Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. I'm very excited to be hosting what is our first official Capital Markets Day here in São Paulo. We have an exciting week ahead. We're starting here in São Paulo with this event, our Capital Markets Day, and then throughout the week, many of you will be joining us across our operations to see the transformation that's taking place at Ero Copper.
I think just to start quickly on what I see as the four main themes from today's presentation and as we transition the week at operations. Number one, transformation. I have a lot of our leadership team here from around the world to talk about the transformation that's happening in people, culture, and our operations, and something that we call One Ero. We'll talk a little bit about what that means all throughout this week.
The second is the performance against our stated objectives back in 2025. I'm incredibly proud of the work that our teams are doing, particularly around deleveraging, and Wayne will speak to that in more detail. The third thing is the quality of our operating portfolio and some of the technology that we're implementing across all of our assets to improve safety and improve performance.
Gelson will speak to that in more detail. Last, but certainly not least, and I don't want to steal too much of Mike's thunder, we'll be talking about the portfolio that we've put together at Ero that includes development asset, producing mines, development assets in a variety of early-stage exploration opportunities that complements what I think is a portfolio that's going to continue to create shareholder value for a long period of time to come. Just quickly, we're here in São Paulo.
We had the option, thank you, as a company to host this event anywhere in the world, and we chose São Paulo for a couple of different reasons. Number one, our Brazilian heritage, clearly. It's convenient for starting an analyst tour here. More fundamentally, I think there's few places in the world today where you have such a strong intersection of public equity markets, venture capital, particularly around technology, and also in Brazil, a big push on critical minerals.
All those things are important to Ero, and we'll explain why that is as we go forward here. Some of these statistics might be more familiar to those in this room, but for those of you who are dialing in, a couple of quick interesting facts about São Paulo. São Paulo features Latin America's largest exchange, over $1 trillion of combined market cap.
It's home to more than 12,000 startup companies that last year raised over $5 billion in venture capital, primarily in forward-facing technologies like artificial intelligence and automation. Last but not least, talking about critical minerals. IBRAM, the National Mining Agency of Brazil, anticipates that over the next five years, there'll be $80 billion invested in Brazil in mining projects, 20 billion of which will be critical minerals projects.
You have all these things happening in São Paulo, and that's why you're here today. Again, thank you for joining. Very excited about today and this week. Starting quickly here with disclaimer language. Everyone on the stage will for sure be making forward-looking statements. Please, this is posted on our website. Please read those forward-looking statements when you have the opportunity. The agenda for today, again, starting with myself to provide some context on today's events.
We'll continue with Gelson, who will walk through some of the operations. We'll talk a little about Furnas as well. Gelson will speak to Furnas and some of the progress we're making there. Mike will talk about some of the exciting things that are happening in the exploration side of our portfolio, as I said, building out a really strong portfolio of assets all throughout Brazil.
Wayne will talk about our financial performance. Then myself, Eduardo, and Courtney will talk a little bit about Brazil and what's happening here. A very topical time to be talking about critical minerals and obviously politics as well. In addition to the speakers, I just want to acknowledge that we have quite a few members of our global leadership team here today. Their names are listed here. You have the opportunity to meet them. They're in the front row.
Please, after or during the coffee break, introduce. We've been able to attract some incredible talent to our organization, really build out what I see as the future building blocks for our company, and you'll have the opportunity to talk to them in more detail. Getting going here. I think what makes Ero particularly unique in today's environment, we have a history of unlocking value. If you go back to 2016, I was the first employee at Ero Copper in those days when it was just a few of us, and we've been able to build out a portfolio of operating mines, development projects, executing on our organic growth strategy. We also put in place an action plan to really accelerate the growth of our company.
These were conversations that started back in 2020 and 2021 about working with Vale at that time, now Vale Base Metals, to start on a combined work on a project we call Furnas. Really, when you look at our performance since 2017 in terms of copper growth, we see a very clear pathway today to grow the company to more than 150,000 tonnes of copper equivalent production. We're very excited about that. I think today's presentation this week is about showcasing the work that we've done and the work that we are doing to realize that value for our shareholders and for our stakeholders.
I think one of the things that's also important to keep in mind, again, one of the things that I'm extremely proud of and that we've worked really hard to do, is throughout the execution of that organic growth strategy, is really protect our share count and the shares outstanding. What that's translated to is obviously a lot of production growth, but also revenue growth and resource growth on a relatively stable share count outstanding. We've really protected our shareholders, and created value while doing that. Obviously, that's reflected in the value that you see in the company today. When I think about culture, and this is something that we will talk a lot about, and we talked a little bit about on our Q2 conference call, is the around One Ero.
Aligning standards, processes, people, operating philosophy across all of our sites, all of our offices. This comes down to behaviors, processes, and capabilities. Fundamentally, driven by a focus on a relentless commitment to safety and a relentless commitment to continuous improvement. I am going to show a video here that we produced internally back in 2025, when we talked about OneEro for the first time, so that all of you can see the work that went into the transformation that you will see throughout this week.
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Obrigado. More than just a cultural experiment, this philosophy around integrating our operations for safety and performance has led to some really incredible things that we talked about on our Q2 conference call. Starting out, as you saw in the video, extreme focus on health and safety. Gelson will speak to some of the transformation that happened across our organization the last 18 months to two years, culminating in 2025, one of the lowest LTIFRs that we've had at Ero.
More recently, approximately $10 million-$15 million in savings in an integrated procurement strategy led by our One Ero procurement team and philosophy, as well as more than $20 million in savings through renegotiated concentrate contracts all throughout our operations. I think the main theme here being focus on leadership, focus on health and safety, focus on procurement, as well as technology and innovation, and fundamentally underpinned by this culture I spoke to and you saw the video of One Ero. Just to touch briefly on, coming back to 2025, in January, I made three commitments to all of you and to all of our stakeholders. That was number one, to achieve commercial production at Tucumã. We did that on July 1st.
It was to deleverage our balance sheet, which clearly we have done, and it was to advance the Furnas copper-gold project as the cornerstone of our future growth strategy, and we've clearly achieved that with the PEA that came out in Q1. In addition, we also added some few creative value drivers that have accelerated some of that deleveraging and really resulted in strong financial performance. Obviously, the gold concentrate program at Xavantina, a creative way to add value to our business, and that will benefit us not only this year, but also through a good part of next year. We completed the mine mechanization at Xavantina. For those of you that are coming to Xavantina this week, you'll see that in action and the potential that that provides that operation, as Gelson will speak to. Also the plant debottlenecking that we achieved at Caraíba.
The last three quarters have been all-time record throughput levels at that operation. Again, three big value drivers as we think about the future and what our operations are capable of doing. Just to touch on the deleveraging component, something that I am very proud of is that roughly $0.9 Of every dollar that was available for deleveraging in our company over the last 18 months has gone to deleveraging, really emphasizing the commitment, the performance against that commitment, and the focus that we have on positioning the company for future growth. That future growth is coming in the form of a large project. Obviously, we have organic opportunities around our operations, which Gelson and Mike will speak to.
But at Furnas, when I take a big step back and I think about our future, Furnas offers a long duration mine life, a significant production potential, outstanding geologic opportunities in terms of the exploration programs that we have going there, and we will talk about that a little bit as well, and very compelling economics. So you are looking here at the sensitivity that was produced in the PEA.
Obviously, metal prices have improved a lot since then, and it is part of the reason that we are so focused on this project, again, as the cornerstone of our future growth. Our commitment at Furnas goes beyond just the execution of the earning requirements. Today, September 14th, very proud of our team. 1,000 days of working on-site without a single lost-time injury, and I think that is a milestone worth celebrating.
In addition to the fact that in August, we completed our 90,000 m of drilling that was required under the earn-in. That happened about two years ahead of schedule, and so congratulations to our team there. We have 11 drill rigs that are operating on-site now at Furnas, and those are continuing to test resource extensions, confirm mineralization for future studies, including the pre-feasibility study that we expect to be out in 2027.
But what does that mean for Ero Copper? I think fundamentally, as you will see in this presentation and as those of you who are joining us on-site this week will see, is that we have effectively two main pillars to our value creation strategy that is set on a foundation of deleveraging and de-risking. So that is coming in two places.
Number one, focus on balance sheet deleveraging, which clearly, as I indicated, we have done, and Wayne will speak to that in a little bit more detail here. But to improve our financial strength and flexibility going forward, that is one of the foundational pillars that we have. Also, our continued execution ahead of schedule on Furnas to accelerate that project as much as possible. Enabling investments in technology and innovation. Marcelo is here.
He is our technology and innovation head here in Brazil, doing some very exciting things across our portfolio, as Gelson will speak to and you will see this week. And then we also have, as I said, something that I am very excited about is the exploration portfolio that we have been able to put together in Brazil across every stage of development.
From near mine opportunities to new regional opportunities in this environment, we've been working quietly for the last several years to put this land package together and do some initial work, and I think you'll see today why we're excited about the work that we're doing on that side. Finally, Furnas really creating that bridge to the future state for us with a target FID in 2029. With that, I'll turn the mic over to Gelson. Thank you very much for being here today.
Thank you, Makko, for your introductory remarks. Thank everyone for being here today. I also want to thank our team from Ero, which have been working very hard for us here today. This preparation is fantastic. Thank you very much.
Before I move to the slides, I would like to sort of in the next 25 years, just to explain the common themes that we're going to hear today on these 25 minutes. Number one is safety. Makko mentioned about this. It's how we operate. Also, the technical depth. We know these assets very well and what makes our plans robust. We're also going to be talking about discipline and execution.
This is common across all assets and projects. Of course, we got to talk about people. This is our main asset in the company, the people that actually work for Ero. This is what makes everything possible here. We also extend about application of technology innovation in our projects and how we are benefiting from this today. Of course, how we're going to make our assets more efficient and how we're doing this as I speak.
Everything on this safety transformation here leads to a very simple point. We want to make our operations safer, and we are doing this as we speak. Our track record, Makko mentioned about 2025, which was our best year so far. Lost time injury frequency rate, the lowest. We had an uptick in 2026. In the same process, we also have the lowest rate in terms of how the injuries occur.
It is actually half of what happened before. This is a great thing for us. Some of the common themes that we mention here is the focus on people, the connection with the people on site, the entire leadership. We have our directors of operations, our managers, our supervisors, and coordinators. They actually in the front line, and this gets the peer-to-peer connection with our operators and makes a big difference in the group.
We also get the feedback from our operations to us. One of the key areas that we focus in the last 18 months with the support with dss+, and I will talk about this in a few minutes, is about focus on critical risks. These are the areas that we focus the most because we want to reduce the harm. Every accident that actually can cause harm, and that is why we are focusing on the critical areas.
We build controls for this. We increase our audits, internal and external. We also increase communication between our teams. If I look on the left side of the presentation here, you are going to see several themes which relates to how we got to One Ero Safety Management system, and it goes from something simple like 5S housekeeping programs.
This is done across the entire organization, from mining operation exploration and our projects. It is a company-wide. The site is better organized, therefore, is safer and more productive. We have seen before in other places, and Ero is no different. The safer we are, the more productive we are. We go to projects and aspects like a bright mine is a safe mine. We started this in the underground mines, and we went through other areas within the surface as well, where we know the difference between having lit mines across the entire set of underground actually improve safety but also improve productivity. This is all linked together. On the site leadership renewal, that is clear accountability. We have, as I said, the directors, the managers operating and working side by side with our teams on site. That actually makes difference for us as well.
We are sharing best practice, of course, the entire organization, that One Ero that Makko mentioned here. It is just not a title. This has been embedded here, not only in safety, but in productivity and procurement and technology, everything. I would just want to open up a little bit about the dss+ program that we had. We finished this program after 18 months. We got the company to help us in leadership development. Also processes, governance, and management programs across the entire organization. Also identifying for teams in the ground all the critical risks. So there is a big focus on fatality and serious injury prevention. Then finally, after we trained all the managers and directors on site, we extended that training. We call it train the trainer. So dss+ helped us to create the environment such that we can change this process on our own.
