Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2024 Annual General Meeting for Hot Chili Limited, both in person and online virtually. My name is Christian Easterday. I'm the CEO and Managing Director of the company, and I'll be chairing the meeting today. At this point, I would like to introduce my fellow directors attending via Teams and visible on the screen behind me:
Dr. Nicole Adshead-Bell, and our non-executive chair, Mr. Stephen Quin, our non-executive director, and Mr. Mark Jamieson, also a non-executive director. I've received apologies from non-executive director Mr. Roberto de Andraca Adriasola, and also our Vice President of Chile, José Ignacio Silva. Our company's Secretary, Carol Marinkovich, to my right; our COO, Grant King, to my left; and our Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Finkelstein, also to my left.
They're also present with us today, along with Niki Wayne, our Perth Office Manager, and other members of our staff. Attending through Teams, we have Bryan Ting of RSM, who is representing our auditors in today's meeting, and also Will Moncrieff, Hot Chili's Australian Chief Legal Counsel, also in attendance virtually today. I would also like to introduce Rod Somes of Computershare Investor Services, who is assisting with the proceedings today. As there are at least two eligible members present in person or by proxy, we have the necessary quorum to proceed with the meeting.
I therefore formally declare the 2024 Hot Chili Annual General Meeting open at 9:33 A.M. Thank you, Carol. Your attendance will have been registered by the team at the front door on your entry for those attending in person. If you have not done so, however, please raise your hand.
I think we have one shareholder here in attendance outside of our staff shareholders. Please ensure any mobile phones are turned off or switched to silent during the proceedings. For our online attendees, you have been muted to ensure there is no background noise. I confirm that the Notice of Annual General Meeting, which was lodged with the ASX on the 25th of October 2024 and distributed to shareholders, is to be taken as read.
There will be no formal shareholder presentation today, proceeding, or after formal business of this meeting. However, I will be providing an informal update on the company's current activities and our next key milestones of the coming months ahead, as outlined in recent publicly released ASX and TSXV announcements. This informal update will be given following closure of the meeting. All resolutions will be voted on by way of a poll.
People who are entitled to vote on the resolutions are all shareholders, proxy holders, corporate representatives, and attorneys of shareholders that are physically present in the room. There is no online voting. If there is any person present who believes they are entitled to vote but do not have a voting card, would you please speak with Carol or Rod Somes?
For each resolution, I will show the status of valid proxy votes that have been received by Computershare as at 9:30 A.M. Australian Western Standard Time on Tuesday, the 26th of November 2024, and how the proxy votes are to be cast on that resolution. The proxy votes can be seen on the screen. For the purposes of the poll, I appoint Rod Somes to act as returning officer and to conduct the poll.
Shareholders that have already submitted a vote by proxy should note that your votes will already be counted towards the poll. You do not need to lodge another vote unless you wish to change your proxy instruction. I declare that the poll is now open. If you are a shareholder or a proxy holder, please place a mark in either the for, against, or abstain box next to each resolution. After all resolutions have been read and voted on, please pass your voting slip to Rod Somes, who will be collecting the voting cards at the end of this meeting.
Are there any questions in relation to the voting process? There are no questions. Then I'll continue. Proxies have been inspected, and all those validly lodged have been accepted. Proxies have been received representing 22.26% of the issued capital of the company. All undirected proxies are open votes that have nominated the chair of the meeting as their proxy. These will be cast in favor of each resolution. There will be an opportunity to ask questions of the board as they relate to the formal items of the business of this meeting.
We ask that shareholders advise their names so that the board can properly address the shareholder. All questions in the first instance should be directed to myself as chair of the meeting, and for our online participants, please use the Q&A function. I'll now move to the formal items of business to be discussed.
I confirm that all shareholders have been provided with a copy of the company's annual report and financial statements, which comprise the statement of financial position, cash flow statement, and statement of financial performance, as well as the reports of the directors and auditors for the financial year ended 30th of June 2024. There is no resolution required. No written questions to the auditor under Section 250R(a) of the Corporations Act have been received.
As previously noted, Bryan Ting of RSM is present online at today's meeting, and in accordance with the Corporations Act, he is available through the chair to answer questions relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation and consent of the auditor's report. I now ask shareholders if there are any questions or comments regarding the financial statements and reports, including any questions as to the audit and the auditor's report.
As there are no questions, we will proceed to the resolutions set out in the Notice of Annual General Meeting. Resolution One, Adoption of Remuneration Report. Resolution One is a non-binding advisory resolution which relates to adoption of the remuneration report as detailed on the screen.
The proxies received in relation to this resolution are on the screen. As you can see, for the resolution, 92.81% of proxies received have been voted for the resolution. 0.25% have been voted at proxies discretion, and 6.94% of proxies received have been voted against the resolution. Those abstaining represent 284,918 votes. Ar e there any questions or questions about this resolution?
