Okay, next presentation is from Sigma Lithium, of course, a Brazilian spodumene producer. Happy to have Ana Cabral- Gardner, CEO, to present.
Thank you. It's an honor to be here. So, without further ado, I'll start. Read the disclaimers because we're going to make a lot of forward-looking statements. Well, just briefly, what we do: we own two different businesses, a mine and an industry. We industrialize lithium oxide concentrate, and we do it quintuple zero, meaning zero carbon, zero tailings dams, reusing the water, no dirty power, so 100% clean power. And we do not use chemicals. How did we achieve that? We invested and perfected a very old technology in the diamond industry called dense media separation, which is actually where the magic happens. So, we've done it to a point where we've been achieving now 70% recovery using dense media separation only, which is a level of lithium recovery achieved by a more complex flotation solution.
And at that, we also leverage on overall low-cost operational location that is Brazil. So, we perfected industrial technology, and we operate in a low-cost environment, which are the two building blocks, foundational building blocks of how have we been managing to remain low-cost throughout this cycle. Now, Brazil is further away from end-user markets in Asia than other regions, yes, but because of the existing infrastructure resulting from the historical mining industry in Brazil, we are actually benefiting from not having to deploy CapEx outside of the gate. The freight is now $36 from port to China. It's actually costing me the same to go to China than to truck to the port. So, with $80, we actually get a door-to-door delivery service. And that's all courtesy of roads, ports, existing infrastructure. So, it's the ideal location for a low-cost producer.
So, as a result of this, we built resilience throughout the cycle. In other words, we managed to get to the scale that we designed. We're actually doing slightly better than that. So, we achieved large-scale production. It's equivalent to 40,000 tons LCE, 270,000 tons of lithium oxide concentrate. Now, we're doing that with very, very low production costs as a result of industrial focus and benefiting from outside-of-the-gate CapEx infrastructure. More importantly, we operate in an environment where traceability is obvious. And I'm not even talking about environmental. I mean, I cannot send a person to a mine without a helmet because they will shut down my operations in Latin America. So, Latin America historically is an environment where you've got to organize labor, you've got to organize workforces. So, traceability becomes the norm. On top of that, we operate with fantastic safety and health standards.
We've been 555 days with zero accidents. In this whole conference, there's only one company that's doing better than us in the ICMM, which is AngloGold Ashanti. We're very proud of that, given that we are a young producer. Coupled with that, low-cost scale and traceability, we have speed of execution, low CapEx, and obviously, this is a result of being a low-cost operating country. Just quickly, this is kind of what we based our operations on. We have this fantastic mineral resource reserve. We're now the fifth-largest operating mineral industrial complex in the world. We're hitting 150 million tons. That's enough material to operate current capacity 60+ years, expanded capacity 25 years. But we keep it at that because we haven't drilled out the region at all. We got four properties. We just drilled one, the Cirilo property.
Here's what would happen as we keep on building industrial facilities. So, the ore body, the source, I mean, the mines and the geology and the reserves are not the constraint. The constraint is how quickly can we put industrial facilities in order to deliver more lithium. And so, we've done the first one. We're fully funded 25% into the second one. And then we have an approved industrial plan from our development bank to do a third one. So, we're just going to keep growing. Hopefully, all of us will keep growing together because the world needs a lot of lithium. But what does it mean? We're going to be top five. We belong in the top echelons of the industry because we're so large. More importantly, we do it at very low cost, which gives us resilience throughout cycles.
So, we're weathering the cycle quite well because we're low-cost, and that's the only way to go. And that's kind of commodities in general. You've got to be at the low end of the cost curve so that you've got resilience. It's kind of simple, but it's easier said than done. Managing costs is a constant daily cultural exercise. And we were born with that culture because we have, you know, we were private equity-led, but we've been 10 years doing this. So, this efficiency is the driver. Here is our health and safety record, of which we're very proud. Why? Because we haven't been operating for two years yet. We haven't reached our second anniversary, and we're reaching these operational excellence standards of mature producers, which makes us very proud because it demonstrates how well can we operate this business. So, here we close the gap on the puzzle.
We call the puzzle a competitive advantage, meaning scale plus low cost is price cycle resilience. Traceability and low cost, well, we can compete with any jurisdiction, including Africa. Traceable, untraceable, it doesn't matter. We win on untraceable on scale. We win on traceable on logistics. Scale and traceability ensures our spot in the largest supply chains in the world. Management speed of execution. The other day, someone said, "You guys build as fast as China," and I take it as a huge compliment because I have enormous admiration for the work ethic and how fast they build things, and we aim to get there. We're not there yet, but we aim to get there. That's the goal, and then, obviously, the location of developed mining practice, mining province, is disadvantaged on, you know, the availability of skilled workers. Infrastructure is not a constraint.
