Hello and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we're very pleased you have joined us for our three day Metals and Mining Conference. Our next presentation of the day is from Cerrado Gold. Please note, you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for a one on one meeting by clicking Book a Meeting in the top toolbar. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Mark Brennan, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Cerrado Gold, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol CRDOF and on the TSXV under the symbol CERT. Welcome back, Mark.
Thank you very much, Greg. It's a pleasure to be back. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for joining us for this update on the Cerrado Gold story. We have a very exciting story that we've been going through a transitional year where we've seen investment of approximately $40 million in our assets. We've seen $40 million reduction in our debt, and we really feel we're in the optimal situation now to really grow our operations. I'll remind you that our main operation is Minera Don Nicolás in Santa Cruz province in Argentina. We produce 55,000 oz per year on average at about a $1,700 AISC, generating about $50 million of free cash flow at today's prices. We also have a development project, Lagoa Salgada. The way gold prices have moved, this is actually now moving more to be gold and silver heavy, so precious metal heavy.
This is a polymetallic project in Portugal on the Iberian Pyrite Belt, which is a belt that's had prolific mining for over a couple thousand years. We found this project and are growing it very aggressively. Feasibility will be up before the end of the year, and we expect to be in construction by the third quarter of next year. We also have a longer term project in Quebec, the Mont Sorcier project. It's a high-purity, high-grade iron ore project, which is an exceptional asset for the type of purity iron ore that people are looking for. The market growing 9%- 10%, but we're looking at a feasibility to be completed there by the second quarter of 2026. That's a little bit out there. The main focus today I'd like to focus on Minera Don Nicolás and Lagoa Salgada just to show you how we're growing.
I mentioned earlier we're producing 55,000 oz at Minera Don Nicolás or MDN. The objective of MDN is to really grow to maintain a five-year production profile with about 55,000 oz per year. We've started some initiatives that we anticipate will see us being able to provide evidence of that five-year mine life by year end. Right now we're running approximately three years, so people get a little bit concerned about the short mine life. We're very comfortable that we'll be able to show to the market a five-year mine life, if not indefinitely, then a proof of concept as such. Beyond that, our expectation is to grow this asset very dramatically. We started an ongoing surface exploration program, about 20,000 m for this year. Because of the success that we've had there, our objectives will be to increase that to 50,000 m next year.
We'll have four rigs on the property, three drill rigs, diamond drill, one RC rig. We expect to see some really strong growth in our resources as a consequence of that program. That program began in June, so it's still somewhat in its infancy. We're seeing very, very positive early findings with respect to our second initiative. We have underground development underway. We started again in June. What we see here is an ability to mine underneath a pit that we mined for three to four years, averaging its surface about 8 g-1 2 g. Very little exploration work has been done below the pit. What we're doing now is we're going to go and drive ramps down to the ore bodies that we know to be there. Also, more importantly, is to look at putting drill pads down to grow the resources.
We will see some very profitable ounces coming out of this mine starting in November, December. However, the real objective here is to grow as a consequence of underground higher grade material. I mentioned our second project, Lagoa Salgada. This initially was perceived and was designed as a polymetallic mine with the zinc heavy focus. What we liked about the project is the zinc was within the 10% of the lowest cost producers of zinc in the world at around $0.59 AISC as according to our last feasibility study. Under the current feasibility that we're doing, we're going to see a much heavier content with silver and gold making precious metals probably around 40% based on the feasibility pricing. At today's spot pricing we're probably north of 50% on the precious metals side.
We have a project here which currently pre-feasibility which is due in December of about 27 million tons. We expect that resource to grow fairly significantly, even without any drilling taking place. We acquired this project, the option for this project in 2018. The objective here was really to grow this to be 100 million, 150 million tons. I think over the course of the next six months we'll be able to show you how we intend to grow this that dramatically. I mentioned a third asset that we have. It's a further longer term critical mineral opportunity. It's high grade, high-purity iron ore. The market is a distinct segment from the conventional iron ore market, is growing at about 9%- 10% per annum, has about a $35 premium to iron ore.
