Thank you very much for your attendance. It is an honor for all of us to be able to host all of you and share some of our history with you. Today, I would like to comply with two broad goals. First of all, to speak about what has been happening at Aura, all of our accomplishments, the way we have achieved our goals, our outlook for the future, but not only that, of course. It's not only about what we are doing and how we have discovered resources reserved, the increases in production, the projects we are working out with, and the improvements in our balance.
But also, what we would like to share with you is show you, and that is why we have our entire executive team here, speak about how we are doing all of this, how we make our decisions, how we reduce risk at the company, and how we enhance returns. It's not in vain that Aura finds itself in highly favorable periods. We have hit production records. We have an EBITDA record, and we will continue to grow because it's a combination of what we are doing and the way we do that.
[Foreign Language]
We do like to show you the people working in our mines. We have the people from the mines to converse with you and subsequently interact with you as well. I will make the initial presentation. Kleber, our CFO, Glauber, our COO, Isabella, our People and ESG Manager, and then all of the persons responsible for the mines. The people here working at the mines do not only focus on production. Their business managers at each of the mines are responsible for the cash flow, for the impact of their decisions on the community, responsible for the environment areas. It's as if they were CEOs at each of their respective mines, and each of them will present you their business viewpoint. We have Fred, who was from Apoena, who is now going to Borborema. He's going to run that operation.
We have Pitágoras , who is building Borborema, also built Almas. We have Wilton, whose flight has been retarded. He will be here in an hour, an hour and a half. Soon to come. Sapucaia is also here, leading our Almas operations. He was the leader of the transition of builders, and we have been advancing at a very firm pace since Chile. He will speak to you about eventual underground mines. We have Francisco enhancing the productivity. We have been able to hit a record every quarter, and Mamede, who took up Apoena, that was the most complicated business, but he is there leading and will put everything in order, has a very interesting long-term view. We have had a pair of difficult years there. I have already mentioned Pitágoras. We have Richard, responsible for innovation, technology, and who is paving our way into artificial intelligence.
We have already used AI to analyze M&As, so a great deal of things happening simultaneously, and then Henrique, who recently took up the part of technical services and is working at the holding, which means that this company has become ever more complex, and we need qualified people to help us work on our portfolio and, of course, to continue to grow. I speak to you and I say to my team. I dare to say that this team is one of the best in the world. I have never worked with such a high-quality team, and I want you not only to hear what I am saying, analyze for yourself what they have to say to you, interact with them, although this is, of course, a short period, but the results that we have attained are due to the consistency and the top quality of this team.
Aura nowadays is a benchmark when it comes to safety. Few companies have reached the safety levels we have reached at our activities. This is a risky activity. We're constantly concerned that we need to have all of these standards, and these are but a few examples of what we are doing.
People ask us what is happening with gold. Very briefly, nobody knows what's going to happen to gold. The variables that are there seem to be very variable for the appreciation of gold. We also have the appreciation of Bitcoin. We have a new government assuming in the United States that's more fiscally responsible, but they will begin reducing taxes, increasing tariffs. She's favorable to gold, and the Secretary of State, named by the government, truly believes in gold and has his investments in gold as well. We understand the importance of retaining reserves to maintain a strong currency. This is of the utmost importance and will continue. We also have the problem of having reserves in gold. After the war with Ukraine, this was suspended.
A few days ago, the People's Bank of China once again acquired gold, even with a price at $500-$600 per ounce. So, it is a moment that is favorable, and we will increase production, contain our costs, and of course, this will fall directly into our margins via what we see in other companies in the industry, especially the larger ones.
Another point that I would like to draw your attention to, and this refers to all the miners in general. We see a change of mood in the world when it comes to mining. We went through 10 or 12 years with a lack of capital, extremely high environmental, social rules, and have been changing because of the capital coming into the industry. It doesn't demand ESG factors. We're working with critical ores. China is banning the export of rare ores. So, each country is trying to take a different stance. We have Argentina undergoing a significant recovery to grow once again. El Salvador, where mining had been forbidden, all of a sudden saying they're going to put up for vote the laws to be able to invest again.
They are sitting on one of the greatest gold reserves in the world, and of course, they want to explore it to enrich the country in a responsible fashion. El Salvador has 95% of its rivers polluted but has no mining. So, mining should clean up the rivers, and we are treating water. We're going to use the surface waters in Borborema because mining has shown us that we can have a positive impact on the environment. We have a positive impact on the social area, eliminating that prejudice that existed worldwide. It is but the beginning of a process, but we are well positioned in this sector. I think all of you know the history of Aura. We're going to speak a bit more about what we are doing. However, I draw your attention to our revenue, 12% in 2022, 2023. Presently, we are 9%.
We're paying out dividends, and we are growing. What is happening? Our shares are at a very low price. We have a very high dividend yield in dollars for the shareholders, however. Here, we're speaking about what we do. There's truly nothing novel here. We're going to make presentations, and you will say, "They've already presented that slide." Yes, because the strategy remains the same. Nothing has changed. What is very important is the efficiency, the diligence with which we put into practice our strategy. When we held the IPO in Brazil, we decided that for the company to grow, it needed three pillars. Very obvious things: responsibility, diligence, and the way that you execute. This is our differential. Any company to grow has to have a good asset portfolio, a strong balance sheet, and of course, a very strong team.
But in execution, we have focused on this in a diligent way. We have reorganized the portfolio. We have acquired assets through M&A, strengthened our balance. We have gone to the market to fundraise at competitive prices, trained the staff, and always assessing what we do. We have Glauber here, who will give you a general overview of our operation. We will also speak about our balance, how we access the market, the returns that we have. Isabella will refer to employee training and our viewpoint on the ESG agenda. Therefore, this is a team that is holding up these pillars, and our vision of what we want to do going forward has also not changed. There are three broad goals here to offer value to shareholders. We have an enormous exploration value as part of our assets, more than 600 hectares.
It has been little explored because of the lack of capital. We began to invest more in exploration three or four years ago, and the return has been expressive. We have constantly added resources to our reserves. Today, in the morning, we disclosed this, and we're thinking about having an expansion of reserves and resources. Serra da Estrela has potential. Matupá, we have carried out exploration there as well. Bosnia is consolidating. We think we have been speaking about the increase of reserves that are growing. We're going to grow through an increase of production. You can see for yourself, Almas executed on time, Borborema for the coming year, also within the budget and the deadline, and something the industry doesn't tend to do. We have said we would grow through M&A, and here you have Bluestone and Cerro Blanco offering us greater growth alternatives. We're not stopping there.
We continue to look at M&A with this team, and I joke with them. They do everything so speedily that perhaps we can acquire new companies at the same speed, but there's a great deal more to do. This is simply the beginning of a history of a company that could become one of the largest in the world. 250,000-300,000 ounces, we could get to 400,000. We're looking at other acquisitions. Therefore, why not dream of an increase in ounces? We can do this. We have the right team. We have a good balance, and we're confident we will achieve this. The growth of exploration, and we'll show you the results we have achieved here to grow through a production growth.
We will share with you everything the team has done, Almas, Borborema, the upside of some of our business units, and to grow through the re-rating, which means to continue to work with M&As, creating new projects. We have Cerro Blanco and Carajás on the way, and of course, this will position us very adequately. We do things so speedily. We announce quarterly half-year dividends. We don't realize how fast we're moving. Since we held the IPO, we decided to work with these three points, but also pay dividends. How is it possible to do that? It is possible because the projects we have short payback periods, supporting on a very good cash generation, and we can scale up and sequence the projects to generate more than sufficient cash to face these results.
$220 million paid out in dividends and buybacks, almost $400 million invested in growth, and this is not the investment in projects with a return of 10%-50%. We're thinking of a 70% return deleverage. So, yes, we have had investments in projects with an extremely high return, and the same holds true for our investment. A cost per ounce discovered in exploration. The cost is way below that of the market. We have a portfolio with enormous opportunities. So, as a company, we have several low-hanging fruits and an enormous potential. All of this without increasing the leverage in an irresponsible, careless way. We're at the end of the construction of Borborema. Borborema will come into operation in 2025. So, yes, we have been able to grow, pay out dividends, and of course, leverage in a very responsible way. In productions, we continue with the 450,000.
We have changed the term perhaps because we thought again about Matupá. We're going to speak about Matupá, the potential, the discovery. We have good visibility of what to do and when to build Matupá during the first six months of the year, and we will speak more about this the coming year. The results are promising, and those 450 don't include the Cerro Blanco project that could reach 200 ounces and an underground of 8 grams and an overground of 6 grams, depending on how you look at this. In terms of exploration, we show you we are growing, and we will continue to do this. This is one of our pillars. We see what the industry has spent to discover an ounce to put into production. The junior companies are spending 130. The larger ones spend more.
We are spending $25 for each ounce that is discovered, which shows, of course, the potential that we have of continuing to grow our resources and reserves because of our efficiency. When it becomes difficult to discover ounces, this value, of course, will increase, but we're at $25, and this should continue for some time. Our resource and reserve operation has been extremely efficient, and it has increased gradually. As we increase production, we increase our resources, and we will continue to do this with most of our assets going forward because of the potential we foresee. Increase of production, increase of resources and reserves, and the increase of re-rating. I feel uncomfortable whenever I look at this now. If it's a problem for me, it's an opportunity for you. We are at 0.4 NAV, disclosed by Bloomberg.
There's a mine in Pará and a project in Goiânia at 0.7. B2 Gold, 0.8, which means we're way below the average for the sector. It's a new company. It's a new history, a new management team. We are still achieving the confidence of investors, but I think we have sufficient elements to show that we will increase this multiple. This year, we have increased the value twofold at a pace much faster than our peers. And in this NAV, we don't have new resources, new reserves. We haven't included Cerro Blanco or Carajás. There's a great deal of evolution that will still come, an increase in NAV and an increase in this re-rating. And this will mean a new return and new results for you while we are also paying out the dividends or the buyback of shares.
You can see here the average of all of the producers, and we're a bit above them, and some of them are even producing, but we are below some of those who have greenfield projects. So, there is a solid portfolio growth, a high-level management team, and I think there's a lot for us to do so that we can leverage these values to our shareholders. I've said it all. You will be able to see how all of these increases in production, the upsides throughout my presentation. Also, as I said from the very beginning, our mission is to share with you our vision for the future, what we aim for this company, but also maybe as importantly is how we're going to do it, because the way you make decisions is what will guarantee results later on. We have a project to develop.
