think there are a couple of questions on placings, which I think we have addressed. In any event, we cannot give forward notice of these things in any event, but I can tell you there are none planned. There's a question from Lucas B. on the company's cash position and how far it will take the company. Well, we'll be publishing our annual accounts very shortly, early in the new year. Hopefully, without me going into detail about that, you'll be able to take a view on that in the early new year. Obviously, to do all the work that we want to do, we will need to raise funds at some stage in the future, but we would hope to do it at a higher price. We have a number of warrants in issue, which could bring initial cash into the company. Doing deals like the deal that we've done with Konkola certainly reduce the need for capital, where someone else is spending money, and we'll certainly be looking to try and replicate that elsewhere. In reality, the amount of money that we'll actually need may be a lot less, and we would hope to leverage that through joint ventures, et cetera, on other projects. Hopefully, that's about all we've got time for, I guess, in terms of questions. If there are other questions that get submitted, we'll do our best to answer them through this platform. Perfect. Patrick, thank you very much indeed for being so generous with your time then addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. Of course, we will be able to give you back all of the questions that were submitted today, as well as any other ones that do come through, back immediately after the presentation has ended, just for you to review to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so, and we'll publish all those responses out on the platform. Patrick, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, if I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that'd be great. Yeah. Well, firstly, thanks to Investor Meet Company for providing this platform. Also I'd just like to thank all those who are listening and watching this for their attendance. I really appreciate their interest in the company. We're looking forward to a really exciting time in 2024, lots of plans, and yeah, we look forward to coming back and saying more in future. Perfect, Patrick. That's great. Thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Tertiary Minerals plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. Good morning to you all.