Everyone, I'm hoping you can hear me okay. Let me know if you can't in the message. We'll wait for another couple of seconds, and then we'll get going. I have prepared some slides to summarize the Scoping Study to hopefully make it a bit easier and more digestible if there's a bit of work involved in that. All right, let's get going. All right, can everyone see the presentation, hopefully? All right, guys, thanks again for joining us today. It's been a pretty important couple of days for the company, and hopefully we've managed to get out a Scoping Study in line with, obviously, what we've been sort of forecasting, if not sort of beat that.
A lot of work involved, but it's been following a certain pathway that we've been going towards strategically with the way we've conducted our exploration, our mine planning, our MET testing, and our engineering. Hopefully this is a decent summary from that. Just getting on to just a highlight, I guess, we've tried to look at different pricing scenarios in the sense that it's probably not the easiest commodity in the world to forecast the price based on, obviously, the complexity around the monopoly almost of China and then, obviously, all the other geopolitical issues that are going on at the moment. We've looked at sort of three pricing scenarios: a low side, which is to spot what we think is more of a pragmatic sort of base case, and then an upside.
$60 for our spot price, probably know it's had a bit of a run the last few days, so it's good to see it a little bit higher. Our base case, we've actually used Project Blue, and we've looked at our day that we're going to get in or our year we're going to get into production and saw that it was $9. We've just had a flat $90, just to be conservative from that point of view. We've looked at our higher side of around $111. One thing which I did want to point out is if you have looked at the Scoping Study, we've also included sort of the ND, so neodymium supply and demand, since early 2013, and just to show basically that supply-demand dynamic and where we think we're going to end up.
The good news is, even speaking with the Project Blue guys, they haven't forecasted something which is like a hockey stick. It's sort of in line with what's happened the last 10 or 12 years. From that point of view, it's another sort of realistic data point that we believe that the neodymium demand will continue. Just to put things in perspective, based on today, 2025 and 2028, when we're looking at getting production, there's almost a 20,000 tonne increase per annum. If you've looked at the Scoping Study, and we're about to show some results now, we produce around 3,000-5,000 tonnes per annum of MREO, so that's NdPr, DyTb. Of that 3,500, Nd makes up around 70-72%. We produce around 2,500 tonnes per annum. I've just said by 2028, the forecast is going to increase to 20,000 more.
Theoretically, the market needs another eight Colossuses just to keep up with demand. I think it's a really important point understanding that there's probably only a couple of projects, our neighbor being one of them, is another good project, that they need several of ours just by 2028 to keep up with that demand. On the back of that, obviously, with the main highlights, one of the exciting parts is that even at today's cyclical low, we're at a price of $60 US for NdPr. We're still making pre-tax NPV of close to $720 million US, or just over $1.1 billion.
That should be important for those that are investors or future investors understanding, I guess, the robustness of our sort of financial structure here so that we can actually not just survive, because that word gets used a lot, the cyclical lows, we can still make some pretty robust returns. That is why I have highlighted sort of the annual EBITDA of $114 million, even at that $60 or AUD 180 million, which is nothing to be snuffed at. Pathway to production. I guess we are going to talk a bit about all these individual sort of cornerstones on how we got here. I think everyone understands the fantastic asset that we have got, not just the $500 million almost that we have got in MRE, but the high grade of MREO.
You'll see that I, for those that have heard me present, I don't talk about TREO because I don't think it's a very important metric compared to MREO. Of that, we've got 329 million tonnes of measured and indicated resource. I can tell you now, if you haven't read some of the nuances in the Scoping Study announcement, the whole mine plan is done on measured and indicated. There's no inferred. I want you to understand from a geological perspective, we sort of are in a good place for de-risking that on what we're feeding the plant should come to reality. Exploration upside, I think everyone knows that we've got plenty up our sleeve. In particular, the southern complex, which is really prolific with our grade and tonnage, it only includes 14 sq km at the moment. It's got a whole another 50% to go.
