Good morning. My name is Sylvie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Capstone Copper 2022 Results Conference Call. Note that all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw from the queue, please press star then two. Thank you. Mr. Jerrold Annett, you may now begin the conference, sir.
Thank you. Good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to Capstone Copper's Initial Results Conference Call. Please note the news release and regulatory filings announcing Capstone Copper's 2022 first quarter financial and operational results are available on our website and on SEDAR. If you're logged into the webcast, we will advance the slides of today's presentation, which is also available in the investors section of our website. I'm joined today by our CEO, John MacKenzie, our President and COO, Cashel Meagher, our Chief Financial Officer, Raman Randhawa, and our Senior Vice President, Risk, ESG and General Counsel, Wendy King. Following our brief remarks, there will be an opportunity for questions. Please note that comments made on the call today will contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws.
This information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on the risks and uncertainties pertaining to our business, please see Capstone's most recent filings, which are available on our website and on SEDAR. Finally, I'll just note that all amounts we will discuss today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise specified. Now I'll turn the call over to John MacKenzie.
Thank you, Jerrold, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report our inaugural first quarter of Capstone Copper, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our entire organization and our stakeholders as we progress our integration efforts through what has been an incredibly busy period since announcing the transaction in November of last year. On slide five. Before we kick off the call with respect to our Q1 operating and financial results, I wanted to take a step back and briefly revisit the vision of Capstone Copper as we continue to build a leading copper producer in the Americas.
Our portfolio of four operating mines, the brownfields Mantoverde expansion, and our fully permitted Santo Domingo project, create the foundation of a truly peer-leading growth profile in the coming years, with the ambitions of building a world-class district in Chile while simultaneously improving the asset quality of our portfolio with higher grade, lower cost sulfides coming online. Moving on to slide six. In Q1, we produced 22,500 tons of copper at a C1 cash cost of $2.31 per pound. Our quarterly results include a nine-day stub period for our Chilean operations, Mantos Blancos and Mantoverde, as a result of the Mantos Copper transaction closing towards the end of the quarter on March 23rd. Inflation has been a topical theme this quarter, not only amongst our peers, but for the world more generally.
Our operating costs were impacted by inflationary pressures felt over the last six months and further exacerbated more recently as the war in Ukraine and the associated sanctions on Russia have led to higher energy and input costs, which we'll speak to further on the following slide. On slide seven, we've shown the year-on-year change in our C1 cash costs to illustrate where we are seeing the largest impacts on our business from an operating cost standpoint. Prior to the impact of our Mantos Blancos and Mantoverde mines, our C1 cash costs were $2.17 per pound in the quarter, impacted by inflationary pressures primarily felt at Pinto Valley with respect to power, diesel, grinding media, and other input costs, as well as higher TCRCs, where global benchmark terms for copper have increased by around 8.5% year-on-year.
On the top right-hand side of the page, we show the impact of our Chilean operations for the 9-day stub period in the quarter, where costs were heavily impacted by record high sulfuric acid prices. I'll cover this in more detail when discussing our guidance for the remaining nine months of 2022. With the completion of the ramp up of the Mantos Blancos sulfide plant debottlenecking in Q3 of this year and the commencement of production from MVDP late next year, we expect our costs to decrease substantially. As I mentioned earlier, our vision is to build a world-class district that encompasses Mantoverde and Santo Domingo. Now I'll pass over to Raman for our financial results.
Thank you, John. We are now on slide eight. Despite the inflationary pressures John referenced, we had a solid quarter underpinned by higher sales and gross margins, driven by a realized copper price of $4.78 per pound, resulting in Adjusted EBITDA of $123 million in the quarter versus street consensus of approximately $95 million. Operating cash flow before working capital in the quarter was impacted by some one-time items, including transaction costs related to closing the Mantos transaction of $19.9 million, as well as the annual Mexican tax payment was higher by $23 million, which related to actual income from 2021.