This is part of its success. The way you develop this process is what is going to guarantee success. We do believe that by having a process or a project like this, we are likely to succeed. Of course, there are other companies doing the same, but there's a natural bias in the mining sector where we have a high concentration in corporate. Our Aura is an example. In the past, we used to make our decisions using a remote control, and if I tell them today, they won't even believe it, but our corporate meetings had a monthly plan where we're going to do what you're going to mine, and those who were in Toronto and had never visited the mine were making decisions for Mexico, Honduras, and Brazil. They were determining what we had to do on the day-to-day, but we do not believe in such a model.
We believe in empowerment. We had to make significant changes in our team. Those who are here were probably not here when I started working in the company, but we had to make changes. They think like CEOs. They're not concerned with production. They are concerned with cost, cash management, working capital. But this has led to good outcomes for us and is probably one of the reasons why we've developed this on-time on budget project. We've been able to have efficient management, but what is the role of corporate is so obvious. We have to allocate capital. We have to focus on capital allocation, people management, and we should also determine operation standards, all of it based on ethics, how we're going to operate, and this should be coordinated. But we have to empower people to make their own decisions.
Sometimes I learn later on that we have to exchange people working at the base, but we do not need corporate to demand. Sometimes those who are there can do a better job, and they do it more than we do, actually. So, the mines are taking care of their own business. We have to reach excellence. This is not something we will give up on. We don't want to be the largest, but we want to be the best, and we want to be the best in everything we do. This is something you can achieve based on the culture we're sharing with you, on the Aura culture. So, to conclude the how, and because we have a decentralized structure, what does our mindset work like? We want to deconstruct huge mines with returns that are not so good but are related to high risks.
We prefer to reduce risks, even if you have to reduce our VPL, but that will increase our return anyway. Industry is focused on VPL but does not look at the return as much. We do it the other way around. What are some of the examples we see here on how we make our decisions? We will reduce the initial CapEx. That's so obvious. We will also decrease VPL. Yes, we will, but as we reduce the CapEx, we also increase our capacity to leverage. We reduce risks, implement the project, generate cash, and then I go after the upsides. In Almas, for example, in the underground, we've gone down to 1.3, and we've already overcome more than our nominal capacity, and there's a lot more opportunity to grow. We have reduced our CapEx to $75 million with excellent returns.
Do we have to run the risks of the cost of gold? Well, this is not something we take care of. We understand that if you have the guarantee, if you're going to implement a greenfield project, and if you guarantee that the payback is going to happen, why not? But then you will pay your debt. You will have a return of your equity. This means discipline. We're always reducing towards cost returns. In Almas, we learned it the hard way, but it's working well now with lower costs. We also tried to reduce the social and environmental risk. This is very transparent. We invite the society to go there, visit our operations. In Honduras, we have over 95% of approval of the local population, and this is a result of this transparency. There's a lot that we're going to talk about as well, mitigating risks.
Isabella will talk about what we do with training, meritocracy, diversity, all of this put together, leading towards efficiency. And then making quick decisions. We will talk a lot about it as well. There's no detailed engineering. We've already proven you can do it, so why should we wait more? This is not going to harm anyone. It's not going to put it at risk. We're not going to be wasting money. We'll have some return, and then we can improve later on. We have different examples, different such examples, but now going back, and those, you know, we're here available to answer and tell you what we're going to do, what we've achieved. It makes us really proud. We have a lot of good results in this company, and we've achieved them very quickly over the past years, and we will continue doing so. And how?
Well, because of this Aura 360, the way we work. Now I will turn over to Isabella and she'll talk a little bit more about the Aura 360. Thank you very much.
[Foreign Language] . Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here for my second Aura Day. It is an honor to be part of this team. We're so aligned with Aura 360, and most importantly, they practice our culture in our units and in the practice with their teams. I will talk to you a little bit about the culture of our company, the symbolism of this Mandala, and it is how we translate this culture into the day-to-day. It is our guiding star. In 2024, especially for the area of people, we consolidated a database culture.
We have some tools that we use to hear our employees so that we can better understand what pathway to follow to understand whether we're following the right pathway, and with that, we determine our actions. In addition to that, we've also worked with different cultures of trust. They are cross-functional, and each one of the directors is a sponsor. They take to their units those rituals which symbolize Aura 360, and then below this team, which is already so aligned with the culture, we also have workshops to leverage the culture. We share best practices because we do believe that by doing so with different realities, we have good results for our day-to-day. We've already been collecting some results. The first one was this coherence, I'm sorry, we've seen with Aura 360.
We've had favorable results in 2024, and when we ask people if leadership or if leadership actions are coherent with Aura 360, the results are good. We know that we've taken the right actions to work with our culture. In the very first year, we've already received a certificate in all of the countries we work in, in Brazil, Mexico, and Honduras. Rodrigo talked about our decision-making. It is very expedient, and we do believe that good decisions are made when we have a diverse team, which enables people to be who they are, and they can voice their feelings, feeling confident about. Also, we've had good signs that we're creating a very healthy environment for people to be who they are. Here's an example: 86% of favorability, and when people ask whether they can express their opinions without fearing revenge, we can see good results.
Of course, we want to improve it more and more, but we can already see that we're on the right track. We can see diversity, gender, ethnic diversity, and they are all aligned with mining, especially to include women in the workforce. We are attracting different audiences, and that's why we follow these numbers, and they only show that we are following a very positive track. Another aspect of the Aura culture: meritocracy and transparency. So how do we do this in the day-to-day? We have a process called the 360 Cycle. We started with 48 people evaluated. Today, we have over 300 people being evaluated by it. We evaluate both the results delivered and the way they were delivered. Everybody goes through this. We have a leader committee to avoid the biases. Everybody receives feedback by the development team, and we're also collecting good results.
63% of our directors have come from the company, so this 360 Cycle is the basis for us to do it. With the level below, we have 30% coming from our own place, and we have an opportunity to focus on the business, further increase these figures, especially in the Brazil units. Brazil has had a very low rate of turnover and the different areas, but even with this very challenging scenario, this is the global number of our undesired rate of employees asking to leave the company, and we've gone from 22% to 15%, and we have to be very vigilant because the next years are going to be very challenging. Another aspect that we adjusted in 2024 is how we map people to take more complex positions in the company.
We went from the classic succession plan into a wider one, and today we have potentials where our classification is more based on the time and expand opportunities for those in Aura. Now, looking at our strategy for the development of people, we have internal and external programs to increase this buffer of people for each layer of the organization. We have different programs, apprentice programs, programs with the community, and the training program that we carry out on a constant basis to supply for this first line of leadership. Each unit will give its contribution, but we also have our global strategy, and we've already understood that based on this, people would like to have more career opportunities at Aura.
We will thank our leadership for their feedback, for constant training, and a more intentional feedback for those who we believe that will have an opportunity in the future to occupy different positions. Now, I will talk a little bit about our people's strategy with a broader look into Aura sustainability. The ESG area had an important achievement, and we closed our third year of certification with the World Gold Council. We had audits and different actions that were taken, and it has become an important framework for us to move on to the next years where we will redirect our actions. And based on this analysis, we have ethical issues which are disseminated. We have a hotline which is clearly embedded in our operations. We also have a robust system of indicators. ESG is also very mature.
Next year, we're going to focus on the review of our inventory and the basis of gas emissions. We will also have a more robust training for those who work with human rights. This is going to be our focus for 2025. The agenda is very intense when we talk about ESG. Gold mining has an opportunity to reach cities and locations which often do not have good infrastructure, and that's an opportunity for us to make a difference. So in our group of employees, we have an average of 68% of people who work in the areas we are present, and we want to grow even further. In Almas, since 2023, we've already trained over 200 people in different areas in Borborema. Even before we got to our business production, we are already training people.
Fred, we'll also talk about that in detail, but I wanted to talk about the impact of a mining company in remote locations. We have a wonderful opportunity. Still in the social pillar in Minosa, that's the unit we have more employees from the community. 95% of the employees are from that region. We have a social arm. It is called San Andrés Foundation. It has an impact on different areas, including health, education. We work with the maintenance of an important state, which has an impact on over 20,000 people. We have scholarships. In 2024, we had over 37,000 people who were benefited from these initiatives. Eu quero trazer último case antes de fechar. We have a last case, the project, that refers to Borborema. We learned constantly. Pitágoras built Almas and has brought back what we learned, and we begin with a view on ESG and making progress.
We have water that is fully recycled. Our energy matrix is 100% from renewable sources, all coming from Brazil. We have the issue of desertification by flatlands. We have been able to change the reality of Seridó, besides, of course, the training of people. Before we begin the operation, we began to train the people in the community. And to conclude, it has been a year with several recognitions. The award of Brasil Mineral Companies of the Year, based on popular votes, the units also received important recognition for being a socially responsible company. For the second year, Mexico reinforced the stamp of being a socially responsible company and mining and metallurgical industry excellence awards. I would like to thank all of you, and we're paving the road to have a sustainable company in terms of people, culture, and ESG. I wish you a very good day.
Thank you for your attention. [Foreign Language] Well, good morning, everybody. [Foreign Language] Once again, it is a true pleasure to address you once again. I normally go through all of the operations, giving you somewhat more color, but today we are privileged. We have all of the directors here, and I will allow them to refer to what we do day after day to speak about the operations, the projects, what we have accomplished, and our outlook for the future. [Foreign Language]
Before we go into the details of the operation and to connect this to what Isabella said about the culture and Rodrigo speaking about our numbers and KPIs, I bring you two examples of the Aura culture in practice, an important indicator for us that refers to safety, the safety of our employees. We measure the accident rate, the number of accidents without absences. Of course, mining is a risky activity. We work with heat, with energy. Therefore, several risks are involved, and with a great deal of pride, we look at our figures. We're below 0.1. Our goal and our background show a significant drop. We had an accident in one of our operations in Apoena, but all the other centers have been without any accident for more than two years.
Thanks to continuous work, we have to work every day on safety, and this is something that we can celebrate, especially when we compare ourselves to the peers in the market, larger companies, companies that are very similar to us. Our figures are quite different, and the results are due to our culture of care with people. This is something we do genuinely. When we visit the operations, we can see this on the ground. We have also worked according to the best market practices, the best standards, and work that I would like to refer to that refers to the environment is that we begin the work to progressively close down some mines. If we think about the mines since the day it begins operating, we already are thinking about what we're going to do to close down the mines.
We don't wait to end the operation to do that. Through this, in areas that have already been used and where we have no plans for future use in mining, we are able to recover or offer other use for the area. The case of Honduras in MINOSA, we have taken a technique that has been imported from Brazil, the cultivation of wine for the grapes for the production of wine because it still has the same characteristics. The altitude of the region is very similar. The goal is not for Aura to produce wine, and through the foundation mentioned by Isabella, this is a legacy we would like to leave for the community, a second economic option while they work there or when we close down our activities in Mexico as well for the dams that have been closed.
