Hello and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you have joined us for the third day of our Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The first presentation of the day is from Centaurus Metals. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for a one-on-one meeting by clicking Book a Meeting. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Darren Gordon, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Centaurus Metals, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol CTTZF, and on the ASX under the symbol CTM. Welcome, Darren.
Thanks very much, Greg. Great pleasure to be here to introduce the Centaurus story. I thank everyone for who's sitting online. Hopefully we can deliver you a very nice, interesting story about the upcoming development of our Jaguar Nickel Sulphide Project in Northern Brazil. You would have seen a few of these over the last couple of days, get them to read at your leisure. There's definitely plenty of information set out inside this presentation. Just having a look at Centaurus Metals, Jaguar as a Nickel Sulphide Project, we acquired from Vale about six years ago. It came with a little bit of drilling. We've been able to do an enormous amount of drilling on the project over the last few years. We've completed economic studies.
We've licensed our project, and we're in the pathway to undertake the funding of the project, which is a really exciting time for us all. What we do have, and I'll obviously spend a bit more time on as we go through the presentation, is a very large Nickel Sulphide Project. It has 1.2 million tons of contained nickel metal. I guess, in ore in the ground, it's about 138 million tons at around 0.87% nickel. With that, we've been able to complete economic studies, feasibility studies such that we have a 15-year open pit mining operation planned. All the economics that you see today during the course of the presentation are based on that open pit operation only. There is some strong opportunity for some underground mineralization to come at a later point in time.
That is just further upside for the project. We're operating in Brazil. It's an outstanding jurisdiction to be doing business. We've got a very strong focus on critical minerals right now. It does come with the benefit of having generally low carbon footprint and very strong ESG credentials based on the fact that the national grid in Brazil runs off principally hydropower. The risking steps that we've undertaken have allowed us to get all of the key permits in place ready to build the project, and we're now on the pathway to making an investment decision hopefully by the end of September this calendar year. There's been a lot of activity over the last three or four months.
An offtake agreement with Glencore, some very nice debt funding proposals, and I look forward to working through that as we work through the presentation. Just looking at it corporately, and I guessed just to have in a back of your mind, in a context, we're about $235 million market cap. As Greg said earlier, we're listed on the exchange in Australia as our principal listing, but also with the OTC. There's about $ 20 million odd in the bank at the end of the March quarter, and we are really looking to this project with the enthusiasm that comes with having someone who has built these projects before. I'd just like to turn your attention to this slide with the recent key appointment of Thiago Costa.
Thiago's been with us for about six weeks now. Comes with an amazing pedigree in building projects in Brazil for international companies. Probably the most recent appointment that is very critical to us was his appointment as Project Director of Ero Copper's Tucumã project, which is only about 40 km from Jaguar. I'll show you that on a map in a sec. Overall, we've got the team in place. We've got the project credentials, and really now it's all about the funding. Brazil, it's becoming a critical mineral powerhouse. You would have seen that over, probably over the last few days. A lot of companies presenting with Brazil as their key jurisdiction. The Brazil government is doing a lot to advance critical minerals, and we fall very fairly and squarely within that category.
Where we are located in the northern part of Brazil, allows a 15% tax rate, which obviously goes to the huge economic benefits that come through in the project economics. I touched upon it earlier, but it probably can't be understated, but 80% of the power in the grid in Brazil is coming from renewable sources. Whilst that is fantastic from the ESG footprint perspective, it also delivers very low power costs, which drive to our very low operating costs, which makes us globally competitive and will be globally competitive at every point in the cycle. When you look at the location of where we are, we are in the northern part of Brazil in the State of Pará. It's the Carajás Mineral Province that you see on the map there.
It's probably about 150 km by 100 km. It's dominated by Vale. They have some of the largest mines in the world. Top of screen you see the Salobo mine. You know, it's about 35 million tons a year of throughput producing, I think, around about 250,000 tons of copper and maybe 400,000 ounces of gold. Middle of screen is S11D, which is one of the largest, richest iron ore deposits globally, producing a very high grade 65% iron product. This whole region has got an enormous amount of investment that's being put at it. Vale are spending, I think, in the order of about $12 billion on what they call the Novo Carajás Program.
Really delivers a lot of benefits to others that are operating in that region, like Centaurus, with its Jaguar Project. We are out in the western portion of the Carajás, very close to a project called Onça Puma. That is a project owned by and operated by Vale. It's about 40,000 tons of nickel in ferronickel. Coming from a lateritic source, quite different from Jaguar with us coming from a sulphide source. About 30 km-40 km to the south of us is a project that Ero Copper built and completed in 2024, and that was the project that Thiago Costa built. That was a 4 million ton copper float plant, and we're looking at a 3.5 million ton nickel float plant.
