Hello, welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you have joined us for our Energy and Precious Metals Summit. The first presentation of the day is from Paladin Energy. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter at any time. You can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking "Book a Meeting." At this point, I am very pleased to welcome Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Paladin Energy, an OTCQX Best 50 company, which trades under the symbol PILAF and on ASX under the symbol PDN.
Welcome, Paul.
Thanks, Lily, thank you, everyone, for joining us here today. I am in the lovely city of Perth. It is dark outside, it is 9:30 P.M., really happy to be talking to you all about Paladin Energy. I do not think there is any better time to be in uranium. Demand for uranium, it is growing, it is strong, it is also incredibly predictable, driven by this global drive for electrification and the need for secure energy. Paladin is incredibly well-positioned to participate in this energy market with a global presence, a current supply capacity out of Namibia. We are delivering real value through the high-quality assets that we do have, with the long-term growth potential of significant projects, particularly in Canada. Let me just step through what we have been doing.
I am just going to start with our strategy overall. Our strategy really is about being a multi-decade production and growth supplier to meet this growing uranium supply deficit. Our key assets primarily are based in Namibia, where we have an operating mine, Langer Heinrich Mine. It has been operating for a long time. It has a great track record of performance, in the last couple of years, we brought that back online after a period of care and maintenance. In Canada, we have our advanced development project, the PLS Mine. It is in the Athabasca region, that is the postcode to be in for any uranium producer. We have a range of exploration opportunities in Canada, in Australia, in Namibia, also a significant pipeline of potential projects and tenements also located in and around Canada.
Let me just talk briefly about the uranium market. This map sort of shows you a little bit about where the supply and where the demand is coming from in the market. One of the interesting features of this map is that all the places that consume uranium for nuclear power generation typically do not have any significant supply of uranium. The U.S., for example, is a significant producer of nuclear power with a very large fleet of nuclear reactors, has a very small generation of uranium capability. Conversely, if we look at Canada is one of the largest producers of uranium in the world, with very small demand for uranium. It is the same in a number of locations. China, a large consumer, growing consumer of uranium, no domestic supply. Namibia, very large supplier of uranium, no nuclear power generation.
What is interesting about this from Paladin's perspective is it positions us exceptionally well. A very large proportion of customers globally typically take the majority of their supply out of places like Kazakhstan, Canada, or even Australia through Olympic Dam and a small number of other producers. Where Namibia has its competitive advantage is it provides global diversification of those supply. Namibia is becoming increasingly more important for these Western-facing producers looking to diversify geographically their supply of uranium. In the future, PLS for Paladin provides us with another opportunity to really address the Western-facing nuclear utilities. At the moment, Paladin has 14 Tier 1 counterparties, and we are able to supply all around the world. We have utilities in Europe, in North America, and in Asia.
What's really driving nuclear power generation at the moment is there's approximately 438 current nuclear reactors that are operable all around the world. The way to think about this 438 is that they each have a uranium demand of approximately 500,000 lb per annum. That's the base load that drives this demand. You can see on this chart in the green, there's that white line just above the green at the beginning. That's about 200 million lb of demand from nuclear power generation. That is currently met by the existing mines globally. As we progress through the 2030s, you can see that the new power generation that's coming online, of which there are about 78 under construction today, and another 120 nuclear power plants in various phases of planning, that drives the future, very predictable, very stable demand in that white line at the top of that curve.
In parallel with that, what we're seeing is the existing mines in the bright green at the bottom are being depleted. That's mines like Cigar Lake, McArthur River, Kazatomprom, and even our own mine in Namibia, over time, will be depleted. The white bars show all the new mines that are currently in various development phases coming into production. Still, beyond 2035, there's a growing deficit that's going to be extremely challenging to be met by any uranium producer. What this means for me is that there's no better time to be in uranium.
Let me just talk a little bit about Langer Heinrich Mine. Langer Heinrich Mine is in a proven jurisdiction in Namibia. Namibia's been producing uranium for more than 50 years. One of the earliest producers was Rio Tinto's Rössing Uranium. It's got a long history of performance, and the government has a long history of support for uranium mining and mining in general. We receive incredible support from the Namibian government. It's incredibly stable. It's a jurisdiction that is very reliable. The logistics supply chains of inbound product and outbound product is incredibly reliable and very supportive.