We're putting out a Supramax boat like this week. So, you know, any size boat, docks, and a port, it's just a matter of how much product I have to put on a boat. And so, therefore, as a result, we also end up with very low construction CapEx because part of our work is cut out for us in the outside-of-the-gate infrastructure. On top of it, the country has one of the lowest energy costs in the world. Green energy, labor costs are low, so we can build very rapidly a big network of in-country local equipment suppliers. So, it's kind of all there, right? So, here is how that all translates into numbers. And this is why we put in a preview of the financial performance. So, we're analyzing 270,000 tons of lithium oxide concentrate.
In the fourth quarter, we demonstrated how certain that number is by delivering a spectacular quarter. So, it could be more. The underlying revenue, we adjusted for the charges from 2023 due to provisional price. So, you know, very healthy number. So, how does this business look like? It's a 40% cash gross margin revenues. That's the business. So, it's a pretty good business in this point in the cycle. So, imagine what this business would look like with $100 more, $200 more of, you know, concentrate pricing. Now, cash costs are managed to be low. And we've delivered cash costs of, you know, below $500, and we could do it, but we're not even guiding to it. So, here's sort of how we had to hit the ground running as a producer because we became producer against headwinds of a collapsing price, lithium price, right? Year one, year two.
We hit steady state literally right out of the gate. More importantly, we had to maintain the discipline because as we were, you know, adjusting production, the prices were collapsing. To preserve cash generation, we had to build this institutional obsession with cost-cutting. You can clearly see that to this day, we keep cutting costs. Now scale becomes our friend because the more volumes, the lower cost per ton we get. This is going to keep on going. These are actual numbers for the fourth quarter. We're not just talking about it anymore. We delivered better than what we told in this conference a year ago, $430 China. That's a very decent number for a producer halfway across the world. This is the guidance for this coming year, which, again, we're hoping to surprise you positively on.
But as you can see, we're not even guiding to the delivered numbers. We're guiding to the averages we put in so that we give you comfort that we're going to make the guidance. And again, the purpose of the slide is available on the net. It's just to show the cash generation capability of this business, especially as we complete the construction we're, you know, we're going through now. And so, here's what we delivered: pretty much everything we said, plus some. Again, most important is phase two. It's significantly progressing. It's on target. It will be this year, end of the year. We decided to go ahead on with it because it is actually good for the business. It's going to help us be more resilient with higher margins on scale. This is the expansion. This is how fast we build.
Again, target is to build as fast as China. We're not there yet. We're striving for it. This is how we look like in May 2022. This is how we look like in April 2023. We can build fast. This is the advantage we got on this one. Again, the infrastructure is already there. So, this construction is a lot easier than the first one. And we itemized why? Because essentially, we don't need to build the support infrastructure for the second plant. We're just putting a line, an industrial line together. We're fully funded thanks to our development bank. They gracefully extended to us 16-year financing at a dollar-equivalent rate of 2.5%. So, it's clearly a development play, multi-cycle. That is the kind of capital this industry needs. Fortunately, our country understood it and is on it. And this is a video which is 1,000 words.
We're very proud to present that because we haven't talked about the construction. This is where we were in the fourth quarter. This is where we are now, and that's just how much progress we make once we just decided to go. We mobilized over 100 workers, seven units of machinery. We, again, obsessed with safety. Those safety records count towards our safety record. Again, this is fourth quarter, like early fourth quarter, and then you can see we're done with the stairs now. We finished main access road to the new industrial site, to the new plant. We're going to get over 1,000 workers at peak construction in August. You can see first cement was poured. We've done the drainage. So, drainage is important because we reuse the water. This is the first cement being poured, which is a great milestone for those who build.
Again, I mean, it moves fast. Once we decided to go, it's a go. We're obsessed with cost timelines. We're hoping to do this probably under budget, but again, can't promise. This is the terracing that you just saw in the beginning of the video where it is now, how the drainage looks like. It's just happening, right? The video is available online. Again, where do we go from here? We build a third plant next year. Again, not with my cash flow, within the same development bank, industrial approved plant. It's not funded yet because they fund the program. As I need it, we go there and get the firm commitment, which is what I got for plant two, which then becomes production next year for the full year.
And then their goal is to do lithium sulfate, which most likely, given that we've been very wary of the economics there, we've been telling them to push into 2027. But again, three units supported by the same infrastructure, very straightforward. Now, why? Because it's CapEx efficiency. It's the lowest CapEx intensive project in the industry because, again, we're just building a line. So, that's us. Finishing time. Thank you.
That was a perfect 15-minute presentation to the point where we have no time for questions.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Okay. Thank you.