Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for waiting, and welcome to Cosan's conference call. With us today, Mr. Luis Henrique Guimarães, Cosan CEO, Mr. Marcelo Eduardo Martins, Cosan CFO, Mr. Juarez Saliba, CEO of JV Mineração, and Júlio Fontana, senior advisor and JV Mineração consultant. We'd like to inform that this event is being recorded, and during the company's presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. After that, we will start a Q&A session when further instructions will be given. Should you need assistance during the call, please request the help of an operator by pressing star zero. Now, I would like to turn the floor to Mr. Luis Henrique. Please, Mr. Luis Henrique, the floor is yours.
Good morning, everyone. This is Marcelo Martins. Luis will be addressing you shortly. Thank you all for joining us at such short notice. Our objective today is to talk about yesterday's announcement, which is this JV Mineração, which was set up by Cosan and the Paulo Brito Group, with immediate announcements of the acquisition of the Port of São Luís, which is a key asset for this announcement and its timing. I'd like to speak briefly about the transaction itself, and then I will turn it over to our other conference call participants. After Cosan's corporate reorganizing and Raízen's IPO and Compass' private placement announcements, as I had told you during our last day, we have been looking for investment alternatives that make sense in our portfolio.
Our historical goal has been to bring in assets that give us strategic operating leverage based on our knowledge and on our portfolio so far. However, at the moment, considering a different investment horizon to the other companies in our portfolio. By different, I mean we now have a permanent portfolio as we have told the market, and we also want to find other alternatives through partners by establishing partnerships with investors as well as strategic partners that see value in what we're doing who can help us to add value to our projects looking forward. This is the first of a series of events that we should be announcing over the next foreseeable future, and it is very relevant. The timing for this investment and for starting this business happened because we found an extremely relevant asset for this kind of business, which is the port asset.
As you know, shipping is key, and it can be a very important entry barrier to this business. Our objective, after talking to Paulo for a few months and his group, was to find a logistic asset that would justify our going into this business. We have found this asset recently. The São Luís Port was for sale by CCCC and the minority shareholders in a corporate and governance structure that was very appealing to us. That was why we have announced positions from the minority shareholders and from then on, started talking to CCCC, which will hold 1% of the port. They will come back to us after they've signed our letter of proposal. They will also be providing us with the EPC. We are discussing the terms of the EPC so that we can announce that in the future.
What I'd like to make clear to you before I hand over to Luis is that the timing was determined by our finding of this asset. This is a key asset. It is the only relevant asset in the region that was available. In fact, this is the last asset of such importance in that region, and it was crucial to our strategic view for this business looking forward. I will now turn it over to Luis Henrique because he's going to talk about our decision to put this portfolio together, and then we'll turn it over to Juarez, who will be talking about the project itself. Luis.
Thank you. Thank you, Marcelo. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We will have a Q&A session. You can ask any questions about anything that wasn't made clear to you. This is an integrated plan, including mining and logistics. You know how we think in our other business. We always want to have a broad, complete view of our supply chain. What Marcelo said was we found an opportunity to bring together our partner's existing mining assets.
Our partner has a great deal of knowledge with port assets with very efficient logistics. It would only make sense for us to go into this project if these conditions could be met. World-class assets in a strategic position that are extremely hard to be replicated. Also, as you know, Marcelo and I have been consistently telling you that we want to diversify our portfolio. We have moved an international company. Raízen has been growing its trading and building a hard currency position, and we want to diversify our portfolio in terms of currency.
We have this asset coupled with our knowledge about Brazil and our ability to navigate all the regulatory and land issues in Brazil. Brazil has a competitive advantage in mining, as has been proven by excellent companies such as Vale. As always, it's always good to do these things with partners, so it was crucial to find the right partner for it. We wouldn't have gone into the business if we hadn't found the right partner. We are a partner company. We like partners. We learn from them, and we can also add value to our partners. What we're bringing to this project is our expertise in management and logistics. We're also bringing to the table elements that are key to an integrated project.
