Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for attending another call with the results for our Q3 . My name is Cristiano Veloso. I'm the founder and CEO of Verde AgriTech Plc. As usual, the first part of this presentation, Felipe will be giving an overview of our financial statements, and then later on the presentation, I will be addressing questions we've received over the last few days, as well as questions you may submit via the bottom of your screen under the Q&A option. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that our conversation today may contain some forward-looking statements which may or may not occur according to plan. If you're risk-averse, please do not watch this presentation. Thank you very much. If you're watching this on YouTube, thank you another time.
Please don't forget to hit the like button if you like what you hear. That's how you tell Google, YouTube, to show the same content to other people like yourself who might also be interested in what we have to say here today. Thank you very much. Before I begin, I know how excited all of you must be with the coming Black Friday. I know how excited all of you must be with Christmas coming over, trying to decide gifts for your loved ones, trying to decide what are you gonna buy for your neighbor, what are you gonna buy for your in-laws, what are you gonna buy for your dear family and friends. There is the best suggestion we can offer.
If you're in the U.S. or if you're in Canada, just log on to your Amazon, use your Amazon Prime and make sure to use the voucher we're giving here, offering some discount on Super Greensand®. Not only you have the opportunity to follow a story, not only you have the opportunity to benefit from that, both personally from seeing us improving the environment, but you can also help your own lawn, your own garden, and your friends and family with our Super Greensand® delivered straight to your door. Thank you very much for your support. Thank you very much for your interest in Verde AgriTech. Felipe, it's over to you.
Thank you, Cristiano. Hello, everyone. I will start our presentation with key highlights, where you can see chart number five. In the left side of the screen, we can see cash profitability and operations. First, related to cash, we do still have an ability to generate significant free cash flow in the long term. The total loans for CapEx and working capital up to September 2021 is CAD 2.8 million. For the three months ended on September, the cash utilized from investing activities was CAD 811,000, an increase of close to $0.5 million from last year, mainly due to infrastructure investments in Plant 2.
A bit on profitability, revenue from sales for Q3 was $10.6 million, from the sales of 153,000 tons of the product at a $69 per ton average price sold. Operating profit before non-cash events increased by 124% to $3.6 million, compared to $1.6 million in Q3 2020. On net profit, an increase of 192% in Q3 2021 to $3.2 million compared to $1 million in Q3 2020. Trade and other receivables increased 141% to $8.2 million compared to $3.4 million in Q3 2020. Sales by volume increased by 45% compared to last year.
We're gonna have a bit more details in the coming charts, and then you can get more into details later as well. Operations, the group is currently fully permitted to mine 482,800 tons. We have submitted environmental applications for an additional 2.5 million tons per year. The right side of the chart, you can see a bit on the summary that we are pleased to announce another increase in our 2021 guidance. The new target on revenue is BRL 110 million, which represents an increase of 120% of the company's original guidance that we had of BRL 50 million.
If we achieve this target, it will represent a 212% growth year-on-year. In October 2021, the company has secured CAD 3.75 million in loan agreements to fully cover the CapEx for construction of Plant 2. The first CAD 1.1 million was already released by Santander Bank, and the remaining CAD 2.6 million was already approved by Santander and Bradesco, and the company will use in the coming months as soon as we need.
The total CapEx for Plant 2 is expected at CAD 5.2 million, which CAD 1.4 million invested through internally generated cash flow. After having invested over CAD 66 million to reach our current rate production, we are just proud to finance the tripling of current capacity based on debt and cash flow alone. Going to chart number six, Q3 2021 financial statements. I will highlight some key points here, and then in the coming charts, a bit more details on the main points. First, I would like to highlight the revenue growth of 169% year-on-year. Here we need to remember also that we had a devaluation of Brazilian real. In Brazilian reals, the growth was over 200%.
The product cost also increased as was expected. We did have some impacts in our cost per ton. It could be, say, on oil, gas, electricity and local inflation in Brazil, and freight and other kind of expenses that had an additional cost this year. On general expenses, also an increase as expected to support our sales growth. We will be detailing a bit more. Another key point, the operating profit and loss before non-cash gains, we're showing here $3.6 million of operating profit, compared to $1.6 million last year in the quarter. In the cumulative year to date, we are showing close to $4 million compared to $1.5 million last year.
