Is starting to materially decline from 2025. So we live in this world. We have a very constrained primary supply. We have no firm commitments into material investments into that new supply. So what does that mean? That means that the copper price has to materially increase to incentivise new supply. And personally, I think copper has to go between $6 and $8. I've been saying this for a couple of years. It's yet to happen. And you see more pundits in the sector have that. And at Hot Chili, we have a project that has a number of, I think, unique characteristics. We're in one of the top 20 undeveloped in size projects in the world that is currently in the hands of a single asset developer.
And we have some unique qualities of the asset in terms of permitting and water, which I'm going to touch on throughout this presentation. So I think we're all here today looking at investment opportunities. Juniors in our sector do their utmost to show how undervalued they are on a relative basis. Ultimately, our aim is to become fairly valued, if not overvalued. And so what I hope to do throughout this presentation is to demonstrate to you how we hope to get the material value of our assets reflected, the intrinsic value inflected into the market valuation, and hopefully with the aim of moving to the left on this chart. So Hot Chili has Costa Fuego, which is located in low elevation Chile. We are a sizable deposit, very conventional, conventional open pit and conventional processing. Released a PEA mid-last year that had very, very strong economics.
Really, those strong economics are driven by two key reasons: the amount of effort that the management team has invested in terms of permitting, but also our location, location, location, location. We benefit from a wealth of existing infrastructure. We're 50 kilometers from the coast in low-elevation Chile. There's a direct correlation between elevation and size of CAPEX and OPEX in Chile. On the permitting side, we've invested in excess of 10 years in advancing permitting activity through and including surface rights and easements for most of our embedded infrastructure. This is material time investment. On the water side of things, I think we all know that if there's no water, there's no project. In Chile, water, it's a very water-scarce country. You can no longer extract water from continental sources, so that's from aquifers or rivers.
Your only water solution is a marine concession, and we have one of those, and that was an extremely long duration in terms of permitting. We have a very clean concentrate. We live in a world where concentrates globally are moving towards more deleterious elements, mostly in the form of arsenic, so we have a very, very valuable concentrate in terms of its ability to be used for downblending purposes with problematic concs. The company has a history of adding value through consolidation and then extracting further value by smart exploration, and we continue to do this. As Jonathan said with our announcement today with the acquisition of the La Verde project, which we've already begun drilling, two drill holes have been completed with visuals that look promising, and assays will be forthcoming. The company is listed in Australia with a secondary listing in the TSX.
We have a very strong balance sheet at around AUD 26 million, and we are actively looking at alternative funding sources within our own property portfolio, mainly around a water business that is now called Huasco Water, which I'll touch on, so in terms of the project status, as I said, it's completed a PEA last year, we're in the final throes of completing a PFS with a due in Q1 of next year, so with companies around the world, it's not just completing your economic study, so once that's completed, it's all of the other things that can point towards you becoming a developer in a short period of time or a longer period of time, and so back to what this company has done in the last 10 years, it's spent an enormous effort to de-risk the advancement of Costa Fuego from a permitting perspective.
That's permitting rights-of-way. It's permitting surface infrastructure. We have a granted maritime concession, which is a very strategic asset. We have the final tie-in into the local grid. It's road accessible. We're low elevation. We've executed an MOU with a local port, so we do not have to build a port and are in the throes of completing an economic study with respect to upgrading that port for future concentrate supply. Perhaps most critically, our concentrate is not fully committed. Glencore has a sizable investment in the company. They're a 7.5% shareholder. They have the right to 60% of our concentrate for the first eight years of the life of mine, but only if they maintain an ownership of above 7.5% in the company. We have a concentrate that has a lot of qualities that make it very, very desirable to those smelters, refiners, and traders.
This is just showing the evolution of the resource. The resource has grown sizably over the last 13 years, but over the last four years is up 79%. Over 85% of the resource is in the indicated category, and this is forming the basis of the pre-feasibility study, which is due to be released in Q1 of next year. What we're showing on the right are the two main production hubs of the asset with a central processing facility. And again, conventional mining, predominantly open pit, and conventional processing, small amount of oxide production, and predominantly concentrate. So where do we sit versus our peers? We are one of the largest top 20 of undeveloped copper projects in the world that are in the hands of a single asset company.
On the PEA side of things, it's economically very robust, using $3.85 copper and $1,750 per ounce of gold, with a relatively low build, around $1-$1.1 billion, and the question that we get post-release of the PEA is, you seem to have a low CAPEX versus the size of the project, and once again, the reason for that is location, location, location, so we have existing infrastructure. We don't have to build a desalination plant. The orebody is amenable to seawater processing. We're 50 kilometers from the coast. We don't have to build a port. There is an abundance of existing roads. There's local communities that are drive-in, drive-out, so all of these things help benefit us from a CAPEX and an OPEX perspective. Exceptional leverage to the copper price.