The training now is with the supervisors and with the operations, all the operators on site. This is across the entire organization, and it has been going very well. Makko mentioned about technology, and I want to make a big parenthesis here for this. When we talk about technology in Ero, there is a big focus on people, right? I will talk about the three pillars, but big focus on people, reduction of exposure, and we will see some examples on this when I talk about the sites. Give the best information for our teams to take decision on site in the moment. What it means, I will give an example related, for instance, to Tucumã with the AI-driven mill, is that all the programs that we put in place in technology, they are very focused. We identified the need with the operations.
The discussions they run from the mine directors to the managers, all the people doing the work. We create the programs, the technology application, and then we have a team under Marcelo, he is in the room, which elaborates the processes, what kind of equipment we are going to use, the timing for the implementation, and what benefits we are going to bring, plus the training and so forth. That is going very well. I will give an example today. When you visit Caraíba this week, we will see some of the operations now in drilling area. We actually can do the drilling from the surface. This actually reduce not only the exposure of operators on-site, but also removes the induced error while they are doing their work. Some of this work you see is command by laser, and the full processing there on the screen is going very well.
We also have the same process in Xavantina. We have got in Tucumã something that we started there a few months ago. It is running, it is implementing. I can take my phone and show you guys, if you have a time later on, where we have an AI basically implemented with the mill and the crushing circuits. Which means that it is not about talking about if the equipment has got an issue during the operation, but the entire value chain is linked. We give information for the operators so they can take a better decision process.
If the system detects that water or a density or even the feed needs to be changed, all of that is done as we progress during the day and the shift, so they can see that and take the appropriate decision that actually is happening right now, and it is making a big difference for our operations as we speak. Digital twin, it is something that we are doing at Tucumã as well, and we look at Furnas in the future. I will be talking about it. We want Furnas to start with the right technology from the beginning, not only equipment side, but also how we simulate Furnas on the study phase of the implementation of the auto construction that is going to be used in there. You see firsthand the blasting in Xavantina that we are doing this remotely from the surface.
It removes people from the line of danger as well, and it's controlled with the team. All of these that I'm mentioning here, it's running on-site, and we will be able to see it there. Some of you are familiar with Caraíba, but if you are not, Caraíba is in the Bahia State and has been operating for more than 50 years. It's a reference in Brazil in terms of mining operations, not only because of the scale, but also everything that actually runs at Caraíba, the history. Many professionals in Brazil, mining engineering, geology, all areas actually have professionals formed in Caraíba. We are very proud of it. Some people that actually work in Caraíba 20 years ago, they work for us at the moment, and we are very proud of it. We are running the 4.8 million ton per annum capacity in the mill.
Makko mentioned about the achievements that we have done in changing the mill set-up, the investments that actually have been done in the past, and also the debottlenecking. I will be able to speak about it shortly. But the major aspect for Caraíba is the largest investment that we have done there, which is the shaft. The shaft will change how we operate in Caraíba. I will give an example. Today, if you are an operator, after you do the shift change to get to the mining phase, which is about 1,500 m deep area, it may take you an hour and a half driving in a ramp. This is going to change for a few minutes once the shaft is up and running, and that's going to change the productivity and the cost, of course, for Caraíba.
On the plant side, the message here is that every increment that actually have been done on this plant since 2020 with the HIG mill installed, additional ball mill installed, and the large piece of work that actually was done also with the Jameson Cells increase in recovery on the plant. But last year, which was the entire debottlenecking completed by the end of the year, taking us to 4.8. That's about 1.6 million tons per annum additional capacity than was provided. You can see on the graph on the right side, a self-explanatory how we are using that capacity. I think this is a key message here, not only for Caraíba, but what we are going to see soon and also I will talk about it, Tucumã and then Xavantina. Our Caraíba operation actually is composed by three main ore sources.
In the past, most of the ore was coming from Pilar. More than 95% of the ore source was coming from Pilar. Today, what we see is a combination of Pilar underground mine. We have Vermelhos, which is also underground mine and Surubim. Surubim is an open pit mine, and it's going to be running all the way to the end of this year with some stockpiles mining in 2027. To feed the plant and continue feeding the plant with different ore sources, we have N8, which is an open pit mine closer to Vermelhos, which we start next year. Work is in progress already. Feed grade about 0.9%-1.1%, as we show in the graph there, plus the total capacity on the plant, which we try to maximize and use the total aspect in there.
That is sort of a projection for us for the next three years. As I mentioned before, our single largest investment at Caraíba is the shaft, and it opens up many benefits for us. The shaft is in progress. We are about 1,170 m, give or take. As we speak, we plan to be finishing the excavation of the shaft early next year, and then continues on in the progression of the equipment shaft and getting the shaft ready in 2028. The entire capacity of that shaft is going to give us on the hoister system and people, we are talking about 3 million tons additional that open up a different area for us.
You can imagine today operating at 1,500 m deep, there are different areas that we want to explore, develop, and the shaft is going to make that possible and increasing the life of this operation pillar for decades to come. This, of course, will translate to lower operating costs and more efficiency at the mine. This is a current picture of the setup that we have. All of these infrastructure, these are permanent infrastructure where we have the rock winder, the areas where we have the shaft frame.
This is close to the operations. There is a massive integration of operation and the project as we speak. Every meter basically that we are seeing today guides us closer to the highest grades in the development area of Pilar, the deeper areas. I would like to make some comments and start a presentation here on Tucumã. It is our newest operation.
I will maybe try that. Excuse me, I am just going to change this because sometimes it feels. Sorry about this. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. Tucumã, located in the Carajás area, if you are familiar with the areas on the east side of Carajás, has designed a 4 million ton per annum operation processing with the mine life all the way to 2035. We reached commercial capacity last year. Now the progress is on basically delivering additional filtering capacity, which we will talk in a few minutes. Important here is that the whole ore body knowledge and all the technical aspects for Tucumã is incredible.
When I joined Ero, I remember talking to Makko about this, that once you turn the mill, the recovery that actually came from out of the concentrator was the exact recovery that actually was in the design phase of this project, which illustrates how well the studies were done, but also the implementation and also the quality of the ore combined to the processing design.
So it is very positive for us, and we see that on a daily basis. We are adding additional filtration, and that filtration on the tailing side, this additional filtration capacity will take us to 4 million ton per annum processing. This is basically the story that I was mentioning here. Sorry, I should have put this slide before. You can see the steps that we are moving on from the day that we started the operation all the way to now.
The filters are in the port in Bahia and delivered on site. For those that actually visit the site as well, will be able to see the construction ongoing, all the civils and materials in there, and it's on plan to deliver what we designed for the remaining of the year. They will be able to see that with me during the week. When I move to Xavantina is located in the Mato Grosso State. It's a high-grade underground operation. This operation, we've made a huge change recently on that, which I'll talk about it, which is where we see the major growth due to the changes. You can picture at the beginning of the operation many years ago, narrow veins, very narrow. The mining method had to adapt to the geology.
As we move and progress deeper, there was the need for us to reevaluate the entirety operation, and that actually was done. We completed the mechanization, and with this mechanization, we can add mining development, and we can increase the mining rates, but also remove people from the line of danger. Our plant at Xavantina, it's capable of processing 300,000 tons a year, and that's where we're moving towards with the increment in production.
This is basically a summary of the work related to the mechanization. Important when you think about mechanization, we got to remember that we are changing a lot of things around there. We're changing people, we're changing processes, we're bringing new equipment and have to be training people. Everything supporting that process needs to be implemented.
I'm very happy and proud of our team that we achieved that in less than a year since the beginning. So, it's a fantastic work that actually been done there, and you'll see by yourselves. With that mechanization, we accelerated also bringing technology to the table, and you'll be able to see some of this equipment being guided by laser, which reduce variability on the drilling, improving meters that we are able to do on a development.
That's in progress right now. We'll be able to see. So it's scalable, and that's very important for anything that we look at the capability to expand Xavantina in the future and to achieve the production rates that we're talking about the mine is prepared for. We will continue in that process. This is the infrastructure support.
It's a very simple slide, but I think it makes important that we bring it here. We're always looking at opportunity to be more efficient, reduce OpEx across the organization. This, it was very important step that we took when we look at the Xavantina operation. As we did not have the need for larger capacity in terms of power, we used a 35 kV.
Then when we moved to mechanization and bringing additional ventilation, additional cooling, we felt the need to work with our partner there, which supplies power for us and increase capacity using a different line. It's 138 kV. That's going to help us across the additional power that is required for Xavantina, but also brings a lot of savings in OpEx for the next few years.
Makko mentioned about the opportunities that we take within the company, and this was one of the best opportunities for Xavantina in the last while, which related for us looking at what we had in stockpile, this material we are seeing there. We have tested the material, we identified it, we quantified as we reported last year in terms of inferred resources due to the nature of the deposit we have been operating at since very successfully.
We had to bring additional equipment on-site to support us, especially in the rainy season, and that graph illustrates very well the challenge that we had in there. But you will be able to see this by yourself and how the entire set up for running concentrate and creating concentrate from that stockpile is in progress with the dryer and also the filter press. We will be able to see that.
That also, of course, when you look at the cost, that is basically translate the entire operation that you see there is about $700 per ounce, and then that brings a significant margin for Xavantina. I would like a coffee break, and we continue for 20 minutes. Good? Thank you.
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[Non-English content ] Okay. I think we are good to go. Thank you. We should put the video? Okay. I think we can start Furnas. We will see a video about the project. It is a great video. When I look at this ticket, it represents everything that actually is in our minds, that represent not just the setting of the project, but the idea behind the project, visually speaking. Also, we are going to see a couple of slides just to finalize. Makko mentioned at the beginning some of the highlights of the Furnas project. I will not bring them up, but I will make comments about how the project is progressing. Okay.
The Furnas Copper Gold Project, cornerstone of Ero Copper's future growth strategy. Furnas strengthens Ero Copper's differentiated copper gold growth story, complementing an established portfolio of operations across Brazil. The project spans nearly 2,400 ha, less than 15 km from rail, power, roads, and established regional services. Supported by regional infrastructure, Furnas sits among established mines and significant deposits across Carajás. From above, the scale becomes clear. Furnas is a large, highly prospective iron oxide copper gold system.
Below surface mineralization stretches across a 9-km footprint and remains open with significant potential for continued growth. That opportunity is grounded in more than 90,000 m of historic drilling completed by Vale. Ero confirms high-grade continuity across both zones with over 90,000 m of drilling. The 24-year PEA mine plan integrates selective open pit and underground mining, feeding a centralized 13.5 million tonne per year processing plant. The scale and continuity of the deposit support large stopes and efficient high-volume underground production. Across a compact 5-kilometer corridor, proposed plants and infrastructure connect the northwest and southeast zones into one integrated operation.
Among the project's infrastructure, a conventional processing plant is designed for efficient, large-scale recovery of copper and gold. The project's proposed flow sheet incorporates proven technologies, including high-intensity grinding mills and Jameson Cells, already successfully deployed across Ero's operations. The preliminary economic assessment brings it all together. A long mine life, robust economics, and a clear pathway from resource to production. Furnas offers substantial upside, remaining open at depth and along strike, with over 200,000 m of drilling completed and 11 drill rigs currently operating. Furnas, cornerstone of Ero's future growth strategy.
