All right, we'll get things rolling here. Hello and welcome to Burgundy Diamond Mines' presentation for our year-end 2023 results. My name is Eric Ingle, and I'm the Vice President of Corporate Development here at Burgundy. I'll introduce our presenters in a moment, but I'll cover some introductory comments first. Please note that the session today will be recorded. At the end of our formal presentation today, we'll embed a Q&A session. Please feel free to place your queries in the questions section in Zoom, which is just at the bottom. The results communicated today reflect a six-month period of July 1st to December 31st, 2023, reflecting Burgundy's adjustment to calendar year reporting versus our previous fiscal year, June to June approach. Also coincidental with the start of the reporting period, the results reflect the transformative acquisition of Arctic Canadian Diamond Company and our cornerstone asset acquisition of Ekati Diamond Mine.
Where dollars are noted and communicated, they are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Any reference to mine life enhancement is conceptual and formally confirmed in a renewed formal mine plan, which we aspire to communicate in the next 9-12 months. Lastly, please note the Andrew, just a next slide. Lastly, please note the important notices and disclaimers, which will be made available in our presentation for your review, which includes notices on financial advisory, advertising, past performance, and future performance caution, and on our reserves and mineral resources reporting. At this point, I'd like to introduce our presenters: Kim Truter, our CEO and Managing Director, and Brad Baylis, CFO and Corporate Secretary. Kim, over to you.
Fantastic. Thank you, Eric. Good morning, afternoon, and evening to everyone around the world. I think it's important we just start off with the ESG focus from Burgundy. So up on the screen, our first slide here is about sustainability. Just three topics there. From a safety point of view, one of the things we've brought to bear on the business is a real focus on fatality prevention and therefore critical controls that help prevent fatalities. You can see some of the injury numbers below that. It ticked up a little bit in the second half of 2023 compared to 2022, but as I said, a big focus on fatality prevention and critical controls.
On the environmental side, probably the two highlights there was we received the primary mining license, even though it's a water license for the Ekati Mine, so that was renewed for further 10 years, which was fantastic. And then for the new Point Lake project, which I'll talk about shortly, we received the final permits to allow us to start mining in Q1, and again, I'll talk about that a bit later. Quite important from a community perspective. I think you've probably seen that we've just released our latest impact on communities, and I'm sure it made some very good reading for many of you.
And you can see some of the many benefits of running these mines up in the Arctic, but probably worth just emphasizing that we make a real impact on communities through the Impact Benefit Agreement payments, which are sort of in the form of royalties. It was a very significant focus on northern spend, which gives business benefits to local communities, and then, of course, things like employment, sponsorships, community donations, and things like that. So, we are a very, very big contributor to those kind of things in the north of Canada. If I focus on the next slide, this, we'll talk about it in more detail a bit later, but these are some of the highlights when you look at the operational performance comparing the two halves.
probably the more important numbers are the bottom row, which are sort of our highlights around revenue, EBITDA, and cash flow. So you can see, you know, for the half year, we did just under $260 million in revenue from 2.6 million carats that were sold. That translated into just under $70 million in EBITDA. Cash flow was pretty healthy at $68 million, and, very pleasingly, net debt, you know, after including inventories and so on, was just under $40 million. So a very, very healthy start to the ownership of the business. If I switch to the bit more detail, starting with the market, 2023 was certainly an interesting year.
Effectively, what happened in 2023 was there was a correction in diamond prices, from the highs of the prior years of 2021 and 2022, which was really a real increase in price. So in the first part of the year, we saw a roughly 14% drop in diamond prices. This is sort of an aggregate diamond price, which slowed in the second half of the year. So that slowed down to about 6% in the second half of the year. And, as Brad will talk about a bit later, we've seen a recovery in 2024. A lot of the drivers of that are sort of macroeconomic factors related to customer demand, which I think we're all experiencing in terms of cost of living and so on.