Based on the PEA, for every $0.10 move in the copper price above $3.85, there's a $100 million increase in NPV. So if you like copper and you like leverage, Hot Chili has it. In terms of capital intensity, I have probably mentioned this at least three times in this presentation so far, but this is just showing our peers and where we sit on a capital intensity basis versus per tonne of copper produced. So really what this shows is that you want to be at the bottom end of this table, and we're in the right quadrant. I think this shows the unique quality that we have versus many of our peers. And so this chart shows evaluation of all the development projects that we would put in our peer group and whether or not they have water.
So the ones that have a water license is us in the gray and Hillside. So as one of our Chilean employees says, no water, no project. So it doesn't matter how good your project is. It doesn't matter how far along you get on the permitting pathway. Without water, you don't have a project. And that's the case anywhere, everywhere in the world. So what the company did was 10 years ago, realize that water was exogenous risk. And this was at a time when you could permit extraction through aquifer and riverine sources. You can no longer do that in Chile. So 10 years ago, they made that decision to start the permitting process. And it took 10 years. You're dealing with plus 24 regulatory bodies, the Chilean Navy, multiple stakeholders. It took 10 years not because we're bad at permitting.
It took 10 years because that's how long it takes. And so anybody that needs water that's within a development project in Chile that doesn't have water today and needs to permit it, you're looking at a plus 10 year time horizon. So not only have we secured the water license, we've secured all the right-of-way concessions. And all of these have been spun into a separate company that we've called Huasco Water. And we own that 80% with CMP, a 20% holder who are our partners in Productora. And so what does this mean? What is the value of this? And how we look at this water business is not that we're going to build Huasco Water. We see it as a potential funding optionality to fund the copper project. And so what is it worth? We are going through that process to understand that today.
In completing a feasibility study, pre-feasibility study, which is due in Q1 next year. Recently, Antofagasta, which are about 600 km to the north with their Centinela mine, announced, and they too are a mine that uses seawater for processing, and they announced a transaction with a consortium where they sold their water rights. Water rights are the same that we have, but they also had piping infrastructure. They sold their water rights and piping infrastructure for $600 million. Now, why are infrastructure firms interested in this kind of asset class? It's essentially a perpetual asset class. Our water license is currently for 50 years. You have the right to expand that time horizon, and also you have the right to expand your water license. We're in the process of doing that.
Even though we do not require desalination, we're going through a permitting process to permit a desalination plant. In doing so, we think we have a very, very compelling business case that entities that would be interested in investing in a long-lived asset class would have some interest in. This is just a map showing all the copper-gold development projects that are within a 150 kilometer radius of us. Most of those will need desalination water. If you're looking at this as a business opportunity, and none of them have a water license today. Again, that's a plus-10-year time horizon. Really the key news events going forward is the release of our PFS for the water business and the PFS for our copper business concurrently. We think those assets need to be looked at together and also separately.
Drill results coming out from La Verde, and then advancing for the submission of our EIA, our key environmental license in mid-next year. And the basis of the EIA application will be the pre-feasibility study, just showing where La Verde is. And this is really the culmination of probably eight years of intensive efforts. So it's a culmination of projects that were privately owned, that were exploited for copper oxide resources, and had some contiguous projects. We've consolidated those. We've done this before, where we've considered it as a case in point where they had shallow oxide and haven't been drilled for sulfide. So we think this is a great exploration opportunity, and results will be forthcoming. So to end, we are unique, I think, in the copper developer space because we have a project that can be brought online in a timely manner.
We have de-risked enormously from permitting. We have water, and not only do we have water, we have water that could constitute a business that we hope to create value from in an agenda funding to help advance our copper project. We are located in a jurisdiction where you can advance projects in a timely manner. Obviously, Chile is the largest copper producer in the world. We have a management team and board that's got a lot of experience both in building and operating copper mines, but also ensuring that we have the appropriate level of local expertise, so every single employee of ours in Chile is Chilean, and we have a Chilean national on the board. We have a substantial resource base, and we think that we aim to grow that over time through future consolidation, and we have a very, very clear pathway to investment decision.
Now, unfortunately for us, we're in that part of the Lassonde curve. We're a developer. You don't necessarily get rewarded for being a developer unless you're in a crazy bull market. But we think that with the copper price heading in the direction that it absolutely needs to head to incentivize new production and the short timelines to production, plus the potential alpha that can be generated from exploration results, that Hot Chili is a rare beast indeed. Thank you very much. Thank you.