Hello, and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you have joined us for our two-day Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation of the day is from Outcrop Silver & Gold. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter at any time. You can also view a company's availability for a one-on-one meeting by clicking Book a Meeting. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Rob Bruggeman. He's the Chief Executive Officer and Director of Outcrop Silver & Gold, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol OCGSF, and on the TSX under the symbol OCG. Welcome back, Rob.
Thank you, Greg. Pleasure to be here. Thanks everybody for joining me. As mentioned, I'm the CEO of Outcrop Silver, which is focused on advancing one of the world's richest primary silver deposits. I will be making some forward-looking statements. These you can find in our presentation, which is always updated on our website, which is outcropsilver.com. It's a pretty simple story. Outcrop is focused on the Santa Ana project, that is one of the world's highest grade undeveloped primary silver projects. We are backed by legendary mining investor Eric Sprott. As a result, we have a strong treasury and are very active with both drilling and advancing the project towards production. The location of the project is excellent. We are in the heart of the mining district in Colombia, which has had a very positive election recently. It's pro-mining and the area we're in is both safe.
It's also got a long history of over 400 years of silver mining. Let's start with silver. I'm a big bull for gold and especially silver. The reason for that is the silver market has been in deficit for the past five years. The recent move up in prices is really no surprise. It's been brewing for a while, and that's because mine supply just doesn't simply meet what's required in the market. There is some price sensitivity. We expect some things like solar panels to probably be lower demand this year. You've got other applications such as some new EV batteries, AI data centers that are going to be massive new consumers of silver going forward. We expect the market to stay in deficit for a while, expect prices to be very strong.
The other factor for that is normally when prices go up, you'd expect to see a supply response. The reality, as you can see in the pie chart on the right, is that when you look at where silver comes from, only 26% of it comes from primary silver mines. The rest of it comes as a byproduct from lead zinc, copper or gold mines. As a result of that, you will see a supply response. It's really only that blue slice of the pie, the primary silver projects that are going to be up and running any time soon. That's not going to grow that significantly to offset that deficit. As a result of that, primary silver mines are very scarce and very valuable. That's why we're so excited about our Santa Ana project.
It has what we call the silver trifecta, which is grade, metallurgy, and payability. Starting with grade and size, we have a mineral resource estimate, which is out of date. It's from 2023, but nonetheless, it's significant. It's 24 million ounces silver equivalent in the indicated category, which is higher confidence, and another 13.5 million ounces silver equivalent in the inferred category. The mineral resource estimate is in the process of being updated. This 2023 resource is based on about 60,000 m of drilling. The new resource estimate, which will come out in September of this year, is going to be based on the 130,000 m of drilling. Lots of drilling. Expect significant growth in this resource, and we look forward to getting that out to the market.
When you look at the resource that we have, and specifically if you look at the indicated category resources, what stands out is the grade. The average grade of those resources, 614 g per ton silver equivalent. This is true primary silver. This is not polymetallic. This is not base metals. That 614 g per ton is comprised of 446 g per ton of silver and 2.3 g per ton of gold. In other words, high grade, 73% of that is silver. We've got some column charts here showing what we consider to be our peers in the development space. What you can see is our grade beats all of them, and the amount of silver that we have is also higher typically than what you'd see. This is an excellent project, in terms of the grade, but as you'll see also for other reasons.
When you look at silver projects, metallurgy can be much more complex than gold projects, sometimes you'll see a silver project and recoveries are only 50%, 60%, maybe 70%. In this case, we've got very simple metallurgy, based on preliminary testing with a gravity circuit upfront and then conventional simple flotation, we can recover 96% of the silver and almost all of the gold. This is very good. You've got high grade. You can recover that grade. Then the last piece of the puzzle is the concentrate that you produce. In this case, we produce a high-value precious metals concentrate. This again is based on preliminary testing. What this showed is the concentrate we produce is over 4,000 g per ton of silver and 52 g per ton of gold. Based on today's prices, that's worth over CAD 14,000 per ton.
This is a very valuable concentrate because of the precious metal's nature. It would be very much in demand. Also we could take this and we could smelt it into doré bars or even take it a step further and refine it into silver. Taking a closer look at this resource and the Santa Ana project, the image on the right is a plan map showing the project. All those little lines there are veins. This is a vein style system. These veins pinch and swell, but they're typically fairly narrow, but they've got very good continuity. We've identified veins over a strike length of 17 km from the Northeast to the Southwest. When we look at that 2023 resource estimate, these are indicated ounces.
