Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Orosur Mining investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press Send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, which will just appear on your screens now. I would now like to hand you over to the exec management team from Orosur Mining. Louie, Brad, good afternoon.
Good afternoon or good evening, depending on what part of the world you're in. Louie and I are in Toronto, where it's cold, I can say. Snowy. Well, thanks for the introduction, and thanks to those who have taken time out to log in to watch this. I'll keep this presentation reasonably brief. Most of you, or a large portion of you, would have, I imagine, seen much of it before, so I won't go into great detail technically. Really just a chance to give you a snapshot of where we are on the major projects and where we think we're going to be in the near term.
You know, I appreciate that there's been a lot of interest in many of our projects, particularly Colombia, over the last 12 months as to where that's going. Hopefully we can provide some slightly more guidance today that may give some ideas and we're looking forward to just near-term changes. The snapshot clearly the share price has not been great, and I'm not gonna apologize for that, but nor will I give you excuses. You know, we have had some issues, some within our control, some without our control. I'd like to think, however, that we've seen the worst off and we're beginning to see a recovery and I remain optimistic about the future going forward.
I think that the news flow that we should be seeing coming over the next couple of weeks and months will attest to that. Investment case hasn't changed. I mean, we've always striven to provide the company shareholders access to the highest quality projects we can. Now, that's, you know, obviously somewhat of a subjective comment, but we've always been very conscious of quality rather than quantity. We've tried to balance the portfolio of projects from across jurisdictions, across geography to reduce risk across a range of commodities, predominantly gold and battery metals. And I guess importantly, across different stages of development.
We've got the Anzá Gold Project, which we've always viewed as being a much more advanced project, and the other projects being earlier stage, although they have over the last 12 months begun to move toward a more advanced stage. I'm of the view that it's quite a well-balanced project. I think the quality geologically is very good, and I think the prospects moving forward, hopefully into a more receptive junior market into 2024, will leave us in quite a good stead. Importantly, I'll make this point over and over again during the presentation, each project gives optionality. The projects are not simply binary. They succeed or fail. Every project at every step gives us options to pursue various things going forward. We have flexibility to move and to change as we go.
I'll start with Anzá because that's obviously the project that most investors are interested in. Geologically, I'll keep it simple. We're in northwestern Colombia. The Mid-Cauca Belt, which is the predominant gold belt in Colombia, plays host to largely all of the major gold projects in Colombia. Just north of us, 40 km, Is Buriticá, which is probably the best. It's about 10, 12 million oz, very high grade. Along that entire belt, we're seeing a range of gold projects from small to high grade to very, very large projects. Most of these are quite young. They're late Miocene, so they're about 8 million years old. Mostly porphyry related, but porphyries bring with them quite complex systems of veins and various things. All the same kind of basic geology, but the localized mineralization will vary from case to case.
We are in the right environment, which is specifically why these projects were chosen. It's been the right rocks, the right structures, the right address. The lease package we've got, we picked up in late 2014, December 2014, with the takeover of existing TSX company. Orosur began to work the following year. To be fair, this was at the time when the company was beginning to struggle at its mining operations in Uruguay, and very quickly, the cash wasn't available for the company to move those projects forward. Ultimately leading to the JV with Newmont in late 2018. That, however, was almost immediately preceded by some security issues.
Newmont in the beginning of the following year undertaken the first of its major mergers, that then with Goldcorp and obviously recently with Newcrest, which I suppose gave them a bit of indigestion in terms of projects. Newmont began to look at Colombia less enthusiastically, which ultimately led then to Agnico joining the fray in 2020. Those two companies forming Minera Monte Aguila as their JV partner. They reassumed control into that year and were very active for quite some time. We've drilled close to 40,000 m now across the project, but mostly at that central APTA project, which was the historical project that we worked at the beginning. COVID of course got in the way, and that severely impeded our ability to move along strike.
We managed to continue working in a COVID bubble during the pandemic. It was only after the pandemic that we were able to then move along strike, particularly to the north, and begin to look at more detail at the northern projects, Pepas and Papilla. Pepas particularly, when we drilled the first couple of holes were a little short of spectacular. High grade, thick hits from surface. Subsequent drilling, you know, we felt was perhaps done in a way that geologically wasn't correct. Still that's left us with a very nice drill target. The whole southern area is immensely prospective, but we've not yet been there in any great detail, drilling-wise, or we hope to be able to be in position to move those forward in the new year. Work has continued.
The situation there is that there was some mapping and stuff recently. I'll talk in a bit more detail. Perhaps there'll be questions in that sense. We're beginning to see a lot of these prospects come together. The prospects in the south, El Cedro, El Roble, we begin to see now are all largely the same project, so these names are somewhat arbitrary. We're seeing what we think is a major porphyry system just to the south of APTA that ultimately is the feed source of all of these prospects. That puts us in position to be quite keen to get back in there in the new year as we see this really emerging as a quite substantial prospect.