When I first visit the Furnas project, I was not only impressed by the setting and the work which was already done by our teams, gathering all the knowledge that actually was acquired with the work done by Vale in our core shed and seeing all the geologists' environmental work and community work in progress. But when you start putting the list of what makes a project successful, I saw all the elements in there, not only in terms of the geology and the knowledge that we have acquired for the mineralization, structural controls, grade distribution, how the teams located the drilling program, not only to define resources, but also to test the boundaries of the mineralization.
I've seen the team testing holes at 800 m deep, which is way far from what is in that project right now as we speak, and testing the mineralization and finding the same mineralization, same thickness, high grade in there, laterally speaking. So in terms of what makes a big project, we start with the geology and then move on, how can we mine this? Then the large-scale mining, when we compare Furnas with our Caraíba operation, just for a sense of the engineering here, when we planned the Furnas during the PEA, we brought not only specialists from outside of the company, but our own team to test and challenge the assumptions that actually were in the PEA. Today, we mine Caraíba from 400 m from the surface all the way to 1,500 m.
Even at this scale of Furnas, the entire production on the underground can come from a single level in a year. Even when we get to the end of the 20, 25 years mine life, we will not have reached 500 m deep. That is very impressive. We have areas where the ore body crosses 100 m. Large stopes can be applied. We are looking at the paste filling, ore rock filling, the setup with the open pit mine as well, the geotech in progress. Everything points out for a very robust. In terms of infrastructure, the video points out the area of the infrastructure is beautiful because everything can be concentrated and minimized, minimal impact. With that, we are continuing this year with the pre-feasibility study. Some of the accomplishments so far in 2025 and 2026 there.
The most important aspect is that we continue to work on-site with additional drilling test work, engineering work as well in progress with the firms working on the project for the PFS level. Also on the environmental and permits with the EIA/RIMA already being prepared by our teams collecting of data, great relationship with the local community. These are the phases that we see for the Furnas project.
Of course, we plan to deliver this Pre-feasibility study next year. We work very close with Vale. Some of you asked me how we interact with Vale. It is a great interaction. We have quarterly meetings where we share not only what we do in a project, but also we get to understand how they are doing their own projects, because everything is the same setting. They are in the same area.
There is quite a lot of learning among the two companies, and then exchange of information. Also our target for investment decision, looking at to 2029 with the completion of the feasibility study. As we progress, really, the more we learn about the deposit, the more we learn about the mineralization. We adjust the mine plan, we adjust the mine design, and everything continues in the confirmation of the PEA so far.
Currently, we have 11 rigs, and we will basically, as we progress towards the end of the year, may reduce some of the drilling because we have completed, and then there is going to be more specialized drilling across the site, and the focus mostly on the items which make impact on the pre-feasibility study to give a certainty and reduce risk for the project, being aspects related to reserve definition.
Our teams have defined many areas for resource growth, actually is in progress as well. Very importantly, not only for the open pit areas, but also to the underground. There is a very deep understanding on the geotech, that what it makes us design and make sure that we will perform, as we say in the design for these mines, for slope angles and water inside the areas, and how much pumping will be required. These are the processes and work in progress as we speak today at Furnas. With that said, I want to finish here and then ask Mike to come in and help us to understand more about all the exploration and potential that we see in Ero. Thank you.
Yeah. Good. Okay. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Gelson. Gelson touched on, and the video touched on the exploration at Furnas. I am going to talk about the rest of the portfolio. We have a fairly simple and deliberately simple strategy that really hasn't changed. One, we replace reserves and extend the mine life at the mines. This is where the bulk of our drilling BRL go because it's the highest return on invested capital. It's where we're going to make the cheapest discoveries, and those discoveries are going to be near the plant, near our people, and with permits. Regional and greenfields projects provide us opportunities for organic growth in the future, in the medium and long term. This slide really from left to right shows that progression. Our foundational assets at Caraíba, Tucumã, Xavantina, and now Furnas.
I am going to touch on some of the updates at those mines as well as some of the new regional opportunities. Caraíba, we have a new copper nickel discovery near the Vermelhos mine. At Tucumã, I am not going to go in great detail, but I will say that we do have an exploration project within 30 kilometers of the mine that we're drilling on right now. Then we have a new greenfields project, very large, 220,000 ha project with an emerging copper nickel district. Starting with Pilar, you can see the reserve growth here from 2017 when the company started through to the discovery of the deepening. We're really focused on the deeper portion of the mine and the area where we're developing the shaft 2. By 2021, we had 10 million tons indicated, 6 million tons inferred.
By 2025, 3 million tons measured, almost 10 million tons indicated, and 11 million tons inferred. So a big resource growth in that area. You also notice that the grades are quite high relative to the reserve grade at Caraíba in general. In the long section on the right, you can see the distribution of the measured and indicated resources in gray, and then that sort of mustardy yellow is the inferred resources. You can see in the inset the shaft, which is 1,500 m from surface, and then the bottom of that shaft in the top in the larger image right there. You can see the bottom of that shaft, 1,500 m below surface. There hasn't been a lot of drilling here in recent years because of infrastructure requirements and just development needs.
But you can see a couple of holes that we've drilled here relatively recently, and some of the results. I think the one that's really worth highlighting is the 2 at the bottom from hole 217. So we had 27 meters at 3.2% copper, including a very high-grade interval within that, and then 18 m at 3.4% copper. These holes are hitting at a relatively shallow angle because of the orientation that they're drilled, so those aren't true thicknesses. But the point is that the zone is open, and at the bottom of the inferred resources, we're seeing very high-grade mineralization, so it's very encouraging. At Tucumã, the question here is around the continuity of the geology at depth and what sort of grades we're seeing below the pit. There is an existing underground resource of about 1.35 million tons at 2.24% copper.
That is from the 2021 resource updated for depletion. Obviously, it has not really changed. That sits below the pit design. We had an 8,000 m program from surface to test for the geological continuity of that high-grade mineralization and to test to see what the grades are below the pit. In the section that we see here of Tucumã, you can see the distribution of blocks above 2% copper and some of the intercepts that we drilled below the pit with some very high grades. 11 m at 4.4% copper, 5.9 m at 4.1% copper. There is also an intercept at the bottom there of 11.7 m at 1.8% copper. Very strong underground grades drilled below the pit. We know that it is open, we know it is continuous, and there is a very continuous plunge line to that mineralization, which is quite encouraging.
Xavantina, it is one of the operations where exploration has most clearly paid for itself. You can see the change in resources from 2017 before the Santo Antônio discovery to 2021, where we had about 1 million tons in indicated and 700,000 tons inferred to the end of 2025. When we put out the technical report, we had 300,000 tons in measured, 2 million tons indicated, and 1.1 million tons inferred. Very strong resource growth. We have very consistent mineralization, and tracking that to the north and drilling those extensions of that mineralization has really added to that resource. In the plan map on the right, you can see there are three zones within the lower portion of Santo Antônio. This is a plan map. The mineralization is dipping shallowly to the north-northeast. Santo Antônio Main has been the area that we have mostly focused on.
You can see the extension of that mineralization. It remains open. We continue to drill this portion. This is the mineral resource envelope from the end of 2025, and the black pierce points are drilling from the end of 2025 and through 2026. You can see there has been a big focus in this area, which we refer to as Santo Antonio East, with some very, very strong grades. Holes 60, 65, 70, you can see intercepts 6 m at 15.5 g, 15.7 m at almost 12 g, 10.3 m at over 20 g. Very, very strong intercepts. I would also point out that you can see a fair bit of natural variability within this deposit with lower grades that are relatively close to high grades. 1.9 m at under five, 2.3 at two.
There is variability within the system, which is important when I touch on the next slide. It is also worth pointing out this area here over at Santo Antonio West. The grades and thicknesses are generally lower than what we see at Santo Antônio Main and Santo Antonio East. What we are encouraged by is that this is within the main mine sequence.
We see veins, laminated veins hosted by carbonaceous phyllite, and the sulfides, galena, sphalerite, and pyrite are very diagnostic of auriferous zones within the main mine. We see all of that here. We have gold-bearing mineralization within those veins, and we are going to continue to chase that mineralization in that direction to see if it thickens and gets better grade like we see at Santo Antônio Main and Santo Antonio East. This is quite a different slide.
With Santo Antônio, we have consistently drilled and extended the plunge line of that mineralization, and we wanted to see how far that zone went. So we drilled a hole to the north of the main mine. This is the 2025 mineral resource envelope in dark gray. We drilled SPL03A. It is an almost 1,700-m-deep hole from surface, which intersected a 3-m vein interval at about 1,570 m vertical depth within a larger 11-m package of carbonaceous phyllite with smaller laminated veins, galena, sphalerite, pyrite, so those diagnostic sulfide minerals that we see within the Santo Antônio mine. We interpret this as very similar to the mine sequence, which we see up here, and we effectively believe we have extended the mineralization by about 1 kilometer from the 2025 mineral resource envelope down to SPL03A. We have internal lab assays for this, and we are waiting on the accredited lab assays.
But in general, I would say that they are fairly low grade anomalous, but very encouraging that we see that mine sequence very thick and a fairly thick 3-m package with concentrated veining, as you can see here in this core photo. To follow up on this, we are drilling a number of wedges from the parent hole. SPL03B is the first one. It is targeting 1,500 m as a wedge out of the parent hole, and a number of other holes will be drilled to test the lateral continuity, the grade, and then the up-and-down plunge continuity of the mineralization. Back to Caraíba. This is an emerging nickel-copper discovery. I think three key points to start. It is within 10 km of Vermelhos, so very close to infrastructure and power. We have drilled 4,200 m on this project, which have defined a strike length of about 400 m north to south.
The mineralization is shallowly plunging, which is quite encouraging for the deposits that we tend to see in the Vermelhos District. And we have had a number of hits of semi-massive and massive sulfides with pyrrhotite, pentlandite, chalcopyrite, so the nickel and copper-bearing minerals. I will not read these out, but you can see some very encouraging intercepts with widths from 7 to 16 m, some considerably elevated nickel and copper grades with some cobalt. We consistently explore for this mineralization using borehole EM.
If you are not familiar with that electromagnetic technique, it is a geophysical method. We put a probe down the hole, and we look for conductors off hole, and usually those are associated with accumulations of sulfides and nickel-copper mineralization. We have two untested plates here at the southern end, at the lower plunge of the known mineralization, and those are being drilled now.
And we will continue to follow that up with more borehole EM and drilling. And lastly, this is a new district. At Caraíba, we have spent 10 years working on it. Obviously, there was a lot of work that happened before we got there. There has been over 428,000 m of drilling in the mines and regionally. There are six current and past producing mines in that district. We targeted this area at Odin in a similar environment in Bahia. It was originally mapped as an area of ophiolites. O phiolites are a sequence, basically, it is a slice of oceanic crust which has been thrust onto continental crust through tectonic processes. And those would not be prospective for copper-nickel mineralization.
Our team had a hypothesis that this was mismapped, and what we were really looking at was intrusive ultramafic and mafic rocks that had the potential to host magmatic nickel-copper sulfides like we see at Caraíba. So we did a fair bit of mapping and soil geochemistry and identified a zone that is about 100 km east-west by 90 km north-south. You can see these are stream sediment samples that identified the zone. We did further mapping and soil geochemistry to identify 13 mineral systems. We find nickel-copper mineralization hosted by ultramafics at surface, numerous gossans. There has been no work here, no drilling in this entire district, so it is brand new. With those six advanced target areas, we drilled 3,100 m from Q2 up until the end of August.
I can say that we have hit a number of intervals of disseminated mineralization, similar sulfide minerals that we would see at N30. So pyrrhotite, pentlandite, chalcopyrite, disseminated with some zones of net textured mineralization. The point is not that we have made an economic discovery, but the point is really that we have proven a concept that we have a magmatic nickel-copper system here and that we have discovered an emerging district. So the next steps here are to take that information, understand the distribution of sulfides, understand the geometry of the system, go back and refine our targeting, and have a second phase of drilling to understand what the potential is and hopefully make an economic discovery. So I guess to sum up with Pilar, we have a system that continues to be open at depth with high grades. We have an emerging copper-nickel sulfide discovery in that district near Vermelhos.
