Hello, everyone. Lovely to have you here for our capital markets update, capital markets day for Amaroq. You're very welcome in the room and online. Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. It's quite rainy in London, so hope it's nicer weather wherever you're sitting at home. We've got about two and a half hours. We're gonna be taking you through various aspects of the business. You'll have a full coterie of the members of the team from all aspects of the company. Hopefully it'll be informative, and there's time for questions at the end. The format will be, we'll take questions from the floor here to begin with, and then we'll take questions from the line thereafter, but we'll do it till the end.
If you have any nasty questions, try and think of them now and through the presentation. We're gonna kick off with a short video, which will hopefully set some context for the day. It's not too emotional, but it should provide a good basis for what we're gonna be talking about and how we operate in Greenland. After that, Eldur will come up and kick off proceedings, and then we'll run through the agenda as you can see here. Thanks for joining us and enjoy.
Everyone talks about Greenland, the minerals, the shipping lanes, the strategic importance. Here's what they don't talk about, who can actually make it happen. For decades, people have looked at Greenland and said, too difficult, too remote, too expensive. What an opportunity if we could make it work. They have a point. It is difficult, but we're doing it anyway. Now let me tell you why Greenland matters right now. There are three reasons. First, the minerals that power our future. AI needs energy, computing power, semiconductors needs germanium and gallium. Defense system needs rare earth. Renewable energy and the energy transition needs copper and zinc, and Greenland has them. Second, Arctic shipping lanes. As ice retreats, new trade routes open between Europe, America, and Asia.
Shipping times could drop by 40%, only if someone can actually navigate them, only if there's icebreaking capacity, only if there's infrastructure. Third, security. The North Atlantic, the gap between Greenland, Iceland, and the U.K., the GIUK gap, has protected the free world for 80 years. Whoever controls access to the Arctic controls the 21st century trade and security. Who can do this? Let me give you some history. The Americans came to Greenland in around 1940. They built military bases, weather station, and radar, fully manned. For 85 years, they've been here with NATO protecting the North Atlantic, understanding what's at stake. Before that, my ancestor, the Norse, discovered Greenland in the year around 800, before they actually discovered America. For 1,200 years, Nordic people have survived and thrived in Arctic condition.
Iceland, Norway, Greenland, we know the cold, we know the ice, we know how to build where others can't. It's that risk appetite we all share, I'm really proud of it. Greenlanders, they've been here for thousands of years. They know this land better than anyone. They are the foundation. When people ask, who can unlock Greenland? The answer is those who already have. The Nordics, the Americans, the Greenlanders working together. The private sector doesn't wait for permission. The private sector solves problems, and that's exactly what's happening. At Nalunaq, we've been producing gold year-round operation in one of the most remote location on Earth, and we've proven it can be done. At Black Angel, we're developing the high-grade zinc, lead, silver, critically germanium and gallium mine. The minerals that semiconductors depend on, the minerals that defense technology need, strategic mineral the West must secure.
At Nalunaq, we just made one of Greenland's most exciting gold discovery. Multiple zones, significant scale, depth potential we barely tested. Every piece of infrastructure we build for economic development also serves security, also serves access, also serves the West. That's not accidental. That's intentional, and it is already happening. We're not waiting for governments to coordinate. We're not waiting for announcements. We are the coordination. Through Amaroq, these partnerships are real, operating, delivering. We've proven the model works. We've shown that Greenland isn't just strategically important, it is strategically capable. One mine today, multiple mines tomorrow. Regional infrastructure becomes national infrastructure. This is just the beginning. People said it couldn't be done. Too cold, too remote, too difficult. They were right about one thing, it is difficult. We're doing it anyway.
The question was never, can it be done? The question was, who will do it? The answer is Amaroq.
To come up after that. Welcome everybody. It's a pleasure to see so many of you here. I have to say we weren't sure the attendance after COVID. There has been more on webcast. It's an absolute pleasure to have all you here, to walk you through it. As a start of the presentation, I wanted to reflect a little bit on the last five years, and we want to also give you a roadmap for next coming five years or. Since we started the company in 11 years ago, two or three people around the room, we've gone through a strategy where we acquired the real estate, gold, critical minerals.
We develop a team, we develop a mine, we develop a way to explore and do exploration drilling every summer, and we continue doing more of that. Today, we now sit at the position where we have the skill set, the team and everything, and we've really just started. On that note, the question becomes: Why are you doing it? Well, since we started this industry fairly countercyclical, and I'm not gonna lie to you, our timing was a bit, I wouldn't say wrong, but it has taken time to get here. We think there is another super cycle coming, and for these particular reason. The traditional demand for minerals around the world is growing. When I say traditional demand, I mean houses. A normal house needs 200 kg of copper, as an example.
The traditional demand means that more and more people are coming out of poverty, wanting similar potential quality of life, I wanted to say, as others. The second part is the electrification of everything. Electrification became something that was very topical around 2020 when we thought about Tesla or the electric car. If you think a little bit further, it is about everything we do. Your tumble dryer, your phone, your computer, everything is now being electrified. Which has meant that countries like China build their whole economic model on electrification, which in turn becomes decarbonization or energy transition. How can we not be dependent on oil and gas? China way is to electrify.
Yes, they use coal and wind and solar and other things. They use ways to build up batteries and others to store that electricity to be able to utilize the best possible way. Other industries like AI and others are certainly there also. The point about this slide is that the demand supply today is now 50/50 between the Western world and the undeveloped world. It used to be 80/20. There's just a lot more demand. What is staggering about all of that is that while this is happening, due to the fact that this industry has a very challenging risk-reward profile. There are a lot of risk around. I mean, it only takes you a few minutes to look at that video, how many risk are associated with building mines and developing mines, right?
What is happening is that there hasn't been capital in this industry. The prices have been very, very low over 15, 20 years. We've had to go deeper, meaning each deposit that are now discovered is going deeper and deeper. The grade that is the metal per ton is lowering. That means the yield is worse generally. As an example, copper-gold discoveries are at historical low. Partly it is because the best has been mined, but partly it's also because we are not or have not been exploring for new resources. Best way to explain that, if you look at much of the portfolio of assets, it isn't even valued in our market cap because it's hard for us to explain what derive to a value when you only have a one sample or one drill hole.
You need a resource, and I'll go through that in a minute. Also, capacity delays, permitting timeline, and all of these things are also delaying. We will see a shortfall in providing demand to the market when all of it others. On top of that, we are seeing one country dominating the supply chain, both from mining and processing, which is China. This is an example here from rare earth. What that means is that their industries are much stronger than other industry. They make electric car cheaper. They make most things that are electric and therefore, because the minerals and the processing of supplying their industry is better served. That's why what we see in America or in the European Union and all this, but that's why you see the interest in places like Greenland.
What is also quite interesting is that the metal sector is not like oil and gas, where oil and gas is 80%, I think, of commodities. It is much more vulnerable to disruption in supply. Copper, for example, 23% of the copper in the world or 22% comes from one country, Chile. Majority of nickel comes from Indonesia. When there is a mine failure or single mine issue that has a big impact on the supply and therefore that is a risk for any industry in the world. We've seen the similar things in aluminum. I know there are a lot of Icelanders in the room here who have witnessed that quite recently. Why is Greenland important in that?
Now, to give you an idea, Amaroq has funded in total since initiation probably up to $250 million of investment in mines and exploration and others. When the new mining code was put in place in 2009 to 2012, about CAD 1 billion was spent on project. We had this period, a down cycle from 2012 all the way up until maybe one or two years ago. In the past one and a half year, more than CAD 1 billion has been raised into mining projects. Just yesterday, day before yesterday, a license called Disko was funded with CAD 30 million on an idea on a total valuation of CAD 60 million.
We bought Black Angel last year for CAD 10 million, as an example, with the resource and infrastructure, which we'll explain later on. The valuations are growing, and the capital is being injected in huge amounts these days. This kind of goes into the whole idea about how we unlock Greenland. It is a lot gonna be about services to lower unit cost and understanding the know-how of doing things. Amaroq today is valued close to CAD 1 billion. We like to use Canadian dollar because it gets us closer to that one billion mark. As a reference, the unrisked potential in the overall portfolio is CAD 20 billion. What does that mean? That means that areas that we are looking to either explore, develop or operate has a combined value in the management eyes of CAD 20 billion.
Meaning if everything goes as planned, if we have the capital and the people to develop them, that's the size of the price. You will see it later on how we evaluate that. Right? They go through these stages, through the evaluation. When you're in exploration stage, you typically get maybe 0.1- 0.3 of your NPV of a project, and you have to get to a certified resource to start getting more and more added value to the project. We have Black Angel, which already has a resource, and we intend to, similar to Nalunaq, use exactly the same strategy to develop larger resources and get that into production. That sits on this definition in feasibility studies. With Nalunaq getting into that operating state, we see lower and lower discount.