We are in the process of de-characterizing the dams. They're very close to the city, Concepción del Oro, so we want to offer that area as a center for the community to meet once the area has been fully de-characterized. We have had the same initiatives in Apoena, Borborema, and Almas as well since the beginning. With that commitment we have towards the environment and respect for the community that surrounds us, another important point that refers to geotechnical structures that involve paving, the stability of the mines, and much more. We have made great strides in this, and according to our outside consultants, we do have outside support besides our internal expertise. All of the dams have been deemed to be stable. We say stable because they're like living organisms. We constantly are vigilant with all the controls and measures to guarantee stability during the period of their utilization.
We have heavy investments in technology as well. In the tailings dams, all the monitoring system is online. The communication between the tools we have on the field and the control panels is done online. Whenever an index is out of control or causes concern, the board, the technical team is called upon immediately, and besides, using radars and satellites to carry out a monitoring of the stability of our tailings and the mines. Therefore, technology has been an ally, a true support in terms of the stability of our best practices. A gente fala do sistema Aura de gestão, né, Rodrigo? When we think about the Aura governance system, Rodrigo said, "We want to make our decisions expeditiously. We don't want to centralize the corporate part." Isabella spoke about our culture, people, our turnover.
How can we put all of this together to offer results in an activity and an industry where you have no control whatsoever over the raw material, the ore, the gold that we have? Something that comes regularly, it's not variable at all and quite random. If we don't have a process, if we don't have techniques to put in place, any variation of concentration of gold in the feed, there's no technique that will offset this. It's also a risky activity, a rather technical activity that requires several procedures. And procedures, of course, lead to red tape. When we speak about being expeditious, making decisions, giving autonomy to the units, how do we do that without generating red tape? How do we work expeditiously but without losing sight of control and keeping in mind that issue of forecast stability? We have several tools therefore.
Now, Richard, our CEO, helped us a great deal, bringing us all the part of innovation, the use of artificial intelligence, and we have depended a great deal on this. We have certain rituals, the life of mine that is done once a year, to be able to discuss the entire life of the mine, what needs to be done year after year. We go into great details in the year plan and then create a master plan that will serve as a guide for all of our execution. All of this has been carefully defined. Each unit will have its own master plan, and based on this, we create the Aura master plan. We know exactly where we are heading in the next five or 10 years.
When Rodrigo says that we have a well-defined pathway to get to the 450,000, it is the plans that allow us this long-term vision. Of course, there are variabilities. Sometimes we have to derail from the plan, but we know which is the main path. Now, along with this and as part of our governance, we have three pillars that are very important. The first, we speak about decentralization, empowering the people that have been trained to make decisions in the site where they work. They are the people that are closer to the problem. They also can detect opportunities, and they can make decisions as long as they know which are our goals and as long as they're prepared and ready for this. So this decentralization is a key point for us, and this generates a great deal more of commitment. People feel empowered.
They are part of the business, and this leads to more commitment, engagement, that feeling of ownership mentioned by Rodrigo. Another pillar is the Aura Loop. Now, conceptually, we plan a great deal. We structure everything. We think about all the possibilities, and only after that we implement. Now, not everything is done simultaneously. We tend to begin small. We test things in one site with our expert team. We debate some items. We think about the action. We make minor tests. We put it to run. If it operates, if it requires adjustments, we make the necessary adjustments, and after this, we scale up this process, and this is what we have done. The practices of Aranzazu that have offered good results, we export those to Honduras, to Mexico, to Brazil, and this holds true for other practices that we have in Brazil that we take to different operations.
This scaling up is a constant activity. Third, a data-driven culture. Information, of course, is of the utmost importance. We offer autonomy for making decisions, but there has to be a base for this analysis. That is why we have digitized our entire database that is now on the cloud. We have what we call the Aura Analytics Center, a dashboard where all of the company information can be found on a dashboard. The companies, the units have autonomy. We work in a decentralized way, but with full visibility of what is happening. We have created dynamic reports, and this enables us to be very updated in terms of operations, to offer support, to exchange ideas, and discuss our goals. [Foreign Language] . Before we go into each unit, a general view.
This is our production trend for the last quarters. These columns are for each quarter, and in the curve, you see the trend for the last 12 months. The last four quarters were about to get to our guidance. That is between 250-290 ounces, more at the top of the range. We have the contribution of each of the mines, of course, Almas. This is the first year with a full operation. In the second half of the year, we had a change of the contractor, and Rodrigo will speak about this further. We were trying to develop a supplier with a more accessible cost, with the right profile, with support to grow jointly with us in the operation. This did not hold true. We decided to change the contractor, maintaining the cost within what had been forecast, but hiring a contractor with higher expertise.
That is why we see a monthly improvement in the operation. We began in June. It has been one year since the startup of Almas. We have an expansion that will go up to 2 million tonnes. We are highly aligned. Therefore, we begin small. We reduce the implementation risk, generate cash, and begin to grow. And this is a clear example of that dynamism. We had planned this for the second and third year, but the plan was stabilized before we had imagined and were already under execution of our expansion. Aranzazu, more than three years of delivering consistent results, an underground mine with a very good balance. This reinforces how mature the team is. And additionally to this, it does not stop there.
Now, Wilton, who has just arrived, will be able to share with you the initiatives that are brought up by the team for enhancements, to enhance the results with the exploration of molybdenum. We have increased the concentration of molybdenum in our copper concentrates. We can sell it separately. And this, of course, will bring us a return of $6.3 million per year, equivalent to 3,000 ounces per day in Minosa. Francisco will speak about what we have been doing. There are challenges. Not everything is wonderful. The content of the reserve has dropped. This material doesn't have the same metallic recovery we had in the past. Notwithstanding this, we have maintained our production profile, increased production at the mine and at the plant. The plant is an old plant. Everybody has focused on removing the bottlenecks, and we have had very positive results.
In Apoena, this is the most complex operation we have with great variability in the ore. It's a very limited or narrow-vein ore without much thickness. Therefore, we have to be more selective. And when we extract this ore, despite this, we have been able to unlock value. We have sought out new alternatives. There is a positive outlook for the future. And Carlos will explain to us about the exploration and the opportunities for the future. This is simply an overview. We have been increasing production. We have Borborema and Matupá that also will be part of this. And the goal is to get to 450,000 or 500,000 ounces with Cerro Blanco. And we're seeking other alternatives to surpass that. We'll begin with Almas. Gabriel will explain what he is doing there. Thank you very much for your attention. [Foreign Language]
Good morning.
[Foreign Language] . It is a pleasure to be able to address you and speak about the Almas unit. I have been there since the beginning of the project, where it was a construction. Pitágoras will refer to this. It's an interesting partnership between the construction team and the operation. When we think about Almas, we have been able to attain operational stability very quickly because of the synergy, the AURA way of building and integrating all of the pieces that are part of a pre-operation construction, transforming this into a plant operation. Whenever we look at this slide, we have a flashback of things that have been around from the very beginning, and Isa talked a lot about it, about people training, about the community training, people from the community. We started an operation with a lot of people from the local community.
75% of our operational team at the plant comes from the community. To do that, we had to train people. They didn't have a lot of experience with mining, no background. We had to train. We had to include the theory. We also used our units as training units. In other words, our employees went to the Apoena unit to be trained for hands-on. They had an intensive theoretical training, and then they went to hands-on so that we could have a successful startup. We've started our operation. We've been operating for 17 months. Before that, a lot happened. In the first quarter, we were able to stabilize quickly. Within three or four months, we were already doing what the project somehow had determined, which was 1.3 million. But as Danilo and Glauber commented, we start small and we grow.
With small adjustments, we've been able to process 1.5 million tons per year at our plant. We've also had a plant expansion to reach 1.8, and we are now pursuing 2 million tons per year of processed mass at the plant. Rodrigo commented that in the second quarter of 2024, we had a transition with our partner company, which hires employees for mine operations. We had initially hired one company. We had some performance problems, and then we did everything the Aura way. We determined we had an opportunity to make changes so that we could increase production. It was a transition that within two months, we were able to exchange this company. We used the labor, which already worked for the other company, and we migrated from one company to the other within two months.
You can see the amounts we sold over the quarters that we surpassed in the third quarter of 2024. We surpassed it to 13,000 ounces. We are at a ramp, increasing quarter over quarter. These were the most important aspects. And if we look retrospectively, these are the aspects we had. We had a very strong fourth quarter. It's still ongoing. When we look at our history and our present, it's important also to consider our future. When we talk about our Almas unit, which is located in a geological area called the Greenstone Belt, here in Brazil, we do have some operations that are embedded in this Greenstone Belt and Aura in Almas. It's one such unit of gold mines. It is a rock foundation whose characteristics include gold.
Here in Brazil, we have the Greenstone Belt that is the least explored geologically, which means that we have a very high opportunity to increase our potential as a mine. We are talking here about expansion, different targets throughout our mine, but also what Glauber commented, we can increase our underground potential so that we can become an underground mine, so we will be an open and an underground mine. But to do that, we need to do what we've already mentioned here, geological probing, so that we can evaluate underground. To that, we have tried to evaluate this deeper profile, and we had a good surprise. We have not found the end of this area, but we know that it goes deeper and deeper, and the Aura way of deciding is what really matters because we see the potential. We are investing in profiling.
We have one with a 2.6, another one with a 24.8, or we're going to drill deeper in so that we can pursue this geological profile. We will continue drilling so that we can identify where this body is moving to, and I hope that we do not reach the end of it, and in 2025, we hope that we will be able to go down with a ramp. We have an animation here with this cone or open-pit mining area to decide where we're going to go down in an underground mine. With the first drilling, I'm sorry, we've been able to start our underground production going down the ramp, and these activities will start in 2025, so drilling is basic for you to understand the required engineering for us to be able to go underground, but then we can make the decision to go down.
In 2025, we'll be able to start writing this history. So the potential for Almas is very high when we see how much gold we still have deep in our unit. This is an important potential. In 2024, 2025, 2026, we'll be able to develop this ramp and then access this body. For Almas, this is what I wanted to share. We have a potential to increase our production in 15%-30%. When you access the underground body, you can be more selective. You can increase the content extracted from the mine, and you can feed the plant with a higher amount of gold. Basically, these are the aspects I wanted to share with you about Almas. I will now invite Francisco to talk a little bit about our Honduras unit.
Good morning. I am Francisco. I've been in Honduras for two months.
