Welcome everyone to today's Maronan Metals Investor Briefing webinar. It is a pleasure to have you with us. My name is Nicola Ghisardi from Investor Relations Consultancy Corporate Storytime. Maronan Metals Limited is an Australian listed resources company focused on realizing the growth potential at the advanced Maronan Silver-Lead and Copper-Gold deposit in the Cloncurry region of Northwest Queensland, one of Australia's most productive mineral provinces. Maronan recently announced the results of a preliminary economic assessment, a scoping study for the starter zone, which represents just 22% of the global silver-lead and less than 10% of the copper-gold mineral resource for the Maronan Project. It is my pleasure to introduce the Maronan Metals team, Non-Executive Chairman Simon Bird, who together with Project Director Dean Fredrickson will share insights from the study, outlining the project's development pathway and discussing the exciting growth potential ahead for Maronan Metals.
Following the presentation, we will open the floor for a Q&A session, and you're welcome to submit your questions at any time during the webinar via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. If we're unable to address your question during the session, we will follow up with responses after the webinar. Without any further ado, I am pleased to hand over to Simon.
Morning everyone, and thanks Nicola for facilitating this important shareholder update. When we listed a little over three years ago, we took on the challenge of converting this 40-something year discovery into a mine. This study marks a special milestone on that journey. The economic assessment that we released earlier, released last week, complies with ASIC and ASIC guidelines and ASIC's interpretation of those guidelines. As a result, the study only contemplates some 15% of our 65 million ton global resource at Maronan, and Nicola, as you referred to earlier, that's only a small portion of our overall deposit. Despite this only being a small portion, it clearly demonstrates, the study clearly demonstrates that this project is viable on both a standalone basis and a toll treating scenario utilizing nearby facilities.
All credit for this outstanding work undertaken over the last three years must go to Richard Carlton, our Managing Director, together with Dean and Andrew. I'm not here to take credit for any of this. Andrew, in particular, our Geologist, has overseen both our successful drilling campaigns, which have substantially advanced this project and enabled Dean, our Project Director, to pull together this comprehensive economic assessment. Let me hand over to Dean, who with Andrew's help will take you through the study and key outcomes from the study, and I look forward to answering questions later.
Thank you, Simon. The story advancing Australia's next silver mine. We have our obligatory disclaimer and notices that you can read at your leisure afterwards. Where are we? Maronan is about 60 kilometers to the southeast of Cloncurry. We're in a well-advanced or well-known mining district, about 150 kilometers to the east of Mount Isa. We have some pretty substantial operations nearby. We have Cannington to the south, a very large silver lead zinc producer, to the north Evolution's Ernest Henry, MMG's Dugald River, and another plant called Rocklands just out of Cloncurry, which is now on care and maintenance, and one we've signed an MOU as a potential toll treating exercise. We know a number of those plants are not operating at capacity and also present some opportunities for toll treating our ore.
We have good infrastructure, a tar sealed road just five kilometers from the project, 40 kilometers away to the nearest railhead that could take concentrates either to Townsville or back across to Mount Isa. With those toll treating options out there, it gives us a lot of development flexibility in the area. We've got a great location, good infrastructure, and a good, fast, capital-efficient path to production. Next slide, please, Andrew. Simon and Nicola both mentioned the starter zone and how it fits into the overall project or deposit scale. Here we have a view looking at the mineral resources for the Maronan Project. The blue and green shapes that you see there are the much larger lead silver resource, silver lead resource, and then the bronzy color is the copper gold resource.
It's a substantial resource, 111 million ounces of silver and 2 million tons of lead, 270,000 odd tons of copper, and 650,000 ounces of gold. We're really just considering a very small portion of that global resource. It also has scale. We're talking 1.2 kilometers deep by a kilometer along strike. It's a massive deposit and one that's very hard for us to drill out in its entirety before we get underground. The starter zone is a good piece of geology, easy to get to understand, and we've focused our drilling over the last two to three years on that area alone. Next slide, Andrew. The PEA confirms really compelling economics. We have put into this PEA a lot of very good work geologically, but also a lot of good metallurgical processing work through a variety of labs. We've also done some really detailed geotechnical evaluations.