Turning to slide nine, with the Mantos transaction closing in the quarter, we highlight our strengthened consolidated balance sheet with available liquidity of $638 million, which included our cash and short-term investments of over $400 million, with an undrawn revolving credit facility of $225 million. Subsequent to the quarter, we had been working on this before the quarter, we further enhanced our financial flexibility. We actually increased our available liquidity by amending our revolving credit facility from $225 million- $500 million plus a $100 million accordion at very attractive terms. This financing was about right-sizing our borrowing capacity for a company of our size, i.e., Capstone Copper, and the amended RCF is now expected to be in place before July this year.
With the enhanced RCF, our total available liquidity has increased from the $638 million I noted as at March 31st to now $913 million or over $1 billion with the accordion. Capstone Copper with four operating mines, all generating meaningful operating cash flow, underpins our ability to finance our growth plans. Our financial strength, coupled with our EBITDA generation shown on the left, the right-hand side here, even at meaningful lower copper prices, which is shown on the right-hand side of the page, illustrates our ability to fund our next phase of growth. As John mentioned, build a world-class district between Mantoverde and Santo Domingo. From a capital allocation perspective, we have actually phased in a disciplined approach with respect to our major capital projects in construction.
The major project that we do have in construction is Mantoverde, the sulfides, of which 40% is already spent on A25. + 80% of the Mantoverde capital costs are fixed relating to the lump sum turnkey of those EPCs and the fact that we order mining equipment from Komatsu pre-inflationary environment. With that, now I'll hand it over to Cashel.
Thanks, Raman. We're on slide ten. At Pinto Valley, we produced 14,400 tonnes of copper at C1 cash costs of $2.60 per payable pound. Mill throughput was strong at an average of 58,400 tonnes per day, while grades and recoveries of point 32% and 82% are expected to improve as we progress through the year. Copper production is weighted towards the second half of the year as we have taken some planned annual maintenance downtime in Q2. The waterfall chart on the slide shows the areas where we saw $0.37 per pound higher operating costs in Q1 compared to our January guidance. About $0.12 Per pound or a third of the higher cost is due to inflationary input costs, as John mentioned earlier, like fuel, explosives, grinding media, reagents, and some contractors.
The balance is mostly due to Q1 being a lower production quarter, plus the impact of capitalized stripping. We'll comment more on Pinto Valley costs a bit later in this presentation when we cover our nine-month guidance. Photo on the top right of the slide is a recent drone shot of our demo dump leach testing pad for our PV4 study. This is in addition to column leach testing we are performing using the Jetti catalytic leach technology. The opportunity here is that excess SXEW capacity at Pinto Valley is available to process increased dump leaching activity. Work continues on our pyrite agglomeration project. We'll conduct column tests to determine the amount of acid credits that could be potentially generated by diverting a tailing stream containing up to 50% pyrite and mixing it with our dump leach feed.
The results of this will be included in the PV4 PFS. This study is expected to be released in H1 of 2023. Recall, we are aiming to extend the Pinto Valley mine life by 10-15 years into the 2050s. Before I leave this slide, and not mentioned, is the work that we have done so far this year at Copper Cities, just 10 km from Pinto Valley. We believe Copper Cities is a geological mirror image of Pinto Valley. Recall, we announced in January that we have entered into an 18-month access agreement with BHP to conduct drill and metallurgical test work. To date, we have completed the required drilling and have sufficient samples to commence metallurgical test work in H2 2022. I believe that the $7 million program is going quite well. Moving to slide 11.
Cozamin had a good first quarter with production of 5,900 tonnes of copper at C1 cash cost of $1.12 per payable pound. On the cost side, Cozamin came in on the lower end of the guidance we provided in January. Throughput of just over 3,700 tonnes per day was slightly impacted by planned downtime to install a mill end to increase grinding capacity to over 4,500 tonnes per day. This compares to our current mine plan of 3,780 tonnes per day, so the additional mill capacity will provide future mine expansion optionality and overall operational flexibility.
The top right of the slide shows a recent photo of the dry stack tailings and paste backfill facility, which continues on track for completion at the end of this year, with commissioning in H1 2023. The total project investment is estimated at $45 million, of which $23.2 million have been invested to date. Cozamin's exploration teams were very active during Q1, testing the Mala Noche footwall zone and the Mala Noche main vein west target. Drill testing has commenced from the underground west cross-cut area. This is significant because our drilling accuracy and efficiency has improved as a result, we are targeting a zone that appears to extend the Mala Noche vein. We expect to provide results of our Cozamin drilling within a broader corporate exploration update before PDAC next month. Now on slide 12.