Very similar project development in a similar region to where we are located. The 230 kV national grid runs out to the Onça Puma operations and we're going to spare a line off that to run power into our project. The Carajás has everything that you need. It's got, you know, bigger cities. We've got 3rd-, 4th- generation mining families, well-educated people, sources of power, sources of water, rail access. Everything you need really to develop a quality project that like we're planning at Jaguar. Just touching upon some of the specifics that came out of the study work and, you know, where we see this project going. It's licensed now. We have the environmental licenses. We have the mining leases granted to us.
The mining lease came in October last year. From an approvals point of view, there is nothing further to get. We touched upon the resource previously at sort of 1.2 million tons contained nickel. That's allowed us to put a initial ore reserve together of 400,000 tons of contained nickel metal. That in turn will allow us to generate at least 22,500 tons of nickel over the first seven years, and that probably averages out about 18,500 tons-19,000 tons of nickel over the 15-year project life coming from the open pits. CapEx is about $380 million. Again, very low capital intensity, for 20,000 odds tons of production. Very low relative to a lateritic nickel source.
Again, another really important reason why when you're distinguishing your nickel projects, looking at nickel sulphides is extremely important. The $4.43 per pound all-in sustaining cost was particularly important as we were talking to off-takers. What we needed to demonstrate that even though we have a large resource base and mine life, and a very good production profile, we needed to show that we would always be in the market, that we wouldn't be dropping in and out as prices moved up and down. At $4.43 per pound on a payable basis, we've got a lot of buffer, a lot of margin. We sit at the bottom end of the cost curve. That's, you know, really been quite important in the discussions that we've had to date.
What that does is deliver very strong economics, from a net present value perspective, about AUD 1.15 billion. As I guess I'd refer that back to where we sit from a market cap point of view. There's plenty of wriggle room there. Licensing, Brazil does it really well in the sense that it's a well-known pathway. You complete an environmental impact assessment. You get issued with a preliminary license. You make your Installation License application, which takes a little while, but you get that approved. We have both of those environmental approvals. That has also allowed the mining lease to be issued. We've got that for the project. We've got that for the power line route. We have mining easements over the power line route and over the project itself.
We have land where the project is located, we're doing an enormous amount in the local community, training up people, getting ready for the construction phase. Really, Centaurus right now, it's about moving into that development, really tied to the funding. The next piece is that resource. I touched upon it earlier. It's very rare that you get the grades that we have in an open pit. A lot of the time you might have higher grade deposits, but they will generally be from an underground source. What we are looking at is relatively high grade for the size and scale of the operation. The goal there is the Measured and Indicated component of the resource. We have nearly 1 million tons of contained nickel metal sitting in the Measured and Indicated Resource. It's a very large resource.
We're not doing any more drilling right now. The deposit is very well drilled out, with a high level of confidence in the mineralogy. What you see on screen now is the outline of the pits. Those pits run for about 3 km of strike extent. There's a little pot of ore further to the north by about, you know, a kilometer away. The combination of those two is what's driving the 400,000 tons that's in the reserve. We do see mineralization sitting under the pits. That is not in the project economics that are presented to you today. We do believe that there will be mineralization below the pits that will be able to come and be economic for the project and expand and extend mine life.
On the resource basis, there's about 300,000 tons of contained nickel metal sitting in those underground locations, which, once we do further work, we'll look to bring that into reserves. Project profile, as I touched upon, it was a 15-year project life, 3.5 mi llion ton per annum throughput. The early stage of the project's sort of running in that sort of around 0.85% feed grade. What you see at the bottom half of that is then the production profile, about 22,500 tons of nickel for the first, seven-odd year
It does drop down a little bit at year nine, to around about 16,000, 17,000 tons of nickel. That's where we potentially see the underground being able to come in and pop that back above the 20,000 odds tons of nickel. We really look at Jaguar as being a project that can produce 20,000 tons of contained nickel, do that for over 20 years. There wouldn't be too many projects globally that would be able to say that they could do that. Process flow sheet is a very simple process flow sheet. It's got a nothing overly complicated about it. There's no tech to it. It's a very traditional float plant. What we do have, though, is a nickel sulphide species here that is very high tenor in nickel.
It's what they call a millerite. That millerite, when you float that off, does deliver very high-grade nickel concentrate. The high-grade nickel concentrate means that we can have our contained nickel in a much smaller volume of concentrate, which benefits us from a logistics perspective. Really, another reason why we're able to deliver the project for a very low all-in sustaining cost. That's where that sits on the cost curve. All those gray bars are the lateritic sources of nickel. The green bars are the sulphide sources. You can just get a visual picture that way that there's not that many sulphide sources of ore globally anymore. The bottom end of the curve is Norilsk with its PGE credits.