We've engaged GR Engineering from Perth to help us with what onsite processing might look like. ATC Williams have done some tailings dam designs and stuff for us. We have put a lot of really good quality work with good quality consulting groups to help us do this. What we come up with, regardless of whether we're a standalone or a toll treating option, is about a nine-year mine life. We call it 10, but it's nine to 10-year mine life. That is the same schedule for both a standalone or a toll treating option. With a toll treating option, if you look at the bottom line, and we can compare these two quite quickly together, onsite CapEx is around $260 to $270 million for onsite treating, a little under $100 million for toll treating, which gives us very similar pre-tax NPVs at 8%.
The IRR, of course, is much better for a toll treating option because of the less capital. We pay back that capital in two years toll treating or potentially four years with onsite treatment. Both have pretty good all-in sustaining costs for a silver equivalent. The silver equivalent being 5.4 million ounces per annum and a cash flow at $36 per ounce of about $120 million. It is a very exciting project from that perspective, heavily weighted to silver. If we look at a silver price increase of $1, we're looking at roughly a $20 million increase in the NPV. We are now at $46 per ounce silver, so we're adding roughly $200 million to the NPV of the project at the current spot silver prices. It is very well leveraged there. We are only looking at a very small portion of the overall resource.
You just pop to the next slide, Andrew, please. When we look at the production profile, what really drives us looking at this much smaller option is the requirement to have a life of mine schedule backed by a certain proportion of indicated resources. In this particular case, we've set that as 70% indicated resources and 30% inferred resources. The first four years of the project, which covers the payback, is backed by 82% indicated resources and just 18% inferred. It is a good quality mineral resource estimate that supports this PEA or scoping study. When you look at the graph on the bottom left-hand side, you can see also that we only include a small portion of the copper-gold ore tons. We can talk about that a little bit further, just how the copper-gold will come into the story in time.
Our life of mine production and revenue, 53% of it is silver, then lead, and just a small portion of the copper and gold at this stage, although we anticipate that that'll grow significantly into the life of the project. If we just hop on to the next slide, we can see the value-creating opportunities. You can see here the box cut and the exploration decline is proposed in a conceptual mine design into the starter zone. There are significant shallow resources to the north of the starter zone that are not yet included and need more drilling. We've got a heap of scope to convert the additional inferred resources at depth and even potentially make more discoveries at depth as we go along. All of this leads to potential for higher mining rate scenarios.
Ultimately, this may be a much bigger project than a 1.2 million ton per annum scenario that we've put together here. We've got plenty of opportunity to grow. We don't need to go and pick up other projects or other tenements or spend money elsewhere. We can make this a really exciting project into the future. What about the pathways to mining? One of the things that we're doing at the moment and having an approval in the process is called an MDL or a Mineral Development License application. This creates more security for the tenure of the project, but also enables us to put an exploration decline. There's an environmental assessment review underway at the moment. We've ticked the box off. We've done our preliminary economic assessment. We've been running these assessments internally for quite some time.
We've had a pretty good idea of what the potential of this project has been for quite some time. We expect the Mineral Development License to be granted about December. There's nothing that we see that makes us think that timeline is not achievable. We'll push forward with our feasibility studies and permitting for a mining lease, whether that be a mining lease to just toll treat ore, or whether that be a mining lease to put our own processing plant in. They're not quite the same. Your toll treating license will be a much easier application, we believe, than for putting our own processing plant and ultimately a decision to mine. We've put that into a proper timeline where we've put some what we think are reasonably achievable or indicative development dates. As I said, we expect the MDL to be approved towards the end of this calendar year.
We're about to commence some more surface drilling, that surface drilling to increase our amount of indicated resource, but also we need some geotechnical information to support the box cut and decline advance and some further sample for metallurgical development. Effectively, we'll start the feasibility study very, very soon. We hope that pushes us into a direction where we can undertake our mining license applications. All of this, once we get that decline underground and have a bulk sample and do some more underground drilling, we'll be able to push in place quite a bit more indicated resources and ultimately our maiden ore reserve for the project, which should give us a chance of having a final investment decision sometime in late 2027. You'll see there, we put in the optionality for toll treat or process plant. I think, you know, in reality, either of those are great scenarios.