This is an extremely robust project with fantastic jurisdiction in Quebec, great infrastructure, and a really high quality deposit with about 1.1 billion tons. We're very excited with these three assets to really drive the company forward. We may see the company change its iterations in the coming years. Right now we've got a clear plan to develop these projects and to get them into production and drive really strong cash flow. The good news is we've got a very strong cash balance. As I mentioned earlier, we've reduced our debt by about $40 million this year. We've really focused on cleaning up the balance sheet. Currently, as of June 30th, $15 million cash balance. We expect by year end that'll be between $20 million and $25 million. The important thing to note here is we've spent about $40 million on investment in our three projects.
Probably about $20 million at MDN , about $10 million at Lagoa Salgada, and $10 million at Mont Sorcier. We've partaken and we've expended the greatest amount that we need to in terms of our capital programs. Moving forward, at today's prices, it looks like we'll generate about $50 million of free cash flow. On the basis of that, we'll have a $20 million cash balance to start the year in 2026. We're very well funded to develop our projects. We also have debt funding support in Portugal as well as in Quebec. What our objective will be is to drive dramatic cash flow and NAV and earnings without diluting shareholders. I'll show you what that means for us. First of all, we look at our production profile. We've grown our production in Argentina. When we got there in 2020, our first year of production was in 2021.
We went from 20,000 oz, just under 20,000 oz when we acquired it in the half year, and have now taken that up to a consistent 55,000 oz mark. As I mentioned, the combination of the company at spot prices, we're about 81% precious metals and about 62% using our contemplated feasibility average pricing. If you look at our growth potential here, we're looking at the ability to grow. The proposition we have here is $15 million in cash, $25 million at $2,100 gold of free cash. I'm telling you, that's probably closer to $50 million now, an NPV in the last feasibility of $150 million, which we expect is going to exceed this fairly comfortably and materially. A new feasibility by the end of next year, by the second quarter, will also be around that $1.6 billion.
For a company with a market cap of $150 million , we think it's a tremendous offering. What we are looking at is the ability to drive our NAV from about $111 million now up to about $258 million when we bring Lagoa into construction. If we bring Quebec, our NAV there will be just under $2 billion. That's the equivalent of about 330,000 oz of gold that we're looking at there. On top of that, as I mentioned to you earlier, our focus is really on driving cash flow and earnings. We will do approximately $50 million in 2026 out of MDN . We'll grow that to about $75 million in Lagoa starting in late, actually late 2027, and then up to about $500 million by 2030 when we anticipate the production of Mont Sorcier coming on stream.
With the new laws and the new initiatives by the Canadian government, we could see this actually coming down to 2029. Nonetheless, we see some very, very strong growth potential. We can do this largely by funding Portugal with the cash flow that we'll have from MDN . We can largely fund Mont Sorcier in Quebec by the cash that we have coming out of Portugal and Argentina. The interesting thing there is, I think that the cash required would probably be less than one year's cash flow for these combined operations. From that perspective, we see this as a low-risk opportunity to grow very, very dramatically. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, this has been a tremendous transition year for us. Reduction of debt, substantially expanding our investment in Quebec and Portugal.
More importantly, we've expanded our investment into Minera Don Nicolás in Portugal, adding heap leach production and capability, adding underground production and capability, and now looking at doing substantive surface exploration and underground exploration. My expectation is if we can show with a great deal of confidence that we have a five to six year mine life by the end of the year, it's my view here that we should see a substantial rerating of our company's stock. Minera Don Nicolás is our lead asset. We're in a very prolific belt. We have Newmont producing 350,000 oz to the northeast, San José, which is owned by Hochschild Mining, producing about 100,000 oz. Directly adjacent to us we have Cerro Moro producing about 120,000 oz. Cerro Vanguardia have produced over their mine life about 8 million oz. We are in a very prolific belt.
Basically what we're looking at is we own about 330,000 hectares. We've only touched a little bit of this property. The important thing here is that we're very, very new to this area. If you look at the granddaddy on the belt, it started in 1990 with Cerro Vanguardia. Between 1995 and 2005, they went from zero to about a million ounces in 2005. By 2008, 2009, they took that up to about 4.5 million oz, largely in gold, which is the open pit mining. They added some. The silver is the actual, the color silver is actually the heavily. They added the black, which is the underground. We are very, very new here. If you look at how these other assets have evolved, we see here a very, very strong potential to grow our asset base and our resource base very strongly over the coming years.
