As the time is now 12:00 P.M. and the company has complied with the relevant requirements for convening this meeting, and we have received confirmation that a quorum is present, I formally declare the meeting is open. Also in attendance today is Mr. Todd Williams, the Managing Director; Miss Melanie Layden, a Non-Executive Director; and José Bordogna, a Non-Executive Director. Mr. Peter Canterbury, a Non-Executive Director, is an apology for today's meeting. In addition, we have present Mr. Rajeev Chandra, our Company Secretary, and Mr. Ross Burt, a representative of the company's external auditors, William Buck. If any questions need to be directed to the auditors, the notice of meeting has been given in accordance with the company's constitution, and copies are available for you on the company's website, the share registry's online voting site, or on the ASX market announcement platform.
I will take the notice of meeting and explanatory statement as read. The format of today's meeting will be a presentation by our Managing Director, Mr. Todd Williams, followed by a Q&A session on the business operations. We will then consider the business on today's agenda, and then we will proceed with a Q&A session on the items of business, following which shareholders will be provided with additional time to vote on resolutions. As previously advised, this is a virtual meeting, and shareholders will be able to ask questions and cast direct votes at the appropriate times while the meeting is in progress. Questions received during the meeting, which are of a similar nature, will be grouped and answered at the appropriate time. If you have any questions which you feel were not addressed at today's meeting, we invite shareholders to contact the company via phone or email. I'll now hand over to our Company Secretary to outline the procedures for today's meetings.
Thank you, Chair. As mentioned earlier, shareholders will be able to participate, ask questions, and cast direct votes at the appropriate times whilst the meeting is in progress. Visitors and media are reminded that whilst we welcome you at this meeting, it is a shareholder meeting, and you may not make comments or ask questions. We may experience some time lag, and this may cause some delay in your text questions or comments coming to our attention. We encourage you to lodge them as early as you can. Shareholders wishing to ask questions via text, please take note of the following instructions on screen. Shareholders wishing to speak and ask a question, an audio questions facility is available during this meeting. Please follow this process, which again is shown on your screen.
Regarding voting on today's resolutions, all shareholders, proxy holders, and authorized corporate representatives and attorneys of shareholders who are entitled to vote will be able to do so via the webinar poll. It is important to note that if you have lodged a proxy form and voted prior to the meeting, you do not need to vote again at this meeting unless you wish to change your proxy instruction. For those proxy holders, shareholders, and authorized corporate representatives who have not yet voted prior to the meeting, please cast your votes on each of the resolutions when the poll is open. For proxy holders, you will have a summary of proxy votes which detail the voting instructions, if any, for the items of business.
By completing the voting via the webinar poll, when instructed to vote in a particular manner, you are deemed to have voted in accordance with those instructions. Where the Chair has been appointed proxy on behalf of the shareholder, the Chair, Mr. Mullens, of the meeting intends to be voting in favor of all these resolutions. When the poll is declared open, a poll window will appear. To vote, simply select the direction in which you would like to cast your vote. The selected option will be marked. To submit your votes, simply click on the submit button. You will have the ability to change your vote up until the time voting is closed. Voting on all resolutions is allowed up until the time the poll is closed.
I will now hand over to our Managing Director for his presentation, following which there will be an opportunity for shareholders to ask general questions. As advised earlier, if you have any comments or general questions, please lodge them whilst the Managing Director is giving his presentation. Over to you, Todd.
Excellent. Thanks, Raj. Just jump onto the title slide. There we go. No, look, thanks for... Yeah, maybe just go back one, Nina. We'll just sit on the title for a bit. Yep. Excellent. Here we are again at the AGM for Unico Silver for 2025. Look, I'd love to take this opportunity to thank the shareholders for their support over the past 12 months and the Board of Directors. I think we've had an excellent 12 months. It was really set up in 2024 on the back of a number of acquisitions that we completed, with the main one being the acquisition of and consolidation of the Waikin project in Santa Cruz, Argentina. Yeah, look, we've since leveraged our market-leading resource base to become and position ourselves as one of the leading silver juniors on the ASX.