In the pie chart, you can see that it consisted of six primary vein systems, and each of those pies show the average grade. You can see some are 300, 400, 500 grams per ton silver equivalent. The ones that really stand out are ones like Paraiso and Las Maras, where you've got 767 g per ton and 969 g per ton silver equivalent. The reason this is significant, as well as what you can see on the plan map, is these veins start at surface. Most of the mineralization sits within the first 200 m or 300 m from surface. What this means from a mining perspective is you can pick the highest grade veins and mine those first. Now, even within what we'd call the lower grade veins, there are still some high-grade areas, so you can go after those as well.
What that means is you can sequence this from a mining perspective so that you go after the high grade first. That's very significant because with high grade and this type of vein style system, it means you can build a small plant, doesn't need to be big, and you can produce very meaningful amounts of silver and gold. Small translates into easier to permit, less time to build it, and also less CapEx. We like that, and our plan is to advance this as quickly as possible. The other nice thing about this style of system is this is going to be an underground mine. It's not open pit, so you don't have to drill off the whole thing. We don't need to define every single vein to know what it's going to look like.
We can start mining any time based on the veins that we know. Going to the next slide. What you can see here, there's quite a bit of information, but if we start with 2026 forward, on the right-hand side, you can see we're doing the Mineral Resource Estimate update. That's going to come out in September, and that's going to be followed up by a PEA. The reason for that is we want to demonstrate what this looks like. Because of the high-grade nature, because you can build something small but very meaningful, we want to put some numbers around that in terms of what's the production rate and most importantly, what are the economics, because I think that combination of grade, metallurgy, small plant, I think the numbers are going to be fantastic and I want to get them out to market.
Even though we're looking at advancing down a development pipeline, it doesn't mean the resource expansion is going to stop. When you look at the timeline here, you can see that in 2023, 2024, 2025, there's a consistent cadence of new vein discoveries, and so we expect that to continue as we drill. The resource, we'll put out the new resource in September. It's going to be significantly bigger than the 2023 resource estimate, but it's also going to continue to grow. Our goal is to see if we can get this up to somewhere in the order of about 100 million ounces silver equivalent. The other thing you notice is Eric Sprott has been a consistent backer of our exploration programs. He's put money in every year. He's a 20% shareholder.
In the most recent financing, Jupiter Asset Management put in CAD 15 million for a 9% stake. We've got very good backing, and I expect that to continue given the merits of the project. This is, again, a plan map. I want to just focus on the exploration upside that I mentioned. Here it's color-coded. The image on the right you'll see the dark blue veins are the ones that were in the 2023 resource. We've done additional drilling on those. The light blue veins are the ones that we've added since 2023, so those are going to be reflected in the new update. Beyond that, we've got these green veins that have either very little drill testing, they won't be part of the resource, or they have yet to be tested.
We also have additional claims and are working on other things. I expect this to definitely continue to grow, but it's already big enough that we can build a very meaningful mine here. When you talk about building a mine, the other thing that's very important is ESG and social and government support. I want to focus on the management team here and our presence in Colombia. We've changed management quite a bit over the last few months. I joined in April. Carlos Torres, our Vice President of Exploration, joined in May. We were brought on because the former CEO was running two small junior mining companies, which when the companies were smaller, made a lot of sense, but in terms of accelerating development here Outcrop Silver in Santa Ana certainly deserves to have a dedicated CEO.
I was brought in for that basis. I've got a long track record in silver. I've been involved with a company called AbraSilver for the last eight years. Mostly during that time I was chairman, and I'm currently still a director of that company. I know the silver space well. I know what it takes to advance projects. Before that, my background, I am an engineer, but mostly it's been equity research, investment trading, and finance. I am not based in Colombia, but much of the team is. We've got Thyana Alvarez, who's our Country Manager in Colombia. Carlos Torres, new VP of Ex, also based in Colombia. We've got Oscar Villada, who's our Exploration Manager. He heads the team. We have about 125 people at the project site. About 75% of those are local people, so we're a big employer in the region.
Ian Harris, if you look towards the bottom left, he was a previous CEO. He runs another company called Copper Giant in Colombia, and he's based in Medellin. The other thing is he's a mine builder. He's built mines around the world, including in Latin America. As we're looking at developing Santa Ana, very important to keep him involved. Also on the board, Ana Milena Vásquez is based in Colombia as well. We've got a very strong Colombian presence, good knowledge, and about four or five years there of basically getting social license and showing the community that we're committed to sustainable development. In terms of the project location, it's shown in light blue here towards the bottom of this map. We sit roughly halfway between Bogota and Medellin, the two major cities in Colombia. It's an excellent area.