I'll mention that we now have the capability for all three types of production: open pit, heap leach, and underground. At the same point, we also have amongst the lowest cost of production in Argentina. With our growth of production, what we've also managed to do is even though some of these other mines are producing at much greater ounces and much higher run rates, throughput, we've always maintained a fairly low operating cost, which I think speaks volumes about the capability of our management team. We did a PEA in the summer of last year, basically showing about a four year mine life on the heap leach operations at Calandrias [ Sewer]. Our expectation here is that again we have a two to three year mine life currently with running about 55,000 oz per year, generating about $50 million.
On the back of that, we expect to see growth, one from underground. We have resources below this pit in the shaded area. Here you can see the old Paloma pit that we mined for three years. Average grams were 8 g- 12 g per ton. We expect to see high grade material below here. It's open in all directions. What we do know is we do have some ounces here that more than pay for our program. At the same point, the critical element is starting in December we'll start to put drill pads down and will drill very, very aggressively underground. It's underground where groups like Newmont and Anglo really grew their operations. I'm not going to suggest for a second that we're the next Anglo or Newmont. What I will tell you is there's no proof that we're not right now either. Let's see where we go.
That could have a tremendous impact for us moving forward. If we can add from underground, every gram we add going into our plant, we have a 1,200 ton per day plant, CIL plant. If we can add a gram per ton to that plant, basically that adds about $18 million a year for free cash flow to us. Right now we're putting in about one gram per ton. My expectation for the underground is about 5 g per ton. However, when I mentioned to you earlier, when we were mining this area in the open pit, it was running between 8 g and 12 g. I think that there's a strong possibility that we can really expand our cash flows beyond that $50 million by adding a few grams per ton to this equation. As I mentioned, it's a 330,000 hectare property. It's a very, very big property.
It's very, very lightly explored. These types of belts, you couldn't have the land position and the opportunities in other countries, the U.S. or Canada. The fact is that Argentina still remains a very underexplored area. We see lots of potential in lots of different areas. These targets that we have here are all for surface exploration. Again, we're looking at a 50,000 m program next year. This is a typical kind of cross section that we're looking at with the veins that you see. This is somewhat common on the Deseado Massif. We don't see anything different from what our neighbors have done where they've very successfully grown their resource base. We have a lot of areas, again just to highlight, up in the north we have the underground, we have the surface mining areas.
We have two areas at Paula Andrea where we saw some very, very high grade areas coming out of Baritina and [Chilonga]. We had one of the highest grade drill holes in Argentina coming out of [Chilonga]. Now what we want to do is go and drill 50 m below and see where we can get to. We also have areas to the south. This is directly adjacent to the Cerro Moro property owned by Pan American where they had a big discovery. We see lots of potential for growth as we move forward. The second project, and a project that I think is going to have a much more significant influence on us as we move forward. Basically, Lagoa Salgada in Portugal, about an hour and a half southeast of Lisbon on the Iberian Pyrite Belt, that's been in production since, you know, year zero.
The fact of the matter here is that we've got a project that was only discovered because it sits about 130 m underground compared to the peer group that are really known as surface deposits. Here we have Neves- Corvo, which was Lundin's property and now Boliden's property. It's the largest mine in Europe. We have Aljustrel, which is a private company held by Almina that produces about 200 million lbs of zinc per year. It's a prolific area. We're a project of national interest. We have the support of the Portuguese government, we have the support of the local community, which is very critical for moving forward.
Why we like this project is that we see it as the first stage of development now where we're looking at producing the equivalent of about 120 million lbs of zinc or about 40,000 oz of gold, which should get us around that 100,000 oz of gold equivalent for the company. In terms of the important thing here, it's a low cost producer for juniors. It's critical that you're a low cost producer so you know that no matter the volatility of shares, the stock, sorry, the commodity pricing, you'll always have a good, a good profitability. Our expectation here is that in the previous feasibility study that we completed, we had basically about $75 million of cash flow per year. Our expectation is that'll be well north of $100 million.
