Welcome, everybody. My name is David Dickson, Managing Director, CEO of Lake Resources. The purpose of today's webinar is for me to give some commentary on the updates that we gave to the market today, particularly regarding the work around the DFS and the updated DFS. I would draw your attention to what's been posted today. We've had an update on our ore reserve and obviously an update on the DFS, which you'll see in a sort of DFS summary. As I've talked through today, I'll be referring to a lot of data points that you can see from those documents. There is also a presentation on the website, and again, I would draw your attention to look at those slides as I talk through some of the updates as a result of the work that's been done over the last coming months.
Just to remind everybody why we're updating the DFS, and we've talked about this before on several occasions, is that since posting the DFS back in December 2023, we've had a number of changes. Things such as an upgrade on the quality of our brine in regards to lithium content. If you recall back to the original DFS, our lithium content was, our DFS was designed around our lithium content of 205 mg per liter. The DFS update that we're providing today is based on 249 mg per liter. I'll also draw your attention to that if you look at our reserve update today, you'll see that we actually have had a further increase on our brine content up to close to 270 mg per liter, but the DFS update is based around the 249 mg per liter.
When you look at the reserve, there are some further opportunities for further savings on both CapEx and OpEx. The other reason for updating the DFS is that if you recall back in the middle of 2024, our DLE technology partner Lilac updated their technology to what they call Gen 4. There are a lot of benefits from Gen 4 that I'll talk about later, but what you'll see in the presentation is there are significant savings both in CapEx and OpEx. Other reasons for updating the DFS, it's now been 18 months since the original DFS, so supply chain costs will have naturally grown. Global inflation still remains relatively high. As we have looked at our updated CapEx and OpEx, we've taken into consideration the impact on supply chain costs over the last 18 months to two years. We also have completed the power feed.
We announced that to the market a number of weeks ago. Again, bringing that into the update. Lastly, addressing the financials based on the lithium price. If you recall the original DFS , we were looking at over $30,000 a ton. That was the information provided to us by WoodMac. You'll see in the presentation today, and I'll talk about it, we adjusted that number based on the data that we have, being provided by, in this case, Benchmark Minerals. As a result of the work, pleased to say that we've had a good reduction in our capital costs, around about 16%. I'll touch on that a little bit later. Less so on the OpEx. A lot of that is really driven by the cost of power, and I'm going to get into that in a little bit more detail as we go through this.
As a result, the financials are still good. Projects are in a good place, and we believe that Kachi is an attractive offering for potential off-takers and partners who want to come into the lithium space. Talking about CapEx first. Under CapEx, if we looked at where we were before at $1.377 billion, and I'm talking in U.S. dollars, when we looked at supply chain costs, we saw an increase of $46 million. Now, looking at the improvements with regards to the upgrade in the brine, the improvements in the technology, and some of the other advancements that we've looked at through this period, we've got a reduction of $266 million against that new number. Ultimately, that gives us a new CapEx number of $1.16 billion.
That's about a 16% reduction from where we were previously, and actually, a 19% reduction if you consider supply chain cost increases over this last 18 months. Quite a significant shift in our capital number. Big savings, the big numbers in there. One, DL E, is nearly $100 million of that. Again, demonstrating the good work that's been done by Lilac and their technology advancements since we completed the original DFS . We also have had improvements with regards to, with the upgrade in the brine, we've been able to reduce the number of wells. If you look at the presentation, you can see we've got a significant drop in both the number of production and injection wells.
If we take the next step of looking at what the CapEx would be at closer to 270 mg per liter lithium content, then we can see further reductions in the number of wells. That hasn't been taken into consideration yet in the update that we're giving today to the market. We're also looking at changes in some of the supply chain and selection of equipment, particularly pipelines. You can see in the presentation a significant reduction by moving to different materials. There are a number of other savings, as I said, reduction in the number of wells. On the construction side, some particular savings, and I'll touch on that later. With regards to Lilac, obviously, people are always asking the progress of Lilac. I think what they've done over the last couple of years has been excellent, and not just working with Lake Resources.
Lilac are working on a number of other projects with other customers. The big shift has been, since we had the original DFS , is recovery from 80% - 90%, an improvement on the cycle performance of the beads, nearly double in terms of the performance. As a result, with all this, it really reduces the number of units and, you know, nearly a 50% improvement. Very happy with that. This Gen 4 platform that Lilac talks about, although we didn't demonstrate that at our own demonstration plant, this work has been done at other projects, one in particular in Jujuy, where Lilac developed this technology. I think a lot of good work has been done by Lilac over this last two years to further enhance the technology.
On the construction side, some slight changes, if you recall, previously we were talking about a two-phase type development or two-train development of 12,500 tons each. Because of the work that's been done on the power and the shift of the timing of the project to the right, we believe that we can have power early enough in the project that would allow us to integrate those two trains. It doesn't provide a huge amount of saving with the reduction of CapEx, but certainly we can look at changes in cost of labor by more integrating those two phases. As Ken is aware from the construction side, not a big shift, roughly timeline, same as before, kind of 33 months from final investment decision to first lifting, but not a big shift, but certainly opportunities to reduce our costs for the construction.