The whole focus here is to move through growth projects from exploration all the way to producing end. What is interesting about our projects in Greenland, and each and every one of them is not an idea. It is a rock that we have sampled with high-grade something. We're gonna speak to you today about gold, iron ore, nickel, copper, rare earth. These are all samples we've taken, or we have drilled them. In contrast to what I said earlier, they are on surface, they are high grade, so it's about quantifying. It has been hard to quantify in Greenland because it's so remote. You need to understand how to drill and how to develop. It costs money, and it takes you a lot of people to do it. About 60% of our OpEx, our CapEx is people. Right?
It's not enough to only have the asset, you need to be able to unlock them. The Amaroq Way and how we are approaching things, we look at high-yield asset. That means high grade. Nalunaq has a resource statement of 30 gram per ton. I think the average grades in gold is 2 g-3 g per ton. It gives us high margin. We like to go into mines where the low upfront CapEx. Amaroq cost us about $200 million to get into operation. That's obviously because they were a miner before, we can leverage off that. That gives us the playing ground to hunt for the elephant because the cost of being there is 60% of it, we can use that infrastructure to drill other areas and build up a regional portfolio.
We've already proven that in Nanoq. Nanoq, we believe, is an elephant, a world-class deposit. More than 70% of the hole in Nalunaq show high grade in mineralization. We can only do that by having good people, motivated people, and people who can actually help us gain that attraction. In addition to what we do in Amaroq and, you know, we have had question on that, why are you thinking of services or energy? When you're in a jurisdiction which doesn't have services or doesn't have any energy infrastructure, you have to build it yourself, because otherwise your unit cost will not come down. On that note, I will hand over to Ellert.
I don't think this works. Does this work?
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you, Eldur. I'll start with key highlights from Q1. We delivered a strong operational quarter at Nalunaq, producing close to 3,700 ounces at nearly 20 g per ton. Recoveries were 61% in line with expectations for the gravity circuit. More importantly, Phase II flotation commissioning remains on track for Q2. On the permitting side, we completed the IBA in January and received approval of the final mine plan in March, a key permitting milestone at Nalunaq. Within the wider portfolio, we also announced encouraging results from the highly prospective Minturn license within Gardaq, which displayed high-grade iron ore mineralization, which James will cover in more detail later in the presentation.
Finally, on financing post-quarter end, we announced in April that we had expanded our RCF to CAD 70 million, which materially strengthens liquidity and lowers our overall funding cost in parallel. Turning to the financial performance of the quarter, very pleasing to see Q1 marking the first quarter of net profitability for Amaroq. Hopefully many more to come, with net income of CAD 2.4 million. Revenue totaled CAD 18.9 million from sales of roughly 3,000 ounces in the quarter. Of note also, G&A was slightly higher than in previous years. That is mostly attributable to legal and advisory costs related to the main listing in the U.K., which Anna will cover later in the presentation. Moving on to the balance sheet.
Total assets increased to CAD 376 million. This reflects continued investment in our asset base, mainly at Nalunaq. This is in line with expectations, so the first half of the year was always going to be more heavily weighted towards CapEx, including investment in underground mining equipment as we took over from Thyssen, our mining contractor, which the last people from Thyssen and equipment left site in Q1 once we brought in our new mining equipment and of course due to also continued progress towards completion of the Phase II flotation circuit. The change in cash balance between quarters reflects this investment, as well as the increase in inventory, which increases materially between quarters and stands at CAD 33 million at quarter end, driven by stocking up of spare parts and consumables.
You'll also see a continued investment in our gold inventory, which stood at CAD 20.3 million at quarter end and is expected to be converted to revenue once shipments continue. Liabilities increased to CAD 92.7 million. That mainly reflects a temporary increase in current liabilities related to a payment received for a shipment that remained in transit at quarter end, together with accrued interest on the RCF. Despite that, the balance sheet remains very strong with equity ratio just over 75%. Cash movements. Cash flow from operating activities positive 10.8%, which reflects the gold sales in the quarter. I've discussed the investing activities that took place in the quarter as well. CapEx mainly for the processing plant construction.
Cash at quarter end at CAD 8.8 million. We had an additional undrawn credit facilities of CAD 8.9 million. Post-quarter end, we announced the expanded RCF, which basically takes this CAD 8.9 million number to about CAD 57 million in undrawn facilities. That significantly increased our available liquidity going into the 2026 field season. For guidance that we announced in February 2026, earlier this year, that remains unchanged for our full year guidance. Operational focus continues to be on Nalunaq ramp-up and stabilizing production. You will see there on the tables to the right, Q1 performance was in line with or ahead of expectations, particularly on the production side due to higher grades than initially forecasted.
That puts us in a good position for the 7,000-10,000 ounce H1 guidance, and our full year guidance of 25,000-35,000 ounces remains unchanged. On costs and capital investment, they also continue to track in line with plan. I wanted to look a little bit more in detail at our AISC number and the underlying cost structure at Nalunaq in particular. You'll see on the graph to the right, upper right corner, that AISC is expected to reduce progressively as recoveries and production ramps up. We are guiding an AISC range of $1,250-$1,450 per ounce by year-end. That is due to the denominator increasing, the production increasing. We are not estimating cost optimization or lower cost in the guidance.
Wanted to show and make a note that, as Eldur mentioned, the cost structure is largely labor-driven. Approximately 60% of operating costs are related to labor. It's direct salaries, which accounts for roughly 40%, then we have contracted services and associated travel costs in bringing people to and from site, where we run a kind of four weeks on, four weeks off rotation at Nalunaq currently. We have energy, which accounts for 10% of the cost base. What's important to note here is that much of this organizational and infrastructure base is already in place, and the number of people required to operate the business doesn't increase alongside increased production, or at least not proportionally. There is significant operating leverage that we can look to as production ramps up.
A major focus throughout this year will be on productivity and cost optimization, and that speaks to our capital allocation strategy and links directly into the next slide as we look to lower our unit costs. We view capital allocation across three core areas of value creation. It's shorter term, medium, and long term. The first area is optimization, as I alluded to earlier. Continue to improve efficiency and lower unit costs. That includes several initiatives we're looking to this year and going forward. It's obviously local workforce transition that decreases travel costs to and from site. Insourcing of contracted services. We have an extremely good track record of that in recent months after we took over mining operations from Thyssen, our mining contractor, that basically handled all mining operations at site up until Q4 of last year.
That decreased costs by 25%, and that's only in dollars and cents. We also saw increased productivity and all in all, just better control and flexibility across site. We actually lowered costs and we got more tonnages from the same number of people. That's operational leverage. That meant we had to bring in our own equipment to site, we had to make investments in that vein. Why we might need to do something similar when it comes to taking over operations from other contractors. That is an investment that pays back very quickly for us. We're also focused on logistics optimization. This speaks to Suliaq, our servicing company, which Ed will go through later in the presentation. Having longer contracts gives us better payment terms, lower unit costs, and more flexibility.
We'll look to engage with that as well. On infrastructure investments, fuel farm expansion. If we have more capacity at site to receive more fuel, the ship moving in the fuel costs the same. Again, lowering unit costs, the hydropower initiative has the ability to significantly lower running costs going forward, and more on that later as well. The second area, looking at Nalunaq itself, and this would be within our growth capital. The focus there is on increasing throughput. We have currently a 300 ton per day facility there. We're ramping up to full nameplate production by the end of this year. That's our base case plan. We'll do it earlier if there are no issues.
We have already now commenced study work with Halyard, the engineering group, Canadian engineering group that has worked with us on the processing plant since the beginning, to increase throughput from 300 to 450 tons per day. Effectively increasing throughput by 50% and which does not require a proportionate increase in workforce or equipment, and more on that later. The third area is the wider portfolio. You can see on the far right, systematically advancing our projects. Our approach there is mainly value-focused. We put pressure on the geology team, which sees opportunities in every corner of Greenland, understandably, as the minerals are basically on surface.
We require them to explain the field season activities to us and how that directly translates into increased geological confidence, de-risking the projects, moving them along the Lassonde curve Eldur showed earlier, thereby increasing their value. There we're looking at a couple of or several key projects which will be covered later in the presentation in more detail. That's capital allocation. That's one side of the coin. On the other side is financing and how do we fund this exciting growth potential we see. Our funding strategy is diversified and has continued to evolve alongside the business. If I just go through these boxes now, first, we expect Nalunaq to become cash flow positive in the second half of this year. That's going to be an important source of internally generated funding.
