Good morning. My name is John O'Court. I'm the CFO of EQ Resources, and we are a significant tungsten producer in the world. The usual disclaimer before we begin for this presentation, and if you want full disclosures, we just ask you to refer to the website and our section announcers as we walk through today's presentation. Tungsten market, what makes it so special? It's a critical mineral. It's seen as one of the most critical minerals within Australia, the European Union, and the U.S. The reserves, the global reserves are 3.7 million tons, with annual production of about 79,000- 80,000 tons. It's a very small market in terms of volumes. Within that, restricted countries, when we talk restricted countries, we talk China, Russia, and North Korea. They make up about 87% of total production, 63% of the global reserves.
What we're seeing is substantial geopolitical tensions that are driving the price. For example, last year, the U.S. Department of Defense is banning Chinese imports from January 1, 2027. In addition, China has also banned its exports at this point in time. What you're seeing is 83% of the tungsten market disappearing to the Western world. You can see in the graph on the top over there, in the last six months, you've seen a production, a sale price increase per MTU of approximately 40%. You're starting to see prices of about $450 an MTU and above. There have been long-term forecasts that have expected a decline in production or a large supply gap. We're hoping that we'll see that unfold, and this could be the potential of that pricing impact between demand and supply. What's tungsten uses? It's a very small market. It's a bespoke market.
The big thing about tungsten is it has a very high melting point. It's the highest melting point of all metals. It's got incredible hardness as well as significant density, which makes it very hard to be substituted in an efficient manner. The key industries that use it, you're looking at defenses increasing, industrial uses increasing, mining and construction is increasing it. To give you some sense and some specific examples, tungsten is used in armor-piercing ammunition, CT scanners, semiconductors, and even golf clubs for the people out there who enjoy their golf. We see significant opportunity within that tungsten market as the supply chains tighten up. EQ Resources, that's one of the, I guess, what we had to talk about. Our current market capitalization is $108 million, and in the 12 months ending 31 March 2025, we produce 1,700 tons.
Just to put that into perspective, global production is about 81,000 tons, and 13% and 83% of that is coming out of China, or is remaining in China. We see ourselves as a significant producer at this point in time. Over the last six months, we have raised substantial capital. We've raised $24.6 million, and the target there was to reduce debt. We've paid down some debt at one of our assets in Spain by €5 million, provide working capital, and to continue our progress in the developments of both our assets of Barruecopardo in Spain, as well as Mount Carbine in Queensland. In July 2025, just this month, we received a letter of interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States , where there's an opportunity to potentially fund us up to $34 million U.S. at a 10-year debt facility period. That would be to progress the developments of Mount Carbine.
That's something that we'll now continue to progress over the coming months to see where we go. Operations. In Spain, Saloro is the entity that owns our asset there. What you can see is it's located up in the northwest of Spain in a very tungsten-rich region. It's got a long history. Before EQ Resources acquired it in January 2024, a substantial amount of investments had been put into it. Today, as we stand, it has a seven-year mine life with extension opportunities, potentially underground, and also to nearby tenements. One of the key challenges that, or one of the key focus areas for the business has been to increase the ore recoveries from sort of 30s up into the 60s and 70s %. It is very conducive to ore sorting, and we've installed two ore sorters, and the third one is being installed as we speak.
We should start to see those recoveries. We're seeing 60% as now, and they will continue to improve. The current production is about 1,300 tons or 130,000 MTUs per year and climbing. All in all, the in-situ reserves are 4.4 million MTUs, and the pricing, as I mentioned, is by MTU, which is a 10 kilo trading unit for tungsten. In Mount Carbine, it's located just out the back of Port Douglas. It's about 100 or so kilometers outside northwest of Cairns. It's a producing asset. Its mine life is 19, has a 19-year mining permit, and we've spent approximately $50 million to date in developing the asset. The minimum at the moment, the minimum mine life is about eight years, and that only uses 19% of its known resources. Those resources are 9.4 million MTUs, which is in 10 kilos or 943,000 tons of tungsten oxide.
We've also secured the Wolfram Camp just here, which is in reasonable proximity. It's in reasonable proximity to our existing Mount Carbine, and that will give us long-term options around development and progressing the mine plan over the years. We are targeting an increase to approximately 1,700 tons to come out of Mount Carbine, but we've still got a bit of a way to go there to achieve that. In terms of where we are and where we're at and the opportunities that we're seeing in the marketplace, you said the market's substantially tightening. With operations both in Spain and Australia, we've been able to develop some very good partnerships and collaborations through the international marketplace. Some of these key ones really focus on Vietnam. In Vietnam, there's some of the largest ferro-tungsten processing plants outside of China.
We've got collaboration there with H.C. Starck , Masan High-Tech Materials and H.C. Starck , to continue to develop our market position within the globe. We have ongoing collaboration with Almonty Industries , which uses tungsten in producing its equipment and tools. That's really giving us great opportunities to funding. We've got a currently, we have a grant application in place with the U.S. government and combined with Almonty. I think the other key thing to mention about Almonty and some of our other U.S. customers is that to have access to the Export-Import Bank of the United States and funding facilities, we need to really meet the supply chain initiatives requirements. That ultimately means two things. One is you either are selling into the U.S. and you have U.S. customers or that you're buying U.S. equipment. We're meeting those requirements and that's what's creating us our opportunities to potentially secure some funding out of the U.S.
at very competitive pricing. The last one to mention, and it's been, I guess, announced previously, just around the Tungsten Metals Group. If we talk about global production of 81,000 around the world, 83% is coming out of China. Call that 67,000. There's ballpark 14,000 tons of tungsten floating in the marketplace in the Western supply chain. The Tungsten Metals Group owns the largest ferro-tungsten smelter outside of China, and that's approximately 4,000, has a capacity of 4,000 tons. That creates quite a significant market share opportunity if we are able to secure that as we move forward. Those really create substantial vertical integration for EQ Resources as we get our mines up and running to where we need them to be. Why invest in us? We've got two significant expandable operations that are operating in very well-known historical tungsten-rich regions.
The strong market outlook, so we think we're very bullish on the market. We're seeing substantial supply chain shortages coming through in the West and continuing demand for tungsten. We have secured off-takes, so we absolutely have those, but they are at spot pricing. It gives us an opportunity to ride the wave of any pricing that moves forward. We have our customers that are in the United States, Europe, and Asia. That ability and the locations of our operations really give us options around sustainable funding solutions with institutions such as the Export-Import Bank of the United States and others. We're in talks with many various financial institutions to give us opportunities to continue the development of our two operations to be expandable and really generate significant cash flows.
We believe that we've got a genuine focus on ESG performance, and we have a history, particularly at Saloro in Spain, and we'll start to see that coming in Mount Carbine as it starts to produce. Thank you very much, everybody, for your time. We greatly appreciate it. Big thanks.