Centaurus and the Jaguar Project is very well placed at the bottom end of that curve and can compete very comfortably with Indonesia on a day in, day out basis. As I touched upon before, the grid in Brazil is what enables the power costs to be very cheap. We're looking at around about $ 0.04 a kilowatt- hour for our power, which does make Brazil very globally competitive when it comes to operating costs. That flat line on the curve is where our costs are. What we've looked at through the study work, and what you can see is the nickel price over the last 20 years has never really been below that point.
What we've been trying to do is continue to de-risk the project over the last two or three years while the nickel price has been down, because we do know when nickel prices turn, they can turn very aggressively, and we want to be in a position where we can capture all of that economic benefit when that happens. You know, we're already starting to see the signs. You know, nickel price was $ 15,000 a ton at the end of last year, and now we're already back or up above $ 9,000 a ton with a few restraints being made by the Indonesian market, and some of the cost increases that have occurred in that market. From a cash flow point of view, this is the same, I guess, the 15-year profile just run out.
At these nickel prices where we are today, we'd be expecting around about or above $150 million per year. That's, you know, that is what is compelling. We have a very nice strong NPV for the project. On a 15-year project, you really don't see that full benefit. I think what investors should be looking at is that once we've got through this funding, and if you've got any belief in the ability to get the debt and equity in place, which we strongly do, then all of a sudden you avail yourself to these cash flow streams, and they are gonna be significant over a long period of time. Right now it's all about funding.
We completed an offtake agreement with Glencore for about a third of the production maybe, 8-10 weeks ago. That has been very important in, I guess, shining a light on the project again and credentializing it a little bit. We've got the other 2/3 of our production profile still available for us, and that is assisting with our equity funding pathways where we would expect that the groups participating in the balance of that offtake can also bring some equity to the table. The debt funding process is coming along extremely well. We've had a lot of very favorable proposals at the non-binding at this point in time.
A number of proposals over $ 250 million and up to $ 300 odd million, which is allowing us to think about a much smaller equity piece, which obviously is beneficial for all of our shareholders and all of our future shareholders. We're running the equity funding to ground, but it's really gonna all now be tied to completion of the offtake, getting through the debt, getting through the credit approval with the various financiers, and then being able to make an investment decision, come the end of Q3 this year. The schedule looks like that. It's probably gonna be about a two year build once we make the investment decision.
As I touched upon earlier, super excited to have Thiago Costa sort of as our Project Director who is now gonna be driving this schedule home, getting us into production, and really delivering those cash flows that we've been able to show. That's Jaguar at the moment. I'll come back to questions in a sec, but quickly wanted to touch upon our exploration play. It's also in the Carajás Mineral Province. I mean, Centaurus itself has grown up as an explorer. We value exploration. We think it's a very exciting part of the work, and we are genuinely looking to create a profile of opportunity. Yes, most of the focus right now is on Jaguar and on the Nickel Project.
We do see a lot of opportunity for copper in the Carajás Mineral Province as well. We're about 30 km outside of the township or the city of Parauapebas. Parauapebas, about 250,000 people. We've been doing early stage exploration work. We've had some initial success there. We've acquired a second piece of tenure immediately to the north of our original tenure late last year, and we're really now working through the low-level work of soils, doing some magnetics, doing some fixed loop electromagnetics. We've already seen from the soils work, there's a couple of anomalies that are running over 2 km of strike.
The aim is to build up more targets there and then get the drill rigs back in July or August this year, and continue out the drill out of this project and really see this as a neat opportunity filling the pipeline that we've got or that's been created by what we're doing with Jaguar. We've got a very important Tier 1 scale asset on our hands at Jaguar. The cash flows that we can generate once we're in production are gonna be enormous. The financing pathway right now is super exciting. I feel like we're moving through that with a lot of gathering pace. The offtake with Glencore set the tone.
We've got a lot of inbound inquiry and I guess interest in that remaining piece of the offtake, which again, should help us get through the equity funding. The debt is exciting in that it's probably of a size that is gonna put a very big dent in the equity component that we need, and we're really tracking well through to the investment decision. I'll leave it there right now. Got about 10 minutes left, and really just look forward to opening up for some questions. I'll just have a quick read of those as they come up on the screen. The first question is, as you head to investment decision in September, what's one of the milestones that you think is still under appreciated that could really move the dial for Centaurus?
I think there's a couple of things in that. I think the remaining piece of the offtake will be extremely important because I think it will show where the rest of that volume goes. That also helps the debt financiers. I think the secondary piece right now is gonna be around getting the credit approved term sheets there. If I looked at it more broadly, I just think that nickel, even though it's moved up quite strongly, is still not that well understood in the market.
