Its development. Together with me for this presentation, I have my Chief Fellow Directors in Oby Rare Earths. I have our Chairman, Michael Etheridge, and our Director, Andrew Whitten, both resident in Australia, both resident in Sydney, both highly experienced in the mining sector, in the corporate world, and together we are the board members for this new company. Further down the presentation, I will introduce in a little bit more detail each one of them, as we will also be talking about the project, what's going on, and at the end, we're going to be able to answer questions. If you have any question, please use the Q&A option on your screen. You can type it in, and we'll make sure at the end of the presentation we will answer all of those questions.
I think it's our first experience trying to find a time zone for a presentation that works across the globe. I thank you for waking up early and joining us in this call from Australia. Those of you who are connecting from North America, they are towards the end of the day, so thanks for making the effort and joining us. For those of you in Europe who are around midnight, 11:00 P.M., midnight, I hope you don't fall asleep during the presentation. I'm pretty sure some people will send me emails later on and say, "Oh, I didn't feel you were very energetic tonight. What was going on?"
I don't feel it's quite late for me here. But don't let my tiredness, even the late hour, be a reason not to understand how excited I am about this opportunity and how excited I am about this next phase of development for Oby Rare Earths. Let me start with the presentation. I'll share my screen, and I will look forward to answering questions and receiving feedback towards the end. I hope you can all see the deck now, which we prepared for tonight's presentation. The name of the project is Men of War. Men of War is the name of a Portuguese battleship, and it was the name given by the first settlers in that region.
One of the mountains where we found rare earths, it's an area where 300 years ago, there was a lot of diamond exploration and a lot of local fights between different people exploring for diamonds in the region. In a number of those hills, they ended up receiving names of Portuguese warships. Brazil was mainly colonized by Portugal, and the name of another hill there is Fragata, and you have others. I think it's quite interesting how for this transaction, we're actually merging the company with Nautica. I think there's something there in terms of destiny for the growth and for the future of the company. As I begin the presentation, I would like to remind you all that this presentation contains forward-looking statements, and the actual results might be different. What we are developing here at Oby is a very large rare earths resource.
We have over a billion tons of mineral resources compliant both with JORC and NI 43-101. Not only is it big, it's also very high grade. You have over 3,000 ppm of total rare earth oxide, which doesn't mean much, in all honesty, because it's really only four rare earths that represent most of the economic value of any deposit. Those four elements are neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, which, as you will see throughout this presentation, we're very lucky to have some very high-grade content of those elements. We more recently did an analysis of our resources applying a greater cutoff. That was already thanks to some very good conversations with our Chairman. Even though the resource comes down, as we can see, to about 400 million tons, you can see how much greater the average grade goes up.
Quite honestly, 400 million tons, if you think about the in-house scoping study we did, which was looking at a 15 million tons per annum run of mine production, that was still enough for over 30 years of mine life. Some of the initial work we did came back very positive with Ionic Clay Mineralization. For those of you who are familiar with rare earths, Ionic Adsorption Clay is the cheapest, the easiest, the simplest, the lowest CapEx type of rare earths you can look to recover. We are very lucky already to be able to come up with results as high as 35%, which still has plenty of scope for further improvement as we progress the work program. Not just rare earths, but it is quite an interesting resource.
I will invite our Chairman, Michael Etheridge, to talk a little bit about Mineralogy and Geology when we get to the right slide. It has been very exciting for me to find out what stuff like rubidium is used for. Rubidium, the Rb, is used on atomic clocks, quantum computing, and we seem to have a fair bit of this. Something else called hafnium. Hafnium is used for cooling semiconductors, cooling nuclear plants, which equally we have a lot of. Some very interesting critical minerals are present in this deposit. As I said, we did this in-house scoping study, so this is not compliant to JORC or anything else, but helps us look at the economic value and, more importantly, allows us to plan for the next stage of development for the project.
It's in a good location, so it's very close to where we built two mines, two production facilities, one bioproduction facility where we made substantial investment in local infrastructure. We upgraded about 20 km of roads, paved about 10, been operating the area for nearly 10 years now, and it's quite fortunate that this other resource is so close to where we are. The transaction you saw, the press release, was the merger between Nautica and Oby. As part of this transaction, Nautica has AUD 1 million, and we will be looking to potentially raise another AUD 1 million. There has been interest from shareholders, both from Nautica and Verde AgriTech, to participate, as well as other external investors. The board of directors has decided to potentially increase the size of this raise.
