Hello, everyone. My name is Peter Hjorth. I'm with exploration company Bluelake Mineral. I will make a company presentation today. Afterwards, we will have a question and answer session in which our moderator, Verneri Pulkkinen, will be participating and lead that session. That will come after the presentation. Welcome everyone, and I will start telling you a little bit about Bluelake Mineral and also our current operations, our plans, and our ongoing financing and explain the offering which is currently at hand. This is an introduction to our business. Just like to make a point about the Nordic countries which are actually leading the electrification and the green transition process.
One example is the share of electrical vehicles share of new car sales in 2021 where Norway was the leading country globally and the other Nordic countries were following suit. Obviously, to make the green transition, you need to have critical raw materials going into batteries and electrical vehicles, so that's why we need local mines in Sweden, Norway, and the Nordic countries because the recycling of metals won't suffice to sustain this green transition. Another important parameter in this green transition was the other day, the European Union proposed a new legislation called the Critical Raw Materials Act. It has a lot of implications for companies like us.
The European Union has identified that we need to bring out more critical raw materials to sustain this green transition, make Europe less dependent on China and other countries which are controlling a lot of the mineral interests in the world. The European Union has identified 34 minerals as critical, and 16 of those are strategically important, of which cobalt, copper, and nickel are part of these 16 strategic raw materials. Obviously, in our key projects, which I will talk about now, we have both cobalt and nickel in the Rönnbäcken project, and we have copper in the Joma-Stekenjokk-Levi project. This is good news for us, and it's good news for the European exploration and mining industry.
Now, this is the fact or the background why we are trying to build a Nordic-based metal groups focusing on minerals and metals that are critical for this green transition. We have one subsidiary, Nickel Mountain, which is containing this nickel project, nickel-cobalt project in Rönnbäcken, which I will talk about. Then we have another group of subsidiaries in Sweden, Vilhelmina Mineral and Joma Gruver, which are containing our copper and zinc projects in Joma and in Stekenjokk-Levi, which I will also cover. Starting out with the copper and zinc part of it on the Joma-Stekenjokk-Levi project. First, just a little reflection on the market situation for these commodities. If you look at the copper price, it's been developing nicely.
Obviously, we had a peak in 2022, reaching more than $10,500 per ton. It has come back a little bit for obvious reasons. There was a downfall after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The copper price has surged back, and it's at a historically high and good level at around $8,500 per ton. It's very profitable for our projects so to go into production, and we could actually cope with a significantly lower copper price and still be profitable. Also for the zinc price, the current level of at around $3,000 per ton is good in a historic perspective, but we think there's upside both for the copper and the zinc price going forward.
The reason for this is the increased need for this minerals, both in the infrastructure industry, but also in the electrical vehicles and in the battery sector. Going into more details about our projects. We have a cluster of projects on each side of the Swedish-Norwegian border. It's roughly about 4 hours drive north of Norwegian town of Trondheim and the Swedish town of Östersund. As I said, we have several projects in a diameter of around 100 km. Our plan is to build a central processing plant and waste handling facility in Norwegian location of Joma. The other projects on the Swedish and Norwegian side, we will use as satellite projects where we will mine and transport ore for processing in Joma.
We have published updated mineral resource estimates. Currently we have roughly around 20 million tons, which will sustain mining operations for up to 20 years. However, when developing projects like this, you do often all the time, you do more exploration, you find new resources. We could even buy other satellite projects which are available in the region. We have a good chance of prolonging the life of mine more than 20 years when we come to that point. When it comes to the grades, they are healthy at around 1% copper per ton and at around 2% zinc per ton. This is good. Could sustain good profitability for when this product come in production.
Obviously, one important driver for the whole project and for the support from the local and regional authorities is the fact that we could employ quite a few people in the operations. Directly in the operations, maybe 150- 200 people on each side in Sweden and Norway. Indirectly, normally, these types of operations lead to indirect jobs from with suppliers and also with the service sector. Normally maybe two to three times as many jobs indirectly also. As I said, our plan is to have the main operations in Norway, in Joma, where we have the processing plant and the waste handling.