It's been a commodity that's been unloved for probably two or three years. I think that there's as the price stays up, with all the things that are going on in Indonesia, there will be more and more eyeballs on it. I think that that's where we see some significant upside coming for Centaurus. What else have we got here? There's one here on, given the high grade 30% nickel concentrate that we are targeting. Sorry, where's that moved it? Have you had inbound interest from downstream battery and OEM groups since the Glencore deal was announced? We've definitely had a lot of inbound inquiry since that Glencore thing came out. I think it was, you know, as I said previously, I think Glencore credentialized the project somewhat.
They're a great group to deal with. They're one of the biggest, you know, mining groups globally. We're looking to get that, I guess the volume that we contracted with them up into their Sudbury operations. I think that's led to a number of other customers, potential customers, coming in. What I would say is it's not so much OEM interest directly. I think the OEMs going upstream into the mining space right now have probably slowed down somewhat compared to maybe three years ago. I think the OEMs were really playing a part, but it's more into your sort of midstream type groups that are looking into the offtake agreements. What else?
The company's already secured all key permits, including the mining lease and the LP and the LI, plus land access, local training. What are the remaining de-risking steps before you can comfortably pull the FID trigger? Look, that's really all to do with funding. We now have everything in place from a funding point of view. Sorry, to make the funding decision. We have all the licenses. We've, you know, we're well down the pathway on the engineering. Basic engineering is now being completed in Australia. That's all transitioning now into the, I guess, what I'd call the true project development team in Brazil.
Yeah, look, to make that, I guess pulling of the trigger for FID, it's just about putting that last piece of the offtake together, getting the credit approved term sheets from the debt providers, and then closing out the equity balance. Once we've got that funding in place, you know, we're full steam ahead. Nickel forecasts are now calling for a deficit in 2026 while Indonesian laterite supply faces growing ESG scrutiny. Do you see Jaguar evolving into a go-to non-Indonesian nickel sulphide source for Western parties? I think that is definitely on the cards. I think we've always been a project that people have been looking to source nickel from a non-Indonesian source of supply.
I think the operating costs for Jaguar are extremely attractive because with that we know that we are always gonna be in the market. We're not gonna be dropping in or out. As I said, we sit at the bottom end of the cost curve. But I think the other side of it is, you know, it's not by, it's not like the reason we went to Brazil, but we do get the benefit of a very low carbon footprint associated with producing nickel in Brazil, and that's not just specific to nickel. It could be any other commodity that's accessing power on the grid in Brazil, that you have this natural benefit of a very low carbon footprint.
A lot of the groups that we speak to are all about trying to diversify their supply a little bit, you know, blend some ores with some of their Indonesian stuff, have a source of supply that's available into a different jurisdiction from what is currently dominated by the Indonesian market. Right. What else? On valuation, do you feel the market cap gives any real credit to the 15-year production profile in the Tier 1 jurisdiction, or is Jaguar still being priced like a mid-tier development asset? Look, I guess most managing directors will say this, that their projects are undervalued. I think ours is probably undervalued, not so much because of those things, but probably because we're still going through the funding phase.
This is where I think there's a real opportunity for investors that if you believe, you know, with the things that we've already done and that the things that we can actually complete in the next sort of four to five months, if those are all going to happen, then we should see a very significant re-rate. I expect with nickel price going up and as we do more and more of the de-risking steps with Jaguar, that our valuation will continue to rise into that sort of first stage work. I think the 15-year production profile and the Tier 1 jurisdictions do help with the getting the off-takers in. It's maybe a part of the rationale on valuation, but I think really right now it's going to be a flip the switch.
Once you actually get funded, you're gonna get the re-rate, until you've actually got funded, you probably don't get the re-rate. You know, it's really about playing that game right now of getting through and completing the funding pathway and then we'll be well and truly on track. Probably got time for one more question. LME nickel has bounced off the lows and high-grade sulphide feed like Jaguar is getting scarcer. How much pricing leverage do you think you have in the remaining 70% of that that isn't contracted? Look, I think nickel sulphide concentrates are generally priced in a very consistent way. They have been over a period of time.
What we do have is a very high-grade con, it's which has some logistic advantages, not only for us, but also for the customers that ultimately buy that nickel. We will likely see the benefit of that come through in the payables that are applied to the concentrate. The only problem is that most of the time the counterparties that you deal with on those payables really don't want those disclosed because it's such a, I guess, a relatively small market. There's not that many players. The deals that you do, we as a company just need to be comfortable with them.
If we're comfortable with them and do those deals, then you should have a lot of confidence that we've been able to leverage the situation to get the right pricing that we need for our concentrate. All I can say is with the Glencore contract, it's very consistent with what we used in our economic assessment. Feeling very comfortable about what we've been able to achieve to date and what we can achieve moving forward. That's me probably out of time. Thank you again everyone for taking the opportunity to listen to the Centaurus story. If you need to get hold of us, it's www.centaurus.com.au, or you can sort of call through the office with the details on our webpage. Thanks again.