If the opportunity were to arise that we could sign a toll treating agreement with somebody, that would certainly push us into that pathway sooner. Maybe that's the way that we finance the process plant construction. The key to unlocking all of this, as I'm saying here, is really we just need to get this exploration decline into the ground and enable us to collect the quality geological and mining-related information that we need to realize this project. Andrew's going to spin on now into some three-dimensional views, and we can have a bit of a look at the project and the data that we've collected in three dimensions. Just firstly, before we start that, this is an aerial view of the project area. We're on a Maronan pastoral station to roughly 125,000 acres.
It's managed by a very proficient family who have been operating a beef pastoral business there for quite some time. As we see here, you can see our exploration permit in gold and then in turquoise, what is called the mineral development license that we've applied for. As we zoom in here, you'll see the proposed box cut and exploration decline. This exploration decline will take us to 200 meters below surface and will enable us to explore the extents of the Maronan deposit, both the copper-gold and the silver-lead ore. In place there are the various bits of surface infrastructure that we would need to support this. If we were to go trucking ore, we really wouldn't need a whole lot more on surface or underground than what we've currently proposed.
For toll treating, for an onsite treatment facility, we'll need a tailings dam and a little bit more area for the processing plant. Over to you, Andrew.
Sorry, Dean, I hit the wrong button. This is zooming down for a 3D view of the ore body. We're showing the silver-lead domains here. The blue ones are from the western horizon, and the green ones are from the eastern horizon. This is just showing the zone at the starter zone mineralization. One of the things I want you to take away from this image is the density of drilling we have within the starter zone versus the rest of the deposit. The shapes that I'm showing here are the raw mineralization shapes that we've interpreted from the drilling. We then give them to an engineer who puts them through a process called a mine stope optimization. That's how we end up with our conceptual mine schedule for the PEA study.
In the image shown here, the orange blocks are the copper-gold stopes, and the green shapes are the silver-lead stopes. From a side-on perspective, you can see that it dips quite nicely at around 60 to 70 degrees, which is fantastic for conventional long-hole stoping. The other thing that you can see is that there are multiple lenses on each horizon, which is good from a mining productivity perspective because you can have multiple headings open at the same time, which is good for productive mining. Again, just reiterating, we're really just looking at a very small part of the Maronan deposit, showing it in context with all the mineralization and the full global resource.
We are going to finish that slideshow here. It's a compelling starter zone study. It is just the start. It's only the beginning. This is quite a good quote, it's valuable today, but really it's scalable tomorrow. We really, really look forward to developing the future of this project. Thank you.
Thank you, Dean and Andrew. Folks, as you can see, there's an enormous amount of work that's gone into this, and all credit to Richard, Dean, and Andrew. This scoping study, which as we pointed out, only covers a small portion of the entire deposit, generates robust economics and a clear growth potential. Whilst we're as a company enjoying some tailwinds from the strong silver sentiment, it's worth noting that since listing, our share price has doubled pretty much in line with improved silver prices. It's also worth noting that thanks to the efforts of the team on the ground, the enterprise value of Maronan has quadrupled over that same period. However, despite this, it won't surprise you that we still believe that the company is undervalued and set for a further re-rate. We look forward to updating you as we progress.
Thanks again, and back to you, Nicola, if there are any questions from shareholders, we're happy to field them.
Thank you to all for the presentation. We will now move on to our Q&A session. My first question is for Dean. Dean, can you elaborate on the processing options and an indicative timeline to production?
Yeah, thanks, Nicola. We've undertaken a reasonable amount of metallurgical test work to support the study, both from a standalone—how would we build our own plant and what data do we need—and also from a toll treating option, looking at some of the flow sheets that have been used in the area. We understand that the ores recover well and they make high-quality concentrates following several different process flow sheets and with some different reagent regimes. We've got a lot of optionality there. As we said, we have in place a memorandum of understanding with Oscal Resources to study the potential pathways for toll treating at their Rocklands plant near Cloncurry.