Going down to the operating costs, profit and loss after non-cash events, we did show $3.6 million in the quarter of operating profit and $2.44 million in 2021 year to date. Growth of 185% in the quarter and 120% in the year to date. In the end, bottom line net profit of $3.182 million compares to $1 million last year, so it's close to 100% growth. In the year to date, this is $1.6 million compared to $700K last year. It's another over triple digit growth of 122%. On operations summary, this chart shows a bit on the expenses and revenue per ton.
We did sell 154,000 tons in the quarter with a revenue per ton of $69. The production cost of $16, which increased, as I said before, against last year that was $12. But showing a gross margin significant growth from 67% to 77% in the quarter, and from 63% year to date to 74% this year. The second table is a bit detailed at explaining FOB against CIF. The company has included in the $69 per ton the revenue with freight. So if we take this out of the numbers, the revenue per ton would decrease from $69 to $48.
This is just to analyze the gross margin variance without CIF sales in it. Since CIF sales, there is no margin for the company. In the end of the day, we can see here that the gross margin is still high to 67% in the quarter against 64 last year, which shows an increase. Also at the same trend here you can see in 2021 year to date, 62% for gross margin this year against 59 of underlying gross margin adjusted, removing freight from the revenue. Move to chart eight. We can see sales ton in the left side and revenue on the right side. You can see per quarter and per year, so it begins in 2018 in Q3. You can see how the company grew each quarter.
At the end of the day in Q4, in Q3 have a reference. We came from 9,000 tons in 2018 to 62,000 in 2019, to 105,000 last year, and this year 153,000 tons. In the right side, you can see here the revenue also showing even higher trend of growth. Then a bit of the reasons that I'm gonna explain later related to revenue impacts that driven us to a higher sales price per ton this year. Now, we can see the full year metrics from 2018 to 2021, the left side showing a growth from 29,000 tons to 400,000 tons, which is our expectation for this year.
The right side, the revenue, as I've already said before, it's BRL 110 million, which is $25.8 million for 2021. If you compare to 2018, 2019, and 2020, you are showing triple-digit growth here year-on-year, which shows a very consistent growth. The chart 10, going to sales, general and administrative expenses. We do have an additional cost, yes, for sales and marketing expenses. We did have also sales commission paid to independent sales agents. We can see here a huge growth. However, it has an impact that we show below in the footnote that we had a provision that was reverted in Q3 last year.
It has an impact here, but we still show growth since it is a fee that we pay that is a percentage of the sales. Once we grow, this expense also expects to be growing. Increasing. At the end of the day, product delivery freight is also important. We have a chart here to show, but we did have a very relevant increase in this expense from $264,000 last year to over $3.2 million this year. And then this is explained by CIF against FOB. We do have a chart to show in the next one. Going down to general expenses. General administrative expenses, $291,000 in the quarter at 21% growth.
Legal, professional, and consultancy. Here we did have a decrease mainly due to renegotiation with auditors and other consultants. IT software expenses, it's increasing. It was expected also due to the number of new employees that we've hired in the period. Tax and license fees, which is very relevant. The percentage is big, but it's only CAD 5,000 expense this quarter, CAD 19,000 year to date to the year. Now as I said, we have FOB and CIF sales. We did have an increase from 14% last year to 50% this year on CIF sales, which explains that impact input I said before that on revenue per ton. Also we can see now here the volume that we sold in CIF, which was 50%, 76,000 tons.
This is good for Verde because especially in high season period, we can control a bit more the exact day that the product will be delivered. It is easier to align with production supply chain and the whole chain, the situation to make sure that everything works as we need, and we do not need to depend on customers freight and trucks to arrive in our plant. We do control our demand. It's better for us once it's CIF, although we have some risks like credit fee and other risks, but in the end of the day, it pays off for sure, and it's a trend to be like 50% or even higher in the coming periods.
The right side, a bit on general expenses, we do show general administrative expenses here, increase mainly due to additional 36 administrative employees to support the company growth that were hired in the period. This is something that was already expected in our budgeting and the numbers. A bit on financial summary. Again, now the revenue from sales for Q3 was $10.6 million from the sales of 153,000 tons. It's important to say at $69 per ton sold, despite the 14% Brazilian real devaluation against the US dollar. The revenue per ton was higher than Q3 2020 in $37 per ton. This is mainly due three factors.