With the mine planning, we've only included 20% of our resource. That is because we've got some pretty clear blinkers on that. We're chasing the MREO. We're chasing the MREO to TREO ratio. We also know we've got good recoveries. It is one of the reasons why we sort of summarize the analytical work that we've done with our leach testing, because it is an important part of us being very clear on where we send our rig and where we do our mine planning. The flow sheet, as a process engineer myself, is something which I really focus on, understanding the impact that has later on, not just on OpEx and CapEx, but uptime. Really important uptime. Otherwise, no point having great economics if we do not have a facility which is actually up and humming and ready to produce. I've mentioned the recoveries. They're fantastic.
Why we're confident in not just the stuff done by ANSTO with the high 70s on why we think the rest of the mine plan can achieve those is because we've actively gone out and built a mine plan around the similar metallurgy that we've got in that stuff we've done with ANSTO. I mentioned the low prices at the moment and the beauty of the project. I mentioned the simple flowsheet is we have a very competitive all-in sustaining cost. The C1 cost of $6 per kilogram TREO, I do not think anyone's got that. That is because it takes into account, obviously, how much you produce. I'm going to give a bit more color about that on the exceptional metrics we've got here.
If you've got the production and you've got a simple flow sheet, it's the reason why we get such a low all-in sustaining cost and our cost life of mine. The last part is the CapEx. It's just short of $300 million at the moment, excluding contingency. That's for a good-sized facility. That's a 5 million-tonne ground facility. It shows that there's always a compromise of how big you go versus how small you go. It doesn't mean it's set in stone, but the higher you go, you can have the economies of scale and reduce your OpEx because a 5 million-tonne ground plant probably has the same amount of people running it as a 4 million-tonne ground plant. You've got that same sunk cost on people, but you're producing 20-25% extra more product.
It's finding that balance as a project and as a company of where we end up so that we're making sure for the long term we've got the right facility making the right amount of production and cash flow. Quickly going through some of those individual steps that I just spoke about, the resource and the mine plan. Hopefully most of you guys are pretty familiar with the map that we've got here, which is the alkaline complex that we call Poços de Caldas. You can see all the other tenements that we have, not just the stuff that's in our $500 million MRE, but all other stuff that's in our black and white. There's plenty of exploration upside, guys.
The mine plan itself, and it shouldn't be a shock that this is what ended up being the mine plan, considering we sort of gave everyone a bit of insight to having a 1,000 ppm MREO feed grade, is we've only used the northern concessions, and we've only used the top part of the southern concessions or Cupim South , as we call them. The reason for that is if you look down here in Central- Sul, we've still got other areas right around it that need to be explored. It seemed like a bit of a waste of mine planning, considering it's a bigger area, and there's no point doing these little small pits if we know that we've got better areas when we accumulate that whole area. Okay?
It's just showing you the upside we've got there, and obviously look forward to getting those results sometime in 2025. I want to reiterate what our focus has been with that mine plan, not just the fact that it's only 20%, but it's all been about MREO content, MREO to TREO ratio on the mine development, the recoveries, so that we can hit those targets that we've set in that MREC that we've had with ANSTO. It's been a still focus of ours to make sure we hit them. On the topic of MET testing, most of you guys hopefully have seen these. It's just reassuring that when you've got a true ionic clay, it's the way it behaves with the MET testing. I'll explain it again that we've looked at ANSTO.
We've actually looked at magnesium sulfate as well and got the same results as the AmSul. That is, we've looked at pH 3, 4, 4.5, 5. For all of them, I can tell you the recoveries of the rare earth is the same. That's because it's not based on pH. It's using that ionic nature where it sees the sulfate molecule, and then it swaps over with the rare earth molecule. That's why we wash the clay afterwards to get the sulfate off it. It's important to understand that the pregnant leach solution now has the rare earths. It's almost semi-agnostic to what pH you use.
