Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ivanhoe Mines Kamoa-Kakula 2023 Integrated Development Plan Conference Call. At this time, all participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Also note that the call is being recorded on Tuesday, January 31st, 2023. I now would like to turn the call over to Matthew Keevil. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. This is Matthew Keevil, I'm the Director of Investor Relations and Communications with Ivanhoe Mines. It's my pleasure to welcome you today to this conference call to discuss the outstanding economic results of the updated independent integrated development plan or 2023 IDP for the world-leading Kamoa-Kakula copper complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was announced yesterday.
On the line today from Ivanhoe Mines, we have Founder and Executive Co-Chair, Robert Friedland, President Marna Cloete, Chief Financial Officer David van Heerden, Executive Vice President Projects Steve Amos, and Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations Alex Pickard. We will finish today's event with a question-and-answer session. You can submit a question using the Q&A box on the webcast page as well as through the conference operator via your phone line.
Given our time constraints, we will unlikely be able to answer every question. Please do contact our investor relations team directly for follow-up. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements.
Details of these forward-looking statements are contained in our January 30th and January 31st news releases, as well as on the SEDAR and on our website at www.ivanhoemines.com. It is now my pleasure to present Ivanhoe Mines Founder and Co-Chair, Robert Friedland, for some opening remarks.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this IDP call for 2023. It's occurring in about the 26th year of our efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When we started, there was nothing there. The country was engaged in a civil war. The degree of human suffering and privation in that part of the world was difficult to describe. With a very long, dedicated effort by a team of visionary geologists working through several changes of government, this grassroots discovery is now actually the best copper development in the world.
It is actually the best copper development in the world. It's not captured in a traditional NPV model, which assigns an 8% or 10% discount rate to the enormous cash flows and wealth and opportunity this development will bring the Congolese people or any of the other stakeholders associated with ownership in the company. If you assign an 8% or a 10% discount rate to an asset that will run for 50 years, you're paying me nothing for anything that happens after year 10. That's crazy. You'd have to sell the stock.
If I sold you my mine and had a 50-year life and you assigned an 8% or 10% discount rate, you'd have to sell it back to me for $1 after 10 years because an NPV model does not capture the inherent value in a tier-one asset in a commodity our world desperately needs. I'm calling you from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I've been doing a lot of traveling.
It's 6:30 P.M. in the afternoon here, and I'd like to salute the incredible team of people that have worked for the last 20-odd years to bring this magnificent asset into a period of continuous growth in a way that has never been achieved before, in a way that empowers women, in a way that uses hydroelectric power.
So there's virtually no global warming gas generated in the production of the copper metal, in a way that's training young Congolese people who comprise the vast majority of the labor force, in a mining effort that really has heart and soul as well as numbers that cannot be captured in a sort of spreadsheet.
With no disrespect to my analytical friends who only have a day to respond to a 35-page series of numbers, this mine and its efforts and the growth of Ivanhoe Mines can only be appreciated by coming and visiting the sites and talking to the people firsthand and seeing what's going on firsthand. This is the highest-grade major copper mine in the world, and there'll be a lot more found in this region.
This is the commodity the world desperately needs if we're gonna leave our children or our grandchildren a cleaner, cooler world. This copper has to be mined somewhere. I just noted today that the Biden administration put the final nail in the coffin on the Pebble Mine in Alaska. Other mines are being legislated out of existence on places that are just too dangerous to invest.
Southern Peru, for example, is in a state of near civil war as we speak tonight, and Peru is the second-largest producer of copper metal in the world. Chile has been unable to grow production. Despite decades of capital investment, their production is actually going down. That's the largest copper-producing region in the world. In short, the great future for metal production doesn't lie in Russia, it lies in Africa.
The heart of Africa is the Congo. Just as Barrick bet the company on that incredible gold mine called Kibali, the Congo is the brightest place for any mining company to go and operate if they want to light a lamp that will show the world you can find the copper metal we so desperately need. Hats off to all of the people that have brought us this far.
You'll meet some of them in the upcoming video, and I'll try to hang around for any questions and answers at the end. I'm robert@ivanhoe.net. We're heading to Ndaba after some tours of the mine for the next few weeks, and we hope all of you accept our heartfelt invitation to come visit Kamoa-Kakula and see Kipushi and Platreef as well. With that, over to you, Matt. Let's roll that video.
