Welcome to Nordic Mining's presentation of our second quarter results. My name is Finn Ivar Marum, and I will be presenting the main highlights from the quarter. Following that, Kenneth Angedal, who is the Managing Director of our Engeberg plant, will talk about operations. Finally, our Group CFO, Tord Meling, will go through financials. Following that, we'll have a Q&A. The company recorded one lost -time injury related to production at the Engeberg plant in the second quarter. We had our official opening at Engeberg with representatives from local and regional authorities, as well as the government, who all showed very strong support for the project. They all reinforced the importance of our operation for the supply of strategic minerals to Europe and beyond. The first commercial shipment of garnet was dispatched in May, and a total of 3,900 tons were produced.
The production ramp-up continued with high operational activity but limited output, leading up to our planned shutdown in July. During that shutdown, we carried out upgrades to pumps and other parts of the plant, and these improvements appear to have had the desired effect on the processing plant, which should translate into increased reliability and throughput as we continue the production ramp-up. Production of rutile has commenced with a target of having volumes ready for shipment by the end of the quarter. We maintain our target of stable production at the signed capacity at year-end. In terms of financial results, the company reported first revenues from Engeberg in the quarter of NOK 2.7 million, following the sale of two small shipments of garnet. The reported operating loss for the quarter was NOK 103 million.
We are making good progress with our board on an updated strategy for the company, and we'll conclude that later this fall. In August, the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the NGOs in their case against the Norwegian state, in which they have challenged the key permits for Engeberg. Nordic Mining is not a party in the court case, and the permits that we hold for Engeberg are valid for the company, and the production ramp-up will continue as planned. We ended the quarter with NOK 438 million in cash, providing a financial foundation and sufficient liquidity to support the operations going forward until we're cash flow positive. Before I hand over to Kenneth, I will briefly comment on the market developments. The titanium dioxide prices were flat in the second quarter in most regions compared to the first quarter.
The demand for titanium sponge remains strong, while the pigment segment continues to be weak. We expect the market to be flat or slightly down in the next quarter, and this is due to soft demand in China, leading to the export of surplus volumes. The garnet abrasive market is tight with growing demand, while the supply side has seen curtailments from South Africa and delay of new production in Australia. Thus, we see very strong demand for the garnet from Engeberg in the current market. Over the last months, we've had visits from most of our customers at Engeberg, and they're all eager to receive both rutile and garnet. They're asking us when the volumes will be ready for shipment. This provides real evidence that there is a strong demand for our products. Now over to Kenneth to talk about an operational update from Engeberg.
Thank you, Finn. While looking at some pictures over the process plant at Engeberg, we 're happy to announce that now we are fully running the plant in all stages at simultaneous operation, meaning from crushing to final product. In the first quarter presentation, we talked about that we were producing in stages, but this is now a chapter that we put behind us and are focusing going forward. At the same time, we are also taking the hard-earned experience from the first and second quarter into experience and continued and lengthy operations. We are on day-to-day and week-to-week increasing our production volumes and throughput in the plant. Our hard-earned experience is fantastic to see when our operators, both on process and maintenance, are keeping the plant running for longer and longer durations. A little bit update on our maintenance stop.
We had some underperforming soil pumps that we were modifying, and we now see positive results after the change and modifications done during the maintenance stop. We have not yet fully checked the validity of the pumps because we have not reached full design throughput yet. We 're continuing and monitoring the progress while we ramp up. At the moment, we do not see any issues on the pumps that we have been modifying. Through the maintenance stop, we also did other inspections, repairs, and modifications to facilitate the increased throughput of the plant on bulk material handling, transport conveyors, chute transfers, and so on. A little bit on production statistics. When ramping up, there are a multitude of issues and challenges and parameters to look at. The three main ones are the throughput in each step of the plant.
It is the operational time, and of course, in the end, the recovery and production volume of final mineral concentrates. Our focus has always been to maintain a high quality according to our specification in the off-take agreements with our customers. When looking at the current throughput, we are seeing a 75% design capacity through crushing and milling into our wet plant. We see the design throughput in our dry separation plant at roughly 50%. It's important to mention that this throughput is not the same as mineral recovery. We are keeping the mineral concentrate at the correct quality, but the production volumes are still low. We expect now that we are increasing the throughput on both crushing and milling into wet plant and dry plant in the coming weeks, also to require fine-tuning and to upgrade both the quality and the final product volumes as we go along.
A little bit back to what was mentioned in terms of production volumes going forward, we are continuing to ramp up as planned. We are focusing on maintaining the quality of our final concentrates. We are in a phase with uncertainties, as mentioned before. We do anticipate that we need to continue the modifications tuning in the coming months as we increase the design throughput to reach our design capacity at the end of the year. It's very motivating to see all the learnings from our team and all the challenges being met on a daily basis and fixed going forward. We are happy to go into the next half year with positive volumes in the end.
Okay. We begin by addressing cash flow in the second quarter. Operational activities resulted in a negative cash flow of NOK 93 million.
The operation has been characterized by high activity throughout the quarter, and we have had extraordinary costs associated with the challenges we faced in the plant. This includes hired personnel and external services. Changes in the working capital had a negative impact on the operating cash flow in this quarter, as opposed to a similar positive change in the first quarter. There is a timing effect here. Cash flow from investment was negative with NOK 44 million, which originates from the construction project. The overall remaining CapEx related to this project is lower than the NOK 44 million we had in this second quarter and relates to holdbacks against some of the EPCs. The final amount we are to pay to the EPCs and time of payment is still under various discussions and has not yet been finally agreed.
