Before we begin, I'd like to make the following poll, and I'd like to hand you to Alberto Lavandeira, CEO. Good morning, sir.
Hello. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for being here, and thank you and taking the time to be with us. I'm going to go quite fast through the results. I think you have seen, try not to repeat all the numbers. I think that you can read them carefully. And I think the important thing here to focus is what's happening, what's going to be the future. We had already pre-released the results, the production results, so it was not very difficult to conclude the economic results from there. So, with me, I have César Sánchez, which can answer anything that is from his specialty if needed, although I will try to reply to most of the questions.
In this slide, you are seeing the opening for our company trading in the main market in the London Stock Exchange. I think this has been one of the good achievements of this year, and it has been an incredible journey. I mean, right now, we have been working for this for, I would say, one year, with lots of ups and downs and lots of difficulties and lots of changes, but finally, we are here. And since then, we have seen lots of interest, we have seen lots of good volumes in volumes of shares traded, and I think this is just the start of a good journey.
Still not finished, because right now, this just opens the door to be trading in one of the index of the U.K. We have some delays in this, because we have to go through a new procedure that was implemented in Cyprus in the first quarter of this year, which took us halfway, which means they changed some laws, and we have to go again to obtain the shareholder approval, which is going in an AGM or AEGM. And we are going to be doing this at the same time that we have our AGM in the 27th of June.
So after that, hoping that this is approved, we will continue with the procedures and hope to get everything ready by October, November, which is basically six months delay since our plan, because basically, this is the delay that this has we went through since our approval on December 2023. We believe this is going to be creating a new additional liquidity to our stock, and this is something that's is going to be quite interesting for the company, like, like being in the main market. Of course, the reason why we are quite optimistic is, first of all, the copper market is excellent, and the second is that the we are one of the few companies in the that are pure plays in the copper stock exchange.
Obviously, Antofagasta is one, Ivanhoe is in some ways, but the other companies that are present in the London market are Glencore or where they are not exposed to copper as much as we are. We are 100% exposed, and I think this is excellent for investors that want to participate in the copper market. And why we believe there is interest for our company is because we are a growth company.
Yes, we are providing some dividends, and we continue with our dividend policy, but the reality is that in the next three years, we want to see our company doubling or more than doubling production from our existing operation at Cerro Colorado and San Dionisio, which is basically the Rio Tinto District, plus the permitting of the Touro project in the north part of Spain, which is advancing quite well. With that, we will be over 100,000 tons of copper, 120,000 tons of copper equivalent. And we couldn't do this in a better time. I think since the last time we spoke or I spoke here, the copper was basically 1 lbs less than today. Today, it's close to $5 per lbs, $1 per lbs more.
Well, $1 per lbs is quite easy to make the calculations. If we had 100,000,000 lbs payable, it's basically $100 million more without doing anything else. So that's to the bottom line. So you can see that we are quite leveraged to the copper price. And why this is happening? I think we have been saying that this thing was going to happen, and I think it had to come because there is a steady demand. There is a steady demand, especially coming from the energy transition. It's coming from installation of wind and solar, which China continued to build up, but also Europe and U.S. going hard.
But at the same time, we also have drivers like electrification of vehicles, but, and also, recently, we have heard about artificial intelligence, data centers that are going to be also net consumers of copper. And the problem we have is that the supply is simply not there. I mean, we have seen all these bad news of Cobre Panamá and others, but especially the large mines need to either make expansions or just need higher incentive prices because the capital intensity, the cost per ton produced is getting higher and higher. And the mines are not in the places where they're easy to build.
So what's happening is that really the miners, and we have seen it with the approach of BHP trying to buy Anglo American, specifically for the copper price. The approach of these big companies is better to buy than to build, simply because buying you can do it in one year, and while building is not less than four or five years, assuming you have the cash, and you have the permits, and you have no local opposition, and you have water. And surprisingly, you have people, which is something very important. So I think we are just starting to see this high leg of the copper price, which I don't know where it's going to take us, but certainly higher than we are right now in the longer term. So we couldn't be in a better position.
So coming back to our results of the quarter. We had already released the production results, which were around a little bit less than 11,000 tons of copper, which were basically low grades. As a result of low grades, we have better low recoveries. Actually, the recoveries are quite good compared to when you consider the low grades fed to the plant, and also considering that we had a couple of shutdowns at the plant, which were not planned originally. So in spite of all this, we were able to control our costs. So, I think it's probably the best achievement of this month. Bad, bad grades, but still being able to consistently cash costs are under $3 and all-in sustaining cost of $3.20. Just think, and that's within our guidance.