Our other major project in this, in this copper and zinc class is the Stekenjokk-Levi situation in Sweden, which was both those mineralization were in previous productions. Joma was in productions from the 1970s to late 1990s. Stekenjokk was in production in the 1970s and 1980s. But there's still remaining mineral resources that we can mine out and build operations around. In order to get the permit in place in Sweden, we have structured the project in a way that we plan only seasonal mining, which means that we will mine underground for ore in Stekenjokk in the period when there is normally no reindeers in the region. That's from late November, early December until late April and early May.
Then we'll transport the ore from Sweden at around 70 km southwest to Joma for the processing and waste handling. That's one adaptation we have made in the projects in order to enable permitting, which we hope will come in place soon. Another part of the permitting process which has been important, and one thing we have achieved is the so-called Natura 2000 permit, which is European legislation, which have become Swedish law also, and it's part of the permitting process. The Stekenjokk-Levi mineralization is nearby in Natura 2000 area, which means that we have to comply with certain regulations and also show the authorities that we can run these mining operations without negative impact on those habitats or species which are protected by Natura 2000 regulation.
One example of species that are endangered and that we need to coexist with is the Arctic fox. This is one of the projects which we will develop in parallel with the mining development. We plan to collaborate with the Save Arctic Fox project, this is something we are certain of that we can handle in a good way and also put the mining operations in production without endangering those species or habitats. Going over to Joma, where we'll have the processing plant and the waste handling. We are currently in a situation where we are working on permitting the so-called zoning plan.
The zoning plan is for all mining projects, is sort of an industrial plan of the industrial site and layout that it's approved for mining operations on which area is devoted for which types of operations. We have two areas have been marked out for this zoning plan, which one is the northern part of it, which is close to the Huttingsvatnet, the greater lake here, and the other one is more south eastern part, which is industrialized zone for a possible small open pit mining in the early stages of this project.
We have in this zoning plan process, we have specifically avoided any wet tailings, meaning that we will not put any tailings in the Huttingsvatnet, which was previously done in the previous mining operations in order not to affect water quality negatively. We will only have a temporary land deposits for some time, but then the final storage of the tailings will be made down in the underground workings. As this has been a previous mine, we have 11 km of underground working where we can sort of backfill with tailings from the mining operation. This is a unique possibility for us to create a truly green and sustainable mining operations. There will be no tailings in the water, no tailings on land.
Everything will be finally stored in the underground workings in the previous mine tunnels. Also, of course, we will do everything we can. Everything that can be electrified will be electrified. This goes for transportation vehicles, haulers, any machinery that we need. If it's available electrically, we will use it so to minimize the carbon dioxide footprint from these mining operations. A final slide about the copper and zinc project here. As you see, there's a lot of parallel processes going on, both in the Swedish part of the project and in the Norwegian part of the project. We have basically three key processes. One is the different types of mining studies, including mineral resource estimates, preliminary economic assessments, et cetera.
We have the permitting processes, which are ongoing both on the Swedish side and the Finnish and the Norwegian side. We have on top of that also the financing process, which is part of what we're doing right now. As you can see, we have achieved several parts. The green ones are marked. They are finalized and accomplished. The yellow one is ongoing, which we hope to get finalized in near term. The exploitation concession with Stekenjokk-Levi in Sweden, and the zoning plan in Norway for Joma. When we get those in place, those will be major milestones for our operations, and then we can go on to apply for environmental permitting both in Sweden and Norway.
As far as we see it, when we have the exploitation concession in Sweden and the zoning plan approved in Norway, there is very, very high likelihood that we will go all the way. That means getting those mining operations in production within relatively soon future. Okay. That was the copper and zinc projects, Joma, Stekenjokk and Levi. I will now go on to talk about the nickel cobalt projects here in Rönnbäcken in northern Sweden, Västerbotten. First, just a little outlook on the market and the nickel price development. I mean, as for copper and even more so the nickel price is heavily dependent on this ongoing electrification on the green transition. Nickel is a major component in most batteries for electric vehicles.