As Marcelo has said, and I'd like to reiterate, and Juarez will be talking about this, the port enables our entry into a segment with an important entry barrier, which is the shipment of the production. The challenge in this business has always been to find an exit for the ore at competitive conditions and management itself. We are making that possible, and that's why we're so excited about that. When we look globally at the requirements of the clients, we also see a huge advantage in this project because all of our operations will be greenfield, so we have the possibility to do what's best in environmental terms, management terms, efficiency terms, allowing for a smaller carbon footprint compared to other projects. This is a niche project, so it will allow us to have products that will set us apart.
Juarez will be talking about it in a bit. Considering players, we'll also have the opportunity to create what we'll call Mining 2.0. All these characteristics and these opportunities, those assets with excellent mining asset partners who know the subject matter, coupled with our management and logistics expertise and resources during our internal discussions were what made us decide to invest in this new segment, as explained by Marcelo . I'll turn it over to Juarez now to talk a little bit more about the project as the CEO. Juarez.
Thank you. Thank you, Luis Henrique and Good morning, everyone. You probably don't know me, but I have 35 years experience in mining. I have devoted my life to mine iron ore. Obviously, I've done other things, but I've mined other things, but mainly iron ore. I've learned a great deal, and I've been privileged because I have started a few projects from scratch, probably the biggest mining projects in Brazil.
I graduated in mining engineering, and I was hired by Vale to work at Carajás when Carajás was being built. I went to Carajás at the beginning of the '80s. I was a director, and I was there for 17 years. I got there as GTNI, and I was the superintendent for all iron ore operations at Carajás. I started off as a trainee, and I moved all the way to becoming the director of operations, including rail, the port. I had other positions at Vale. I left Vale in 2002. I was invited by Benjamin Steinbruch to develop and implement CSN's iron ore project. I set up a new company with CSN called Namisa.
We started mining iron ore to do something similar to what we'll be doing here. CSN had the possibility to turn a coal importing port into a coal exporting port. We started buying assets, and I was responsible for everything that happened during that period. I was responsible for the partnering of the Japanese with CSN, and that was my second biggest opportunity to start an iron ore project, practically from scratch. More recently, I went back to Vale. I stayed there for three years. I left Vale about a year ago, and a year ago, Paulo Brito reached out to me. He's a dear friend of mine. We've known each other for close to a decade. At the beginning of the last decade, Paulo reached out to me because Paulo has started two gold production companies, Yamana Gold and Aura Minerals.
He had different mining projects, especially in iron ore. He talked to me to see if we could do something in iron ore like he'd done with Yamana and Aura. I said, "I'd love to help you. I'd love to be a part of the project, but there's a problem. We can't do anything without a port. There is no possibility to have a relevant iron ore project without a port." I remember that in 2014, when we had this talk, we looked at the São Luís port. The São Luís port, at the time, was undergoing a licensing process, so it was a distance, and shareholders decided not to discuss it at the time. Some time has gone by. Paulo came back to me, and I said to him again, "Paulo, we need a port.
São Luís is the only port that can be used for that kind of thing. He said, "Well, I have a partner, and they're interested in looking into it with us." He told me about Cosan. We said, we have all the jigsaw puzzle pieces to have an iron ore project. We have very relevant iron ore assets. There's a great deal going on. We know about the potential of these areas. We have the port. Having a company such as Cosan backing this project with their management and logistics expertise, we'll have everything we need to do a great iron ore project. I said, "I'm definitely in." Cosan came to an agreement with the São Luís port shareholders, and now we have a huge potential to ship iron ore.
I can guarantee you that the port can do over 50 million tons a year, and it's flexible enough to go well beyond 50 million tons. The main restriction we had at the end, which was the port, has now been solved. We're working on probing and characterizing all the ore that is in the area that Paulo Brito has. On the way, with all due respect, there's one of the best railroads in the world. Carajás. It's fantastic. It's fantastically managed. Practically entirely duplicated. It's probably the best place to transport iron ore. That railway is fantastic. Obviously, we'll still be talking to Vale, but the regulatory environment in railway in Brazil at the moment is really good.
The renewal of the concession fees, that one has been renewed already, and it's the perfect scenario for us to have great regulation in terms of contracts, in terms of amounts, and in terms of cost of transportation. Everything is lined up. I had already talked to other major companies, but they didn't know anything about railway regulations in Brazil. Cosan is well aware of that. Now we have Júlio Fontana, who is an expert on the subject. It was easy to talk to Cosan because Cosan knows what we're talking about. Cosan knows the potential of railroad transportation of Carajás Railway. We have an excellent business to be developed, and we have another fantastic advantage because as Luis Henrique said, this new company has no legacy. When I say legacy, I mean none of the liabilities that other companies have.