The question I guess that's going to be asked by everybody is what on earth is going on? The joint venture or the Phase One of the joint venture came to an end of its first four years at the end of last year— September last year. Now, as most of you will be aware, the option then was to move forward into Phase Two, which should have happened reasonably quickly. Now, we've explained on numerous occasions why that didn't happen because of the change in tax. Tax rules in Colombia meant that the whole process of moving to Phase Two as was originally envisaged didn't work for tax reasons. We needed to move back to square one and create a whole new process, a whole new structure for that to work.
Then over the course of the next few months as we moved through that process, we were working on the basis that they would eventually move forward to Phase Two. I think, however, I guess the middle of the year we pivoted when we began to recognize that they were not or they didn't want to move forward. Largely I think driven by Newmont. As I mentioned, Newmont is now a very substantially different company to what it was when it began the JV. A merger with Goldcorp, a merger with Newcrest, it's now almost three times the size. It began to see far too many projects that it could digest and Colombia was one that it sort of, I guess, became less important to them.
That then led Agnico, who were much keen on the project, were unprepared to move on without Newmont. We began to get the sense that they were not as keen as they were. We pivoted back and said, "Well, okay, guys, if you don't want to do this, you know, can we have the project back?" That's been the discussion since, I guess, the middle of this year. That was met with agreement. I mean, we all agree that was probably the best way to go for the project for both companies. The question, however, was what was the process? It isn't just as simple as, you know, shaking hands. It actually is quite a complicated transaction.
Lots of moving parts that had to be sort of worked out, and we're getting quite close to that point now, I think. There were always four options. Option one being simply go as before, move to Phase Two, they work, and everyone's happy. That option we felt was off the table middle of the year. Option two, MMA could sell its stake. They can if they wish. They've earned that stake. We can't prevent that, but we had made it very clear that we would not give any concessions to a new buyer and that any new buyer would be bound by the terms of the existing agreement. We did that intentionally, not to make it difficult, but to certainly make them aware that any new buyer would not get any free passes with this project.
Option three was MMA not moving forward to Phase Two, in which case they would fall back to 49%. We would have reassumed majority control and dilute over time. That's the simplest option, but it's not the option that we preferred for a number of reasons. The primary reason being that it made it very hard for us to know where we'd end up. The way that they would dilute would be by them electing not to contribute their share of capital, but they could elect to recommence at any time. So if we, for example, had some positive drill results, they could jump back in.
We would never really know where we'd end up equity-wise, and that would make it very hard for us to, a , to bring in new partners, and two, to value the firm without really knowing what our end equity would be. It's easiest, but it wasn't the favorable one. Our preferred option was we get the project back 100%. We made that very clear to the partners, I suppose, Q3 this year. We provided them with a range of what we saw were mechanisms we could do that. We began those discussions, and that's certainly been our preferred option. We've pushed this fairly hard.
We think we're beginning to come near to the end of having agreement on those general terms or subject to finalization and the limit to what I can say is sadly at the moment, but I'm fairly confident that we are moving to a point where that should be our end game in the near to medium term. We're in Toronto now, we are moving that process forward. It is, as I said, complicated. It's not simply a matter of shaking hands and off we go. There are a lot of things to unwind, our objective has been for quite some months now, for us to reassume total control of the project 100%. The reason that's preferred is that really that gives us options.
You know, we can run the project. We can find new partners. We can sell the project. We can do anything we want. We're not bound by the constraints of an existing JV. So at the moment, we're simply working through the process of understanding exactly what that mechanism would be, understanding what terms might be attached, and we would hope to be able to communicate that to the market in the near term. The other projects we have, we now have three other projects, all of which were acquired on largely the same basis. Major ground holdings in major endowed regions. Early stage, all early stage projects within the gold. That's our Chairman Louie's phone. Within the gold or battery metal space.
Early stage with very clear signs geologically of things having gone on, and importantly, low entry cost. We were very conscious of our balance sheet, very protective of the balance sheet to make sure that everything we did, we get in cheaply. The first year, at least in some cases two years, we could work slowly and cheaply just getting our feet on the ground and moving things forward, so that every project we had didn't constrain us too much in what we could do, and every project gave us options moving forward. The first of these, in no particular order, the Brazil Ariquemes Project. It was a tin project, but actually looking at detail and more data, it's a tin niobium tantalum rare earth project.