In the new feasibility study that we're about to complete by the end of the year, we're expecting this to be into construction by the third quarter of next year, 2026. We expect the support of the UK Export Credit Agency UKEF for 70% of the project financing required. Banco Santander are our lead arrangers for that project, and we've been working very aggressively with them to that schedule. Moving forward, we have a very low cost project. When we acquired this project, the objective of this project was not to have a 27 million ton project. We believe that this project has substantial capabilities to be somewhere closer to 150 million tons as we move the project forward. We've had a pretty aggressive schedule to get this moving. We expect the feasibility study by the end of the year.
We expect to have the environmental impact assessment by early in Q1, if not in 2025, then we do our. We expect our construction license to be had by the end of Q2 and into construction for probably a period of about 18 months to have us in production in 2028, which, you know, is not a long time from where we are. We have tremendous results in metallurgy. Our resources will grow. Our initial capital, we believe that of the initial capital $150 million- $160 million, we'll get $20 million from an offtake potential to take more from a stream. We think that the capital requirements to the shareholders of Cerrado will be de minimis, minimizing dilution for shareholders moving forward. Most of these projects on the belt have been found through geophysics. Right now we've got two pods, the north zone and the south zone.
We believe that drilling that we did earlier in the year, we found some indications of something right in the middle as a cross fault. Long story short is what we anticipate is that like Sandfire's Aguas Teñidas or Boliden's Neves-Corvo project, we're going to have multiple pods as we move forward. Geophysics has been a very strong indicator for us. We've done only 40,000 m of exploration drilling on this property to delineate 27 million tons, which shows that every meter we drill we end up with about 0.6 of a ton, which is a tremendous return, which is largely on the back of the geophysics. I'm not going to dwell too much on this, but at the same point, it is a very, very large project. We're looking at a project that will produce 5 million tons of iron ore. High grade, high quality iron ore.
We're in Chibougamau, an old gold camp in Quebec, town of 7,000 people that is disintegrating as a consequence of not having employment. Many of the people here, they actually fly in and fly out to the Labrador Trough where the other iron ore projects are in Canada, or they even go over to the Alberta tar sands to work. We're located about 20 km from Chibougamau. The fact is they would love us to be there. We have strong support from the indigenous community, from the local community. Our project will be non-invasive to their community. What's important here is we have rail lines and then we have a deep all-year port that are underutilized. Much like in real estate, it's all location, location, location. With iron ore, it's all infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.
That said, we have a 1.1 billion ton deposit here at surface, strip ratio less than one to one. What we're looking at is a project that will cost, according to the previous feasibility, to produce 5 million tons was going to cost about $600 million and would generate around $350 million of cash flow a year or about $250 million of free cash for a period of 20 years using only a third of the resource. This project has a lot of potential to grow. I don't know where it goes. By the end of next year our feasibility study will be completed. By the end of the second quarter we expect to see a similar feasibility than what we had in our PA, around $1.6 billion of NPV. I would expect that we're going to see a little bit of inflation taking place here.
Our initial CapEx is probably going to be closer to $850 million or $900 million. We have the UK Export Credit Agency who are looking to provide us support of 70% of our project finance. We're working with TD as our lead arranger who are very excited for us to get this project moving. I would say here with a $1.6 billion NPV, we're in a situation where we should at least get 0.1 if not 0.2 in terms of value to our shareholders once we get the feasibility completed. If I look at the proposition for Cerrado shareholders, we have strong cash, our balance sheet's in good shape. We spent 2024 and 2025 cleaning up our balance sheet, making sure that we're strong, driving our cash, reinvesting in our assets.
If we look at what we expect is to generate about $50 million of cash flow at today's prices per annum. We also do a little bit more cash from potential asset sales that we've already entered into. The real important thing here is that you've got an asset where we've basically continued to grow MDN in Argentina, that asset, in our view, should be worth the same as Serabi and Heliostar which are around that $400 million market cap level. How we get there is by basically getting to that five year mine life. I think once we can show that, I think we'll get that re-rating on the valuation again. When we complete the feasibility study in Portugal, my expectation is that we will see us getting some kind of value. Most of the companies trade about 0.8 x NAV.