We've completed over 30,000 m of drilling in the past 12 months. We've got another 30,000 m planned ahead. We've just recently announced a number of discoveries. Really, what we're excited about and what we hope to be marked on at the AGM next year in 2026 is our stated objective of transitioning from Explorer to Developer and becoming a Tier 1 silver development company. Thank you. We'll just skip through to the next slide. Thank you. Our vision is quite simple. Our goal is to become a leading silver development company. We've got a twofold strategy to achieve that. The first is our Beyond 300 Resource Growth Strategy. That is to grow our total resources to beyond 300 million oz of silver equivalent. We have a track record of executing on this.
We've not only completed the Waikin acquisition in just over the past 12 months, we've also put out a revised MRE for the Cerro León project, which provided a huge step up in global resources. We've got three rigs active. At the moment, we've got a 30,000 m drill program underway at Waikin, and we've got two emerging discoveries. Importantly, we've grown the resources 155% since the second half of 2024, and we expect that that trend continues. More importantly, obviously, it's one thing to grow the resources, but it's another thing to show how you can mine those resources and convert resources to reserves. We've launched the Plus 150 Strategy, which was launched in May. Really, that's just a capital allocation framework around how we plan on transitioning from explorer to producer.
What we are focused on at this point is our free milling oxide ounces, pick and strain ounces. We obviously are very comfortable with the work completed by Pan American Silver in the past. That has given us an excellent platform to launch from. They completed a PFS and mining studies on the Waikin project back in 2018, and we get to leverage all of that work. It is providing us a really clear pathway through to development. Importantly, we also have key infrastructure, which was obviously articulated at the time of the acquisition. We acquired all of the key farming lands. We have got an access and mining agreement valid until 2034, which covers 70% of the ounces at Waikin. We have a 150 man camp. We are very much blessed with infrastructure at the project.
What we're really excited about and a huge opportunity for Unico Silver is just what's happening not only in the silver space, but in Argentina. At the moment, they have the RIGI. We have a very pro-business government. The RIGI is the equalizer for Argentina. It's aimed at bringing Argentina in line with other mining countries like Peru and Chile. In simple terms, if you have a development project that requires more than $200 million of capital invested, this is foreign direct investment, then under the RIGI, your corporate tax rates decrease from 35% to 25%. The export duties are abolished. In general, there's a lot more stability around the fiscal regime of the mining project moving forward. That's seen a flurry of investment interest from the likes of BHP, Glencore, Rio Tinto.
We are just really pleased to be in a position to deliver into the market a development project under such favorable fiscal regime. Next one. Thank you. Just on the corporate snapshot, obviously, we are very well funded, just under AUD 30 million as of the end of September, market capitalization of just over AUD 300 million. Look, I think the two main metrics that we are most pleased with are our total shareholder returns since the depths of the precious metals bear market in the second half of 2023, which is just over 700%. More importantly, one metric that we follow very closely is our mineral resources on a per-share basis. How many ounces of silver you get for every share in Unico Silver. Pleasingly, since the second half of 2023, we have increased that by over 600%.
We have done that because we have an excellent management team in-country in Argentina. We have managed to allocate capital accordingly depending on the market conditions. We have a great Board of Directors who have experience not only discovering world-class deposits in Argentina, but also exiting and selling those deposits. We also have a very supportive institutional register and long-term holders who have been supporting the story for the last six years. Next slide. Thank you. Why are we here? I think the reality is at the moment, the opportunity for us is really top-down. If we have a look at the silver ecosystem, during the past 18 months, there has been a flurry of M&A. Basically, every single asset silver miner has been acquired by one of the intermediate to majors.
This kicked off with the acquisition of SilverCrest by Coeur Mining, and it concluded with the acquisition of Adriatic Metals from Dundee Precious Metals. What's really interesting about all of these acquisitions is not only the consideration, $1 billion - $2 billion, but what's more important is the production profile in terms of the total primary silver production from all of these assets for 2025. That was guided to be around 5 million oz- 7 million oz of primary silver. That gives us a pretty good range of what is material to the ecosystem that we operate in. Essentially, what we've done is we've back-solved our entire corporate strategy around this basis, which is delivering into the market a project that has the profile of other Tier 1 silver producers. Next slide. Thank you.