I also said, and I think I continue to reiterate because it is important to us, that getting underground is the key to unlocking this project, both for getting more resources up to the indicated category and putting together our ore reserve. If during this work a toll treating agreement could be established, then maybe within two years' time, we could be trucking ore, given that we've got a favorable outcome with our permitting. A standalone plant option is likely to be three to four years.
Thank you, Dean. My next question is for Simon. Simon, the GBA Capital Initiation Report from late 2024 highlighted that Maronan Metals was already significantly undervalued compared to its peers, with a target price of $0.95 a share based on the project's potential before this study, when it was trading sometimes around $0.20 a share. Now that the PEA has delivered such robust economics, could management comment on how this study acts as a catalyst for a market re-rating and what similar valuation exercise might look like today?
Certainly, thanks, Nicola. Yes, that study did come out in 2024, and it's currently being updated with inputs from the study, because as you pointed out, it was done before the study. We look forward to having that, and I don't see why the outcomes would be substantially different. Certainly support my comments earlier, that we still believe we're undervalued. We're also looking forward to other organizations providing coverage of Maronan in the near future.
Thanks, Simon. The next question is also for yourself. The study spot price case used a silver price of $65.17 Australian per ounce. In the six days since, the price has risen approximately 4.4% to over $68 Australian per ounce. Could you please quantify or discuss the positive impact this stronger silver price has on the study's already impressive NPV and free cash flow projections? Presumably, the supply deficit and strategic importance of silver are strong tailwinds for Maronan Metals.
Certainly, thanks, Nicola. For those who've seen the study, they'll be able to find in the detail Dean has provided sensitivities on the silver price, and it won't surprise readers that with 53% of the revenue from the starter zone alone coming from silver only, the leverage is high. As Dean pointed out, one U.S. dollar increase in the price of silver pushes up the NPV 20%. The study was out of date almost as soon as it was released, to be honest, because the numbers that are used in the study are $36 U.S. an ounce, and they're up closer to $46 U.S. an ounce now. Just that increase alone is more than a 50% increase on our NPV8 numbers. The sensitivities are there, and the evidence of the leverage to silver is there.
Thank you, Simon. Thank you. My next question is for Dean. The study delivers robust economics for a starter project, but the June 2025 resource update highlighted a near 100% conversion rate from the inferred to indicated category, which you called a defining characteristic of the ore body. Could you elaborate on how this exceptional geological predictability gives you the confidence to scale the project well beyond the initial 10-year mine life and ultimately bring the other 78% of the silver-lead and 90% of the global copper-gold global resource into a multi-decade mine plan?
The answer to that question is multi-pronged. I think initially I would answer it around the fact that we've done some really good geological work and we've engaged the right people to help us understand the geology. Predictability is very much linked to the amount of information that you can put into your models. We engaged some very experienced geological consultants to help us with that broader scale model. They're both very good structural geologists and helped us build a really robust geological framework to base our mineral resource estimate on. The drilling during 2024 therefore gave us predictable outcomes because we had a good model to start with. I would say the ore body to date has been very forgiving, and we see no reason for that to change as we expand our infill drilling.
I reiterate again, getting underground as soon as practicable will also enable us to accelerate our geological data collection and broaden our understanding of the deposit. Those geological observations will help improve our predictability going forward. If we keep doing good work and making good geological observations, we'll have a really good chance of converting a significant portion of the remaining mineral resource over time. You look at projects of this scale: Rosebery, Mount Isa, Cannington, and all that. Ernest Henry's another great example. Time and effort, it's just about getting started. The study really is about how do we get started and how do we build a legacy that goes forward beyond us that are currently working with Maronan Metals.
Thank you, Dean. Simon, the next question is for yourself. Please advise of your plans for financing going forward. Are the shareholders concerned about your next capital raise will dilute shareholders again?