It's very hard to turn a company that was built based on a consumption model, using diesel, using sea freight, bunkers, and it is completely installed. It's too difficult to change that because you'd have to give up on all the investments you've made to start something new. This is completely different. This company will be ESG-oriented from the word go. Every time I talk to Luis, he tells me that. Cosan's main concern and all of our main concern is to build a company that, in addition to having great governance, has the best carbon footprint in the industry. We want to be the best company in this industry in terms of coal and carbon footprint in the world, and we can do that. Replacing diesel by natural gas, LNG, 50% of the carbon that of the CO2 emitted by diesel is emitted by LNG.
Using renewable energy, and we're also considering about vessel fleets that use LNG and not bunker, thereby reducing emissions by 50%. A mining company in Brazil, sea freight emissions only will be cut by half. If we can cut that by half on comparative terms, we'll be reducing 40% of emissions of a conventional iron ore mining company in Brazil in sea transportation. Moving from the Scope 2 and going into Scope 3 of the environmental issues with the effect of our products on our clients. Our industry is going through a challenge at the moment. It's one of the most polluting segments in the world. It needs to reduce CO2 emissions, and it doesn't know how.
We want to have a pellet feed product. Practically 100% of our production will be based on rich pellet feeds that will help integrated steel mills to reduce emissions because they will consume less coal, because the iron content in our product will be very high. We can see what Vale is doing. We are not reinventing the wheel. We are just doing what we see that is being well done in the market already. We know that Vale does a great job, and we want to follow along the same lines and to generate a product that will grow a great deal in the world and especially in China. Because they use electric furnaces to produce steel. They recycle steel scrap and use that to improve the quality of the steel that is produced.
The product that will be produced will be ideal and great because there's a scarcity and there's a shortage of it in the market. I've said enough. Everybody is already looking at their watches. Time is short. That's it from me. We'll have the chance to speak more later today.
We'll open for questions and answers. I just want to reiterate something that Paulo Brito asked me to, because it's very important. Even though this is very recent, there's been some confusion about our partner in this project. Aura is not our partner. Aura is not involved in this project. This project is being conducted with Paulo Brito. Paulo Brito is our partner and not their invested company. Aura is a listed company and not our partner in this project. We'll open up with Q&A, and Júlio is here as well to help us out.
We'll now start the Q&A session. To ask a question, please press star one. Our first question is from Mr. Thiago Duarte from BTG Pactual. Please, Mr. Thiago.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I have two questions. The first one, I think it's for Marcelo. It's about portfolio management and like you said in the beginning, and also going back to a discussion that we had in the last Cosan Day. I had asked about the risk of Cosan's being seen or still being seen as a holding company, as priced on top of a possible holding discount. You mentioned then and today again about the difference between a new portfolio and a permanent portfolio and a new one that you would start bringing in opportunities to gain capital.
The way that you said it today, it looks like this new area that you're creating with this new project is the very beginning of those projects that you would be having out of the scope of what we would be calling that prior portfolio first. Does that make sense, the way I understood it? Can we see that investment initiative, as you mentioned, will be generating other projects in addition to this mining JV? Could we see any other projects there to address this new approach? My second question is for Juarez. I think that one of the discussions that the market has been having for a while and will have today is, difficulty to price the project, to think about the potential size of this project.
You mentioned something about a reasonable size. I don't know if we can already even superficially quantify or size it in terms of production and/or reserves. Something along those lines that could help us try to add a figure to this picture. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Thiago. Yes. I think you mentioned something that is very relevant. We are a portfolio management. We are a portfolio management for businesses where we have a strategic footprint and also value-adding on top of competencies that we have developed over time. I don't think you are going to see a situation in which Cosan is going to be a passive partner because there is just a financial opportunity, and we would not be adding operating value on our side. That's not something that we do. There are others that do it much better than ourselves. I believe that we can be competitors, where our competence is exposed. When we finished our corporate restructuring and we started looking at these other possibilities, this project was one of the first ones that came up back then.