On partnerships, we've already demonstrated a strong track record of strategic partnerships, partnering with GCAM in 2023 in our Gardaq exploration JV. Through that we have funded approximately CAD 30 million of exploration activities so far, with programs continuing into 2026. More recently we announced a similar structure being contemplated with IFU, one of our largest shareholders in Suliaq, the services business. That is an opportunity set that we'll continue to look to for either it can be the companies, the subsidiaries such as Nalunaq, but also single licenses such as Nanoq or others that is a possibility there. On the debt side, we successfully established our first debt facilities in 2023, a construction loan to the tune of CAD 18 million.
That was then subsequently upgraded to an RCF, a $35 million RCF, with Landsbankinn a year later. Now we've just announced a syndicate of $70 million with Landsbankinn and Gunvor Group, one of the largest metals and commodity traders in the world, bringing them into the syndicate. So we've progressed well on that front as well. Offtake financing, we continue to engage with partners such as Gunvor, commercial partners, and also public institutions or public bodies when it comes to offtake financing opportunities. That is especially relevant to our critical minerals portfolio. On the capital market side, we're seeing increased inbound interest from debt investors as we've moved to production and now positive cash flow around the corner, particularly within the Nordic market.
We are seeing investor appetite for the sector as a whole also increasing considerably alongside several recent transactions. Last but not least, equity markets, of course, they've historically played a very important role for Amaroq, especially in funding Nalunaq. As you can see, with that having been done mainly through equity financing and a strong equity ratio now of 75%. That has also allowed us to build up a very strong register of supportive and diversified institutional shareholders, which spans resource funds, pension funds, family offices, management, et cetera. I see a lot of them here in the room today. We really appreciative of that support, and this is one of the strong elements of the company for sure.
Overall, I believe we have significant financial flexibility and access to a broad range of alternative financing, of funding alternatives to support the growth opportunities in front of us. With that, I will hand over to Joan Plant.
Thank you, Ellert. For those of you that haven't met me before, I'm Interim COO. I've been operating in Greenland for 16 years, and I've been with Amaroq for 11 years. One of my areas of expertise is negotiating with the government, on the permitting side of things. Also what I'm passionate about is that we fulfill our promise of building a Greenlandic legacy. You've heard from Eldur and Ellert what our plans are, and I'm sure you're thinking, what exactly are Amaroq going to do? How are they going to achieve this, and what edge do they have over their competitors? It's quite simple: it's our people. When Eldur and I started on this journey over 11 years ago, as he said, there were just three of us in this company.
As a result, we've had to understand and build everything from the bottom up, which has been really helpful in identifying the skills required when we're growing the team. Eldur in the early days said, I drive the train, and Joan keeps it on the tracks. Not much has changed really. We realized that we would never be successful without investing in our team to get the expertise that we needed, and that's why 60% of our costs now relate to people. We knew that we wanted people with the same values as us, who approached everything with integrity, hard work, and drive. Individuals who were as passionate as we are about creating long-term value for Greenland and investors. The search was hard.
I believe that we have now built the strongest mining team in Europe, and you will hear from some of my operations team today. From Phil, who has spent his whole career in mining and now leads a team of 200 people at Nalunaq, producing cash flow from our regular gold sales while looking to expand the life of the mine through the focused approach to resource growth. From James, an experienced exploration professional who has so effectively planned and executed our exploration strategy and who will be overseeing the work of 80 people during the 2026 Greenlandic field season, which starts very soon. He's also a key member of the team in evaluating M&A propositions. From Will, who joined us 10 years ago as a geology intern at Black Angel, and he'll be talking to you today as the project manager of the West Greenland hub.
His growth during his time with us has been great to see. Our operations and project teams are of course supported by a team at head office. There's 25 of us, and we're experts in HR, IR, legal, compliance, and sustainability. From three to 300 people, that's quite an achievement. Next slide, please. Okay, we've got the right people, but how are we using them effectively to build value and accelerate progress of the projects? As the saying goes, failure is success in progress. We're not ashamed of our failures. The challenges we have faced have shaped us. Nalunaq tested our operational, technical, and logistical capabilities, and we've learned from every setback. The hard part is done. We now have a repeatable framework, playbooks, standard processes, and lessons learned that can be dropped into future projects.
That means faster ramp up and a quicker path to production with fewer surprises. Being aware of past mistakes means we won't repeat them again, thus minimizing CapEx overruns, schedule slippage, and operational downtime, all of which leads to lower risk and cost. This institutional knowledge sharpens with every project, and it's hard for others to replicate. It's one of the most unique parts of the business and sets us apart from others. At Nalunaq, we have taken a mine into production. We have done it, and we've done it successfully. That is something that our peers have yet to prove that they can do. The last ingredient that makes us successful is our execution-led mindset. Every single member of the team shares a common trait. We all want to be the best at what we do, and we enjoy winning.
Our first mover advantage means we are leading the way in so many areas. For example, we've built the only new producing mine in the Arctic in recent years. We've got the only dedicated environmental operations team in Greenland. We are the first to negotiate the Impact Benefit Agreement for Nalunaq under the new framework, and we led the way in establishing a monthly meeting with the municipality leaders in Greenland over five years ago, which has become a valuable way to share information and build trust. To retain our people, we need to offer a compensation package that rewards them well, but we're also very clear it needs to be delivery driven. We offer a competitive base, a good performance related component, stock options, and we have developed an effective KPI framework that ensures remuneration is linked to results.
There are a mixture of corporate and personal KPIs set at the beginning of the year at our group strategy session, and progress against plan is formally evaluated by the executive across the group on a quarterly basis to ensure that we're on track, and if we're not where we need to be, then we're able to implement intervention strategies. In addition, we measure things like morale. It matters to us how people show up. We've also found over the years that enjoyment fuels productivity. When our people enjoy their work and have a high morale, quite simply, they deliver more. Einstein said, try not to be a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. That really echoes with us because we found it really true that a team upholding our strong values will invariably be successful.
I want to take a minute to remind you of our values. Leading through professionalism. We are all ambassadors of Amaroq, striving for operational elegance. Sorry, excellence and elegance. Innovative and agile. We have learned from our mistakes, we face the future better prepared. Collaborative and caring. We have built strong relationships, realized by using our individual expertise effectively, we are stronger together. Long-term perspective. We have invested with purpose in people and systems, the Amaroq Way that Eldur mentioned earlier is a clear plan of how we see the future. Finally, execute and deliver. We want to deliver on commitments, be results driven whilst enjoying what we do. We will reward people who help us meet our goals. All of these values help us to achieve our core purpose of building a Greenlandic legacy.
As Eldur told you, Greenland is the mining frontier for a resource-constrained world. We are committed to operating sustainably to provide the world with the commodities it needs. We're an active member of the local community, empowering Greenland to become an economically independent country. When we look back in 10, 20, 30 years' time, we want to make it clear that Amaroq helped Greenland move forward, not just through what we mined, but through what we built, creating long-term, skilled employment and capability so expertise stays in Greenland. Partnering with communities and municipalities transparently, so trust and shared value endure beyond any single project. Operating to the highest environmental and governance standards, so future generations are better off because we were here. That is what Greenlandic legacy means to us.
I'm so proud of what we have achieved. We welcome your support as we take the next steps together. I'll now pass over to Phil, who is leading the team at Nalunaq. He can tell you everything that's going on there.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Joan. Is this working, yeah?
Yeah.
Excellent. I first arrived at Nalunaq specifically in May last year, initially as a consultant, actually. The place is so incredibly wonderful, it captivated me in a way that no other mine has done before. I'll show you a little video in a bit, which will show you exactly what I saw when I first arrived and exactly why I decided to stay. Today we want to talk about exactly where we are and where we're going. Once again, when I first arrived, May last year, the process plant building was almost an empty shell. We had gravity concentration only, which meant that we were recovering between 50% and 70% of the actual gold content of the ore. We also went through a contractor to owner/operator transition, which, if anybody has been through that process before, is rather difficult.
Consistently, month on month after that transition, we did better and better in terms of productivity. Going into 2026, we're gonna continue that ramp up. The aim is to get up to that stable 300 tons per day throughput. Within the next one to two weeks, we should be commissioning Phase 2 of the plant, which will provide us with a second saleable product and a second revenue stream. Heading into Q3, we start to realize revenue from that second revenue stream. It also means that our recoveries of the ore body are in the high 90s. By year-end, we wanna be sitting at $1,250-$1,450 per ounce, which is world-class. Some of the interesting things about the Nalunaq ore body, it actually outcrops on both sides of the mountain.