If anyone in this call is interested, please reach out to Andrew Whitten or myself, and we can have a specific conversation about that. The comps, which are both public companies, they've seen their share prices going up last week since China decided to restrict exports of some rare earths, which we happen to have a lot. What I will do, I will pause here, and I will allow Mike to say hi and Andrew to say hi. Mike has an extraordinarily successful career, both in the academic world and in the professional entrepreneurial world. He had set up a consultancy company on geology, which was then taken over by SRK, one of the world's largest engineering companies. He went on to lead this company in Australia and in Asia.
He joined several boards of directors and has been very good working with Mike over the last few months now. Andrew, who is a very successful entrepreneur and lawyer, has been helping us as well, and like Andrew, has been very valuable on taking it forward. Before I allow Mike and Andrew to introduce themselves as well and say hi, a little bit about myself. I am Brazilian. I am from Belo Horizonte, the mining capital of Brazil. I started my first mining company when I was 23, 24 years old. I took this company public when I was 27. Over those years, we've raised a significant amount of money.
We were lucky and fortunate to be able to go and have all this experience all the way from looking for mineral resources for projects to drilling them, getting environmental permits, working on metallurgy, coming up with metallurgical routes, getting patents, getting processes developed, working through project finance, building operations, ramping up, getting to production, struggling with adverse markets. We have been lucky over the last 20 years to go through a lot of experience. With no further ado, Mike, if you want to say hi, Andrew, if you want to say hi, and then we can carry on.
Thank you, everyone.
Sorry, Mike, do you want to go first? You go first, Mike.
Okay. Thanks, Cristiano. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. It's a great pleasure for me to be involved in the birth of Oby Rare Earths. I think it is a very exciting project. It has the scale and, more importantly, the grade. Even more importantly, for at least part of the deposit, the ability to be developed with, as Cristiano said, the Ion Adsorption Clay Methodology. It is currently at a value which should be attractive to investors. As Cristiano said, my background, I'm a geologist by background, by training and practice for four years, and I'd like to count. I've been involved in research organizations. I've taught Geology at universities.
I've then established a consulting firm that became SRK in Australia and led that organization for a number of years before I worked all over the world on all types of deposits, including coal and petroleum, as well as a wide range of mineral deposits. Since then, I've been involved mainly in strategic advisory roles and board roles. When this opportunity came up, initially via Andrew Whitten, with whom I've worked on a number of projects, I thought, had a good look at what was available on the deposit, I thought, this is too good not to be involved in. I look forward to answering any more technical questions at the end of the presentation. Andrew.
You're on mute, Andrew.
Yeah. Hi, Mike. Hi, Mike. Hi, Cristiano. Hi, everyone. Andrew Whitten, thanks for the introduction. My background is experienced corporate lawyer and director and entrepreneur. I've listed probably 50 or 60 companies, both professionally and for myself on the ISX, and been involved in a number of different mining projects, both as lawyer, investor, entrepreneur, director, etc. Those of you who are from the Nautica side, obviously, we've merged Nautica with Oby to form the company going forward. The reason we chose this project is we looked at a number of projects over a number of years. This one has all the characteristics to become a very large company. It's got a very high-grade resource in a good economic and geopolitical jurisdiction. Mining in Brazil is well-trodden past. The valuation of the capital structure was right for Nautica to partner with.
We believe there is significant upside in the project. It has the scale and the grade to really kind of secure alternative supply for countries like the United States that are looking for alternative suppliers outside of China. Those are my kind of strategic rationales as to why Nautica partnered with Oby and obviously Cristiano's experience in Brazil, in country, coming from his backyard. We are very excited about the project. We are excited to partner with Oby and take it forward.
Thanks, Andrew. Let me share the screen again, and we can carry on with the presentation. I've just looked at the list of attendees, and I can see a few names in Europe, which I appreciate being awake and joining the call as well. A little bit of the history of the project. Verdi AgriTech had about 150,000 hectares of exploration concessions in a very, very exciting area of Brazil in Minas Gerais state, with phenomenal geology. We did a lot of sampling, and we did a lot of drilling. We looked at different targets. One of the areas we drilled, where originally we were looking for phosphate, we did nearly 4,000 meters of diamond core drilling. We kept everything. We kept all the data. We kept all the drill cores because we had calculated a small resource of phosphate.