It was simply tin because that's what was mined by the old artisanal workers in the region who had no capacity to move into the other metals. It's a huge land holding over the region, 3,000 sq km. We have the right with a Canadian company to own 70%. It had been historically mined, well, not on a large scale, but by local cooperatives who en masse mined this huge amount of material. It's a very well endowed region in Western Rondônia in Brazil, but no exploration had ever been undertaken on a, you know, what we might call a modern standard. No historical data, no maps, no understanding of methodology. Heavily mined, but largely untouched on an exploration basis.
We—t he challenge or the opportunity was. It was a huge land holding, which is also the challenge. I mean, 3,000 sq km, where on earth do you start? The first process was simply to spend something like six months just going through the entire project on a regional basis, sampling along roads and creeks, and just getting a sense of, for the first time ever, what the regional endowment was, what the regional target vectors were to mineralization. That took us to middle of this year. The data began to show us areas that we thought were very attractive, and then would lead us through to more detailed exploration later this year, moving into next year. This project was always meant to be slow, and that was always the intention. We've moved very slowly.
It's a very low cost, low burn. We found areas that we think are potential. We've since gone in the last few months and reduced the scale to focus down on some of these high priority areas. I mentioned recently, we have had some sampling problems. Sampling with some of these alluvial systems is a little bit odd in the way it works and the way in which we collect and concentrate and assay is something that we've had some difficulty with the local systems and the local people in place. We've had some issues. We are close to resolving those now. We hope to have some decent results to announce in a couple of weeks time.
We've had to go back and do a bit of basic geology, just to get ourselves in a point where we can have a higher level of reliability in the sampling. It isn't like normal drilling where you —it's well established. This is sort of a quite an old-fashioned way of doing things. It's taken us a while to get our feet on the ground reliably. So moving forward, we're moving forward slowly, but we remain quite positive about it. The project that I've always quite liked from a geological point of view is El Pantano in Argentina. Again, early stage, in fact, it's actually a virgin project. Large, entirely untouched, no drilling. Huge land holding, 600 sq km.
Evidence on the surface of what we saw as a massive epithermal system. In this part of Argentina, we're looking at low sulfidation systems. Hugely endowed region of projects of 10, 20 billion oz. You know, really serious gold country. The key thing that appealed to us was it wasn't just the geology, it was the ability for us to do a JV that led to us earning 100%, which is, I wouldn't say it's unusual, it's almost impossible to ever see an example of that. It's very, very rare. And again, that gave us options. You know, we earn our way in to 100%, which means we again can do subsequent deals with other majors in time should we wish to do that. We haven't—we haven't pushed that yet.
We've begun the project on a small scale basis, and we've been moving forward over the last 18 months just doing all of the base case data. We're in far southern Argentina, obviously a country with some interesting politics right now, so it actually makes it quite good to work. Remote, arid, winters are horrendously cold. Summers are horrendously hot. It's a great place to work. Empty, no one lives there, no conflicting land use, perfect place for mining and well-endowed. We're surrounded by major mines and major miners in all directions. The biggest being Newmont Mining's Cerro Negro project just to the northwest. Cerro Negro is currently about 10+ million , but it will be at the end of its life about a 20 million oz project. Of course, Newmont is our largest shareholder.
Newmont are aware of us. They've been quite helpful. We've gone to visit their project. They've come to ours. They've given us some assistance technically. We've been able to visit Cerro Negro underground, and that's given us some quite valuable insights into the structural controls of these things, which have been very useful. We continue a dialogue while they watch and cheer from the sidelines. There's no JV being offered, and we haven't asked for one, but it's interesting at least that we have Anglo to the south and Newmont to the north. Our objective is to develop a project from nothing really that can get to a point where it's a very attractive thing either for A, for us to drill ourselves or B, to then go and present to a major partner.
That's been our objective over the last 18 months. Really it's just been slow burn, mapping, sampling. It's a challenging place to work climatically. The winters down there are fairly grim. We really can't work from about May to October just because it's cold, wind, and dark. We've been slowly just mapping and doing ground mag surveys over the last 18 months, and we're now at a point where we're coming toward the end. Again, very low burn, very slow burn, very low cost, just ticking along, moving the project forward to the point where, you know, we're slowly bringing it together as a fairly major, more advanced project. The structure's holding up. We know the structures in this region are all southeast, northwest, the main structures.
We have one. We can see a massive structure 20 km long. We have geochemistry showing us gold anomalies all along, all the way along. More importantly, we're seeing the pathfinder elements of mercury and arsenic, which are more indicative of these epithermal systems, and we're seeing all the right rocks. We're gonna get to a point at the end of this year, which is a week away, b eginning of next year where we'll probably have completed the mapping exercises. We've done all the base work where we've now got a project we can move forward. We'll have geochemistry. We'll do more geochemistry, beginning of next year, and we'll get to a point where we'll have drill targets in a couple of months, I would hope, and permits to drill, which is obviously equally important.