No. I confirm all undirected proxies will be cast in favor of this motion. As mentioned, voting on this resolution will be by poll to be conducted at the end of the meeting. Yeah. We will now move to Resolution Two. Resolution Two, Re-election of Director Dr. Nicole Adshead-Bell. Resolution Two is an ordinary resolution which relates to the re-election of non-executive director Dr. Nicole Adshead-Bell, as detailed on the screen. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are outlined on the screen.
96.38% have voted in favor. 0.25% have voted at proxies discretion. 3.37% of votes received have voted against the resolution. Those abstaining represent 61,565 votes. Are there any comments or questions about this resolution? I confirm all undirected proxies will be cast in favor of this motion. As mentioned, voting on this resolution will be by poll to be conducted at the end of this meeting.
Moving now to Resolution Three, Re-election of Director Mr. Christian Easterday. Myself. As the resolution relates to myself, I'll hand the chair over to Ms. Carol Marinkovich to read the resolution.
Thanks, Christian. Resolution Three is an ordinary resolution which relates to the re-election of Director Christian Easterday, as detailed on the screen. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are also shown on the screen. So for the resolution, we've received 82.73%, proxies discretion 0.25%, against the resolution 17.02%, and in abstaining 55.67%. Are there any comments or questions in relation to this resolution?
Thank you. I confirm all undirected proxies will be cast in favor of this motion. As mentioned, voting on this resolution will be by poll to be conducted at the end of the meeting. Thank you. We'll now move to Resolution Four, and we'll hand the chair back to Christian.
Thank you, Carol. Resolution Four, Re-election of Director Mr. Roberto de Andraca Adriasola. Thank you. Resolution Four is an ordinary resolution which relates to the re-election of Director Roberto de Andraca Adriasola, as detailed on the screen. Proxies received in relation to this resolution are also outlined on the screen. For the resolution, 83.37% have been voted in favor, at proxies discretion 0.25%, and against the resolution 16.38%. Those abstaining representing 61,565 votes.
Are there any comments or questions about this resolution? I confirm all undirected proxies will be cast in favor of this motion, and as mentioned previously, voting on this resolution will be by poll to be conducted at the end of the meeting. We'll move now to Resolution Five, Facing through them, Carol. The re-election of Director Mr. Mark Jamieson.
Resolution Five is an ordinary resolution which relates to the re-election of Director Mark Jamieson, as detailed on the screen. Proxies received in relation to this resolution are also outlined on the screen. Those voted for the resolution, 81.72%, at proxy's discretion 0.95%, and against the resolution 17.33%. Those abstaining representing 278,045 votes. Are there any comments or questions about this resolution?
I confirm all undirected proxies will be cast in favor of this motion, and as mentioned previously, voting on this resolution will be by poll and conducted at the end of this meeting. Moving on to our final resolution, Resolution Six, Re-election of Director Mr. Stephen Quin. Sorry, my apologies. Resolution Six is an ordinary resolution which relates to the re-election of Director Stephen Quin, as detailed on the screen. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are also outlined on the screen.
Those voting for the resolution represent 95.09%, at proxy's discretion 0.56%, and those voting against the resolution 4.35%. Those abstaining represent 278,045 votes. Are there any comments or questions about this resolution? I confirm all undirected proxies will be cast in favor of this motion. As mentioned, voting on this resolution is by poll and conducted at the end of the meeting. Moving on to Resolution Seven, Approval of Auditor.
Resolution Seven is an ordinary resolution which relates to the re-election of the company's auditor, as detailed on the screen. Proxies received in relation to this resolution are also outlined on the screen. Those voting for the resolution represent 96.74%, at proxy's discretion 0.26%, and against the resolution 3%. Those abstaining 304,147 votes. Are there any comments or questions on this resolution?
I confirm all undirected proxies will be cast in favor of this motion, and as mentioned, voting on this resolution will be by poll and conducted at the end of the meeting. Moving on now to Resolution Eight. Final Resolution, Approval of Additional Placement Capacity, Placement Facility. Resolution Eight is a special resolution which relates to the approval of the company having an additional 10% placement capacity, as detailed on the screen. Proxies received in relation to this resolution are outlined on the screen.
Those voting for the resolution representing 84.95%, at proxies' discretion 0.29%, and against the resolution 14.76%. Those abstaining from this resolution representing 133,766 votes. Are there any comments or questions about this resolution? No. I confirm all undirected proxies will be cast in favor of this motion. As noted, we are conducting this by poll on all resolutions.