Of course, if we had a higher copper price, this would have meant basically another EUR 10 million of extra EBITDA. EBITDA still was around EUR 10.3 million at an average price of $3.90. Imagine that we are right now with much higher copper prices, of course, with a copper price of, let's say, $0.60 higher, of course, you only need to multiply by 25 or 20 million pounds, and obviously will be much, much better. Working capital was decreased temporarily this month. It's not something that's worrying us too much simply because we repaid part of our short-term loans, and we continue investing in the pre-stripping in San Dionisio, which is moving very fast and finalizing the plant of E-LIX.
So but still continue to have a net cash position, just counting net cash minus, minus, minus debt, but not all the debt is short term, so actually, our working capital is much better than the net cash position. So I think overall, although it was a bad quarter from production point of view, as we had already flagged, it wasn't it wasn't a bad particularly bad quarter from the financial point of view, or at least not more than what should have been expected from the low production figures. As I said before, there were lots of activities in the corporate side with all the paperwork needed to move to the main market and redomicile to Spain.
So that was a very, very, very, very intense month from that side. Right now, at asset levels, we continue moving fast San Dionisio to get to the better high rates. We continue moving in Touro, with things moving along quite well, and we believe we are in the last leg of getting our project to be declared strategic. We are already doing some work for our next growth projects like San Dionisio or other places like Masa Valverde. Another disappointment, let's say another couple of disappointments were a slight delay in the E-LIX construction and startup.
I mean, construction is very well advanced, and it has been producing zinc precipitate from copper concentrate very successfully, but they still are in the final stages of commissioning. It's quite complex. And we also have some delay from our supplier of the solar plant, which they said that fully completed by the end of the year, although they will likely give us some electricity by mid-year in June. They will give us... Part of it will be operational. It looks like there were some delays in ordering some equipment. There were some delays in their own internal permits. This was a kind of turnkey contract, and we are not very happy, and we're looking how we can compensate, get some compensation for this.
Having said that, we don't expect this to affect too much our financials because of the- due to the low electricity prices prevailing during the sunny hours, which means the difference between having our plant or having a new plant is not that big. So, going with a little bit in production, I have already mentioned what I said. I mean even with all the stops of the plant, we processed 3.7 million tons, so with quite long stops, so this should be better in this next quarter. The grade also was quite low and also should be slightly better in this year, in this quarter.
Especially much better in the second half of the year when we hit some of the better ores at San Dionisio. The recovery, as I said, close to 85%, is slightly lower than previous year, but not that bad compared to when you think on the grade of the feed. Of course, this comes into lower revenues due to lower realized prices, lower operating cash flows. We gave back $17 million from investment, which is more than previous year. Sorry, $17 million, which is more than previous year. We had a slightly negative operating cash flow.
But we continue to have a working capital surplus of around EUR 60 million, around $70 million, which when you compare to what's seen in the slides of our history, remember, we are at a certain time, we were negative EUR 60 million at a certain time, so it's quite a big difference. The costs are broken down in the slide 15, in all the detail. When you make the calculation and see why the mining costs are slightly higher and some other costs like G&As, it's simply because we have lower production levels.
So the cost per ton has been quite constant, and even quite constant and even lower than the previous quarters due to the electricity going down, as shown in the second line, where processing cost is lower than previous year, simply because the electricity is lower, in spite of having lower production. But what one interesting surprise and things that were good was good is that we had lower freight costs and or treatment charges, which is helping. Of course, the market is helping. And also we had a much higher silver byproducts because we are producing from an area that's higher silver, although it's lower copper. So we in some way it compensated for other things.
So at the end, we had our operating costs, all-in costs, very similar to what we had last year, in spite of having much, much lower production. All in, when you compare with our peers, we continue to keep under control our costs within... compared with other companies that, based on public information. So this is, I would say we are keeping competitive with other people, and actually much better, as you can see in the slide 16, which shows that in the last column, in each of the left column, in each of the groups, is the last quarter. You can see lots of companies having higher operating costs in this first quarter than previous quarter. So we are more or less satisfied.