I think we should, if we get 0.4 x, that's another $100 million we should have added to the valuation. If we get 0.1x- 0.2x NAV on Quebec, that's another $150 million- $300 million that we may be able to get market value for. Those are mostly NAV calculations, but I think our cash flows will provide substantial upside to give us that. I think we've got a tremendous opportunity. We've had a good move so far, but we're still very cheap, and frankly, I think we've de-risked a lot of the projects. There's nothing complicated about any of the projects we have. We just need to get to work and put our heads down and realize that asset values. That's all I have for today. I'll address a few questions that I've received.
First question that I have is how is our company ensuring that tails management in water use and local community? In Argentina, we work very closely with the state mining agency, and we're the state of Santa Cruz. We're well away from most population bases. There's not a large population for a huge landmass. There's probably about 200,000 people over probably something the size of Florida. Perhaps it's a big, big province. Whether we're in Brazil, whether we're in Argentina, Portugal, in Portugal we'll be doing dry stacking, and from that perspective, likewise, we'll be looking at the same thing in Quebec. We're utilizing the most sophisticated and current and up-to-date standards and procedures that are being used globally. Next question, in terms of outlook for gold and silver prices, I don't know.
It's a great question to ask, but I've never necessarily been a bull on gold prices, but I have to say I've never seen the world in the situation it's in today. We have a lot of volatility, we've got a lot of uncertainty and concern. I read a very interesting article talking about how it looks like what we're seeing is the initial phases of moving away from the U.S. dollar, and most central banks have been doing a lot of the buying on the gold. From that perspective, forget about the political issues that are adding uncertainty to the world, but also what we're seeing is we're seeing mature countries that are now becoming more mature, and they want their own destiny to be determined by their own currencies as opposed to the U.S. dollar.
Add to that with the burgeoning trade deficit, excuse me, fiscal deficit that you have in the U.S., I think we're in a good position for gold. We may not see it go up in this parabolic line forever, but I think at the same point there's very little that I can see that will drag it down. I'm being asked in terms of the sources of our cash and, you know, just give people a perspective on our cash position.
We basically sold Brazilian asset in the first quarter 2024 for CAD 80 million or about $60 million , which has funded the company fairly strongly to get us to the position we are at today. Again, MDN is now firing on all cylinders and we expect the addition of $20 million by year end to be added, about another $50 million if we don't find other capital uses for that cash. I think no matter what happens, we've got a very strong ability to grow from the perspective that, you know, moving forward, once we complete the financing for Portugal, we're not going to have any need for capital for Portugal, that'll be ring fenced. Basically, we'll have raised all the capital we require, hopefully with very minimal dilution to equity shareholders.
Our expectation is when that starts kicking in in 2028, it'll run at about $100 million cash flow, $150 million of cash flow on an annualized basis. You know, Quebec again, we could use our funding for Quebec. We can use our cash flows for Quebec, you know, for less than a year's cash flow out of Portugal and Argentina to be required to build a project that you could have potentially $250 million of cash flow for the next 20 years. It's a pretty nice position to be in, I would think if we can accomplish that goal of being somewhere in the region of $300 million - $400 million of cash flows by 2030, we would have to be in the market cap range of a few billion dollars at a minimum U.S. I've been asked about the feasibility for Lagoa Salgada.
Yes, we're expecting that to be completed by year end, maybe just a little bit before, but we'll determine when the most opportunistic time to release that is. Maybe not. If not year end, then early in the new year. Political risk in Argentina. Yes, political risk in Argentina will always exist. We're very good at operating around it. We bought this project at MDN in March of 2021. That was a week before COVID took place. We've been able to really push that asset forward, get it now to a very stable operating position where now it can generate cash. Yes, we don't envisage the political situation in Argentina to change dramatically, but we do see ourselves being in a much stronger position to ride with the waves.
If we see any deflation, which I think you'll see some depreciation in the currency, I think that we'll be in a very strong position to add to our profitability. Any depreciation in the currency, which I think is overdue, will only add to our strength because we're selling in U.S. dollars. Portugal, I see less. I don't see a dramatic political risk in Portugal. We are a project of natural interest and we have very strong support. I'd love to go on, but my time is due. Thank you all very much for your time. I'd be very happy to address any questions that you have, either directly or you can go to info@cerradogold.com. Thank you very much.