Commissioning of the Mantos Blancos debottlenecking project was completed in Q1, and subsequent to quarter end in April, we reached a throughput of 18,000 tons per day. We're well on our way to achieving design throughput of 20,000 tons per day. Typical to all ramp-ups, you need to see steady-state throughput first before process optimization can take place, where we expect to make gains in recoveries. They are currently in the low 70s%, and we expect to see the target at 80% level that was in the technical report in Q3. Important to note that Mantos Blancos is processing feed grades in the 0.8%-0.9% range. When we achieve design production, this will drive down C1 cash costs at the mine.
The higher cost oxides are now considered secondary production, which we can dial up or down depending on input cost factors, namely sulfuric acid prices. We'll talk about this more in detail in a few minutes from now. Phase two PFS work to expand Mantos Blancos to over 27,000 tons per day throughput will be completed in Q2, and this will be incorporated into a feasibility study we will release in Q4 of 2022. Recall the expansion aims to tie in unused old mill capacity with the new mill operation currently in ramp-up. We expect this to result in an attractive IRR and overall low capital intensity. Moving to slide 13. Mantoverde will become our crown jewel world-class asset that is expected to double our company EBITDA during its first year in production in 2024.
As you can see by the photo below, major construction is well underway. Bulk earthworks are complete for primary crushing and grinding area platforms, and major TSF construction activities have commenced. We have received 13 new Komatsu 830 haulage trucks, and they are currently in operation. Finally, the construction camp is complete and operational. Over 40% of the projected CapEx has been spent at the end of Q1. In terms of inflationary pressures, we are seeing a small increase in CapEx owing to $25 million in higher pre-stripping costs related to higher diesel prices, and we added in an extra $15 million contingency. The projected CapEx is now $825 million or $38 million higher.
Recall we have a lump sum turnkey contract with Ausenco, of which $525 million or 67% of the original capital costs have been fixed, + $140 million in mining equipment is fixed, which equates to a total of $665 million on the $825 million or 80% of the project fixed. Now onto slide 14. One of our top deliverables for this year is for a Mantoverde Santo Domingo district integration plan to be announced just ahead of an analyst and investor tour scheduled for the week of November 14. The plan will outline how we believe the large copper, cobalt, gold, and iron resources at Mantoverde and Santo Domingo should be developed so as to maximize the value of the district to the benefit of our shareholders and stakeholders.
We expect to communicate an optimized flow sheet as part of this plan, as well as detailing the synergies that will be maximized by integrating these properties. We are targeting 200,000 tonnes per year of copper production with first quartile operating costs driven by efficient operations, high copper grades, and strong iron and gold byproduct credits. On top of that, we have an enormous potential to be one of the largest battery-grade cobalt producers in the world at lowest cost with strategic byproduct sulfuric acid used to treat district copper oxides and fill excess SXEW capacity. We would produce 1.4 million tonnes of sulfuric acid per year, and currently, we consume 900,000 tonnes between Mantoverde and Mantos Blancos, which would be significant cost savings for additional oxide production.
The plan will map out how Mantoverde Santo Domingo will link together with flow sheets, which we will then work on to deliver feasibility studies as follows. In H1 of 2023, an updated Santo Domingo feasibility study that captures district infrastructure synergies. In H2 of 2023, a Mantoverde phase two expansion feasibility study that captures district synergies. Also in H2 of 2023, a Mantoverde Santo Domingo cobalt feasibility study, which captures production from both Santo Domingo and Mantoverde with byproduct sulfuric acid production. In H2 of 2023, a further updated Santo Domingo feasibility to capture the copper oxides opportunity where excess SXEW capacity at Mantoverde can be utilized. This approach will enable us to provide informed timelines for each project that can be phased appropriately to reduce our execution risk.