Please complete the voting paper now by marking a box beside each motion for either for, against, or abstain, and then signing the paper once completed. Please hand all cards to Rod. Okay. Excellent. Have all persons that intend to vote submitted the cards? Yes. There being nothing further, I declare the poll closed. Rod will now process the poll, and the results will be announced to the ASX once they are available. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the formal part of the meeting, and I declare the meeting closed.
I take this opportunity to again thank everyone for their attendance and continued support. Management, along with myself, will remain available to answer any questions that shareholders may have. For anyone online, please submit any questions through the Q&A function within the Teams environment. I'll now open the floor to questions.
I think I've had a lot of my questions answered today, right?
In advance of the meeting.
Yes. Yes.
Never had those discussions before the meeting.
Yes.
Fantastic. Excellent. So we have a first question, Carol. Did you want to read out the questions, perhaps?
So we have a question from an online participant. Did the company proceed with the auction payment of $1.5 million for AMSA, which was due on the 15th of November?
That auction payment, that at the moment is something that will be announced to the market in due course. It is certainly not a material announcement in respect to market capitalization, nor does it contain any of our resource base, nor does it impact any of our infrastructure. It's something that we're discussing with AMSA, and the outcome of those discussions will be available in the coming weeks to the market. Are there any further questions?
Yes.
Okay. Excellent. Niki, would you please bring up our corporate presentation? I'll be happy to take everyone through an update. We've had some quite material news flow of late, as many of our shareholders are aware. We're entering a very exciting period for the company as we're about to put our two key catalysts into the market in the new year.
One, a Pre-Feasibility for our exciting venture, Huasco Water, which is positioning the company to be able to do something that very few juniors are able to do, which is provide a pathway to be able to fund a very large copper project by monetizing that asset. It's something we've been developing for quite some time, and I'll be happy to discuss that further. But primarily, as a major copper developer on the ASX, our Pre-Feasibility is due in Q1.
Both of those Pre-Feasibilities are being delivered now in parallel. They're both intimately associated with each other, and the timeframes of both. Financing announced a quite significant offtake agreement over a project called La Verde, sitting 30 km to the south in the heart of a new consolidation focus for the company in the Domeyko Mining Centre.
I have another question online.
Thank you.
While you're talking about it. So we have a question online. When will we get results from the 30 km drilling?
From the 30 km drilling? We have a 4,000m drilling program. We have a 30,000m program, which if we added up since we announced that, I imagine we're somewhere around the 23,000m mark by this point. I think the last time we mentioned a 30,000m program to the market was nearly 18 months ago. Certainly, this is a component of that wider drill program, which we outlined to deliver by the end of the Pre-Feasibility. We have a 4,000m RC program, which is underway on La Verde.
As we mentioned in several media interviews during the year, we had raised a significant amount of funds earlier this year, almost at the most opportune time for copper in this annual period, a period where the copper price had risen by almost $1.50 per pound.
We were able to be very well supported by institutional raising, which had some $45 million book billed within a 24-hour period, $ 32 million taken by the company to advance the completion of these Pre-Feasibilities, but also to supply a significant amount of money for that completion of that growth drilling program.
Up until this point, the company was prudently managing those funds and not deploying them until we were able to deploy those to targets which could be rapidly moved into resource development or, alternatively, at a very low risk or a higher probability of success. If we move through the presentation, we can perhaps look at what we've secured at Domeyko. Niki, if you would like to move to our landholding figure on.
We just had the same.
Just stop here.
I'm seeing a couple of questions on historical results.
Yeah. Maybe we can have all the questions at the end, Carol, rather than.
Yeah.
So as we look at just our landholding map here on the coastline of Chile, most of our consolidation efforts have been around the Costa Fuego production hub, Productora, Cortadera, and our smaller San Antonio satellites, sitting with our landholding to the north near Vallenar.
So this landholding to the south that we've been consolidating since April of this year has taken a significant step forward with the addition of the La Verde acquisition, which is, for some reason, not outlined in this presentation, but was outlined in the presentation that was released to market.
This is a key asset that the company has been focusing on securing for about six years and is a very large porphyry footprint. If we move to the La Verde slide, which is hopefully in this presentation, keep moving forward about another eight slides. Yeah, this is the wrong presentation. That's okay.
The La Verde position that you can see there in the center of the landholding is the location of La Verde. The announcement that went to market has a number of summary figures, and perhaps Niki might maybe open the version that's on our website, which is the one that was released to market on our homepage. That is an area that has a historical 800m long open pit that was exploited for oxide historically.
It was an area that had been consolidated by Hudbay, where they had undertaken exploration, but unfortunately didn't have access to the center of what is about a 1.4 km by 1.2 km wide open pit footprint. They'd received a number of very significant drill results, drill results which we've not been able to confirm from our own due diligence.