And then the other little hiatus that happened in the second half of the year was India implemented a buying hiatus, which actually helped things a little bit because it reduced some of the oversupply in India. Probably more importantly is looking at 2024. I think we've all been reading in the news about what the G7 have been implementing, and the framework which will help to restrict the flow of diamonds will be fully implemented during this year. It's being implemented in parts. The first part of it has already been implemented, and we are certainly seeing some of the benefits of that flow to our production and sales. The other market phenomenon in diamonds is that 2024, the forecast for diamond rough diamond production is at around 118 million carats, which is down by about 3.5 million carats from 2023.
And they are some better than expected holiday shopping that we're seeing for both rough and polished sales, which is good. And then hopefully in the second half of the year, we see China demand pick up and Indian demand is already picking up. So generally, the, I think all the producers feel that the second half of 2024 will be better than the first half of 2024. Just a quick note that a good reference for anything diamond related and diamond market related is Paul Zimnisky, who produces a monthly report. And so you can see the numbers on the right-hand side there reflect Paul's view of what the rough diamond prices will do in 2024. We have taken a quite conservative view around pricing in our financial models and how we run the business.
Just unpacking a little bit some of the operational highlights. Generally speaking, across the board, everything was better than the prior period. So you can see ore mined a hell of a lot better, ore processed better. I think we reflected in some of our other correspondence that the process plant achieved the best results in 10 years, which is fantastic. And you can see carats recovered was way up as well. Just to explain, the waste mined is down, but that is a purposeful downward trend because the strip ratio of the kimberlite pipes reduces the deeper you go. So that was actually in our favor. So all in all, a pretty solid result. So I'll hand over to Brad, who will unpack the financial results. I get just a quick bit of commentary before Brad launches into the financials.
Q1 this year has been quite an interesting period from a cold weather point of view. We are seeing some cold weather effects in the Misery underground, with withdrawing ore from surface. So we're probably seeing a soft start to the year from a production point of view. But as we work through this colder period, that'll pick up as we go through the year. So that just something to note. So over to you, Brad.
Thanks, Kim. Yeah, so you know, I don't I don't want to get too much into the comparisons on this on this chart because, you know, really what what we're comparing is, you know, our our business now, which includes Arctic versus the the pre-acquisition Burgundy numbers. So it's it's really not apples to apples, but, you know, I think we'll start to see this we'll start to see this materialize in the future where the comparisons start to become a bit more meaningful. But, you know, really, if you look at if you look at the transformation, you know, we went from a an exploration company with a with a small polished diamond business to an operating company with a with a polished business.
So that's really what you're seeing there on the big change from the 12 months ended June 30th versus where we were at the end of the year. Some of the highlights, you know, Kim touched on it, but you know, revenue of just under $258 million. Considering the second half of the year last year where a lot of producers were struggling to sell their goods, you know, we feel very fortunate that we've got the Canadian product and it's in high demand and very high quality product. And so our sell-through rates were a lot higher than some of our competitors for the same period. So good performance for the year.
Obviously, price is not where we want it to be or where we need it to be long term, but you know, we're kind of hoping that the last six months and maybe the first six months of this year will be a little softer, and then we'll start to turn the corner and start to see some growth going forward. The other number, obviously, that Kim mentioned, so $69 million EBITDA for the first half of the year last year. Again, this would be, you know, down from what our expectations were primarily driven by softer diamond pricing. But you know, we ended the year very strongly with $60 million of the EBITDA being generated in the fourth quarter. Yes, next slide. Thanks, Andrew.
So this takes us through the change in cash. So from the period of June 30th through to December 31st. Again, a little bit of, you know, you're comparing a little bit of the historical. So we opened with $125 million, and this is primarily driven by the fact that the capital raise associated with the Ekati purchase was in the bank account for the end of June. We then used that cash, and you know, part of that cash went to the repayment of the loans, which is the $27 million, and then the $28 million consideration for acquisition. So those two items are really related to the acquisition. $68 million generated from operations, our lease payments for equipment. So that'll be a normal go forward number. Sustaining capital, we spent $13 million during the second half of last year.