At Tucumã, we have shown that the mineralization continues at very good grades below the pit, and we are going to continue to drill that starting at the end of this year. At Vermelhos, the mine continues to add ounces as we drill down the plunge, and we have shown that it continues at least a kilometer down with that deep regional hole. And now we have a new emerging nickel-copper discovery at Odin. And obviously, I think as Gelson mentioned, we have 11 rigs turning at Furnas. And with that, I will turn it over to Wayne.
Good. Okay. All right. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the most exciting part of the presentation, finance. And what could be more exciting than risk management? But seriously, when we think about our business, obviously you have heard a lot from the team around what we do to grow our business, protect our business, a lot of things that we can control, but there is also a lot of things that we cannot control. And as we think about how we protect our business through the cycle, we wanted to highlight sort of five pillars here that really help us protect and grow and continue to deliver value to shareholders. And so what are those? Obviously, we are a Brazilian-based business, so heavily exposed and reliant on the BRL. Metal prices, that is pretty obvious.
When we think about our balance sheet, we are coming out of a very interesting phase as a company, out of a very heavy capital phase. But having a balance sheet that is robust and allows us to do the things we want to do in the future is very important. Commercial terms, obviously, we talk a lot about copper, and when people talk about selling copper concentrate, it is a little bit more complicated than just loading up a vessel and sending it halfway around the world, and I will touch on that. Then Makko talked about the One Ero program and how that has really helped us on the procurement side. I will go through each of these in a little bit more detail.
This is a very interesting slide, and I think for those of you who have followed the story and known us for a long time, we have talked a lot about our foreign exchange hedge program. As I mentioned earlier before, we are heavily exposed to the currency. We have all of our assets in Brazil. As most of you in this room know, the real is a very volatile currency, but on the other side is a very liquid currency. So together with the Mexican peso, it is probably the most liquid of the Latin American currencies. That gives us an opportunity to put in place structures to protect our margins. How do we think about that?
We are not trying to bet on the currency, but what we are trying to do is when we put together a budget for the next 12 to 18 months, we have a very good understanding of what we think the metal price will be. We have a very good understanding of what input costs will be. Where we find ourselves exposed is potentially a strong move in the real. I think we saw that happen obviously very wildly in 2020 when COVID hit, and we saw the currency move from low threes to high fours, which had a hugely positive impact for us at that point. But similarly, when we moved into a heavy capital phase with Tucumã, we saw what that could do to us if it went the other way.
I think this slide really summarizes it quite nicely in terms of how we think about it. Obviously, we are not looking to get the exact number. It is about putting in a range. We use costless collars to do that. I think this demonstrates quite nicely how, yep, there are swings and roundabouts. There are days where, and months and quarters, where we will lose against the spot rates. But ultimately, from our perspective, when we think about our budget, we are still very comfortable because we are at a level that we can support. Then there are quarters, as you have seen in the last two quarters particularly, where that program has delivered quite significant gains to us. We will continue to try and be opportunistic. Obviously, you have to be a bit opportunistic.
The real has a very interesting relationship with the U.S. dollar because of the interest rate differential. The ability to capture that differential when you see opportunistic moves in the currency, whether it be local geopolitical news or whether you see some international turmoil drive currency markets. We try to use that to the best of our ability, obviously, to capture a range that we feel comfortable with rolling forward into the budget. Makko touched on the procurement. This is obviously one very happy outcome of the One Ero program that has been in place. I think context is important here. We obviously had a very decentralized approach to procurement up until a few years ago, and we really solidified a centralized approach last year with the One Ero program.
I think that has given us, as you see, stronger governance, standardized contracts, but also given us a much better view of what all three assets are consuming, where the exposure is in terms of certain supplies or reagents. Through that and through being able to negotiate now with bigger volumes, of course, bringing Tucumã into that mix has meant that we have a lot more volumes to negotiate against. We have been able to generate fairly significant savings, which is a great testament to the team down here.
Obviously, I think when you look at the balance sheet over the last few quarters, you have seen inventories grow, but I think that is twofold. One of that is the point we make about adjusting inventories for disruption. Certainly, the beginning part of this year, we saw significant global turmoil, shall we say, which created significant logistical bottlenecks, logistical challenges.
It was something that we were very proactively trying to manage, and we did that by building up certain inventories in certain reagents or supplies that we felt would be difficult to source if we saw a full-blown freeze in the global seaborne freight market. Obviously, as that settles down, we will work to bring that down. Of course, having a bigger asset base as we do, naturally, it requires us to carry greater inventories. I thought this was a slide worth putting on the table because we get a lot of commentary, and I get a lot of, there is a lot of noise about TCRCs. Everyone is like, "Oh, look at the spot TCRCs. They are minus 300 and minus three." Every week, it is about the TCRC.
I think what I wanted people to sort of understand is that the selling of concentrate, the TC and the RC, and for those of you in the room, I hope know there is a treatment charge and a refining charge. Treatment charge for a smelter, refining charge for a refinery. It is a cost that we pay ultimately because we are delivering, although we do not deliver a final metal, the historical pricing of the metal is the delivery of a final metal, and that cost is borne by us as the producer. When you think about it, there is so much more that goes into TCRCs because there are the payables and deductions, which nobody really focuses on.
A lot of people today sort of say, "Well, how with these negative TCRCs running in the market right now, how are smelters still surviving?" Well, they are still surviving because the deductibles and the payables that they have historically had in their contracts are allowing them to have huge wins on gold, silver, other materials they might have.
Similarly, when you look at the freight and the freight to different markets, obviously focus has very much been on China and China freight. But for us, for example, moving material into Europe versus China is a significant saving. Now, it is not easy to do that because obviously there is not amount of smelters in Western Europe or in Europe compared to the smelting capacity that has been built out in Asia. But if we are able to capture some of that benefit for ourselves, that can have a very big impact.
Right now as well, the counterparty mix is proving to be very interesting. Again, for context, when we acquired Caraíba, it was a domestic supplier to Paranapanema, and we went about changing that and introducing export sales. But our volumes are actually quite small when you think about it in the context of the global concentrate market. For us, it made sense to deal with traders because they gave us a lot of flexibility around timing. What do I mean by that? Well, if you are supplying to a smelter, they plan out their production and their inputs 12 - 18 - 24 months ahead, and they are very particular about their deliveries. If we, for example, put together a lot, 10,000 tons is a lot, and we miss a shipment by a couple of weeks.
Let us say a ship, and that is also driven by the ships moving around the world. We would potentially be up for significant penalties if we did not hit a delivery window into that smelter. Obviously, the traders have a very different approach. They have a huge book of material that they buy from lots of producers around the world. They are able to absorb that. Clearly, there is a cost that comes with that, but that cost is built into the TCRC that they offer you. For the longest time, we were very happy with that relationship, and we continue to be very happy with that relationship, particularly amongst the very large trading houses. But what we have now able to do, which is really exciting, is this year is the first year, and in fact, we shipped and delivered our first direct smelter material in late Q2.
That is really exciting because it allows us to create a bit of a mix between direct smelter business and trading business. We are able to do that because now we have the volumes, so having the two assets gives us enough volume to be able to offset any risk of delivery or timing of, let us say, a slight slip in the shipment schedule. That, again, kind of changes the way we think about how we sell the material and the overall value proposition. This is a slide that makes me very happy as CFO. Look, it is self-explanatory. Obviously, tremendous performance over the last six quarters from a peak leverage of 2.8 x on a gross basis when we were right at the end of, I guess, the Tucumã CapEx and the commissioning had just begun.
As Makko said, this was a key part of our strategy over the last few quarters. When we think about what we want to do with this business was to get ourselves below one times. We are there, and obviously, the numbers on the right really give testament to that. When you take your adjusted EBITDA from $216 million - $533 million over two years, or over 18 months, actually, that drives incredible performance in terms of your deleveraging. I think that then flows into this last slide, which is how do we think about the balance sheet? How do we think about returns to shareholders? Certainly, there is a lot of questions and thoughts around what are we doing in respect to returns to shareholders. The first thing I would say is, in paying down debt, we are actually making returns to shareholders.
We are lowering the debt burden, we are lowering the interest charge, and so that in essence is a return to shareholders or stakeholders in this business. As you can see, we are reaching a point where we feel over the next, say, two to three quarters, we will be in a position to pay down all that remains on our credit facility, on our revolver, which is $95 million, finish up the copper prepay, which we did just a chunk of two years ago. That really will allow us to be more thoughtful, and probably a bit more directed around how we want to begin to make returns to shareholders. We do that in the context of both thinking about Furnas. Furnas is, as you just saw, an incredibly exciting project for this business. But we want to be really thoughtful about how we fund that.
When you look at Tucumã and we talk about the debt here, we were very thoughtful about putting in place a high-yield bond when we funded Tucumã. Obviously, our timing was tremendously advantageous, given the current interest rate cycle at that point in time. But today, we have a lot more levers to pull, not least of which is the tremendous cash generation that we have from this business. We will continue to think about that. Obviously, Furnas is progressing very quickly. But certainly, I think you are going to see us come back to our shareholders and stakeholders here in the next short while around what we think we are going to do in terms of shareholder returns. That is me. Thank you.
Perfect. We thought we would do something a little bit different here. Courtney and Eduardo have prepared a couple slides to talk a little bit about the current climate in Brazil. Then I thought what I would do is ask all the controversial questions ahead of our Q&A about Brazilian politics. Over to you, Eduardo and Courtney.
I am going to take a step back before we jump into why Brazil is destined to be a partner of choice around critical minerals. I want to talk about some of the historical context around why governments today are so focused on critical minerals. If you think back to the 1970s and the oil markets back in the 1970s, OPEC, at its height, controlled or supplied 55% of the world's crude oil production. Today, across critical minerals, the top supplier of refined production supplies an average of 70% of the market. For copper, it is about 50%, and for rare earths, at the highest end, it is about 95%. Back in the days of the oil embargoes and oil crises of the 1970s, OPEC's control of the market influenced everything from energy and foreign policy to industrial strategy.
That is why you are seeing a proliferation of government policies around critical and strategic minerals. The other important point is that it is not as simple as building processing capacity domestically in any country. What is happening now is there has also been a race to secure the feed for those smelters and refiners. The pool of concentrate available and the concentrate coming into the market that is uncommitted is shrinking.
Last week, Japan announced a transaction with Codelco, where they provided, I think, $666 million of financing, and in exchange, they secured long-term concentrate offtake. This is happening across the market. What Brazil has done and what Brazil recognizes today is that it is in a position of strength around critical minerals. You have strong policy momentum in Brazil. It is a great jurisdiction, a great mining jurisdiction.
In fact, the Fraser Institute named it the most attractive jurisdiction for investment in the region around mining. You have a strong workforce, you have the infrastructure, and so it is really well-positioned to take advantage of its place in the world and to become a critical minerals supplier of choice. Last week, Brazil also announced the national policy on critical and strategic minerals. Edu will talk more about this, but this is part of a continuum that has been going on for five years for Brazil to create some clarity around the regulatory and legal framework and to also provide some support and tax incentives to help build out the critical minerals capabilities in country.
Here we talk a little about why Brazil at this time has a very unique opportunity when you talk about minerals, mainly about critical minerals. Probably what I am showing there is not new for anyone, but I think it is important we review again. The first, the guys used to say that Brazil has in our geological deposits, all the periodical table, all the chemical elements.
We have a very rich deposit, and then with the new technologies that you can see now in the global market for different technologies is a very unique opportunity for Brazil to take a position as a leader of this process. The other is because most of our territory is not yet totally explored by a geological point of view. We have a lot of areas, mainly in the north of the country, that you do not have any exploration or any data about our deposits.