This provides us a little more color around that corporate strategy that we put out in May. Obviously, the Beyond 300 strategy speaks for itself. The goal is to always continue growing resources. Later in the year, we'll be looking at an expansion opportunity to look at the deeper sulfide resources, particularly at the Cerro León project. For now, in the immediate term, what we're focused on is the very simple pit-constrained oxide free milling oz at Waikin and Cerro León. The reason we're doing that is because we have robust metallurgical recoveries. There's been a huge amount of work that has been done in the past by majors like Pan American Silver, over 150 samples that have been submitted for whole ore leach test work. We're really comfortable with the recoveries. We're comfortable with the metal mix.
The oxide mineralization comprises 70% silver, so that gives us huge leverage to silver in a rising silver price environment. Importantly, we've got this baseline environmental and hydrological work that was completed by Pan American Silver that we can leverage, which means that we can expedite a lot of our development work streams. Next slide. Thank you. On the Beyond 300 strategy over the past 12 months, clearly, we've executed on that with the acquisition of Waikin, which brought another 70 million oz of silver equivalent resources. We also put out an updated MRE for Cerro León, which increased the MRE from 2023 by just under 80%, which we're really pleased with. In total, in the past 12 months, we've increased total global resources by 150%. Importantly, we're sitting on just over 230 million oz in silver-equivalent resources.
That includes 126 million oz of silver and just over 500,000 oz of gold. Next slide. Thank you. Just a quick snapshot of the portfolio. I probably will not dwell here too much. I guess the key point is that we are very well located with respect to mining infrastructure. We are just up the road from AngloGold Ashanti's world-class Cerro Vanguardia mine. The two projects are connected by the public route number 12. Importantly, these projects were held by five companies during the last precious metal bull market. It is the first time they have ever been consolidated by a single junior. Most noteworthy was really the Waikin project, which was previously held by Pan American Silver and Yamana Gold. It is the first time that that project has been held by one company, let alone one junior company. Next slide. Thank you.
This is basically the story of Unico Silver in the context of the history of these projects. Both projects were explored in the last precious metal bull market. There was a NI 43-101 put out on the Pinguino property, which forms part of Cerro León. In 2011, there was a maiden NI 43-101 put out for Waikin shortly after in 2012. You can see here that the total drilling is directly correlated to the silver price. Since silver has recovered, hitting all-time highs in October this year of $54 an ounce, we are meeting that with a record amount of drilling for both projects. 50,000 m this year in total. We completed 30,000 m in the first half of this year, another 20,000 in the second half. We will very quickly be moving into another 10,000 m drill program in the first quarter of calendar 2026. Thank you.
On the Plus 150 development strategy, we've set out an exploration target just to help the market understand the building blocks of where we think our maiden mining inventory will come from. We set a target of 40 million oz of oxide mineralization at Cerro León. We've since exceeded that with a resource of 45 million oz as part of our recent MRE upgrade. You'll notice here that in the exploration target, we've got a more speculative allocation for the resource or the exploration target called emerging discoveries. What's really interesting is that since we published this exploration target, we've made two exceptional discoveries, one at La Negra Southeast and one at Lynemarocha Southeast. We think, or we're very comfortable that we are very well set up and positioned to exceed this exploration target.
We believe that the resource growth from those two prospects alone will far exceed 30 million oz allocated to emerging discoveries in this exploration target. Next slide. Thank you. Just quickly on the development strategy, this is an overview of the historical metallurgical test work completed to date. You can see all the purple and pink points here are the samples located throughout the La Negra and Lynemarocha resource. You can see that the work done to date has been extremely systematic. It includes characterization and variability test work, which really is in line with a PFS level. A lot of the PFS level metallurgical test work has been done, which is a major de-risking for our project. Next slide.
This is just, I guess we're going to spend most of the time today talking about Waikin because it is the source of our future resource growth and is the focus of a 30,000 m drill program, which is underway. Importantly, it's a very large vein field. It has dimensions of 12 km by 10 km. It's one of the largest vein fields in the Santa Cruz Province. There is a historical foreign estimate, which we think is very stale and only represents a very small percentage, not only of the project geographically, but what we think will be the ultimate endowment. There was a historical focus on the Lynemarocha and La Negra vein structures, which you can see in this map is just a very small portion of the veins that have been mapped throughout the district.