And then we also put $28 million towards our reclamation obligations. And so these are related to our surety obligations. And we'll talk a little bit more about the sureties a little later. And then we ended the year with $94 million in the bank. So good results considering a very difficult market. On the balance sheet side, again, a little bit comparing apples to oranges here, but, you know, the items I kind of highlight would be diamond inventories. So we ended the year with $109 million worth of diamonds in the pipeline. And it's kind of a normal number. That's kind of a normal number. We would expect anywhere from about $110 million-$140 million sitting in diamond inventory, depending on the timing of our sales at any given point in time.
kind of as we've talked about in other conference calls, we are looking at finding ways to shorten that pipeline. But it's just currently, it's the nature of how the diamonds flow from the mine site through to cleaning in India, through to the sales in Antwerp, and just the timing it takes to do all those steps does result in, you know, 2.5-3 months' worth of inventory that ends up on the books. Like Kim pointed out, very you know, we think we're in a great position from a debt perspective. So net debt of $39 million, if you included the inventories, we'd actually be in a positive position. So, you know, it does show the value that's sitting in diamond inventory associated with closing out that debt.
So yeah, on, like I mentioned, on the surety side, so the sureties are related to our reclamation obligation. And so, you know, we're required to either put a letter of credit in place, put cash with the government, or in the case of Ekati, we've chosen to use a surety provider, which essentially is an insurance company that provides essentially credit for us. And then over time, we fund the surety with cash collateralization. The legacy surety arrangement had us funding the full closure obligation by the end of May this year. You know, that just wasn't going to happen. It wasn't really the right thing for the business.
We want to use that cash to grow the business, not to tie up in a closure obligation that we hope to not have to touch for 15 years. So we have landed on an agreement in principle with our surety providers. And really, it's to line up the cash collateralization of those surety payments over the published life of mine. So currently, you know, about a four-year period. And so that's the agreement we have in principle. And we're still working through the final crossing of T's and dotting of I's in order to get that agreement in place. But we expect to have the agreement in place within the next 30-60 days. And basically, what that does is it spreads those payments out until 2027.
And then the second thing we had to do this year was because of the new kimberlite pipe we're opening this year, the Point Lake, we needed a reclamation bond for that. So we've put a separate agreement in place for Point Lake. And again, that kind of aligns with the Point Lake current life of Point Lake, which is a five-year period. And those payments will be spread over that period. So essentially, what it does for 2024 is it provides a benefit of $130 million, essentially, that we've deferred to future periods versus having that cash go out the door this year. So huge win for us. This was kind of one of the legacy things that we inherited as part of the acquisition.
And we knew that it was a high-priority item that we needed to get sorted. So we feel very happy with where we've landed and, you know, we couldn't be happier with our partners, the surety providers. And you know, we're starting to develop a great relationship. And we hope to, you know, as we continue to extend them at the life of mine, we would look to extend those surety payments even over a longer period of time. On the sales side, you know, so a bit of a view into the 2024. So we've actually had three sales held so far. So one in January, one in February, and we had one just a couple of days ago.
So far, the market, you know, again, due to the Canadian provenance of our, you know, the product that we have, you know, we really are the only producer within the G7 of rough diamonds. So we feel like we have a, you know, an advantage from that standpoint. And so our sales in both January and February, again, very, very high sell-through rates, very high demand, lots of participation from our customer base. You know, Q1 is typically a bit of a slower quarter. We normally only have two sales, but what we ended up doing was bringing forward a sale we had planned in early April. We brought that forward to this week, trying to capture some of the demand for Q1.