What is nice about Aura is that when we relate to the life of the company with our personal life, Aura has a very large geographic area. We're drilling in Carajás, Mexico, Honduras, Tocantins with our new project, in addition to Mato Grosso. Then we have a little bit of our personal life in Minas. My wife is from that state. I have a daughter who was born in Goiânia. I also have the privilege to live in Carajás. I have two twin sons. They are Mexicans. We're now all of us in Honduras just to share a little bit of our personal lives with you, in addition to our professional life. In Minosa, more specifically, we can see that the evolution has been significant.
When we look at our graph, in 2022, we realized we had an excellent production, but we're also having this change, as Glauber mentioned, regarding our geological reserve. AURA had been changing its content, and therefore we had to make a new plan for the production in Minosa. In 2022, within this new scenario, we had changes in the cost scenario. We had to make new plans for production. We had to exchange the company we hired, and in Honduras, we are the main mine, and it's not a mining country, and therefore we do not have any specialized providers to support us with some exchanges that are required, and so we had to train a new company so that they could improve their operations and so that after 2023, we could collect good results. In addition to increasing production, we also have lower operational costs.
We came from three consecutive quarters with production increases. In 2024, we fed the plant more, more than we did throughout 40 years. In August, also, we beat records in feeding. And as a consequence, we can see all of the production, gold production in the last 12 months. We're talking about 75,000 accumulated ounces. And as I mentioned, these changes in the content here, we have the reduction of fragmentation. But gold has a lot of variation in our monthly operations. Some months, it is higher, and others, it's lower. But when we analyze this, we can see the trend. Here, for example, in the third quarter, we're working with, for every ton of extracted rock, we only had 200 grams of gold. So it's very complex. It's complex activity to compensate.
If I have a lower content, we have an increment in the feeding of tons in the plant. In 2022, we had an increase in the amounts per ton. And the work done with mitigation of failures at the plant, it was very old. We have 40 years of operation in the production chain, including mines and plant operations. We also had improvement of our operational model, as Glauber commented, data management. So we saw a lot that was done in the field. We modernized. We brought in control units, control centers with technology, data management, supervisors so that they could make decisions every shift based on the operations. But we still have a challenge regarding recovery. The content trend continues decreasing. We've stabilized feeding per ton. We're now working with recovery. There is a trend for higher results.
We analyze trends, but just as a comment, in September and October this year, we've been able to have recoveries in the order of 72%, which is record recovery for the unit, and we have to improve, or we are improving our technical understanding of the area regarding the future. Today, we have solid and detailed planning for the next two years of operation using this new methodology and this new operational model. We also have an estimate for six years, but it depends on additional licenses to operate. We're also detailing this area. We have six more years of production. In addition to other opportunities, we work with oxidized rock, and we have studies that we are undertaking to improve our activities in areas where we have gold and this type of lithology. We have surface samples, which indicates other possibilities for us to continue in Honduras.
In 40 years of operations, we have found some opportunities in areas where we have low content. In the past, it was 0.5 grams per ton. Today, the content is very similar to what we operate with. So we are carrying out studies to better determine the ore in these regions, which will increase our operations. We can also decrease the distances from the ore until we get to plant production levels, leading to better future costs in the mine. Now, I wanted to turn over to Carlos Mamede. He will talk about our operations in Mato Grosso. Thank you very much.
[Foreign Language] . Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here with you. This is my first Aura Day ever. I've spoken to other people who are also here for the first time. But let's share information.
Let's make our commitments and look ahead into the future because we're going to be here for many more years. Talking a little bit about Apoena, I will divide it into two different scenarios. We'll talk a little bit about 2024 and the challenges we faced in 2024 to deliver our production and a promising future that lies ahead. Talking about 2024, as Glauber commented, there are times when things aren't easy. In 2024, we had a huge challenge regarding our environmental license in Apoena. We had a plan that was connected to go in areas with higher content. It never came through, so we had to go into areas with lower content. What happens in these situations? We have lower recovery and, of course, lower production as a consequence. But I will make a comment here about the Aura way of working.
We work fast, we are flexible, and therefore our performance was very good with the plant team and the mine team so that we could minimize these impacts. With that, we were able to offset the impact a little bit, but we still had a lot of impact. I would like to highlight that when we do not go in these areas with higher content, we do not lose it. We just postpone it, and then later on, we will benefit this material. We will process it. When we look at the scenario, it is very promising for the next 10 years in Apoena. But now, what do we have here? And I'm going to link it to what Rodrigo said. You've already talked about this big pit in the past. It only shows that our strategy is aligned to what we're doing, which is very important.
What do we have and what is confirmed here? You can see these bits that we have, these two pits with our advances in research and drilling. We can see that we'll be able to connect these two areas. With that, we have a very promising future after 2027, a high content future, which leads us to higher production or at least equal to what we had in the past. When we look ahead, we can see a very high delivery, which makes it very interesting in the long run. When we talk about our mining, we have a more detailed strategy. With that, in addition to replacing the ounces we've already mined in the future in Apoena, our resources will increase, and that's very interesting for us. There is something new here that you hadn't seen before.
This is Lavrinha North, the north part of it, which might be our big pit zero two. With that, we can increment our resources and leverage our productions, delivering quality. In 2024, 2025, we're going to have challenging times. I've mentioned it, that we have the lions, I'm sorry, the licenses, the ounces, but we will try to minimize the impact with promising deliveries for Apoena. Count on us. We're going to deliver well. Now, when we look at this promising future, I would like to invite my colleague to talk to you a little bit about Borborema.
[Foreign Language] Good morning. [Foreign Language] . Well, it is a pleasure to be with you. My arrival was somewhat complicated. I lost some flights, but here I am. I did participate in the other Aura days from the unit.
I was in Minosa as Francisco has taken it up. Now, I've gone somewhere else, and this shows you the movements, the meritocracy we have in the company. While I was coming, I was following up on the prior presentation so that I could be here with you. I'm going to focus on two or three messages, basically, to speak on the case of stability of Aranzazu, how we were able to remain with a good production, good stable production, and consistency in our results. I would also like to speak about the Aura way of making decisions, simplifying the process, and, of course, empowering those that are involved in the process and to look ahead. What do we envisage for Aranzazu in the coming years?
When we look at the consistent results, we have been there since the first quarter of 2022 with a production that varies between 100-110 ounces. There are minor variations between 24,000-29,000 tons, but for annual production, we're always above 100,000 ounces. Where does this consistency come from? For eight years, we have had a confirmed reserve. We have two more years at least, which will maintain us there for 10 years with productions at those levels. Evidently, during the first three years, we carefully surveyed everything. In the other years, we continue on with surveys to guarantee those 10 years. We have been improving the turnover all the way from the operational part up to management. Now, this is important to maintain consistent deliveries. An interesting point in Aranzazu, before 2021, we were at 75,000-80,000 ounces.
Beginning in 2021, where we streamlined the plant and increased capacity, the production has been above 100,000 ounces. How did we achieve this? We increased the capacity of the pumping part, the floating system. We're working with Everbore selective reactives and a PAD based on the streamlining of the crushing system. This is a very active plant. Aranzazu has been in operation for more than 30 years. It became necessary, therefore, to modernize everything. We had to crush a finer version, which helps us in recovery, and with our capacity, we are able to enhance our production. How do we maintain this? Our team has an extremely low turnover. For three years, we haven't changed managers. The only movements we have are due to meritocracy. Francisco was a manager three years ago. Now he is a director, so this is what we see.
Superintendents that were at a slightly lower position are promoted. This isn't considered turnover. There's simply promotion. Our culture also fosters very simple solutions. Without red tape, the decision-making is done there. Everybody knows what to do. Of course, they have guidelines they have to follow. Decisions are made quickly to avoid impacts on production. In the mine, we're also very flexible. There are limitations. It's different from an open pit. You can act in several fronts simultaneously. We work in the mine at the same time where we're working in the underground. We have some areas that are closer to the surface. If an operational issue comes about, we make quick decisions and we also work with a contingency stock. If there's a problem in the mine, if there's a breakdown on equipment, this will have an impact on production.
We work with our inventory to have that flexibility. We increase the capacity of the plant. We streamline the old plant, which guarantees physical safety by 90%. Of course, this is very important to maintain our production. And the results are 13 consecutive quarters of stability. And the idea of facing these challenges is to move ahead. Now, between mine production and plant production, there is enormous alignment. The mine dictates the pace. They put the ore in the plant, but we also need to have a stable plant because of production. So we do work in great alignment by conversing with the plant and with the mine. If we look towards the future and the decision-making process, we have the Molybdenum project. Until a year ago, we would look ahead and say, how are we going to make this project feasible?
This is an interesting case that shows you how we make decisions. The team quickly identified that the Molybdenum grade was relatively high in the concentrate content. We can separate that and sell it as an added value product. We decided to carry out a simplified study. Initial survey showed us we would need two or three years to make the project feasible. We decided to do something simpler that could advance at a faster pace. We reduced the risk by working with a lower CapEx. If things don't work out, we can change. If it does give us good results, we're on the right path, and alongside this, we worked with laboratory investigations. Throughout 2024, we carried out a full survey. We have worked on construction.
We have an advance of 45%-50% in construction, which should end at the end of this year or during the first fortnight of January. The investment was $1.3 million with a nine-month payback. It's the example of Almas that we mentioned here, where we simplified the CapEx for a faster return. If the project pays itself, we will invest again and see how we can increase production through recovery to add a larger number of ounces. For 2025, the production will be 3,000-3,500 equivalent ounces per year, close to $7 million. This is an example of how we work in a simplified way when making decisions. We have an open potential when it comes to exploration. The mine operates close to Esperanza, but we have all of this potential in the region. We're going to intensify the exploration work to increase our reserve.
And obviously, work in greater depth to look for the ores. We're looking forward to have extension of life if possible. We're acting once again on a very small area in terms of the operation, but all of the areas in the quadrant give us mineral rights to increase our potential. We continue to invest rationally and gradually, initially seeking out the near mine and then the extensions, but the potential is there. That is what I wanted to share with you.
Thank you very much. We're going to have a 10-minute break. We have coffee simply so that you can stretch out. Please be back by 11:00 so that we can end punctually. A 10-minute break, therefore. See you very soon. [Foreign Language] Very well.
We will resume and speak about the future call upon the Borborema teams so that we can put their presentation on the screen. [Foreign Language]
Good morning, everybody. My name is Pitágoras , responsible for projects and construction at Aura. I will speak about the Borborema project today, and I have to begin by speaking of where this project is in Rio Grande do Norte, an area with a great deal of challenges due to the water restrictions. When we decided to go on with this project, we did have some options to seek out water sources to feed the project. One was a traditional option to obtain this from the available reservoirs in the region, and we had to think outside of the box. This was a preliminary survey that we had: sources of conserved water that we could treat to supply the water for the project.