First, product volume sold as CIF from 14% to 50%, as I said in the prior chart. Potassium chloride CIF price increased from 219, the lowest price in the period for last year, lowest price of 515. Third, we did start sales of bags last in Q4 2020. This is already accounting for over 10% of our sales, and this will for sure impact us since we add some new premium to the product, it impacts us in our revenue per ton here and also in the cost per ton. On profitability side, operating profit before non-cash events increased by 124% to CAD 3.6 million, compared to CAD 1.64 million in Q3 last year.
Gross margin increased to 77% compared to 67%, and sales volume 45% growth to 153,000 tons in the period. Net profit increased by 192% in Q3 2021 compared to $1.09 million last year. On the cash side, as of September, the group held cash of $2.4 million, an increase of $24,000 only. It was very similar. Trade and other receivables increased by 141% to $8.2 million compared to $3.4 million last year. From the total trade receivables, overdue were below 0.5% as of September 30th and t his $8.2 was also expected to support the company growth and remaining with the same payment terms that the customers have.
It shows this increase. It makes sense to have over 100% growth here in the trade receivables. A bit on summary of interest and loans and borrowings. The company has currently on its books, or they have in September $2.8 million debt in loans of a total loan that was taken in 3.2 million BRL. We did have the $3.2, sorry, million dollars. We do expect here to in the average you do have 21.25% loan.
Considering that the inflation in Brazil is close to 10% and the Brazilian government long-term bond rate is 12% per annum, we do consider that we do have here a good average of interest in our debt currently. A bit on economic scenario, Brazilian real versus U.S. dollar, you can see that the quarter that has ended is pretty close to last year, a bit lower, I'm saying like 5.28 against U.S. dollars. The trend for Canadian dollars a bit different, we are a bit higher. The expectation from the Brazilian Central Bank is to close this year with 5.50, which we are very close now. The interest rate that is expected to have in Brazil is 9.25% at the end of this year.
On potassium chloride price, you can see here CIF taking consideration price in US dollars. You can see that changed from $209 to over $500 year to this year-on-year comparison. The 30-year history, we do not show here yet a trend because it's a very long-term chart, but for sure in a few months, I think it's gonna start to show the trend that we are seeing in the price increasing here as well, averaging the price 12 months.
16% year-over-year sales growth in tons, you can see here, from 2018 to 2021 year-over-year comparison, showing that we came from 29,000 tons to 400,000 tons now in 2021. Year-over-year growth here showing from 243 to 400, which is 64% expected. The guidance we had before, we did have a guidance of 350,000 tons. Now we revised to 400,000 tons. On the revenue side, we did have a target before of BRL 50 million revenue, and now we are showing BRL 110 million target for this year ending. On product pricing, our product price is based exclusively on its potassium content.
Since K Forte® has 10% of K2O, whereas KCl has 60%, the farmer pays 6x less for our product. As example, we took here two key cities, one in Minas Gerais state and another one in Mato Grosso state. That shows that, including the freight, the price that the farmer pays is 6x lower to our product, towards product, to compensate the 10% against 60. And also in the table on the right side, you can see here the FOB price as well. Once the freight is more expensive, which is the case of Mato Grosso, the distance is further than Minas Gerais, the FOB price has to be reduced to make sure that the farmer will pay.
At the end of the day, the farmer get price exactly the same price per ton of K2O. Also here you can see, of course, there is a footnote here that say that sometimes discounts might be applied, et cetera. This is just how we make our sales price list. Then at the end, we do have here a revenue trend from 2017 now to 2020 end of the next year, to 2030s. We do expect this year BRL 110 million coming from 2017 from less than BRL 1 million of sales.
Well, now I'll pass it back to Cristiano that will handle the Q&A section, and I'll be also here to support whatever we need to answer the Q&A section. Thank you, Cristiano.