Apologies, I was on mute. Thanks, Nicola. Yes, that's always an obvious question. I'm sure people who understand that projects like this, mines don't build themselves. We're going to have to source capital to help bring this mine into production. The company to date has been very frugal with funds that we've raised. When we were first listed three years ago, when half the company was floated, we raised $15 million. We've only had one capital raise since then, almost two years ago, which was a $9 million capital raise, which was well supported by our existing shareholders and some new shareholders. That money was well deployed by the two gentlemen on the screen, together with Richard, to undertake infill drilling and complete this study. We have got a demonstrated track record of only raising what we need to progress this.
We're now in a position, the envious position, where we now have economics that we can go and discuss with a number of different strategic partners and financiers. Those range from equity, debt, streaming, royalties, and even joint ventures. There is significant interest with a number of parties who we'd already started preliminary discussions with. We can now engage with them more meaningfully now that we've got the robust economics that Dean's just shared with us.
Thank you, Simon. Dean, my next question is for yourself. How come so much of the resource is excluded from the study?
We discussed earlier there, Nicola, the requirements to have a decent quantity of indicated mineral resources. We set a goal there that was 70% indicated resources. That really sets the benchmark as to how much global material we could include at this time. The PEA considers 15% of the global mineral resources, just 8.3 million ton out of 65 million ton. There's lots of mineral resource to be evaluated into the future. As I said, in those discussions, all that gives us optionality to look at whether this continues as a 1.2 million ton per annum mine or a much bigger mine.
Thank you, Dean. The next question is for yourself. Could you explain some of the trade-offs that may need to be considered between the standalone plant and a toll treatment processing options for Maronan?
The biggest one is the immediate financial perspective. We've got a much bigger CapEx bill for a standalone processing option. In the long term, we would hope that you can all see from the scale of this project that in time, this does need to have its own process plant. When you look at the OpEx, if we're trucking ore, and then we've got a toll treating margin, the processes that might treat this ore for us are not going to do it for nothing. They're going to want a margin on top of what they're treating their own ore for. OpEx is more expensive when you're toll treating. The other thing is with a standalone plant, we also have control of our destiny. We will be processing the ore, and we'll be getting paid for it when we process it.
That may not always be the case if we were toll treating. Trucking, you know, say you're going to truck 60 million tons of rock over the life of this project on the highways, there's a lot of risk attached to that. Is that a long-term risk that we can do? Queensland does have a pretty wet season in this area. That can have some impacts on the timing of ore processing and cash flows as well. There are a bunch of things that go in there that are all trade-offs. Ultimately, we're driving hard to try and get this project into production and realize the potential for our shareholders and also for the Queensland government who have a vested interest in getting this going as well. There are a few people that are keen to see us get moving.
That sounds great, Dean. The next question is also for yourself. The copper and gold mineralization doesn't really contribute much to this study. Will it be considered in feasibility studies, and how much additional capital does it require for the processing circuit considered in the study?
That's very correct. We know the copper-gold mineralization expands in scale at depth into the north of the starter zone. It's not as well drilled as the silver-lead mineralization to date. Into the future, it's likely to become much more significant. It will be accessible from the same mining infrastructure, so it will be an important consideration in the feasibility study. We've previously modeled processing scenarios with GR Engineering Services, where we look at how we could batch treat the copper-gold ore through the same plant with the addition of some flotation cells, some additional fine grinding capacity, and a separate concentrate circuit. When we've done these preliminary designs for a smaller plant, we've considered all of that.
We think the time that a $1.2 million ton per annum processing facility is going to be, it's going to be quite a bit larger than that, and that's the optimum timing to include that additional plant infrastructure.
Thank you, Dean. The next question is also for yourself. What risks do you see related to the permitting and development schedule discussed in the presentation?
The Queensland government has in place a group called the Critical Minerals Group, and they have a role in assisting companies navigate approval pathways. Whilst none of our minerals are classified as critical, what the Queensland government sees as most critical is about getting projects underway for jobs and growth. The Cloncurry area is going through a fair bit of upheaval at the moment, particularly when you bring in the Mount Isa project. There's the copper mine closed there, and there's discussions about the smelter. The government are fairly well focused on development pathways going forward. This group has been very supportive in our MDL permitting to date, and we really do appreciate their ongoing support. They've helped us bring together all the various government bodies and groups that have a say in whether these projects can get going. We're well engaged with them.