Timelines for studies outlined above will ultimately influence decisions around green-lighting growth beyond our near-term MVDP project under construction. We recognize we're in a fortunate position given our low altitude location near major mining centers, the scale of resources, the existing production base, and with key permits in hand. This is rare. Clearly, this growth pathway will keep us incredibly busy over the next 18 months, so I'm pleased that Capstone Copper continues to attract top industry leading professionals to join our team. In April, Peter Amelunxen joined us as VP, Technical Services, and he will oversee plant optimizations across the portfolio, quarterback our technical reports or studies, including the Mantoverde Santo Domingo integration plan. He's a professional engineer with 25 years of operational and senior management experience at numerous copper mines across the globe.
I have had the honor in working closely with him for many years and look forward to this next chapter as our team executes on our exciting growth strategy. Now on slide 15, one of the largest synergies we have in creating the Mantoverde Santo Domingo district is in cobalt. The iron oxide copper gold deposits in the Atacama region typically have high concentrations of cobalt associated with pyrite, and we have the opportunity to be one of the world's largest and lowest cost vertically integrated battery-grade cobalt businesses. As mentioned, a strategic byproduct will be sulfuric acid, and we anticipate more than we currently require, allowing us to pursue copper oxide growth opportunities around our operations where we have excess SXEW capacity. We are currently evaluating two different processes, roasting and acid pressure oxidation or POX.
POX has potential to be a lower capital alternative, which is why we are pursuing this process in parallel with roasting. A flow sheet will be selected and a cobalt resource update will be completed for Mantoverde Santo Domingo in H2 of 2022. In H2 of 2023, we will have the cobalt plant engineering and reserve estimate, followed by cobalt Mantoverde Santo Domingo feasibility study completed. Now over to Wendy King for the sustainability review.
Thank you, Cashel. We're now on slide 16. We are pleased to announce our upcoming sustainability report that will be published in June. This is our sixth sustainability report prepared in accordance with the GRI standards and the SASB Mining and Metals Standard. We are also beginning to align our disclosures with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. Tailings management was a key focus in 2021. Pinto Valley established and convened its independent tailings review board, a requirement of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management. Construction is underway for the new paste backfill and dry stack tailings storage facility at Cozamin, which will result in a smaller land footprint and lower water demands. Our global workforce grew by 30% in 2021, mainly driven by growth projects. Women's representation in our employee base held steady at 11%.
We created a diversity and inclusion committee, which will work across sites to develop an action plan in 2022. Our board diversity target is 30% women by 2023. We also made efficiency gains relative to production in water use, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, water intensity or the amount of water used per ton decreased by 11% over 2020, despite a global production increase. Trends in emissions closely followed energy use, which increased from added fuel demand for capital construction projects. However, the increase is still well below our production increase. We are committed to taking action on climate change by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, we will establish a company-wide target and assess decarbonization pathways for all our sites.
This process began in Q1 with a review of greenhouse gas inventories to establish a baseline in line with industry best practices. We are also developing our ESG strategy with focus on the areas that would be critical for Capstone in this new growth phase, which are tailings, water, climate change, land management, responsible value chain, workforce development, and community impacts. Our strategy will include actions and targets for these focus areas. Through our strategy, we aim to link our performance to the ambitions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Now I'll hand the call back to John.
Thanks, Wendy. We're now on slide 17. I'm pleased to provide Capstone Copper's inaugural guidance. Keep in mind, this is for the nine-month period from April 1st- December 31st. For the balance of 2022, we expect to produce between 91,000 and 100,000 tons at C1 costs between $2-$2.15 per pound for our sulfide business. Additionally, we expect to produce between 45,000- 50,000 tons of copper from cathodes at $3.55-$3.75 per pound. During the quarter, we critically looked at our business in the context of the current inflationary environment. The world has certainly changed since providing guidance in January this year. With the war in the Ukraine and sanctions on Russia adding to inflationary pressures, which we're experiencing on input costs such as fuel, sulfuric acid, explosives, grinding media, and freight charges.
The cathode costs are roughly $0.70 per pound higher than what was published in our technical report because we are assuming spot sulfuric acid prices of $280 per ton for the balance of this year, which represents all-time highs. This compares to $180 per ton we assumed in the technical report for 2022. The perfect storm has led to where the sulfuric acid price and sulfur market is today. Incredibly strong fertilizer demand is coinciding with pandemic-related logistical challenges in Asia and high ocean freight costs that have hampered the supply side of the equation. We believe sulfur and sulfuric acid prices at these levels are unsustainable and will ease in the second half of 2022. Prudently, we've price mixed around 65% of our sulfuric acid purchases in Chile for the balance of the year.