We thought it was very attractive because as Luis and Juarez mentioned, we have a number of competencies that are important for us. That is, we can make a difference in this project. Second, because once again, we are talking about a transformation moment of an industry, and we would not be going in if that was not a transformation moment to bring in what we believe is our value-adding, such as ESG. We are not going to go away from the fact that we are a infralogistics port, a railroad operator. This is our call. If we go away from that competence, probably we're not going to be working as well. I think we are a good portfolio allocator. We are known for that because we can leverage all these competencies.
Would not go into an industry if we did not think our operating standards would not meet the ESG areas. We are going into an area that's important in the world, and Brazil has a huge competitive advantage. Here we want to leverage our skills at this moment in this industry, and that's an amazing reference in Brazil, which is Vale. All of that helps us raise the bar even more than what it is placed today. We do believe that we have very good skills and a great team to work on that. In terms of our portfolio, as I mentioned, this is an area, this is an arm that we consider a little bit shorter than our permanent portfolio.
This notion of permanent portfolio is something that we're discussing here, and we came into an agreement that these are the businesses that are part of Cosan and participated in the maturity process. I think we need to have partners. It is going to be very difficult not to have partners from now on. The best way to bring in new competencies is bringing them in. We now also have a possibility of bringing in financial partners as well, so that we can have a funding diversification that is also interesting. We have a huge financial discipline. We are not going to change that. Our leverage goals will not change. This project will be paid out over time.
We have a number of hurdles to overcome. As they are overcome, they will allow us to be safe in terms of return of the project, therefore allocating more capital. In terms of time allocation, mine and Luis' time, we have a very well-defined governance structure and a very skilled, competent team to run this operation. We have a strategic view. We will be in the business management a good amount of time. We'll be participating on the future decisions, also in the business operations decisions. I'll turn the floor to Juarez for his operation remarks. Then we'll come back.
Very well. What you asked about the size of the project or the first production. We do have some important assumptions. First, you need to know that I don't want to use the word reserves. I'm going to use the word mineral resources. The mineral resources that we have in this project, on top of the surveys that we have carried out so far, around 50,000 m of surveys. In a year, we would like to do 80,000 m more of surveys. Today, we can already say that we have over 2 billion, from 2 billion- 3 billion tons of mineral resources to turn into mines. With this additional survey that we will carry out in the next few years, we expect that this figure goes up much more. It is very difficult to precise because geology is not a precise science.
We do believe, and also external consultants that we have been talking to also believe, that we will have additional figures here on top of the size of these resources that we already have, which is very significant. As I said before, the port can be over 50 million tons of capacity a year. We have a lot of mineral resources. We have a port with a limited capacity in terms of what we want to do. I'm sure that our first production will be happening only by 2025, 2026. Why is that? Because we need to develop the first area, and the first area, which is already more developed technically, is close to Carajás mine. Also because we need to build the port. We can't tell you 2022, 2023, because even if we could have the production, I would not have the port.
The first production is going to be 2025, 2026. We would like to start producing 10 million tons a year by 2025, ramping up 2025 and 2026. Possibly the other projects will be developed, and we believe that by the end of the decade, we will have a production size very significant. Today it's impossible to say which one it's going to be. There's something else that's very important. We will be working because we will have a very high quality product with iron content of over 67%, and we will have high premiums, and we will be working with the right discipline so that we can perpetuate these premiums in the long term. This is our goal. I'm sure that by 2025, 2026, we will be producing 10 million tons a year, and we'll be delivering capacity over the next five years. That is our target.
Next question from Mr. André Rashid, Itaú. Please, Mr. André.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I would like to go into the ports project and better understand a few areas. We have some recent news about this project, that the prior owner had said that he wanted to do the port. I would like to know if these are valid. My second question is about the port itself. In the original project, the port was going to ship ore and grains. Do you still have this idea of having a port operating with a white flag, or is going to be 100% to cater to mining? Another question is about financing. I understood that the project did have problems with financing. Having Cosan as a partner and with a contract signed, how do you see this project being financed?
The ports project also. There are some topics related to the area of the port that I would like to understand how limiting are the problems that you find there.
