Hello everyone, and welcome back to ABG Investor Days. For everyone's information, our upcoming presentation will be held in English. My name is Adrian Gilani, and I'm an equity analyst here at ABG, responsible for our coverage of Viscaria. And today with me, we have Ross Armstrong, Head of Geology at Viscaria, who will hold a brief presentation, and then hopefully we will have time for a couple of questions at the end as well. With that being said, Ross, I'll leave the word over to you.
Thank you very much, Adrian. And yeah, good morning everyone here, and also joining us on the live stream today. Very cool, very fun to be here to give an update on the Viscaria project. Things are moving really quickly here. So I'll give an update on the latest developments, a bit on the geological developments as well, and also to discuss a bit why Viscaria matters within the wider context. So unfortunately, CEO Jörgen Olsson couldn't be here today, so you're stuck with a geologist. Then very important in that case to have the disclaimer, because it's very easy for a geologist to get a bit excited when talking about the latest results. But so what is Viscaria? What is the Viscaria project, and who are we?
I suppose in the audience, we have some that have followed the project for some years, but at the same time, probably some that are hearing about us for the first time today. So I'll try and put that into a nutshell for you. So Viscaria, we're a new mining company, well on track to opening the Viscaria Copper Mine in Kiruna, Norrbotten, located just next to the state-owned LKAB Iron Ore Mine. We have a number of key strategic traits, I would say, that are well positioning us to open this mine in good speed. We have a sizable and high-grade mineral resource based on decades of drilling data. We have a strategic location within a tier 1 jurisdiction. And on top of that, we now have all of the permits in place. So it really is full speed ahead.
The company is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, the main listing, headquartered in Kiruna, though, which we're very proud of. And yes, the market cap is now SEK 3 billion. That was based on the stock price as of last week, but also taking into account the number of outstanding shares associated with our upcoming rights issue as well. In terms of the company structure, we have the parent company, Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria, and beneath that, some subsidiary companies, which are associated with the different exploration projects we have in Arvidsjaur and Tvistbo as well. But today we're going to keep full focus on Viscaria Kiruna AB, and that is the operator of our flagship project. Briefly on the management, we have an extremely experienced team, and this is a team of doers who really make amazing things happen on site every day.
On top of that, we have an extremely engaged board of directors. And just this year, both Lars-Eric Aaro and Mark Johnson were elected to the board, which we're extremely pleased with. They bring a wealth of mining expertise and experience from major assignments with companies like LKAB, Boliden, Freeport-McMoRan, respectively. And just for full background, I think I'll try and go through the history of the project briefly. And to do so, we have to start in 1972. So the whole project, everything starts with this small pink flower, Viscaria Alpina. And it was an LKAB geologist, Paul Forsell, who had the understanding that he saw this little pink flower and he knew that this meant something. Viscaria Alpina, it has a special tolerance for copper-enriched soils. So his theory was really put to the test.
With the second drill hole that was drilled, they drilled into 9 m of high-grade mineralization. You can say the rest is history. It took 10 years to bring the discovery into production, first operated by LKAB and later by the Finnish company Outokumpu. 15 years of production and 12.5 million tons of ore were mined with an average grade of 2.3%. Ultimately, in 1997, the mine closed, and this was mainly due to depleting ore grades within the mine, coupled with a declining copper price at the time in the late 1990s. Of course, things quickly changed, and in the 2000s, there was a real boom in the copper price, and this is mainly driven by the rapid industrialization and development of China.
Then, of course, in more recent years as well, copper, as we know, plays a central role in the energy transition, and this has basically led to a continuation of that upward trajectory in the copper price. So, of course, during this time, during this period, there was a lot of interest in reigniting the Viscaria project. It changed hands through different players at various points. It was in 2019 that Copperstone Resources, a Swedish company, they acquired the project from Australian explorers Avalon Minerals. Copperstone, of course, later were renamed to Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria. That brings us here to today. To date, SEK 2 billion have been invested, and now we sit at a copper price of above $5 per pound or above $11,000 per ton.
So of course, now we look very well positioned to bring a high-quality, responsibly produced and European-sourced copper concentrate to the market. So yes, that's a brief run-through of the history that brings us to today. And I think what better way to show you how the project is looking than to watch a short video of the latest project developments. Hopefully this works.