So the company will not be releasing those results without accurate due diligence. It would be something that the ASX would frown upon. But what we are doing is our own confirmation drilling program, which was for the first time we have access to that entire footprint. And this is really the combination of six years of relationship building with the private family that has owned that lease for nearly 60 years and was not able to be secured by HUDBAY over their time in the area. This is one of the strengths of the company.
This is really a key part of our business development in being able to get our hands on deals that others can't, that majors can't, that mid-tiers can't. And that relationship building has been really driven primarily by our Vice President, José Ignacio, and myself. That has now given us the opportunity to access this porphyry footprint. We have a drill program going on that's about eight drill holes in.
We mentioned in the release that the first three drill holes had hit wide copper porphyry mineralization, and we're very much looking forward to those results being available once the ALS labs can get them back to us. At the moment, ALS turnarounds in Chile are around about the 30-day mark. However, we're also going into the summer period where we have all of the High Andean projects delivering all of their assays to the lab. We're monitoring those, and once they're available, we'll be putting those into the market.
But certainly, it's a very exciting phase we're moving into, and a long wait to get our hands on that asset. As I mentioned also in previous interviews, the asset which Niki is just bringing up on the screen now, you just got past it. Thank you. The asset that Niki is just bringing up here that is outlined on this slide is just part of what we're doing in Domeyko. Our exploration team for the entire year has quietly been building up foundation data sets. We've collected almost 3,000 samples on the ground, both rock, chip, and soil samples.
Conducted extensive magnetic surveys, you can see here. I've done a lot of detailed lithostructural mapping over key areas within the project, but also part of that was our due diligence on the La Verde porphyry system. And so that has really led us into the commencement of our drilling activities, which we would have dearly loved to have been drilling earlier in the year.
But given market conditions, we're certainly being very prudent with the management of our capital. So this means that now we're moving into an area that's got a lot more, I guess, higher probability of success and the ability for the company to add this into our resource growth plans over the coming two years as we approach the completion of our bankable feasibility on the project. So in terms of our timelines, just moving forward now, Niki, and moving past the next two slides towards our timeline slide. Thank you.
You can see that we have a very defined pathway to decision to mine here. We're well funded into 2025 to deliver our key catalysts, which have been pushed into Q1. Huasco Water pre-feasibility has been brought forward from mid-year, and the Costa Fuego pre-feasibility has been delayed to be delivered in tandem with that pre-feasibility. What that has done has given us the ability also to contemplate additional work streams, which we can layer on top to strengthen both of those pre-feasibilities.
We expect those to be delivered in the new year and that to commence our bankable feasibility phase, which has the project being positioned in late 2026 or early 2027 for financing. Also importantly, on top of these two pre-feasibilities, we have an extensive amount of work going on the preparation of our environmental impact assessment.
This is a key permit application. It is our final permit application for the approval of the project to go to mining. It is a long lead time item and something that we are focusing on delivering in the mid-year period of 2025. Those are really our key catalysts coming for the new year. On top of that, obviously, growth drilling occurring.
One of the key aspects of strength in the company is this strategic asset that we've been developing in Huasco Water. So if we just reverse a couple of slides, Niki, and we just start here on Huasco Water. So as most of our shareholders are aware, we've taken all of our water assets that were very long lead time items. I know that this sometimes is maybe confusing for people that might not work in Chile and understand the regulatory environment that Hot Chili understands over there.
We're one of the few companies, I think one of the only companies actually in the last 15 years that we're aware of that has been awarded a maritime seawater concession. So that makes that process that we've gone through very well or very poorly understood, not just by our peers, but also by market participants. When you read about the long lead times that it takes to build copper projects, this is one of those key lead items. It has taken the company eight years to secure its own maritime concession to take water from the ocean.
That's not because the company was slow at doing that. That is because of the 18 different stakeholders that all had consultation periods and the process that is required to go through to be able to make one of those maritime concessions and get it approved. We're in a part of Chile where there are no other maritime concessions in the Huasco region, and that is really, really important to understand. Multi-user water, yes?
So I'll ask a question. How's that going to be financed?
Sure. Well.
Is there any estimate?
That's really a key part of what we're doing. We're not looking at financing it. We're looking at others financing it for us. Once we had our maritime concession, that was very critical for us to be able to supply water to ourselves. Why is that the case? It's because the Atacama region of Chile is one of the most water-stressed regions in the world. Over 12 years ago, we saw what was coming, and the company made those applications with foresight that back then you were allowed to take water out of the ground for mining developments.
Now you are not. Every mining development in Chile is transitioning towards desalination water supply where they require freshwater. Projects that are lucky, like Hot Chili's project, that only require seawater because our metallurgy is good and we get better recovery, those projects need to take water out of the ocean, but all of those projects now going forward need to take their water out of the ocean.