But anyway, we cannot be satisfied very satisfied. Our goal is to get to the higher grade of San Dionisio as soon as possible. Slide 18, you see that we have already started moving there, and actually this slide is one month old, but this excavation here is moving very fast. There we have a grade which is almost double than we have in the main pit, and it's essential that we can blend some of this material, although limited, so that we can get better grades in the second half of the year. Seen from the top, you can see the recent picture, how excavation is going. I mean, it's a kind of a small pit close to the existing Atalaya, existing flooded Atalaya pit.
Also in this picture, you can see in some way the water level going down in Atalaya pit, as we are pumping out already to get in preparation for the future expansion of the pit. Also, big advances in E-LIX . For those of you who are not familiar with E-LIX, is something to be able to leach metal concentrates and get better recoveries from copper, zinc concentrates. And that difference of recovery, it makes a big difference. Still, this is a very novel thing and is still in commissioning. This is old picture that we had in the early January, where we produced first cathodes. Now, this quarter, we have been producing zinc precipitate, extracted from copper concentrate.
So in other words, we have a concentrate having 18.9%-18% of copper and 8% of zinc. After cleaning it, you end up having a concentrate of around 22% of copper and 1% of zinc. This zinc, it goes into a precipitate, which is shown in the picture left, which is basically only contains zinc, and this is really sold, and you can produce cathodes or ingots of zinc, or sell it directly as precipitate. And the copper does not lose anything because we maintain the recovery, and we don't touch the copper barely. So we know this production has been obtained during the commissioning, but they still have things to finalize in the construction because this was while the commissioning is quite a complex plant.
I'm sorry that we cannot show pictures because due to the, it's a picture from what's looking inside, because it's essential from the secrecy point of view. But for those of you that have the possibility of coming into a visit that we'll organize later in June, or you'll probably be able to see it in person, and you will appreciate the size and the complexity of the material. Another thing that's, as I say, it's a little bit delayed, but it's advancing, as you can see. I mean, most of it is finished. There's still some holes left, but the main delays are coming from the moving, crossing the road with electric line and some pieces of the substation that had not been ordered and had delays.
But other than that, the plant is quite ready, and they will be able to likely give us some electricity by June. Not full, but maybe half of what is already based on what they have already installed. And we don't have too much to show as pictures in relation to Touro, but I have to say that the new government has been formed. They... We continue receiving lots of support in the public media, also by the local authorities, and we believe we are going to be named or getting the status of a strategic project, either the end of this month or the beginning of June. This is so, so this is what we have been told.
So we believe this is going to be permitted after that in the fast-track route, which is never fast enough for companies, but it's good. So that's in a nutshell what we are doing. In addition to that, we continue exploring the belt and the Ossa-Morena belt. We have some rigs working in a gold prospect in the north part of the Rio Tinto belt. Well, north, it's called Ossa-Morena. We are also infilling and doing some geotechnical work at Masa Valverde in order to be able to start the ramp there in order to access the copper ore sooner rather than later. So we continue working very hard.
As you know, we already have all the permits for Masa Valverde, so as soon as we start to ramp and drive fast, as soon as possible to the deposit, we will be able to ship that ore directly to our plant at Rio Tinto. So we are moving in that direction because we believe that the copper prices are going to be much better in the next years. So with that, I think we will go into the questions, which are always very interesting, and
Perfect. Alberto, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab, which is situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments to view those questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your Investor dashboard. Alberto, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and if I could just hand over to you just to read out the questions and give responses, it's appropriate to do so. I'll pick up from you at the end.
Excellent. Thank you. Look, we have lots of questions. I'm going to go quite fast, and some of them very interesting. The first one is: "What, what do you think of is the incentive price for big copper miners?" This is extremely interesting questions. I attended the conference of Bank of America last week in Miami, and I heard the guy, the CEO of Glencore, saying that we are not building any mines at $10,000 per ton. I mean, simply, they are not economic. I also heard Richard Adkerson, the former CEO, or and still chairman of Freeport, saying, "At this prices, it's very hard to justify a return, first.
Second, we had some projects that we could expand, but simply we don't have people. So in conclusion, we have seen the miners are needing much higher price, and it's very simple. The reason is that the big deposits are in Latin America, Africa, Indonesia, very remote places that are really infrastructure projects, projects that require desalination plants, pipes. The CapEx are huge. The amount of people are huge, and simply, at less than $10,000, they don't provide a decent return when you think that the construction is going to take five or six years. And that's one of the reasons why you can see, and you will continue to see, a frenzy of buying versus building.