The question then arises, well, what do we do? Do we go it alone, or do we talk to majors? I don't have the answer yet. You know, again, it's a question of options. You know, we've got a wonderful project, a massive project, certainly of major scale, and the ability to have 100% ownership gives us the option of being able to look at alternative ways of doing this. So we've moved this forward absolutely according to plan, and we'll have that in a position to weigh the options in early in the new year. The last project, sort of the most recent project, is Lithium West in Nigeria. As I made the point when we announced this some months ago, what on earth are we doing in Nigeria when we're a South American company?
The answer was, well, we want lithium. We were looking at lithium, or have been looking at lithium for over two years and just couldn't find a way to buy our way in during the time when the lithium price was just completely crazy and the asking prices for projects was beyond our capacity or beyond our preparedness to countenance. Certainly in South America, there was simply no way we were getting to the space. Nigeria was a place that Louie and I knew quite well, and geologically, it has a lot of analogs to South America. So basically, the rule is you go where the rock tell you to go. We're comfortable working there. We have people there.
It required no additional startup costs, no investment in capital or staff, and we could begin work immediately with a very substantial pre-existing geological knowledge. For us, it was. It wasn't a big step, although to the market it might have seemed slightly scary. As I said, follow the rocks. Going back in geological time, Nigeria and Brazil were once joined together before the ocean opened up. The rocks we see in Nigeria are a mirror image of the Lithium Valley we see in northeastern Brazil. It's almost exact analog. We can take a lot of the learnings from Brazil, which has probably got a two- or three-year head start, and move those across to Nigeria. Exactly the same rocks, just in a, you know, a slightly more interesting part of the world.
Importantly to us, it was a place that we got in fairly early and we could avoid the competitive rush. At the moment now, Nigeria is not entirely gone, but close to being gone in terms of access to land. We really got in at the last moment that we could, and now it's, you know, we are seeing some fairly major companies now beginning to work in Nigeria, and I think we've come to the end of acquisition phase because the costs have increased substantially since we began. We began with four licenses and then added two more, so the total land holding is a bit over 500 sq km. The other areas, other projects where we have one contiguous block, we spread ourselves across several belts.
Nigeria, like in Brazil, the lithium, the pegmatites are located on these sort of large regional parallel belts or schist belts, as we call them in Nigeria, structurally controlled. We've put our foot on a couple of these schist belts rather than just the one. One, just to get ourselves geologically spread risk-wise, but to also give ourselves the catalyst to use our licenses as a way to begin acquiring more. We want ourselves to have a foot on, in this case, we have three major belts. Once we're there, we can begin to look at neighboring prospects and projects and establish hubs on those three belts. We are looking at more deals, and we certainly will begin to look at new prospects. These licenses, as I said, were chosen specifically.
We understood what controls pegmatites here. Our people there have been working on this geology for the last four or five years. We very clearly understand what controls it, and therefore, we chose these licenses not simply on availability, but on what we thought was a highly prospective location. So it was all very much geologically driven. We began work immediately, which was the great joy of having people on the ground. The first pass, we began in the west just for logistical reasons, and the first license out in Kwara State came back immediately with some very high-grade numbers just from soil sampling and rock chip sampling across the license with lithium oxide numbers above 2%, which is highly encouraging for an area that had largely been untouched.
That was a nice first pass test and a nice indication that our reasons for going there proved to be valid. We've since moved toward the east, and we have covered the other five licenses now on a recon basis. Data is coming in now, and we hope to be able to announce that probably after the new year. It's just being processed now and correlated. So again, w e're seeing some quite comfortable numbers coming out of those areas. Quite nice numbers, and we'll get all those moving in the new year. We are also, again, looking at new prospects. This license, for example, quite obviously is a rather odd shape.
We're very quite keen now on the basis of these numbers to fill in these gaps. We're in advanced negotiation now to acquire some of the surrounding ground on this particular license to make it a little bit easier to work and to fill in those highly anomalous gaps. Again, watch this space. But it's a fascinating place and it's becoming a very busy place, but it's a place that we are very comfortable working politically, economically and logistically. So, you know, we do have a substantial advantage there among other companies. I keep showing this slide somewhere where to next, and it changes every time.
I think we're coming into or at least coming to the end of what's been, I'm sure for all of us, a very frustrating time. You know, we've dealt with the slings and arrows of what's happening in Colombia. My argument's always been that it was beyond our control because the decisions that were being made, they were being made by another company. That was a great frustration that we're not in control of our own destiny. Our primary objective has always been to get that project, or at least get back control of that Anzá Project so that we can at least begin to make our own decisions.