We're only mining a very, very small portion on the eastern edge. We have areas of the mine which were previously developed, but showed some geological complexity, were never really mined properly, which gives us ample opportunity to glean additional ore from these areas. Why stop at 300 tons per day? We're actively investigating and scoping out our ability to be able to move up to 450 tons and possibly 600 tons using additional processing technologies. Year on year, we're gonna be increasing our reserve base, resource and reserve base. This comment is particularly poignant, significant amount of visible gold. This is now my fourth gold mine, and it's very, very rare to see visible gold, let alone in the quantities that Nalunaq has.
You may have heard me just mention that the ore body outcrops on both sides of the mountain, so I'm gonna do some pointing now. It outcrops here and it outcrops up here. There are virtually no drill holes in any of this, so that's the true potential that we have here, and this is what we know about. Our current drill campaigns, you can see in the 2026, the red part which says drilling completed, every single one of those holes had visible gold in it. That represents most of the mining for 2026 and a significant portion of the mining for 2027. The general strategy is that each year we'll drill off at least the next year's worth of mining, and if we can, even more.
The drill rig is currently set up down at the 500 level, which is a separate part of the ore body. It actually sits in Target Block, which is lower. This will also be an additional mining area for us as we go forward. In order to exploit and explore the extension of the Main Vein throughout the mountain, we have plans to mine an exploration drive pretty well the whole way through the mountain. That's gonna allow us to be able to incrementally drill off sections of that ore body as we go, increase our resource base, and increase the amount of mining inventory that we have available for every financial calculation that comes off the back of it.
As I mentioned, the western drive's slightly geologically complex, however, a very big opportunity for us in terms of additional mining areas which can be brought into our current plans. The Target Block, also an area which probably hasn't been mined since the last operator was here. We wanna bring that back into operation and expand it on every front that we can. We also have the 75 V ein as well, which sits parallel to the Main Vein, just displaced ever so slightly, showing very good grades and potential for mining. I believe the next slide is this video which I'm dying to show you. Here we have the camp at Nalunaq. Quite a dramatic setting. Haul road running all the way up to the mine. As we crest the hill, the plant. Now, the plant. This is where the magic happens.
Ore fed through a crushing circuit. Through several sets of screens. Into a ball mill, where it's ground into a fine powder. Now this is where the true magic happens. Concentration into clean concentrate, which is then used to cast the gold bars, which I'm sure all of you have seen in various media. That is Amaroq. That is Nalunaq as it is at the minute. I have to show you this as well. This is Phase 2 construction. The first photograph is at the very beginning of this year. The last photograph was taken about a month ago. That's construction of the flotation cells, which, as you can see, that's a significant amount of work to achieve in such a small time. It makes me incredibly proud of the team. That's pretty well it from me, I believe.
Next up, I'd like to introduce Will Gray, who's going to be heading up our West Greenland hub.
Thank you, Phil. Can everyone hear me? Yes. Hi, I'm Will Gray. I'm the project manager for our new West Greenland Hub. This is also for the Black Angel Mine. A brief introduction, as Joan Plant mentioned, I joined the company 10 years ago, and my first job in Greenland was actually at the Black Angel Mine. Since then I've been working as a geologist across all of our projects leading exploration or working as a geologist on all of them. When I joined, Nalunaq was at basically the stage which Black Angel is at now, a very small team, past producing mine and one which we're looking to restart. What is Black Angel? Black Angel is Greenland's most profitable mine to date.
It is a past producing, high-grade underground zinc-lead-silver deposit which sits in this area we call our West Greenland hub, a collection of mineral exploration licenses covering all known zinc occurrences in West Greenland. It also sits in this district of numerous showings of other commodities as well, including gold, nickel, copper, of which exploration and mining activity is only going to increase over the next few years. You just saw that announcement from 80 Mile that they're planning to drill the Disko target. The community is very supportive of mining in this region and wishes to see the restart. A brief history of this deposit. Mineralization was actually discovered in the 1930s, although it really took until the 1960s for drilling to define the initial ore body.
Over a number of years, a number of drilling campaigns, the operator proved up an initial resource of 4.5 million tons at very high grades. We're talking 20% combined lead zinc. Over the next 17 years, starting in 1973, 11.2 million tons of ore was extracted, first by Cominco and later by Boliden, mainly using the room and pillar mining method. This left behind around 2 million tons in pillars, which is an opportunity for us. Fast-forward to the present day, we have a current mineral resource of 4.4 million tons on this asset. Also at high grades of 11.6% combined lead zinc, which is also at the top of the range of deposits of this style globally.
Last year, we assayed a historic concentrate sample and realized that this ore also contains commercially significant grades of germanium and gallium. In future, we think that this will also be a germanium and gallium mine, not just zinc and lead. Black Angel is a near-term and low capital restart opportunity. As Eldur mentioned, that is our focus. It also has very significant exploration upside. We're targeting an additional 5 million-10 million tons to bring it up to that 15 million tons where it was historically, leading to that long mine life that the previous operator enjoyed. These photos show the surface infrastructure at the site. The bottom photo shows the site as it was in the 1980s. Although it's quite a small site, it has the large building in the center is the processing plant.
They produced a concentrate which they shipped off-site to Western smelters. It's also got all the accommodation blocks, helipads, a deep water port, and all of this infrastructure sits right at the coast, so the access really couldn't be better. That top photo is the site as it is today or as it looks today. Most of the buildings have gone, although one remains, which is a camp which can house 30 people. That's what we're gonna use to support exploration and development of this as we bring it back into production. Also most of the port facilities remain and in pretty good condition. There is also a cable car on site. This was used historically to access the ore body and also to bring the ore down from the deposit. That's something we'll be inspecting again this summer.
This slide shows a map of the Black Angel project, what we describe as a resource with a lot of upside. On the left, faintly you can see the coastline and the location of the camp I just showed you. In the center there highlighted in red is the outline of the historic Black Angel Mine. This is where the 11.2 million tons was extracted from and where approximately 2 million tons of ore remains in pillars. The green areas highlighted there are our exploration targets where we look to increase the size of the mineral resource. For example, the glacier showing or the glacier deposit is a zone of massive sulfides exposed at surface, which was actually recently uncovered by a retreating glacier.
You've heard that story that the ice cap melts and uncovers new sources of ore. That is very true, especially in this area. That's a deposit which is open, a long strike, and at depth, and clear potential for us to increase the size through additional drilling. Perhaps the most exciting of these exploration targets nearby to Black Angel is the Deep Ice Zone Extension. This sits right next to the Deep Ice ore body. Historic drilling, those are the historic drill holes you see as these little gray dots, has identified some very high-grade intersections, world-class intersections. For example, 6.9 m at a combined 32.6% zinc and lead. This is not just, you know, tier one. This is kind of a class of its own in terms of grade.
We believe that through some additional drilling, infill drilling, we can tie some of these intersections together into a coherent resource and really add significant tonnage in this area. It's also an advantage that it is very close to the historic mined areas, so gaining access to these new ore bodies will be quite straightforward. We plan to develop this project in a phased approach. Phase 1 would be development and mining of the pillars, and then Phase 2 would be mining into these new areas. This photograph shows you one of the pillars left behind underground. All of these pillars you can actually walk up to and touch, basically. All of the infrastructure to access them is already in place, and you can see the quality of the ore body here. This pillar is perhaps 4 or 5 m high, massive sulfides.
The mineralogy is fairly straightforward. It's just sphalerite and galena. It leads to a very simple, straightforward, conventional processing circuit. A very high-grade concentrate, which is valued by Western smelters. I should say there is actually a feasibility study on extracting these pillars, which was published in 2008, and does demonstrate that they are financially viable to extract. That's something we'll be working towards updating this year, that feasibility study. Our major milestones for 2026, we haven't wasted time since acquiring the asset last year. We spent significant amounts of time on data collation, consolidation, updating the geological models, and really trying to understand the potential of where this resource and where this project could go. This year, the objectives are mainly to update those technical studies.
We believe that there is a huge wealth of data on this project. We can get that feasibility study update completed by this time next year, in the best case. We'll also be refurbishing the camp, which hasn't really been touched for the last 10 years. With a little bit of additional money, we can get that habitable. We'll also be advancing this project through those planning stages that we've just done at Nalunaq. Something we're very familiar with and bringing it rapidly through those permitting stages, so we can begin Phase 1 production. Our five-year strategy at Black Angel is really this phased approach of development. Phase 0 is the foundation. We're updating these technical studies, advancing the project through permitting, carrying out exploration to increase the size of the resource for Phase 2.
Phase 1 is mining these high-grade pillars. That gives us a low capital restart. A lot of the infrastructure and access infrastructure is already in place. The ore is treated using a process called dense media separation, which upgrades the grade of it. It's shipped off-site for off-site toll treatment. That provides cash flow and also all of the infrastructure, the camp, et cetera, that we can use to build out Phase 2. Phase 2 is really where the value lies in this project and where the real optionality is for Amaroq. We aim to scale this up to a long life operation, so 10, 15, 20 years plus, driven by exploration growth. As we are building Phase 1, we'll be exploring for Phase 2.