Like the example of BHP, trying to buy the, the assets, basically due to the, to the copper of Anglo American in South America. Next question is when... So the price, I would say, is probably, $12,000 consistent, so in, in the range of $5-$6 per lb, consistent and steady. Just as a reminder, we didn't have any, decision of project being built during few years ago, when the copper was higher, after the pandemic, was higher than $4 during year and a half. And at that time, no decision was taken in these big projects. That shows you, and things have not gotten, got better. I suppose the price will have to increase enough to, in order to, to incentivize some substitution or some lower consumption.
When do you think you will make the decision on building Masa Valverde?" Later this year. We are doing all the work for the ramp. We have all the permits. We're working with offers for contractors. Very likely, at the end of this, at the end of this year, we'll start driving the ramp. So very likely. "Some peers have announced offtake deals with negative treatment charges. Are you achieving the same?" No. Our contracts are based on, our contracts are based on benchmark, and benchmarks are lower than used to be previous year, but they're not negative. This negative treatment charges are obtained in, normally in spot, in the spot sales, very small sales for some smelter that's desperate to fill some void, but that's not the normal situation.
The next thing is, what are the plan for utilizing land assets once mining operations are reduced or ceased? Also, very nice question. Look, in the tailings pond, we have the plan is to—it's about 500 hectares. The plan was to basically reclaim it, cover it with grass and shale. Right now, we have been looking at several things. One is to put some farmland with greenhouses, another one was to use a system, new generation solar, because it will be connected directly with the grid, which is very close, the solar station is very close. So we are looking at several alternatives.
Around the plant, which I hope it happens in, in more than 20 years from now, very likely this will be industrial area because there's access to electricity and a pool of good workers. The pits itself, the restoration plan are basically going to be left to be flooded, and we are allowed to do that. Very likely this will become a very touristic attraction because it's already now a huge touristic attraction, so I think this will be the final use of the pits. Another question is: Would you consider feasibility study establishing data centers in Atalaya mines? Given the massive future demand for- driven for- by IE, Atalaya has all the resources and used land, clean area resources, water supply, road infrastructure, distance from population centers to mitigate noise concerns. Well, to be honest, we have never thought on that.
It's a good thing to think. As I said, this thing will only happen probably between 15 and 20 years from now. So it's very difficult to make any prediction of what's going to be the need right now. Right now, we are full of- we are using the full capacity of our network, and actually would like to have more to be able to expand E-LIX. And right now, it's a problem. Atalaya has started purchasing some initiative. Is there any restriction on processing the material, or is the permit in all related to the final pit? What we are waiting is for the final pit right now.
If there is some material being mined in the future, we will treat it because it's really no sense to stockpile it, because we will, we'll stockpile it. It wouldn't makes any sense to stockpile it, to treat it later. The permits in Spain are not related to treating material at all. Once you have the permit, you can treat whatever you can through the plant, even even external material. The permits are related to the footprint of your land, or your site or your volume. So tailings, for example, is the amount of tailings you can hold by the... In that space, if you could pack it and put more, it would be better. The footprint of the pit is basically how many hectares you cover. I mean, is it too big?
So what we are permitting is the expanded pit, which basically goes to the main road, which, by the way, we got the permits already to move the road and environmental footprint, and we also got the permits to use the tailings to process that material. Another question is, will you continue your clean energy policy or at new sites such as Touro, especially, do you plan to develop clean energy project in this location? Yes. As part of the new project, it includes a solar plant, I believe it was 25 MW. So it's not as productive as the sun in the south. But yes, we are also putting that solar plant on top of the old tailings of the Touro, the old Touro mine.
Next question: Are you considering hedging a percent of your production to lock current price, given the Chinese NAV slowdown? Well, look, we have been asked this when the price was $4, and now it's $5. So locking in some hedging, maybe we will, you never know, but in an opportunistic matter, very, very short term, basically to cover short contracts. But it's a very dangerous situation, because, yes, the slowdown of China electric vehicles is probably there, but not so much the infrastructure. And also, it's a very dangerous game because, at any moment you can have a disruption in any mine, and the market is so tight that the prices could shoot up.