That's been, I think, what's held us back over the last 18 months is that inability to run the project in a way that that better reflects our size. You know, being a smaller company, we would do things very differently to what a large company would. So getting Anzá back is, and has always been our priority. It's certainly not worked as quickly as we would have liked, but again, beyond our control. But I think we're very close to the end now, and I will just ask for a little bit more patience, if there's any of it left. I think we're at the last inning now to use a North American term. Should that happen, we then plan, and we move forward.
We're coming to the stage now where you know we are seeing some more interest in the junior mining sector and our ability to move a drilling program forward there is looking far more attractive than it was recently. Certainly the politics in Colombia, while remaining complicated, to use a polite term, is improving. It's becoming a place where we would feel much more comfortable working now than perhaps we might have done a year ago when things were a little bit more complicated. Nigeria, as I said, we're getting assays coming in now, and we'll probably announce those in a few weeks once everything's completed and assessed. Nigeria, we wanna move fast, and we can move fast.
It's just a country that's just a lot easier to work in terms of permitting. And obviously, as the photograph suggests, it's a lot flatter than Colombia, so moving around working is just a lot easier. We aim subject to positive results to be drilling in the first half of the year if we can. That's certainly our objective should we find the right target. So again, we'll see how we go. As I noted, El Pantano, our aim is to be drill ready in the new year. The question then is, well, do we drill or do we find a partner? That's the objective, and we'll assess that, you know, I guess in end of Q1, we'll move that one forward. Ariquemes is probably the project that will remain slow for a while.
It's of our projects at the bottom of the list just for a number of reasons. We're looking at that now, and we're beginning to assess some options that might see us, should things go well. Yeah, looking at the near-term production, but that's obviously a somewhat speculative idea. Ariquemes will remain probably our lowest burn project for a while, but we'll watch this space. There's our snapshot. That's the end of the presentation. I'll, you know, we do hope to be able to provide a lot more detail technically and commercially in the new year as all of these things hopefully come to fruition. I'll be quite happy to hand over to questions should there be any interest.
Perfect. Brad, Louie, thank you very much indeed for your presentation this afternoon. If I may, I will just bring back up your cameras there. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. But just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Louie, Brad, as you can see there in the Q&A tab, we have received a number of questions from investors that were both pre-submitted ahead of today's event, as well as those that have made their way through during the presentation this afternoon as well.
Firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. Brad, Louie, if I may just hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you.
Okay.
Okay.
We'll read out the rude ones. There's a few of those.
Why don't I go with the first one? Give you a break.
Yeah, Louie, you get the first one.
The pre-submitted question, the first is, "Can you explain why U.K. shareholders are unable to vote at the AGM, which is contrary to any shareholder democracy?" Now, I can understand people's frustrations, but that's not really the fault of the company or its directors. It really is an issue with the way the law works in the U.K. and indeed in Canada.
The issue is that if the actual shareholder on the company's register is a nominated company—nominee company rather than you as a shareholder, then it needs to be the nominee that votes. So you as a shareholder, if you have a broker or a nominee company. For example, like ii, which I now think is owned by abrdn plc, you will need to contact abrdn plc and tell them how you wish to vote those shares. It's something that we've taken to heart, these comments. There is an extensive set of instructions in the circular to the AGM that was sent out in early November. We also have a Q&A section within there which should let you know how to do that. So in essence, we do want obviously people to vote.
We want people's comments as well as votes on these sessions. The way to vote is just to ensure that you speak to your nominee or broker to ensure your votes are made and your voice is heard. Like, that's it in a nutshell, and that's both in the U.K. and in Canada, frankly. If your shares are held by a nominee, you as a shareholder need to talk to the nominee and get them to vote those shares. Right.
Second question. "Does the JV company in Colombia provide us with the data? And has that data thrown up any interesting thing?" Well, the answer is yes.
The JV deal always was that with MMA that they would provide us with all of the data on a regular basis, quarterly, at the very latest, but they wouldn't provide the interpretations, just the raw data. Which is fine, we're capable of doing our own thing. But to their credit, MMA have been quite friendly in providing us more than that. So we've certainly seen the data as we went along and some of their comments, interpretations as well. Even though, you know, we sort of we did announce beginning or earlier this year that the project was in effect going into care and maintenance.
Actually, there was work going on. There were, e ven though the MMA was winding back, there were still obligations in the lease condition to do work. While there was no drilling, there was a reasonably substantial amount of mapping and sampling done over the course of the year, simply just to meet the obligations of the license. We clearly want to protect the tenure of the licenses. That work focused on originally Pepas, and then it began to move down to the area just south of APTA, which, you know, we've historically referred to as Charrascala to the west, and then south of there, we're looking at El Roble, Guamal, all these odd names. That data began to flow in over the last couple of weeks. I've just come back.