The bulk of nickel demand is still coming from infrastructure and steel. On top of that, the growth in the battery sector is very high, maybe even exponential. The zinc price has been very volatile in the last two years. F rom looking back five years, it's up 70%. It had a peak right around the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The nickel price went up almost up to $50,000 per ton. It fell back a little bit, it has recovered. It's a little bit volatile. At this level, the Rönnbäcken project is very profitable.
As far as we see, we think the nickel price could maintain at the same level or even go up over time as we will come back to what are the driving forces. Overall, the market outlooks are good for nickel. Before going into the project specifically, just outlook on the nickel production in the world. You see all those blue marked areas where the majority of nickel production in the world is currently taking place, North America, South America, Russia, China, Indonesia, Australia. In within the EU, it's only Finland that has some nickel production going on and a major deposit as Rönnbäcken in Sweden would be very strategically and geopolitically important project as the nickel imports from Russia is currently not ongoing.
When we spoke earlier of the Critical Raw Materials Act that has been proposed by the EU, we see the Rönnbäcken project as probably one of the projects that will be supported and guided to production as it will be strategically important for Europe to get this mineralization into production. Another important something for the nickel market in the European Union is, of course, the battery industry growing quickly. A lot of new established players in the Nordic areas, for instance, Swedish Northvolt and Norwegian FREYR. Tesla has battery manufacturing going on in German et cetera. There are many startups and development of new battery manufacturers in Europe. Which will demand nickel.
If you see on the left-hand side of this slide, you see the share of batteries for electric vehicles that are being more and more dominated by the NMC category, the nickel, manganese and the cobalt batteries. Of which the nickel part of the cathode is becoming more and more dominant, substituting to some degree the cobalt component. Looking at this development, as I said before, the development and the market outlooks for nickel is looking good. We should also bear in mind that battery manufacturers within the EU are more and more looking into the origin of the nickel. Where has it been produced, how has it been produced, and has it been produced in a environmentally sound and sustainable way?
That's where we come into the picture and have a hopefully good future. Just another one on the market side. On the left-hand side, you see the blue share in 2020 of the total market. 6% of nickel consumption was going to the battery sector. In 20 years' time from now, the overall demand for nickel is estimated to double, and the share of nickel going to the battery side is sixfold from 6% to 36%. This is another way to explain or show that the battery side will be a major driver of nickel demand as far as many experts are concerned.
Now going into the Rönnbäcken project specifically, it's the largest unexploited nickel project in Europe, meaning that's the largest known nickel deposit which has not come into production yet. It was discovered in the 1940s, it has been thoroughly examined and drilled by previous operators, including the Geological Survey of Sweden, Boliden for many years, and another operator called IGE before us. The resource is well known, and we estimate that previous operators have spent at least $25 million in developing the projects, maybe even more. This is substantial amount of drilling and even test mining, which was done by Boliden in the 1970s. What we know today is that we have a mineral resource of at around 600 million tons containing nickel, cobalt, and also magnetite iron ore.
With a planned annual mining of 30 million tons per year, life of mine is estimated to 20 years. On an annual basis, we estimate that we could produce roughly around 25,000 tons of nickel per year, 700 tons of cobalt, and 1.5 million tons of iron metal in concentrate. If this or when this mining operation comes into place, looking at current level, Rönnbäcken could provide up to 45% of the total nickel consumed within the European Union. That's why this project is strategically important to get in place and get off the ground. Looking at the financials, I mean, obviously this project is heavily dependent on the nickel price development.
80% of the revenues from this project are estimated to come from nickel, 20% roughly from iron, and a few percent from cobalt. There will be an upfront investment which will be quite substantial for the first two years, negative cash flow. For the other following part of the 20-year life of mine, there will be cash flows at around $400 million-$500 million per year according to this price level. I mean, the price of nickel will be very, very important for the economics and the finances of this project. At this level, highly profitable, and significantly above the break-even level for the project. One more slide about permitting process. We are now seeking to raise financing for this project.