That is something that we saw a long time ago, which is why we made the applications, which is why we're now in this strategically unique position with our own water license, but most importantly, not just our own water license to supply seawater for our project, but a water license that could potentially supply desalination water supply to the entire region. All of those water assets earlier were transferred into a dedicated subsidiary, Huasco Water, where we control 80% interest.
Our partners, CMP, our original partners at the Productora project where these water concessions were constituted, had already a 20% interest. We honored that and we honored that importantly because their major expansion of their iron ore mine at Los Colorados, just to the north of Vallenar on that map, is also requiring 200 L a second of desalination water supply, and that's going to be very difficult for CMP to secure without a maritime concession, so on the next slide, moving forward, Niki, this concept is very easy to understand.
What we have is a tangible asset in terms of seawater supply. That is something that provides water access to Costa Fuego on our targeted production timeline of 2028 for first copper production on this project. Therefore, the requirement for 600 L per second of seawater supply. That is a very substantial 20-year business at 600 L per second. And so that is the business that we are looking to monetize that is very much tangible because Hot Chili is the holder of that offtake agreement.
We are the customer. So we not just hold the assets, we also are the customer for that. So a trend in Chile that is a growing trend is the outsourcing of water infrastructure out of the capital to build a mining project. There was an important transaction that was done that we were able to point to earlier in the year, one that was done also on a seawater supply project, a major seawater supply project in the north of the country, the Centinela Copper Project.
It is one of Antofagasta Minerals' major mines in Chile. It has been run for 15 years on saltwater. Those water assets are approaching the end of their life. And so probably only have about five years left on the water pipeline and the extraction sequestration station on the coastline for that mine. That mine is undergoing a major expansion.
And so Antofagasta, in the funding of that major expansion, decided to outsource the water assets, i.e., the license and all of the easement corridors, the existing pipeline, which only has about five years' usage, sold that to a consortium for $600 million. And now that consortium is building their $380 million water expansion that will effectively replace that aging water line and provide all of the water to Centinela on a 20-year offtake agreement to supply that mine.
So there's a very, very substantial transaction, and it is not the first transaction like that in Chile. And now we're also seeing contemplations of other assets starting to outsource this water. So that's important for Hot Chili in two respects. Firstly, as one of the lowest capital intensity major copper projects in the pipeline outside of the majors, we already have a very, very cheap build cost at $1 billion to produce such a large amount of metal.
This gives us the ability to make that even cheaper by about $140 million that was estimated in the preliminary economic assessment. Obviously, the pre-feasibility is estimating that capital component on water infrastructure again. But that looks to position Hot Chili not just as the lowest, but really underscore that low-risk, low-cost startup to build this large-scale copper project. So that is about really cementing that place as the lowest capital intensity project.
And that's really important when you look at tours that have just occurred in Chile, from BHP taking the world's analysts to Escondida about a week before we took about 10 analysts to the project a couple of days ago. I've just arrived in from Chile. And growing focus in the copper sector is on capital intensity. How expensive is it? How much money do you have to put in to get out annual production of $100,000, $200,000? In the case of BHP, it's equal large as copper produced in the world, 1.4 million tonnes per annum of copper production.
BHP are about to put in about $14 billion just into Chile. It is the jewel of their crown. It's where the majority of their copper production comes from. And that is just to maintain that copper production. That's an average annual capital intensity of $23,000 per annualized tonne based on a copper equivalent basis. So this is using credits to their advantage. Hot Chili at the moment on our PEA is sitting around $10,000 annual a tonne.
So that is less than half, less than 40% of the capital intensity that BHP, the world's largest miner and equal largest copper producer, is looking to put into Chile. So that makes us very low risk. By outsourcing our water infrastructure, that reduces that even further. And what that means is we also secondarily can look at this as an opportunity. This is a unique opportunity. This is not something that we need. This is the problem that faces every junior in the industry.
How do you build a large project when your market cap is here and you've got a large-scale capital to build, which means that half of that cost is going to be requiring equity? And so when you do that equation, that looks extremely destructive to shareholders on a dilution basis.
For any company approaching that milestone and having to contemplate that milestone, we have something very, very unique that I don't think I've recognized in any other copper developer or mining developer in this space, which is a strategic asset that we can actually sell down for a very large check size. And a lot of people want to understand, well, if there was an existing pipeline at Centinela and these guys paid $600 million for this license, surely they were just buying the existing pipeline.
They were buying the ability to build the replacement pipeline and finance it. The majority of that $600 million was in consideration for the licenses and the ability to secure a 20-year business to supply water to that mine. That is what Hot Chili is advancing through. We're in discussions with all of the major water suppliers in the world, Tier 1 players in this space. We are in Chile, which is one of the largest growth investment jurisdictions for water investments in the world.