Now that the sale that happened this week, we will recognize that sale over two quarters. So whatever we collect from that this week will be recognized in Q1, and then whatever collections fall into April, then will be recognized in Q2. And we do have our next special and fancy sale, and that's planned for late April. And for that sale, we're actually holding viewings in both Antwerp and in Dubai. So this is the first time that we'll be doing viewings in Dubai. So we're going to see, you know, what kind of uptake that gives from a customer participation perspective. And then we'll make a call on whether we continue to offer viewings in multiple locations. Like Kim had mentioned, that the G7 sanctions kicked off this year at the start of March.
You know, so, you know, the good news is that, you know, given that we're a G7 producer, you know, our goods are flowing through the process quite seamlessly, where other goods are experiencing some, you know, some difficulty in getting through customs in Antwerp. So again, we feel in a fortunate position, and that also should help our customers getting their goods through the pipeline. So yeah, so, you know, and we have worked very closely with the regulators in both Canada and in Belgium to ensure that, you know, that Burgundy is part of the design of how this is going to work going forward. From here, I'll pass it back over to Kim.
Yeah, thank you, Brad.
That was a great overview of the numbers and some of the market-related activities. So the exciting thing is that Point Lake, which is now the new mining activity that's taking over from the Sable open pit, has effectively started. The phase two dewatering is completed. We got the open pit mining approval, as I mentioned earlier on, and the waste rock storage pad has commenced. And the very exciting thing is the first mining blast occurred at the beginning of March. So that was fantastic. And we now embark on the pre-strip work, and the first ore is expected in Q3 2024. So that's pretty exciting as that new pipe starts. And actually, on the right-hand side, that's quite important.
You know, Point Lake was the first kimberlite pipe discovered on the property, and it's now the latest pipe to take over. So this is pipe number 11 of 125 pipes that will be mined on the property. So it's number 11 in a long queue of hopefully pipes to come in the future. If you got to jump to the next one, just a little bit of update on the mine extension work. I think many of you would be familiar with this slide. As a reminder, we are focused on 5 different activities to extend the mine life. So I've just mentioned Point Lake, Misery, which is the current underground mine, which produces a lot of our wonderful yellow diamonds.
Some of the work we've done recently have confirmed that the ore body appears to be thicker than originally modeled at depth. And so that's a bit of a bonus because that means there's more ore. And then we're doing some geotechnical and ore body extension drilling in the coming quarter, and that'll allow us to get the confidence to extend that mine life. And if all everything goes according to plan, Misery should be extended to around about 2027. Sable underground work is progressing pretty well. We've finalized the portal location, and we'll start that portal in August. We've started some of the reverse circulation drilling in February, and that'll confirm the Sable mine resources and firm that up.
And then we'll do some geotechnical drilling also in Q1 and potentially into Q2 just to firm up the mine design work, and then we'll get on with the permit application. So Sable's looking pretty useful. If I switch to number five, that is one of the real surprises was we uncovered from our point of view anyway, a very valuable resource, which is an unprocessed stockpile that sits adjacent to the Fox Pipe. There's about 7 million tons of the stockpile, which contains around 1 million carats. And it's basically all that was put aside by BHP when they mined the Fox Pipe. The value of those carats are very high, so around about $300 a carat. So it's very interesting. There's nearly $300 million of diamonds sitting in that resource.
We've done some processing test work, and we're looking at ways to introduce that stockpile into the plants over the next couple of years. So we'll supplement our mining feed with the stockpile, and that'll give us more revenue. Then on the number four there, which is the Fox underground, we've done some preliminary work working at a mine design, as I think I've mentioned before. And then we'll progress slowly to do any other work we need to do, including the pre-feasibility study on the new mining method and any drilling work we need to do. So those are the five options in play, and we remain very confident about those 5 options. Our plan would be to try and release or publish a new mine plan either towards the end of this year or early next year.