Also, when copper prices were higher in April, we made a decision to protect a $4 floor and lock in margins for over half of our cathode production for the balance of the year. This works out to 27,000 tons of copper cathode with a $4 floor and a ceiling price of $4.86 per pound. Now on to slide 18. We added this chart to illustrate how we're proactively improving the asset quality of our portfolio by transforming our business to lower-cost sulfides as we ramp up Mantos Blancos concentrate debottlenecking project and complete the construction and ramp up of the Mantoverde sulfide project in 2024. Delivering the Santo Domingo project will further increase our sulfide business, improving margins through reduced costs. Low-cost sulfides are expected to contribute over 90% of our future total copper production.
The development of the world-class Mantoverde Santo Domingo integrated district is expected to drive company-wide consolidated C1 costs to approximately $1.50 per pound. Slide 19. This slide shows our capital and exploration guidance for the nine-month period from April 1st- December 31st. At Pinto Valley, our sustaining capital includes one-time items totaling $24 million related to tailings and water management initiatives, especially important as we are actively looking for ways to maximize mill throughput. At Mantos Blancos, for financial reporting reasons, we were required to reclassify some operating costs to production phase deferred stripping, which is expected to be just over $50 million for the balance of 2022.
As previously mentioned, total initial CapEx for our Mantoverde development project has increased $38 million- $825 million, with expansion capital this year focused on the primary crusher, pipelines, stockpiles, camps and tailings. At Cozamin, capital spending is on track with respect to our paste backfill and dry stack tailings plant. At Santo Domingo, capital is primarily focused on rerouting Highway C-17 and spending on the cobalt feasibility study. Our exploration efforts for the balance of this year are primarily focused on brownfield opportunities at Cozamin and in Chile, with a focus on delineating the oxide resource at Santo Domingo as well as greenfield exploration at Copper Cities. Looking forward, we expect increased brownfield exploration efforts in Chile, particularly at Mantoverde and Santo Domingo.
On slide 20, we've set forth an exciting pathway to transform Capstone Copper into a premier mid-tier company en route to 100% production growth and lower costs. We also have an opportunity to create a world-class cobalt business that will put Chile on the map for yet another critical green metal as the world accelerates its decarbonization efforts. We're applying a disciplined and phased approach to growth, and we have the balance sheet, a strong cash flow base from current operations, and the leadership to execute on this plan. Finally, on slide 21, Capstone Copper is expected to produce 185,000 tons of copper production over 12 months in 2022, which has been illustrated on the slide as the first stage of growth.
The second stage of growth, as we commission the MBDP, is expected to generate copper production of 260,000 tons by 2024, which represents 40% growth. Beyond this, we expect to deliver another 45% growth to 380,000 tons per annum with Santo Domingo, with further expansion opportunities throughout our portfolio. You can see that we have a tremendously exciting growth trajectory, and this doesn't factor in the robust pipeline of other growth initiatives that we have referenced, including PV4, the phase II expansion projects at Mantos Blancos and Mantoverde, and the cobalt production. Of even more importance is the fact that these projects all serve to lower our unit costs, allowing for strong cash flow generation throughout the cycle.
I'd like to take this moment to thank our team at Capstone Copper for their huge commitment to our integration process, which I'm very pleased to say is going extremely well. With that, we're now ready to take questions.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please slowly press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will then hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. If you would like to remove yourself from the question queue, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star one now if you have a question. Your first question will be from Orest Wowkodaw at Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, and congratulations again on the transaction. I've got a couple questions about your guidance, and I appreciate the pretty detailed guidance for 2022. When we start to think ahead to next year, am I correct in thinking that your copper production consolidated will be fairly similar in 2023 versus the 185,000 tons?
In 2022, with really the step up beginning in 2024.
If I can answer that a little bit. I mean, as you know, Mantos Blancos is the main asset that's ramping up this year. When you look ahead to 2023, that will be the pickup in production that you'll see, when you look through the four assets.