Thanks very much, Robert. As Robert noted, we're just gonna play a brief video now that's gonna bring a little piece of Kamoa-Kakula to you, right now, and you can meet some of the great people that are operating the mine. There may be, for those on the phone line, about a 15-second delay in the audio starting up, so do bear with us and the operator. I will run that video now, and we will see you on the other side. Thanks very much.
Good morning and good afternoon, everybody. This is Marna Cloete, President of Ivanhoe Mines, broadcasting from Johannesburg. I'm always so proud when I watch these videos and think that I was part of the team that achieved this. We theme today's presentation a 26-year odyssey of discovery.
What exactly is an odyssey? It is a long journey full of adventure or a series of experiences that give knowledge and understanding to someone. The discovery and subsequent development of Kamoa-Kakula was most certainly both. You can go to the next slide, Matt. I still recall my first journey to Kamoa-Kakula when there was just a single dirt track leading into the bush.
Today, after $2.9 billion of investment as at September of last year, the results speak for themselves. We have achieved many milestones along the way, but none of this would have been possible if it wasn't for the support of the DRC government, who is also a 20% shareholder in Kamoa-Kakula.
From first production to September of last year, we have generated $1.5 billion in EBITDA, and we have unprecedented contained copper in our stockpiles to the tune of 165,000 tons. All this through the development and subsequent extraction phase one. During this webinar, Alex Pickard, my colleague in London, will talk you through the findings of our Integrated Development Plan that boasts an extraordinary Net Present Value of $22 billion. 26 years ago, this ore body was a sleeping giant.
It's through the drill bits and hard work of many dedicated people that we managed to unlock value, not just for our shareholders, but also to our stakeholders surrounding the mine. We can go to the next slide. This great discovery enabled Ivanhoe Mines to create ancillary value.
Through the refurbishment of the government-owned hydropower facilities, we added an additional 250 MW to the grid. We also supply portable water to over 90% of the households in our 400square kilometer I now hand over to Alex Pickard to take you through the results of our 2023 integrated development plan.
Thank you, Marna, and good day to everybody on the line. I will now take you through a few slides on the highlights of the Kamoa-Kakula life of mine study, which we call the Integrated Development Plan 2023 or the IDP 23 for short. I'd just like to start by saying that it's not easy to summarize what is an incredible volume of work into a few slides.
I would highly recommend that the audience read our press release that we put on the tape yesterday, as well as the technical report that will be filed within 45 days, on SEDAR. Next slide, please. This slide is really just to set the scene in terms of what is included in the IDP.
In fact, it's two studies, the first of which is a pre-feasibility study covering the phase three and four expansions, and the second of which is a preliminary economic assessment or PEA, which entails effectively a 9-year life of mine extension to the PFS, which already has a 33-year mine life.
If I could direct you to the graphic on the right-hand side of the page. This really just shows all of the mines and infrastructure that we will build on the full 400 square kilometer Kamoa-Kakula mining license area, and all of this is covered within the IDP 23.
Starting with the blue box, as you can see at the bottom of the page, we have the Kakula mine, which today is producing over 400,000 tons of copper annually, as well as the Kansoko mine, where we are currently ramping up for much larger operations. The Kakula mine will very soon be feeding up to about 9.2 million tons per year of high-grade ore into the Kakula concentrators.
Phase one and phase one, where we are basically complete in terms of the debottlenecking. We really are in the last month or so of installing the debottlenecking infrastructure. All of this infrastructure in the blue is installed and completed today.
We start to look at phase three. Phase three, you can see in the green, we bring the Kamoa phase three concentrator online in 2024. That's located about 10 km to the north of Kakula. That phase three concentrator will be fed at a rate of about 5 million tons per annum from the Kamoa one and two mines, which we are opening up right now close to the concentrator.
You can see those highlighted in the yellow boxes. A very critical part of the phase three expansion, it was mentioned in the video, and I will come back to it later on, is the 500,000 tons per annum direct to blister smelter that we are also targeting for commissioning in late 2024, that's located next to the existing Kakula phase one and two concentrators.
The smelter will be fed from a blend of concentrate produced at both the Kamoa concentrators and the Kakula concentrators. Moving to phase four, towards the end of the decade, we will expand the Kamoa concentrator capacity by double, so from 5 million tons to 10 million tons with a parallel concentrator known as phase four.