We are open to discover large deposits in many areas that is totally open at this moment. Although, as Brazilian guys, we are used to talking about some deficits in our market, in our regulatory jurisdiction, but when you compare with other countries and other potential producers of different minerals, Brazil has a very good position. We have a labor prepared to do the work that you need. We have agencies that can control the process, and in some way, we have a stable jurisdiction process what may create for the investors a stable scenario for make investments to develop the Brazilian industry in the mining sector. The last one is about the kind of energy that Brazil can support for all the mining producers. Brazil is one of the countries in the world that have the most renewable power generation supply.
We have hydroelectric supply, we have solar supply, and all the biofuels that we are using right now and give us in these discussions about green energy transitions a very special position when you compare with other countries that needs different sources of energy to supply the industries that is acting in this sector.
Now when you talk about what Brazil is developing to try to make this position more clear for the investors and for the companies, as Courtney mentioned, we just approved a new policy to try to incentivize and make a regulation for the critical mineral markets. It is expected that next Wednesday, the president should sign the final regulation that was approved by the Congress, by the Senate. We have here some main points that we can see in the law. If you go for the other, please.
This focus on try to develop a better environment for critical minerals is not new. When you come back in this timeline, you can see that in 2021, the Brazil government created what they called at that time, Câmara de Minerais Críticos. It was a specific agency to try to incentivize process and projects for developed critical minerals. Copper that time was one of these critical minerals.
In the end of 2021, we had just approved internally the start of Tucumã project. We applied for this Câmara to include our project in this set of minerals, set of projects, and was approved. Tucumã project, it was one of the projects that was included in the critical minerals Câmara. But what happened? We had the change of the government, and nothing happened with our project. We do not receive any different incentive to develop our project.
Some indications about a fast project to get the permits or some incentives to import equipment. Unfortunately, this project did not have a continuity, and we follow the normal project, and we deliver the project according the laws that you had that time. Now, this discussion come back with this new policy. We have here a timeline that I mentioned, and we should have the final process next week with the president signing.
What you are expecting at this moment from this policy? I believe all of you are looking what is happening and know that now you need more time, maybe months, maybe year, to have all the points included the policy regulated. Because you have a lot of definitions that need to be, let us say, defined by the government, by the council that you be create to fully implement this regulation. But what is the main points?
Number one, we should have more facility to get financing. This is really important mainly for junior companies that are starting to developing projects for critical minerals, because you have a fund to offer guarantees. We should have specific funds for this kind of a project, and then this can make easier the development of some projects. Tax incentives. You know that in Brazil, this is a very controversial point because all the time you have, but it's not applied, or you can take time to can use this. But mainly for projects that is included since the upstream into the downstream of the chain should receive more incentives, and then try to match the strategic goals that the government has about control, or at least assure the supply of the full chain of some critical minerals.
One point that is really important, and then you believe that this policy can help a lot, is about the priority of permitting. Is not make easy the process, but the idea is have a better coordination in the different levels of the government, federal level, state level, municipal level. What can make the permit process easier and then unlock some projects that with the current prices is very attractive in terms of economic results. What's important is that we are now creating not just a government policy, but a state policy.
What for a sector like our sector, where the projects take 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, we have a policy support this and have a better regulatory certainty can help the companies invest and bring more resources to develop this kind of sector that is very clear, is economically important for Brazil. The mining sector has weight in our trade balance very significant. Strategically, Brazil has very good reserves in strategic minerals, and if you can assure this regulatory certainty, for sure you can be an important player in this new market that you have for the critical minerals.
Perfect. Thank you, Eduardo. I wrote down four questions for both of you. If you could just give a brief answer before we move into the broader Q&A. Eduardo, this first one is for you. Even in the cocktail hour last night, there was a lot of discussion about the presidential election that's happening in October. It's obviously a controversial time in Brazil. But in your opinion, what is at stake for the mining industry in Brazil as it relates to the presidential election?
Marco, we have now very different candidates, different policy. What I think that's important, is clear that Brazil has a very unique opportunity. The point is how unlock this potential. I believe what you listen from both is that they are committed to try unlock this potential. Doing what? They mention things like about regulatory stability. I think it's important you have now this law that again, becomes a state policy instead a government policy, number 1. The importance in the trade balance is another point.
When you look the fiscal situation of Brazil continue generating fiscal surplus, it will be really important to at least stabilize the economic situation. The other point it's about how we can make the inflation under control, trying to bring some materials for our producer. I believe that for the mining, both of the candidates should not impact directly. I believe that by what they have been talking, for both mining sector, it will be very important for all the government that you have.
Okay. Thank you, Eduardo. Courtney, this question is for you. Taking a step back from Brazil for a minute. You've been working closely outside of Brazil, with the Canadian and U.S. government, among others, on broader critical minerals policies outside Brazil. My question for you is, and we have this discussion a lot, what will it take to turn white papers into action?
First of all, I want to say when I joined the company five and a half years ago, I never would've believed that I'd be sitting at a table with representatives from governments around the world to talk about critical minerals. The fact that we're having these conversations is mind-blowing. The other thing that's important is to recognize is that there's a ton at stake.
We are in the midst of a new industrial era that's shaped by electrification, digital infrastructure, AI. What's at stake is technological leadership. So there's a tremendous sense of urgency across governments around the world. The U.S. and Canada in particular, have slightly different approaches. The United States, over the last year, has announced about $30 billion in funds that are dedicated just to critical minerals. The United States approach is slightly more short-term focused.
They're very much looking for deals, dare I say, huge deals. The Canadian government is much more policy and partnership-focused and also more long-term focused. They've set aside about 2 billion CAD for a sovereign critical minerals fund. Their focus has been more around broadly South America with entering into different partnerships with Chile and Argentina. They are working on something in Brazil. I'm not exactly sure when that's going to be announced. The United States, again, much more transaction-focused. I'm sure a lot of people have heard about the serro Verde transaction. It's a raros company. That was announced, I think, last year. That provides about $565 million of financing for an expansion of production there. There's a tremendous sense of urgency, and there's a recognition that it goes beyond just policy.
Fortunately, there are deep pockets, and there are a lot of money behind these commitments that they're making. Ultimately, it's more than just financing. They're also going to have to provide other mechanisms like long-term offtake, price floors, basically guarantees of sales of the product. They're going to have to have strong partnerships with the countries that they're working with around ensuring that licensing and permitting is organized and streamlined.
Okay. Thanks, Courtney. Zooming back into the slide that we have here. Eduardo, maybe starting with you, and Courtney jump in, if there's anything here that you want to touch on from the outside Brazil perspective. This national policy on critical and strategic minerals, that has been signed by Congress and the Senate, has received both praise and criticism in equal measure. In your opinion, what do you think the biggest pros and cons are for this policy?
Makko, I believe that you have three main points. Number one, again, is because I think for the first time, we have it for the mining sector, a state policy instead a government policy. What should make it more stable, the rules for the sector. Number one. The second, I believe that one of the points of the policy is to try to have a better coordination among all the levels that a mining company needs to act to get permits. Federal level, state level, city level, because this is a real problem that you have today. Sometimes you receive priority for one level, but the other, due many other reasons, is not fully aligned with this, what make the process moving slowly to get the permits. I think this coordination will be very important.
Number three, that for Brazil is a point that all the time you discuss, this is what you have here. That is the regulatory certainty. We have yet some points. Everybody here knows the situation that you are facing in Pará State with the TFRM, some changes in tax and other points that sometimes change the rules, change the assumptions that you use in your feasibility study, then have this in a better way, I think will be another positive point for the policy. By now, we needed to wait the full regulamentation. But what I think that can be a negative point is because one of the points of the policies are creating of a council to have definitions about many different aspects of the policy.
Depends on the size, the red tape issues that you can have for the working of this council, the projects can suffer in some way. It is not fully clear yet, but the situation that you have right now, most of the federal agencies suffer with a lack of resources, human resources, technology resources. Then with this power in this new agency, this new council, if you do not have enough resources, this can make it more difficult. Although good indications in a positive way, I believe that this concentration in this council can be a concern, in my opinion, for the project.
What I would add is, generally speaking, when a government announces new policies and regulations, it is generally not met with excitement. I can absolutely understand why there would be skepticism and concerns around added bureaucracy. However, I very strongly believe that the country of Brazil has a tremendous opportunity before it, and they absolutely understand this.
This is a bipartisan opportunity, and the intent behind this new policy is to accelerate the expansion and capabilities around critical minerals. So on one hand, while if they get too prescriptive, that is certainly a risk. The intent behind it is to streamline and accelerate and expand. I am actually quite hopeful that, again, the devil will be in the details, but I am quite hopeful that this is going to be a positive for the mining industry.
Perfect. Thanks, Courtney. Maybe just one last question for you, Eduardo, before we get to the broader Q&A. Something that has been a topic for a few years here, and I know it is near and dear to your heart because I ask you every week about it. Labor productivity in Brazil, particularly for underground mining, compared to the rest of the global mining market, is low. You have been working at the federal and state levels, as well as the broader mining industry here in Brazil. What are you hearing around labor productivity in underground mining? Do you think that 2027 is the year that we might see a change in underground work hours for mining in Brazil?
Yeah. Well, in Brazil, Makko, as you know, the labor legislation is an old one. It's from the 1940s. In that time for the mining sector, the way that you used to mining that time and when you look what you have right now, it's totally different. The risk, the safety is a totally different scenario. IBRAM did a study and among the 10 majors economy, Brazil is the only that do not have a 12-hour shifts underground. Fortunately, now with the new technologies, smart mining, remote operations, the shaft that you can do in a very deep areas, this allows to continue producing. The change in the shifts will be very welcome, but it's a totally different scenario than if you look for 10 years, 20 years ago, that you do not have this kind of technology.
Most of the deposits that you have, not just in Brazil but in the world, it's becoming deep because the easy deposits, the underground with high grades is disappearing around the world. Every time you need to go deeper to get better grades. In Brazil, we already started this process. IBRAM have been supporting this discussion. We have now a congresswoman Brazil, Greyce Elias, that presented two bills to change the regulation. One is about the woman working in underground mining, about the maximum age to work underground. Another one is about to increase the time in the work of underground, 12-hour shift. This was filed in the Congress, but now stopped. Probably they will come back with these discussions after the election.
We saw it's a very positive way, will be very welcome for all the mining sector, all the sector that operate underground is asking for this change. In our operations, we changed the surface work. We started using the 12-hour shift, as you know. The results is very positive, both in productivity and both in the approval from the employees. They can have more free time.
They not spend too much time going, come back six days in a week. IBRAM tried to put this change in the discussions about the escala 6x1 that you have now in Brazil that should come back after the, maybe between the first and the second shift in the elections. We need probably you have a discussion to Senate to approve this, but unfortunately, the 12-hour shift was not included. I believe that after you have a new Congress, maybe the same or a new president, this matter, you come back to discussing. You have very robust arguments to these new technologies improving safety to approve a change in the regulations, is my opinion.
Okay, perfect. Thank you, Eduardo. We are going to take just a quick five-minute break, so don't go too far. We are going to put chairs up here. I will ask all the speakers to come up. We are going to do a monitored Q&A session, both here in the room and with participants live. My ask for all of you is that if you have a question, please wait until a microphone is passed to you, so those that are dialed in online can hear the question that you are asking. Okay. So a quick five-minute break. We will be back here in just five minutes. Thank you.