When we get to that stage, we're hoping we'll be able to include four of those five things. And then probably a short while later, hopefully at the end of 2025, we'll release a second iteration, which would then include the Fox underground. So very good news to come as we complete all that work. So that's a bit of an update on the operation. Just to finish off, this is our guidance. We did provide this a while back, but just to remind everyone, we're still on track for this guidance. So ore tons between 4.2 and 4.7, the carats recovered between 4.9 and 5.3, and a similar number for carats sold. So all very, very healthy and no change to that guidance. So on that slide, we'll probably conclude. And what we do is I'll hand back to Eric now.
And what we'll do is if we do have any questions about any of those slides or any other topic, please feel free to post it. But back to you, Eric.
Thanks, Kim. Yeah, and just a reminder, there should be a Q&A icon on your Zoom functionality that you can just type in your questions. And we already have two, so I'll start with those, but we'd be happy to take any questions. So the first question is regarding margins. So do you expect to maintain a similar to calendar year 2023, $31 margin on carats sold in 2024? So it's basically a question, do you anticipate the 2023 calendar year margin to port across to this year?
Look, that's a very good question, and that's a topic we focus on every single day.
So one thing I can reassure everyone is a huge focus on maintaining margins and not just maintaining them, but increasing them. We've set an internal target, which I won't disclose, but we've tried to set a very healthy internal margin. We motivate the operating teams to focus on that number as well. I think, because of how the market softened last year, it did narrow our margins in the latter half of last year. So certainly, we'd expect to achieve similar margins at the start of this year, and hopefully, that'll open up in the second half of the year. But Brad, feel free to jump in if you've got more to add.
No, I think you covered it. I, you know, like Kim mentioned, I think, you know, it's a big focus area for us.
You know, we're going to try to grow the margin with, you know, looking at, you know, both from a cost perspective and from a selling perspective. So can we, you know, increase margin by being more efficient and reducing some of our cost structure? And also on the sales side, can we be creative in looking at different ways to get our diamonds to market?
Great. Thanks, guys. And I see the questions coming in here. So fantastic. Keep them coming. So a question from Mike. With additional cash flows now available from the surety bond adjustment, any plans to bring some CapEx projects forward or increase exploration programs? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Mike. Look, I mean, we had already made quite a lot of progress around the surety negotiations.
So when we did our budget or our plan for 2024, we'd have sort of already made an internal assumption that we would have solved that problem. So we took a leap of faith, and that's why we were confident around developing Point Lake. And so we've already allowed for that in our plan. We've also allowed for the sustaining capital, which I think we mentioned before was a bit of a heavier workload this year as we do some sort of stronger focus on sustaining capital. And then we've also allowed to do that drilling work and all the work required to bring or to get Misery deepened and to bring Sable into the plan as well as that Fox stockpile. So we've allowed for all of that, our capital and our plan.
And so at this stage, nothing to increase. And in terms of exploration, we obviously still are focused on exploration. A lot of it doesn't really require money. It's really just going back and relooking at the data and using things like artificial intelligence to go back and trawl through all the data rather than actually having to spend money on the ground. If we then decide that we need to do something, we have got the financial capacity to do that. But at this stage, we're just going to be trawling through all the data and having a look at that.
Thanks, Kim. A macro question here. So China demand across luxury is down materially and not expected to uptick anytime soon. How significant is this in your thinking on forecasts?
So maybe just Kim or Brad, what you're seeing maybe in the market, China specifically, and then how does this bear into our thinking on forecasts?
Yeah, so a couple of points there and Brad can jump in as well. But first of all, as I said earlier on, we do use some of the industry forecasts and you know, Paul Zimnisky's reports, as I showed you earlier on, as a very useful source. But we use a variety of other sources, so we don't rely on any one source. We have a variety of sources. As I also mentioned, we then take a quite a conservative view about pricing, and so that which is what we've done. So we think we're still well on track from a pricing point of view.