We are in an active mining jurisdiction, so people are used to trucks going up and down the road, and they're used to people flying in and out and looking after all those things. We've completed two years of floor and foreign groundwater and surface water data collection. We've done a lot of work, and to date, that's not shown any red flags. We also continue to engage with our traditional and pastoral landowners and believe continued engagement will help us work towards mutually beneficial outcomes for the project and for them. There are always risks, but we're doing everything we can to mitigate those risks by talking with people.
Excellent. Thank you, Dean. The next question is for Simon. You have already discussed conventional financing of equity and debt, project-level financing, and strategic partnerships as potential ways to fund the project. Could you elaborate further on how you intend to approach this to maximize its value for existing shareholders?
Thank you. Again, a good question. I probably answered some of it in the earlier response. I'm conscious that the markets are currently open and need to be aware of sensitivities. Yes, one of the really exciting things about the scoping study is the fact that, as I mentioned, we can now go out and talk to parties who maybe weren't mandated or maybe weren't ready to talk to us beforehand. We're always conscious of doing the right thing by all shareholders and conscious of the comment or the question earlier about dilution. That's always a factor. However, we're not a large-cap company, and we've got the potential to build a large mine here. That is something that we're very excited about.
This starter zone economic assessment that Dean has put together will give strategic partners and other potential funding sources the opportunity to look at the numbers and form their own view, extrapolate their own numbers to scale it up to the potential that we see in this mine.
Thank you, Simon. Dean, the next question is for yourself. What are the biggest challenges Maronan faces in moving to cash flow generation?
It's time. It's always time. You can't just snap your fingers in any of these projects and get to cash flow generation. Getting the exploration decline underground as soon as we can and advancing our understanding of the deposit, and in particular getting more indicated mineral resources up in our first door reserve, that's a good challenge. Really, it's permitting and being able to fund the project. There are no challenges that are any different to any mining, anybody looking to get into cash flow anywhere in the world, really. They're all the same things. Just do the good work and be frugal with the money and spend it where it's needed. We can overcome those challenges.
Thank you, Dean. This is our final question for today, and I will direct it to yourself. Has any thought been given to the possibility of toll treating the copper-gold and thus freeing up the proposed onsite plant to process 1.2 million tons of silver-lead? Could increasing the silver-lead resource in the mine plan to replace the copper-gold make this option achievable?
That's a really good question and probably a really good observation that somebody's made, and all of those are possible. As we discussed earlier and keep reiterating, getting that MDL permitted and getting our feasibility study underway is a key part of it and getting the drilling going. You're absolutely right. We continue to explore options to toll treat, whether it be one or both of the viewers, though they're all very, very possible. I think that's somebody's made a great observation there rather than asked a great question, I reckon. That's my answer to that one.
Thank you, Dean. That does bring us to the end of the Q&A session. As always, if you do have any further questions, please feel free to email us at info@corporatestorytime.com. Simon and Dean, do you have any final comments you'd like to share before we close today?
Dean, I'm happy to go. Do you want to add anything?
Yeah, go on. You can answer on our behalf. Thank you, Simon. Thank you, everybody, for your time and listening today.
Good job, Ian. Fellow shareholders, I trust this session has helped demonstrate to you not only the excellent work that the team's done already, but the fact that we're well positioned now, out sharing the project economics and the potential above and beyond the starter zone. I am very much excited about this milestone, and we look forward to providing updates as we move forward on our quest to turn this discovery into a producing mine. Thank you very much, Nicola.
Thank you to Simon, Dean, and Andrew for such a comprehensive update. This does conclude our webinar for today. A recording will be made available and shared through Maronan Metals and Corporate Storytime social media channels. On behalf of the Maronan Metals team and Corporate Storytime, thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to welcoming you to our next investor briefing. Enjoy the day, everyone. Thanks, team.
Thank you.