Returns on investment in the water sector are averaging between 12%-18% in Chile, which makes this a very lucrative destination for investment in water. We have all of the major Tier 1 players in water that are in the country that are operating and supplying water to mining projects. Not a lot of people know, but even BHP uses another company, Mitsui, to supply water to its Spence mine that has secured a long-term contract. So it is not something new that Hot Chili is considering.
It's something that actually the industry in Chile has really embraced. And that is an advantage that we have over every other development in our space because we have the only maritime concession in Huasco. It is tangible on the seawater business. But what's even bigger than our ability to monetize our seawater business to reduce our capital is the blue sky that we see, stage two and stage three that is on the screen. Desalination. And you are the holder of the only maritime concession for the Huasco region.
And you have six major undeveloped projects, including our partner, CMP, requiring desalinated water. We’ve had in the last six months major players within the valley coming to us and executing private MOUs on potential water supply for the future. We see a very, very large business, much larger than the seawater business that is there today.
That is something the company is now pursuing to develop those relationships with potential offtakers, to develop the relationships with the major water businesses that buy these assets, that finance them, that build them, and that supply water for 10, 20, 30-year contracts.
And so that is what we’re looking to do is advance not just our seawater business and monetization of that, but to advance the value proposition of Huasco Water, to increase it just like we would a copper project by growing the resource base, by optimizing and improving the financial metrics.
The next two years for Hot Chili is very important because if we are successful in increasing the value of Huasco Water, then any component that we control when we move into project financing of our copper project, we have the opportunity to significantly increase the check size that we derive from any potential sell down of this business.
When you look at the scale of this business, you look at the ability for Hot Chili to potentially fund our entire equity side, or in layman's speak, our water business has the opportunity to potentially fund our copper project. That is very, very unique. Some people might mistake that as well. If we can't do that, if we can't pull off Huasco Water, then we can't build a copper project. No. That just puts us back into the basket of every other developer in the industry.
Then we look at all of our traditional financing methodologies to reduce shareholder dilution. We look at all of our gold credits, which we haven't touched on streaming, a mechanism that the North American market uses by selling forward credit metals that don't impact greatly your operating cost, but allow you to actually get through that hurdle of building the project. We look at our offtake agreement.
Why did we retain 40% of our offtake? We're now in an environment where the refineries of the world are fighting each other just to get their hands on concentrate, let alone high-quality concentrate that Hot Chili has come to market in 2028. That is seeing a significant amount of interest, particularly from Asian smelter groups. Treatment charges and refinery charges over the last nine months have moved from historical averages of 80 and eight towards zero and zero.
In some cases, some of those refineries are paying miners to supply concentrate just to keep the refineries operating. So that is a very advantageous environment, which we sit in, which means that 160,000 tonnes of concentrate that is uncommitted by Hot Chili in the first eight years outside of our key partner, Glencore, and the benchmark offtake agreement that we have for 60% of our sales, that is seeing a significant amount of interest.
So those mechanisms on streaming, on offtake, and other innovative ways to protect your shareholders from dilution, those are just the standard fallbacks that we enjoy by having a multi-commodity project where we have copper, where we have molybdenum credits, gold credits, and some silver credits. So we'll be employing those regardless. But for us, we have a secret weapon called Huasco Water.
It is certainly something that is gaining a significant amount of attention. I think the market is struggling to understand how to put a value on it. We might be looking at transactions like Antofagasta, but there are a lot of questions about, well, how much does that represent on the tangible component? It is significant on the tangible component, which is seawater.
But our opportunity is to turn this into something much larger to provide water for the entire valley, to unlock those mining developments, which without our license would not be able to go into production in the next 10- 12 years based on those timelines of getting a maritime license approved. Some people might say, well, can't the Huasco players take water from the north or water from the south?
One of the things that Hot Chili learned through this journey of becoming water experts was what our consultant, the key consultant who ran Codelco's water business for over 20 years and is working for Hot Chili, he sat down straight away and put a 75 km line to the north of Huasco and a 75 km line to the south of Huasco, and he said, there are no maritime concessions within this area, and he confirmed how unique that was, and why is that important?
Because about 80% of the cost of water is associated with transmission. It's the cost to get the water there, and once you move water further than that 150 km distance, you start to deliver very expensive water, and that is just not sustainable for mining developments to be paying that kind of operating cost, and so that is why we are in such a unique position.
Yes, there are alternatives. People can build 300 km pipelines, but they can deliver water at twice the price we can deliver for this area, and they also have capital burdens that are multiples of what a multi-user water business can be set up here for, so the capital savings alone for all of those projects stretch into the multi-billion dollars, but the actual revenue bring forward value on all of those projects, the opportunity for them to actually go into production in the next 12 years.