I think hedging at this moment is a risky business, that I don't think we would be doing it unless we went in a very short basis, like, three months to close, or two months to close a QP in a shipment. Was the cash cost guidance for 2024 to 83 based on solar plant coming online in mid-2024? What has been done to mitigate impact of higher electricity prices? Could you gi- okay, first question. Yes, it was based on coming online mid year. In order to mitigate, we have been hedging and covering some short-term contracts at the good prices, so that's why we had good prices during the first quarter, and also we will have them in second quarter.
And the moment we get some decent prices, especially in the daytime, we, we try to close them, because right now, the moments where you have a good solar prices are also the same time where you can get better prices in Spain. So that's what we are doing, trying to cover in short-term contracts.... Another question from the same person is: Could you give an update on permitting process in Touro, sometime in April, May? Is that still the timeline, is it still on track? Well, not certainly not April. The time for elections took almost two months to create the new government, so and change some—no big person in charge has changed in the environmental department or industrial department, not the equivalent to the consejeros, which is ministers.
But they did change some of the general managers of the environmental department, and this has created some small delay in producing the papers for strategic process. But, as I said, we believe we are in the—we have been told that we are in the right track to do it, to obtain this in late May and or early June. So not, no big slide. Could you give more color impact on lower TC/RCs in Q1? How should we think in the rest of 2024? Well, as I said before, lower TC/RCs, yes, we had lower TC/RCs due to the benchmark being $10 lower. Also, we had some slightly lower shipment rates. And how things in the rest of the year? Well, it looks it's going to be good.
It looks like the treatment charges benchmark are going to be going down with the spot, but not like the spot market. The spot market is something for, let's say, the marginal producer, but most of it is done based on benchmark, based on the concentrates provided by Freeport and Antofagasta or these other people. Another question: What are the key requirements for Touro to be declared strategic under the EU regulation? When do you expect to have a final decision on the project? Well, actually, the strategic project is declared under regulation of the Galicia, our regional government, not doesn't take into consideration EU. Well, EU is pushing, and all the laws are coming, and it will be very difficult for them not to say it.
The key requirements are you have to make a change in the area where you are, which we do. We have to have a minimum of 100 employees, which we have. We have to have a minimum capex investment, which we have, well, more than enough. And we have to show, basically, a significant economic change in the area where it's implemented. So all of these things are, we comply with those. And when do we have the decision? Well, first of all, it has to be declared PI, which is project of a strategic interest, by the regional government, which is, as I say, expected to be, let's say, in less than one month.
After that, it goes through an accelerated permitting process, which by law, it cannot take more than one year, so that's the maximum it can take. We believe, since we have gone through all this, it will take less than that. And so the decision will be taken probably or approved, the project will be approved likely at the end of the year or maybe the first month of 2025. We are always planning for construction already starting by second quarter or so of 2025. Do you... The next question is: Do you anticipate that the Rio Tinto copper mine recently operating out of production in Mongolia will significantly affect the supply of copper in the overall? Well, this thing is already included in the expectations. We are not a specialist, we just read what these people say.
The mine of Oyu Tolgoi, yes, it's expanding. It's expanding as the cave gets larger, and but it's already planned. I mean, one of the things that I should say is that the mines cannot go over 100% of the plan. I mean, no mine can go more than what they say they are going to be doing. So the only thing, the only news can be bad news. So if suddenly it happens, like the caving in that happened in Chuquicamata in Codelco, where for some reasons that I don't, I'm not a specialist, that wouldn't, that did not cave as expected, it simply is delayed, and it produces less. If things take longer to commission, it produces less. So it's very difficult to get someone producing more than it's already expected.
So all this thing of Oyu Tolgoi is already in, but there are other things that this is what is increasing, but the other ones that are very important, that deplete, that are depleting, like you would see with Escondida, which is the largest mine in the world. Which, according to the plans published by BHP a few years ago, would have to undergo a huge capital investment to maintain production. Otherwise, they will lose 500,000 tons of copper per year, which is more than this mine of Rio Tinto, Mongolia, Oyu Tolgoi is producing. So just to give you an idea, if in three or four years, a huge investment is not done in Escondida, that loses production equivalent to the second or third largest mine in the world.