All of this infrastructure that I've described falls under the scope of the PFS study. What this entails is a massive increase in the reserve base that we're including across the Kamoa-Kakula project, over a 100% increase compared to our previous study, which really defines the decreased level of risk that we see in these estimates. Finally, just to mention the PEA again, that's effectively a life of mine extension to the PFS.
The way that we do that is by opening up four additional mines in sequence. You can see them highlighted in the orange towards the north of the Kamoa mining license. They are called Kamoa three, four, five, and six. These are largely inferred resources today, but of course, we will drill them as needed to a greater degree of accuracy as we continue to produce from Kamoa and Kakula.
Next slide, please. That was a lot of detail and description of all the infrastructure, but here you can really see the ramp up to 19.2 million tons per annum in a graphical format. Where this is slightly different from previous studies is that we historically looked at doing this in five phases of roughly 3.8 million tons per annum each.
Where we are today is that we have phase one and phase two doing 9.2 million tons per annum, and then we're adding a further two phases at 5 million tons per annum each. Four phases overall, which is more capital efficient than what we previously looked at. I think also on this slide, it's worth pointing out that we will have an increased contribution from Kakula in the early years.
Today at the mine, we're working very hard to put in additional underground infrastructure, which will allow us to ramp up Kakula to between a capacity of 8 and 9 million tons per annum. This will effectively support the full capacity of the phase one and two mills, together with the surface stockpiles at Kakula that we've mined and effectively already paid for, in our cash flow.
The effects of expanding the contribution of Kakula is to improve the grade profile, in the first 5 or 10 years of mining, which you can see quite clearly from the red line. Eventually, as Kakula starts to decline in terms of mining rate, Kakula will be supported by a new high-grade mine, which will be established at Kakula West.
Finally, maybe just to note on the timing of phase four, you can see here we've modeled it at 2030 in the studies. The reason for this is really just to create a steady stream of concentrate feed for our smelter, which you will see in the next slide. Depending on the copper markets environment, we can accelerate the timing of phase four.
You know, the only real critical path item is further investment in DRC power rehabilitation, but we already have plans that are well advanced in that regard. Next slide, please. This is zooming in on the production profile, which is showing copper and concentrate. Of course, a lot of that concentrate will be refined further to be blister anode copper.
In terms of the production profile, I think this is where we've made a big improvement on our previous studies. Not only has the ramp up of phase two and three happened way ahead of our original schedule, but we've also managed to sustain a higher production profile for much longer. After phase three, we're looking at production in excess of 600,000 tons annually of copper for over 15 years.
Bearing in mind, during this period of time, the mine will be producing a huge amount of cash flow. You know, we have it modeled at well over $3 billion of EBITDA annually. You can also see the green line, which is the 500,000 ton production level. It's anticipated in this study, including the PEA, that Kamoa-Kakula will maintain that level for close to 30 years. That's what really sets Kamoa-Kakula apart as being a truly tier one multigenerational mine.
Next slide, please. This slide really just puts that in context on a global scale. You can see the largest copper mines in the world are shown here. This is 2025 data, and they are sorted by the production scale and the grade. You can clearly see that Kamoa-Kakula will be the fourth largest copper mine in the world, and it will be for a long period of time.
But also operating at a grade that is multiples of the other major copper mines. The bubble size that you can see represents the measured and indicated resource, which shows that Kamoa-Kakula really is among the biggest deposits out there, and we're still not finished in terms of exploration on the license and in the Western Foreland. We mentioned the smelter quite prominently on the video.
That's because, you know, we really firmly believe the smelter is one of the most important and value accretive aspects of the whole of the phase three project, and actually is the thing that will really sustain Kamoa-Kakula as a tier one mine for generations. This just touches on some of the highlights. You know, compared to the mine and the concentrator, the smelter is an enormous construction project of significant complexity.
You know, with that in mind, we're very pleased to report that the capital cost is still coming in under $1 billion at about $900 million here. There's a bit of allowance in addition for contingency and so on. It's also worth considering that this number is based on commitments and orders that we've already made.
We're expecting the key equipment to start arriving over the course of this year, and the foundation works and the civil works are already well underway. We have a high degree of confidence in that number. We mentioned in the video we'll be producing 500,000 tons of blister copper anode.