We'll build a full-size processing plant as they had historically, and size that so that we can actually bring additional feed in should we make additional regional discoveries. Everything I've just talked about is only the Black Angel project. We also have, I should have mentioned, other projects in the region, so other occurrences which are similarly exciting to Black Angel, which have not yet been drilled. The main one being our Kangerluarsuk project we acquired last year, which is about 20 km to the north. That's a very large Sedex play. This whole region really provides a lot of opportunities for phase two and beyond. I'd like to finish by comparing Black Angel to a recent success story in our industry, what we're calling here Greenland's Vareš style $1.2 billion opportunity.
Adriatic Metals is a company you've all heard of, I'm sure. A similar story to Black Angel, actually. This was a historic mining district, a brownfield site with access to some regional infrastructure and a workforce with a knowledge of mining. A visionary team defined additional resources through exploration and ultimately brought this into production in a phased approach, ultimately leading to the sale to Dundee for CAD 1.25 billion. We believe that we can do something very similar here. We can prove up a resource of a similar size and a similar grade, actually a higher grade on the zinc-lead front, than what Adriatic had at the time of their acquisition. Amaroq is looking to deliver a similar value to that.
We believe that we have the knowledge of this asset and the experience in the team to do that. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Will. I think if we're all okay with this, we'll take a 10-minute break. If we could come back at 3:40 U.K. time for that. Wet the whistle, take a break, and we'll come back for some more. Thanks very much.
[Break]
Hopefully this is on and everyone can hear me. Great. Thank you very much. Hopefully you're all fueled with your coffee, and we'll take it straight back into it. Some of you know who I am. My name's James Gilbertson. I'm the Vice President, Exploration with Amaroq for the last five years. Prior to that, I spent 17 years bungling around the world doing exploration and mine development on various commodities. I'm just gonna give us a overview on some of the organic growth opportunities within Amaroq. Now, Will's done a fantastic job of explaining Black Angel and Kangerluarsuk, and some of the opportunities there. I'm just gonna talk about our gold portfolio, and then also with our Gardaq JV, which is our critical or strategic metals portfolio.
Let's first of all concentrate on our gold portfolio. We've heard a lot about Nalunaq. I'll talk about Nanoq in a moment. That's either side of what is known as the Nanortalik Gold Belt. This is the same gold belt as we see in Sweden. It's called the Swedish Gold Line, that you've got Björkdal and the likes located there. It's the same gold belt swinging up into southern Greenland. We've got the bookends of Nalunaq and Nanoq, and in between we have this plethora of other targets that we have identified over the years.
Things from Vagar Ridge, where there's a historical drill hole of up to 2,000 grams per tonne, and the newly discovered Q- North Ridge, which we discovered last year with surface grades of up to 26 g per tonne, and we're hoping to be able to drill that this year if all goes well. This is what we are developing as a district-scale control across the Nanortalik Gold Belt. We have the intelligence, and we have the licenses that no one else has to realize this. This is really what we're concentrating on in this gold, this bigger gold play. It's important to notice that these, what we call the satellite deposits, it's because they're in close proximity to Nalunaq.
What we're looking for is high-grade material that can be easily shipped to Nalunaq to extend that processing plant's life. Leverage ourselves of what we've developed already. Nanoq is potentially world-class standalone project. Some of you will have read the press releases with Nanoq. There's a little video here that's going off that shows some of the results from last year. We had a really stellar exploration season there. Drilled about 5,000 m into the central zone, and we got on average about 3 m- 3.5 m wide of 10 g per tonne in gold. This really is quite substantial. Those grades go up to 180 g per tonne, by the way. They form what you can see here is these saddle reefs.
These are sort of folded arches stacked one on top of the other. It's very similar to a project called Bendigo in southern Australia. That project was historically mined and produced 22 million ounces. We really think that Nanortalik is the next big thing for us, and this is really where we're gonna focus our exploration efforts on the gold portfolio this year. We're gonna crack open the rigs again, start drilling that central zone, but equally look at these parallel zones that we've discovered, West1, West2, West3. We haven't even looked east yet. We're gonna sort of really hone in on Nanoq. That's really our sort of our poster child, shall we say, on the gold front.
In parallel to that, we have been developing a bit of a five-year strategy for Nanoq. Over the next two years, it's really about resource estimation and resource growth. After that, we start to have a look and diverge and think w hat is our strategy here? That saddle reef structure is close to surface, that lends itself to an open pit style of mining. We're flexible. We will look at underground opportunities as well, or possibly a combination of both. This year is about resource estimation. Let's put that on the table. Let's then grow that. Let's build that infrastructure. Let's leverage off everything that we've learned at Nalunaq. Let's get the camp in.
Let's get the infrastructure in, the roads, the harbors, everything that we need to be able to make this a full success, and we have the team and the expertise to be able to do that. If we take our whole gold portfolio, and we look for a global analogy, within our sector, we don't actually have to look very, very far. The eagerly awaited consolidation in Finland that Agnico Eagle put together in their acquisition across Rupert, Kinross' sections, B2, it's been a bit long in the waiting, but it's finally happened, and that really is very similar to what we're trying to do. This is a district-scale control that they have now on that central Lapland Gold Belt. We're looking to do the same, but on the Nanortalik Gold Belt.
The numbers of our acquisition just speak to themselves. The real premium is fantastic sort of numbers that are coming out of that, and that's really what we kind of pitch postcard of what we're trying to do across the Nanortalik Gold Belt. I can move then on to our strategic metals portfolio. I'm gonna talk about three projects here. We have a, again, a plethora of targets. I'm gonna talk about Stendalen, Minturn up in the north, that's our venture up into northern Greenland, and I'll start off with Ilua. Ilua is a new discovery from last year.
It sits within this group of rocks called Nunarsuit, which is the westernmost extension of what is known as the Gardar Igneous Province. Now, when you hear about rare earths in Greenland and how it can be a powerhouse in the rare earths market, it's because of these rocks. This is where it all at. This is a unique piece of geology anywhere in the world, and we have a piece of this. Alongside us are three big boys, as I call them. You have the Motzfeldt project, you have Kvanefjeld, and you have Tanbreez. These are very large, very lucrative, rare earth-rich projects. We made a discovery of the pegmatite zone in Nunarsuit, which we're now calling Ilua.
This is a 3 m-5 m wide pegmatite zone with grades up to 2%-2.5% total rare earths, roughly 27% heavy rare earths. That is really high grade for rare earth deposits. Importantly, we're right here at the coast, and not infrastructure yet. We have fantastic access and very good topography to work with here. Equally, we are low in radionuclides. What that means is we don't have much uranium. That means that we don't fall shy of the moratorium on uranium exploration in Greenland. Thirdly, mineralogy. This seems to be hosted in something called monazite, which is a very classic mineral that rare earths are held in. The processing pathway is well understood and well practiced globally.
That really sets Ilua apart from everything else on the Gardar Igneous Province. We'll be tackling this very, very soon. We have a team just sort of mobilizing as we speak to start our work here. Going to move now to the far north of Greenland. This is our venture into northern Greenland, where we made a discovery we've termed the Minturn discovery last year. This sits north of the ice cap, where we have now, from our work last year, discovered 9 km worth of surface-exposed iron ore at up to nearly 70% iron. That is pretty much pure magnetite, for those of you who don't know. It's really a phenomenally large system, which in geological terms, what that means is if you've got a big system, there's been a lot of fluids, there's a lot of metal in the system here.
We're really quite excited about Minturn and what it has for us. We don't know if that mineralization at surface extends at depth. That's why we are going there with a drill rig this summer. Those numbers probably don't mean much to you, but 36,000 nT, that is an incredibly strong magnetic anomaly. It's the strongest magnetic anomaly in Greenland. It's actually stronger than Kiruna Iron Ore Mine in Sweden. That sort of intensity suggests that this thing sits above a significant iron ore body. What's really important here is this is not just iron ore. The chemistry ore is very indicative of what's known as an IOCG system, or iron ore, copper, gold.
We have, lo and behold, have a parallel copper and gold-enriched zone to that iron ore that we've discovered. Therefore, we're now looking at an IOCG system, very similar to Kiruna in actual fact, over a huge area that we're gonna start testing this summer. Really quite excited about that. Lastly, Stendalen. We have drilled here before, and this year we're gonna be in preparation for a further drill program, this year or next year. What we're looking at here is a system that is geologically and temporally related to Voisey's Bay, and that world-class deposit in Newfoundland. The chemistry here and the grades that we've had is indicative that massive sulfides here would be in the region of 3%-5% copper nickel. That is world-class.