That's a really critical point that we'll continue to reference as exploration develops. Importantly, all the baseline environmental work for this project, including full mining studies, was completed in 2018. Therefore, we're in a really interesting situation here where we are basically undertaking greenfields exploration on a brownfields project, a project that has already had a history of mining but hasn't had systematic regional exploration. We've got three rigs operating double shift. We're likely to move to four in the next few months. We've only reported assays for 31 holes or 5,000 m. There's a lot of assays to come and a lot of opportunities for new discoveries. Next slide. This is just a quick overview of the two main discoveries that we announced in July. We actually announced both discoveries within two weeks of each other.
The first was Lynegra Southeast, which was a really broad 90 m intercept, including very high-grade silver and gold. When I say high-grade, I'm talking in the context of a near-surface open-pittable mineralized system. You can see there the drill core on both sides is very rusty all the way from the top to the bottom of the hole, showing that we've got a lot of homogeneity in our metallurgy and the type of mineralization. It's very much oxide mineralization all the way down to 250 m vertical, which makes for very easy planning when it comes to geometallurgy. Within two weeks of discovering Lynegra, we announced the discovery of Lynemarocha Southeast. Why that's important is because Lynemarocha Southeast is only 400 m southeast of Lynemarocha, which was the vein that was subject to a small amount of underground mining by Pan American Silver.
That vein, pre-mining, had just over 35 million oz of silver. What's really interesting is there's a huge opportunity to find additional 30 million oz silver mineralized chutes along this structure. We've actually mapped the structure in the field in outcrop all the way down to Lynegra. We see huge opportunity not only for an emerging discovery with scale at Lynemarocha Southeast, but also additional discoveries along that structure. Lynegra itself, you can see the scale of Lynegra. We think that this will be a cornerstone of any development plan. It's going to be a very large resource and a very large single open pit. We're very excited to drill this out and very excited by the results that we announced Friday last week. Next slide. Thank you. This is just a quick overview of access.
You can see here we have the Waikin camp, Lynegra Southeast, the structure. You can see that trending in the background. Then Lynemarocha Southeast, you can see that trending in the foreground. In fact, the arrow from Lynemarocha Southeast is pointing directly on the discovery drill pad. You can see the relative proximity from the new discovery to the camp. It is also a nice shot of the drill rigs, the diamond rigs operating at Lynegra Southeast, just showing how easy access is. It is very akin to the geomorphology of Nevada in America. Next slide. Thank you. Firstly, on Lynemarocha, we are very pleased in two fronts with some of the results we put out Friday. Firstly, the historical Lynemarocha resource. We saw a lot of upside to improve our understanding of the distribution of high grades in the top 75 vertical meters.
You've got to appreciate that this vein was subject to underground mining, which meant that the previous operators didn't really care about what was happening in the top 75 m because it wasn't being mined via an open pit. We saw quite a lot of opportunity to improve the resolution of the drilling in that top 75 m. Really pleased to put out some exceptional drill holes Friday, including 42 m at 437 g from 46 m down hole. That was within and just directly above the high-grade chute that makes up the Lynemarocha system, showing that those high grades actually do extend closer to surface than previously recognized, just meaning simply that we can access very high-grade mineralization close to surface in any conceptual pit. A really big step forward for the mine planning, detailed mine planning for the Lynemarocha vein.
On Lynemarocha Southeast, we put out a number of holes. We're putting together quite a significant mineralized envelope. At the moment, it has dimensions of about 400 m strike, 175 m vertical. It really looks like another Lynemarocha itself. We haven't actually seen the limits of that discovery. It's still open at depth, and it's open to the southeast. Next slide. Thank you. On Lynegra, look, Lynegra is a very simple story. We were drilling the extension of the Lynegra foreign estimate, which was the resource declared by Cordalane in 2013. Their drilling stopped at the tenement boundary, which was the former tenement boundary between Yamana and Pan American Silver. Since we are now the first company to operate both sides of the prospect as a single consolidated block, we simply have continued the drilling along that structure.
We are very pleased to, I guess, announce and to reveal that not only is the mineralization increasing in thickness, the grades are increasing, and we still have not actually seen the limits of the structure. It is still open not only at depth, but also to the southeast. We have also put out some exceptional drill holes, which are leading probably some of the best silver-gold discovery holes anywhere globally at the moment. Out of the first 10 holes that we announced, five of those delivered grade thicknesses of greater than 10,000 GT, which is an incredible achievement. Next slide. Thank you. Just a quick snapshot of the resource or some sections showing obviously very shallow mineralization, very wide potential mining widths, very amenable to open-pit mining. Next slide. Thank you. That is basically it from me.