Recently, not that recently anymore, but a few months ago, one of our geologists turned to us and said, "Hey, I think there might be some rare earths in that geology. I think we should re-acid some of the drill holes." We did. We randomly picked a couple of drill holes and sent them to the lab to be re-acided. The results came back with phenomenal results, very high grade, as you saw from the results. We are very excited, but also very cautious because most of you who are familiar with rare earths know that rare earths are not really rare. What is rare is for you to be able to recover it economically. At a very early stage, we sent some of those drill holes to SGS to check if it could be recovered.
More importantly, if it could be recovered as ionic adsorption clay. It is a very simple test they do. You do pH 4, use ammonium sulfate, which is a salt, and you do this leaching at room temperature for about 30 minutes, and then you see how much it recovered. We are very lucky that straight away from that small sample, we were able to get some results which were very, very encouraging. We then sent all of the other drilling to the lab to get it all re-acided. The results came back, carried on, very, very encouraging, very positive. We then hired a consultant to do a resource, which demonstrated over a billion tons of resources, one of the world's largest and highest-grade rare earth deposits, especially with magnetic, very high concentration of magnetic rare earth oxide.
More recently, we did this in-house scoping study, which showed some potential robust economics. Finally, January, February, we did the transaction spin-out, and now it is a separate entity with money in the bank that it will start developing the project. A bit later on during the presentation, if I am still awake, I apologize, but a bit later down the presentation, I will discuss a little bit more of the strategic route the board is contemplating and some of the stuff that is happening, at which point I hope it will get a little bit more exciting for all of us. It is an area we know very well. There is plenty of infrastructure. What was not good there in terms of roads, Verde AgriTech managed to pave a lot of the local roads. You have good access to power, to water, to people. You could not dream of a better place.
This is three and a half hours' drive from where I was born. It's all proper good place to live, work, and more importantly, to build a mine. The concessions which Oby Nautica will be developing, or four concessions together, they represent approximately 50 sq km, so very big. More importantly, this is 50 sq km from about 5,000 sq km that at one point we had and did a lot of prospecting, a lot of sampling. This is already where you want to be developing as a mine. As a matter of fact, all of those mining rights already have proven resources with the Brazilian Mining Agency, and it's already advancing throughout the regulatory process towards a mining concession.
What you can see on this map to the left here, and I will talk a little bit more about this, are the new targets, Fragata and Caravela, which, as I said, are both names of Portuguese ships given by the locals 2,300 years ago. A cross-section of the deposits, so it's all pretty much from surface and very wide realization. The realization horizon is over 50 meters thick. Talking to Mike from a geological perspective, he has some interesting ideas about where to get some of the best mineralized zones, which makes a lot of sense, and we're keen to go and test with further drilling. From what we have and with different cutoffs, you can see the high grade and the high tonnage for each one of the targets.
This is the first target, Alto da Serra, which with a higher cutoff, you have about 60 million tons. You have Nautigueira, again, big old crop, little hill, and with wide mineralization, likewise, 50-60 meters thick, with here another 37 million tons with a 4,000 ppm cutoff, with outstanding high grades for your magnetic rare earth oxides, dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, praseodymium. The last, the third target, which we had drilled before, Balsamo, again, very thick mineralization, 60 meters, with a bigger resource here, 309 million tons, 4,000 ppm cutoff, over 1,000 ppm of magnetic rare earth oxide. There is a JORC report. There is a NI 43-101 report which looks at those tonnage in detail. The work we also did more recently, it is on this slide here, and it is very, very exciting.
To the right, you can see Balsamo, which was drilled, and then to the left, you have those two structures. You can see some of the results we had just from samples at surface. You can see, for example, one meter with 5,000 PPM of total rare earth oxide. You can see here, one meter with 15,000 PPM, with 3,562 PPM of magnetic rare earth oxide. Another one here with 2,611 magnetic rare earth oxide. 2,000. Phenomenal grades of this structure that runs next to Balsamo, where we expect to have not just tonnage, but very high grades. What's very exciting is terbium and dysprosium. When we talk about rare earths not being very rare, what's rare is being able to recover them economically. This is true for most of the rare earths, but there's a few which are actually rare.
This is terbium and dysprosium, which you can see the phenomenal high grades we were able to get just from grab samples there, 90 ppm, 20 ppm of terbium. There is another one here, 79 ppm of dysprosium. It is all exciting stuff. Next slide. We did an in situ analysis comparing our project to some of the public companies we had mentioned. You can see how much more valuable our mineral is in comparison to the mineral being explored by those other public companies. This here is looking exclusively at magnetics, looking exclusively at rare earths. You can see by the color what really matters is your NdPr, DyTb grades. You can see how they make up for like 90% of the value of what companies have.