What we need to do is build up a program. We continue to review that geophysics that we've taken, find those sulfide traps, and target those with our next drill program. Let's look at the broader organic growth portfolio. We've got the gold, Nanoq and its satellites. We have Ilua, Minturn, and Stendalen. What we wanna have a look at is what is the growth potential that we have here? What are we targeting in each, and what are our analogies? Nanoq, I've already mentioned about Agnico's Finland Hub. That really is very, very similar to what we're trying to do here in [Nalunaq]. We have the golden system. We have the proven production for Nalunaq. We have the new discovery from Nanoq.
We have lots of targets, and we have the team that can actually pull this together. We're really quite excited about that. Ilua. Tanbreez, our local neighbor, is a fairly good analogy. They've got a fantastic value to themselves. They've got a, you know, they are a proven asset in terms of potential Western supply of rare earths. We think Ilua could really stand out from that. We have the mineralogy, we have the access, and we don't have the radionuclides. That's Ilua. Nunarsuit. Analogy here would be Kiruna Iron Ore or IOCG system in Sweden. That's a massive generational-sized mine. We are looking to see if we can discover the iron ore, but equally the copper and the gold in that system. We know that the system is very strong and it's very large.
Again, its access is gonna be an issue or a challenge rather, but this is something that Amaroq can come to and leverage ourselves off our experience within Greenland. Lastly, Stendalen. With Stendalen, again, an obvious analogy is the Voisey's Bay, that is a significant magmatic sulfide project producing mostly nickel in that sense. We're actually more copper-dominated at Stendalen. We have all the right geology at Stendalen. We have much of the data. We just need to continue drilling, and that's what we plan to do to actually realize that potential. What I'd like to take this as a small picture of what Greenland has to offer. I think we all know, we in Amaroq certainly know Greenland hosts a huge number of globally significant exploration targets or mineral targets.
We hold the keys in Amaroq to be able to realize that. We believe we've got the best assets in hand. We continue to work in discovering additional ones and bringing those into the portfolio to really build that organic growth opportunity within Amaroq. It's gonna be a fun season realizing all this. Thank you very much. Now, over to you.
Thanks very much. Thanks very much, James. That is riveting. Clearly a lot of growth ahead of us. I'm gonna briefly talk about, as we call them, the enablers. Clearly operating in Greenland is one of those, is one of those areas that is incredibly resource-rich, incredibly opportunity-rich. As a mining business, the mining industry is a very, services intense industry. One of the things that Greenland doesn't have is a big services industry. You've had to go upstream into that to develop your own ability to do that. We've sort of encapsulated these as we call them, our enablers, because we don't want to distract people from the main core of our business, which is mining. Clearly, we've had to go upstream to do that. I'm gonna briefly talk about those two things.
Specifically, we've set up these two businesses called Suliaq and Imek. Suliaq is a services company and Imek is our hydropower company. Energy and services are the two things that Greenland lacks that we're trying to provide. If you take a step back and you look at what's happened within Greenland, in the mining space within Greenland, the amount of money that's been invested and the activity that's been going over the last 10 years, you've had a sort of 28% compound annual growth rate in the, in the amount of exploration going on. I mean, this year alone, we're definitely going to be keeping up with that on our own drilling campaigns, not least the other X number of operators, which we know are also drilling in the drilling season this summer. That presents a huge opportunity.
As I said, business is operating there. Mining is a very services intense industry. It needs rigs, it needs equipment, it needs camps, it needs fuel storage, et cetera. We, as Eldur described, it was a long journey to get here. We've had to go upstream, invest in our own assets. What we did was we put that into our own, 100% owned business called Suliaq, with the aim of servicing ourselves, but setting it up so it can be independent and can service the rest of Greenland's mining industry. It's got its own management team, Ulrik there, who is, who's been with Amaroq for a long time. He's gonna be the sort of general manager at this business. It's got its own board.
We're looking to, as I think we've already announced, we're looking to separately finance this business. IFU, which is one of our large, our largest investors, the Sovereign Fund of Denmark, alongside the Sovereign Fund of Greenland, have given us very good indications that they're very excited to come in and help finance this business. At the same time, we're going out to get third-party investors to coincide alongside them and recapitalize Suliaq to enable it to go and buy more equipment, provide more services, et cetera. I mean, just outside of mining, there's a huge growth in other industries within Greenland, whether it's telecoms, defense, and tourism, which Suliaq could also help service, whether it's maritime equipment.
I mean, for example, when I've talked to the management team at Suliaq, they've already had a number of requests for help, whether it's rigs, whether it's drilling equipment or camp space. Already this summer, they will be looking to commercialize some of that. We're working on this at the moment. We hopefully will be closing out this fundraise in the next period of time. Bear with us, we are, you know, it's a real opportunity for us, and an opportunity for that business, and an opportunity for Greenland, actually. Talking about unlocking the legacy, this should provide a really essential business to unlock that. Alongside that, energy is also a huge element of what we do.
Almost all of our power comes from gen sets at the moment, which apart from being expensive at the moment with diesel, is also emissions intensive and less efficient than it could be. We set up a business called Imek, which is our hydro business, again, on a similar bound, looking to go upstream into energy provision, starting off on quite a small scale at the Nalunaq Hydro project. Clearly, you can see the numbers there. The savings alone justify the CapEx. An estimated CapEx at quite a conservative level is $ 7.2 million. Clearly providing big fuel savings, big OpEx savings. If you compound that over 20 years just on the fuel savings alone, you can see the impact.
On top of that, it has significant savings on emissions, which is increasingly important to us. This year we're going through permitting, we're going through engineering studies and procurement studies. We're looking to start civil work as soon as we can, potentially, if we can get all the permitting and licensing process going as we want, we could be then commissioning at the back end of 2027. Very exciting. Again, a separate management team led by Ásgeir there, really seasoned renewable energy developer, and we're really lucky to have him doing it for us. Outside of that, we're looking to the next project. We've just heard about Black Angel, the scale, the opportunity there.
The idea is that we would look to develop certainly Phase 2 of Black Angel and if we can into Phase 1 with hydro to begin with. We're starting the process now of the application and the licensing process and the permitting to see if we can do that. Interestingly, Black Angel presents a much larger opportunity from a hydropower perspective. 68 GWh per annum is quite a significant amount. That would provide a huge amount of the power for the Black Angel process, which is a much bigger processing unit than we've got at Nalunaq, for example. Really exciting times. Imek we'll be talking a little bit more about in the future, but I thought I'd give you that snapshot now to give you an idea what we're up to.
Thanks very much. I'm gonna hand over now to Anna to give you a little brief on the main market process.
Thank you. Good afternoon. I've been with the company for four years, but my career in mining is actually over 15 years, I think. I used to head corporate governance at world's top 10 gold mining companies, which was premium listed here in London. Let me now take a moment to take a step back and look at all of what we've just heard from a corporate markets perspective. You've now seen the full picture from Nalunaq right across our broader portfolio and about the business, how we are doing the business in Greenland. Listings, this is probably the one core thing about listings, they are fundamentally about governance. With Amaroq, governance has never been just ticking compliance boxes and just meeting all regulatory requirements. With Amaroq, it is more about doing things the right way from the start.
When I joined Amaroq years ago, this was exactly what inspired me, this leadership mindset, just doing things. Thank you. Doing things the right way from the start and with this long-term perspective. What does this actually mean in practice? When we started this, the focus was not only on projects and assets. We also focused on systems and structures that were the foundation for what we were doing, and that this foundation for the next stage of growth. We've always been good, but the U.K. main market, it demands a different level of discipline, and this was exactly the foundation that we wanted to build. Over the past several months, our teams have been working on governance, on controls, on reporting, on everything that supports this strategy that you've just heard.
We've been working on putting all these pieces together so that they could work, and this work is now largely complete. We are moving forward. We are preparing to comply with UK Corporate Governance Code right from the outset. At the AGM earlier this month, the shareholders approved the updated bylaws, all the key governance structures that will kick in right at admission. The board has been working on finalizing the board-level governance systems. This work was there in the background. In parallel, we've been progressing the board composition. The nomination committee is working to shape the board that would be aligned to all the main market standards. The focus is on independence, on skill sets, on diversity, and we are talking to really strong candidates now. So what else? We are developing the reporting system for 2026.
That means that our next year's disclosures will be fully aligned with main market standards. This transition is broader than governance alone. It is also about streamlining the framework and simplifying the overall structure. What we did, we aligned our U.K. and Icelandic markets. We completed delisting from TSXV earlier this year, and this made our governance framework simpler. Simpler, it means that we are better positioned to attract investments. We are now have the opportunity to align our investor base and equity story in the U.K. and in the Nordic market. We are ready. This is not only about the platform, main market, it is also about access. Admitting to the U.K. main market opens our doors for a broader set of investors.