[Break]
Okay. Perfect. Thank you, everyone. Again, thanks, everyone, for sticking around with us this afternoon as we walked through our business and some of the things that we're very excited about. Hopefully, you found it exciting as well. As I said, we're going to go ahead and open up both the virtual Q&A and the in-room Q&A. For those of you that are here with us in person, my only request is that if you have a question, just raise your hand. One of our partners here that's supporting us in this event will bring you a microphone so that you can ask the question on the microphone. That way, the people who are dialed in can hear your question. Okay? With that, we will open the floor and the line for questions. Farouq will help, and Bruno will help us moderate the questions from the online Q&A.
Thank you.
Hi, guys. Ricardo Monegaglia from Safra. I have a couple of questions. I will try to be brief. The first one is on Furnas. We receive a lot of questions on how you could advance the project. You have Vale as a partner. The company, as you probably saw recently, is advancing the copper projects. So when we see the drilling phases already concluded, and we understand there is a timeline that has to be respected till you reach the FID. But I wonder if in any sort we could take Vale's example to believe that you guys could anticipate Furnas, and what are the required conditions for you guys to do that?
That is my first question. My second question, to me, at least, it was the first time I saw Odin District, and as you discussed, it has pretty similar characteristics as Caraíba. I wonder if you could give us some color on exploration, how much you plan to spend on exploration at that district, and when do you think we could see some initial results on drilling and eventually the project becoming more feasible? Or any other detail that you could share. Thank you.
Okay, perfect. Thank you. I will address the first question with Gelson, then we will pass the microphone to Mike. In fact, if I could just have one now, we will pass it to Mike to answer the Odin question. From my perspective on Furnas, and Gelson, please support me if you see it differently. I think as you saw, we are two years ahead on drilling. That is something two years ahead of the original schedule that we envisioned under the earning agreement. I would say that from an engineering perspective, we have been moving things very rapidly in parallel, right? So when you think about the stage gate from PEA to PFS and FS, we see that much as a continuum in our organization rather than defined stage gates.
There's certain areas that we're well advanced on, other areas that we just simply need the hours and the personnel to do the detail engineering to get us to that feasibility stage. But it's something that we're working very aggressively. I would say that on the things that are directly in our control, drilling, obviously we're well ahead of schedule. Engineering, we're putting maximum effort and resources allocated to doing that as fast as possible. Then there's the things that we need to do in partnership with the environmental agencies, with our local stakeholders.
Those are the things that are going to take time. When we look at that 2029 FID decision, that's taking into account the external factors that we see in front of us. Certainly, in many conversations, and we have this incredible partnership and relationship with Vale. Obviously, we're all incentivized to move things forward. But we have quite a bit of engineering and man-hours to do, and then we also have all the work to do on the environmental and permitting side as well. I don't know if, Gelson, you've got anything to add there, but that's the way that I see it.
Makko explained most of the topics, and I agree with you, Makko. As we discussed previously here, we at Ero, we do work in parallel, so there are many aspects for this project that it's in parallel work. On the engineering and test work, confirmation of the processing routes has been very different. What I'm saying, different in terms of what we have added in the last few months, the amount of test work completed, and confirmation in what we discussed. This is very positive, which feeds into the PFS. I would say there are some elements of the project today which are already in the PFS level, and some areas that we will expedite such that when we get to the end of the PFS, I would say a portion of the work will be in a feasibility study.
That's the parallel work that we're talking about, especially for de-risking, right? Collecting data in terms of geo tech and hydro, that influences the engineering aspect and mine plan and design. But also looking at the infrastructure, decision points related to location, drilling for combination, where the plant is going to be located, where the team's facility will be located. All of that we can expedite, right? In terms of power as well, with studies, logistics. We've been in contact with Vale in various aspects in there.
But as Makko said, there are a few areas which are beyond our direct control, and we keep working with stakeholders, and license is one of them. We have a very good relationship with SEMAS, not only for Furnas, but everything that actually happened before at Tucumã, we've taken that relationship to Furnas as well. The target will continue the same, 2029, and we have to stay tuned on the advancements that we do as we progress this year and next year.
Mike, over to you on Odin.
On Odin, I think the things that are really encouraging there are the rocks are basically the same. The ultramafics are very similar to what we see at Caraíba. The ultramafic rocks are the same. The ages are the same, so we are very confident that we are looking at the same kind of mineral system, and the wall rocks are very similar. There is a lot of research that has been done on how discoveries progress. Often, you will hear numbers about a decade. You will see a decade that it takes to go from discovery or working in a district to making a significant discovery, because you need to have people that understand those districts. You need to put in enough work to really make something, to understand those rocks and understand those systems to make a discovery.
The fortunate thing here is because this system is so similar to Caraíba, we have 10 years of experience and a lot of drilling and a lot of personnel experience within the group to understand what makes an anomaly that is worth drilling and what makes an anomaly that is not worth drilling. I think it is very hard to predict the pace of a discovery, but I do think that we have learned a lot about those systems. I think the first phase of the drilling, to me, what was very encouraging was we were drilling ultramafic rocks with sulfides, with nickel, with copper, probably with PGEs, maybe cobalt. That is a very early sign to be drilling sulfides in your first few holes of a program. We are 3,100 m in. We have about 7,400 m budgeted to go to the balance of this year.
We're going to be reassessing the targeting, so understanding the geometry of those zones is really important. The next phase of drilling is how do we take what we've learned so far and then apply that knowledge to the next phase.
Good afternoon, you all. I'm Rodrigo Gotardo from BTG Pactual. Firstly, I'd like to thank you for having us here on this great event. Thank you all for having us here. My first question goes towards the encouraging, the leveraging the company has delivered over the last quarters, and of course it will continue towards the year-end, right? Apart from Furnas developments and possibly repaying these senior notes, Ero Copper's team today has told us about the shareholder remuneration, possibly this program, right? So I'd like to ask you to give us a little bit of more details on this possible remuneration. So when you plan to announce it, in what magnitude can we think about this program, which you could view in a very positive note? If I may, a second question, right? For sure, we have many brownfield, many nice brownfield initiatives in Ero Copper's current operations.
You have Furnas providing this long-term growth to the company. But as of now, we see Tucumã and Xavantina with shorter life of mines. How is appetite for M&A in Ero Copper's company for the next coming years? How is this appetite? We have some preference for some commodity in specific terms and some preferences for the look of this possible transaction. Thank you.
Yeah, both great questions. I'll let Wayne handle the shareholder returns, I think, and then I'll come back on the M&A question. But I think one of the things that Wayne said that is really important to keep in mind is that, number one, we made a commitment to deliver the balance sheet. I think we're delivering on that. Number two, paying down principal is a form of return to equity. I think that's also important to keep in mind. Before Wayne jumps in, I just want to say that one experience that we have this year, and I'm sure all of you will appreciate this, is that volatility is the new norm, right? So it's very difficult to predict an exact date, but I'll maybe let Wayne talk to the thinking there.
Well, you kind of stole my thunder there. I'll pick up the point that Makko made. We are certainly on the journey to achieve the three pillars of what we set out to do, which was get the leverage ratio below one, repay what I would call the variable senior debt, which is the revolver, and then think about shareholder returns. One's gone, two is probably likely here in the next quarter or two, but that is very much dependent on the metal price environment. I was talking to somebody before we started today, last week we were at $6.60, and now we're at $6.20, copper price per pound. It's an incredibly volatile environment, driven by a single tweet or a single comment coming out. We bear that in mind.
Having said that, the business is in a very strong cash flow generation phase, regardless of what the metal price might do around a certain point. That point is going to come. Is it by the end of the year? Perhaps. Is it in 2027? Most likely. I think you will probably hear from us once we're through the third quarter, and we have a little bit more visibility on when and how we plan to return that capital.
Yeah, perfect. Just circling back on the M&A piece, I would say that, I think one of the things that I think that you saw today, and we hope to get across, is the breadth of the portfolio that we have. For sure, we look at opportunities to continue to grow our business. We've been very active in looking at opportunities. We take those reviews very seriously, but we also do that in the context of our own portfolio. When you just take a big step back and you look at what we've built over the last several years, we have three operating mines, we have a very advanced development project in Furnas, all the way through to a new greenfield area that we've been working on for the last several years to put together. Obviously, it's the first time that we've talked about it.
When we think about looking outside of our business at new opportunities, as I said, we do look at that, but we are doing that through the lens of the quality of our own portfolio. On your point on Xavantina and Tucumã, I would say that, I always take that comment in stride. If you just take a step back to Xavantina, when we started in 2017, there was no reserves and resources.
Today, combined total aggregate resource, 600,000 oz in reserves, 400,000 oz more or less in inferred resource, 1 million ounces of potential when you go drill that. As Mike showed today, a kilometer step out, still hitting the same mineralization. Similarly at Tucumã, right, hitting very high-grade mineralization at depth, working areas that are within our portfolio today, within 30 kilometers to try and extend that operating footprint that we have in Tucumã.
I would say, for sure we think about it, for sure we take those reviews very seriously. Fundamentally, we are a copper-gold business. If you look at Furnas, it is copper-gold. All of our assets are copper-gold. We do look very seriously in the Americas. As I said, we do that through the lens of the breadth of the portfolio that we have been able to build and hopefully showcase today with some of the exploration success that we are having across the group.
Hi. Question from Matt Murphy at BMO. Question on Caraíba. The range on throughput is 4.5 million - 4.7 million tons, grade 0.9% - 1.1%. How do you get to 50,000 tons? Because I think if you take the upper estimate of each of those, you do not get there. I am wondering what you see as the upside for that operation once you have the shaft at full capability and you have Surubim transitioning into N8 at Vermelhos, which I think should be higher grade. Can you possibly paint a bit of a picture where this goes, maybe beyond the three-year outlook as well?
Yeah, maybe I will start, and then Gelson can jump in here. Look, those are long-term averages. Obviously, if you look at the results that Mike put out in the deepening, we do have very high-grade zones within that ore body, so we are talking about large averages. I think that where I see the greatest opportunity at Caraíba, and we do see modest growth in terms of production output over the next three years, but it is really around what the shaft is going to unlock for us is greater productivity. Obviously, a little bit better grades in the deepening. But really driving margin out of that business, when you think about, okay, what does a 30% incremental improvement in productivity do in terms of costs? We expect that to be a pretty significant savings over the outlook period when that shaft is operational.
Looking at the portfolio of options that we have, right? I always like to say that when you take a big step back and you think about the mix of grades in our portfolio, right, from open pit, lower grade, but also lower cost, right? Grade tells one side of the story. Our open-pit mining cost is roughly 10% of our underground mining costs, more or less 10%-15%. You do not need very high grades from open pit to generate equal or better margins from underground. When I look at the overall portfolio, we are going to continue to have open pit contributions from our mines, as well as lower cost production once the deepening is online.
So look, I think if you look at the deepening project today, as I said in our Q3 conference call, sorry, Q2 conference call a few months ago, the last shaft that was built at Caraíba was built in 1986. We see that investment as being able to support the stability of the complex in Pilar for the next several decades. I think our operating plan certainly that's out in the market and our technical report shows that. It will vary year to year depending on the mix of grades. I do not know if you have anything to add.
No, I think you covered well there, Mike. I just want to add that when you look at the deepening area, the development will open new areas for exploration, and that actually can accelerate some of the areas for mining. That's a work in progress as we speak. That's why Mike was showing up some of the results in there, that are all the areas around the surface or close to the surface within Pilar as well, which are in exploration. We do not mention here, but it's part of everything that we do, what we call the brownfields, near mine exploration. So there's a lot of potential there. Just to finalize, it's not just about the grade, but also the capacity to deliver that tonnage and a very competitive price and the cost, right? So I think that's what it brings out to the Pilar in terms of advantage.
But then looking ahead, what we call the District of Vermelhos, that's what we call it now, especially with N8. N8, it starts as an open pit operation, but it's a lot of potential for underground. So there's a lot of growth capacity there, which is part of our plan. So I think that continuity in the drilling and the modeling, and also looking at the opportunities to basically take every advantage that we've got on that processing plant, that 4.8 million tons, I think that's what's going to drive the growth that I think you were referring to.