It's not even fair to call companies rare earths, I guess, when what really matters are those four elements here. It gets more exciting than that. It was quite interesting finding out about those new other critical minerals we have along the journey, as I mentioned, stuff like hafnium, rubidium, and all of that contributes to the in situ value, which when you add them to the calculation, the number goes up significantly. This is using a 1,000 ppm cutoff. Okay? For those of you who are probably people in Australia who have fresh out of bed, more weight, excited for the day, have seen that this is far less than the in situ value here, but this is a greater cutoff. You can see the value which is added by those other elements.
That is why metallurgy right now becomes very important because by doing additional work and being able to recover not just rare earths, but also being able to recover stuff like hafnium or rubidium, it can significantly enhance economics. Some of the results from the leaching test we did, as I mentioned, by SGS. We had some conversations with ANSTO in Sydney, so they can help us moving it forward to a small pilot plant as well as optimizing and advancing this work forward. When it comes to the usage of the seed capital, the idea here is to be focusing on work that will add value to what we have. We will be doing additional metallurgical work to further enhance some of this recovery, to improve some of this understanding. We will be doing some work on some areas of the deposit for better understanding.
Very importantly, we're going to be doing work on the environmental permit. We're in this very unique situation where we can move very fast towards a mining permit, from an exploration permit to a mining permit. Guido already has the company lined up to start doing this work. I think looking at the other exciting stuff from the conversation before I start answering questions, which is on what else is going on with the company. For those of you who follow the rare earths sector, have been following it for a while, especially capital markets, at the beginning of last year, if we go back 10, 15 years, there was not a cycle where there was a lot of excitement. If we just look at the recent cycle, in the beginning of last year, there was a lot of excitement on rare earths.
There were several companies that went public in Australia with different projects and were progressing its development. In the second half of the year, the company went into hibernation. The appetite for rare earths reduced a lot, and the interest reduced a lot in Australia. As in all fairness, for one to do an IPO in Australia right now, the market is probably closed. There isn't a window. There isn't an appetite for a new IPO in Australia for a rare earths company the way we see it. Other markets, though, it has been different. In the US, North American capital markets, especially NASDAQ and YSC, there has been a few listings of rare earths companies which are doing relatively well.
There is a lot of appetite, which is understandable when Trump and most of his accolades love to talk about rare earths and why it is so strategic and why the U.S. needs them so much and why the country is weak, unless it can secure it from wherever it might be able to do so. It is quite bullish there. In that regard, we have been having conversations with different investors in the United States who are interested in potentially taking this company public in the U.S. There are discussions going on. There are possibilities about that type of transaction. One of those conversations even has a Middle Eastern angle to it with a Middle Eastern investor who is looking to do a rare earths refinery in Saudi Arabia. There is that possibility as well.
In the other bucket of conversations we're having, there is a very well-known large Chinese company that is potentially interested in the project. There's one other alternative for TSX for Canada, but I rank it a bit lower priority in comparison to the other possibilities. The reason I'm bringing up those other strategic alternatives and discussions is that there is a possibility that we might not list on ASX. There is a possibility that there might be a transaction. There's a possibility that there might be a sale of the company even before we move things further along. The board will obviously be reviewing and monitoring and looking at it and trying to decide what would be the best for all shareholders. Even though there's lots going on, we need to focus on what is within our control.
What is within our control right now is getting the company ready for an IPO on ASX, getting the company ready. As soon as there is a window on ASX, we can go and become a public entity. That is what we are going to be doing. We are going to be doing some strategic investment in the project in the coming months as we move it along. We will be monitoring all of those other possibilities and continue to entertain those conversations and see where they might take us while at the same time focusing to get the perspective and getting everything ready for an IPO. Let me stop here and start answering some questions, which I can see we already have a few. First question here, and there will be a lot of questions from Verde AgriTech shareholders about their share certificates.
Let's just see how many there are here. One, two, three. Yeah, there's a few. We have already issued shares in Nautica for all of Verde AgriTech shareholders. The share certificates have been issued. The share certificates have been posted to Canada. What happens now, and that's what we are in communication with TSX, TMX, the registrars, is that the brokers in Canada, they're going to be getting the share certificates from this Australian company. They're going to need to reallocate those shares to one of their own shareholders. What happens, and that might be new or might be something you're not aware of if you hold your shares in Canada with Scotia or BMO or National Bank or whichever bank you have your account with, they don't tell us, Verde AgriTech, that you are a shareholder in the company.