That tells you how severe it is, that's how severe the situation is in the world of supply. What's the estimate of known all-sustaining CapEx for the full 2024? I think we have given the guidance, I don't have the figures right now, for the full year. Do you have them here, César? Or I think you will have to connect your microphone. Do you have it? Can you... No. Well, I will jump and see if we can get, we'll get César later.... Are you still looking for copper acquisitions, given copper assets with no, not now be much more expensive to consider risks too high?
Why do we not make acquisition 2023, or can you move forward without acquisition, without—look, we can stay how we are. But yes, we are looking at things, and if they are, if they do not make sense, we will not buy them. We are, we're, we're quite tight when we make this acquisition. We always look at things that make sense. But we are looking at things that are not that developed, and they are still not that expensive, and certainly not in public companies. All we are looking is in private companies, out of the radar.
Sorry, Alberto, can you hear me now?
Yes, perfectly. Thank you.
I'm sorry. I apologize, I have some IT issues. So I think the CapEx question was referring to the pushback of San Dionisio, which we have guided the market in between EUR 42 million-EUR 46 million. And in addition to that, the expansion of the tailings dams, which, consistent with previous year, we have guided the market between EUR 13 million-EUR 15 million. So both together, we're speaking about EUR 55 million-EUR 61 million, and that, that's a significant, the significant chunk of CapEx that we will have in 2024.
Okay. There's another question is, I keep asking this question because once Atalaya moves to Cyprus, to Spain, Atalaya is an easy takeover target. Effectively, we know that. What do you plan to do to safeguard a hostile takeover? Well, we have some defense mechanisms already, in place and, and even advisors. It's not that easy. I mean, at the end, it's up to the shareholders, but here, at the end, the best defense that we have is that we have six shareholders or seven shareholders that jointly together will get over... I think 10 shareholders will get us to 75% of the register. So with seven calls, it will be easy to say, "Look, this is a fair price. This is not a fair price." So from that sense, I'm not that worried.
Simply, of course, if this seven or eight are happy, then they are the owners of the key owners of the company. But we are not that easy target, and from my conversation with the key shareholders, their price expectations are not close to what we have right now. Would a visit, a mine visit be possible September, October? Well, this, yes, I am, Eric, yes, you know, happy to host you here whenever you like. You have been a shareholder for quite a while. Just let us know privately, and we're happy to do it. Solar. Given the sunk investment, would you consider increasing this capacity, double capacity? If you do 300, 500 MW, does it become a standalone business?
No, I don't think it's viable by a standalone business. There's excess capacity in Spain, and one of the problems we have is a lack of connection points. Right now, Spain has huge capacity installed, and some of the solar farms are producing money, and that's the reason why our marginal costs are very low during the sun hours, because only people that have a PPA are able to sell price at a good price. So I don't think solar is a good business as a standalone right now, unless you can use it, which is our case. What does it mean Touro permitting timeline to be fast-tracked? How long do you expect the permitting process to take at this point? By law, it has been established as one year.
So once they declare it strategic, it cannot take longer than one year. Of course, it's slower than that. What they do is that they have a limited timeline, which is two months to evaluate, to produce the project, the reports after going into public information. Then they have another one month or two to reply and to send some internal documents. So it really is really a real fast track, very well established, that things cannot go stretch forever. Have you seen a pickup in institutional interest since moving on to main market? Well, we have seen lots of volumes, and we follow up some people that are wanting to buy stock, and they are waiting to see the availability of the stock. Yes, we have seen this interest.
In the presentation that we have had in the Canaccord conference in the East in the West U.S., and also in the Bank of America in the East in Miami, and also we have something in Switzerland. Yes, there is institutional interest, and actually growing quite fast. Actually, if anything, the problem is lack of shares to be able to buy. Have you started exploring where you can expand E-LIX? Yes. We have been looking at places where we can build a new E-LIX installation with access to electricity. But right now, we want it to first work fully. Have you had any bid approaches for the company?
No, not officially, but we have had lots of people saying that they would be very happy to buy the stake of Trafigura, and we told them to speak with Trafigura, and Trafigura has told them that it was not interested to sell. Given Atalaya low debt, is a share buyback alongside current dividend policy a possibility? I think we'll stick with the dividend policy, and also we have lots of CapEx included, so I don't think we'll go into a share buyback. Would you consider a special dividend? No, I don't think so, because we have lots of CapEx coming on, so I don't think we'll do that. Copper shortage speculation, China, copper warehouse in Atalaya offer a warehouse and services? I don't think so. We are too far from being economic.