Hi. Marcio from Goldman Sachs. Thanks for the time, for being here with us today. A couple of questions on my side. The first one on Tucumã. Some great numbers you have shown in the last couple of quarters. You mentioned, the bottlenecking that was concluded, I think, in mid-year. So I think the question is, how have the mill performed over the last few months, considering what the work you have been done, and as you go into next year, you install the filters at the end of the year, what is the sort of ramp-up we should expect going into 2027? When you should achieve close to 100 throughput, capacity at the mill in Tucumã? The second question on Xavantina. Obviously, the grades on the concentrate are definitely remarkable. We've only seen mostly one quarter of it because of the rainy season.
But just trying to understand the level of confidence that you have for the remaining of the concentrate in terms of grades as well. If it's fair enough to extrapolate what you have seen in the first round, I think above or close to 30 g per ton. Thank you.
Yeah. A few things to unpack there and just keep your microphone in case I call back on you to go through those again. But starting with Tucumã. Yeah, look, the mill has continued to perform well. We saw that, right? You saw that on the chart, the continued improvement in performance. Gelson spoke to some of the technologies that have driven that performance, and he also mentioned that that filtration capacity, with the filters in Brazil now, we expect to exit 2026 at that full run rate. I would say and are chasing down opportunities to continue to de-bottleneck the plant as we did at Caraíba this year. So stay tuned on that. Things are progressing well. We will obviously have the opportunity to talk about, in greater detail, about plant throughput on the back of our Q3 call, and how that project is progressing.
But I would say the mill continues to perform well, in line with our expectations. Xavantina concentrates, I might have missed the middle one, but we can come back to that. Xavantina concentrate grades. Yeah, look, we came out with initial resource. It was 29,000 oz based on what we were able to sample at that time, which is about 20% of the available volume. And I believe that that had a grade of about 37 g per ton for that initial 20%. If you look at what we have shipped to date, we have been around 35 g per ton. That obviously includes that initial material as well as some residual material, and we will talk about the total volumes in arrears on our Q3 conference call. But I would say that we have got a lot of confidence in the grades that we are seeing coming out of the concentrates.
So for what we have so far, right? So to extrapolate that out in the future, we obviously do not have sample data to do that. So we do not know with 100% certainty. But if you look at that original estimate versus what we achieved, and you look at what we have shipped to date, those grades reconcile pretty well. And so we are feeling good about the performance. Particularly on the back of Q2, we saw a nice increase in production volumes, right? That came with the installation of that filter press and dryer. And I would say that we mentioned this on the Q2 conference call, but we are feeling good about how that operation is performing in terms of the gold concentrate operation. And again, all that will be reported in arrears in our Q3 call. Did I miss one? I missed one of your questions. There was three.
No. I mean, Tucumã current run rate and expectations of ramp-up and also Xavantina. That's great. Thank you.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
Maybe we'll take a minute here and take some questions from the webcast as well, and then we'll go back into the room. This is coming from one of our investors on the webcast, and the question is about technology. Their question is that you've touched on technology through your presentation. Can you give us some details about some of the benefits that you're already seeing from implementing that technology or the different technologies across the operations?
Can you repeat just the last part of the-
The actual benefit that we're seeing across our operations
Understood
From technology, yep.
Yes. The application of the technology, as I mentioned during the presentation, have been very focused on key aspects across the organization at Caraíba, Tucumã, and Xavantina. These gains that we're getting in terms of productivity or in safety and also reduction costs, they actually have been built into our plans. We can see that on a monthly basis, and then as we progress further. Definitely some of the examples that I used here before, for instance, where you have human error in terms of drilling, especially in the face, that actually has been removed, which means that we're drilling more effectively. We are taking less time. The blasting becomes more effective as well with less over break or under break.
That's also part of the gain as we speak, and the same as in Tucumã when we get replies from the models that we've got in AI, which is guiding our teams on-site in decision-making on the spot. That actually has been built, and we're quantifying that as we speak and put into our future plans as well.
Thanks, Gelson. I will do one more question here from the webcast and then pass it back into the room. This question is regarding Xavantina, and the question is, now that you have converted the mining to mechanized mining, what are the opportunities for growth at Xavantina?
Yeah, maybe I will touch on this, and then Gelson can jump in here. I think the most obvious place to look for growth at Xavantina is in the excess mill capacity we have, right? We showed that we have 300,000 tons of mill capacity. Over the three years average, we do not use that. We see the largest opportunity of being able to better match the mine output with our mill capacity. That obviously takes additional development, additional infill drilling, which we are doing now. It also takes the things that we have already done, which is putting equipment, getting the workforce trained, putting in ventilation and cooling, to be able to access larger volumes from that operation. I think the results that Mike showed today give a clear indication of why we are heading down that path, right?
We see an ore body that is continuing to remain open in almost every direction. We have a lot of excitement about what we are doing there in terms of being able to get higher mine volumes. I think some of those intercepts also showed that, particularly as we get deeper in Santo Antonio, we do see increased ore thickness, and so that will also have a net result on driving volume eventually when we get development and access to those levels. I do not know if you have got anything to add there.
Makko, I would just add that on top of what you said, in terms of the mineralization thickness, it opens up a new area for us in terms of how fast we develop. Of course, with the mechanization, we got support being done by the machine today, and that expedites everything, right? It expedites the development rate, it opens up new areas for mining, and that is what we are targeting now. Similarly to what we have done in Caraíba, when you have got the mill capacity there, we want to fill that mill and then opening up new areas for the development, increasing mining rates. I think that is the biggest opportunity within Xavantina today.
Hey, everyone. Guilherme Rosito from Bank of America. Over here. Yeah. Hello.
It's impossible to tell. Maybe just raise your hand so we can tell-
Yeah
so we can look at you when you're asking a question. Thank you.
Yeah, no worries. I have two questions. My first one is on Tucumã. I think there was some very exciting news on Mike's slides and potential underground resources. I was wondering if you could comment a bit on that and what you guys have done in terms of exploration. It's been a while since you declared reserves on Tucumã. If there's any potential extension there, and what are you guys seeing more medium terms, possibility to extend life of mine, maybe move to underground?
My second question is more open-ended, Makko, to you. How do you see Ero Copper's equity story up until 2029, when we will be at 100% Furnas and delivering on that? Now we have a phase in which Tucumã is ramped up, almost there, and you're deleveraged. How are you guys seeing the equity story and strategy up until 2029 from here on? Thank you.
Yeah, those are good questions, particularly the longer-dated one. I think when you look at what we're doing at Tucumã, I think Mike touched on this a little bit. Obviously, we're ramping up capacity there. Everyone knows that. We are excited about that potential. As I said in our Q2 conference call, we are coming out with an updated resource and reserve on Tucumã this year before year-end. We do see opportunities, for sure, to increase the resources and reserves. That drill program, that 8,000 m that Mike spoke to, it is an inferred resource, so that won't be reflected clearly in the reserves. But as Mike spoke to, we will start drilling that here at the end of this year into early next year to really prove out. You might ask, "Well, with those kind of grades, why didn't you guys drill there?
It is copper price is $6.50. What are you guys thinking?" Which is a fair question, but I would just comment that it is really about you are drilling underneath the pit bottom in a pretty confined space of operation. This year we had quite a big pushback to do to get ready for the later phases of mine life, as we just physically did not have the space in the pit to be able to access the angles that we needed to drill that. That is something that we are looking at in Q4 of this year, into early next year to restart that program. Maybe take some of that inferred and upgrade it into higher categories so that for 2027 and beyond, we can start looking at underground opportunities.
I would just say, although Mike didn't get into it, we do have an advanced stage exploration project that we are drilling now, that is within 30 kilometers of Tucumã. Stay tuned on that, I would say. That is something that we still need to do a lot more work on, but it is an area that we are encouraged because of its proximity and because of the apparent mineralization, at least on surface, but we need to do more work. Fast-forwarding to 2029, what does the company look like at that stage? I think I mentioned this on stage earlier, as the first employee of Ero Copper, I think one of the things that we have been able to do consistently over time is put options in place, that have crystallized into real shareholder value over time, right? One of those being Furnas, right?
That was 4 years of effectively discussion until we started drilling there and thinking about how to do that with our partners in Vale Base Metals. When I look at the portfolio that we have today, in particular around Odin and some of the regional work that we're doing around Caraíba, I think that we've got enough in place in our portfolio to continue to create a lot of shareholder value organically. What that exactly looks like over the next three to four years, very difficult to say exactly, but Mike and the team are putting the effort and the work in place to be able to position the company for future growth. As I said, we continue to look externally for options as well. I'm reminded of the discussion we had back in 2021 when we updated the feasibility study of Tucumã.
We sat as a leadership team, and we looked at each other and we said, "Okay, what's going to be next after Tucumã?" Obviously, Furnas came about and you see the value that that brings to all of our stakeholders today, including our partners at Vale Base Metals. I would say those same discussions are happening today, right? Okay, what's after Furnas? I think the work that we've been doing over the last few years to build that pipeline of project across all stages is really reflective of that question, right? Which is, what are you going to do after Furnas? Today we're working pretty hard at developing enough organically in our portfolio to make sure that we can continue to deliver growth for our shareholders and deliver value for our shareholders with what we have today.
Hello. Rafael Barcellos from Bradesco BBI. Thanks for the opportunity. On the capital location, if I'm not wrong, you mentioned that depending on market conditions, and considering that the company will head into a net cash position by year-end, you could analyze a shareholder relation policy, right? In the next two quarters or so. That said, I want to bring Michel to this discussion. Maybe if you could elaborate a bit further on how do you see M&A as also another strategy here in the long term? Which sort of initiatives you could analyze, jurisdictions and also type of assets, exploration assets or more developed assets. Could be interesting to hear as the company heads into this net cash phase. As a second question for Furnas. Of the 11 drill rigs that you mentioned, how many are currently resource growth?
How many are reserve definition? If the geotech comes back worse than expectations, would you slow the resource growth or would you delay the PFS? Just wondering how do you balance those two things. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. A few things to unpack there. I do not think Wayne said net cash by year-end. I do not think he said that, just so we are 100% clear. What did you say?
I said net senior cash. Obviously we still have the bond.
Yes.
It would be net senior debt cash, right? If we pay off the revolver.
Yeah.
But we understand the point. The senior bond is a longer dated part of the capital structure, so we would be in a very advantageous position once we have the senior debt revolver paid off.
Yeah. As Wayne and I mentioned, it comes to shareholder returns, obviously volatility is the new normal, so let's see how the next several quarters progress, and go from there. On the M&A side, as I said, you asked a couple of specific questions, and I typically give the same response to shareholders. But as I mentioned, we do take reviews very seriously. We're pretty disciplined in a couple of different things. Number one is time zone. So Vancouver time zone to São Paulo time zone, that's 100% a hard limit in anything that we look at. I think all of us have worked for enough businesses with joint offices in Australia to know that's just a different regime, and we don't want to do that. Obviously, copper, gold.
When it comes to specific stages of opportunities, we do that again through the lens of our own portfolio, right? We've got, as I said, these incredible advanced projects. We've got incredible option value that we're building in Caraíba. I think if you take a step back and you look at the first slide of our presentation, Ero fundamentally, we're a deep value company, right? So in this market, finding deep value is pretty hard. I think it's much more opportunistic than to say a blanket statement what stage. But as I said, we have a corporate development team.
They have a job to do, and they do look at opportunities, and we take those reviews very seriously. But we're very happy with our portfolio. I think we have an incredible story in terms of Furnas and the options that we're putting on the table again, which I think are going to deliver shareholder value for many, many years to come.
I think there's a question about the Furnas as well.