Thank you, Felipe. Excellent. Felipe, I think if you want to stop sharing your screen now, so we can go back to the full screen space. Excellent. Okay. Anyone who wants to participate now, please feel free to send your question via the Q&A option at the bottom of your screen. I will be answering some of the questions we received over the last few days. Before I start answering the questions, one important point to say is that some of the questions we've received, in order to answer them, we would potentially disclose some commercially sensitive information, which we just aren't sure whether the net benefit to investors would make it worth it, or if perhaps other parties would benefit more than investors by having those answers. Those questions we will not be answering for the time being.
We'll be reviewing the situation. It might change. Other questions we received, they were good. We're just unfortunately not prepared yet to be answering them from how we structured. For example, there was some very specific questions about certain types of cost structure which our ERP system just can't handle it. Next year we will be operating with SAP and then we expect to be able to provide certain information with a bit more, with a higher and greater level of detail. Even if your question isn't answered here today, please accept that it has helped us. It has helped us to think about it, think about the answer, take it on board, share it within the company, see how it can be addressed.
Even if you don't get the answer, you should be assured that the fact you've sent this question to us has given us an opportunity to reflect about it, and we like to think it has helped the company has helped our company grow, thanks to your contribution. Please don't stop sending questions, don't stop sending comments. We read each and every one of them, and we very much appreciate how successful a lot of you have been in your previous careers and how much input you can give us. Over a decade, I have no doubt we wouldn't be in the position we are if it hadn't been because of the input of our several shareholders who have supported us along the way in several different ways.
Starting with the first question we have, here on the list, it is a question about what type of energy we use in our production process. The type of energy we use is electricity. It is provided by one of the largest energy companies in Brazil, a company called Cemig. It is from Minas Gerais state where we operate. Electricity accounts for about 5% of our costs. We were lucky to sign an agreement with the energy company, a good few months ago when electricity prices were quite low. This has been benefiting us in a scenario nowadays where electricity prices are much greater.
The main source of how Cemig, for those of you who worried about ESG, from an ESG angle, the main source of electricity or the main source of power from Cemig is hydroelectric electricity. I think over 80% of all the electricity generated by Cemig comes from hydro. It is in our plans to, at some point, build a small solar energy plant to supply it, to supply us. It will probably happen alongside Plant 3. Whenever we start building Plant 3, which I hope Plant 3 construction should begin at the end of next year.
At that point, I would expect also to concomitantly be building a small solar plant, which can be funded in very good terms, and it would coincide with when we would be coming out of this good agreement we have for electricity rates. If I didn't answer your question, if you feel like there's more to be clarified there, please do not hesitate to send another question here. Next question, it is a question about our pricing. The question is, I don't understand why your revenue shows CAD 69 per ton when you're showing the price of potash as CAD 515 per ton. We've added to Felipe's presentation a slide that has a breakdown on the pricing.
Felipe, if you wouldn't mind sharing your screen again and going back to the slide with pricing, we can have a look on the pricing structure. This document or this information is also in our PFS. If you go on sedar.com, look for Verde AgriTech, or if you go on our website, look in the other documents, there is the full copy of our pre-feasibility study. Essentially, how we come up with our price is to look at the delivered price of potassium chloride at the potential customer's farm. Nowadays, okay, if the farmer is in the town of Unaí in Minas Gerais state, you can see that the price he's currently paying for potassium chloride in Brazilian reais is about BRL 4,681.
If he is further away in the country, in the Mato Grosso state, further away from our plant, he's currently paying about 5,000 BRL per ton. What we do with that delivered price is to divide it by six, because our product has 6X less potassium. That brings the how much is our asking price in each of those farms. Divided by six, come up to 780 BRL. In Tangará da Serra, it comes up to 800 BRL. If the farmer wants to buy the product CIF delivered to the farm, we will bear the cost of transportation, and we'll be charging the farmer, if he's in Unaí, 780 BRL, if he's in Tangará, 863 BRL.
If the farmer wants to pay FOB, sometimes the farmer has his own truck, trucking company. Some of them do. They will want to buy FOB, in which case we deduct freight, and we come up to our FOB price. Essentially that's why when you look at the financials, you see that price, the revenue per ton will never be identical to the KCl price because of all those aspects there I've just mentioned. It's very important to say, as Felipe mentioned in his presentation, that this is the asking price. However, in different circumstances, this price will be lower for the customer. This will depend on a number of factors which are related to our commercial strategy.