Obviously, we've completed our stated objective of consolidating this central silver district in Santa Cruz. Obviously, that was culminated in the acquisition of Waikin. We've since recapitalized the company raising just under AUD 60 million in the past 12 months. We've completed 30,000 m of drilling in the first half of this year, and we've got another 30,000 m planned for the next nine months. We've got an updated MRE due for Waikin within the coming weeks. Really, we're just waiting on final results for 10 more holes, and then we'll be moving straight into an MRE for Waikin. A lot of the long lead items for the feasibility have already begun. We've already started updating our baseline environmental and hydrology studies at Waikin and Cerro León. We've just commenced a detailed geotechnical drilling program to inform a lot of our pit optimization work within both projects.
We have started a lot of the work streams for our internal scoping study, which is very much underway. Really, once we have the final resource, which is pending the results from Lynemarocha and La Negra Southeast, it is hard to move forward on a feasibility when you do not know what the ultimate resource is. Once the ultimate resource reveals itself, we will be quickly moving into a pre-feasibility study, focusing on the RIGI qualification as the foundation of the sort of fiscal regime for the project moving forward. More importantly, we are always looking at growth. The plan is next year to actually start looking at a potential pathway forward for some of the deeper sulfide mineralization at Cerro León and looking at expansion opportunities. A very busy 12 months is planned ahead. I think that should be it. So I might just hand it back to you, Raj, and start with the formal business. Oh, sorry, I think we've got the Q&A.
Yeah. Todd, I can confirm we haven't got any questions.
Excellent. All right. That's easy. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you, Todd. We will now turn to the business of the meeting. Before opening the poll, I wish to remind shareholders that the poll will remain open for an additional minute after we've considered all resolutions. I now declare the poll open. I now move to the first item. So do I move on, Raj, or leave that for a moment?
Yes, you can move on, Jim.
I now move to the first item of general business. If you have a question on this item of business, please follow the questions process, which were previously outlined. We'll address your questions after the last resolution. The first item of business pertains to the receipt and consideration of the financial report of the company and the related reports to the directors and the auditors for the year ended 30th of June 2025. These items are contained in the annual report, so I'll ask that they be taken as read. The annual report is available on the ASX announcement platform or on the company's website. The Corporations Act requires the accounts and reports to be laid before shareholders at the annual general meeting. However, except as set out in Resolution One, there is no requirement for a vote of members to be taken on them. No written questions to the audit were received by the cutoff date, five days before the meeting.
Questions may be directed through myself to our auditor in relation to the conduct of the audit, the audit report, the company's accounting policies, and the independence of the auditor. As this matter does not require a vote, we will now move on to the first resolution. I now turn to the first resolution in today's notice of meeting, which pertains to the adoption of the remuneration report. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution One as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on your screen. The remuneration report is set out in the director's report in the company's 2025 annual report. The remuneration report sets out the company's remuneration arrangements, the directors, and key management personnel of the company. Proxies received to this resolution are also outlined on the slide.
I now move to Resolution Two, which pertains to the election of Mr. Peter Canterbury as a director of the company. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Two as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on your screen. Proxies received to this resolution are also outlined on the slide. I now move to Resolution Three, which pertains to the re-election of Ms. Melanie Layden as a director of the company. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Three as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on your screen. Proxies received to this resolution are also outlined on the slide. I now move to Resolution Four, which pertains to the ratification of prior issue of placement shares.
I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Four as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Proxies received for this resolution are also outlined on the screen. I now move to Resolution Five, which pertains to the appraisal of long-term incentive performance rights to Mr. Todd Williams or his nominee. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Five as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen. Proxies received to this resolution are also outlined on the slide. As Resolution Six A retains to myself, I will hand the chair over to Melanie.
Thanks, Peter. I now move to Resolution Six A, which pertains to the approval of the issue of 2 million options to Mr. Peter Mullens or his nominee. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Six A as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on your screen. Proxies received for this resolution are also outlined on the slide. Thank you, Peter. I'll now hand back to you.