It gives us more visibility, more flexibility in terms of funding, financing, it's just we are better positioned to work with investors who are seeking main market listing, who require index eligibility. This is a really big opportunity for us. This work that we've done in the background, it allows us not to be ready for the main market, not to be ready at admission. It allows us to continue growth and to go to a next stage of our development already as a main market company. From corporate governance perspective, the platform is ready, we set this strong foundation, just to sum it up, this is the next logical step in our evolution, it reflects a great deal of this background work all across the business for all systems, all departments.
It shows this commitment to very high standards. They are high, but we do not see them as barriers. We are seeing them as opportunity to continue growth, not lose focus, not to lose momentum, and to do everything the right way. Keep tuned. There is more to come. Thank you.
Thank you, Anna. I have 10 slides here. No. This is coming to an end. Just quickly to sum this up, we talked about today the unrisked potential, the CAD 20 billion of unrisked potential. You've seen the analog in the geological context. You've seen how we're gonna finance it, and you've seen or got an introduction to the team and how we're gonna execute it. Within this portfolio, this is extremely important. There is not much out there in terms of scale, in terms of world-class deposit. You've also seen that from the presentation earlier. We are very much growth-driven company, but with the right financial means to be able to execute on it.
The engine, Nalunaq, is currently close to 500,000 ounces in resource, we're gonna grow it both in terms of resources, but also in terms of growing production, increasing free cash flow. Alongside that, we will bring Black Angel into cash flow to do exactly the same. In itself, Nalunaq, is effectively or Black Angel are company makers in themself. The development assets in Black Angel and Nalunaq not only offers cash flow, but also, world-class deposit potential, which is something that matters. When you build up these assets, for us, it's helpful to have low CapEx, high-yielding assets because we can do what we need to do to build up a large-scale asset. Larger-scale asset generally become interesting to a larger company because they intend to want to run large operation, that's what we need to have.
The integrated Greenlandic platform allows us to do that, to unlock all of this. I'm gonna give you one example. When we bring a rig into Greenland, when we leased it's gonna cost us CAD 50,000 to bring it in. We need to put CAD 100,000 in deposit, then we rent it, and then we need to ship it back out. The actual cost of that rig is CAD 300,000. When you own a rig, you need to maintain it, so you need workshops, you need people. Do you understand me? As soon as we can leverage off what we're doing, we can lower our unit cost and drill these things quicker.
The quicker we drill it, the easier it is for the analyst sitting in the room to apply value to it because there's a resource with an NPV discount on or hopefully not too much discount, but at least a discount. We will look at strategically consolidating within the Amaroq Way. We will look for ways to bring more people to do what we need to do because that's 60%. That is skill set. That is one of the hardest thing about the business today. This has not been a sexy business to be in in the past 15, 20 years. This means that the skill set is on, we need to develop it, and the quicker we can build that up, the better for us. Same with cash flow. It's gonna be done on the strategy as we explained earlier.
Through experience, scale, which is gonna be important for the main market here, execution, delivery quarter after quarter, growth organically, and then strength through what many of you present here today, through our shareholders, investors, off-takers, lenders, and others, is gonna give us the platform to succeed. That's why we're all doing this. That's why we're all putting all of our time and effort 24 hours a day because there's a huge value here, and all of the puzzles are being put in place to make it successful. I'll leave you with that. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks very much, Eldur. That was very good. Clearly, there's a huge opportunity for us here. We're gonna take a Q&A session now. As I said before, we'll do questions from the floor here first, if you have any questions, and then we'll take them from the line, and I've got some questions here already lined up. I think there are some mics roving around. There's one here as well. If you have any questions, please put your hand up, and you can have a mic, and it's important you speak into the mic so they can hear you online. Don't be too shy.
Thank you. I'll start. Straight from Arctic Minerals, a simple question. I think you have well, first of all, thank you for the presentations. Very well done. The research budget of yours for 2026, I think it's around CAD 11 million, going up to, I think, CAD 30 million, preferably. Can you give some insight into exactly where that is? To me, it seems there's a lot of projects that you want to drill. Where is the bulk of that research going into? Preferably, when will we see the results? Some sort of timeline.
I will try to say the correct things, and when I'm mistaken, Ellert will take over. Currently we have it Is it? Can we not just use it on? Yeah, okay. Currently, we have it at CAD 11 million. The CapEx or the growth CapEx there is attributed for the drilling in Nalunaq, another 5 m there. We have separately allocated our capital to Kangerluarsuk. Kangerluarsuk is a joint venture, so we allocate a certain amount of capital and in-kind for managing that, and our partner brings that. That is three areas, sorry, two areas where we're drilling there.
Then when it comes to Black Angel, we're doing the study work, preparation, and bringing rigs in, and we're going to see if we can start also drilling there as well as Kanga this year as well. That is kind of up to the second part of the season, right? In terms of result, we're starting on Ilua to drill, then subsequently we'll bring results out there. If I remember correctly, Minturn is next, then Nanoq or alongside each other, then Black Angel will be kind of later in the season. We then have ongoing drilling in Nalunaq. We are drilling currently in Nalunaq constantly, mainly infill drilling, and we will be doing that from underground.
We really picked up the underground drilling in the kind of last December, January, February this year. That was the best pick. It took a little bit of time to get the team operating and so on, but that we are now reaching the metrics and the targets there. To answer your question from the field season, you will see probably September Ilua, and then you will start seeing it like similar to what you're seeing before the result as they come by. Answer your question?
Yeah.
Any others?
That's probably one.
When we are on webcast, there are much more impolite questions, it is easier.
Yeah. I know, yeah. Okay. Well, listen, what do you think is the question? We'll take a couple from the line. Here's a relatively simple one, actually. At the moment, we're selling physical gold only to Greenlanders when it comes to jewelry-grade gold. Will we be selling that anywhere outside of Greenland soon? Joan, I think that might be one for you.
Actually, we've been speaking. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
There we go. Yeah. Actually, I've been speaking to the government of Greenland about this. Part of the permit was that we agreed that we would sell pure Nalunaq gold just to Greenlandic people to begin with. Obviously, we had quite a lot of interest to begin with, I think, you know, the demand is now drying up a little bit. I've approached the government because I think the permit is written in such a way that we can expand it. Out of courtesy, I'm just making sure that they're okay with that. Unfortunately, the government are a little bit sort of restricted in their resources, so sometimes it takes a while for them to come back with an answer. I think ultimately, yeah, they're gonna agree to it.
We're going to commit that we'll keep a certain amount always in our inventory at our separate refinery in the U.K. purely for Greenlandic people. As long as we do that, I think we'll be able to then expand it out to other areas.
Thanks. Thanks, Joan. Next question is from the line. I know this is probably in reference to a statement on our first quarter announcement. Congratulations on having successfully navigated the challenging winter personnel rotations. Could you talk a bit more about the risk of this going forward and how you are managing that?
In terms of Yeah. Okay, I can go into just generally. Do we need that thing here or can you hear me? Oh. We'll try it. Okay. Generally, when we are, we set up this program during winters, which is an interesting one. I'm not gonna take you through all of the details because it starts going into how you de-ice an ice plane and, you know, we'll not go down there. Effectively, during the winter month, we set up a program where when we fly our shift in, we fly the first shift in and they then go to site, the airplane goes back to Iceland, and then when they're on site, the other shift goes out, we never lose a day.
The other shift then goes out, then another airplane comes and pick them up because we haven't been able to store an airplane in the local airport due to de-icing and various different things. Guys, this is the crux of Greenland, these kind of details. This is where you can go horribly wrong. If you lose few days, it costs you know, in revenue, millions of dollars a day, right? Can be once we're in full production. Knowing all of those details are important. This system now has worked really well during the winter, and we haven't lost a day due to that.
The risk going forward, what we are mainly focused on, as you saw in the financial statement, we bought a lot of supplies during the first three months, and we can see that we need to understand and have a strategy of supplies on site. Let me give you example. If an engine goes in one of our trucks, do you own another engine or all of the parts into the engine? Do you have a small workshop who can do flanges and other things to repair the engine? This is all capital development, and how do you then store it? How do you make sure none of this equipment goes off? All of that thing is now being set up, and therefore we set ourself up for that and build that up.
We try to hedge, maybe the hedge is not right, or fix our cost for the year to know our people cost and all of the supplies and all of that in the beginning of the year, so our guidance becomes easier to manage. That's one of the reason why we are so good on guidance this time around.