Moving on to the OpEx, we didn't see as much shift in OpEx. All of it really being driven by the cost of power, and I'm going to get into that a little bit in detail. Certainly from what you would call the non-power elements of the OpEx, we saw a significant savings. Again, going back to things like Lilac, use of reagents, and a number of other items, we're able to reduce what I would call the non-power element of the OpEx by 30%. A lot of it in the DLE, some savings in labor, a lot of savings in other consumables, but we saw a significant increase in the power, and I'll talk about that a little bit later.
What we did see, though, was a significant reduction in the power requirements, as we've been through, with the improvement on the brine and the improvement on the DLE technology, but unfortunately, the last piece that we need to work on is the power element. If you look at the overall OpEx today, of roughly just under $5,900 a ton, 55% of that today is taken up by power. A little bit more, and we put some more detail in the presentation with regards to power. For those of you who didn't follow the story, we completed the power feed a number of weeks ago, but you'd have seen in the public, there's a lot of data and discussion around the extension of the grid within Argentina from Jujuy, Salta, all the way through to Catamarca.
There's a lot of discussion and a lot of information being given in the press. If you look at it today, the extension of the grid requires two stages. There's the first stage, which takes the power line all the way down to the edge of Hombre Muerto, where there's a number of projects, and then phase two is from there all the way to Catamarca. As I said, we have done the feed work, but today we're still working with YPF Luz with regards to the commercial aspects of what that is. If you recall from my previous presentations, I've always said we'll focus on the power feed, and then that will lead us into a discussion around a power purchase agreement, and that is still in its early days.
The numbers we've taken into the OpEx today are the latest numbers that we were in our discussions, but we still have a long way to go before we finalize the power element. A few things I want to highlight in the power. One, we had a significant reduction of power requirement. It went from 82 MW - 57 MW. Obviously a big, big plus, and again, that's driven by the improvements on the brine and the technology. What we've done too for assumptions in our power pricing today is we've taken into the cost of us picking up partial costs for phase one. If you look at the slide in our presentations, there's a map that demonstrates where this power line goes, and you can see there's a number of projects.
What we've done, because it's still early stages, is we've assumed that Kachi is going to take the full cost for the second phase. Now, you could question, is that conservative at this stage? I would like to say it's a prudent position to take, and I believe as time progresses, we'll start to see some opportunities of where we can improve on that. From what we know today, this is a position that we've taken on power cost. In addition, there are alternative energy sources that could supplement this power from the grid. Again, that will take more time from the team to work through. Today, I think it's important to tell our shareholders we have a solution for the power. We know what the costs look like, but we also believe there's opportunities that we can improve on those power costs.
That'll take some time for us to complete, and that is likely to continue to progress up until the point of moving to final investment decision. Moving to the financials. Firstly, talking about Argentina. As you've seen, significant improvements in Argentina since the new president took over some 18 months ago. In particular, the introduction of the RIGI bill, which was approved back in August 2024, allows a number of changes with regards to corporation tax, acceleration, depreciation, import duties, etc. That was all put through in August of last year. The good news is that two other lithium companies, obviously Rio Tinto, obviously the largest, getting their approval on their RIGI charter or contract earlier this year. More recently, Allkem, who got the approval of their RIGI contract.
It demonstrates that the government and the provincial governments within Argentina really want to drive through and encourage investment into these areas. I think as a company, we're encouraged by that. Regards to the market, with the fundamentals, not a lot has changed. Everybody's still forecasting a deficit on supply-demand occurring towards the end of this decade. We have taken our data from Benchmark Minerals, and they're forecasting some are just under demand of being around about three, just under three million tons by the end of this decade. Going further, as we go further on, a lot of it driven by obviously EVs, but a lot of discussion now in the marketplace about the demand with regards to the battery energy storage systems, which is probably the largest growth market in the U.S. today.
I think at this stage, we're still trying to understand what the size of that market looks like. There are some very optimistic forecasts that say that, you know, the battery energy storage could actually overtake the demand for EVs. We're still at early stages, but the fundamentals are still telling us is that while the market is tough today, by the end of this decade, there's going to be a significant demand and some more supply projects need to come on. Taking all that into consideration, we updated our financials based on the latest numbers from Benchmark. Our long-term financials are based on just over $21,000 a ton. That is obviously a significant drop from where we were at the original DFS , which is obviously well over $30,000 a ton. Obviously, 18 months ago, the market was in a different place from where we are today.
Even at $21,000 a ton, our financials are still strong. Even though NPV's come down, and our NPV pre-taxing now down to $1.5 billion with a pre-tax IRR of 22.5%. Fundamentally, the economics of this project remain very strong. We'll see how things progress, and we'll see how the market develops over this next coming month or next year. Everything really is really all based around what happens with lithium pricing. I think I've said before, when I look at where we stand now today with the CapEx and OpEx, I believe we are competitive. I look at comparisons of both Rio Tinto and a company called Allkem. Allkem, you know, a billion, just over a billion dollars, for 24,000 tons. Rio Tinto have quoted $2.5 billion for over 50,000 tons.