When we go through our Red Straw, which is TMX, the same company that owns the exchange in Canada, and we ask TMX for a list of our shareholders, what we get is something called CDS, the Canadian Depository System, owning 99%. CDS is only the system that represents all of those different brokers. You go one layer, and you can get a breakdown of ownership by brokers. When you get this other layer, and that was given to us by TMX, it shows each one of those big brokers owning a big chunk of shares. That is as much capillarity as we can have for all of the shareholders of the company. We issued the companies under the instruction of TMX to those brokers. We were told that they know how to reallocate that internally. We are going to be doing that.
If you have any difficulty or if your broker is not working, just please reach out to us, and we will be able to help. I am pretty sure we are going to make sure your share certificates should not disappear along the way. There is another question here about the grade. The grade is not 35%. The grade is 3,500 ppm. It is on the slide as well. There is another question here. Pros and cons of listing a stock market versus a private company to developing the project, especially in relation to the significance of the mine being a relatively geopolitically neutral location and country and its potential global significance. Oh boy. Pros and cons of being a public company. That is a good question considering I have spent the last nearly 20 years as CEO of a public company. I have probably bias on my answers. I will let Andrew answer this question.
Go ahead, Andrew.
Like all mining projects, mining projects are quite capital-intensive. It is really about creating the best value for shareholders. At this point in time, we have not kind of got a defined path. If we can get a strategic investor and the capital that we need privately, we may go down that path depending on the terms. Getting the money in for public markets is generally the way these ones develop because of the liquidity that is offered by public markets. Given we are going to have several hundred shareholders between both Nautica and Verde's pro-rata distribution, the liquidity requirements of the shareholders may mean that we will need to be listed. At this point in time, the board has not decided exactly what we are going to do. World markets are incredibly volatile at the moment.
We want to position the company so we can take an opportunity or a window to list when it's appropriate. Will that be trumped by a private offer of capital to develop the project potentially? At this point in time, we're just going to try and keep our options open and create value for shareholders which way we go and choose the best path that we can say at that point in time. Does that answer the question?
I think it's a good answer, Andrew. I think it's a good answer. Let me see here. If Mark does think it's a good response, please go back here, Mark, and ask for more. The other question, could any potential American stock market listing potentially be a contentious issue now or in the future?
Given recent developments within America, listing would be desirable as most assume based on a more multiple economic balance world. I think Mark, you inspired Mark, you're probably in Australia, you're probably not in Europe. I think the U.S., when you look at the valuation being given to rare earths companies, there's no doubt the U.S. has been the best market. It's true, though, that most companies going public in the U.S., the project is a little bit more advanced than ours, perhaps with a pre-feasibility or even a feasibility study. Once you're there, valuations are far greater than in other markets. It's something I personally see with great eyes. ASX can be a jumping stone to that. You can start on ASX. You can finance this first leg of development up to a pre-feasibility, to a feasibility study.
Then you move on to NYSE or NASDAQ as a way for you to raise your equity component for a project finance transaction. Also important to highlight, there is a lot of appetite in the U.S. to finance also from government banks, U.S. government banks and projects to finance rare earths. Other question here. Would the roads need revamping to accommodate for the increased traffic of trucks in addition to those from Verde? Oh, that's a good question. The short answer here is no, absolutely not. Because different to what we do at Verde, where we ship several tons, when you look at OB, you're concentrating it into kilograms. The final mass of what you sell is a fraction of what we do at Verde, where everything we extract gets crushed, grinded, and then sold as a fertilizer. No, I don't see that as a problem.
The other question here is, as investors at Verde AgriTech, for ethical reasons, there's a huge factor. Can you talk about how environmental standards will factor into any paths to ownership and development and eventual running of the mine? Mark, we'll make sure the same very stringent operation requirements, operation procedures are in place with anything done in the region. We will carry on protecting and making sure things are done properly. We need to do that. There's no other way for you to operate in Brazil. You need to really operate by rules. You need to exceed the rules. You need to be seen as an example to societies, an example to regulators. That's really the only way. Working with requirements even greater than what the legislation is, you need that.
Another question, how does the ASX compare to other global stock market mining companies used to list as a preferred market in terms of developing success of the company's listing? I'll let you answer that one as well, Andrew.