That's perfect.
Make sense?
Yeah. Perfect. Thanks very much. A question regards the main market process. Are we on track for the June or September window? I think I can probably take that.
Yeah, I mean, all the work is going on at the moment as Anna alluded to, we're pushing very hard. Clearly, there are two windows. There's the summer window, and then the which we can use the full year numbers remain relevant for, and then there's the autumn window. We're pushing very hard, and we'd probably like the summer window. It doesn't really make a difference to us, but we'd like to do it sooner rather than later 'cause all the work's going in at the moment. We hope to have it during the summer window. Question on dividends. To be in a position to pay dividends, would you need No.
No.
To be in a position to pay dividends, you need a second mine in steady state production. Does that mean we're looking at 2029 before we'll pay a dividend?
We don't have a current dividend strategy's answer, right? Our allocation of capital has mainly been focused on growth. If any of our projects don't pass the smell test, and we don't see any interesting growth opportunity, and our cost of capital for this project is very, very high, then we can look into a dividend strategy as we go on. Currently, we are in this growth state. I think our investorship need to know that that is our focus and our target to utilize the free cash flow to develop exploration and next mines and grow that up for the next five years' strategy for sure.
Yeah. Great. A slightly different tack now. On an interesting sort of pseudo-operational geological question. I've heard a comment that one of the main problems for Amaroq is the nuggety nature of the ore, which can damage plant machinery. Is this still a risk to output viability, or are you more relaxed about this now?
Uh, so, mm.
Phil, do you want?
Phil, you can.
You can.
Yeah. I'm not sure the nuggety nature of the ore itself would damage any machinery. We have seen it's relatively abrasive, which has made us run through a few more buckets than I'd like. We have now bought a whole host of different bucket teeth and ground engaging tools, which will solve that problem for us. I don't believe it's a problem in the mill either. It just means we get more gold faster.
Thanks. Thanks, Phil. This question for James on MRE. When are you likely to have the next MRE coming out? When should we expect it? Could you throw some light on that?
Yeah, sure. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah.
Yes. We are busy working with our external consultants on MRE 5. We're currently sitting on MRE 4, as we know. I can say that we're very close. We've done all the groundwork there. We have delayed it slightly because we wanted to incorporate a lot of the learnings that we've got from Nalunaq. Now we're coming towards a steady state on Phase 1, and to sort of incorporate a lot of the evolving mine reconciliation data, 'cause that's quite important to cementing our models when it comes to the resource. We just want to incorporate all of that. What I can say is it's imminent, it's well advanced and watch this space.
Thanks very much. This is quite an interesting question, actually. Maybe this is another one for you, James, here, which is there any, or really exactly, are there any synergies that could be gained from the other rare earth opportunities like Tanbreez and Motzfeldt for our Ilua prospect?
Yeah, that is a good question. As I alluded to, that Gardar Igneous P rovince really is a potential powerhouse. Some of the things we've got to play around with is mineralogy is different. You know, our mineralogy is quite benign. Some of the other mineralogies in Tanbreez, for example, is a little bit more challenging. There might be other opportunities within that. I think things such as logistics, if we bring in Suliaq into the scenario as well, having the ability to be able to service all of these operations, bring in power, et cetera. Those sorts of synergies can come through. Ultimately, with rare earths, it is down to the mineralogy and making sure that they work well together.
Thanks, James. While you're all thinking of questions, I'll take another one from here. Are you in any danger of doing too much too quick? I like your focus on Nalunaq here, but it's, but it's 2030 before you'll have cash flow. Surely best to narrow operations and do less and build to strengthen the long term. I think there's a question around given we look incredibly busy, are we running too quickly? Are we doing too much?
Yeah, I think, how we set the business up is that, I mean, 90% of our management focus is to get Nalunaq in cash flow, drill it out, define that, because that is closest where we can make a rock become cash, right? Therefore, in our development team, as you met with Will, that is a separate team. The development team of Nalunaq has now moved or will be moving to Black Angel because we are not developing Nalunaq any longer. We want to keep that team also fresh. They've just developed a mine, it's important to keep them there. James Gilbertson has been running a separate team on exploration, which is completely separate, those are people who are, most of them, contracted in over a short period of time.
I would say we are not in danger of that because we have set the organization up like this in the past five years to do exactly this.
Thanks very much. That's actually the last question from the line that we haven't already covered in the presentation. If there's any other questions from the floor, we'll take those now.
Yes, a couple of questions on Nalunaq. Towards the end, Eldur, you on the sort of summary slide, you're talking about sort of getting up to 70,000 ounces there and getting the throughput up to 450 tons. What needs to happen to get there, and how much would it cost? The second part to the question is the sort of the parallel vein, I think it's the 75 V ein. At what point I don't think that's included in the resource as things currently stand. At what point do you start drilling? Does it start becoming one of the resource and then ultimately part of the ore that's gonna go through the mill?
Okay. I'll start on the plant side of things. On the plant side of things, to run a 300 ton per day plant and a 450 ton per day plant is almost the same cost. There are a bit more consumables, but it's very similar, right? For us, we can then allow us to run, if that would be the case, lower grade to get more ounces throughput. Does that make sense to you, right? In terms of how we design the plant, it is fairly modular, this plant. We would be effectively adding to some of the flotation cell and another small mill, right? That mill would be a 150 ton per mill next to the mill that you saw earlier to be able to get there.
A cost estimation, I'm not gonna give you right here, it is not gonna be in any of the range of what we've already done. It is just an addition to what we're already doing, and it would not require any shutdown of the plant or anything like that. We will be updating you probably closer on the actual cost estimation we in next quarter or the quarter after that, right? On the resources, I think it's important also from an MRE point of view, just so we set the expectation right. What we are doing now when we're drilling underground, we are drilling ahead of us. This means that you saw in the results we were expecting grades between 14 g and 15 g per ton.
Now, we have before said we are gonna be in the range of 12 g- 16 g per tonne. The reason is the nugget effect in the ore body. It's a great thing to have a nugget effect because there are big nuggets of gold, and it's easier to process, and we get high yield, but it also can be hard to estimate the gold. What we are doing now on the underground rig is to drill every stope. This means we're now drilling down to 20 m spacing, so we can better plan and guide you, hopefully by the end of the year, on the exactly grade and everything else. That is a key thing. 75 Vein, the target there, once we are now underground drilling, where the rig is correctly set up, we will be drilling through Main Vein and into the 75 Vein as well.
That will, we'll just extend the holes as they come by. That will slowly be starting, I would say, mainly from end of June and onwards, right? That from June and onwards, if things are going well, we'll be drilling 27 and 28 out. From a resource perspective and how you grow the resource, we wanna have resources of 10 years ahead of us. If we're doing 50,000 ounces annually, you know, you wanna have 500,000 ounces. If we're going to 75,000 ounces, you wanna have that. We don't wanna spend too much capital also just drill out all of the 2 million ounces, we'll gradually do that as we go by.
With every drill hole and every geological data we get in, the more confident we get in the geological model, right? Make sense?
Hi, hi, Eldur. It's James here at Rothschild & Co. Big picture question for you. What does success look like for Amaroq?
CAD 20 billion. I mean
I only joined halfway through.
I think what we strive to create was a balanced portfolio of production, development, and exploration. Because obviously not everything will be a world-class deposit. It's more likely you will find that in Greenland because it's unmined, but that is what we're after. We don't wanna be dependent on commodity prices or the market or the super cycles or not. We need to create a sustainable business with stand any cyclical nature of the business, which we see very often. I mean, even this year, gold price went up and down and all the rest of it, right? Even in places like that. Where we wanna get to is that we truly believe that the value lies there.
We wouldn't be doing this unless we were targeting, you know, assets that are of that nature of $20 billion. We need to, similar to we need to start knowing how to walk before we run. Getting these operations going, managing them well, and then grow step by step in this nature is, I think, the best risk reward value for the shareholders.
I have just got one more question online. You've clearly got a big organic growth portfolio, but would you consider inorganic growth?
I think we would, yes, and in the right circumstances. It would need to be something that services Greenland. It would have to be something where we get more skill set to develop what we're doing in Greenland or cash flow, right? That is the only way we would look at it. To put it into perspective, if we can find a mine to acquire that would be lower in CapEx than CAD 200 million, you can't do that. It's very hard. As an example, with a high-yielding opportunity where you could have also access to people and skill set, that would be of interest. Currently, we are not looking at that, for that, those kind of a thing is something we would focus on evolving what we're doing in Greenland, effectively.
Yeah. Okay, good. I've got no more questions from the line. If there's any more questions from the floor, please let me know. Otherwise, we can take that with a drink afterwards. Okay.
Thank you.
Thanks very much.