The northern Sweden mining district, a sleeping giant is awakening. After 25 years of silence, one of Europe's most promising copper deposits is being brought back to life. At Viscaria, we are reopening the copper mine just next to central Kiruna, a region built on deep mining expertise. Our site neighbors are LKAB's century-old iron ore operation and the electrified iron ore line, Malmbanan, connecting us to both the ice-free port of Narvik and the Baltic Sea. On April the 16th, the environmental permit for the Viscaria project gained legal force, marking a decisive step forward. The old Viscaria mine has 65 km of underground tunnels. Rehabilitating the existing mine is 5x faster and costs only a quarter compared to developing new tunnels, a major advantage as it accelerates access to the deeper mineralized zones.
Since 2019, close to 250,000 m of geological drilling have been carried out to map the deposit. During this time, the mineral resource has been gradually upgraded from 52 million to 72 million, then to 93 million, and now to nearly 108 million tons of mineral resources with an average copper grade of 0.9%. That's about 60% higher than the global average. As a result, the projected mine life has increased from 10 to 16 and now to 17 years. As the deposit remains open at depth, the life of mine is expected to extend further as production progresses and more resources are confirmed. A modern processing plant, a new tailings dam, and the industry's most advanced water treatment facilities will ensure strong environmental performance. Powered by fossil-free hydropower and connected by electric rail, Viscaria aims to rank among the world's most sustainable copper producers.
Alongside our industrial development project, we have taken a proactive role in uniting Kiruna's business community to help develop the city itself. We have initiated a new cultural festival that embraces both artistic expression and the rich outdoor culture typical of this Arctic city. We also support the housing sector by promoting innovative housing concepts and creating collaborations for conferences aimed at developing the housing market in Kiruna. Join us on our journey toward responsible copper production. Viscaria is part of a sustainable local community where mining, people, and nature coexist. Here, we produce the first link in the copper value chain, laying the foundation for a resilient and united Europe. In the heart of the northern Sweden mining district.
Let's not watch it again. I think once is enough, but I think that puts, I mean, to be able to see what's happening, it just shows you how real this is, and I could only describe that in so many words, but I think the video shows it nicely, and so yeah, as we saw in the video, the project is advancing at a really quick speed, and I think the key reason for that is our ideal location and everything that comes from that, so of course, we're working with a brownfield site. This used to be a mine, so there's over 60 km of existing underground infrastructure which we can reutilize. 30 km of those 60 km are planned within our mining schedule to be reutilized, so of course, this basically just gives you a head start. You can get deeper quicker.
Of course, you're bringing cash costs down right from the start. On top of this, being located in Kiruna, you have access to a local skilled workforce, as well as the suppliers and contractors as well. This is a natural benefit of being located in a major mining town. You have the local know-how and expertise basically at your fingertips. On top of this, we also have access to Malmbanan, the ore railway line, which comes just next to our project site. This is a huge sort of advantage to us. Again, this provides great optionality as from this rail link that we will connect next year. We have the opportunity to take our copper concentrate both northward to the ice-free port of Narvik, as well as towards the southeast, towards the Baltic Sea as well. Then finally, we also have access to clean power, hydropower.
So of course, this will enable the construction and the operational phases to be powered in the most sustainable sort of environmentally friendly manner. So I mean, located in Kiruna, an old mine site within Malmfälten, right next door to LKAB, I think you could argue that there's no better place to try and open a mine. Investment into the geology as a foundation for Viscaria's project development. I really like the title of this slide because it just gets the point across really well. All this development and all these investments that we've looked at, you can only justify them by really knowing what's in the ground. And that all comes from the geological investigations. So you see here on this timeline on the top row, just how much drilling we've been doing. You saw in the video, over 250,000 m since the project was acquired in 2019.
This has really expanded our knowledge in terms of the mineralization, the geotechnical behavior, the rock mechanics, to basically de-risk all of the mine planning. So we have less surprises when we actually get going with the mine. So this is really all these other milestones in terms of the permitting infrastructure, the construction that's now well underway. We've progressively justified these major strategic investment decisions based on an expanded geological knowledge. But just how much copper do we have in the ground? This on the screen here is our mineral resource statement, which tells us exactly that. There is, of course, a lot of numbers on the screen though, so I would direct your attention to the main figures which are in the top there. 108 million tons and an average copper grade of 0.9%. That's the total mineral resource as it stands today.