I've spent a week down in South America with our geologists, and we had a massive data dump from MMA, which was great, but it's just a huge mass of data. We said we're running through it all. The assays had come back in. What we're beginning to see now is that, as I mentioned in the presentation, a lot of those old prospect names that were originally based upon historical geochemistry back in the old days don't work anymore because it's just one big system rather than little sweet systems. We're seeing tremendous potential in the region just south of APTA that we hadn't seen before that would seem to us indicative of a major porphyry, probably one or two big porphyry systems underneath that entire area.
Now, the way porphyries work is that, they're not just a simple big blob. You get a big blob, and then you have all these veins heading off. So a porphyry is a simple word of saying a very large, very complicated system with all kinds of varieties of mineralizing styles. The porphyry itself, the alterations, halos around the porphyry, the veins. It's a big system. So that's highly encouraging that we're seeing that coming out now in an area that we really hadn't. You know, we'd been to it in the past in a cursory fashion, but not really worked at to the same level of detail. So, you know, caps off to MMA for heading down and doing that work. It's quite—i t's tough country. It's quite hard to access.
You know, should you know, fingers crossed, touch wood, we get the project back in the end, which is our plan and which is our expectation. It will be given back to us in a much better condition than when we handed over a couple of years ago. Not only with what I would view as a walk up drill target at Pepas tomorrow, just drill that properly, but this massive system down in. We got to think of a new name for the region. South of APTA. South APTA, there you go. That you know is tremendously exciting.
Yes, the answer is, you know, at the end of it all, we're getting data coming in over the last few weeks, which has really lifted the whole profile of project in my mind. You know, subject to the finalization of our discussions, that'll all come out in the new year, I hope.
Excellent. I'll take the next one is, "Ho w does Orosur plan to manage its cash flow and funding for ongoing projects?" Well, yes, it's gonna be a challenge. It's a good situation to have. We have a number of interesting projects now. When Brad and I arrived, we had just the one project in Colombia. We've now got these other three and frankly, it does give us some optionality there. These assets are now valuable, so raising cash on the market is not the only option that's available to us. That said, we haven't raised money for over three years now. A lot of our funding was brought in by our partners in Colombia, so we've relied on them to fund that particular project.
We did do a raising just over three years ago, which was about GBP 4 million, and that's kept us going. We're careful with money. We ration capital as we go along, and we'll carry on doing that going forwards. That said, we are an exploration company. There will be a need to go to the market for money if it's not the right time to look at monetizing any of these assets, and we don't wanna monetize an asset at the wrong time. If it's the right thing for the company to do to go and raise money, we'll go and do that. And so, yes, that's what we'll need to consider. Are we gonna go to the market, or are we gonna do something else to raise finance?
We've still got near on $2 million, so we're far from running on fumes right now. It's good to have the ability to time the raising if there's one that we're gonna be contemplating. Yeah, I think that's it on that one. Hope that gives you some idea of the options that we have.
Next question. "How do we ensure compliance with local regulations in your mining operations?" Well, we don't mine for a start, but I get what you mean. And how do we engage with local communities? Well, we'd be here all day if we talked that. That's a massive subject. Well, how do we comply? Well, you comply by complying. If there are regulations, you know what they are and you comply. Every project we have, every country we're in has regulations, both generally speaking federally and on the state level. You know what they are, and you follow the rules and that's number one. You know, breaking the rules is somewhat unforgivable in any country.
You know, we try to—yeah, t here are certain, what you might call best practices in certain things environmentally and human resources. If those best practices are above the local level, then you go to the higher level. Ultimately, the least you do is follow the rules, and that's just business. We have people in place on the ground at every place we work that know the rules, that know the people who apply the rules and, you know, we do things by the book, and that's just the way any, you know, for a better word, Western company does things. Not everyone does.
You know, if we go to any country where there are activities being undertaken by local artisanals or, you know, miners from other countries who don't feel the need to follow the rules, then that's just our bad luck. We don't have that luxury. We follow the rules. Communities, well, absolutely. I mean, that's like anywhere you go. You can't work in a place unless they want you there. That varies from place to place. Luckily we're in places where by and large we are welcome. That varies case by case. Argentina, there is no one there, which is great. I mean, it's like working in Australia, but colder.
Literally there might be one person living on our mining prospect or in Patagonia. It's just, you know, in the middle of nowhere. It's like being on the moon. That's nice. Colombia's more complicated. Colombia is, you know, rugged country, coffee, mangoes. You know, different social tensions. We've worked very hard for a very long time in the Anzá region to have a positive, you know, a positive face. We are wanted. We are liked. We follow the rules. We engage constantly, and MMA took that on and followed it, and they did a very good job. You know, we are very highly regarded in that part of the world. But in Colombia, it's complicated. There are other areas nearby where they don't want miners.