In fact, we probably expect more upside to our own internal pricing estimates than downside because we've been quite conservative. The other thing just to remind people of is we do not really depend on China. 50% of the world's diamonds get sold down in the U.S. market. And because of our proximity to the U.S. market, I'm pretty sure that the percentage of our diamonds that go into the U.S. market is far greater than 50%. So we're not as concerned about the China side of things. We're more focused on the U.S., and as you know, the U.S. economy is going pretty well. So I think in a nutshell, we're quite confident about our price forecast and where the market's going to go.
Great. Thanks. A question from Stuart on the Winter Road.
And maybe just for the benefit of those not familiar, we have an annual ice Winter Road program as part of our supply restocking annually. So the question is, can you please provide an update on the Winter Road and supplies restocking? Is this going as planned budgeted?
Yeah, so there was a little bit of a late start to it. The Winter Road typically starts at the beginning of February, but it started a couple of weeks later this year. But so far, everything's on track, and we haven't got any concerns about that resupply. So the fuel is busy pouring in, and all the bulk supplies are pouring in. So yeah, we haven't heard anything that's counter to that. So yep, all good.
Great. The next question on the Fox stockpile.
So, how do you expect the processing of sales contribution of that to contribute over calendar year 2024 and calendar year 2025? And I guess a supplementary: is it more skewed to 2025?
Yeah, so as I mentioned, we'll bleed that stockpile into the process plant provided there's actually space in the process plant. We're always going to focus on higher value ore. So if we can keep the plant full with higher value ore from Misery or Sable, then the stockpile won't find its way into the plant. So really, this is supplementary feed. And either when we've got a bit of spare capacity in the plant or, you know, or when we can increase the plant capacity at some point. But it'll really be spread over the next probably the next five years, to be honest.
It won't be a short-term project. It'll be a supplemental feed.
Great. Thanks, Kim. Again, a reminder, if you have questions, bring them into the Q&A. I think I'm at the final question here in the series, but if you have another one, please put it in. So a question from John. As your average selling price is $100 per carat, can we assume that most of the stock is industrial usage? Will the in-house polishing ability give the company prospect of gaining margin on the fancy product? So I guess a question on just the usage of diamonds, the $100 carat reference, and a second question on the prospect of additional margin through our in-house polishing.
Yeah, that's a two-part question, John. So the first one, just as a correction, I'm not sure what you mean by industrial usage.
100% of mined diamonds these days go into jewelry. So nothing goes into industrial usage, if that's what you're talking about. All mined diamonds basically get sold as jewelry. And so all of ours will go into jewelry. And then the second part of your question is around the polishing facility. So when you look at the polishing facility in Perth, it is a very low volume. If you may recall from earlier presentations, it's got a capacity of around 3,000 carats, and we are producing 5 million carats. So yeah, 99.9% of what we produce and sell will be sold as rough diamond, and then a small percentage obviously will be taken to Perth and polished in Perth. And yes, we do anything we send there; we expect to get better margins on that material.
But what we are finding is that we are getting a lot of leverage in the market from our rough sales and a very high interest from luxury brands wanting to direct purchase for their product lines. So at the moment, the biggest lever we've got, and certainly for the foreseeable future, is on our rough sales. While the polished businesses are useful little business, it's not the moneymaker in the business. It's really the rough sales, and that's where we're getting most of our leverage.
Great. Thanks, Kim. I've received a couple more questions here, so that's great. I'll keep on going through them. Can you talk more, and this is related to the G7 sanctions. Can you talk more about the progress in implementing blockchain tracing to enforce Russian sanctions? Has that started to improve pricing for Ekati?
Yeah, so as Brad mentioned this early on. We are already seeing a premium in for the Ekati diamonds because of two reasons. One is because of the Ekati product itself is very, very sought after. It's a fantastic product. It's quite easy to polish. It's very high quality. So the product itself is very sellable, if that's the right way to phrase it. And then secondly, as Brad mentioned, the Canadian provenance is very, very useful. So what we're finding is just those two things is allowing us to sell at a greater rate and probably superior pricing to others. The blockchain process is definitely going to come into play. It'll be mandated in the last quarter of this year.