That's actually a target spec well in excess of 99%. That will be the largest smelter of its kind in the world and the largest smelter in Africa. As well as the production of the anodes, we will also be producing roughly around 700,000 tons of sulfuric acid as a by-product. The sulfuric acid is in huge demand in the DRC.
There's a captive market consuming around 1.4 million tons annually, which is mostly from oxide copper operations that use the acid for SXEW for leaching. Recently, we've seen prices as high as $500-$600 per ton in Kolwezi, although in this report, we are forecasting much more conservatively at about $150 per ton long run.
Finally, I think probably the biggest impact of the smelter overall is in terms of the logistics and the shipping. Not only is it much more straightforward to ship anodes than it is to ship concentrates, but overall, we will be reducing the volume of copper that we are shipping per unit of metal by more than half. That's effectively moving from shipping 40%-50% copper in concentrate to 99%+ copper anodes.
That obviously brings significant environmental benefits in terms of the amount of trucks that we will be using per ton of copper shipped. Also, we estimate a big reduction in our overall operating costs. Factoring in all of these things, the logistics as well as the byproduct credits, as well as the operating cost of the smelter, we are still factoring in an overall reduction of around 21% from bringing the smelter online, which brings our cash cost in at around $1.20.
Next slide, please. David van Heerden, our CFO, will shortly cover the nearer-term 2023 guidance and give some pointers in terms of our cash costs. This slide really shows the bigger picture impact of the smelter.
You can see on average, this is the first 10 years of production, and that includes two years without the smelter. We are averaging $1.22 per pound, so that places Kamoa-Kakula right towards the very bottom end of first quartile cash costs globally. As I mentioned before, you know, we feel that these numbers have been well estimated, but also there are areas of potential upside.
For example, you know, we have assumed a relatively conservative asset price. As well as that, we've assumed in our costs no material improvement in the logistics costs in the long run, which result from the opening up of the Lobito rail corridor to Angola. We know firsthand that this project is now very quickly gathering momentum.
Both of these factors are just examples, where we could have a significant positive upside on our cash cost. Looking at the capital expenditure breakdown, I will leave it to David to give the big picture, which will include all of our projects. This is the detail of phase three and phase four.
We believe that these numbers, particularly for phase three, are quite in line with expectations and where we have been guiding. You know, we've never seen material CapEx blows at Kamoa-Kakula. That should give investors additional confidence. I mean, firstly, you know, looking at what we did on phase one and two, where we came in budget both times. Secondly, the $3 billion number you hear, the number you see here is based on, orders that we placed.
Much of the CapEx has been committed. You know, the work is already well underway on site. We have a very high degree of confidence in our CapEx projections. Of that $3 billion, it's worth adding that we will spend roughly $2.5 billion in the next two years.
The remaining $500 million or so is more associated with sustaining the mining production profile at that rate of 40 million tons per annum, once phase three is in operation. That's in years 2025 and 2026 mostly. Finally, just a note on the phase four capital number. You can see that that's quite significantly lower than phase three.
This is actually very similar to the dynamic we had with phase two and phase one, where during phase one, we overbuilt a lot of the infrastructure that we needed in the production area. That didn't need to be duplicated in phase two. It's a very similar story when you look at phase four, where we are estimating a capital cost of $1.5 billion-$1.6 billion today. This last slide from me is really the conclusion. You know, I think Robert made the point very well at the beginning of the call.
You know, how do you place a value on a mine like Kamoa-Kakula, which will surely be one of the world's largest, and longest life copper producing assets, but also one of the most profitable for a long period of time based on the findings of the IDP that we are presenting here.
We believe that the near-term cash flow impact of Kamoa-Kakula is very much overlooked. You know, the long-term value is represented here in an NPV number. We are using an 8% discount rate. We think that 8% is steep, considering what we've delivered at Kamoa-Kakula so far and our cost of capital. You can see that despite this, the NPV of the mine is well over $19 billion.
This is based on a long-term price from the street consensus, that's $3.70 per pound, which is roughly 10%-15% below the spot price today. Looking at the spot price, the NPV increases to $23 billion. Obviously we are strongly of the view that this copper bull market has plenty of room left to run.
Perhaps just to add, this is showing the PFS. All of this is excluding roughly an extra $1 billion in terms of NPV today, which would be included by adding the inferred resources at the end of the mine life in the life of mine extension scenario. With that summary of the IDP, I will hand over to David to take you through our guidance.