They will also vary along the year, depending on a number of issues such as seasonality of demand, and other factors, which we will not be going into much detail here for commercial reasons. If we go back to Felipe, you can stop sharing the screen. Thank you. If we go back to another question. What is the breakdown by tons sold to end users? What's the split between, inside sales or the sales made by Verde itself, sales made by independent sales agents, and sales made by distributors? The split which in the beginning of our sales activities, the bulk of our sales right at the beginning was made by independent commission sales.
Over the years and especially this year, we've brought the majority of those sales, they all made directly by Verde, by our own team. The split at the moment is 50% of those sales are made by ourself directly. 40% of the sales are made by our independent sales agents, who we try to provide a very comprehensive support to assist them growing their own markets as well, and adding further capillarity to our commercial strategy. Around 10% of our sales are made by distributors. Next question. erde spent. Well, he talks about Verde having spent a million in the past 18 months acquiring land. The question he asked here, can you share details of that land and the reason for the acquisition?
It wasn't that much money spent on land. It just happens that under the accounts, infrastructure investment is also being accounted there. What we will be doing for the next financials is to provide a better level or more detailed level of disclosure in terms of what is land and what is actually all the stuff. We will be looking into doing that but t he amount spent on land acquisition has been tiny. The next question, and before I answer this question, I'm very pleased to report the number of new names I see attending this conference. Thank you very much for your interest in Verde.
If there's any point through the presentation you feel a bit like I didn't give enough detail or I didn't have enough background, please do contact us directly, and I will be delighted to go over into more detail about the business itself. The question is: Do you have a dedicated team looking at ways to reduce considerable freight costs that are a result of increased tonnage for potassium needed by farmers compared to conventionally used potash? Can Verde remain competitive for the largest scaled farmers? There are two questions here. The first question is yes, we have a pretty good team, I have to say, handling logistics.
It's a team that this year alone will have managed, you know, if everything goes according to plan, around 400,000 tons or, well, not everything was CIF, so it won't be 400,000 tons, but a gigantic number of transportation. We try to use technology the best we can in order to keep those rates competitive and keep the access competitive. Second question, can Verde remain competitive for the large-scaled farmers? Yes, we can remain very competitive, and we've been very much so. The other question, someone looked up this and something else we trademarked. They're asking, Silicio Forte as a trademark, what is that?
That is the trademark for Silicio Forte, which is a product which is a source of the nutrients we usually have, but specially marketed as a source of silicon. Silicon is a very important nutrient which helps crops increase its resistance against drought, against pests, against diseases. For example, if there is a short spell when conditions were drier than usual, the crop will be more resistant. This occurs for different reasons. One of the reasons is that something to do with the evapotranspiration mechanism plants have, which is how much water plants lose to the environment as part of their growth. By absorbing silicon, the structure of plants become more resistant and as a consequence, it loses less air.
There are several very interesting articles on the internet about the benefits of silicon to crops. Next question, it's a technical question about reporting and to do with taxes. Of course, because we've made so much investment over the years, and there was G&A associated with that, we carry losses in the balance sheet, especially in the Brazilian balance sheet. If you look at our financials up to this point, we haven't compensated for any of those losses. The reason we haven't compensated, I believe, is explained in detail in the financial statements, but the easier way to explain it is that in Brazil, essentially, when you become profitable, there are two different tax options you can follow. In one of those options, you can't use these previous losses.
However, the tax you have to pay is much smaller. The calculation is you do what you use to calculate, follow some rules which benefit and definitely benefit Verde at this point. The other alternative, you pay 34% income tax, and that 34% income tax you can then use to compensate the previous losses. This beneficial arrangement, this original one, it's only allowed for companies of a certain annual revenue. As of next year, we will go beyond that, so this benefit won't last very much more. This is what it is. The other one is an update on our trade receivables. You can see we have about $8 million of receivables.
The answer to the question is that about 70% of those receivables will be in our treasury throughout Q1, and the remaining 30% of that CAD 8 million will be paid throughout the rest of the year. The other important point here in terms of the trade receivables is our inadimplência. People who have failed to make the payment agreed is less than 0.5%. The people who have failed to make the payments on the agreed date is 0.5%, which is very low. Very low.