If the electrification of the world continues and copper price incentivizes those boards to put those projects on fast track, those projects can't go into production in the next 10- 12 years based on the timelines that Hot Chili understands, so hopefully that's given you a little bit more understanding on what we're doing with Huasco Water.
We have a dedicated team that is working on this, some of our own staff, not distracting from the focus at hand, which is Costa Fuego developing and delivering on our milestones on pre-feasibility, pushing into the bankable next year and putting the finishing touches on a 10-year process to position that environmental impact assessment in an almost bulletproof form. We are doing a lot of additional risk engineering on the project.
Some of the areas that we've had some of our directors, particularly Stephen Quin, working on in the background with our environmental team and our engineers around making our things such as tailings storage facilities bulletproof for the community. We have a lot of work to do to ensure that the project is positioned in a very, very, I guess, synergistic state so that it works with the community, it works with our regulators, and it works with all of the stakeholders that Hot Chili needs to bring along to get that social license to operate.
And so Huasco Water is not just unique in terms of our ability to reduce capital further, to provide the answer as to how a junior is going to build a large project like this without destroying its shareholders. But most importantly, water is the provider of life. This is a partnership now with community. The provision of water to the community is how Hot Chili is going to tie this in so that we have the community fully behind Costa Fuego going into production because the provision of water is about the provision of copper also. Are there any further questions?
We do have a number of questions online, which some of them may have been answered through your presentation. So if we just go back to the historic ones, there's just a couple of questions regarding if we have any historical results from La Verde.
Yeah. So obviously a lot of historical results. We've showed all of the exploration results. We're just not in a position to put out, say, results on drilling, which we never undertook, which we don't have access to all of the core to undertake our own QAQC and due diligence on, which we have incomplete assay certification for.
But as part of that process of doing that work and now confirming with our own scissor holes and twin holes and making sure that those assays are veracious, obviously in the future we may well be able to release those results. But they're also another company's results, and we have to navigate that with their approval. We certainly don't want to find ourselves in breach of any non-disclosure agreements in the past.
We were just talking about drill results, rough timeframes, what turnover was after drill results, and how we can release in batches or wait to the results received. The release of results is generally about materiality. We also don't like to put out partial results on holes. When we have a significant batch and we understand what those results are so that we can report them effectively and represent them to our, I guess, to our satisfaction, then we can put those results out.
What does that mean in layman's speak? Yes. If the first two or three drill results, which we are very much looking forward to receiving, come in, as we mentioned, they had wide intersections of copper porphyry mineralization, I imagine that we would want to release those first two or three when they're available.
We've got a question regarding Definitive Feasibility study next year. Will we be appointing an external engineering firm? And if yes, has the engineering firm been identified?
No, at the moment, we're using Wood as our overarching independent engineering group that is working with the company and our Owner's Team on the Pre-Feasibility. But as yet, the company has not made its decision on who will be taking the bankable or the Definitive Feasibility forward. I'll pass over to you, Grant, just to.
It's just to answer that question, but it will be an independent as it is for the PFS because of the requirements for a lot of that work to be done independently from the company.
Yeah. And how we're, I guess, working with a number of tier one groups across our pre-feasibility, including Knight Piésold on the tails facility, GAC on the environmental side, and a number of parties outside of Wood. But going forward, we also have a number of independent experts that were brought in by the board and the management group to put individual assurances across key areas of our study representing risk and opportunity.
And then above that umbrella of risk mitigation, we've also assigned Ausenco and Enthalpy as the independent technical reviewers of the Pre-Feasibility. And the reason why we've done that is we've done some elements of this Pre-Feasibility almost to a bankable standard. And that's because we're in a process to submit an environmental impact assessment on a defined project by mid-next year before the Definitive Feasibility is complete.
So some of those elements, the company had to have the kind of risk assurance we needed across those key areas. So going into next year with those kind of names, we acquire a number of very recognised tier one firms that are already working with the company. And no doubt those relationships will lead into a selection of an appropriate study manager.
We've got quite a number of questions coming through.
So hopefully we've answered a lot, but I'll just briefly skim over that. I imagine we won't go through all of the questions. Maybe perhaps another couple of questions. And then I'll probably pass over to Nicky and Stephen for some closing comments.
And just a general question on the recent analyst trip. What's the reason for that? Look at it.
Yeah. No, thank you. Yeah. We're very pleased to have been able to bring nine analysts and a few fund managers over to the project to see firsthand our sites, meet our management team, look at the infrastructure advantages, go and look at what we're doing at Huasco Water and the coastal land accesses that we have and all of the infrastructure advantages that the project has. That's really leading in to the delivery of our pre-feasibility.