One thing that is important to understand is as you go down in pH level, which is what happens with a lot of our rare earth peers, that sort of acidic nature starts to not just do the ionic swap of the rare earths, but it starts to leach out the gangue elements, stuff that you do not want.
You've got the aluminium, which is a real big problem for the downstream processes, but all the other stuff, the calcium, iron, potassium, you name it, but also the uranium and thorium, which is a really important part that I'm having lots of discussions with, not just low impurities with some of the off-takers, especially with the trip that I'm about to embark on the next couple of weeks, but understanding how those radionuclides actually accumulate and that having the basically decay of those is really important for the off-takers. As you can imagine, if you've got a higher pH, we're now taking out less of those gang elements. It means that when we do our next step, first we do leaching or absorption, next step's impurity removal.
If you've taken less impurities out or you've leached less of those gang elements, it means that we're not having to do so much work in that unit operation. If you're not having to do as much work, they'll precipitate those aluminium, calcium, potassium, as I mentioned. It means that we precipitate less of our important rare earths. That's why we highlight in these announcements the small losses of rare earths. It's really important. Obviously the last part, as we mentioned, we just go from pH 5.5 to pH 7 with ammonium bicarbonate, and we precipitate out our mixed rare earth carbonate. All in all, all of that comes to our flow sheet.
As I mentioned, if you can have this simple process, and it's not just the production facility, but if I quickly talk through, and hopefully you can see my cursor online, if you can see the simple open pit free dig that we do and get that onto the back of a truck. As per the Scoping Study, we have a central beneficiation hub where we screen the oversized particles, and then we basically slurry up the ore and send it to the facility. Okay? Once it's in the facility, the reason why these three steps are very similar is because they are fairly similar in physical equipment. That is, we have a big tank. It's an agitated tank where we do the desorption or leaching first, put it through a press filter. That residual ore, it's what goes back into the ground.
Yeah, and I'll talk about that in a second. The pregnant leach solution comes through to the next tank where we do impurity removal. That's where we increase the pH from 4.505 to 5.5 with ammonium bicarbonate, and we precipitate out the gang elements. Put it through a filter, and now we keep the last bit of actual solution, which has got the rare earths. Now we increase the pH to around 7, 7.1, and that's where we precipitate the mixed rare earth carbonate or MREC, as you hear me say a lot. This time we're keeping, obviously, that. It's our product. The last step is the spent solution, which is obviously heavy in ammonium bicarb. We recover a significant portion of that, which is what allows us to reduce our reagents, but also recovers our water.
All in all, that's what allows us to have such a low OpEx. It's a low technical risk because we don't have many complicated pieces of kit. The one that probably stands out is the press filters. It's the reason why we spend so much time working on it and dealing with vendors and suppliers and testing, not just the equipment, but the cloth. Again, I'll harp on not just the low OpEx, but the high uptime is just as important. We've got access to hydro there. We've already been talking power purchase agreements with the local government to tie in our actual closest substations every three and a half kilometres. That's quite enviable.
As I mentioned, as we finish, and maybe the next couple of slides is better, once we finish with the ore, it's basically going back into the actual equipment. All right, a couple of just main stats that were made up the actual Scoping Study. We chose a 20-year mine life initially. Obviously, everyone knows we've got plenty in the sleeve. The production facility, it's designed for a 5 million-tonne ground plant. That's on a dry basis. Obviously, our ore has a certain amount of moisture in it, which gives you an understanding of what we're looking to produce. I spoke about briefly the grade. The TREO grade, to be honest with you, like I said, it's not important. It's the MREO feed grade, because that's what makes your basket value so high and so important. Okay?
I gave you some color about what we're looking over the life of mine, about 3,500 tonnes of MREO. As I mentioned, 70% is roughly the ND. What you can see with the predicted future forecast is that in the next three years, 20,000 additional tonnes are required. There are eight Colossuses that need to come on board. If you can think of eight Colossuses that are going to come on board in the next three years and who have economics that are okay at today's spot price, then I'm happy to receive an email from you guys. The other thing which is important is it's great to have a great project and economics, but the critical path for our projects is heavily on the environmental approvals.