That means that we've defined around 970,000 tons of copper in the ground. On the right-hand side of the slide as well, we see a cross-section of the deposit, which we also saw in the video, just showing the geometry and how this is composed. We have four main mineralized zones, the A zone, which was mined historically, the ABBA- zone, our latest discovery, the B zone, and the D zone as well. It's worth saying Viscaria is not just about copper. We will also produce an iron concentrate as well when we're mining in the D zone, because in the D zone, the copper is hosted by massive magnetite mineralization. We can say that Viscaria is truly a multi-commodity project.
The vast sum of the drilling that we've been doing has been focused on infill, and this is basically drilling done to increase your confidence and to build your mine plan. But just in the last year, we've shifted our focus strategically towards exploration to show the upside of the project and show the sort of wider potential, how big can this deposit be. And it's been hugely successful. So within just one year of exploration drilling, we managed to add and define a total of 28 million tons of additional mineral resources, which are highlighted in these darker orange colors here. That's over 250,000 tons of copper added to the resource base with less than 20,000 m of drilling. So it's really a huge sort of bang for your buck exploration.
If you ask any of the geologists here, we would say this is just the start. If we look through time as well, we can see that there's been a steady growth in the mineral resources. So when Copperstone, now Viscaria, when we acquired the project in 2019, the total mineral resources stood at 52 million tons. In the six years that followed, we've managed to more than double this. If we look further ahead, based on our current geological understanding and the supporting geophysical data sets, we've set a new midterm target as well of 140 million-160 million tons, which we're aiming to work towards over the next three to five years. Okay, so we've heard a little bit about the project, the history, where we stand today, geological potential. Why does all of this matter? It's simple really.
We're facing a major global copper supply deficit. It's projected that over the period until 2040, copper demand is going to outpace copper supply through primary and secondary production by 2% every year. And that will mean that by 2040, we'll have an 8 million ton global supply deficit. And if we were to look at Europe in particular, we're no exception to this. Europe is expected to rely even more heavily on imports. And of course, then within the context of a global supply deficit, that means you're going to face even fiercer competition to get these imports and to meet your demand within European borders. But why can't mining, why can't primary production keep up the pace, keep up with the demand? If we look at the historical trends in the blue curve, we see the average head grade.
That's basically the concentration of copper that's being extracted from mines. You see that this over the last 70 years has basically fallen off a cliff, steadily declined. That basically reflects that no major high-grade deposits are being discovered. The existing mines are being pushed to their limits because no major high-grade new discoveries can replace them. That means in these existing productions, that means you have higher cash costs, you're investing more for every unit of metal recovered. The same thing for the environmental impact as well. These graphs show a similar thing. A big part of this is that the easy copper has been mined out. In the blue bar charts, we see the investment in copper exploration globally, which since 2004 has been quite steady, around $10 billion over these four-year periods.
But you see that for this investment, the amount of copper that's being discovered in these orange bar charts is plummeting. The same amount of money is being spent, but no new copper is being discovered. And again, that's because the easy copper has been mined out. The big deposits that sit shallow close to the surface, they've long since been discovered and exploited. Now the exploration costs are going through the roof, the complexity is increasing, and that's because we're having to search deeper and in more inaccessible regions. Having said all this, there is still hope, of course. Europe still has great potential for more primary production of copper. And here on this slide, we have a compilation of some of the ongoing projects, albeit at different developmental stages.
Among our peers, Viscaria stands or is well placed in terms of a really robust size in the mineral resource that comes with a relatively high grade of copper as well. But the main standout point for Viscaria is our time to market, where we're expecting to produce our first copper concentrate at the end of 2027. And if you see some of the other timelines for the different projects, then these are lagging behind, unfortunately. And I mean unfortunately, I think in the big picture, this isn't a competition. Europe needs more copper. Europe needs Viscaria. But the reality is Europe actually needs 10 Viscaria. So I come to my final slide again. I'll finish by showing our timeline for reopening the mine. We have the permits, construction is well underway, and we're set to produce our first copper concentrate at the end of 2027.
Our goal is not just to reopen the mine, but to set a new example for responsible mining. We want to show that, yes, it is possible to open new, modern, and sustainable mines on European soil and just to do things in the right manner. That is our objective. So thank you very much for your time and attention, and hopefully we can have a few questions as well.
Absolutely. Thank you for your presentation. I'll jump right in with a couple of questions, and I'll focus on the geological side.
I appreciate that. Yes.