That might even be a bit too low in my mind because the problem with being too low, of course, is that you fail to sell to some people who do offer a slightly greater risk of not paying us back. You don't sell to people like that, but the other side of the equation is that you could increase a little bit your risk taking in terms of offering credit. Consequently, you would also be able to sell to more people. It's an important part of our business, which as we grow, will become more and more important to me because in the agricultural sector, farmers do expect to be financed by suppliers, input suppliers like ourselves.
Essentially, if you don't do this, you really limit your market. This is also a great business opportunity in terms of what you're essentially doing, which is lending money. I've even heard some people suggesting we should look into turning this side of our business into some sort of fintech, given the access we currently have to farmers. I can't say it's a bad idea. It's just not something we can focus right now. Another question, the status on permits. The 2.5 million tons mining permit is making slow, crawling progress throughout different levels of bureaucracy, facing and different hiccups all the way from broken scanning machines to other similar problems.
We're very confident it should be issued on time to allow us to carry on supplying Brazil of its very needed potash on a timely basis. In terms of environmental license, we have really here to congratulate the State of Minas Gerais, where we're located. They've done an amazing job in terms of modernizing the environmental licensing procedure a nd it has been a complete different experience to what had been in the past.
Last week, I had the opportunity to have dinner here in London with the governor of Minas Gerais state, with the secretary of environment of Minas Gerais state, and I could thank them directly and tell them how pleased we are with all the hard work and fantastic work they've been doing for the state of Minas Gerais, for entrepreneurs and how transformational it has been for all the society of my beloved state of Minas Gerais, where I was born and lived most of my life. Next question. When do you expect to have a production and revenue guidance for the coming year? We were going to disclose that on, as usual, on our last press release.
Either someone looked at that and said that was already too much good news for just one press release, not to put another good news on that press release in terms of guidance. That's either that or we are trying to use a little bit more of the time we have in the coming weeks to try to be a little bit more assertive with this guidance. I don't like what happened this year where we came up with a guidance and then we kept having to increase that. I think for next year we should try, I hope, to be able to predict a little bit more or better our revenue.
Of course, what no one can really determine is what happens with fertilizer prices, what happens with agricultural commodities, what happens with global economies. I know there is a question further down, but I may as well share my view right now on this topic. There was a post I made on LinkedIn. I think it was yesterday or the before. It was, I think it was over the weekend actually, where I posted a chart showing the global food price index over the years and the fertilizer price index over the years. You can see on the chart how much correlation there is between those two, those two lines. The outlier, however, is now. I think fertilizer prices have gone beyond where they should be. If you ask me, I think it's too expensive right now.
It's true, the argument other people make, which even though it's expensive, farmers can still afford, and the economics still work for farmers. However, from a supply structure perspective, I think they've gone too far. I wouldn't be surprised if current potash prices over the next 12 months come down by half. I think that wouldn't be a surprise. Of course, for anyone looking at fertilizers in agriculture and assessing other projects who do require greater potash prices or do require an exorbitant potash price, which is the price for now, that might come as very bad news. For the case of Verde, which is the lowest delivered cost producer in the Brazilian Cerrado, yes, there would be less margins h owever, it's good for everyone, farmers, global food prices and other aspects of the business, so it's not something that bothers us.
If you look at the pre-feasibility study we had last done, the potash price we used as a reference to come up with a net present value of around $2 billion. The price we used was $250 CFR Brazil, and not the $800 CFR Brazil we see nowadays. You can just imagine what the NPV would be with a price close to what it is at the moment. I feel like I've spoken a lot on this topic, but I didn't answer the question when we will come up with a guidance. I think it will be, well, most certainly will be before the end of the year.
A couple of questions here. This one is on when we expect the pre-feasibility technical report. The guidance we gave was by the end of this year. As of today, the guidance remains as such. However, I will make sure the report is as good and as neat as you all deserve before it gets published. If it comes to the end of the year and I feel like it isn't up to your standard, to our standard, I won't disclose it. I won't release it just for the sake of, you know, making good on our promise of putting it out this year. I will use an additional few weeks to resolve anything I feel like might be resolved.