This is Júlio here. Well, our project is very different from what was conceived before. We will be targeting iron ore. It will be focused in iron ore. In the future, considering we have a large area, we might even consider if there is any other possibility or anything else is feasible. Right now, just iron ore. All that initial project that needed a very relevant CapEx, that's not what we are planning right now. There are no problems of dis appropriation of having to let go part of the land. We have two families living in that area, and we are negotiating with them. That two areas have no impact in the ports project and the construction area that we're going to be using for the port. About funding, I'll turn to Marcelo.
First. We are first now starting with a process for the acquisition. We'll be preparing ourselves for the acquisition of the remaining part, and then we'll be working on the EPC and the EPP. We will have some time to address the funding equation. We have some other possibilities we're looking for. We're starting to work within this model, of course, in this funding scenario. That's not going to be a challenge, to be honest. We are talking about the acquisition of 100% of the port by BRL 720 million. After defining the EPC, we'll bring you more detailed information on the construction. We already have an idea, a good idea about it.
After approving this number, we'll bringing you the information on the funding. Funding is not a concern for us because we do have funding available. What is important for you is that we do have a financial discipline that is permanent, and we will bring in other financial investors to the project if that is needed. Eventually, we even do have that possibility, even if we have all financial resources for the financing. It's important to say that once again, this is an investment project, of course, and out of our permanent portfolio, and it allows us to leverage more our investments so that we can optimize our return, and that is our objective at the end. Okay.
Okay, clear. Thank you very much.
Our next question is Mr. Luiz Carvalho from UBS.
Hi. This is Luiz, Marcelo. Thanks for taking my question. I have a few. The first one is to Marcelo. What is the rationale to allocate this investment in this new fund? This fund was created for this project. Are there any plans to have a future IPO or transactions in the capital market to bring in more funds? You're talking about BRL 3.5 billion in investment in the port alone. I'd like to hear more about this allocation. The second question is about trying to quantify, and I'll be honest, I know nothing about the mining industry. What is the competitiveness of this site compared to other global competitors, and also in terms of the iron ore price?
Could you talk about the bottleneck of shipping that production by rail? I know that you do have the port, but there may be a bottleneck prior to that owing to Vale's production.
Hi, Luiz. Thank you. Well, first of all, this fund structure was the best way for us to be able to bring in investors and for these investors to have liquidity over time. That was the only reason why we set up this fund. In terms of governance, we will continue following our standards, what we do in the board, appointing executives, and our ability to manage the business so that we can provide the right levels of return to our shareholders. Thirdly, we wanted to have more currency diversification. We know that Brazil is very competitive in this industry. We have a clear competitive advantage, and this is a hard currency business, so that was very, very important to us.
It was one of the main drivers behind our decision. We had to have a very well-positioned port asset. That was the main challenge in this project. This asset was available, and it wasn't necessarily easy to acquire. There were other players that were interested in it. We were able to come to an agreement to buy the asset so that we could have an integrated project for this business. In time, our goal, like in all other companies in our portfolio, is to generate liquidity, and so that investors can invest in the business when it makes sense, when it's mature enough. Whether it be through an IPO or a private placement, or however else might be to generate liquidity both to Cosan, our partners up here, and all Cosan investors, as we have always done in all of our companies in our portfolio.
We want to continue with the same rationale. We will continue to manage the portfolio, to be the capital allocator, and to provide our shareholders with the option to invest in the business when it's mature enough and able to justify the return we'd like to get from this business. I'll turn it over to Juarez now.
In terms of competitiveness, we are in Brazil. We need to be aware of that. We are at a disadvantage when compared to Australia in terms of sea freight. The reason for that is that Brazil is not very well-positioned when it comes to Asia, which is the main iron ore consumer, especially China. Despite that advantage, we have another considerable advantage. Australia is the biggest iron ore producer in the world. There's been a reduction in quality in Australian mines.
They're producing more at lower qualities in Australia. The problem is that the steel mill industry cannot accept that for technical reasons and due to CO2 emissions. The steel industry really needs high-quality iron ore, and that comes from Brazil. Vale is the only supplier of that ore, with all their competence and their ability to meet demands of this market. That's one thing. The other thing is that there's a change taking place in the steel industry, especially China. If we go back 20 years, China used to produce 50 million tons of scrap a year. Now China is producing close to 200 million-250 million tons of scrap a year. Can you imagine piling up 250 million tons of scrap a year? It doesn't make any sense. What you do is you melt the scrap in electric furnaces.