Yes, look, the ASX, I mean, Australia does mining well. We are an experienced mining country. We have a very experienced and well-developed capital market in Australia, which regularly facilitates capital raisings and listings. Probably the most efficient venture capital mining exchange in the world, I think. Probably that or Canada would be the two. As such, we have investors, brokers, and a network and infrastructure that is attuned to raising money and developing projects. Of the 2,300 listed companies on the ASX, approximately 800 are mining companies. It is kind of one-third of our exchange.
There is a very well-trodden path of Australian companies raising capital, acquiring assets globally, all around the world, developing those, bringing them to PFS, scoping studies, feasibility studies, and then either bringing them forward to mines or being purchased via a major somewhere in the world. It is kind of listed venture capital, is the way to describe it. It works very, very efficiently in Australia. We have investors and brokers who have the risk appetite for these types of projects. That is one of the reasons we look at it in Australia. Any other questions on that?
Yeah, no, that is a good answer. I would add to that, Andrew, to say that when it comes to rare earths, no other capital market has funded as many rare earths companies as Australia has. Arguably, that is also where the most successful companies are.
Plenty of analysts who understand it really well, banks, investors. It is a great jurisdiction for rare earths. It is all cyclical, as you know, with commodities, with mining. It is all cyclical. I do think we are in a—it might be changing now. It might be recovering now with what we are seeing. We are starting to see the share price of some Australian-listed rare earths companies running in the last few days. It might be starting to turn. It is a great market. It is a great market, great people, and great retail following on. That is very interesting. Please explain, please explain, Andrew, the situation with the superannuation funds and the government, what the government does to make sure money gets reinvested in resource stocks and the incentives people have to do that, both from funds and retail investors. I think that is something Canada kind of missed the boat more recently.
Perhaps the younger generation in Canada is more focused on Bitcoin and Tech than Mining. Explain why it just was not the case, Andrew, in terms of those programs you have in Australia.
Yeah, probably the biggest one is we have compulsory superannuation in Australia. That means that, I think—correct me if I am wrong—it is about 10.5% or 11% of your salary that has to go into a superannuation fund. You can choose to have a self-managed superannuation fund, or alternatively, you put it into a large global kind of fund, and they invest it for you. That means that effectively all Australian employees are compulsorily saving, and that capital gets reinvested into our economies, and it gets invested in a raft of different economies. One of the benefits of those investments is ASX-listed securities.
Most of the superannuation funds have mandates where they can purchase ASX-listed securities. That allows the capital to go effectively from your salaries back into capital markets and be reinvested, which has created over the last 20 or 30 years since it was brought in huge wealth in this country. One of those—that investment often fuels investments into small mining stocks, people that have their own superannuation funds. You can tap into those, and as a part of their portfolio, they'll invest in these types of projects.
It's different, as Andrew said, it's different to what you see in Canada. When you said of having to invest on TSX, you end up just investing across the border, and the money doesn't—the companies at the exchange just don't get as much money.
I think the other beauty of Australia is the fact you have BHP and Rio Tinto, sort of the world's largest mining companies, as the largest companies probably in Australia. There is lots of commentary, and you do not have the influence of having the U.S. as a neighbor as well in order to—I think it is great. I think there is no doubt. It is a great jurisdiction. Okay. The next question here.
Cristiano, can I just add to that?
Of course, Mike, please.
Yeah. I think the Australian—because of the strength and size of the Australian junior mining company, we will call it, group in Australia and the investors that follow that, there is an acutely—there is a very well-educated investor market about minerals, resources, and more recently, rare earths amongst them.
There is an increasing interest in investing in rare earth projects from high-net-worth individuals who have made their money in the resources sector and resource companies such as coal mining companies and petroleum and gas companies investing in rare earths and other things in order to broaden their base. There is a large capital base that sits in oil and gas, coal, iron ore, and gold. It is interesting to see that of the two Australian-listed—the two largest by market capitalization, rare earth companies in Brazil are both listed in Australia. That is Brazilian Rare Earths and Meteoric Resources. Both of those companies have attracted to their register people who have made money in the big end of town in the resources sector. That gives them a stability on their register.
Certainly, we've seen over the last couple of months, the volatility in those companies has been significantly less than the average volatility in the market because I think they know, well, we've got a strong investor base that's committed to the company, and so the small investors stick with them. The other thing is that more recently was the announcement that Cristiano alluded to early in his presentation that China has said it will no longer—it will ban export of rare earths. Now, China produces 95% of the refined rare earth product in the world. They control the market. They caused the price to drop last year. There's no question about that. In order to kind of slow down the competition. They're now saying the word out of China is that their low-cost mines are running out of production.