Yeah. Why don't you go on that one?
Yeah. I'll have to get back to you specifically on where the drill rigs are exactly in terms of which ones are reserve definition and so forth. What I can share with you that you made a specific question about geotech, right? Everything so far since we published the PEA, not only in the geotech but also in metallurgy and the processing side, all the test work that we have done so far for the pre-feasibility study have confirmed everything that we discussed before. There's nothing out there that in terms of knowledge from the geotech side, which shows a more challenging environment, is actually confirming everything that we said for the underground, the geotech aspect also for the open pit and the underground. There is no major change there.
Similarly to metallurgy, as a matter of fact, we're actually closing in the circuit that additional test work we've completed, including for the free gold there for the concentration. Everything so far has been confirmed. I need just to get back to you on the exact numbers and where the drill rigs are located, but
I would say maybe just on the question of drill rig allocation, maybe just a strategy point here is that we decided as a leadership team with Gelson, Mike, and Rafael and brought our technical team on site, that the real objective in resource growth was not to add years 2025 and beyond, right? Clearly, we have a robust project with good economics, good cash costs. What we really sought to do with our resource growth program was target specific areas around planned infrastructure where we could augment the mine plan in that drop off that you see in the PEA, which is, I think, years 16 through 24, right? That was the objective, right? I think to maybe answer it from a strategy perspective, that was our objective. Still is our objective.
We'll discuss the phase III results when we get all those assays back. Obviously, for the PFS, our idea is to stabilize that production profile for as long as possible. I would say stay tuned for when that comes out, but that was the objective. To the extent that drill rigs, we start slowing down the drill rigs to focus on definition drilling and some of the more detailed technical aspects to really de-risk the project for the first few years. The drill rigs that are going away, it's not as if we're leaving. We don't believe the extension of mineralization, it's just that 20, 24 years of stable mine life, it doesn't really make that much sense to continue beyond that from a pure economic perspective in the same way that we did last year. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Hi, Stefan Ioannou from ATB Cormark. Just during the panel discussion, you mentioned, one of the government initiatives was to streamline permitting. Just wondering if that's something that may actually benefit Furnas going forward, or if it's something that's a longer date of sort of thing.
Yeah. I'll maybe turn it to Eduardo. I would just maybe comment that Tucumã was one of five projects back on Q4 2021 that was announced as a strategic minerals project. I would say it's certainly, maybe not expectation, but hope that Furnas would get similar treatment under this regime. It is a critical minerals project. I'll maybe let Eduardo talk about the specifics. Again, lots of details to iron out. I would say right now there's a, as we discussed or as Eduardo and Courtney discussed in the panel, you've got some targets out there without the framework in place. So there's lots of details to come over the months and years. But maybe Eduardo, if you want to comment.
In general, what you have in the policy should help us to speed up the process. The problem is that to become effective, the policy needs a lot of regimentation. That's not clear this you make it in months or years. Once in place, what you have in the policy will help us. But when this will be in place is a question that you don't have the answer yet. Then you needed to wait, probably what the guy said, that you wait, the new government can be the same or can be the other, to start to make the council that take the decisions and put in place all the regimentation. If this may happen, in a fast way, maybe we can use it for Furnas, is our expectation. But in this moment, we can't say with certainty. Okay?
All right. Is this on? Yeah. Hey, guys, Dalton Baretto from Canaccord. I'll try and squeeze in three quick ones here. Two on Furnas and then one on Odin. On Furnas, touching on that line of questioning earlier, 24 years of mine life, a drop off sort of midway. It's open in all directions. As you design the PFS going to the FS, are you contemplating an expansion at some point in time? Are you sizing certain infrastructure? Is that going to change at all from the PEA?
I'll answer this one, and Gelson. We talked about a number of value-generative options in the PEA. I think at a PEA stage, it's always really important to have those options because you know things are going to change as you do detailed engineering and your assumptions will change. I look at those as a really strong way to protect value and protect the investment as we move through advanced stages. I would say, fundamentally, to your answer, no, we don't see fundamental changes. We see incorporation of some really exciting value drivers that we talked about in the PEA and a few other ones that we're looking at. But again, those are really important to have in the back pocket to protect value to the extent that things change, including metal price and other things.
I would say stay tuned for some of those value drivers. We're working on those pretty aggressively now. That has the ability to, again, create some incremental value for the project.
Okay, and then second one on Furnas was that 40% stub that Vale's going to have, it's pretty subscale for them. Is there a prescribed pathway for you to buy that piece? Are those conversations happening at all? It seems to me like that's probably the best M&A you can do.
Yeah, look, I would say that obviously our partner is Vale Base Metals, not in the room, and we have a great relationship. We haven't asked that question because we're working in a true partnership to create value. I think if you look at other partnerships out in the mining sector where you're sharing best practices, sharing knowledge, sharing some risk, I think this meets all those objectives. What I would say is that from a pure copper growth perspective, I don't think necessarily that Furnas is subscale, right? You look at the objective that Vale Base Metals put out in the market for growth, and it's a very significant growth trajectory. I would say that every ton goes a long way to meeting those objectives. I think Furnas is an important part of that.
Obviously, I can't speak for them, but we're very, very happy with the partnership we have. As Gelson mentioned earlier, there's a lot of shared learning that happens between all of our teams in developing this project, as well as thinking about the region more broadly in terms of opportunities. I would say that we value that partnership a lot and we will continue working alongside Vale Base Metals to deliver this project to create value for our stakeholders, their stakeholders, and all the regional stakeholders as well.
Great, thanks. Then just on Odin, when I think back to the early days of this company and the focus on the Caraíba Valley, the airborne geophysics, I think it was IP at the time, was really, really useful. I mean, the mines lit up like a Christmas tree. Is there a plan to do the same thing over Odin?
Yeah. So at this point, if capital was unconstrained, you'd probably fly the entire district with drone mag and EM. EM was the tool that I think you're referring to. So looking at those conductors, picking out the mines, but also it was very helpful from an exploration standpoint. As we go into the 2027 budget season, we are considering that. At this point, we've mostly focused on geochemistry and mapping to highlight those mineral systems, and then once we've found them using ground geophysics. So it's very cost-effective to use our own teams for ground EM and also ground mag. So we've used those to go from initial target to sort of a drill-ready target once we've got that detailed mag and then EM conductors to target the drilling on.
But as we progress the project, that's certainly something that we'll consider, is doing more extensive airborne geophysics.
And it's an important question to ask again, because I think it ties back to our strategy. 90 cents of every dollar that we've made has gone back to paying down debt. So obviously, big priority, we committed to that. We're achieving those objectives. And I also think it's one of capital allocation, because to me, when I think about our portfolio and tying this all the way back to kind of where we are in São Paulo and some of the venture capital that exists here, there's a part of our portfolio which is venture capital. Potential huge returns, lots of value to be created, but very early stage.
And so when we think about allocating capital across all the priorities we have, including paying down debt, advancing our own operations, advancing Furnas, I would say that that part of our portfolio is really the venture capital piece where you want to keep expenditures low and really focus on the rest of your portfolio. And I think what Mike and the team have done there on a very, very small budget is pretty incredible. Across our entire portfolio, our regional exploration program is sub $5 million. And I think if you look at what we've done at Odin over the last couple of years, it's a tiny fraction of that total spend.
And we have drill rigs operating there now, so obviously the spending will increase, but I think the benefit of having many years to work that belt, to think about the geology, to do the stream sampling, I think has really put us in a position where we feel that now is the time to start putting a little bit more capital. But as I said, Mike and the team have done an incredible job ground truthing that entire area, that entire belt.
Yeah, I would just add, Dalton, if you think about the timing of exploration, when the company came into the Curaçá Valley, we already recognized that we had mines, nickel copper style mineralization. Really with Odin, the stage we're at is proving that concept, and so that concept is now proven, and then we can step back and think about how do we want to assess the entire district. Taking steps to go from a hypothesis to a kind of a concept to prove that concept, and now we assess the next steps from here.
A couple of questions about Xavantina, please, for Orest Wowkodaw with Scotiabank. Your slides still show that the gold concentrate sales will continue to H1 2027. Should they not continue well into 2028, assuming that the grade is the same? I know you've only sampled 20%, but why the H1 2027 target?
Well, I think it depends on how much we sell between now and year-end is the real direct answer to that. Obviously, you've seen the cadence that we've had. Talked a little about in the conference call about some of the monthly performance that we've had since we put in the filter and the dryer. We expect to have very strong sales in the second half of the year at Xavantina that help inform that thinking on H1 2027. What I can tell you is that we could extend through the entirety of 2027, for sure that's a potential. All I can tell you is the volume that remains, not the ounces. The volume that we see in front of us is something that we're trying to sell as much as we can right now. So it's difficult to put an exact date on that, Orest.
I would say that if you think about the average run rate that we've done over the last three quarters, I would say yes, but we're pushing pretty hard right now to sell concentrate volumes in the second half of the year that could probably reduce that timeline, but maybe increase the sales volumes relative to what you're thinking.
Is there any kind of physical constraint to those volumes, say, on a quarterly basis? Or is it pretty much you can ship unlimited from a drying perspective?
Yeah. Space and weather conditions would be the two prevailing factors, right? You think about we don't have infinite space, so if you put everything in a centimeter layer in infinite space and you had perfect sunny conditions, obviously, you'd dry that material as fast as possible. The physical limitations, which we'll see on site this week, are space available to dry, and also just the weather conditions. You can imagine, right now we're in the dry season, as we were last quarter. We're pushing very hard to get sales volumes out the door. The reason we installed the filter press and the dryer was to make sure that we continue sales through the rainy season. But for sure, it's not going to be as easy as it is in the dry season. Right?
Just a quick one for Mike on the same asset. You're mining below your installed throughput rates, your capacity at Xavantina. You've got a less than a 10-year mine life. How long do you think you need to really prove up that reserve to show that maybe you can produce at higher rates for much longer than the current mine life?
I'll comment on it and I'll pass the microphone to Gelson because he's thought a lot about this question as well. I would say that the exploration opportunities at Xavantina are not constrained by ideas or by geology. It's more been constrained by capital allocation and infrastructure for placing rigs. We see opportunities in Santo Antonio. There are opportunities in the upper part of the mine that can be evaluated. There's other ore bodies laterally that we will evaluate. We've been consistently drilling at about the same pace, so the exploration budget in mine has been fairly consistent year-on-year.
There's been an increase in drilling for definition drilling as we've mechanized the mine because it requires more drill definition, more pierce points to understand the resource. And I think having an understanding about the scale of the ore body and then how we allocate capital, that will certainly be a discussion going into 2027.
No, just to add what Mike said as well, is the development rates, because some of the areas to access and do drilling requires additional development, then you are competing that against opening up new areas for mining. We got to balance that out, and it is actually something that we are progressing very well as we speak. Stay tuned. We actually doing further studies on Xavantina, especially now with the results that we are getting, the performance that we are seeing on mechanization across the mining operations and planning for next year as well. I think that there is some possibilities there, but the study is ongoing.
Thank you.
In the interest of time, we are going to wrap things up here. I think we are right on target for our Q&A session. I first of all want to express my gratitude to all of you for joining us today, especially locally here in São Paulo, and those of you dialing in. [Foreign language]. No, thank you all so much. Really appreciate it. It has been a wonderful discussion. Hopefully, you learned a lot. Our team is available here, as always, and virtually, so if you have a follow-up question, please do not hesitate to reach out to our team. We are deeply thankful for the opportunity to talk to you today and looking forward to a really fantastic site visits on the back of our capital markets day. Thank you all very much. Also, thank you.
The one person I want to thank specifically, Bruno in the back of the room, has done an unbelievable job organizing this event. Thank you, Bruno. Very deeply grateful for the work that you do, and all of our partners here. Thank you very much