One part is, part of it is this financing round that's currently ongoing. We plan to inject more money, hopefully directly into the subsidiary, Nickel Mountain. There will be first stage of maybe 18-24 months where we develop the environmental permit application and submit it. There is another maybe 18-24 months of like, a permitting process with the Swedish environmental court system. Hopefully, after that period, we can get environmental permit, and then we need to raise the final financing for the construction and commissioning and building of the mine, which will be another probably up to two years. At that stage, there will have to be a major partner or major partners that step into the process and help finance and develop the project.
Our role here is to get the environmental permit approved and permitted. That's how we can build significant value in this project. Just to round off here, one more slide. There's a lot of people working on this project or these projects in on the management level and at the board level. We have quite a mix of people from various nationalities, a good team. Specifically, I would point out that we have very skilled geologists and mining engineers working on the project and have significant experience of putting mines into production. A good team and a good forward movement in this organization. Important in this sense is the local presence.
I mean, specifically in Norway, we have spent a lot of time building an organization and building close relations with other stakeholders like the local politicians, the local authorities, local inhabitants, local business, the reindeer herders of course, et cetera. This is important in Norway, in Sweden, and for all products that we're working with the local presence. Yeah, just rounding off here, just summarizing some of the key investment highlights. Why is it interesting to invest in Bluelake Mineral in this, especially now when we're doing this capital raise? I mean, first of all, we have attractive resources.
I mean, all those assets or commodities are as far as we see it, they're critical for this green transition, demonstrated by the selection of the European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act. We have in the copper and side project, we have, you know, good grades, good tonnage. In the nickel projects, we have huge tonnage, Europe's largest unexploited nickel project. Good attractive resources and good products. Going on with the products here, they are in the copper and side, they are so-called brownfield cases, which means that they have been previous mines in previous production. This lowers the risk. We have a lot of historic data. We know that there are remaining mineral resources.
We know how the previous operations went, like the cost structure, what the recovery rates were, et cetera, et cetera. So that's good. Obviously, Rönnbäcken is not a brownfield situation. That's in that sense, a little bit less certain. All the, all those products are in the Nordic region. I mean, the Nordic countries have a long history of mining, a lot of competent and knowledgeable people that we can recruit in order to make those projects happen. Also, we are in a geopolitically strategic location here. Europe is demanding a requirement. The European Union wants at least 10% of those strategic raw materials to be produced within the European Union, for the consumption. Increased self-sufficiency requires new local mines.
The Nordic countries are specifically specific because we have the most mineral resources in all of Europe. Geopolitically strategic important location for those projects. Going on to the staff, we have good resource. We also need good staff, of course, to get those products off the ground. As I said, we have very knowledgeable management team of people with long industry experience, both really good geologists, very good mining engineers. We will as we go along, of course, we will build more and more operational organization with the ambition to get those mines in place. Rounding off here, the strong market fundamentals.
I mean, the drivers for those products is of course, that there is a demand that the market wants to acquire copper, zinc and nickel. S hort term things are uncertain, absolutely. Long term, there's no doubt that copper, zinc, and nickel will be in demand. It's very likely that the supply will have a hard time keeping up with the demand, which in a normal situation, would probably likely lead to increase in prices over time as far as we see it. Finally, rounding off, I mean, the strong project economics are important. The current net present value of Rönnbäcken is at least $500 million and is very dependent on the nickel price.
If the nickel price goes up to, say, $30,000 per ton down there. NPV of project more than threefolds up to almost $1.7 billion . The nickel price will be a driver of the value of that project. For the Joma- Stekenjokk- Levi, is much less sizable but still very healthy. The net present value, depending on scenarios, is between $100 million and $200 million for those projects in combination. Good, healthy project economics for these projects. No, sorry. Going on to the offering. Yeah, we have, as I mentioned earlier, we have an ongoing financing here. The first day to subscribe in this rights issue is today.
A rights issue normally means that it's only the existing shareholders that can subscribe. Of course this rights issue is open also for other non-existing shareholders to subscribe if you wish. On the right-hand side there, what we're offering and issuing is so-called units. A unit consists of 10 shares and five warrants. The price for one unit is SEK 10 , so that's SEK 1 per share, and then the warrants you get, so you get for free. The warrants have a strike exercising time 12 months away from now then. The subscription period is ongoing. It started today. It will last until April 4.