We've got highways that run right to the town in which the project sits beside. There's grid power, there's water, and we've got a workforce and very strong community relations. The other thing is that silver is increasingly recognized as a strategic metal for the government, and they want to see this project proceed. Here's a picture of the town which we sit beside. It's called Filandia. About two years ago, they put their town letters in front of the town square. The L in that actually features one of our geologists and the town and the municipal government is very committed to seeing this project advance as one of the first new mines in Tolima in a long time. Because of that strong local support, it has extended to the region of Tolima, we've got great support from the governor.
We're held up as an example of how to do sustainable development, and this is very, very important because, again, we're looking at building something fairly small. In Colombia, the way the permitting works is, if you're under a certain size, it means you do most of your permitting at the regional level, which tends to be faster than if you have to go through national permitting as well. Very fortunate in that regard, and I think we can build this probably much faster than most other development projects out there. Taking a look at the corporate structure, share structure, we've got just under 500 million shares outstanding. At the current price, that gives us a valuation a little bit under CAD 150 million, and we have about CAD 18 million in cash, we're still well-financed.
Biggest shareholders, as mentioned, Eric Sprott 20%, Jupiter Asset Management 9%, and then management insiders 3%. Hopefully we'll increase that over time. We do have some analyst coverage already, I expect that when we put out the resource estimate in September, that we'll be able to attract some new coverage just because the project will be bigger, especially if people start to think about what this looks like in a production scenario, I think it's going to be very exciting, we'll get more analysts on board. If you look at the share price chart on the left, so we're the candlestick, the green and the red, but we've superimposed the silver price on here. You can see that late last year we were tracking silver on the way up. Recently, we've really lagged the silver price.
I think this is a compelling opportunity, compelling entry point as a result of this. I attribute this to obviously a pullback in silver prices, but also the changes in the team, which creates some uncertainty, but I think is very positive. Also because the guidance for a resource estimate had been Q1 of this year, when the new team, including myself, came in, we decided to spend some more time on that, just really make sure it was done properly. That's why we delayed it until September of this year. I think it's going to be worth the wait. This is really the last slide, but it's perhaps one of the most important ones. We are focused on value creation and very much focused on and leveraged to silver. What do I mean by valuation?
I'd say, right now we're valued on an in situ basis. We have a certain number of ounces based on that 2023 resource estimate. If we increase those ounces, which we've done through drilling, we should get a higher valuation. That's great. We intend to do that. This resource will get bigger. The thing we're more focused on is how do we get a higher valuation per ounce? With that in situ valuation right now, we're trading at less than CAD 3 per ounce on the ground based on the 2023 resource estimate. That's going to shift obviously with the new resources.
Really what I want to do is demonstrate to the market what this looks like as a potential producing mine, because that in situ valuation is quite crude, and it really doesn't reflect the high-grade nature of this and the short timeframe it can take to bring this to market, just given the grade, simple metallurgy, and the size. That's where I want to shift the focus to. I think that's what creates the upside potential, and that's what we're going to be doing here with significant development over the next year, while continuing to drill. We're about 21,000 m into a drill program that's going to be 35,000 m this year. We'll have a steady monthly news release on drill results.
On the back of that resource estimate in September, we're going to do a PEA, which is going to show economics and I think re-rate this project. That's the end of the formal presentation. What I'm going to do now is I'll take a look at the questions. Just give me a second to go through these, and answer any questions that you have. There's a question about the recent VP exploration appointment, how does it add to the execution plan and new or technical approaches. The VP exploration role is obviously important, in terms of resource growth. I think we're very fortunate to hire Carlos Torres because he's a geologist, he's done exploration work, he's got his master's degree in geology, he's currently also studying to do mining engineering, and he's been involved as a geologist with producing projects.
As we go down this dual path of exploration growth, also taking Santa Ana and moving it towards production, that expertise is going to be very, very valuable, versus a geologist who just wants to find more ounces. Another question, four rigs turning and over 128,000 m drilled to date. How confident are you that the upcoming MRE and first PEA will show Santa Ana as a truly scalable primary silver mine rather than just a high-grade curiosity? Simple answer is, if I didn't believe this, I wouldn't be here. This is really what attracted me to this project. I actually wasn't looking to join the company as a CEO, when I took a look at the Santa Ana project and Outcrop Silver, I was very, very impressed with the potential here. The upcoming resource estimate is based on a lot of drilling.