The mine has been producing in Namibia since 2007. It did go through a period of care and maintenance post-Fukushima. One of the things we've done over the last four years is de-risk the asset. The way we did that was through an investment of about $120 million to rebuild the mine after care and maintenance, and also take out all the bottlenecks from the process that we knew didn't work as well as they could have in its previous iteration. We invested in about 11 km of pipeline. I think there was something like 2,000 valves that were replaced, 800 pumps that were overhauled. There was 52 tons of paint applied. It was a very large project.
What's happened since that investment is all the things that we did to improve the quality of the plant have demonstrated that they work. We invested in redesign of the crushing system, we haven't had a single blockage in that whole time. Blockage in that crusher in the past was a fundamental driver of underperformance and the failure of the plant to meet its nameplate capability. We've installed pre-leach tanks to provide consistent leach feed to the process. We've upgraded the pipes and pumps that give us surge capability, we've installed absolutely world-class automated final packaging and recovery plant. It's absolutely the best packaging facility in the world. Right now, today as we speak, we're probably two weeks away from finalizing our ramp-up, which has been underway for now two years.
In the last couple of months, we upgraded our guidance, we moved from a predicted production range of 4 million lb-4.4 million lb to a new range of 4.5 million lb-4.8 million lb for this financial year. In a couple of weeks, my expectation is we'll come very close to the top end of that range. The Langer Heinrich Mine is a producing asset. It's performing to my expectations, I couldn't be more pleased with its performance over the last couple of years. This data on the left shows our mining performance in the last four quarters. We've been ramping up our mining capability and I'm pleased to say that we have now 100% mining capacity on the ground, fully operational, and really ready to hit next financial year at 100% rates. Our processing facility is running exceptionally well.
That was the key subject of the de-bottlenecking work that we undertook three years ago now. The very top line in that middle chart shows our overall recovery rates. Our typical operating target range for this operation is between 85%-90%. What you can see in the last four quarters is that we've progressively improved the capability of the processing plant and have run the last two quarters well and truly above target ranges. The dark green lines in this chart show our output performance, and you can see we've had four strong quarters of quarter-on-quarter improvement. From a sales perspective, the top line shows our realized price, and that's typically reflective of the types of contracts that we service in any quarter. The green bars on that far right are the sales. Sales are very typically quite lumpy.
That's a consequence of which contracts and which volume we're feeding into those contracts at any point in time. That's very normal. It certainly makes it a little bit challenging from a cash flow perspective. But it's the way the price and the sector works. I couldn't be more pleased with how the facility's going. If I was to summarize this sales slide, we've got 100% mining capability up and running now. We've got 100% processing capability, and we're in great shape, ready to hit the next financial year at full strength. Our contract book, I think, is quite exceptional. I mentioned earlier that we have 14 Tier 1 counterparties. We supply all around the world. The counterparties that we have produce approximately 50% of the world's nuclear power. They're great counterparties to have, and we've been servicing those counterparties since we've been operating.
We did build the contract book slowly. The reason we did that was so that we could bring in new contracts in this rising market, as we have seen both the term prices and the contract price increase over time. If I look out to 2031 or 2030 rather, we have 22 million lb contracted. Our contract book is a mixture of both base-escalated prices and market-facing prices. The market-facing prices give us that upside potential, and the exposure to that increasing spot price. The term price are base-escalated, and what they do is provide us with the protection of any downside risk from a reducing spot price. If we look further beyond 2030, our contract book remains open. That gives us the opportunity to contract more over time, but also to make sure that we are able to capitalize on this growing supply deficit and the expectation that the new price will continue to grow.
Moving forward, we have the PLS project. PLS project is quite incredible. It's in an extraordinary location in the Athabasca Basin on the western side of the basin. If you're going to be in uranium, there's probably no better postcode to be in. The Saskatchewan government is incredibly supportive. I've met with them on a number of occasions. The Canadian federal government is also incredibly supportive. I spoke with them last week. They were well-briefed on our project. They're looking at ways that they can help companies like Paladin progress their projects even faster.
One of the benefits that we have at PLS is that the project is very shallow and very high grade. If I sort of reflect back on Langer Heinrich, the average grade for the remaining mine life is approximately 500 PPM. When I compare that to PLS, the grade's about 14,100 PPM. 28x better. What that means is that the volume of mining that we have to undertake at PLS is about 360,000 tons per year, compared with Langer Heinrich, where we're processing about 400,000 tons per month. It's about one twelfth, one thirteenth of the annual production. To deliver the potential for 9 million pounds per annum over a 10-year life of mine at this point in time. It's a globally significant volume that we can add to that supply deficit.