I think it should be close to the coast, because arbitrage needs to be fast track, faster speed. I think the only place where they can do these things is in the western coast of the U.S., where it's only about 10-15 days shipping from China. Anything that you would do differently in the E-LIX construction? Is just an issue with contractors, or the complexity has been higher than expected. For me, this thing I have discussed with Eva Laín, the owner of Lain, lots of times. We have gone through an exercise of what would you do different? I can tell you, lots of difference. The first thing is that I would not give him any money without a big engineering firm behind.
Even if you have to stay three months, signing with lawyers until you get an agreement to protect the secret. The main issue they have had is that since they are working with lots of contractors, their working is niches, so things are quite complex. When you are able to see the. And I think you have seen it, but you, you're welcome, you want to visit the site and come from, you know, it's only one hour flight. And when you see the complexity, you will understand that this is not an easy thing. The main issue is that when the pilot plant was working, the small pipes and then the valves and everything were more or less installed by the plumber of Rio Tinto.
Now, when you look at the pipes, they are 12-inch pipes, 10-inch pipes, the valves weigh 50 kg. It requires a lot of engineering, and it just takes a lot of time. Having said that, it's very advanced, and she promised that she will be in production in June, with concentrate in a continuous mode, not in batches like we are doing right now. Any new joint ventures in place with our neighbor mines? No, not with Sandfire. With others, we have been exploring some possibility of exploration, but nothing finished yet. Are you listed as competitors who get approval quicker than Atalaya? I don't think so. I think in Andalusia, we are quite fast with permitting.
By the way, listening to the presentation that we had in Florida, I mean, the biggest worry of all the companies present was permitting. In Chile, things are getting incredibly difficult. Even years of companies established like Antofagasta, like Freeport, and they were talking about four or five years, sometimes, to get permits. In other places in Peru, two years just to get drill permits. So when I look at that, it doesn't mean I'm very satisfied, but I feel much better. Things are getting tougher in any place, and I don't think anybody can do it much better, much faster than in Spain. Certainly not in Spain, and not in Andalusia, without any question. Copper current price range, what is our timeline to reach $1 billion valuation? Of course, it can be done.
Yes, it will be done. I think, yeah, we are going in the right direction. We're going in the right direction. What do you think about the Cobre Panamá situation? Do you think it will reopen? Is this having an impact in new investments in the industry in Latin America? Well, certainly, I think we may reopen, but certainly not close enough. I think, not this year, maybe 2025, because remember, it was not a problem of having a problem of, of environment. It was a problem that it was declared unconstitutional. So why would it be constitutional now with the new government? So they had to change the laws in order to allow it to be constitutional. And I don't think it's going to be so easy. It's a pity.
I have to say that I think it's a pity after having invested so much, but I don't think this thing is going to come on stream so close. Is it having an impact in new investments? Without any question. I don't think anybody would go and invest in another place. For example, there's a huge deposit in Panama called Cerro Colorado, also with very high rates, but also with lots of local tribes or original people there. I don't think it's ever going to be permitted. And there are some areas in South America that simply are not going to be constructed simply because of local opposition. The interest of the Trafigura stake, is it institutional or industrial? I think it's just trading. I think they believe the share price is higher.
The moment they think it's a good price, they will sell. I don't think they are waiting for anything else. Okay, I think that ends the questions. I have another one private for César, but I will keep it because it's personal. Okay.
Perfect. Alberto-
Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. And of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today, and we'll publish a response on the Investor Meet Company platform. But just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Alberto, I was just wondering if you had a few closing comments.
Well, thank you very much, of course, to be here again, as usual. I mean, we have a lot of good, loyal shareholders. I think we have come along. I think—I don't think we ever thought we would be reaching so fast this, this, copper price. I really believed it, believed it on it, but, but sometimes it seems it's not coming. I think we will see even better times. I also believe Touro is getting closer than ever, and look, I think our company is still in the way to, to continue growing. So I'm still a happy worker coming here in the mornings, and, waiting and being able to fight to my wife that's telling me to, that I should start thinking in retirement. So while that's there, I will continue supporting the company with all my efforts.
Perfect. Alberto, César, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session? As you know, we automatically redirect it to provide your feedback, and the management team can better understand your views and expectations. I'm sure this will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Atalaya Mining Plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.
Thank you.