As you may expvect, the mining aspect of the feasibility study is very straightforward. The process, very straightforward. Where it's taken a little bit more of my attention is when we look at BAKS. As you know, BAKS is our product, which in addition to potash, has sulfur and other micronutrients. When you look at the engineering process part of it, again, this is also straightforward, where I am having to spend a little bit more time with the consultants is trying to come up with the level of disclosure that will be in the technical report, in a way that it doesn't give away too much of commercially sensitive information on what we're doing.
In their study, there were about 20 other sources of sulfur which were being taken into account in a spreadsheet. Things were getting a little bit complicated. When you also look, even if you just look at the main raw materials, you're looking at potassium sulfate, you're looking at single superphosphate, you're looking at ammonium sulfate, as comparables for which you come up with the price of sulfur. When you look at micronutrients, and on micronutrients, you're most likely gonna be focusing on four different micronutrients to be added to BAKS. You're looking at boron, you're looking at manganese, you're looking at zinc, and you're looking at copper. Each one of those metals have different dynamics.
Each one of those metals have different fertilizer sources. This audit should be very tight in the report, so that is essentially where. Of course, this all impacts the financial models or impacts the economics or impacts the bunch of papers which get written on the back of that. That is where most of my attention will be going towards as you all enjoy the end of the holidays. Of course, we can't do too much of that at this point because we're still very focused on our sales, and we have a campaign going on where we're getting our customers all ready to place orders for next year.
We're doing all the strategic planning, coming up with a better calculation of budget, marketing budgets, trying to validate the growth levers we've been able to identify over the years and how we're gonna use them in each different types of the years. This has been a very busy time of the year for us as well. At the current time, if you had to guess, when will the second phase be done? Is it a five-year fair reasonable target? The question here is again about the pre-feasibility study. When we did the pre-feasibility study back several years ago now, we split that into three phases. The second phase was five million tons production.
For the next pre-feasibility study, we're not gonna be too bothered about doing phases because as you've seen, it's such a scalable business that we can, you know, grow as fast or as slow as we can develop the market. We don't need to follow an established, fixed, phased approach. If the question is when, I believe we will be able to get to five million tons. My answer is I don't know. However, we will carry on working to support and potentially even expedite our current growth rate, assuming some tests we're gonna be making, especially next year on growth levers. You're gonna hear those words a lot in the coming calls.
You know, our growth levers and if they start to work and we carry on being able to validate that base, validate them based on data we're seeing, we might be able to expedite things. Next question. With regards to recurring sales to farmers, do you see increase in purchasing per farmer as farmers decide to use more material to replace potash on large part of the land, move from pilot to adoption? Can you provide more info about this rate? Yes, we are seeing an increase in the usage. We're seeing some big farmers coming in and placing orders for the full farm, which is good to see the level of confidence people are starting to take with the project. But I don't want to be answering this question purely on an anecdotal basis.
There is something we came across reading the last edition of the Harvard Business Review magazine, something called NPS 3.0, where the inventor of NPS comes up with some ways to measure you know, earned growth versus acquired growth. We're looking into it. If it makes sense, we might even put a press release out and disclose those numbers and start falling from there. Next question. Considering the correlation between food and potash prices and your statement that potash prices may come down by half, you can see I'm not the most you know, promotional hand-waving mining CEO, you know.
I'll, you know, you might not like what you hear, but I will speak my mind, and I don't think the prices will stay at the crazy levels they are now. Why not hedge by selling food futures or by buying some hedges? You're speaking Greek to me in terms of the possibility of doing that sort of hedge. So, obviously you're knowledgeable in that area, so please do reach out, and I would love to hear from you how we could potentially investigate doing something like that. The last question we have here, where can we find the presentation by Felipe? As with all our materials, it will be available on our website very shortly. So, okay.
I think that completes all the questions. I would like to thank you all for watching our results, sharing your questions. If you're watching this on YouTube, thanks again for spending your time with us. I hope you made it to the end of it. I hope you still feel as excited as we are about our company, about our challenge, about our purpose above anything else. If I may say a few words before ending this call, and perhaps in the meantime, you might want to hit that like button, tell YouTube you like it, and other people like yourself might also be interested in what we're doing.