The issue has been underwritten or guaranteed up to 75%, that's roughly SEK 20 million of this SEK 26 million that have been guaranteed. Of course, we hope to get reach a higher number. On the left-hand side, you see how we will use this money. We'll go into the projects to keep working on the permitting, both in Joma, Stekenjokk-Levi, and for Rönnbäcken also product development. We will also use part of the financing in terms of a convertible loan. We will refinancing an existing loan. All in all, that's a summary of the operations, our future plans and the financial offering, which is currently available for those who wish to subscribe.
I think Verneri has probably some questions for me from himself or from maybe some people in the audience. Hello, Verneri.
Hello, hello. Thanks for the very interesting presentation, Peter. Yes, we have some questions from the audience. Mats is asking that, "Could you tell a bit more about the financing alternatives and scenarios for Rönnbäcken? Is the financing strategy different from the other projects since it's such a large project?
Yeah. It's a good question. I mean, we have communicated to the market that we probably need at least $10 million to finalize the environmental permitting because we need to do additional studies, and there's a lot of documentation and work to do. We have been working for a long time. We have had good processes ongoing with many potential investors. There are still some leads, some processes ongoing. We hope that we can close one of these, but there are no guarantees. What we're doing now, we're putting aside a little bit of this new financing for product development. I mean, for the big financing on this project, we are still planning to try to raise money in the subsidiary of Rönnbäcken.
We also, besides private investors, we also look into a possible public financing, and we have, you know, some ways to handle that. What we have, we hope that we can announce something shortly, but there's no secret that there is an interest for this project from the industry, but also from the battery industry that we are trying to sort of tie them together in a solution which will bring in financing.
Could you bring some color that, how does partnerships work in these kind of huge projects in practice? What kind of role a company like Bluelake has in these projects?
I mean, as the total financing of a project like Rönnbäcken is up to maybe SEK 1.5 billion, obviously from Bluelake is too small to put up that type of financing. What we're trying to achieve is to try to raise the sufficient amount of money for the environmental permitting. We would also try to sort of maintain some kind of net smelter return, some kind of royalty. If we have that royalty in place, over time, we will not, e ven if we get 100% diluted, if we have, say, 1% net smelter return or royalty, we can still make a lot of money from the project when it goes into production. That's one strategy to, you know, make it interesting for our shareholders, even if someone else would have to take over the projects in terms of total capital injection over time.
Okay. Could you describe how favorable the environmental regulation in Sweden is for these kind of projects, even though, as you said, there is a strategic sense for Europe to have these kind of projects, but in any case should we expect any regulatory backlash or something?
Well, I mean, the Swedish regulatory context for environmental permitting is complicated because you both have the normal environmental act, and then you have on top of this the Natura 2000 situation from Europe that has been implemented. It is tricky and a lot of, you know, things you have to take in consideration and handle. What we hope and what we see now in this, with this European legislation proposal is a Critical Raw Materials Act is that there is specific demands that strategic projects must be permitted within maximum of 24 months. I mean, this will.
must have implications on the how the local authorities in Sweden are working with these projects that we must see, you know, speedier processes and that things can run in parallel and that, you know, all the processes have to be speeded up and maybe finally this will happen now. This is what we hope for.
Okay. David has a question that, "Is the plan that the money from the rights issue will be enough until the redemption of TO3?
Yes. T hat's the plan. Hopefully the warrants are exercised, that the money will last at least until then. Absolutely.
Okay. I could ask that why Rönnbäcken was not developed by the previous operators if it's so valuable asset. Was it because of the nickel price- or something else?
I mean, if you start with Boliden, I mean, you would have to go back and ask the senior management of Boliden at that time why they didn't go forward with the project. For some reasons they didn't, and at that point of time, they weren't actively involved in any zinc projects. They became involved in the zinc sector because of when they went into smelter operations in nickel. Maybe today they would have made another decision. The other operator, IGE, spent, as far as we know, at least SEK 130 million or roughly $13 million on the project, half of it in drilling, half of it in project development and different types of studies.