One of the things I've been really proud of with the team in Brazil and the relationship they've got with the local community, the local government, state government is we've already had a big milestone where we've been issued the certificate of regularity for land use and occupation from the local government of Poços de Caldas. What it means, and it's clearly written, is that it was up to them and not the state government who actually issued me the license. We're able to already mine, build the facility, and operate the facility. That's the support we've got from our local government already, which is hopefully a big de-risking sort of activity that the market should be aware of. I'm conscious of time, guys, because I do want to leave some questions. The CapEx, as I mentioned, is $287 million, excluding our contingency.
I'm pretty confident and comfortable with a 30% contingency at this stage for a number of reasons. One, the Scoping Study wasn't your typical Scoping Study. I can tell you that now, not only because of the engineering level that was done and obviously MET testing, but we've gone out to the market on certain pieces of kit, which is not exactly normal at a Scoping Study level. I've mentioned the flow sheets and the fact that it's less complicated than a standard sort of, and I'm not just referring to a hard rock rare earth project, but just any project, because there's confidence on CapEx escalation. We're not needing or expecting them to have to add lots and lots of equipment. The last part is, and I've got this as an upside in the slide coming up, the import tax is actually quite high in Brazil.
We've got like 50% of our equipment assumed to come from overseas. We already have an important binding agreement with the state government that the ICMS or [ICPN], which is the import tax we pay on equipment, is going to be waived for the Colossus program. That's not factored into here at the moment. It's something which, obviously, as we move forward, we'll include that in our financial modeling. It shouldn't be two shots that our sort of cost has come out, considering our neighbor got a very similar cost to this. Equipment is always going to be the most expensive part of the facility. You've got your press filters, you've got your pumps, you've got your big agitation tanks, and hence why that's about $100 million, which is short of that. You've got your bulks.
Whether it be the civils, primary, secondary structures, our buildings, piping, and then electrical power, we're quite lucky that the substation is very close. Indirects, so that includes the EPCM contract or management of that contract. Taxes, as I mentioned, it's a health of 56. Overall contingency, we've got $86 million up our sleeve. All right, OpEx, and it's the one that I typically talk about more than CapEx because I think it's the crutch to the viability of a project. I spoke to a few different pricing agencies, and the one I settled on was Project Blue. I feel like they've got a really good understanding of the market, not just with their access to China and everyone else, but the way they understand it. It's a full supply or value chain.
They understand everything from the miners all the way through to downstream magnet producers and OEMs. We are obviously very happy to be on the very low part of the cost curve. It is not an accident that we ended up there. As I mentioned, if you look at the cost drivers in the top right-hand corner, this y-axis is the cost US dollar ton per TREO. Obviously, if you have a high-grade feed, that is going to be an important input to that. As I have mentioned, we have a mine plan focused on MREO and that MREO-TREO ratio. That means we also have really high recoveries as well. The last part is, as I went through with the flowsheet, you have the mining part, which is really simple, and then you have the three main unit operations.
All of that has meant we've ended up at the very low part of the cost curve, which just means that we've got a very solid foundation without all-in sustaining costs of $8.80 that even during the low part of the cycle, we're okay. Okay, I've intentionally added this slide just to be very clear of a couple of things. Obviously, operating profit, it's revenue minus all-in sustaining. I know everybody knows that online. I'm going to quickly move to the all-in sustaining costs. Now, the production costs, anyone that's building a 5 million tonne per annum ionic clay project should end up with very similar production costs because it's the same type of mining, and it's leaching, it's impurity removal, and it's MREC. That isn't a differential. We all should have pretty similar numbers. Okay?