We have four reporting analysts on the company at the moment, one in Australia, three in Chile, with the addition of Paradigm in the last three months with their initiation of research. As in the ASX and TSX company, we're not allowed to put that research up on our website, but we provide the analyst details and the details of that firm, and that is on our website, and any shareholder can reach out to those broking firms and receive that research from time to time.
What we're looking at doing as we move into the Definitive Feasibility is expanding our universe. This has a lot to do with our growth into the North American markets. There were a lot of North American faces on the analyst tour from some of the largest investment banks in the world.
We'll be releasing through our community and PR and IR communications on social media some of the photos and some of the things that we were looking at as we inspected core and looked at the veracity of our resources to also visiting the drilling activities that are going on on the ground at La Verde and looking at the growth upside of the projects down in the south that we're adding. So, no, it was a great tour. We received a huge amount of positive feedback from that.
And this is really important as the company starts to expand its investor universe. Thank you. There's a couple of questions, but I think you'll cover them onli ne. Okay.
And we can have one online with people if need be.
Excellent. We might even collect these up and then publish later a Q&A. That would be good. Excellent. Okay.
Well, I'll stop talking. I've done a lot of talking. So thank you very much. I now want to hand over to Nicky. And Nicky Adshead-Bell is our non-executive chair. Unfortunately, he couldn't be with us today. And I'll probably pass over to Stephen Quin, who's been working diligently in the background with our management group on various aspects of the studies that we're undertaking. But hopefully, Nicky, you've got over your cold and your voice is up to a few words. But I'll pass on to you now. Nicky, I think you've got to unmute.
No, no. She's good.
Nicky said she needs to turn off. Nicky, can you unmute? You can't. No.
So that was you. She was unmuted before, Nicky I think.
I can't disable the camera. I haven't tried again, please.
Yeah, I have my microphone disabled.
Yeah, apologies.
Nicky, we disabled your mic before, but it's been re-enabled. From this side, it looks as though you're muted on your end.
No, she's not. Yeah.
So you can't click that unmute on the screen and it won't unmute. You can't actually click the unmute symbol on the screen.
Stephen, are you able to talk?
Yep, I'm good. No worries. Okay. So that's why you saw Nicky out. For the technical. Oh, no. Okay. Stephen. Okay. So yeah. Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk and appreciate all the discussion at the meeting. I've been on the board just over a year and been up to my armpits and all the technical information. We've got an excellent team. I think we've done a lot of work to bring the project forward since I've been involved.
There was a lot of work done before I was there, but we made a lot of progress over the last year or so. I'm really looking forward to what I think will be a very catalyst-rich year with a lot of significant milestones to come. And I think it'll be pretty exciting. And I think we're feeding into what looks like a very strong copper market ahead of us. So I think it'll be a very positive year.
Thank you, Stephen. I think we've got Niki back online.
Yeah. There was something I just did there. Sorry, I don't have my voice back, I think, quite yet. So just very few words from me because I keep losing my voice. But I'd like to thank everybody who's taken the time to attend the AGM. It's probably one of the most robust attendances of AGMs that I've sat through.
Thank you very much. And also, thank you very much to the owners of our company, which are the shareholders. I missed the first part of Stephen's comments, but would absolutely concur with the latter. We are in this unique environment where you have a looming shortfall of copper. You need a material amount of new production to meet existing demand, let alone the growing demand associated with the electrification of everything. No large company has pulled the trigger on building new big copper mines.
And that's because the copper price is not where it needs to be to incentivize that new production. And so I agree that we are on the cusp of what has to be a material increase in our key commodity price, which is copper, to incentivize new production. And not only do we need the Hot Chilis of the world to advance their projects in a relatively rapid manner, we need most of our peers to as well.
And I think that Hot Chili has positioned itself very, very well in terms of being able to meet the very looming and material demand for copper, and not just in terms of the team's foresight in de-risking the company materially 10 years ago on the water side, but also all the associated permitting efforts. And so I'd like to thank everybody again for their efforts and look forward to, as Stephen said, a catalyst-rich year coming up in 2025.
Excellent. Thank you, Niki. And I'll probably pass over to Mark Jamieson, our Non-Executive Director and representative from Glencore, as one of our largest shareholders, just for further comments. Is Mark available to be unmuted? He needs to unmute. Okay. Mark, I think you need to unmute. Is what I'm being told. Nope.
Still technical difficulties. Apologies. Well, look, with that said, if Mark can't make any comments, I'd like to thank everyone for their attendance and, as I mentioned to Carol, any unanswered questions in this informal session. We'll attempt to compile, and then we'll look to release that on our website with appropriate answers, so thank you very much, everybody, and I'll declare the meeting unofficially closed. Thank you. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.