I think what's more exciting about this PLS project is that there's significant potential in that region. What I mean by that is that in very close proximity to the PLS project, we have other tenements, and we have undertaken exploration, where we have seen significant levels of mineralization that are very similar to what we saw at the Triple R deposit. It's a wonderful opportunity. It's 10 years, 9 million pounds per annum, with potential for significant growth. The project itself, in its current structure, the economics are very strong. About two years ago, or sorry, a year ago, we undertook an engineering review and we updated the economics using improved steel price, improved concrete price, parts, and labor rates. What that demonstrated is that with a pre-op capital of about $1.23 billion, pre-tax NPV is about $1.3 billion. It's a very exciting project for us.
If I compare that to other projects globally, in the top right-hand corner of this chart in that white box, is actually all the low-cost but very high-grade projects. There's only really three. We're very pleased to have one of those projects in that top right-hand corner. I think the other development projects will eventually have their time, particularly as we see the new price signal come through. I think with projects like PLS, we're ahead of the game. The economics are very strong at today's prices and will remain strong under a full range of pricing scenarios. This is what I mentioned a little bit earlier. 28.2% IRR, NPV at $1.3 billion. It's an incredible project. As I also mentioned, at a full range of value prices, it's highly value accretive.
This is a map of the mine. In the green circle area at the top left of this, that's the Triple R deposit. It's accessed through a decline that goes under the lake to access the main ore body and also moves back to the left. Within about 3.5 km is the Saloon Trend, where we have additional mineralization that can add to future growth. One of the key mechanisms of growth for Paladin Energy is all about how we increase the life of mine of this particular asset. The way we're doing that is through our exploration projects. There's three main goals for exploration at PLS. Firstly, there's upgrade of the resource to reserve at the Triple R deposit. Then there's resource extension drilling, where this deposit is open to the east, to the west and depth.
There is significant potential to upgrade the life of mine beyond that 10 years. The third aspect to our drill program is drilling in close proximity, particularly along that Saloon Trend, to identify other sources of significant mineralization that could add to the life of the project. What have we been doing? We acquired Fission Uranium on the 27th of December 2024, and we've been busy since then. We achieved our exemption from the NRCan in Canada, which enables us to be one of the very few non-Canadian miners that can actually own and operate a Canadian uranium mine. We've completed two IBAs with First Nations groups in the region. We completed our engineering review. We appointed a president of our Canadian operations, and he has 20 years of mining experience in the Athabasca region.
We've also achieved our provincial environmental assessment. That's enabled us to move into the next step, which is the regulatory approval to construct. Coming up, we have a couple of IBAs to complete. We need to get through the CNSC process to achieve our license to construct, and we're targeting to reach FID at the end of calendar year 2027. Paladin is a current producer, and that's exceptionally exciting. This gives our investors the opportunity to participate in today's market. We're unlocking potential at Patterson Lake South, which gives us that exposure to that growing deficit that is coming through this nuclear build-out program. We're going to deliver this project by 2031, and that gets us right at the right time for that opening deficit. We plan to unlock further potential through our exploration projects.
That's enabling us to deliver those long-term, sustainable growth opportunities for all of our investors. Look, that's a very quick run-through. I've got quite a few questions, I wouldn't mind shifting to those. I've got a question here about the weather at Langer Heinrich. The question is, "What gives us the confidence that operational volatility will keep trending down?" Well, one of the key features that I've seen in Namibia is that the workforce there is incredibly capable. We've been able to attract some of the best people from around Namibia. In fact, 99% of our employees are Namibian, and they're highly skilled. Every single issue that we've faced, we've been able to resolve and put behind us. Water was a good example.
We had a lack of quality water supply, and by November 2024, we managed to solve all of those issues, working in collaboration with the state-owned enterprise, and we haven't had a single water interruption since November 2024. We've had no power interruptions. We've continued to improve our process performance. We haven't been going through that improve-regress cycle that many companies go through in operations. We improve, we backstop those improvements, and lock them in, and continue to see the benefits of those improvements. I'm confident that the team has the capability to continue doing that. There's a question around, are we seeing a different type of institutional investor coming onto the register as a consequence of us being a producer rather than just a developer? I think the answer is yes. We're seeing on our register, about 43% of our register is typically North American.