Going forward, we anticipate the underlying operational expenses to be stable and the cash flow from investment activities to be reduced. We end the quarter with NOK 439 million in cash, whereas NOK 368 million in Engeberg, which will be sufficient to take us into a cash-positive operation. Moving over to P&L, first revenue from the Engeberg project was kicked off with the first shipment of garnet in May. The revenue of NOK 2.7 million relates to two smaller shipments of garnet in the second quarter. Operational expenses are affected by high activity and inconsistent operation that involves a lot of starting and stopping, in addition to extraordinary costs to handle the issues that relate to the pump circuit. As Kenneth mentioned, this has improved significantly after the planned maintenance shutdown in July.
Going forward, we anticipate a transition towards a more normalized cost base, driven by production level in the plant. Excluding depreciation, we have total operating costs in the quarter of NOK 77 million for the group, which also includes NOK 4.8 million for the share-based compensation program announced in June. This is a non-cash provision being made as the program vests. In addition, we have approximately NOK 2.5 million in costs related to the quartz project. Going forward, we will have a strong focus on sending the first cargo of rutile and continue production and ramp up towards design capacity by year-end. With that, we move over to Q&A.
Thank you. I think we'll start with we have received a few questions. I will try to merge them. Those are similar. Kenneth, have you successfully produced more than 50 kilos of rutile at deliverable quality?
Yes, we can confirm that we have delivered or produced more than 50 kg of rutile at the specifications required in our off-take agreements.
There is a question about the pump design here. The issue was noted by independent engineers several years ago and also noted in the investor presentation from March 2023. Why was the pump design risk not mitigated on the drawing board?
The risk related to the investor presentation back in, I guess, March 2023 is a list of the full risk by the independent engineer. That risk mentioned there related to pump circuits is not relatable to the actual issue we saw and challenges we saw in the plant.
Thank you. Finn Ivar, what is the current status of the quartz project in Kvinnherad?
We have taken out some volumes of quartz that are being processed in a facility in Europe, and we expect to see the results of that processing sometime mid-next year.
The round question here, how is the project Engeberg doing in two years from now?
Good.
What is the expected timeline for utilization of titanium dioxide from Engeberg in the production of titanium sponge?
As I said in my presentation, we plan to have available the first shipment of rutile before the end of the third quarter. The processing timeline of that with our customers in Japan, I'm not exactly sure of, but I would assume that it would go pretty quickly through their processing plant. One of the customers receiving that shipment is indeed producing titanium sponge, and demand is high right now for titanium, so I would assume that it goes through pretty quickly.
A question about the legal issues. Has there been any communication with the state following the verdict, and what are the next steps?
Of course, we're talking to the state, we're talking to our lawyers, and also other stakeholders. The conclusion of this is that, as I told the employees at Engeberg when I was there last week, I'm not losing any sleep over this. The NGOs have sued the Norwegian government, and Nordic Mining is not a direct party to the lawsuit, and we're therefore not bound by the court's ruling. It is incumbent upon the government to do something. We are waiting their decision on how to proceed, and in our view, there are two potential outcomes. Either the government will appeal and bring the case before the Supreme Court, or the state initiates a process for new permits based on the strategic importance of our minerals for Europe. We expect that the state will appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
Should it go the other path, which is a renewed permit, the courts indicated that the rutile from Engeberg is of strategic importance to Europe and could well qualify as an overriding public interest under the EU water directive. As such, the courts in their ruling have clearly indicated a path forward for us. We are, as I said in my comments earlier, feeling and experiencing a lot of support from both local, regional, and central government. We saw that at our opening, and we also saw it very strongly manifested in the royal decree from the government back in May of this year, where they emphasized the importance of Engeberg's production for European titanium supply and also clearly stated the importance of there being no doubt about our ability to operate.
In sum, we are quite comfortable with the support and expect that the government will find a good path forward to remedy the situation should the Supreme Court not reverse the ruling from the appeals court.
Thank you. In the recent court case, I understand that the NGOs argued there is an alternative to putting tailings into the fjord. What are the alternatives, and how long would it take, and how much might it cost to switch to that kind of approach? I don't know if Kenneth or.
Yeah, that's on for you.
Want to answer that one?
I can answer. There has been done a lot of work some time ago as part of the feasibility study to understand what options are available. A land-based tailings deposit was evaluated, but from a security and risk point of view, it was not seen as any good solution. Out of all of that work and continued work in our updated feasibility study, both safety and our environmental solution are the best in the current sea disposal that we are using.
Finn Ivar, will the second alternative you highlighted imply that you have to stop production waiting for new permits?
Not necessarily. A relevant question is in what situation would we be required to stop production? Of course, we cannot rule this out, but the NGOs could seek and obtain a temporary injunction to halt our operations through quartz. My understanding is that they would need to argue that our continued operation would entail irreparable and irreversible damage to the environment. That's the first test. We would clearly challenge that with evidence from the numerous environmental studies that have been conducted. The court would also have to evaluate the proportionality between short-term environmental impact of continuing and the consequences of halting operations. That would be the financial and strategic implication of halting operations. Again, we see that we have a very strong case to argue. Of course, it is a possibility.
I believe we have gone through all the questions. If people out there have any more questions, please reach the company by email. Finn Ivar, is there anything else you would like to address?
I'd just like to thank everyone for participating in this second -quarter presentation. We will be back again in about three months with an update on how things are going at Engeberg. As you can see, we feel quite confident about what we're doing, and hopefully, we can show that in some numbers when we meet next time. Thanks for participating.