Should we expect pretty minimal contribution from that in 2023 specifically?
Yeah. I mean, we don't give 2023 guidance, but if you go to the tech report, you'll see it. It is. I wouldn't say it's minimal. It's, you know. You'll see the numbers there in terms of how many tons there it is.
I think, Orest, the other thing that's important about it is it represents quite a significant shift at Mantos Blancos from oxides to sulfides. That does have quite an important impact on our unit costs at Mantos Blancos.
Right. Okay. Sort of in similar vein, in terms of CapEx, I was a little surprised how high the planned CapEx was for this year. Am I correct that, like, when I deduct what's left for the project, that we could be looking corporately at CapEx sort of similar for next year, somewhere maybe in the $500-$600 range to finish the Mantoverde project, plus all the other, sort of smaller, sustaining and everything else going on? Is that kind of a good ballpark number?
Yeah. Orest, I'll pass across to Raman to give you a more detailed answer. You know, the main portion of the CapEx spend on the Mantoverde project is this year. I think there's the tail, if I'm not mistaken, is about $140 million for next year, I think.
Exactly, yeah.
With the remaining portion for 2023. I think the one item which obviously does influence the size of that CapEx spend is obviously the sort of pre-stripping and the third stripping at the various operations.
When you look at it, Orest, the number is $825. We've spent $338, we've said to date. There's $265 in our guidance for this year. That leaves us another $220 for next year, roughly on that Mantoverde.
Right. Plus all the other assets.
Yeah. I mean, the sustaining capital at our other assets. One thing. You know, when you look at our capital guidance of $620, it includes $125 of capitalized stripping. The tech reports never had the accounting for capitalizing stripping. That was probably just kinda in the OpEx spend. That's kinda new to standardize our accounting when you look at our guidance. If you back out the $620, the $125 on stripping, that's really a $500 number when you look at it from a capital perspective without stripping.
Yeah, no, fair enough. We're not really seeing the offset, though, in terms of reduction in your OpEx, right? It does seem, I'd say, incremental to the net numbers. I get that that's largely inflationary, but it's not like we can.
Yeah.
You know, add the $120 to CapEx and then take it out of OpEx.
Yeah, I agree. I think the asset inflation is heating up a bit of that.
Okay. Okay, thanks. I'll pass it along.
Thank you. Next question will be from Ralph Profiti at Eight Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. If I may, I have two on Mantoverde. Just looking at the construction progress, you know, at 14%, you talked about sort of monitoring, you know, COVID-19 risks and logistic risks. It does seem that inflation risks are pretty much, you know, in check just because of the Ausenco and the EPC lump sum contract. Just wondering, you know, of those three things, which should we be most concerned about in terms of stressing on, you know, either the CapEx number or scheduling? Is it COVID-19 or is it more of a logistics chain that sort of, you know, brings in the incremental risks?
Yeah. Thanks, Ralph. I'll take that and then just ask Cashel if he's got any further comments. You know, we've obviously been through sort of two odd years of COVID already, and I think the procedures that have been put in place, both at the operation, the project and the country as a whole, have proven pretty resilient to sort of what COVID has thrown at us to date. I think we did have the advantage of negotiating the contract with Ausenco, taking into account COVID. We've actually assumed the sort of full-blown pandemic for the full period of the construction. All of that is built into the procedures. You know, there's things like additional transport, sort of additional accommodation, various sort of issues of productivities that we have assumed in the project.
I think COVID is well taken care of. I think we spoke quite a bit on inflation and how we've obviously been somewhat impacted just by diesel price increase and the pre-stripping and that we've now built into our estimates. We've been fortunate that basically we locked in the prices for all of the mining equipment and the plant equipment, I think before we saw this sort of inflationary period. To an extent, you know, we also locked in our orders before we hit the big sort of scheduling challenges. We're seeing in the market today lead times for orders growing significantly. I think we're reasonably comfortable there.
I think, as you know, there sort of are logistical kind of challenges around the world with shipping and et cetera, and particularly I think around China. These are things we need to keep a very close eye on, just sort of as we ensure the final equipment delivery to the project. I don't know, Cashel, is there anything you want to?