It's going to be based on 130,000 m of drilling. I think it's going to be a high-confidence resource. A lot of the resource is going to be in the indicated category, which is good because that means you don't have to infill drill. Also that vein style mineralization close to surface and importantly, very good continuity within the veins, which can make or break an underground mine. You combine that with the simple metallurgy where you can use gravity and flotation. Yeah, we can advance this very quickly. It's definitely not just a high-grade curiosity. This is the most impressive project I've seen, and I look at lots of projects in terms of development potential and production potential. Let me see, what else do we have? Somebody has asked, company mentioned project has never had a PEA.
Can you outline how the first economic study might sequence capital drilling and potential production so investors can start modeling a mine plan rather than just ounces? Yes, although obviously we need to do the work on the PEA to demonstrate this. One of the reasons you do a PEA is because you want to find what is the optimal size. In this case, for Santa Ana, I think it's largely going to depend on your ability to mine multiple faces and what is the development capital required for that. You can also work backwards. You can take a look at the resource and you can say, "Okay, how many high-grade ounces do we have?" If it's an underground mine, my rule of thumb is you want to have somewhere between five and 10 years of high certainty, high-grade resources to feed the plant.
The lower grade, lower confidence stuff can come in beyond that. Typically, because underground mines are high grade, it tends to get expensive to drill to them. Typically, you want to show a mine life of 10 + years. In reality, they end up running 30, 40, 50, in some cases, 100 years, which I think could be the case here as well. When the new resource comes out, we'll take a look at that, but my goal would be to try to aim for something here where we're producing at least 5 million, 7 million ounces silver equivalent per year, starting with the high grade.
I think, you probably build a plant in two phases. Maybe it ends up, and again, I don't know what the numbers are going to be, but just to give some perspective, maybe that ends up being 400, 500 tons per day, which is not big to begin with, and then you double it after a couple of years as things get up and running. That would mean quite low CapEx, but I think with that kind of plant size, we could hit those 5 million-7 million ounce production targets. Less than five minutes left. Let me look at the questions. Somebody's asked, "The company just joined Tolima's official mining energy roundtable and highlighted strong community support.
How does this alignment with local and regional government de-risk permitting and shorten the path from high grade ounces in the ground to actual cash flow?" That is extremely important. I think mining investors have to look at projects, and when you're thinking about social license, you really have to ask yourself is this project benefiting the local communities? Because the reality is, if they're not, then why would the community members and the government support them? Government will get tax revenue, but it's the locals. I can see this firsthand because if you want to build a mine near me, I would ask the same thing, "What's in this for me? How does this make my life better? Otherwise, why am I going to support this?" We are a significant employer in Filandia. The town is about, I think, 8,000 people.
We have 125 people there. We have four drill rigs. The drillers have another 100 or so people. That's significant employment. We're right on the edge of town. That's where our core shack is and our office is. The people either live in town or stay in town. They eat in town. They're seen there. We support lots of local initiatives, education, healthcare, farming, et cetera. We give back to the community. That has translated into support for the project and the company. As a result of that, I think it pulls in the government in terms of willingness to let this go ahead.
The other thing worth noting, like I mentioned in the presentation, is we can permit most of this at the regional level where we have very strong support and less competition for resources in terms of the government agencies at the national level. Yeah, this can be permitted very quickly. We're actually looking at doing a pilot plant as well, which would demonstrate what we're doing, I think really, again, streamline that permitting process, and would actually lead to some production as well. Just looking at other questions. "Eric Sprott and Jupiter have now put in close to $20 million to work and collectively own a meaningful chunk of the company.
What are they seeing in Santa Ana that the market still isn't fully pricing in at a roughly CAD 150 million market cap?" Both Eric and Jupiter are very shrewd and prolific investors in the silver space. They look at a lot of projects. I think the reality is you don't see many primary silver projects with this type of grade, as well as some of these other characteristics in terms of scale, being in a substantial vein field. Then I think the location as well. A lot of silver comes from Mexico. Mexico's got some challenges in terms of government, security, water constraints, and so it's nice to have a project that's in Colombia, where we don't have those same issues. Then longer term, I think they see the production potential here as well.
As the saying in the industry goes, "Grade is king," and this project certainly has grade. Looks like I've got less than a minute. See if there's any fast questions. "Biggest takeaway from the latest drilling for the upcoming resource estimate?" That's a quick one. What you're going to see there is some of these veins are phenomenal. We've got 12 veins that are going to be in this new resource estimate, but some major ones carry most of the ounces, and the grades are fantastic. Those are the ones we're going to focus on first. You'll also see step-out drilling that still shows that that high grade potential is open. I think that's it for my time. Thank you, everybody. You can reach me with any questions at bruggeman@outcropsilver.com