Once that's melted, the quality of the steel that comes from scrap isn't good enough to produce high-quality steel. They need high-quality corrective iron ore, and there's a product for that called HBI. To make that you need fine material pellet feeds. You make the pellet from that, and then you can produce HBI or DRI to mix with the scrap and produce high-quality steel. Electric furnaces are already producing high-grade steel, even for the automotive industry. China has been consuming lots of steel over the past few years and will continue to do so. They will continue to generate huge amounts of scrap. Over 500 million tons of scrap a year in the near future. They will be using electric furnace to be able to use that scrap.
With the product that we will be producing, we will be really well-positioned to make the most of this niche, not only for high-quality iron ore for purposes, but also to produce HBI. So that translates into premium, premium. Premium for quality, premium for reducing CO2 emissions. We're going to have an excellent pricing position based on that.
Do you have a breakeven number in terms of tons? Where is this project at in terms of global cost curves?
Let me give you a ballpark, because we're still going to implement all that work over the next two years. What I can tell you is that our project, according to our estimates, will provide excellent return of about $60 per ton breakeven point using $62 iron ore. The price will probably be above that. Everybody thinks the price will be above that, and we'll also have all the premiums that will increase the return on this project.
About the rail bottleneck. I'm sure you've been monitoring the renewal of the concession of the Carajás Railway. They're only missing 100 km, and there's a bridge being built already. That's the only thing that's missing. That's an obligation of Carajás renewal to Vale, and whenever you get to 90% physical capacity in a rail in Brazil, you are required to invest in capacity increases. This is a new measure, so we know that considering the time we still have to get to the volumes we're talking about, Vale will be fully qualified, and we'll be talking about that openly to them considering all the ANTT regulation standards. If we come to an agreement, which we will, ANTT will be arbitrating the issue.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Next question is from Lucas Ferreira from JP Morgan.
Hi, everyone. Good morning. I have a couple of questions about risks on the project. The first is about environmental risks. That's a complex area with some environmental risks. Do you foresee any risks in terms of getting all the licenses? When would you start this process? How long do you think it will take you to get all the licenses you require? My follow-up question to what Júlio just said is, the rail will require more investment because Vale will also be coming in with Simandou close to your startup. How will that work? Will you need more investment in the rail considering the increase in volumes, both from you and the markets? Thank you.
This is Juarez. Lucas. Actually, Simandou is not a Vale project, and it's not in that region, so Simandou will not be competing. Simandou is in Guinea, in Africa. Simandou has nothing to do with that. It will not be creating any real bottleneck for us. What was your first question? About licenses, right? Was it licenses?
Yes.
We've already started talking to the Pará state government about that, and areas that will have longer licensing process will go into production at the end of this decade. We have enough time. There is no native vegetation in these areas, so we don't foresee any problems unless something unexpected comes up. We don't foresee any licensing problems. We have enough time for licenses because we know how these things work, but shouldn't be any problem.
As for the rolling stock, that's a matter of negotiating with Vale. Obviously, if you have rolling stock, you'll have yield discounts, then you do the math when you decide how you're going to transport the ore from the mine to Carajás. We're not concerned about that. That's easily solved.
The port?
The port is already licensed. No pending issues there.
Sorry, Juarez. I was talking about the expansion of Carajás, not Simandou. I thought about Simandou. Sorry, I got things mixed up. I want to hear about prices when that extension comes into the market. Do you think that may pose a risk.
Well, two is an important factor in terms of price. When I said that the breakeven point for this project is about $50, that already considers Simandou coming in. More importantly, we want to have a product that will be different to that of Simandou's.
Simandou has high quality, much better than that of Australia's, for sure. It's nowhere near the kind of quality that we will be providing, which is over 67% iron content with excellent quality product feed. We will be catering to a different market niche. Considering volumes as a whole, Simandou is relevant. They will have a significant volume. Our market pricing has taken that into consideration, and we're looking at about $60.
Thank you.
Next question is from Régis Cardoso from Credit Suisse.