Thank you very much, Alex. You can move over to the next slide, please, Matt. The 2023 annual production guidance for the Kamoa-Kakula copper complex is estimated at between 390,000 to 420,000 tons of copper and concentrate following the anticipated completion of the bottlenecking program early in the second quarter of 2023. Our cash cost guidance for 2023 is $1.40 to $1.50 per pound of payable copper.
This factors in an increase in the grid power tariff supplied by the DRC state-owned utility, SNEL, which was increased from approximately $0.06 per kilowatt hour to $0.10 per kilowatt hour from December 2022 onwards. That is still very inexpensive when compared to other power sources and the cost of power in other jurisdictions. The fact that it's green hydro energy cannot be overemphasized.
Kamoa-Kakula also continues to receive a 40% rebate on the power invoices, which repays the loan made to SNEL to rehabilitate the state-owned hydropower infrastructure assets. This reduces the impact of the power tariff increase on our cash costs. Our C1 guidance also assumes prevailing logistics costs based on estimated regional trucking capacity, as well as increased benchmark treatment and refining charges and an inflation in consumables and other inputs.
More important than the current guidance for 2023 is the financial benefits we expect from the on-site smelter, which Alex has already highlighted. According to the Kamoa-Kakula 2023 PFS, smelter commissioning is expected to drive a decrease in the average cash cost. From 2025, to $1.15 per pound of payable copper. Next slide, please, Matt.
We have regularly been asked to quantify the impact of inflation on our planned capital expenditure. On this slide is the answer. Importantly, the capital expenditure guidance is what we are guiding towards what we will spend and not the cash we will need in our treasury to fund our growth plans.
At current copper prices, Kamoa-Kakula phase three and future expansion capital costs is expected to be funded by operating cash flows generated by the copper complex. The Kamoa-Kakula amounts in the table are consistent with the CapEx requirements shown in the IDP 2023, which Alex just summarized. The annual EBITDA forecasted in the IDP of over $3 billion for the first 10 years really makes the required CapEx look tiny.
At Platreef, where construction of the phase one mine is underway, with the first production on track for Q3 2023, with Q3 2024. The $300 million stream facility have already in place have been fully drawn and are being utilized for the funding of the development of the phase one project.
We also continue to progress the battery project senior debt facility of $150 million with the mandated lead arrangers, that is targeted to close during the first half of this year. The phase two capital expenditure of $100 million at Platreef represents mainly the continuation of the sinking of shaft two and the construction of the shaft two headframe, allowing optionality for a possible acceleration of phase two, which is currently under review.
Construction of the Kipushi mine is also underway, with a processing plant scheduled for completion, also in Q3 2024. Long lead equipment items have been ordered and manufacturing is underway. Earthworks and civil construction activities are also taking place on surface.
Offtake discussions, including a proposed $250 million prepayment financing facility, have now advanced to final draft term sheets from shortlist listed parties and are also, and we are also evaluating a possible $50 million working capital facility for Kipushi. When comparing the estimates for Platreef and Kipushi to the 2022 feasibility studies, Platreef is still bang on the estimate, on the estimated initial capital in the 2022 FS.
The increase at Kipushi reflect work packages priced to date and it equates to an annual escalation of around 6%, which we believe is not off-market. As at the end of September 2022, we had approximately $663 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand. We are well placed to proceed with our growth plans, allowing us to take another big step up on all fronts in 2024, also to continue with exploration so we can further bolster our portfolio of tier one assets. I now hand over to Marna for concluding remarks.
Thank you, David. One cannot always quantify the impact of new discoveries such as Kamoa-Kakula. Will have on firstly, its communities, its host country, and on securing the metals the world will so desperately need for the green energy transition. NPV calculation is conventional in calculating an estimated underlying value for a finite period of time. Discoveries such as Kamoa-Kakula are transformational for companies, communities, and countries.
Our human capital and know-how in finding tier one assets and subsequently successfully developing those mines are not easy to quantify. Our team is set on continuous shareholder value creation. Just look at our track record. We discovered Kamoa-Kakula. We built phase one and two on time and on budget.
We are among the world's largest producers of the greenest copper in the world. We are ready for phase three, which will bring another step change in production and cost. Not to mention the execution of Platreef and Kipushi that is nearing first production next year.
We have already delivered significant cash flow and EBITDA that funds our future expansions. We pay taxes and royalties, we create jobs, and we are an overall model for greenfield exploration and mine development in the DRC and beyond. Thank you for joining us today. I now hand over to Matt for Q&A.