I now move to Resolution Six B, which pertains to the approval to issue 1 million options to Ms. Melanie Layden or her nominee. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Six B as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen. Proxies received to this resolution are also outlined on the slide. I now move to Resolution Six C, which pertains to the approval to issue 1 million options to Mr. José Bordogna or his nominee.
I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Six C as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen. Proxies received for this resolution are also outlined on the slide. I now move to Resolution Six D, which pertains to the approval of an issue of 1 million options to Mr. Peter Canterbury or his nominee. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Six D as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen. Proxies received to this resolution are also outlined on the slide. I now move to Resolution Seven, which pertains to the renewal of Unico Silver Limited Employee Incentive Plan. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Seven as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen.
Proxies received to this resolution are also outlined on the slide. I now move to Resolution Eight, which pertains to the approval of 10% placement facility. I now propose that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass Resolution Eight as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen. Proxies received to this resolution are also outlined on the slide. We will now go to shareholders' questions.
Chair, there is one question from shareholder Mr. Andrew Oliver, and it's in relation to results announcements. So I will read the question. Given the success of the recent high-grade drilling at Lynemarocha and La Negra Southeast, what specific date in late November is the market expected to receive the updated JORC MRE for Waikin? And what are the next steps for the remaining 30,000 m of the drill program?
I'll let Todd answer that question.
Yeah, no, happy to answer that. Yeah, look, thanks for the question, Andrew. Look, I think the reality is it's hard to provide a specific date for the delivery of that MRE. Obviously, it's very hard to calculate an MRE when you don't have final assays. That's one variable that we can't control. We have a number of drill holes in the lab now, which we're waiting on assay results for. The guidance around that is hopefully no more than 10 days. Once we have those final assay results, we can then actually obviously update the market on those assay results and commence the process, engaging an independent mineral resource geologist to estimate the MRE. Once again, that's a second variable that we cannot control. I think the reality is we're very comfortable that there'll be an MRE before mid-December. We can't give an exact date.
It's going to be plus or minus a couple of weeks, depending on factors outside of our control. We will certainly keep the market abreast of any sort of changes. I think people should be comfortable with the outcome. I think people will be very pleased with what we've achieved, the resource growth that we're achieving at Waikin. I guess what I would say is this is certainly not the final resource. It's just a line in the sand. I think that builds to your second part of your question about what is the plan for the following remaining 25,000 m out of the 5,000 m that have been announced to date. Look, the reality is we've got a very aggressive timeline set to convert a lot of these new discoveries into high-confidence indicator resources that will require quite a lot of drilling on our behalf.
It needs to be done very soon in the next couple of months. The plan is to start scaling up our drill production at Waikin. We've currently got three rigs. We are talking with drill companies to potentially go to four, depending on rig availability. All of that basically means delivering on a high-confidence MRE early next year, in the first quarter of next year, which will basically become the foundation of a maiden feasibility study. Even once that is delivered, I'm sure exploration is one of those things that it only ends, it never begins, and you sort of need to keep moving forward. I think we'll very much start moving into the regional exploration in the second quarter of next year and start positioning ourselves for further resource growth.
Todd, there was a follow-up question, and I think you've just answered one part of that question. The second part of that second question is, are there any long lead items, such as water, power, environmental permits, that currently pose a risk to the timeline for the maiden scoping study?
Yeah, no, look, the long lead items that pose a risk, just those, the baseline environmental and hydrology, the geotechnical is normally a risk in the sense that that work takes time. It requires a specific, well, a standalone drill campaign in order to drill the holes to better understand and characterize the geotechnical aspects of the rocks in and around the pits. Look, all of that work has commenced. We've basically kicked off a lot of those long lead work streams. We're very well placed to be in a position in the first quarter of next year to have those long lead items just feeding straight into our feasibility work streams.
Any further questions, Raj?
Chair, there's one more. With the ongoing expansion and transition from an explorer to a developer, how does the Board plan to evolve its composition to ensure it has the necessary skills in mine, construction, operations, and silver processing? Specifically, how is the Board ensuring gender and ethnic diversity as part of its long-term governance strategy?
Do you want me to have a go at that, Pete?
Yeah, you have a go, Todd.