Hello, everyone. Good morning. Thank you for answering my question. My first question is to Marcelo and maybe Luis. I'll start with that, and then I'll ask a second question, if I may. What are the implications of this fund? You have different participation. What kind of investments will that allow you to have? Will it allow you to raise third-party funds?
Will that help you to have more liquidity? Will it give you any tax incentives, leverage incentives? That's my first question. Still on the fund, I'd like to hear a bit more about what you mean by mid to long-term. You talked about a different investment horizon. What exactly does that mean? Does that mean you can invest and divest more frequently because it's not part of the permanent portfolio? Could you give a bit more color about the fund? Then I'll ask the second question. Thank you.
Thank you, Régis. Well, the idea of fund does have to do with the investment profile. First, our ability to be much more agile in terms of bringing in financial investors so that they can invest faster, directly, and to have more liquidity to go out and to be able to go out directly and to decide on listing the company. We can have intermediate liquidity to do that. It also has a different investment horizon. We believe there is an opportunity to have partial monetization through other investors coming in through listing the company. We want to have a simpler and easier structure to do that, if we choose to do that. Liquidity is an important driver for us. That's why we chose the fund. No tax incentives. Obviously, these are uncertain times. We don't know what the potential tax implications might be to different investment vehicles.
Obviously we want to have a flexible option so that we can adapt more easily. That was an additional benefit, even though it wasn't an original driver. As for the funding, we definitely want to have a flexible alternative. Cosan will be investing its own capital when it makes sense, and it will be bringing in third-party debt and equity when it makes sense. We do want to have that flexibility, yes. Again, we are managers, and we focus on specific industries and our competencies. That will not be changing. We need the market to see this vehicle as the best vehicle to go into these new investments with Cosan. We hope other investments will come up. We're looking at other alternatives, and we hope they can be turned into real opportunities that we can announce to the market.
For the time being, this is it. As others come up, we will create other vehicles, always under Cosan's investment arm, so that it is clear to the market that this is the portfolio to be invested in and divested out of, considering the different investment horizons that are different to the permanent portfolio.
The second question is more specific. We've already touched on a few points, such as capacity. You'll be starting in 2025, 2026 with about 10 million tons, but that is not the end capacity for the project. You're planning to ramp it up. In terms of high-quality iron ore, so that will allow for dry processing. We won't have any dam problems. Another point is that you will be using the Carajás rail. Won't you be able to use Vale's port? Is it a different regulatory framework or is it a matter of capacity only? On port, I understand that everything's been arranged, but is there any risk you might not be able to buy the port? What would happen in that case?
I'll start by the port, then I'll turn it over to Juarez. Well, everything completely agreed on. We signed an SPA. Minority rights are very relevant. It's a complex due diligence, as you can imagine. We needed to have that kind of safety. The agreement is very favorable for the minority shareholders, and that was very important. The 14% entails many requirements, but they will be met over the next few months. The CCCC may sell their share all the time. We do believe that will happen.
In the meantime, we'll be discussing EPC agreements. That will culminate in buying 100% of the port, which was our original objective and continues to be. All sellers have signed the agreement. As I've said, they're all familiar with the terms. We said yesterday, BRL 720 million for 100% share in the port. I'll turn it over to Juarez.
About Vale's port. Ponta da Madeira is a private port. Because it's private, it belongs to Vale. Vale is not required to work with third-party cargo at all. Also, even if Vale was interested, I don't think they are, they almost reached full capacity at Ponta da Madeira. I don't think we'll be using Vale's port at all. That's not an option. We need to use our own port to have control over our production system. You asked another question? About water use. We will be using water because you need water to have the type of quality product we want to have, but we won't be building a dam. Even at Vale and other major mining companies around the world, everybody's doing dry stack. Basically, you filter the material that would go to the dam.
You separate the water, recycle the water in your process, and after you've filtered the material, either it goes to a stack or it's mixed in with the sterile material, which is the material that comes out of the mine, which is already dry, so that can be stacked. Everything gets stacked. Nobody's using dams anymore, and that's the technology we'll be using looking forward. Based on the technological advances that have taken place over the last few years, dry stacking is very expensive when compared to dams. If you do a good job, it may be even cheaper than a dam.