At that time, the price was very low. It was around $10,000 or $11,000 per ton. It was way out of long way from break even. For some reason, I think they ran out of money and steam, they postponed the project and also senior management of IGE left the company. Again, that's roughly 10 years ago. It's difficult to explain exactly why, if various players over a long period of time make certain decisions. The only thing we see now is that this project, as far as we can see, it will have strategic value for sure.
We need to just keep on working, raise the money, do our homework, and do the work to get the environmental permit, and we will hopefully have created a big, big value for our shareholders.
PJ asks that, "Peter owns," he's referring to you, "owns a chunk of stocks himself. Does he believe enough in this to defend his part as the company's taking in more money?" I think he's asking are you going to participate in rights issue yourself?
I mean, of course I believe in this project, so otherwise I wouldn't stand here, I wouldn't work in the project, only in the company. I haven't made up any final, you know, decision on how much I can subscribe. I hope to subscribe in the, in the rights issue, of course. Yeah, I don't know the level, but I will, you know, from my whatever is possible, I will try to participate in the, in the issue of course.
Yeah. I think investors will be looking forward to it. Could you describe in layman terms how long it takes to scale up this mining operation so that how many years we have to wait for more action?
The Rönnbäcken project is more sizable and more complicated. We have estimated that because of the environmental permitting process and building and commissioning the mine, it would take at least, you know, best case, six years to get it started. Then for the Jorma-Stekenjokk side, it's much, you know, more handy size of it. I mean, it's, you know, one-thirtieth of the size of Rönnbäcken in terms of tonnage produced. If you only get the zoning plan and the exploitation plan in approved Hopefully this year. It could go relatively fast. From that point of time, it could maybe take three or four years until we can be up and running.
It's quicker for the copper and zinc projects, we think.
As you said, the long-term drivers for nickel, copper, and zinc are very favorable. In the short term, the construction and manufacturing sectors are the most important source of demand for this material. Do you see a potential economic downturn as a risk to your mining project? Their present value is very sensitive to prices after all.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that goes for, I guess, all projects which are depending on the infrastructure side. What's happening in China is, of course, important. I mean, it was a good thing that China stopped the zero tolerance for COVID and the lockdown strategies. Their eco-economy has started moving and which has an impact. On the other hand, we have inflation, higher interest rates, which of course, acting negatively when it comes to new investment for infrastructure. I think what you need to look here is not the next 12 months or the next 24 months, you know. You have to think about it three, four or five years down the line. Will there be demand from the infrastructure sector?
Will there be demand from the electric vehicle and the battery sector? We think yes. We think the demand will probably match or outgrow the possible supply. At that timeframe, those projects should be possible to get into production. At that time, the prices of those commodities should be high in a historic context. We're very optimistic on that timeframe.
Just a few more questions. Your previous rights issues over many years have diluted Bluelake share counts considerably over many years. If these present projects should proceed as planned, how would this benefit present share owners since you need a lot more capital to scale up the mining operations? How can you defend the present shareholders so that they won't get diluted in the future?
I mean, one way is to do, as I explained before in the Rönnbäcken project, I tried to put in place a deal with, you know, corporations or partners with deeper pockets that can, you know, finance the project from environmental permit until production and where we keep a royalty. You know, even if we get diluted in terms of capital ownership, we will have the royalty and can still make good money from when it comes into production. That's the most obvious way to protect the shareholders, and that's the common way in this industry, and it's, you know, standard practice.
Other than that, we will have to, you know, we will have to work efficiently with the money that we have, try to burn as little cash as possible and only use it for, you know, necessary spending to develop the projects and get the permits in place.
Exactly. Thanks, Peter, for the answers. On my behalf, we don't have any more questions from the audience. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Verneri. Thanks everyone for participating and listening. I really appreciate your, you listening to this, and I hope you will look into participating in the rights issue. If you have any follow-up questions or other things you wonder about, you're always free to email to info@bluelakemineral.com, and we will try to accommodate your questions or queries. Thank you for today.