If you really like what we're doing, please go and share this video with perhaps the people you're gonna buy Super Greensand® to over Christmas and Thanksgiving, Canada Day. Thank you. Thank you very much. What I was gonna say is, I recently watched a presentation done by a very large Swiss bank where they were telling their you know their view for investment in the coming months. It was so interesting to hear them saying, because essentially 70% of what they said would entirely support what we're doing in Verde. I could mention several points, but two points, I think are worth highlighting right now.
One is what they're seeing in terms of de-globalization, how each country will be looking to build moats to protect themselves, to protect their supply chains, to make themselves more resilient, less dependent on global geopolitics, and how many opportunities and how transformational this is gonna be for several industries. This completely, as you know, supports what we're doing in terms of our business. It's crazy to think that one of the world's largest economy is Brazil. It's crazy to think that the world's largest food exporter, Brazil.
It's crazy to think that a country where agriculture accounts for 1/3 of the GDP, which accounts for about 1/4 of all direct and indirect jobs, which even accounts for a significant component of fuel, which gets added to gasoline or to diesel, even like cars run only on ethanol in Brazil. All of that relies on one commodity being potash. Not only one commodity being potash, a commodity which is imported in almost its entirety at the moment. More than 95% of all potash consumed by Brazil comes from imports. Imports from two countries. One very nice, kind, gentle, friendly one, of course, Canada, but one a little bit more unpredictable called Russia and Belarus.
Nowadays, not only the Brazilian economy, but also global food prices, they are entirely dependent upon what Vladimir Putin wants to do. If he wanted to double, triple, cause, use food as a weapon, if he wanted to do that tomorrow, he controls the way to do that. He controls potash supply. If he says, as of 1st of January, the great Russia, the great Belarus, Lukashenko, his pal, will no longer be exporting potash to the world, you better run and stock up on food because things are gonna get very, very ugly. You may despise Putin, you may not agree with Lukashenko grounding planes, crossing over Belarus, but you should be very thankful to them every time you go to the supermarket and you see food prices where they are.
You should thank them for being kind to humanity and keep food prices. We're lucky that it's down to people balanced like the two of them, that we can keep humanity and the world, as safe as it is. That is de-globalization. Of course, this big Swiss bank didn't give the, you know, talk about specifically this thesis, but the underlying aspect of the conversation was what we discussed here. The second point which was discussed, of course, very timely as a major investment trend, is the race to net zero. How every industry is gonna have to try to find different ways to cut its carbon footprint and how countries and business will have to pay for that.
When you do that, when you look into it's again a little bit hard to understand how we're still looking at the possibility in the foreseeable future to be feeding plants with potash from conventional potassium salt. As you know, when you buy conventional potash, be it potassium chloride, potassium sulfate, polyhalite, langbeinite, whatever the source, the salt source of potash is, you are feeding crops with potash, but you're also bringing in what one of our customers like to say, it's poison. So he tells me, he say, "You know, Chris, you're every time I used to use potassium chloride, I would have nightmares because I knew I was both giving the food but also giving the poison together with it, which was that chloride, which was that salinity.
I sleep much better nowadays being able just to supply K Forte®. The problem, of course, with the salinity and with this chloride in soils in a race to net zero, is because they impact soil microorganisms. Soil microorganisms, which are known for playing a crucial role in capturing carbon into the soil. The awareness on those mechanisms is something new to a lot of people. You start seeing some very important players on a global basis talking more and more about that.
One of those players is the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations that has chosen on World Soil Day, the 5th of December, put this date in your calendar, the fifth of December, World Soil Day by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It's gonna be all about the impact salinity has to soils on a global basis and how we should be fighting that. This is again something very close to our hearts, something we've been working very hard in creating awareness and we're very humbly proud how we've seen hundreds of customers joining us one more time this year in replacing conventional imported potash with K Forte®®. thank you very much. I'm pretty sure you're gonna hear from us in press releases before Christmas and the New Years. There's a few things we, you know, we have on the go.
There will be other press releases. We're always happy to be answering questions in the meantime, if you feel like we can help you in any sort of way. Those of you who we don't get to speak again until next year, I wish you all and to your family a very happy Christmas and a fantastic 2024 for all of us. It is still day one at Verde. Stay safe. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.