It's one, first of all, when you say an ore body is open towards depth, how certain can you sort of be of the ore body's potential? Right now you're at 700 m or so . If I remember correctly, I think LKAB right next to you there, they have a plan of mining to 2,000 m.
Yes, exactly.
I mean, is that, is it the same ore body? Do you think it's going to go down to 2000 m, or is that too difficult to say?
Big question. First of all, yes, we try as much as possible not to make any guesses because drilling these deep holes, it's expensive. You want to have as much supporting data with you before you make that investment. When we're doing the exploration, we're carrying out geophysical surveys, sometimes from the surface, but often sending receivers down the borehole as well. That can tell you whether the mineralization you intersect, whether that conductive material extends further away from the drill hole, meaning that when you then step out away from that to try and expand your knowledge on the deposit, you have some kind of indication that, yes, we should hit the same mineralization in this same trend.
Now, to answer your question on how deep can this be, the evidence we see is that this is a sort of shared geological setting and part of a big mineral system that's somehow at least spatially connected and potentially temporally connected to the big iron ore deposit just a few kilometers away from us. And as you say, they're drilling to great depths around two kilometers. We're not quite there yet, but we're hoping to test that eventually. Probably drilling from underground, it will be a bit more efficient. But next summer, we're also planning to do a seismic investigation as well, which in terms of the geophysical methods, this is one of the best ones you can do for high-resolution imaging at depth.
Understood. And you mentioned iron as a byproduct. Again, that makes sense given the proximity to LKAB. But looking at northern Sweden, the only large active copper mine we have has quite a lot of gold and silver as well as byproduct. Is this something you're sort of hitting as well in your deposit that's not included in the resource statement?
Yeah, with these types of deposits like IOCG types, it's quite normal to have some enrichment in your precious metals as well, silver and gold. I can say that on silver, definitely it looks like we could be above the payable limit in our concentrate for the smelters. Gold, gold's a bit more of a mystery. IOCG deposits, iron oxide, copper, gold, that's the name. These type of deposits, there are a wide array. Gold is, although it's in the name, most of these IOCG deposits don't actually have economic gold in them. For us, we can look at the historic production in Viscaria previously. The copper, sorry, gold was not extremely enriched in the concentrate. Pahtavaara, though, the nearby copper deposit as well, had a bit of enriched gold. That might be a sort of later expression of an orogenic system as well.
It's something we're continuing to assess, but I would say in terms of the precious metals, it looks like there's more potential for payability on the silver front.
Okay. And then I guess a similar question, I think about 1 km or 2 km away from you, LKAB has made the biggest European discovery of rare earth minerals. Again, is that something you are also seeing in your deposit? And would that be perhaps economically viable to mine as well?
So like I said, I think that we have the hypothesis, let me say the working hypothesis is that we could be part of the same shared mineral system. What that means is that we think the rare earths are sort of carried in volatile phases, a bit technical language. But what this means is that they seem to work their way a bit further up the system. In the current orientation, that means towards LKAB side of things. So we don't see the same enrichment to economic levels, but we do have some rare earths, particularly in the A zone, in our carbonate ore. But I would say that it doesn't look like there's economic potential for that. But it's a good sort of indication, again, with our working hypothesis of how the deposits formed and potentially have some shared history.
Okay. I think we have time for one final question. Can you put the ore body size in relation to what's actually economically viable to mine? Because the headline number, almost 1,000 tons of copper, it's difficult to sort of put your head around that. How much do you think could be converted to an economically minable resource as well?
Yeah, that's a good question and good to clarify. So of the 108 million tons total mineral resources, at the moment, 42 million tons are classified as mineral reserves. So that's at the moment, based on our current understanding and drill hole spacing, what we expect to mine, and that's what the feasibility study has been based on. Of course, with more time, with more drilling, we expect to be able to convert the remaining or a good portion of the remaining 60 million tons. I think though the important thing to focus on as we're going deeper, we really want to focus on high grades as well. So of the remaining inferred resources that we could convert, we really want to focus on the high grade part. So the D zone deep discoveries, the B zone deep discoveries.
Of course, based on what we've learned during the past exploration campaign, we really think that there's more discoveries to be made as well. At the moment, our life of mine is 17 years. I really believe we can double that, but that's the geologist's opinion.
Perfect. With that being said, I'm looking forward to the next resource update. And I'd like to thank you for coming here and giving your presentation. And thank you to everyone listening in.
Thank you, Adrian.