You need to know what the mood is and really work very hard for a very long time to establish a good reputation. Nigeria's again more complicated. Different culture, different religion, different languages. A much greater degree of, for want of a better word, poverty. You know, you need to act differently and to present a face and provide things that suit what their needs are. You adapt yourself. Brazil, different again. Rondônia is a highly developed place. It's a highly, you know, well-established, reasonably wealthy mining, farming part of the world. It's like working in the first world. Again, different expectations. You engage with the community and you don't come in and try to impose an outside methodology.
Yes, you have these best practices. You come in and you make it very clear you're there to listen more than you are to speak. If you do that consistently, and you then do what you say you're going to do, then generally speaking, you'll do well.
Just to add, there is more information. If you want more information on the website, you can have a look through under the C orporate Governance section. There'll be more for you there if you're interested. The next one. We'll put that together, shall we?
"In the face of fluctuating commodity prices and geopolitical uncertainty, how do you stay resilient?" Yeah, okay. That's, y eah, well—
Well, that's exploration company that mines.
You get up every day and you dust yourself off, and you do it again. Commodity prices, first of all, you don't get concerned about the day-to-day price. I mean, you know, to give you an example, the lithium price has had a bit of a hammering over the last six months, and probably deservedly so. It's come off, you know, crazy highs last year. It's now back to what you might argue is a place that's more akin to supply and demand. It's found its place, but it's come off these crazy highs. So you don't jump in and out on the basis of the price today because we're not mining today. You know, if we're successful, we're mining in five years' time.
You take a view on what the supply-demand fundamentals might be at the time when you might be mining should you be successful. For us, it's a five-year time horizon. You know, we've looked—I'm not an economist, obviously, but you know, we've looked at those numbers and lithium looks good. Gold is obviously, as I mentioned. La Rubina, you know, it stuns me why it's not being looked at now and it's 2,000 whatever it is percent. Now it's bouncing back. I think gold has a very strong future, and we're very happy to be positioned in such good projects at a time when gold price is looking like getting away on us.
Tin again is a very interesting metal in the sense that its supply side dynamics are very stretched and very tenuous. If we can establish ourselves in that space, I think we're in a very strong position. All of our commodities, we feel, have very good fundamentals over the medium term. Short term, I ignore it. I mean, I can't fix that. I can't change it. I'm not mining the material. It doesn't affect our bottom line. It impacts sentiment. I'm not gonna jump in and out of projects on the basis of what the price does tomorrow. Geopolitically, well, that's. Yeah, it's always kind of fun, isn't it? You know, we've looked at the countries we're in. B razil is immensely stable.
It's, y ou know, yes, you can say the government there is a bit to the left, but it's such a big place now that it just kind of trundles along. It's a very safe, reliable, stable country. Colombia, we've had a very interesting few years with a leftist president. That isn't going well for him. You know, I'm not gonna get involved in political commentary, but that seems to be coming to an end in the next couple of years. So, t hat's turning around. Argentina had a very interesting couple of weeks. I was there on the inauguration of Mr. Milei, you know, a week or so ago. That's gonna be interesting. I mean, very positive for business, very positive for mining.
It'll be tough being Argentinian for a while, but that's, t hey seem to be, you know, really grasping the fact that they had no choice. That country to me, you know, observing from afar, looks like it's gonna be moving in the right direction albeit with a bit of short-term pain. So, highly encouraging about Argentina. To be fair, in South America in general, we've never had an issue. It's not corrupt. We've never been asked for a bribe. It works. The institutions work. It may be at times bureaucratic, but it functions—i t functions well. You know, we've found that all the countries we're in South America have been quite, I won't say simple, but, you know, very reliable places to work. Nigeria is different.
We wouldn't be there unless we had a very firm grasp of how it works, what the rules are, and who the major players are, we need to be dealing with. That's again a country with a history, but it's also got a future. And that's to me it's more a question of what is the trend of that country rather than where it is today. That's to me to my mind is moving in the right direction. Its institutions are improving. The rule of law is improving. The workability is improving. Foreign companies are coming. The more that come, the more they become accustomed to foreign companies, and the more it becomes easier. It's as I said more the trend is your friend.
That's a country where, you know, we admit it has challenges, but we can deal with those, and it's getting easier every day.
And just standing back a bit, I mean, there are, you know, four projects in four different countries. Again, that gives you an ability to decide which to push forward at what stage, depending on what's happening on commodity prices, on geopolitical uncertainty. There is a defense in just the nature of the portfolio that we've got. Okay, the next one. "Brad, if you had data, you really should have RNS, that data, anything will have helped the share price."