They want to use—they want to weaponize their control of the market against America. All of that bodes very well for rare earth companies in strong, stable jurisdictions like Brazil. That is why I am very excited by the prospect of working on a Brazilian-based company that produces what will be a growing market outside China of necessity. The rest of the world will not let China control rare earths in the future the way it has controlled in the past, simply because rare earths will become more important in future-facing industries. I know Cristiano is very excited and has got me excited about the rare earth market in robotics. Every robot has rare earths in it. They are essential to producing the magnets that actually control the motion of the various components of the robot and enable them to pick things up, bear heavy loads.
There is no question that that's a market which is going to grow. It's going to grow rapidly. It has the potential to take away the control of the market from China and make investors more likely to invest in rare earth projects in stable jurisdictions elsewhere in the world.
Thanks, Mike. Next question here is a very good one. Get back to it. Okay. The question is, how I personally will be able to manage my time between this new project and Verde, considering time, intellect, resources, and how I plan to find the balance as well as maintaining my own well-being?
It's an important question, and I thought a lot about it before telling the Nautica Board of Directors that I would be able to help and lead OV on this development alongside leading Verde AgriTech. I thought a lot about it, and it's a situation where I can comfortably say that as of now, I can do it. Now I can do it. The way Verde AgriTech is set up, the way we're operating, the way we're having a phenomenal year, the way everything has fallen into place now, the way we work very efficiently, the way the sales are growing really, really rapid, and the way things are going Verde, I am comfortable with it. OV, the stage the company is right now, I'm equally comfortable with it. I started doing what I'm doing now 20 years ago. Everything with OV is very familiar. It's very familiar.
I think I was lucky that I was able to start it when I was in my early 20s and now to be 44 and have had all those previous years of experience. I feel very energetic, and I feel in control of it. Having said that, I have told both boards, both members, that they are the ones who will always have the ultimate say on that. It is down to them to be representing shareholders and making sure things are being run at the sort of level you all deserve, the sort of level we should be performing in terms of leading those companies. If there is any point in time when either board feels like the situation is not ideal anymore and is not working, I will more than happy be able to resolve the situation and make the adjustment so it is not an issue.
That's the short answer. It's a situation that will get monitored very closely by both board members, both boards, and we'll see how it plays out. I also think that given everything that's going on, especially with OV and all of those potential transactions and all of those developments and everything else, I think there might be some interesting development. Something else with OV, we have a phenomenal Chief Operating Officer and Country Manager who I'm really hoping he will join us. He's visiting. He has done a lot of diligence. He's visiting the asset tomorrow. He's going to be tomorrow visiting the asset. Hopefully, we're going to be able to announce him as well joining the team, phenomenal metallurgical engineer, operator, and hopefully, he will join. That's my answer to that question.
If I'm sounding a little bit tired, it's because I am, because it's quite late for me here right now. The next question is, do you have any idea at this stage of the capital required to reach full production? We did an in-house scoping study looking at a scalable approach, two phases, phase I, 5 million, second phase, an additional 10 million tons. The upfront CapEx from that in-house non-compliant, non-JORC, non-43-101 compliant was about $400 million. Next question, I own a lot of VNPKF, which is the ticker for our US listing in the Ameritrade brokerage in the US. Please reach out to me directly. We can look into it in more detail, but usually, a US broker will have a correspondent broker in Canada that will hold your shares. So it would not show up as Ameritrade in Canada.
Usually, it's TD or one of the big banks. They will be the ones that will be holding the shares for Ameritrade. Next question, how stable is the political environment in Brazil? It's very stable as far as being a democracy is concerned with elections and the rule of law. We're going to have elections pretty soon now. People don't think Lula, the current president, will be a candidate for re-election. There is a guy who is the governor of São Paulo who at the moment seems to be the favorite one. He's a phenomenal engineer. He's been doing a phenomenal job in São Paulo as well as the other names. It's quite stable. I wouldn't worry about that. The question, how supportive are they of TGIS type of development? Sorry, I don't know what TGIS type of development is.