When you look at where we are at $1.16 billion for 25,000 tons, I think we're competitive, and I think we're aligned where the market is. We also updated today a couple of other things. We also updated today our overall reserve. The main shift there is that, you know, we've got a further increase in our lithium content. As I said earlier, we have updated the DFS based on 249 mg a liter, but the latest ore reserve, we're now up to close to 270 mg per liter. We haven't updated the numbers to suit that, but based on the improvement that we've had, I'm sure shareholders can do some numbers to work out what the potential savings could be from that.
We also demonstrate the fact that we have got, again, a further reduction in the number of wells, which means a reduction in the number of pipelines, which means a reduction in the amount of power that we need. A couple of other items before I finish. The Environmental Impact Assessment approval, we've been working on this now for over a year. We submitted this back in March 2024. We're hoping for that to be completed and approved by the middle of this year. That still has not happened. I want to highlight at this stage that Lake Resources does not, you know, we do not dictate the timing. We're really dependent on the provincial government of Catamarca to drive through the approval process.
I think I've highlighted before the challenges for a lot of these provinces is having access to resources with the right knowledge and competency to evaluate these new projects. DLE e xtraction is still a new, you know, it's still a new technology, and so these provinces, and clearly Catamarca, relies on third-party companies who are taking a look at it. Today we're not driving that schedule. That schedule is being driven by the government. We are in constant dialogue with the government. We're constantly supporting them, trying to help them through their process. We're hoping that we'll see the approval before the end of the year, maybe sooner, and that'll, you know, we said before, means that this project is now shovel-ready, ready to go to work.
Lastly, before I finish and move to questions, we recently updated the 5B, or issued our 5B for the end of the year, for the end of June. You'll have seen there that our cash position was just over $12.2 million. We also highlighted our $12.4 million. We also highlighted that, post that, we completed the last stage of our ATM with 65 million shares that created another, produced another $2.1 million. Pro forma at the end of June, we're looking at a cash position of $14.5 million. Again, no debt, which would indicate that, you know, we've got cash well through the year into 2026. From a cost basis, you can see our costs continually come down, and I've said this before.
Now that we're getting through the end of this Definitive Feasibility Study update, the Environmental Impact Assessment approval hopefully soon, that will then create further opportunities for us to cut our costs. I think we've got the right culture at the moment of managing our costs and obviously preserving our cash. As everybody knows, we kicked off this process back in May, and our purpose of this process was to look at what are all the options to link Lake Resources in the market today. Everything looking at the partnering on the asset, potential sale of the asset, looking at where Lake Resources is, potential investment in Lake Resources. That process continues on. There's not much I can really say today because obviously it's a confidential process. Again, a reminder, why we're doing it. We've seen other moves in the market, some assets being sold.
We talked about Lithium Chile selling their asset to an Asian buyer for a significant sum of money. There was a public offer to Ganfeng for their asset in Argentina. When we looked at these things, we said, hey, what, you know, how does that impact the value of Kachi and Lake Resources? Today I can't really offer any update because obviously it's a very confidential process. It'll continue on until we feel that we've got what is the best. If you look at Kachi, we've said this before, and it quite often gets lost in a lot of the discussions. When you look at where we are, even looking at our ore reserve update with 11.1 million tons of LCE, we've got to remind ourselves that Kachi is one of the largest deposits in Argentina, one of the largest projects.
We talk about 25,000 tons per annum, but based on what we're seeing, we know that the expansion capabilities for Kachi are there. We've got to make sure we don't forget about that. That's why we like to emphasize the attractiveness of Kachi to develop or to be potentially a large hub for lithium development. As I said on the earlier commentary, and I've said this in a number of presentations before, we're always looking at where do we compare against our peers. The obvious ones today, based on the data that's in the market, are the ones I mentioned earlier, both Rio Tinto with Rincon and Allkem, who just went into production at the end of last year.
You know, I'm not going to say the numbers again, but you can see from the numbers that they've published and the numbers that we've published that certainly we are competitive and we're certainly in the ballpark of where these competing projects are. I think for anyone coming in, they can see that Kachi in itself, even without getting into expansion capabilities, is certainly competitive per cost per ton, compared to our peers. Shareholders are always asking, what are the next milestones or the next piece of news? Now that the Definitive Feasibility Study update's been complete, our reserve has now been updated, our focus is really on things such as Environmental Impact Assessment approval. As I said earlier in the commentary, hoping to complete that before our year-end, completing our strategic review of Kachi. The timeline of that could be over the next coming months.
Again, kind of micro-market driven, and we've seen how volatile the lithium market can be. We will continue to do technical and commercial work with regards to the power supply. As I've talked earlier, we have a solution for power. We have initial costings for power, but we've still got a lot of work to do to optimize it and to improve our OpEx number. I believe there are opportunities as we go through this next period. Really just kind of working towards getting this project to final investment decision, and that needs partners, that needs finance, and we need to complete those other activities that I just discussed. For shareholders, that's the news to look out for over the next coming months. It's that, summarizing the Environmental Impact Assessment, strategic review, update maybe on the power side, and then hopefully taking this project to a final investment decision.