All right. Very clear. Thank you so much for taking my question.
Our next question from Mr. Gabriel Barra from Citibank, please. The floor is yours.
Thank you very much for taking my question. I think some of my questions have been addressed already, and most of them for Juarez , but I have one for Marcelo. Just to make it clear about the dry processing. It's not going to be dry stack? Are you using dry stack or not? I would like to understand how you're going to work with it, if you're going to use a dry stack or not. The second topic about the capacity of this port and the initial project of around 10 million tons and the capacity of 50 million tons. You would have an idle capacity there. How can you use this idle capacity in the project? My third question, maybe now a question for Marcelo, and I'm sorry if it's not clear.
The fund structure that would be used only for this specific project or potential new project, and you could have new structures under Cosan, or this new fund structure is going to be used for all new potential acquisitions or future projects in the group. These are my three questions. Thank you.
Gabriel, let me start by the last question. Well, on what we call permanent portfolio, obviously, we already have the known structure. What we consider as a portfolio with a shorter horizon, we will use the fund structure. Cosan Investment will have a fund for mining or a mining JV. Then we are going to have a fund Y, fund Z. Each fund is going to be used for direct investment within this portfolio under the investment arm. The difference is that it's going to be very clear to the market as we make this investment, what is under this portfolio and what is a business vertical that we consider to be the long-term, which are the four ones that you already know. That's it.
About the port's capacity. What I said was, this port We'll have the capacity over 50 million tons. The 50 million tons is the base that we are working at. If we are able to develop competitive mining projects over 50 million tons, we'll do it because the port has that capacity. Any future decisions about other types of loads in this port will depend a lot on coming into a conclusion that the limit for iron ore production is X, and yes, if we have enough room for other loads, we will bring it in. A pier is not a problem because the port has been already built. It will be built with a structure to have at least four berths.
That will allow us to have a high capacity for iron ore. We are not going to build a 50-million capacity. We are going to build capacity in the ports as we develop our mining capacity. This is a matter of capital discipline. I'm not going to build a port for a 50 million capacity unless someone is willing to buy that remaining capacity. When I have planned already the additional production in our mines, we'll be increasing the port capacity so that we'll be always catering to what we are producing. Finally, you asked about our iron ore processing method.
That this is not a dry processing, this wet processing. What is dry is how we are going to store our tailing products. We send that to a filtering station, then we remove the water. The water goes back to the process so that we reduce the use of new water. The tailing already filtered then is stored. That's how it's being done all over the world in the dams.
That's very clear. Just one more thing, please, and correct me if I'm wrong, with this pellet feed coming from China and the possibility of installing a machine to work with pellet feed, is that a possibility?
Yes, your rationale is right, the problem is that in the pelletization, Brazil is not competitive today for pellet production in Brazil. Vale produces it because it already has old installations. You do not see Vale talking about concession for new pelletizations. That today, just to give you an idea, to produce a pellet of 6 million tons in Brazil, that costs $1 billion. The same 6 million tons in China is much less. The cost for that in Brazil, and now it's very high. There is a downward trend, but the LNG cost now for Brazil is very high in Brazil right now.
In addition to having a very high CapEx, the OpEx is extremely high as well. The pelletization in Brazil right now is not a possibility. No one else is doing it. Today we have much better places to do that in China because of very low CapEx, and mainly in the U.S. also, in the Gulf of Mexico, because in the United States today, 70% of the steel production in the U.S. is already electric oven, and they need a lot of HBI, which needs a lot of pellets. CapEx, OpEx, and LNG there in Gulf of Mexico, all of that is very cheap there. It's much better to produce pellet feed. It's not better. It's only feasible to produce pellet feed in Brazil and to produce pellets at the destination. Okay.
Thank you very much.
We end right now the Q&A session. I would like to turn the floor back to Mr. Marcelo Martins for his final remarks.
Thank you very much for being in this call with us. This was a short-notice call, but opportunities come up regardless our time management. As we move forward in the project, we'll bring you more information. I think we are right now in the moment where we have to wait for the contract and the EPC discussion, and as we move forward, we will bring to you more details, and we will have other calls. Thank you very much once again.
Cosan's conference call has ended. Thank you very much for your participation, and have a nice day.