I don't know if you know what TGIS is, Michael or Andrew. But if not, Alan, if you know. I don't know. You could clarify. It's probably a type of somehow. Next question, how much time would be needed to reach each step so that everything worked fine, pre-feasibility, the definite feasibility permitting construction? I think we will, in the next deck, try to put together a timetable towards getting to construction and production. But you're looking at three to four years from where we are to ramp up and production. Could there be any future freight benefits in terms of cost economics of scale for both Verde and OV working together at some future point? No, not really. It doesn't. As I said earlier, I can't see any logistical benefit. So the answer here would be no.
Can Mike please talk about potential recovery and the potential ultimate size of the reserve? Mike, would you like to answer that one?
No. Two words. You will notice in the slide deck that the resource is categorized as an inferred resource, which is the lowest confidence category in resources in both Australia and Canada. That simply reflects, in this case, the spacing of the drill holes. What we know about the Geology of this deposit is that it's a bit like there's just a layer. You might have noticed on those cross-sections that all of the intersections were at about the same level on the cross-section. There's a layer of sediment running through the whole of the tenements, which contains the high-grade rare earths.
One can be geologically quite confident that if you drill more drill holes, it would improve the confidence and lower, yeah, it would improve your confidence, but not necessarily reduce the total amount present. Ahead of in neither Canada nor Australia, can you publish a mine plan with a production forecast based on inferred resources alone? You need to have enough indicated and measured resources in order to do that. That is one of the first things that the company will do as it goes through the next year or so, is improve the confidence in at least part of that enormous resource, improve the confidence level in part of it at least so that one can generate indicated and measured resources in that part, and then build a plan to develop that part first.
If you go and look at Meteoric Resources, for example, that's precisely what they're doing. They've got, I don't know, it must be nearly 10 different projects outlined in their tenement package. They've now focused down on one where they have the best clay, ionic clay hosted mineralization, and they're going to develop that first and just bring the others along as they come. That's probably what will happen here. We'll find the part of this deposit where the ionic clay treatment works best and start the project there. You can move on and categorize different parts of the deposit according to what sort of processing streams that you might develop in the future. I'm going a bit around the question because my initial answer was no.
A, it's not in the jurisdictions that we want to work in, one is not allowed to talk about reserves based upon inferred resources. Reserves has to be based upon indicated and measured resources, and we will be working to get at least part of the deposit up to that level of confidence. As an experienced Geologist, the Geology is really simple in this deposit. That was one of the things that attracted me. It's really simple. It's a layer. It's in flat sediment package. It's a bit like a coal mine, a coal deposit, in that it's just one seam, if you like, that cuts through all those hills. You can confidently say it will occur between the existing drill holes.
The exchanges with whom we must work require us to do more sampling in order to increase the confidence in that and then build indicated and measured resources, and then reserves. The other answer to the question, and it's one I gave Cristiano when I first looked at this deposit, and I said to him, "You do realize, of course, that your inferred resource is equal to 20, I think I said, 20-40 years of total global production of rare earths. You don't need any more. You just need to work out which are going to be the what pathway is going to be the best pathway to progressively develop what you've got."
Thanks, Mike.
Thank you.
The two last questions here, I'll answer them together. Alan, thanks for clarifying.
Yes, Brazil is very supportive of the development of rare earths and mining. It's very important for the economy. A statement, a proof of that, is a question from Magnus, who is awake, 1:20 A.M. for Magnus, or 2:00 A.M. for Magnus right now. Magnus is saying, "I read that BNDS and FINEP launched a $1 billion fund to boost the strategic mineral project and position Brazil as a global leader in rare earth elements and other critical minerals. Are you in contact with these? Yes. Are there chances of getting funds here instead of diluting shares in the company?" Yes, Magnus. As a matter of fact, before this call, I was just reviewing our application for this grant. We have an application which was put together over the last few weeks. We're going to be doing the filing.
The deadline is the 30th of April. We have been able to assemble a very good team of local scientists and research institutes, which you need for that submission. We are excited. We are excited about that possibility of accessing that capital from the Brazilian government to develop rare earths project in the country. It is phenomenal what is going on there. It would be a longer conversation, but yes, we are doing it. I would like to thank all of you who joined our very first presentation on OV as an independent company. It was a great pleasure. I look forward to more webinars like those where we can be updating you and taking some questions. What I usually tell Verde AgriTech shareholders is that those questions are always very good. They also help us reflect on the business. Thank you for your interest.
Some shareholders have already approached us saying they're interested in participating in investing in the company. If you are not one of those, and if you're interested, or if you know someone who might be interested, please do reach out either to myself or to Andrew. We will be happy to talk to other potential investors. Thanks again, and enjoy the evening or the rest of the day. Bye-bye.