What I notice is that people who invest in Paladin typically understand the U market. They're comfortable with nuclear power generation. They see, as a reliable supplier, I think they see the importance and the value that we can create given our production capability. What's also important about being a producer is we have access to this stream of utilities and of course, that contract book. What we're noticing right now is that although we're not at FID, a number of utilities are already approaching us for supply in 2031 and beyond. That's not typical. What is usual is that utilities will wait till a project is at FID before they start locking in contracts. Given that we have that capacity to supply, people are quite willing now to write contracts with us.
There's a question around, are there remaining bottlenecks to hitting nameplates at Langer Heinrich? In the 32 years that I've been working in mining and resource industry, I've never stood still. You never get to a point in time where you're really satisfied with production and the way things are going. There is absolutely opportunities at Langer Heinrich to continue to grow our capability and push volumes even more. We intend to provide guidance for the next financial year in July. With that, we should start seeing a bit more of a push on production. There's a question about this sort of AI and data centers driving nuclear power generation. Yes, that's very true. One of the challenges, of course, for AI and data centers is that they can build data centers much quicker than they can build nuclear power facilities.
Consequently, what we're seeing with some utilities is that some of those utilities are installing gas-fired power generation to meet the very short-term demand of AI and data centers. If people start producing, whether it's SMRs with traditional fuels, that sort of typical 4% enriched fuels, there is the potential that PLS can be a supplier for those types of facilities. Once they're built, their annual demand is going to be around that 500,000 lb per annum. With that deficit, Paladin is already well-positioned either out of Namibia or with PLS to supply to those co-located nuclear power plants when and if that happens. There's a really good question here about how do the recent indigenous agreements at PLS and the exemption from Canada's NRCan position us versus other Athabasca developers in terms of permitting risk and timeline.
Interestingly, in Canada, there's actually no requirement to have an agreement. You can progress your project without agreements, but it is a little more difficult. From a company values perspective, we believe that our host communities should be beneficiaries of our presence. In Namibia, for example, we're investing heavily in the community through education, wellness, safety, upskilling, employment opportunities, and local spend. We'll do the same thing in Canada. Through our indigenous agreements, we're actually making a commitment to those sorts of things. The response that I've had from the four First Nations groups is incredibly positive, particularly when they see what we are already doing in that space.
There's a question around having completed the heavy lift on the restart and commissioning at Langer, how does that de-risk Paladin versus greenfield? It's a terrific question. I say to a lot of investors that mining is an outdoor sport. In outdoor sports, you occasionally get tackled. Every single uranium project that's started in the last two years has had its fair share of challenges. I feel like we've really overcome those and we've moved beyond. With that stable production, I think it does give us that competitive advantage over a lot of our peers. Also given that Langer Heinrich is actually a reasonable scale. Most of the other restarts that have occurred in the last two years are typically between a quarter and a third of the scale. When they have had challenges, they've been much more material. I think we're in incredibly great shape.
There's a question here around the capital cost and the C1 cost at PLS. Our predicted all-in sustaining cost is at about $15/lb . I think that's a really good opportunity for us, particularly if we see prices continue to increase. Current spot price is sitting at around $85, term price is somewhere around $93. With an all-in sustaining cost of $15, I expect really strong performance out of PLS. It's also true to say that most projects, they probably cost a little more the closer you get to production. Still, we have a lot of opportunity there at PLS.
There's another question here. With Paladin shares up strongly over the past year, do we feel the market is fully valuing Paladin, or is most of the upside still ahead of us? I think that there's almost a little bit of Africa risk, particularly around Langer Heinrich. Quite honestly, I think people consider Africa as a single sort of entity. Namibia is incredibly low risk, and as a consequence, I think we undervalue that just a little bit. With respect to PLS, I think there's enormous upside potential. The mine is currently 9 million pounds per annum on average over the next 10 years. We've got significant potential to grow that asset and to deliver significant value out of the exploration activities.
I think there's still a fair bit of upside ahead of us, and Paladin is really well-positioned to participate in this growing deficit that we're seeing as a consequence of that nuclear power generation build-out that's happening all around the world today as people strive for energy security, decarbonization, and generally speaking, with this new AI and data center thematic.
Well, I think that's about all I have time for tonight. I really appreciate your attendance and thank you for joining me.