As part of the project, we always innovate, think outside of the box, and bring benefits for the company and for the community. Because of that, we decided to innovate. We carried out an investigation. We studied the available conserved waters in the region, and from the city hall, we truly had a surprise. We wanted to develop suppliers and the community, and we obtained a regional supplier that worked hand in hand with us to develop the technology. So we brought about sustainability to the project, with a project that was truly challenging and that was very innovative. We began the surveys of the project, keeping in mind that we wanted to develop the community, not only in terms of labor for the operation, but also labor for the construction. This will be mentioned by Fred.
Additionally, at the beginning of this project, we had an enormous challenge that we posed to ourselves when we delivered Almas in time and according to the cost. Borborema could not be different. So the project began with this benchmark that we want to maintain. Additionally, this is a fast-track project, not a conventional one. We began working with engineering. We then did the acquisitions. It's not what we do in fast-track. Everything happened simultaneously. And as Rodrigo mentioned, we have to be expeditious. We have to guarantee the best return for the project. And everything was done when we decided to buy the mill, which is the most expensive equipment. We worked on the rig without the approval so that we could keep our project in time. We then decided to purchase the equipment, and as mentioned, we focused on safety.
Safety is a day-to-day thing. It's a value we have. We began the project using the lessons learned from Almas. We began with a safety plan with the main risks clearly defined and a proactive implementation plan. And this can be seen in our figures. We have 2.5 million worked hours without any accidents, and this was generated through efforts, dedication, and care from the entire team. Here's another challenge: social responsibility. We worked along with the city hall, the foundations in the region, to train and make labor available. Isabella referred to the percentage of labor we have in our operations. In construction, we have 2,000 employees. 60% are either from the region or from the surrounding area. We're very proud, therefore, to comply with that commitment. We then had the technical part. We have a fast-track project that had to be implemented under those conditions.
How were we able to do this? We needed a well-trained technical team and a qualified management team. As we have all activities happening simultaneously in the fast-track project, we only have one certainty: we have problems, and decisions to solve the problems have to be taken speedily. The same team that was at Almas is a team that is now working at Borborema. They have worked a great deal to keep the team motivated. At the present, we haven't had anybody leaving, and it's an example of the synergy we have between teams generating highly positive results. Another fundamental part: we don't have an operation and construction team; we have an integrated team, a team working through teamwork to deliver the project according to the plan. Every day, there are positive discussions for the deliveries. Everybody participates in the decision-making project.
It's a project that is being built jointly, an integrated project, and the people from operations are not waiting, sorry, for construction to begin. They're focusing on the commissioning, and the handover doesn't happen formally when we realize that we're already operating in an integrated way without any segregation. I would like to call upon Frederico Silva, Operations Director, to explain to you what is happening in terms of operations. Thank you.
Thank you, Pitágoras . We call him Pitch. He's very endearing, and he has been working with us for a long time, and the team is prepared previously to begin to work. Thank you all for your attendance, and Pitágoras spoke about all the different stages, gave you an overview of what we're doing, but he forgot to mention what we do. We live in a town that is very welcoming, but daily they face the water shortage.
We can compare this with Mato Grosso, and the rainfall is 1,200-1,500 millimeters per year, and 10% of what comes isn't sufficient. This year has been atypical, but the average rainfall, and this is a picture of our reservoir. It's the only reservoir we have because the project is very aligned with what Isabella showed us. If you recall, we had a Mandala to the left, and if we look at that green part, it's that axis of community and environment, and one of the important phrases is a positive legacy. This is how Borborema comes about, with two features: 100% water circulation.
100% of the water available will be brought in for the hunting and fishing treatment plant, and we transport this material 28 km from our site to the treatment unit, and we take on full responsibility for removing that effluent that is disposed of in the Rio Currais . We clean up the water, work with a chemical treatment. We also desalinize the water so that it can be used as industrial water, and we can recover the gold using that water. And in our project here, you have a 3D image of our tailings filtering plant. It's in truth a piling. We will have two pilings that will support the life of mine. Precisely to make the most of the water, we filter the material. We have residual moisture in these pilings of 17%, and the water removed from the pilings is reincorporated into the plant.
100% of the water is recirculated water. The joke here is that it rains upward. It's water due to evaporation and losses due to the process. We also treat 100% of all of the inputs generated in our operation, all of them, organic ones, non-organic ones. We do not increase the tailings that Currais Novos City Hall would have to treat. We do this through partner companies and our nursery. We work with composting, so the organic residues coming from our dining halls are also used in the cultivation of plantlands and to avoid the desertification, as mentioned by Isa. If we speak about ESG, we inevitably have to speak about the future. When we speak about the upside of Borborema, here you see this image in the center. This is our present-day cava.
It will produce 2 million tons per year at the plant, 80,000-83,000 ounces of annual production, and the next step that could inaugurate a new potential is to leave Currais Novos and go towards Natal. This is the highway BR-226. We know there are gold resources under this highway, and as soon as we obtain the license to change the highway, we have potential for expansion in production and to increase our reserves. This process is underway. We're carrying out all of the surveys necessary, not only the release of licenses, but the technical part to update the reserves. In 2025, we will certainly be speaking more about the expansion potential of Borborema. The site began for 2 million tons, but of course, it's inevitable that it will grow as Almas did.
I cannot speak about the future production if we're not sure that everything we do now can also be achieved in 2025, ramping up our operation. Now, the same work carried out at Almas, training people, developing partners, is something we're doing at Currais Novos, the Princess of the Sertão. We have opened up two groups of operators, one for men, one for women, of 60 people. 57 concluded the course, a very low dropout rate, and more than 67% are part of our company. They entered the company last week, and they will go through Apoena and Almas in January. We have to think expeditiously and simply. There's cooperation amongst us, and there is no competition, whether we're working with iron or gold. We look at other companies to learn about processes we don't have, like filtering.
Since the beginning of the year, we have been visiting other plants, working what worked out, what did not work out, so that we can begin producing and so that we can avoid the problems that other colleagues had. Using the support of the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Norte, several professionals from Rio Grande do Norte are disseminated throughout the world. It is a think tank for mining. They work with hydrology, geology. It's one of the strong points of the Northeast, and it will help us foster the development of our project. What I truly hope for is that the figures, well, I'm referring to Kleber, and I called him a tall man last year. I would now like to give the floor to Kleber to speak more about our strategy that also has important figures to share for our startup in Borborema.
[Foreign Language] . Well, good morning everybody. It is a pleasure to be in another Aura day, and it seems that year after year we have a full house. We had 150 people online as well, so it is a pleasure to be with you today. Now, to continue, I would like to speak about three topics. The first, to risk management and capital management. We've already spoken about this, but I will give you some examples to explain to you our mindset and how we work day after day when we speak about these two topics. It explains our strategy to you. And then a third point, I won't share with you the EBITDA and the cash flow.
I'm going to give you a more holistic vision, especially when we see an increase in the price of gold in the last 12 months, and which has been the impact on our margin and how we compare to other companies in the sector vis-à-vis the cost. I'll begin speaking about risk management. When we speak about risk management, the focus, of course, is capital allocation. We speak about acquiring or developing a new project. Our bias here is no longer the size. We want to go beyond 450,000 ounces, but we don't want to grow at any cost. Our approach tends to be more financial. We begin smaller. We reduce CapEx. This will reduce the risk, help in the implementation of projects, but with a financial focus. When we begin a project, how do we optimize the internal rate of return, the payback, and NPV over CapEx?
How many dollars that we generate for each real that we invest? For this, I bring you an example, a more mature example, perhaps somewhat repetitive, but it's the example of Almas, a project that is underway, Borborema, and the offer for the acquisition of Bluestone, which is the owner of the Guatemala project. To begin with Almas, I have separated this in three phases: past, the present, and of course the future, what we expect as we move ahead. If we look at Almas, which is the context, this was acquired in 2018 by Almas. So we were going through a time when we could already announce the construction, but we decided to give one step back and look at this study to see how we could optimize it, and once again, how can we reduce CapEx? How can we maximize returns?
And then if you look at what was done, we had a study where CapEx at the time was in the order of $93 million. And then we added four years of inflation in 2021 when we were analyzing it and generated over $20 million, and the CapEx was reduced significantly, as you can see here. And that's especially because we decided to start small. Instead of constructing a plant with a large capacity, we went to 3 million tons. In parallel, we realized that, by the way, that it increased the TPL and charge. So we went from a prior feasibility study of 84. We deleveraged, taking into account the cost of gold in the order of $1,500, and we decided to invest in this reviewed project. We went into a second step, which was probably even more important.
This is what we can see in operation today with Wilton and then Pitágoras . We constructed. We gave a high emphasis on construction. We developed our budget despite an inflationary scenario, which was very challenging at the time of construction. Our goal was to leverage this project. Using third-party capital of at least 60%, we were able to reach our goal. It was fully financed, 99%. We constructed faster than we had anticipated, within 14 months only, and the feasibility study mentioned something like 16 months. We had the ramp-up of the plant when we had almost 100% of the installed capacity of the plant. It was reached within four months. We decided to make things uncomplicated. It was a plant whose profile was very similar to the operation we had in Apoena. We used that experience and are repeating it in Borborema.
Finally, we went into the last phase, operations. Now you can see the results for the third quarter. This is annualized. We want to remove all of the other effects we had in the third quarter because we had the exchange and the provider, and now we can see stronger production than expected, according to the feasibility study. We had increased costs resulting from inflation, and then we can see that costs increased less than the price of gold, so today we already have a project which is delivering what we expected in the feasibility study, but we are not going to stop here. We're looking at the next steps. As I mentioned, the initial project included two million tons so that we can have better production, and then Sapucaia and Rodrigo already talked about this, so we are following this track.
We want to have the same 2 million tons, increasing our reserve resources without having to take any risks to get there. We use the Almas cash generation to fund this growth, and then in Borborema, it's very similar. When we purchased Borborema, we had two possibilities for the size of 2 or 4 million tons. We chose to start with the smaller project, and then we carried out a feasibility study with conservative prices, especially if we consider the price of gold today. We are constructing, as mentioned before, and we have everything to deliver the budget on time. In other words, in Borborema, we have an expectation to have higher returns than we had anticipated in the feasibility study, and from now on, we can consider upsides, which means moving the road expected to increase 2P reserves up to 2 million ounces and above.