Look, I think the reality is I'm very comfortable with the construct of the Board. I think we've made some big appointments, not only at a Board level but at a key management level in the past 12 months to really strengthen our development expertise. I think what people overlook for a company at our stage is that what is most fundamental to any feasibility study or any explorer transitioning to developer is actually the quality of the resource that underpins all of those feasibility studies. Because if you have a very poor resource, then it doesn't matter how good the engineering work is done. Obviously, a poor resource leads to poor predictability around financial outcomes, physicals, etc. I think at the moment, what we're really focused on is making sure that we've got people in country who can execute on that.
We've recently made a number of hires in country with some very senior resource geologists who are former Newmont, etc., to assist us over the next six months. I think we're very well covered in terms of our ability to put together a very robust report resource that will underpin the maiden feasibility study. I think the important thing is that we're engaging consulting engineering firms with a lot of expertise in Argentina. We're probably a few weeks away from disclosing to the market who those engagements are. I guess what I will say is that we're focusing on senior engineering firms that have a lot of experience with not only process engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, building, not only, sorry, designing and constructing gold and silver mines in Argentina. I think that's probably the most critical point to date. I guess on the point on diversity, I think we've got, we may not have a huge amount of ethnic diversity, but we've got a lot of diversity of thought and opinions at a Board level. That's probably what's most critical to us at this point.
Thanks for that, Todd. I'd just like to add as well, I've been involved in a couple of companies that have transitioned from explorer to developer. Firstly, we've just brought Peter Canterbury on, who was involved just recently with the project in Western Australia, Degray, where he took it right through feasibility and through to construction and a buyout. Secondly, at some stage, we need to move from explorer developer to actually seriously considering construction and going down that path. We're not quite at that phase yet.
We really need to get this scoping study out, the MRE completed. Probably by the middle of next year, we'll be in a strong position to look at a team moving forward on the construction side. We are certainly very well covered on the technical side, the geological, and with the consultants we're using. Another thing that's happened, I've been working in Argentina for 30 years, and there's been quite a lot of mine developments over that time. When I first went there, there was a lack of experience in country. Now there's a group of very solid professional geologists, mining engineers, other participants in the mining industry. There's a strong mining culture within Argentina now, which has been a dramatic change. I would rather employ our Argentinian geologists now than a lot of guys in Australia. That's a fundamental change over the last 30 years. Are there any other questions, Raj?
Last one, Chair. It's in relation to the regime and whether Unico Silver has assessed the benefits and the positive impact this could have on the project's long-term operating cost and capital expenditure.
Oh, God, that one's too long. Yeah. I think the reality is, just based on the numbers, the regime is a game changer for the whole industry. It's an opportunity to equalize the fiscal performance of any operating mine in Argentina with its neighbors such as Chile and Peru. Whilst we're not quite there yet in the sense that we haven't produced a financial model on a final mining plan to assess the post-tax NPV, etc., of regime versus the current regime, I guess what I would point to is that AbraSilver is a great example of a silver developer in Argentina that has. They've published a PFS, and they've published their NPV and the total free cash flow under the current regime and under the regime regime. I think you'll see that the impact of the regime is quite astounding because I think in the context of AbraSilver, there was a substantial increase in post-tax free cash flow, which significantly improves the internal rate of return of the project, which significantly accelerates the payback of the project. I think the regime for us is almost a no-brainer.
A lot of the developers operating in Argentina at this point are moving into the regime. We've recently appointed a specialist team within Unico Silver to assist with our pre-qualification into the regime. This is a group of specialists in Argentina who have successfully navigated through that process. We made some disclosures in the quarterly around things that we're doing in terms of restructuring the business so that we can seamlessly qualify for the regime in the first quarter of next year. We're very comfortable that our project has the profile which is similar to all the others that have been accepted in the regime. As long as we are able to put forward a feasibility and development plan that is simple and defendable and robust and makes sense, there's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't qualify for the regime. There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't prioritize qualifying for the regime.
Thanks for that, Todd. How are we going, Raj? Any more?
No more questions, Chair.
Okay. This concludes the Q&A session for the formal part of this meeting. We will now provide the shareholders with an additional minute for poll voting to be completed. As the additional time is up, I now declare the poll closed. Once the results of the poll have been processed, we will announce the results later today on the ASX Market Announcements platform. This concludes the formal business part of the meeting. Since the company has not received notice of any other business, I declare the meeting closed. Thank you for your attendance and your continued support.