Sustaining CapEx and exponential capital, it's the same thing. Because it's a fairly basic facility, you don't have a huge amount of sustaining CapEx. We've assumed around $6 million, just short of that. The last part is the royalties. Everyone knows that we've got that 4.75% royalty with our vendor, and then we've got the state 2%, and we've got the landlords. The reason we're bringing that on, we'll talk about that first, is that's actually pretty common to anyone else that was if they're in the same area as us. The differentiator is the stuff on the left. It's the revenue. Okay? It's really obviously the sale price of whatever your commodity is times the amount you produce. That's where we excel. Our basket value, even at a $60 NdPr price, is $30. That doesn't include payability yet, but it's $30.
That is because we have such a high level of MREO, ND, PR, DY, TB in our feed ore that with our excellent recoveries, we will end up with so much of it in our product. That is how you calculate your basket value, yeah? The second part is linked to those recoveries, which is that if you have actually got a higher grade of MREO in your feed ore, and because they recover so well, we actually recover and produce more for that same molecule of rare earth. We actually get more on the downstream part because of our recoveries. It is because of those two there that we get higher revenues. That is why we have such a foundational, remarkable project that we can make such robust returns even at $60 NdPr. Okay, we have seven minutes left, so I apologize.
Here's just a summary, guys, of what was on the first page. No difference there. The last one I quickly want to talk about and leave five minutes for questions is this is just a starting point, as I mentioned to some of the brokers yesterday, we're highly leveraged to price going up, albeit we're making robust returns down here at $60, and we've got no problem if the price goes down to $50. That's a fact, yeah? As I mentioned before, we've got upside with our resource growth, first and foremost. Secondly, outdated mine planning. As I mentioned, it only includes the top part of the southern complex. It doesn't include the southern part of the southern complex.
It does not include Tamoyo, which is actually our highest ore body across the whole resource, sitting at an average 770 ppm MREO, which is surreal. We have still got things to do with the flow sheet and working with ANSTO and Hatch together. We will see what happens in that space. I have already touched on a bit on the tax relief that I mentioned. We have that binding agreement already with the state government. Now we have discussions with the federal government. We have already had two, what I think are pretty forthright and important meetings with them. We will continue that, obviously, in the coming months to see where we sit and how it dictates our strategy potentially on how we do an EPCM contract. The last part was the MREC payability.
We actually do have other data points that if you've got an MREC of a certain quality, that you've got 85% payability. We'll see where we go as we progress our off-take discussions. As I mentioned, I'm actually off tomorrow for a two-week set of meetings with various ECAs, European and North Americans, and also various off-takers. Being armed with this information is actually very important as we sort of progress our discussions. I just wanted to make sure that we've got a Scoping Study out, but there is plenty of upside for the future. That's it, everyone. I've just lost my light in my room. I'll open the floor to questions. I'll have a look. All right, so Dev, have you considered ISR mining for Colossus? Early on, it was as part of our conceptual design. We did.
Knowing what we know about the state government and the federal government about meeting certain specifications, in particular the sulfate specification back into the ground, we don't believe you can meet those sulfate specifications by using AmSul or magnesium sulfate. That was squashed, in particular considering the environmental approvals is the critical part of the project. That is that answer. Where would you source the medium sulfate from? We've actually got five locations where we've got quotes for. I couldn't tell you by name what they are right now. We also think it's important to, here we go, to look overseas as well. We're in that place where we're using conservative assumptions in that, but we're not ignorant to the fact that potentially overseas is a better option, especially now that we've got this state relaxation of the import tax.
It's something which could definitely come into play. I think that's a really important question. Now that you've asked that, just for a breakdown of the OpEx, reagents make up 35% of that total OpEx. It's something which we're definitely mindful of because it's our number one OpEx contributor. Next question is, who are your MREC customers? Where will the carbonate be required? We don't have yet a designated off-take. We are looking at multiple options. Would it be North America, Europe? Those are the ones that are probably more progressed at the moment. We also have our JV as well, which we're progressing. We've got multiple options that are carrying. Hopefully, throughout the months that come, we'll be able to give a bit more color to the market on where we end up on that.