No, I just echo. You know, I've been to Chile several times since joining Capstone, and it's incredible how that country is managing COVID. I mean, they're very robust protocols and procedures, business as usual. They've been adapted to it. Where COVID interrupts us is exactly where John is saying, is what might be happening in the various areas where parts and components are being manufactured. We're bird-dogging that. We don't have any notice to date that there's any major issues, but that is our biggest concern, if that was your question. What is your biggest concern if some of these areas maybe, you know, what's going through the Shanghai Harbor versus a different harbor and those types of things.
We're keenly aware of those things, monitoring them, but to date, we don't have any confirmation of any major impacts to the project. That's where it would lie, if we were to try and guess where something might happen.
Okay. Yeah, that helps a lot. I appreciate it. Cashel, well, let me stay with you. You know, because there's been a more robust build-out of the team there, are there any scope changes that have happened at Mantoverde that have been, you know, implemented or are potentially being looked at just as sort of a fresh set of eyes has, you know, sort of come in and looked at that project as you're sort of near that 50% completion rate? Or, you know, at the risk of repricing some of these contracts, you've sort of held back on that.
Look, you know, I'm completely familiar with the EPC deliverer, Ausenco, that's there. As it happens, that flow sheet is the exact same as the Constancia flow sheet. I've had lots of opportunity to work with that engineering group, and I understand that flow sheet. It'll serve extremely well. It's already been proven. I don't think there's any modifications that you know myself or any of the new additions to the team would come in on that project. Where we see the value, and that's what we really focused on and outlined, is what the future value for the integrated district is. That's where we see maybe there's some other plans we can bring in, but that's in time and it's in steps.
It's not changing anything than what was previously planned or thought of at the integration of these two companies.
Gotcha. Outstanding. Well done. Thanks very much, all.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please slowly press star followed by one on your touch-tone phone. Your next question will be from Craig Hutchinson at TD Securities.
Hi, good morning, guys. Just a question-
Good morning.
On the ramp up of Mantoverde. Previously, you know, the intent was, I think, to have this thing in ramp-up mode at the end of 2023. Now it looks like the ramp up is beginning in 2024. Is that a change or are you guys just being more conservative in terms of what you're showing now?
Again, I'll sort of see if Cash has got anything further to add, but I don't believe we've made any changes on that. I think we're still talking about sort of commissioning and commencement of ramp up in late 2023, and obviously sort of hitting full stride in 2024.
Yeah, that's it. Often on the back end of these large concentrators, there's a scope given to ramp up. We're just saying that we'll be at complete and full production in 2024. There's that normal period in 2023 that's sufficient to get to full production. It's just we don't see sustained full production till 2024, and that hasn't changed from the original timing at all. Maybe the wording is different, but it hasn't changed.
Okay. We could see some incremental production basically at the end of 2023.
Absolutely. Yeah. Our full intention is to have ramp-up production through there.
Perfect. Then maybe just a follow-up question to what Orest touched on earlier in terms of the capitalized stripping. The numbers you're quoting this year for Mantos Blancos and Mantoverde, can we expect similar numbers as well next year on that kind of level of capitalized stripping?
Yeah. We'll get you some more details on the strip ratio, but it's kinda by pit and by phase. When you look at it, you can expect kinda in that range next year as well.
Okay. Maybe just a last question from me. I know, I know in the past you guys have looked at partnership options for Santo Domingo. I wonder if there's anything kind of actively engaged there or whether really the intent is to wait till you guys have some updated information, whether it's on the feasibility study or the district integration plan.
Craig, definitely the latter. We have no engagements at all at the moment on partner studies, on sort of partner discussions. I think our entire focus is on the study work that we've described. I think once we've got a much clearer idea of the integration plan, the value, the opportunities, at that stage we'll consider whether a partner would be desirable or not.
All right. Perfect, guys. Thank you.
Thank you. At this time, Mr. MacKenzie, we have no further questions. Please proceed.
Thank you very much. Well, thank you everybody for joining us today, and we look forward to meeting investors at both the Canaccord and the Bank of America Mining Conferences next week, and at PDAC in Toronto next month. In the meantime, please reach out to Jerrold if you have any further questions. Thank you very much and have a great day.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. At this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a good day.