Once we start operating, we will generate cash and fund growth based on our own cash generation. Third aspect, this changes a little bit here, has to do with acquisitions. And now I will talk about the Cerro Blanco project acquisition. We still haven't closed this deal. We will do so before January. In Cerro Blanco, as mentioned before, it is a transformational project for Aura. We're talking about many ounces in the future, but we have our challenges. We believe that it will take two or three years of investments before we can obtain all of the licenses, the social and environmental licenses. It is a very interesting project, but it does carry a risk component. And this is how we designed our acquisition profile. Here we have a $60 million, which corresponded to a premium of approximately 40% in Bluestone.
So this is a very interesting premium, but we can see that the premium will be paid once the project is operating. So we would only pay 57% of the total amount in the beginning, and then once Aura has this gain, we would share part of it with the sellers, thus minimizing risks for Aura. To wrap up, to wrap up this topic on risk management, I would like to talk about something that we've been questioned about a lot. The same slide was shared before, but we've decided to repeat it to make it clear. What is our strategy of hedging for materials? We usually have gold hedge, basically only in situations where we have new projects, where we decide to invest and allocate capital, our own capital and third-party capital to develop the new project, as Rodrigo mentioned.
According to our vision, we have a positive vision for this project, but we're not sure where it's going to be within three years. So what we do is we have a hedge based on the metal price so that we can sell our production according to the feasibility studies of each one of the individual projects until we have a payback. We did it in Almas and Borborema. The positive aspect of all of this is when we look at our hedge today in our balance sheet and when we look at 2025, 2026, and 2027, we compare it to other references where our production might be within this period. We can see that the percentage is very small, in the order of 20-25%. In other words, Aura has had the opportunity to benefit from the price of gold without placing the expected return at risk.
Moving on to the second topic, talking about capital management and fund financing. We have already been provoked quite a lot about this and asked why don't we have a five or seven-year bond with our gross debt. But our strategy is different. Today, as Rodrigo mentioned, we work with 12 banks approximately. Most of them are Brazilian, but we do have some from Honduras and Mexico. We've seen this in the recent past. It gives us flexibility to grow. It enables us to have funding for large investments or small investments, but to have improvement in the business unit. And in practice, we use the tax yield generated in each one of the business units. When we look at the past four years, we've had some success cases working like this. Since 2020, we've gone through COVID, the pandemic, the U.S. interest rates were about zero and then 0.5.
We've had different cycles in the market. We've had important changes which have funded us in the past years, the issuance of debentures. This is an operation that we've already announced. When we did so, our objective was to obtain BRL 500 million with a CDI of 1.75. We closed twofold with lower CDI rates, 1.60, with an oversubscription of our book where the market acknowledges the financial solidity of the company. This strategy has enabled us, instead of having a large bond, we've been able to increase the duration of our debts and reduce the spread. In the last three years, we can see the results. Of course, it's also linked to the interest rates in the market. But even with these longer issuances, the results were quite good. Then finally, we have two slides, quick ones, to talk about our cost results.
I will show you our results. Extra is not included here, but in perspective, we can see that different companies in our sector in the past four or five quarters, they've seen their costs increasing. In some cases, closer to the increase in the price of gold. Gold has done well, yes, but this was not per shareholder. Now we're sharing visual results with you. Our revenues are going up along with the price of gold, and our costs are slightly going down. In other words, this gain in the price of gold is being translated into gains to our shareholders. Now, looking at costs and comparing how Aura is doing in face of the rest of the market, on the side, we can see a study published every quarter. This was for the last one.
Basically, we have a summary of 400 projects, mine golds all over the world, and we can see where Aura is in the last nine months. We have a sustaining cash cost close to $1,300, and the market is at $1,400. So the perspective is that it will migrate further down once the Borborema starts operating, and we will have cash costs that are below these levels. Here we have mines in Australia with very high content, but when we look at the right side, we can see companies that are more similar to Aura, regionally speaking. We have a set of medium-sized and large companies which focus on the Americas, and they have at least two assets in the Americas, which is important geography. When we compare Aura with that group, we can see that it's even more competitive.
If we compare it to this group with more similar characteristics, even though in terms of scale, we are smaller than many of them, we can see Newmont, Barrick, which are one of the largest in the world. So intuitively, we would imagine that because of scale, their cost would be lower, but it's not like that, and we've been able to hold the cost more than these companies. And we expect that in the near future, we'll be able to rank as number one or number two. With that, I end my part of the presentation, and once again, I invite Glauber to the podium.
[Foreign Language] . To wrap up with our exploration data, I prepared some materials which share with you a little bit of the context. I will be more efficient for the benefit of time.
These are the steps. As we advance from one extreme to the other, we increase the level of detail of the information. It's a journey of a target since we had the discovery, a site selection, a model, anomalies, and then after that, we detailed anomalies. We obtained different types of data, remote data, geophysics, until we came to the generation. Then we tested and started more physical activities with drilling, removal of samples, and so on and so forth. Then we had a discovery. We identified an anomaly, and that was transformed into discovery. We're talking about a 10-year timeframe here so that we really have a production. It may take 10 more years. Different statistics here is that, interestingly enough, less than 1% of the targets become an operation.
As ORA, we focus on this part here, except for some cases such as Serra da Estrela, where we go into exploration, but we're now in the discovery phase, where we have been increasingly more specialized. These are our figures. Rodrigo talked a lot about how much we've invested. In the past, we invested a lot in exploration for reasons that were relevant to those times. More recently, we've been investing more, and ever since, we've basically doubled our reserves. We still have a lot of potential. The changes of the road in Borborema, for example. We're talking about being able to add a potential of about 2.5 million ounces. Later on, I will talk about Pezão and Pé Quente, different areas in the state of Mato Grosso. We gave a pushback in the implementation process there so that we can have a better understanding.
Here, we can also see that everything that has been invested has been kept in our pipeline. We're increasing reserves, measured resources, which are the basis for conversion and reserves. It shows that investment is well balanced within all of the different pillars. The report is not as updated. It's a report of the long-term trends in exploration. It is from 2019. We're not able to find anything more updated, but the figures are very interesting for periods ranging from 2009 to 2018, when we invested about $77 billion in exploration so that we could identify 336 deposits, which led to 500 million ounces approximately, that with a mean cost of $131, which Rodrigo used. The Aura cost is in the order of $25 per ounce. It is true that we're focusing a lot on projects that have a higher assertiveness levels in the 95%.
I mentioned that we've been able to add in the recent years, showing that we've been very right on. [Foreign Language] About the projects that weren't covered in the presentation, we speak a great deal about Matupá, which is in our exploration pipeline. It is a project that is ready and well-structured for construction. Recently, this year, we have in a radius of 50 km two additional targets, Pezão and Pé Quente. Besides the work in Serrinhas that we were carrying out, all of this is making strides. And of course, there's the issue of the license that impacted Apoena. There's also an impact here because of the state regulation, something that has been resolved, and we can already obtain the licensing to move forward in the exploration of Serrinhas.
What draws attention, the focus this year, Pé Quente, the work brings us very positive results. Pé Quente is 43 km away from X1, and inside Pé Quente, we have sub-targets, as you can see. For the time being, we have only been able to get to one target, and we do have intersections of 130 m to 0.96. The ore is on the surface. It's a very simple open pit to explore, and we have the potential for extension with extensions of 64-65 m to 1.18. Matupá and X1 is seven years of life of mining with an average production of 70,000 ounces the first year. There is that potential to extend the life of mine, and with the grades, we can have a completely different production profile. Here, extension 2 m, 140, above the average grade that we have in X1 deposits.
We're quite confident about Pé Quente, and in Pezão, we're beginning the work, the exploration work. Por último, aqui o Serra da Estrela. Finally here, Serra da Estrela. This is the earlier stage that we have. It's an exploration target. What we did this year was to delimit the target to see the continuity of that mineralized zone and its potential. And there's a network that we have there that can help us in terms of the geological understanding. More than defining a target, we identified an extension of 20 kilometers with an expressive volume, and the intersections that we have obtained have a thickness of 6 meters, which is extremely significant for this type of deposit, and grades that go between 3.4%-3.5% copper, reasonable for this type of deposit with these features, which means we can also say that we have potentially an economically feasible project.
In the areas where we have detailed the drilling, we see the enriching. We had intersections of 16 meters to 1.65. So within that six-kilometer structure, we have been able to find areas where that content is more concentrated and could further increase the potential. With this, I would like to wrap up the presentation on exploration targets, and I return the floor to Natasha. [Foreign Language] .
Very well. Before the closing remarks, we're going to open up for Q&A. Should you wish to pose an online question, I will read them out personally here. We already have some questions. [Foreign Language] Edgar.
Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I am Edgar from Itaú.
I have quite a few questions, but to speak about Bluestone, Rodrigo, besides the project, besides the potential, there's an underlying story of the Lundin Group that was the controlling company of the group, one of the main shareholders, and in the structure that you created, there is the exchange of shares. How have your conversations gone with them? They're a highly acknowledged group in the gold industry, and if they could become potential partners for new projects, so how are your conversations proceeding with the Lundin Group to change to the operational part? I don't know if the directors will remark on this. In terms of San Andrés, I have a doubt. We have observed a worsening of the grade, and this along with a change in operation. You said that you have operational gains. You're at 70%-72%.
The question is, is it possible to expect from San Andrés a continuous improvement in the operation? And if this is maintained with a high level of planted, if we could see an improvement in the grade, can we consider this recovery going forward in a sustainable way? And still speaking about operations in EPP, in that transition to the underground, if you could remark on this, the big pit, would this depend on an underground? Would there have to be an increase in exploration of the mines? What will happen in the coming two years, the transition to the underground, a greater deepening in the present-day mines to get to that super pit? And the last question to Glauber in Matupá, that expectation for the redesign of the project, does this still depend on some exploration issues?
The redesign, is it only for the size of the plant? Will it be similar to the X1 deposit, or does it depend on exploration work to know which will be the size of the plant and where it will be located? If you could give the market greater visibility?
Thank you. I will take the first question. Glauber can speak about the production. Cerro Blanco. We negotiated directly with the Bluestone executive. Lundin is one of the shareholders. We spoke to the shareholders to understand their vision of the future and to hear about their experience in the sector. My take is that the initial conversations were excellent between ourselves. Lundin, who is the son of the founder, died three years ago. He's left some very young but brilliant children. We have Adam and Jack Lundin, and there is great affinity in terms of the management culture.