Next question, does a clay-derived MREC hold any different characteristics to an MREC derived from hard rock? Look, I'm not as proficient on the hard rock side, to be honest. Obviously, they're slightly different potential source rocks. The one thing which a lot of the off-takers tell me is a benefit from ours is just our very low levels of uranium and thorium. If you didn't know, our feed stock, so on average, our feed for the total resource is around 10 ppm of uranium and about, I think, 40-45 ppm of thorium. As you can imagine, that's very low compared to our hard rock peers. Apart from that, obviously, they've got typically higher grades of rare earths, but we're obviously paying for it in the processes. Hopefully, that gives you an answer to that.
Is there any info on Ukraine rare earth deposits that the US aims to secure? I didn't see that material plus info. Look, I don't know too much about the deposit in Ukraine, to be quite honest. I don't know how those discussions are going to go with the US. Look, I obviously think that the US are on a bit of a mission to try and secure rare earths for various geopolitical reasons. A lot of times, rare earths get discussed in the breadth that it's about just the wind turbines or EV. The fact is they're used heavily in defense applications. Hence, probably there's no shock why the Chinese are controlling their output and why the US want to get their hands on it. Look, we'll see where we go.
I can tell you now that we do have discussions ongoing with the U.S. I'll just send a photo sheet for this. Yeah, the questions about the ISR JV technology. That's progressing. Look, it's difficult. You've got two companies in the throes of doing a lot of work. I can tell you that we've started the work on the Scoping Study. We're starting to gather different information, data. Hopefully, we can give you guys a bit more color on that and a few other exciting things that are happening with the JV. Does the southern complex have the 4.7 royalty? Yes, I can confirm it does have the 4.75% royalty as per the northern concessions. When is the PFS due? Look, we're still on track for end of Q2. There's a lot of work involved.
There's a bit more engineering from a Scoping Study to a PFS, guys. Really, the big difference is all about the accuracy of the pricing of equipment and major contracts. That's where we're going out for all the pieces of equipment. We're going up three or four quotes on all of them. Obviously, we get those proposals back. We start to make sure that the specification that's been sent is what we get back. That's where we're focusing all of our attention. Hopefully, into Q2, we'll have the PFS out. Matt, how confident are you to be able to connect the southern area with the northern? Yeah, Matt, look, I'm pretty confident based on the discussions we've had with the local government. As you can probably imagine, 5 million tons of clay is a lot of trucks.
Not that we're Mother Teresa and the only reason why we want to do it is to keep the trucks off the road. It's an important reason that we're doing it. Obviously, the OpEx is a lot lower with the solution we're trying to obtain. The local government are very supportive of any solution. We have to cross one main road to connect the two. I don't think that's insurmountable. Knowing full well my background's in oil and gas and flow lines and pipelines, I don't see that as a big issue. We're already in discussion with landowners, Matt, with respect to getting an agreed pathway to connect the two final lines. Happy to keep giving more color as it further progresses and matures. The last question, I was just going to say that we're progressing. Sorry, I've already mentioned that.
We will kick that off, Matt. Hopefully, that's something which we can progress somewhere to Q3 this year. I'm happy to give some more color in the months that come. The last one, are you in discussion with BNDES and are you part of the conference? Good question. That came up yesterday with some of the brokers. I can confirm that we are 100% attending the very important session with BNDES and FINEP. It's not just BNDES, we need to understand FINEP. That's being held on the 10th, 11th in Rio de Janeiro. Only a few companies have been selected, us and our neighbor being one of them. I can confirm that I'm having separate other discussions with some of the initiatives from BNDES. Hopefully, that gives you color on that. All right, guys. Look, I know there's a lot to absorb.
If you've got any questions, please don't hesitate to email me and we can get on a call. I appreciate the market's quite tough. I would have appreciated a better response yesterday. Hopefully, the fundamentals will get out to the market. I understand we've got a very robust project here. I appreciate your support. Look forward to keeping you guys updated in the weeks and months to come.