Eric is actually the chap that's heading up our focus on that, and he's the guy that's sort of looking at it. And we're looking at a variety of blockchain solutions. There are a few providers that can provide blockchain technology. It will be interesting to see whether everyone is actually ready by the deadline, but we certainly are focused on it, and as we said earlier on, we're not just we're actually influencing the direction of some of those talks and making sure that the Canadian provenance part of it is protected, and we use the strength of our Canadian provenance through that process. But it's definitely already working in our favor.
I think what we're probably seeing in terms of the selling of diamonds around the world is it's really polarized into three sources. It's polarized into sort of G7 production, which is Canadian production, as Brad mentioned. African production or outside of Russia, but not Canada, and then, of course, Russian production. And we are definitely the winners in that process because of the Canadian provenance. But we will definitely be looking at implementing blockchain as it becomes available.
Great. Thanks, Kim. And thank you for the questions. We got four or five more here to go through, but keep them coming. We'll be happy to answer them. Question around overhead costs. What are the corporate overhead costs? I assume that's not included in the carat margin figure.
Yeah, so my voice is going a bit dry here.
I'm going to let Brad jump into this one because he loves this question.
Yeah, no, you're correct. The overhead would not be included in the cash margin. So our main kind of overhead costs would be our Calgary office costs, so the people that are basically sitting in Calgary. And then we have a small sales team that's sitting in Antwerp. So that would be the main overhead costs that are not part of that cash margin.
Yeah, but it's funny, just a compliment that our, you know, costs in general is obviously always going to be a focus of ours.
I think in some of our previous calls, we've mentioned that we've implemented a business improvement process, which is up and running, and there are hundreds of ideas that are flowing from the workforce into that system. As we go forward, we'll be looking at more sort of game-changer type cost initiatives going forward. So we've got it very much in our gun sights. And as I've mentioned to some of you on the call before, Brad and I are laser-like on cash management. And anything that delivers us more cash, whether it's reduced costs or more revenue, we are very, very focused on those two levers.
Great. Thanks. A question from Basil. What prospects does the Indian market have in terms of future sales growth?
Well, the best contribution that India can make is just economic growth.
As we know, the Indian economy is doing pretty well. It's very hard to tell where all of our diamonds end up, but I'm pretty sure some are ending up in the Indian market, and they are big consumers of diamonds. I don't know if any of you have ever been to an Indian wedding, but I think the number I've heard previously is that in a typical Indian wedding, if you look at all the diamonds being worn by everyone in attendance at the wedding, there's often around 200 carats that could be worn at an Indian wedding. So, anything if the Indian market is strong, if the economy is going well, and people are doing well, and they've got the money, it'll be a fantastic consumption of diamonds.
So they're already a very important consumer, and I think they'll only grow in importance.
Great. Thanks, Kim. So there are kind of two similar questions from Wanda and Basil around the underwater remote mining. So maybe the first one is, can you give an overview and expectation of what the machine is, number one? And number two, can you give an update on how the trials are progressing or where we're at in our URM underground or under underwater remote mining journey?
Yeah, I'm happy to talk about this. We've been deliberately quite low-key about the underwater remote mining.
Just for some of you that are not familiar, effectively, it's a new mining method that involves using a floating platform that floats on the water above the kimberlite pipe or on the kimberlite pipe, and then an underwater crawler that's attached using an umbilical cord to that floating platform. The underwater crawler would then cut the kimberlite pipes and suck that material up into the floating platform, which is then pumped to shore, and then from there, it will be trucked to the process plant. It's an absolute game-changing technology. And it's a very interesting technology that Ekati has been pioneering for many, many years. We're probably the only company on the planet that has actually progressed it in reality as opposed to just talking about it. It's happening in the background.