They truly believe in empowerment of executives, empowerment of the people that are at the extreme. This is a first step, of course, to subsequently think about other partnerships. We have to get to know each other better. We have to live together for longer, but we are beginning a relationship with a great deal of admiration. They are at a different scale. They had two large projects for the development of gold in Latin America. They had Fruta del Norte and the Cerro Blanco project. Successfully, they were able to implement Fruta del Norte, a truly extraordinary project. Its stock market price presently is $5 billion. It has a greater deposit than Cerro Blanco, but shows the transformation potential of Cerro Blanco. They did not develop Cerro Blanco because they didn't find the project interesting.
They simply were faced with local problems with licensing projects, and they thought our company could do this better because we're 200 km away. So it could be a very promising partnership. We'll see how all of this ends up in the future. [Foreign Language] .
I'll try to answer the three questions that were made regarding Minosa. In fact, there is all of that effort to mitigate the impact of the grade with tonnage and to resume the recovery profiles. Well, we're thinking outside of the box in that case. We're thinking with granulometry, and we have to carry out some implementations at the plant itself. Yes, of course, we can have enhancements, but nothing that will change the production profile. The two years that we have guaranteed with much detail are still underway.
They're at a very close level to the specific grade that we want for each year. It's not a material change that would completely change the profile, and of course, there's the outlook that other areas will come in with lower grades than the ones we are feeding at present. They have been carefully detailed, and we're pending the release of the licenses, as was mentioned before, for the coming four years. Regarding Apoena, when we speak about transition, if you recall from the figure, we have three mineralized horizons that are very clearly set out, and in the north, we're mining the upper part, and for year two that we need, that will be more complicated. This is a time that we need to reach the second mineral horizon that has better grades, a better behavior at the plant for productivity and recovery.
This is the normal sequence of the pit with an open pit target. That area in the north is the same area we mine. We will have a connection between our sites. We will go more in depth between where we are now until we get to that intermediate level. We have to remove a great deal of area. We will continue with the kind of ores we have at present until we get to the better grades, better characteristics. This is guaranteed, and we're going to use the same methodology we have at present in Matupá, in the 50 kilometers of radius X1 deposit at the center. What will change is the size of the plant, the specification of equipment. In terms of location, it's not very probable that this will happen unless something that makes sense comes about.
It will probably be at that side because of the licensing and the stages which we are. We're going to make profile adjustments, production adjustments, and in life of mine, no drastic changes in the project. I don't know if you'd like to add to this. [Foreign Language] .
Monegaglia from Safra, I'm going to be brief. We do have some questions. Now, to begin with your growth plans, it's clear that you have several growth avenues, the potential for M&As. The question is, if beginning in 2026, we couldn't have an overlay of projects, projects advancing in parallel. So how are you thinking of addressing the financing point? You want to maintain low leverage. Will you do this with your own cash generation and hedges, of course? Are they sufficient?
Or are you thinking of selling a stake in some project or working with a streaming, not of the main product, but the subproduct in the mine? Which is your mindset in terms of this? The second question refers to reserves and the discovery cost. How sustainable is that figure that is way below that of industry? And well, it would take years to get to the level of the industry. Is it a five-year budget, a ten-year budget? And to conclude, still speaking about reserves, perhaps it will be structurally higher than the 1,500 tons that is feasible. Do you think you could use a higher cutoff when speaking about reserves? Thank you for taking my question.
I'll get the beginning of the first question, and then I'll turn over the floor.
We understand about this type of problem of how we can have more access to capital to fund all of our projects. We were speaking with the investors, and we're faced with a cash surplus. We have a liquidity problem. We're working to improve it. We're working with share buybacks and other fronts. Now, once Carajás becomes more mature and once we release Cerro Blanco, this could bring about that need of having to find capital under different modalities. What would address the liquidity is to carry out issuances. We're serving this for equities as long as the resources are used for the acquisition of assets that will justify these low multiples. There are alternatives for this, of course. What we have in our pipeline, our visibility, we don't foresee that we will leverage the company significantly to make these projects stand.
We haven't included Carajás. We still don't know what will happen, but Matupá and Cerro Blanco, a combination of capital, cash generation, and funding by third parties would suffice without impacting our leverage. Now, we always think of a leverage of 50% in our projects. It will increase the internal rate of return. In terms of modalities, we're open to survey the different modalities available. As we did in Borborema, we worked with a bank loan, royalties, and hedges. And then would carry out the eventual or the required studies. But essentially, I would prioritize what makes more sense. [Foreign Language] .
You asked about the discovery cost. What we do is the following. We try to respect the maturation time of the deposit. And of course, the part that involves more investment is related to drilling. Today, in average, we're talking about $220 per drilled square meter.
And we have to explore all of the different alternatives or use as much information as possible or as many methods as possible before we start drilling. And then even so, when we do that, after every drill, we make a decision. It's not like you go there and you carry everything out, and then you make your decisions. It helps us. It helps us to have lower costs. But in fact, the main reason for the cost to be so low when we compare to the market average is because we're talking a lot more about near mine exploration. And for me to make a near mine target feasible, I don't need as much volume as I would have with different profiles. For example, I'm not going to start a project with five or 10 years or build a new plant from scratch.
We're talking about very good returns, but we have a three-year payback period. You have to make it feasible. In our case, we have a target of two years of production, but we're close to the plant. The investment has already been made. That helps. It helps when you want to use these resources. And that's why our success rate is very good, our success rate after discovery. The other question, I think, had to do with the price of gold in the calculation of the reserves. Actually, what we do today is that we update on a constant basis. The numbers you saw here were because we had a feasibility study and the dates they were published. Of course, we have exercises with more updated prices. But before we publish, we have to use our latest references in terms of plan, life of mine and budget.
We use the updated gold prices, which are almost a consensus that we use both for reserves and for resources.
Good morning. This is Guilherme from XP. I have three questions. My first question, it has to do with the update of the reserve update report. So do you see any incremental resources? The line you talked about the main project and also what Ricardo said about the price of gold. Do you have all of these projects which could eventually have an impact on the next reserve report? And the second question is if you could comment on the prioritization of these projects. You have different opportunities in your portfolio, Matupá, Serra da Madeira and others. So could you remind us how you're going to prioritize them over the next years? My next question to Glauber, eventually to Fred. I remember that in 2022 we visited Apoena.
We discussed a lot about the technical aspects of exploration there. You commented about Fred going to Apoena, but I wanted to know what are the challenges involved and what are the main opportunities you see in the Borborema project because of all of these movements.
Glauber, you start with the reports and I will talk a little bit about project prioritization.
The reports, not always what we are investing in exploration reflects on the report for different reasons. Number one, part of the investment oftentimes is to convert resources into reserve. I have a higher level of detail and then you will see if I am in this process of drilling and I don't have a lot of information available to be able to publish it in the report, then sometimes it's not in there. Also, we have a lot of investments that are investments in geological analysis.
They involve geological interpretation and that's not considered a resource, and that's why sometimes we do not have a direct balance between what was invested and what is shown in the final report of reserve and exploration, but basically, what we've worked with over the past years is to at least replace all of the reserve that was mined, and then we've been able to do this in recent years. We want each unit to at least be able to replace the reserve that was used, and then we have the exploration pipeline with areas of inferred resources. We also have our buffer for reserve replacement. Our target is always in the radar as well. It goes into that line where until it is considered a target, in fact, so that it's more detailed, but Mamede talked a little bit about it in Apoena.
We talk about Pombinhas, a new target. It's still not included in our reserve report, but it is being detailed there. As well as we have Japonês West , we do not have enough results for publication, but we've had interesting results and they will definitely be part of the report later on. So the strategy is the same. We report the reserves less, but we maintain a buffer for potential development so that we can develop the graph I shared with you. The best thing is for everything to grow together. Otherwise, there will be a huge gap until I reach my potential. So we allocate capital smartly so that we have a balanced pipeline. It's better than just showing good figures for one year when we know that it will take two or three years for a catch-up. We have been evolving gradually.
We have increased the reserves year over year. Sometimes it's a little bit better. Sometimes I'm just replacing. But the investment is not going to triple overnight unless we have new projects. But this is something that we've been gradually being able to do and what we've seen over the past years. Sometimes they're good, sometimes not as good, but we're following a trend. Then we talked about scaling of projects. Actually, internal greenfield projects, they're all running parallel. We have the underground mining, so they're all running parallel. But to conclude Borborema next year, today, we have Cerro Blanco, Matupá, and eventually Carajás. In perspective, it will take three or four years for Carajás to mature in Cerro Blanco. It's uncertain. We're ready to start building, but we still need a series of licenses.
They may take two or three years or even four, but it could also take only six months. We will know about it in the next half of the year, but Cerro Blanco and Matupá are the ones that are going to compete, and if eventually Cerro Blanco accelerates, then we will have to consider Matupá. Do we go along with it or not? Who is going to go first, but today, the base case is Matupá, Cerro Blanco, and Carajás. Of course, things might change if one evolves better than the other. We may also eventually have new M&As, and those will compete. We have alternatives. None of them are easy, but we continue having good options. The last question on synergism and learning in Borborema,
I will allow Fred to comment upon them, well, thank you very much, Glauber.
First of all, it's nice to see you again in Apoena, and Carlos knows about this. We internally mentioned that from the point of view of the geological context, it is the hardest one we have to operate because the body is very disseminated. The structures are not demarcated when you go from an upper layer to a lower layer, and I've said it internally that consultants who visit us, they say that from a geological point of view, it's a monotonous mine. I want to live my life monotonously, but of course, Borborema, because of its characteristics, they are perhaps the main ones. It's important to think out of the box. We have a project which uses recycled water. In other words, we use treated sewage water, sewage waste, and we've made different testing using our plant in the lab so that we can test.
But even so, for us, it's going to require attention in terms of size. It is the first time ever we're using dry stacking of recycled or reused water. In the picture, I mentioned that the team has traveled a lot, has made visits to different operations to try to learn, develop. We also went to the market trying to find the best engineering reference possible. But on the day-to-day, what really makes me comfortable is that the Borborema team knows it's well aware of the responsibility they hold. Starting operation in itself is a different activity. There's some excitement because of it. We always know when we have to be there, but we never know when we're leaving. Technical challenges have to do with water treatment and waste filtering. In other plants, it's a lot of what we do on the day-to-day.
Marcelo Araoca from Bradesco BBI.
I wanted to invite for a longer-term analysis. You mentioned being the best and not necessarily the largest, but the long-term trend as the company grows. It is, in fact, a story of growth, and you're always looking ahead into larger mines. Of course, that changes the return balance we see in different projects. In Cerro Blanco, the project has the potential to have a higher return. But I wanted to know what your plan is for the long term. Do you expect to continue reaching such? This was also Mackie, [Foreign Language] . Mack is asking if in this line of M&A, we have a lot of companies in the pipeline.
We already have two. Of course, accelerated growth and the projects we've had with return grow higher than 100%.
It's hard to imagine that this is going to continue forever. Of course, as we grow, we have less projects that we can go in that will be as relevant. We are using the benefit of being small and medium-sized. I can clearly see that we will reach 700 or 800,000 ounces with this profile of project with high returns. After that, with 101 million ounces, our profile will change a bit and we will have to start recycling our portfolios. But even so, the numbers are very attractive and what we've seen in the sector, and of course, our return. I had never seen anything like this in terms of investments with other businesses. The payback within one year and a half or two or three years till returns, you're talking when you talk about 30%, that's already very high in dollars, and we see 60%.
But a company with discipline, it's not difficult to start large projects in the order of 20%, 25%. This is not going to be difficult. We can move on from there. And that's already very interesting return. In the next three, four years, we will continue having large benefits. Cerro Blanco is such an example. World scale with expressive returns over volume. You'd already asked another question. What was it? Oh, the number of M&As. Wow, that's a lot. I think that today I invest over half of my time with M&A. Now it is the time. The valuation of the companies, especially those which are still not producing cash, has not gone up. Look at us. We already generate cash. Our value today with higher production is similar to our value in 2021 with the price of gold of $1,800. It doesn't make any sense.
We are already generating cash. If you look at those that are not generating any, you know, the potential is great. We have a lot of discipline. This year, we've seen about 10 alternatives. Cerro Blanco is only one of them. We're analyzing others, but we do not like to have any pressure on our shoulders. If you ask me, when are you going to have your next M&A? I think within two years. Because when we make pressures and goals for M&As, then you make silly decisions. M&A is an important strategy for growth, but it's not the goal for anybody here. We do not receive any variable pay for that, actually.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. I am Luis from Capital Investments, and actually, I have a question regarding Almas.
It really called my attention regarding its productions and also the smaller projects for the plant with processing. When we look at the feasibility studies and the certificates, we can see that you still have figures in the order of 1.3 million tons per year from the point of view of production profile. What can we consider from Almas looking ahead when compared to the feasibility study we have for the project, for the current project?
Would you like to answer it? Okay, I'll start and you complete. What we see are some deposits, but we are focusing in the stoping for the next two years. Of course, we have increased capacity. It has an impact on production increase, but with the consolidation of underground mining, and if it really becomes a mine, and maybe if we're quick in two or three years, then we will match that.
We will match some of the plant capacity, the plant which is receiving 1.2 grams of, or we've seen contents of two to three grams in underground. But you can't replace everything because you do not have enough underground volume to complete the plant. But you will replace it from 1.2 or three. And there's a great deal to do still, but we're very focused. It looks good. This is what we foresee at present, but of course, we could have some changes in the coming months.
Thank you, Elisa from [Inaudible]. I have been following up on you for some time, and you have become a much more mature company. And this is the moment where you look at what you do better as part of your asset portfolio. This investing could become a possibility because you're working at a moment in the project where you have a de-risking.
Now, when you look at the company and the company you become very different from the company in the past, how is it that you distinguish yourself vis-à-vis the market? How can you be different and better? Is it in the operations, in the mining itself, in the way that you extract, in the de-risking, in the reserve? Now, if you look at yourself now and if you could de-risk the asset, and I'm thinking of you more as a portfolio management because you're thinking of M&As, looking ahead, where do you think that you set yourself aside compared to others?
Well, thank you, Elisa. She always believed in us. We had a startup, and we only have five years in truth. The first three years were changes in our portfolio. And AURA, as it is, has only four or five years. Yes, we are maturing.
Thank you very much for your comment. There's still a great deal to improve. What we do that sets us aside, perhaps, is the simplicity when we look upon problems, that simplicity and facing difficult decisions with the diligence of what has to be done and done correctly. The team that you see here has a very good approach. We have molybdenum, and we're starting for it. We said if you mix this reactive, it will work. We can recover it. That began only a year ago. The fact that the team can go after those things, that freedom that they have to make decisions is very important. I'm proud when they make their decisions and then communicate them to me. They don't get upset if they're not asking for my approval. We have to continue working, make things happen.
The flow of coming and going takes up too much time. So the great differential that we have is our expeditiousness, our simplicity in the way we run our business. Where are we good in terms of our portfolio? We get projects, we implement them, and we run the operation. If we're good at discovering new deposits, perhaps not. We do have significant results because of the near mine, but we're not the ones who are going to find a deposit with 10 million ounces. Our profile is an execution profile with efficiency, of course, extremely focused on efficiency and responsibility in how we allocate our capital. Now, to get businesses that are not well managed to reduce the cost, to need capital to build them better. This is more or less what we do. We've shown that we know how to do this.
Along those lines, Rodrigo, another online question about how the growth and the opening of new units will balance out with the payout of dividends is going to remain as it is at present.
I think we have shown that we are able to grow and pay out dividends. In the last quarter, we ended with a leverage of 0.6 times with the Borborema project. The project will come into operation next year. Generate EBITDA will reduce the leverage, and we will begin to build Matupá that doesn't require significant disbursements until 2026. Therefore, there won't be any changes in this formula. We're working with the assumption of paying out our minimum policy, 20% of EBITDA and recurrent CapEx. We're going to follow that.
You spoke about 2025.
That is in accordance with a question made by Tanaka: the great opportunities for Borborema we have in 2025, and which will be the greatest challenge in general, not with Borborema solely in 2025.
Without exerting any pressure here, we have to put that project so that it begins on time and according to budget. To do the ramp-up in four months for Almas is not any company who can do that. What they did there was truly exceptional, and it raised the bar. We have been working with ramp-ups of six to eight months, but what they have the power to do within less. This is our main focus, therefore, putting Borborema to operate on time and on budget, and then we will structure the projects of Matupá or Cerro Blanco. All of this will depend on our discussions.
For Kleber and for myself, which is the strategy to increase liquidity as we understand the company is somewhat depreciated? Would it be to analyze other stock markets, other markets? There are some drivers, some levers here. One of them that we have been working with well, and that was a concern that we saw on the part of investors until two years ago, was to build the project on time, on budget, and generate cash. The gold mining market had very poor cases of 0% return. We show you the growth. We're going to build Matupá, Borborema. There was concern about this. We delivered Almas as we did. We're on our path to delivering Borborema. Now we no longer hear that noise. There's a pool of investors that are beginning to buy the risk because of our track record.
Secondly, what we began to do more intensively in the last two years is to speak more about Aura. In Brazil, it's a story that is relatively well known. When we go to Canada, United States, or Europe, when we go on those shows, most of the people say they have never heard about Aura. So we're going to continue to do that work that we began two years ago. Last month, we were in Europe. We found a group of investors that invested last year. They're following up on what we do. And we're seeking research coverage to also expand our base of potential investors. This is very careful work, but that brings about good results. And the third point, our free float that will happen at some point. We will have an issuance, perhaps with two or three largest shareholders.
We can have a free float of one third. This is not in our hands, but perhaps it'll be something for the long term. As Natasha mentioned, we look at opportunities in North America. Is that good? Is Toronto the best stock market to be in at present? Considering our growth strategy, perhaps we should think about New York. So these would be technical moves to help us improve our liquidity. In the last 12 months, we haven't seen an enhancement, but we're missing that last step.
Any further questions here? Very well.
The last question is online. I have left it for the end. Recently, Bill Gates invested in an AI company to locate the best mines. What is your view on this KoBold?
Yeah, we know that. We've spoken to them on several occasions. This is the way to go. AI will change everything.
In terms of exploration, this is perfect for artificial intelligence. It's the analysis of data, comparing that with other similar situations worthwhile. Nature is not homogeneous, but it does reiterate itself throughout the world. Now, what we have in Brazil is very similar to what we see in Africa. When you upload all of that information and when there's intelligence underlying all of this, like AI, it can open up new avenues, the new discovery of deposits that have not been mapped so far. It will speed up the discovery process. That graph that Glauber remarked on 10 years to discover something and then an additional 10 or 15 years, well, perhaps we can reduce that to only five or eight years. We have a very broad agenda that we can improve through the use of AI. It can help us infinitely.
It depends on each of us. It's not a specific area that will bring about this information. We're motivating people to work with AI because it's changing everything drastically. In Almas, something that I found out later, most of the plant was already using artificial intelligence with gains of 3-4%. They even won an award in Brazil for innovation, so it's those small exercises that we use a great deal now to analyze Cerro Blanco. We uploaded it in our private information, and I would ask questions, and all the ready-made answers would appear. What existed 15 years ago, which is the evolution, and AI brings you all of that information. I think it will be a drastic change.
Any further questions for our audience? Very well, we can go on for the closing remarks.
I don't have that many closing remarks in truth.
The idea today was precisely that, to show you everything that we have done. Remind you of our simplicity and hardness value, increase resources value, and look at the number of cases we have mentioned in terms of reserves. Now, to speak about 2025, we're speaking of the expansion of reserves in Almas, underground, everything that can be done in Aranzazu, in Apoena, the connection of all the pits. So without speaking of Pezão, Pé Quente, Serrinhas and Serra da Estrela, the first level to an NPV value has been very expressive. In the second place, increased production. We've spoken about that, the increase of production reaching 270,000 ounces with the entry of Borborema, 80,000-85,000 additional ounces. We then have Cerro Blanco with another 150. So we're growing and also having a significant increase of production.
And another point to enhance the multiples, we began in 2020 speaking precisely about that. We said we could reach 400,000 ounces with Almas and Matupá. We stated that we would continue to grow through M&As. We have had Borborema that is coming into production. We have not yet concluded, but we have Bluestone. We then have Carajás. So we're working arduously to add more M&As. All of this while we're still paying out dividends. We said we would grow and pay out dividends. It's a company that has difficulties, unforeseen things, day after day, but everything is resolved with this very agile team. We put everything back into operation. So we hope that we have been able to show you that this is a company delivering excellence, going beyond our expectations through the execution of a team that is in the quest for excellence.
I think you were able to feel the quality of the team that is here, and while we don't have an owner, this is a consortium. Nobody acts alone. We act as a group. We have discussions. The team is highly integrated, and it's not by chance that we achieve these excellent figures. The implementation of CapEx, a benchmark. Ramp-up. We are a benchmark. Discovery price for gold. We are a benchmark. Execution of M&A projects. Borborema is not a minor project. I think we still haven't been able to fully show you how much this project is going to add to Aura. It could be double, so we're executing with excellence. Everything we decide to do. I would like to thank all of you for your attendance. Some people have come from far away. They watched us initially in their caps, but we are highly aligned.
We're very proud to work with this team, and we hope to deliver even better results for you.