I don't agree. I mean, we've announced lots of things over the years, and the share price has done nothing or gone down. So, look, I see your point. You know, data comes in. You know, we take a view. We announce when we think things are material. If we get one assay coming in, I'm not gonna announce that. I'm not gonna waste anyone's time. You know, I announce things when I think it's worth to announce, when I think that the data is sufficient volume and of sufficient importance for it to make a, you know, for it to be worth you knowing. If I get some numbers in and there's just some anomalism, are you gonna care? No.
If it's quite sensitive, clearly.
Yeah.
I mean, we'll announce that. The rules are followed in any event, so that's restrictive.
Yeah. I mean, in my defense, I'd say if I start announcing everything, you begin to accuse me of just trying to defect from the reality of, you know, other things. You know, we've always taken a view that we, you know, we're very stringent on announcing when we think things are material. The market doesn't always agree, but that's, you know, our sense. That, you know, we wait till data comes in, it's complete, it's verified. We are required geologically to do things to certain codes, in this case NI 43-101.
The data must be reliable, it must be verifiable, and I must but must be, as the competent person, able to sign off and say, "Yes, this data is correct." There is a process as well, and that process can't be short-circuited, so you know, it does take time.
The next one is going back to funding. " Just in terms of funding, do you balance the position of a diluted shareholder versus the company position?" I think I've probably answered that already. Yes. Well, yes, of course, we decide if a project's worth raising money for, and then, you know, go ahead and raise the cash. There will be obviously some dilution. We've minimized it so far. We haven't raised any money for three years. You can be certain that if we do move and raise some cash, then it'll be for the right reason on the right project.
Perfect. Brad, Louie. Sorry, Brad.
Yeah. I just wanna add to that comment. I mean, it's a very fair question, but it's a very complicated question and it's a question that really you can't answer without the benefit of hindsight. It's very easy once you've found a bloody big mine to look at it and say, "Well, maybe we'd have been better off doing it a different way." You know, our projects are early-stage grassroots in some cases. For us to make a decision on whether we dilute the project or the company, it comes down to our view on the geological risk and the money required to answer that risk or to answer that question, and we make that call at the time on what we know.
You know, for example, El Pantano, are we gonna do ourselves or bring in a partner? Now, I don't know yet, but we'll make a call next year on what we think is the best way to go based upon our sense of the geological risk and the questions to be answered and the cost to answer the questions, and we'll do the sums. If we find a monster and we've brought in a major partner, you go, "Well, you bloody idiots. You've given away a monster." We'll say, "Well, that's fine, but we didn't know at the time." It's a question that I'll answer in about five years' time.
Okay. The next one says that the market thought that our project in Colombia was on a care and maintenance basis, but clearly there is some work being done by MMA, which Brad has just alluded to in relation to all the mapping to the south of APTA. And then this particular person says, "Well, that sort of news should lift the market price." Well, that's your comment. We will pursue our strategy. We'll put out the data when we have it, and it's all been checked over. But yes, there has been some work ongoing to the south of that project.
We don't announce for the sake of making announcements. I mean, I don't tell you that I'm out doing mapping in Argentina. You know, we announce results. That's just otherwise, we're announcing every day that we're brushing our teeth and doing stuff. I take your point. Again, you know, I'm not gonna view that as a material announcement until such time as I see that work is legitimate. I'm just not, you know, in the game of trying to second-guess by just dribbling news out that's meaningless, really. Unless I can attest that it's actually, you know, value-adding and material. You know, I take the point, but that's your view.
Perfect. Brad, Louie, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for being so generous with your time then addressing all of those questions that came in from investors. Of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended, just for you to review to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so, and we'll publish all those responses out on the platform. Louie, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, if I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that'd be great.
Sure. I'll keep it short. We've been on for quite some time. First, thanks to all. Thank you very much for attending. It's important that we do have these discussions with shareholders, and it's also important that we get these votes for the AGM, so I hope you heard my message in relation to the voting. Any more questions, please just write in an email and we'll get back to you. Overall, I think we've come a long way in this year. It's been a difficult year in Colombia, undoubtedly, but we're now making significant strides, I think, to resolving that. Hopefully early in the new year we'll have some news. In relation to Nigeria, we're very excited about the lithium market.
In spite of the price having come off right now, we're looking, you know, well beyond the next year in relation to that commodity. We've got a very strong partner there, so with them together with us, we think there's gonna be plenty of news flow, and plenty of activity going on down there. In terms of the tin project in Argentina, in Brazil, that's a slow burn. The one in Argentina is very interesting, as Brad said. We've got these four projects. There's gonna be a lot more activity in the next 12 months than there has been in the past 12 months, I believe. We're very much looking forward to 2024, hopefully with an improving market.
Let's all keep our fingers crossed for that. As always, thank you very much for attending, and we will speak soon, I'm sure.
Perfect. Louie, that's great. Thank you once again, both of you for updating investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected, for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Orosur Mining, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, so good afternoon to you all.