What's specifically happening is that the trial floating platform has been manufactured, and it'll be coming up the Winter Road in the next couple of weeks. That'll then go out to one of our old pipes called the Lynx Pipe, and we'll use that platform to clean up the pipe in preparation for the crawler arriving, which should arrive. We'll still lock in the timing, but it could arrive as early as 2025. It's about 90% built. Then we'll start trialing that combination of the crawler and the platform and see whether that works. And if it works, we'll then look at deploying it at any one of the pipes that are suitable for it to be deployed in, which could include Point Lake.
It could even replace the Sable Underground if it's if it's if it's more cost-effective at some point. But it's probably a bit further out there. We're thinking that it would probably come into play from a production point of view, probably in the early 2030s. It's not a it's not a tomorrow production solution. It's probably something in the early 2030s. So it's in the back burner. It's progressing, and it's exciting, but it's something that'll come into play later on.
Great. Thanks, Kim. I'm down to the two last questions here, so feel free to if you have one, feel free to to add it to the Q&A. So a question from Sam. Do you earn any revenue commissions from the Canada Mark auction platform?
So maybe if you're in a position just to orient what the CanadaMark program is and then any revenue or commission kind of a view to that. I have some visibility to this, if helpful, but go ahead, Kim.
Yeah, why don't you also, Eric? Given that it's one of your pet projects.
Oh, okay. So the CanadaMark, if you're not familiar with, it's a brand and trademark that we own. So I probably position it more as a hallmark program. So customers that purchase from us have the option to elect to participate in the CanadaMark hallmark program. So that certifies the provenance of the diamond. We provide a certificate of provenance to make sure the end consumer knows it comes from our mine or partner Canadian mines.
And the third aspect to that, we have an engraving process as well. So I'd say we do charge for that service. I don't know that it would be material at this point, but what we can say, we do see value in the Canada Mark program, especially in light of where the market is going with increased focus on kind of sustainable provenance, some of the sanctions that we're seeing emerge in the market that even though Canada Mark hasn't been a material contributor to our bottom line previously, we do think there's something strategic about that brand and the program go forward.
Perfect. Thanks, Eric.
Okay. Another question. I think a follow-up question on the overhead, Brad. So if Kim, you need a drink, maybe we'll throw this one back to Brad.
So I think we had a description of the overhead cost, but I think there's maybe a desire for more quantity or a numerical value with the overhead cost. So whether you approach that from a top-line perspective, Brad, or whatever view you have on it, I think there was a desire for maybe a more numerical answer on what overhead looks like at Burgundy.
Yeah, I'd say it's between $20 million-$30 million annually. I won't get into much more detail than that, but it kind of gives you an indication of what we're talking about.
Perfect.
Great. So that was the last question. Maybe I'll give one more opportunity if anyone has a last question here to throw it in the chat. All right. So with that, maybe we'll close our session here today. Thank you to the participants.
We've had great numbers here and some fantastic questions, which we love. But maybe I'll just turn it over to Kim for the close, and then we'll end the session here today.
Yeah, thank you, Eric. Look, I mean, we're very pleased with the direction we're heading in as a company. I think we've delivered on everything that we promised during the transaction eight months ago. So we're very pleased with how that's progressed. And there's obviously more to come. I think the work we're doing beyond the mine gate is very exciting. Brad, in particular, has been leading the charge there, and there's still quite a lot of exciting news to come in the next couple of quarters in that side of things. The mine plan work, as I mentioned, I'm very happy with the way that's progressing.
There's still lots more, you know, gas in the tank when it comes to improving margins. The team that we've assembled is a very, very highly capable team. We're very, very happy with our leadership team and our operational team and the team that are actually working hard around the world. You can rest assured, all of the investors that you've got probably the best team that we could possibly assemble to run this business. I think they're everyone's doing a very good job. Thank you very much for all of your support. Please feel free anytime to reach out and ask Brad and us any questions and let us know if there's anything else we need to tell you. We'll keep going. Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone.