Ready? Judd Merrill here to present Comstock.
All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming today. A lot of exciting things going on. I'll just go ahead and get started. Let's see if I can get this. There we go. Corrado and I are here today presenting, and we'll be available for a lot of discussions. Just included a picture of our board, partly because we just added three new board members. A couple of these board members are representing some of the big shareholders that just came into the transaction. They're great to have on the board. They really represent the shareholders, and they have a significant portion of the company, including Steven Pei, who you might have been seeing some Form 4s being filed the last few weeks. He continues to buy shares in the company as fund.
Just a little snapshot of where we're at. 75 million shares outstanding. Stock price is higher than that today. It's gone up. Our market cap sitting today closer to $350 million. Total investments, assets, and then just we point out that we did eliminate our debt. We're sitting with no debt, the company. Here's just a snapshot of some of these big funds that have now invested into Comstock. We've really grown our institutional base. We have a really strong shareholder base now that it's very aligned with what we're doing and where we're going. Just another slide, just showing it was a lot of work to get the balance sheet clean. That was one of our focuses of last year, and that's what we're focused on, get the balance sheet clean, which we did, and now we're focusing on the solar recycling.
There's some things we still have to do to get ourselves more focused on the solar panel recycling, and that is to monetize some of these investments. We were a mining company. We mined from 2012 to 2016. We have publicly stated that we are in the process of monetizing those mining assets and moving out from the gold and silver mining that we did. We've also publicly stated that transaction we're expected to close in the third quarter, which is not too far away. That's still on track. The other thing that we ended up with over the last many years is some real estate in the Silver Springs area and ownership in a company called Sierra Springs Opportunity Fund. That real estate has become of much interest to a lot of people, including data center developers. The reason why is partly because of location.
We have land, we have water rights, we have access to fiber, and we've just announced that we have some access now to power through natural gas line that's being built by Great Basin Gas Transmission Company. We're getting a lot of interest in that property. We have also publicly stated that we are working on monetizing those assets. We think there's a lot of value there, taking a conservative approach. Our property that we own 100%, that Comstock real estate, and then our ownership in Sierra Springs Opportunity Fund, we believe there's almost $300 million of value there that we can unlock. Now, it's going to take us a little time. There's some things that we're working towards to get that value unlocked, including some bonding and some different things we have to do to get that power fully available to us.
We've already been locked in to that. We do have an investment in a company called Green Li-ion. They do some lithium battery recycling. We'll monetize that when it makes sense. A lot of work that we did in the biofuels that we spun off last year. That company is doing well. There's a lot going on there. There's some value to the company. We own a big percentage of that company. It's not something we're looking to monetize right away. We want to see that company grow and do really well. We're very much vested in it. Here's some of the objectives for 2026. Really, it's all centered around getting our solar panel recycling business up and running. It's to monetize these assets to get our first plant, which is about to turn on in a couple of weeks here, up and running.
See the biofuels continue to grow. This is what we're focused on: solar panel recycling. We've done a lot. A lot's already happened. We operated a pilot plant for 2.5 years. We ran every type of solar panel through that pilot plant, proved out our proprietary process and our technology, got audited by the big utilities. We got audited by R2v3, got the designation as a 100% recycler. That means everything that goes into that plant comes out as material that we can sell. We don't send anything to a landfill. There's no waste. We don't use chemicals in our process. We don't use water in our process. There's no waste. It's very environmentally friendly. We are expanding. Site number one is just north of us. It's quite a bit north, outside of Reno, Tahoe.
That plant, I'll show you some pictures here in a little bit, is just about to turn on. We got equipment there. Everything's been built. Site number two is actually going to be in this area, the Las Vegas area. We've narrowed down on the site selection for that, and we expect to build that site and have it ready and operating in 2027. We've also built a storage facility in California that receives solar panels, another one in Ohio that receives solar panels, and we're looking for additional sites across the U.S., eventually to put seven sites across the U.S. We did a comparison of our technology and what's out there in the market. There's a couple things that stand out. One is that we're able to recycle everything. There's nothing that goes to a landfill.
That's important because anytime you put anything back into a landfill, there's cost associated with it. The other big piece is capacity. We can put a solar panel through our process every seven seconds, and that's partly because of our proprietary process. There's no manual handling of that solar panel. There's no breaking it down by a manual process. When you see these pictures, you'll see that there's robotic arms putting a solar panel into the system every seven seconds. It runs through that process and comes out a solar panel every seven seconds, and the equivalent of material that we can sell. That's important. The other one is our environmental way that we process, and the fact that there's nothing that goes to a landfill, allows us to release the utilities from any potential liability from those solar panels. These things are classified as hazardous waste.
If you put them into a landfill, there could be a liability down the road if these metals leach into the groundwater or other types of things. Once we recycle it, because we recycle 100% of material, it comes out, and that's clean, and that liability goes away. This is a very busy slide. It's posted, and it's available, so you can look at it. It just dives deeper into the comparisons of the different options for people who are looking to get rid of these solar panels. Our objectives for 2026, I've mentioned some of them already. Turn on plant number one, have that operating this year. We'll be collecting revenues; we already have been. Our pilot plant's been collecting revenues last year and this year because we get paid to receive those solar panels. We get paid on the materials that we send out.
We'll see that increase significantly in the second half of this year as we ramp that plant number one up. Plant number two site selection, and then looking at different locations across the U.S. Just a snapshot, I think a lot of you have seen this, just of our proprietary process. We bring solar panels in where you do a shredding process. Every seven seconds, that solar panel going in goes through that shredding process.
Then it's our proprietary process. The hardest part of recycling a solar panel is the plastics, the laminates, and glues that are stuck there. If you just try to put it in a furnace and melt it all together, some of those things remain. It's hard to actually then use those metals again. If you try to mechanically or scrape off those plastic laminates and glues, you don't get them all off.
It takes time to do that. When it runs through our proprietary process, it comes out 100% clean. All the plastics, laminates and glues are eliminated. We end up with those three products that you see over there on the right. Aluminum flakes, we sell those here in the U.S. Glass beads. Quite a bit of glass in solar panels, we sell that here in the U.S. All the rest of the materials that are in a solar panel, all the metals that are in there's quite a bit. There's lead, there's some copper, quite a bit of silica, a lot of silver. This is very high, rich in silver content. We sell this granular material to refiners. A lot of those are in Asia, like Korea and Japan.
I'll tell you in a little bit about what we're going to do to be able to refine that to actually get the silver out, because right now, we don't get all the value for the silver when we sell it. We still make really good money, but there's a whole lot more value if we can get the silver out and if we can get the other metals. There's tellurium, iridium. Iridium sells for $5,000 or $6,000 an ounce, so it's important to get those metals out and create some more value. Here's a little snapshot on what we spent and some of the dollars that we're spending right now. It was about $11 million to get this plant up and running in northern Nevada. That's pretty low cost in CapEx. I spent some time in the lithium battery industry.
It was over $100 million to build those plants. Our plants are about $12 million-$15 million to build, but we spent about $11 million. There were some power upgrades we had to do, about $1 million. Some leasehold improvements, a couple million there. I'll show you a picture here in a second, but we did permit about 17 acres for storage of solar panels right next to our recycling facility. That will hold up to 25,000 tons of solar panels. That's important. That's about a quarter's worth of production. 25,000. Our plants are designed to process 100,000 tons of solar panels on an annual basis. One of the big things that I— Well, there's two things. The glass, we're doing a little bit of upgrades to be able to refine that glass a little bit better.
We could sell it right now and get some value for it. We've introduced some technology where we're able to increase the cleanliness of that glass and be able to sell it for a lot more money. We made an investment there. I talked about those metal tailings, that silver-rich sand that we sell. We are investing $10 million on some R&D work. All that is already in process. We hope to have a 1- ton per day pilot operation operating by the end of this year. What that will do is extract those silver and these other metals from that granular material, and then that will allow us to get 100%, or nearly a very high percentage of the value out of those metals tailings. Here's just a little bit deeper dive into the economics of what we're getting for each of these products.
About $125 a ton on the aluminum, about $20 a ton on the glass. Now, that will go up with the process that we're introducing. At a $40 an ounce spot price for silver, the value that we get is about $125 a ton for that material right now. This is the equipment that we're using to enhance the value of those glass pearls that come out as recycled materials. The reason why this is important is if you think about a solar panel, about 60%-70% of the volume of the recycled material is actually glass. Although it's small in terms of dollar value that we get in terms of revenue, it's a big volume in terms of just physical amount that comes out. Anything we can do to enhance the ability to get a bigger dollar per ton is important.
There's a picture of that piece of equipment. This is inside the plant with some of the equipment showed up. This picture is probably two or three months old because all the equipment's going in. On the right is a picture of the robotic arm. Some of the equipment outside. Another up-close picture of the robotic arms. This is at 17 acres, that's permitted for up to 25,000 tons of solar panel storage. Remember, every time we receive a solar panel, we get about $500 per ton. We call it a tipping fee. This allows us to collect revenue while we're storing it. From a GAAP accounting standpoint, it's deferred revenue. We don't actually record it until we recycle it through. From a cash basis, which is more important, we're able to collect cash on the receiving of solar panels.
Why are we building our first plant in Northern Nevada, our second plant in Southern Nevada? Nevada, one, is a great location. Two, 50%+ of all the end-of-life solar panels are coming from Arizona, Nevada, and California. Mainly California. That's why we have a collection site there, and that's why we have one in Northern Nevada. We're right along i-80, a major route for trucking and shipping and rail. Obviously, Las Vegas to capture Southern California. What does the market look like? These are where new developments have gone in. You can see they're all over the U.S., specifically Texas, California, Florida, Carolinas. A lot on the East Coast. We want to build seven of these plants. First two in Nevada, third one could be Texas. We're also looking at Ohio, obviously, Florida, Carolinas.
The reason we want to build plants across the U.S. is because it does cost. They pay to ship the material to us, and then they pay us to take that liability from them. The closer we can be, the more competitive we can be, and it also makes it very easy for them to just ship it, to be close to those utilities and where those end-of-life solar panels are coming from. This just shows where there's under development. There's solar panels being deployed. We have some different statistics, but it's about 1.3 billion solar panels have already been deployed in the U.S. Billions more globally. We're working to capture that market share. Here's a little bit on the economics. I've talked about a little bit that $500 per ton tipping fee that we receive to receive that material.
We've been collecting that last year and this year as we've received solar panels. In fact, our parking lot is completely full of solar panels right now. We have about 7,000+ tons of solar panels on site waiting to get recycled in the commercial facility. Based off, I think, a $60 per ounce silver, we try to get something a little closer to the silver price. We're getting about $500 per ton for that material that we're selling. If we're at 100% or at 95% capacity, that's about $90 million in revenue. Our cost is very low. Everything's automated. Our process is very straightforward. It's about $150 a ton to process that material, and that's all in. That includes sales and marketing, that includes operating expense, that includes total variable cost. The cash profit from one of these plants is very high.
Plant number one, we'll start ramping this year, and the goal is to have it at a 20% more capacity by the end of this year. The 20%, we'll start generating cash, so that covers all the costs, and then grow it to the full capacity in 2027. This is just a little bit of mapping out that recovery process for that material, those silver tailings. This is our recovery process that we're putting in place this year. Now, this won't be up and running this year except for a pilot operation. A pilot will be running next year. While this is happening simultaneously, we'll continue our goal of putting in seven plants across the U.S.. Number two operating next year. The reason why this is so important. There's a couple reasons. We've already talked about it economically. We get much more value.
We continue to see a deficit in the silver. They're talking about silver being produced and meet the demand from all the electronics and the robots and the drones and the data centers and all that. The silver demand continues to go up, and that's why we see the prices where they're at. One of our plants will generate over 1 million ounces of silver each year. Unlike a mine, which we're very familiar with because we mined in northern Nevada, once you take that silver out of the ground, it's gone. You got to keep finding more recycled material. You keep building those solar panels, we recycle them. It's a renewable way of meeting that silver demand every year. Just another slide on the silver. All right.
Let me just spend a couple minutes because there seems to be a lot of value and a lot of interest in these properties that we have outside. It's in Silver Springs, Nevada. It's outside of Reno. The reason why there's a lot of interest in this area, partly because we're just about 8 miles east of what's called the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. It's over 100,000 acre industrial center. I think it's the largest in the U.S. That's where Tesla decided to build their first Gigafactory. Since they've built it, Apple's come in and built a data center. Switch has built a data center. Google has built a data center. Tract has built and is in the process of building a lot of data centers. They just did a deal with Nevada. I don't think I said it right.
There's just a lot of growth there, and there's a lot of interest in this area. It's a very safe area. Our property is just outside of where a lot of that's grown, but now it's coming next to us. We've had Microsoft right across the street, buy a piece of property, and they're developing a data center, and Tract is right next to them. This is just showing where we're at. There's just been a lot of interest in this property. We're getting calls daily. We're spending a significant amount of our time right now just making sure that we're able to monetize this. Our goal isn't to be a data center. Our goal isn't to be a developer or a real estate.
Our goal is to recycle solar panels, but to monetize this in the most effective way and to bring those dollars in to support our solar recycling growth. With that, kind of went through all that very quickly, but I wanted to give some time for some Q&A. I'll open it up for Q&A. We got Hey. Yeah. Plant number one, yeah. I'd say by mid-next year, trying to get that up to 100% capacity. On the feedstock, we estimate that, and we have data that supports over 1 million tons that need to be recycled by 2030. That's already growing. We're already seeing that. We have contracts in place, MSA agreements with different utilities, and we believe that we'll be able to feed that plant, and we won't have any issues there. Yep. We're already receiving solar panels as far away as Florida.
We've gotten them from Hawaii. We've gotten them from Canada. There's a question over here. There's two. One, we're getting people who have not really thought about recycling solar panels. They thought solar panels were going to last 20, 25 years. They're lasting 15 to 17 years, and now they realize, "Oh, what are we going to do with these?" They start calling up the landfills in different places, realize that's not a cheap option. There's some liability potential. That's one source. The other source is, yes, people want to know that you have the capacity, that they can relieve their liability. We're able to show them that, especially now that our plant is coming online. Is there any other? There in the back. There is some CO2 that comes out of that it's emitted. It's very small amounts.
We do have scrubbers and other things, but it's a very small percentage of what comes out of there. Yep. There's a couple different timing things. We monetize these assets, the mining and the real estate. That will be used for growth. Depends on timing. We've already funded the initial expansion of site number two with the money that we have. If we need to, we would look to project finance the growth if we need to. I think we have one minute left. Yeah. On the first question, we've been operating a pilot plant for 2.5 years. We've run every single type of solar panel through that, tested it on all the different chemistries and makeups. We have a lot of confidence from that.
Fortunato, who was the inventor of this process. He has used similar types of things in munitions and medical waste recycling, so he's got a history. A lot of this equipment, except for our proprietary piece, is stuff that you can get, shredders and conveyors and things like that. Those are standard industry things. We have a lot of confidence in the technology. That's probably one of our least concerns right now. Then on the second question, it was Right. We haven't seen anybody even trying or even saying that they're using a similar process. There's 20 years of know-how and experience in there. There's also permitting obstacles that we've overcome because we know the industry. There's just a lot of different pieces there that we feel like will take somebody a long time.
Doesn't mean that they won't try it, but it may take a while. Are we done? Okay. Thank you, everybody, for coming. Appreciate it