Thanks very much, Marna. We'll now begin the question and answer session. The way this is gonna go, first we'll handle the calls on the line and then we'll revert to the webcast questions as time allows. I'll now hand back to the operator who will populate the phone line, and we'll proceed with phone questions before moving on to the webcast portion. Operator?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question over the phone, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will then hear a 3-tone prompt acknowledging your request. If you would like to withdraw from the question queue, please press star followed by two.
If you're using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star 1 now if you have a question. Your first question is from Lawson Winder at Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, Robert, Alex, David, Marna, Matt, thank you for the presentation today. Exciting developments at Ivanhoe happening. I wanted to ask two questions. One was on the rail line that's being constructed through Lobito. I mean, that to me seems like a really tremendous opportunity to increase the logistics efficiency of this operation and improve costs.
I wondered to what extent that is being thought about with the longer term for this asset. Secondly, I mean, you posed the question, I mean, how do you value an asset like this? I'd actually like to ask the same question about Western Foreland and get an update on that. Anything you can provide in terms of exploration, spending plans for 2023 and, you know, looking down the road to exploration results and a potential, first resource. Thanks very much.
Thank you, Lawson.
Alex, why don't you-.
I'll take the first.
maybe I'll just take the first one.
Lawson, go on.
on the Lobito Corridor. Yeah.
Thanks, Robert. We are extremely excited about the prospects of using the Lobito Corridor. It's obviously a much shorter route for us to get our product to market, and it will significantly help with cost reduction as well as with some of the bottlenecks we are currently facing at the border. It's also a much greener solution for us to make use of rail instead of trucking.
We are in negotiations with the players on the corridor that's got the concession to be one of the key offtakers of that capacity. The cost savings have not yet been quantified, but it's definitely a development we are actively participating in, and we are sure that that will bring further cost savings to our cash costs. Robert, do you maybe wanna talk about Western Foreland or Alex?
Well, first of all, on the Lobito Corridor, any upside from that is not in this study that we've just announced. That's just a further reduction in global warming gas and a further reduction in cash costs. Not only in shipping copper out to the rest of the world, which the world desperately needs, but also bringing in consumables.
Like, if you're bringing in anything, it'll be cheaper to get it into the Congo. That will be transformative. Trafigura is the world's largest seller and trader of copper metal, they're in that consortium. This is part and parcel of driving the Democratic Republic of the Congo to being the most desirable location in the world to mine copper. This is something I accuse the Canadian analysts of being decades behind.
When I first said that I would rather mine copper in the Congo than in Chile, I got a lot of snickers. It was written about in the Financial Times of London as an absurd statement 3 or 4 years from now. Now we have a young 35-year-old Communist Party member in Chile. You can see that the Chilean industry has been unable to develop any meaningful expansion. The grid in Chile is not green. They burn coal, putting most of the grid. They're desperately trying to get some solar there, but there's a shortage of water. The same applies in Peru.
The railroad coming to the Lobito Corridor is just gonna make the Congo the most attractive place to mine. As we've said 100 times, if my mine is 10 times the grade of your mine, and our mine is 10 times the grade a la Escondida, the largest copper mine in the world, we're using a tenth of the steel and a tenth of the concrete and a tenth of the water and a tenth of the electricity, and we're generating automatically a tenth of the global warming gas per unit of copper.
It makes no sense to apply a 10% discount rate to Congolese copper production when it's the greenest place in the world to mine copper. We don't have ice or snow. We have a lot of young kids that are desperate to work.
I continue to insist that if I came from Mars in a flying saucer, I was sent here by my masters, obviously, I would go to Katanga to mine copper. I'm happy to tell everybody on this call, there isn't a major mining company in the world that hasn't been in touch with us, wanting to visit the mine or to figure out how to get involved in the Congo.
No exceptions. No exceptions. The Congo deserves a premium, not a discount. The analytical work is just flat wrong. Flat wrong. When you ask about the Western Forelands, we've already got 40 years of mining here today. Don't worry about the Western Forelands. We're gonna find a lot more copper there, and we'll tell you about it when we're ready to talk about it. Makoko has been announced.
The drills are turning. Our knowledge of the area is growing, we're in discussions with all manner of people that are interested in being involved. I think yesterday's news was enough. The greenest copper mine in the world, the highest grade copper mine in the world, 40 years of production, and it's not even drilled off yet. Everything ahead of schedule and under budget.
A management team that employs women and empowers local communities. What more could you ask for? That should trade at a discount. It's absolutely absurd to apply an 8% or 10% discount rate to this project. It just makes zero sense. Ivanhoe Mines borrowed money from the New York Stock Exchange. We did a convertible bond that was unsecured, with no security. It was 8 times oversubscribed at a 2.5% coupon.
Eight times oversubscribed with a 2.5% coupon. If our cost of capital is 2.5% unsecured, how can it make sense to apply an 8% or 10% discount rate? Take a look at that net present value as you reduce interest rate, you know, your discount rate down from 8 to 6 to 5 to 4 to 3 to 2 to 1.
You know, tech companies are modeled at a 0% discount rate, and gold companies are modeled at a 0% discount rate. There isn't gonna be any technological revolution without this copper. There isn't gonna be any electric car industry without this copper. It no longer makes sense that analysts are cowed into using a 10% discount rate or an 8% discount rate, which gives you no value for this asset after year 8 or 10.
It took 26 years to discover and build the asset. It's really, really hard to do this. It is literally as rare as hen's teeth. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell everybody on the call the only discount rate that makes sense for this asset is zero.
I think I would take pains to note that when BHP bid for OZ Minerals and when Rio Tinto bid for Turquoise Hill, an asset that we discovered, by the way, they paid a 68% premium because they know that those assets can't be captured in an NPV model. The largest mining companies in the world have thrown these NPV models out the window. They should be burned. They should be trashed. They should never appear again.
The managements of these banks that allow analysts to create these absurd models, they should just change their mind because the real-world asset of a tier one, the value of a tier one mine is much more than an NPV model, NPV modeling is not the only way to model a mine. The markets model great mines at a premium.
I think Oyu Tolgoi is going to be a tier one mine. Kamoa-Kakula is already a tier one mine. I don't think anything in OZ Minerals is necessarily tier one. In order to pay a 68% premium, those buyers, BHP and Rio Tinto, must have used $6 copper in their models. Stick $6 copper to your model on Kamoa-Kakula, and you'll begin to see how severely undervalued this asset is at the moment.
We'll fix that by running tours to the mine and speaking at conferences like BMO and Bank of America, and eventually we'll bring people into the light that this is exactly the type of asset we need if your children are ever going to live in a world that is greener and cleaner. It's not just your children in rich countries, it's Africans and South Americans and people in the developing world that also need to live and eat and survive.
I think this sort of enterprise deserves a great deal more financial backing and a much more mature and a wiser method of valuation. I recently tweeted out a chart showing how absurdly small the mining industry is in market capitalization compared to the technology companies.
It's simply because the mining companies are saddled with these crazy NPV models that don't pay them for any value after 10 years. It's nearly impossible to create a new BHP or a new Rio Tinto. Those companies have 50 years of reserves. They should not be modeled on an NPV basis.
It makes no sense. I'd like to assure everybody on this call, I'm in touch with some of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, and everybody's saying the same thing. These NPV models make no sense at all. With that, we look forward to the bright, exploration future in the Congo. I think the ground that Barrick has up, around Kibali has unlimited exploration potential for gold.
I think the ground, in Katanga has unlimited exploration potential, not only for copper and cobalt, but also for nickel and other metals. The Congo has a very bright future and deserves a premium rating, not a discount. I think we'll get there by running more tours. I think in time you'll see that if any place needs a discount, it's anything south of the Panama Canal. Anything south of the Panama Canal should trade at a discount. Thank you.
Points well taken.
Go ahead, Mr. Winder.
I was just gonna say thanks very much for your comments, Robert. Points were all very well taken. Fantastic.
Thank you for the question. I appreciate the opportunity to rant and rave a little bit.
Thank you. At this time, we have no further phone questions. I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Keevil.
Thank you, operator. We are actually, in point of fact, running over time. So we'll have no further time for webcast questions unfortunately today. Again, please do follow up with our IR team, Alex Pickard and Tommy Horton in London, and myself in Vancouver, and we'll be more than happy to deal with your questions on an individual basis. With that, I'd like to thank you for joining us today to go over the Kamoa-Kakula 2023 IDP. I will hand it back to the operator to wrap up the call. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. At this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines.