Bullish on Copper? Jump on the train!

0:11 Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining Deep South Resources live investment summit today hosted by 6. I have President and CEO Pierre Léveillé with me today. Pierre is going to walk you through a company presentation and after that we're going to be accepting questions. As a reminder you can submit your questions at any point during the presentation using the Q&A panel on the right-hand side of your screen. And as a note, our presentation today is being recorded and replay will be available on six.com afterwards. Without further ado, I'm gonna hand it over to Pierre. Good day, everyone. I'm pleased to have, seems to have a lot of people on board. Wow. Have you seen the price of copper recently? It's incredible.

0:58 Yesterday, it touched $3 to 49 per pound of copper. It's major. What you're going to see what deeps out, some of you have probably seen that presentation before, but for the new ones, what you're going to see there is a pretty rare opportunity because it's not often you see a project of this magnitude in an exploration company. So let's go for it. We hold a massive copper porphyry project in the south of Namibia, which is in the southern part of Africa. It's over 5 billion pounds of copper in the ground. It's a 43-101 resource. It's amenable to low-cost bio-e-bleaching system with recoveries up to 96%.

1:50 It's a tier 1 project with very strong economics. It's in Namibia, which is a low risk mining friendly jurisdiction. And we have an excellent potential to increase the size of the resource and the grade. In May this year, we have issued a PEA that was showing very robust economics, 24 years open-pip mine production with a price of a capex of $340 million US and a price, a cash cost of $1.34 US per pound of copper. We're now advancing toward the feasibility study. We will do up to 12,000 meters of drilling. We have raised money recently and we have enough money at the moment to start to do 5,000 to 6,000 meters. And in 2021, we will certainly raise more money to continue that program. It will be followed by more metallurgical work and that is expected to improve the recoveries and reduce the OPEX.

2:58 And of course, there will be a mining and engineering design and the environmental impact study. The shareholding of the company at the moment is tech resources, all 21%, management and directors, all 19%. We have at the moment a little bit over 2 million. We have raised recently $2.4 million, so we're a little bit under 2 million at the moment. What is very important now, we've seen that recently, the price of copper has gone up very drastically and there's a certain number of reasons for that. First, there's a strong cathode demand from China. China is going is improving, their economy is improving extremely fast at the moment. And we expect a tighter copper market in 2021 due to COVID-19 restriction, but also starting in 2022 and 2023, we will see the production will slow down. If there's no new production that comes online, the production will go down and we see that the demand is going up. So there will be a shortage starting at the end of 2000, during 2021 and it will probably stay for what we forecast now for at least 5, 6 years.

4:21 So it's what we enter now into a period where the demand will be extremely high and production will be lower and lower and there is, you know, the largest producing country in the world like Chile will reduce. It's big mines, but the resources are depleting. So that's happening now and we need to find more and more resource. Copper is also at a cornerstone of the EV revolution. You can see that in a gasoline vehicle, we need 22 kilo of copper, mainly for the wires, and for a battery electric blue bus it's 253 kilo and for a car it's 80 kilo.

5:08 So it's 4 times more for a car than a normal gasoline car. So you can see that just on that, just on the electrification of transport, there will be an increase, a serious increase in demand over the coming years. And Wood Mackenzie thinks that by 2030, we expect to have over 20 million EV charging points in the world. So that's another important factor because these charging points are using a lot of copper. So we're into a market where the demand will grow substantially and the production will reduce. So guess what? It's a perfect storm to have a better price of copper and that's what we're seeing since about 3, 4 months. The Ibe Copper Project is a massive copper porphyry deposit and the property is pretty big. It's 370 square kilometers. It's near an highway, in fact, the largest commercial road in Namibia.

6:07 Water is 15 kilometers and could be pipelined easily. In the center of the deposit, There's a high-grade area that will serve as a starting pit for an eventual mining. The grades there are, we have quite a lot of intercept, historical intercept up to 150 meters and between 0.5 to 1% copper. So it's really a better grade and drilling in that area will also have an influence on the overall grade of the project. There's a substantial upside for the exploration there, you will see that. And of course, as I said, Namibia has a friendly mining jurisdiction, it's very stable, it's parliamentary democracy, It's a transparent system of mineral and surface titles.

6:57 It was ranked first in policy perception amongst African countries, 14 globally, in the 2019 Fraser Institute Mining Survey. So that's very important. It's a very good perception of that country. And because of that, and for many other reasons also, the mining is well established and Namibia is very protective of the and very supportive of the mining industry and you can see that one of the reasons it counts for 25% of the GDP and 50% of the exports. So it's normal that the government is highly supportive of a very important business like this. The project is situated completely in the south of Namibia near the South African border.

7:47 On this map you can see the the Orange River making the border between South Africa, that's the white line there, making the border between South Africa and Namibia and the red contour is the project. Water is nearby as I was saying. The black line is the main commercial road crossing all Namibia coming from Cape Town, South Africa. So we have the road crossing our concession. Along that road, There is a low voltage power grid so we can have some power from there. And the high voltage power grid is about 85 kilometers to the east of the project. It's a bit far, but not so far. At the moment in the PEA, we have estimated that we pay for all the CAPEX to connect to that grid, but we know that the government of Namibia has some program and normally participate to as high as 50% in some project.

8:47 So it will probably improve our CAPEX at some point in time. One other point which is very important, it's a very sunny part of the world. Namibia has an average of 320 days of sun per year, but near the Orange River in that specific section, we're talking of 360 days of sun per year. So you won't be surprised to know that at the feasibility study stage, we all assess the solar energy. We definitely have to go in that direction. So that will certainly have an influence on the CapEx, but more so on the on the OpEx at some point in time. That's a massive deposit. It's a very large deposit. You can see that cross-section map there.

9:34 Most of the drilling that you see there is down to 350 meters. That's where we have the measured and the indicated and inferred resource. If you look at the table under the map, you will see that our indicated resource is 457 million tons at 0.31% copper and the inferred resource is 342 million tons at 0.29% copper. What is important here with that drilling? That's all the historical drilling. You will see that first it's down to 350 meters. That's where we have the indicated and inferred resource. You will see also that we have drilled some drill holes that are down to 800 meters and it's still mineralized arriving there so we don't even know where the bottom is.

10:23 So it's open-ended under and it's quite massive. We think that we can increase the tonnage substantially, maybe double the tonnage that we have at the moment. There is also other satellites around the main body that have been identified for future work, so it's another potential to increase the tonnage. What you can see here from that specific drilling, first there are 66,000 meters of drilling that has been done over the time since the 1970s. And there's a lot of work that has been done, metallurgical tests, geological survey, geochemical sampling, mapping, and so on. There's even a feasibility study that was carried out by Minproc in the 1990s, so it's a huge asset. We have a lot of data, we have all that data, we have most of the core still on site well preserved, so we have quite a lot of data to do as a basis to prepare the future development.

11:23 You can see also that the drilling was spaced in general by 150 meters and It was also done mainly vertical. You can see that there's the red dots and yellow dots, that there's quite a lot of high-grade, high-grade pods in the deposit. So if we delineate them better, we will certainly have an influence on the overall grade of the project. And the first step to do that is to focus on that 140 million ton section that is in the center of the deposit. So just go there. Now we will, one of the things which is very important is that we have also had some recent metallurgical test work that have shown extremely good results.

12:16 We're talking of bioheap leaching tests that have brought recoveries up to 96% and in the PEA we have used 80% as a base case and 85% as a goal to achieve. We're confident that it's highly achievable. The test was performed by MinTech of South Africa, which is a leader in bioleaching technologies. The reason why the bioassisted technology works very well on that project is the mineralogy is very simple. We're talking of ore contains 98.5% chalcopyrite, 1% boronite, and the rest is a thin sheet of oxidized material.

13:10 There is no deleterious element. There's no uranium, no borium, no arsenic. So it's very important in the leaching context because the bacteria have to focus only on the chalcopyrite. You know, there's no competition with other stuff in the... So it renders the leaching very simple. The other thing also is that the acid consumption is very low because there's a high content of pyrite and pyrite when it leaches, it self-generates some sulfuric acid and also it generates heat in the system, which is very important because to keep the bacteria as well active we need some heat in the system and having enough pyrite it generates some heat and we don't have to bring more heating system into it so that's another reason why the opex is pretty low.

14:00 One thing that we have tested also is the high pressure grinding rollers. And that's very important because it reduced the size of the, it reduced the size of the, the rock below 5 millimeters and to be very efficient at the bio leaching, it's preferable to be under 5 millimeters. One of the thing is that it brings a capex and an apex lower and It brings the material easily under 5mm without any supplemental demand and power. One of the reasons for that is because why it crushes so well is the deposit is Archean age so it's 1.8 billion years old. It's completely different than the normal porphyries you see in the Andes, like in Chile and Peru. They're way, way younger. Their rock is volcanic.

14:59 In our case, over the time, the rock has been modified. And today, it's metamorphic. So yes, it's still granite, but it's a little bit softer than the typical volcanic rock. So that all together make that we have been able to produce a very robust PEA. You can see on the right side, it's a 25, 4 years mine life with, We used here the average grade of the overall project at 0.31%. The throughput is 20 million tons per annum. The strip ratio is very low at 1.41 to 1. In fact, it starts from surface. There is no overburden there. We start extracting copper directly from the first material that we move.

15:51 As I said, we use a copper recovery of 80%. And that you can see that the cash cost is operation cost $1.34 US per pound of copper with an initial capex of $340 million. Now that when you go on the left side gives you a project economic at when we use $3 at $950, The NPV after tax is $957 million and the after tax IRR is 29.7% near 30%. It's very high. Now, the thing is that when we issued that PEA, the price of copper was even below $2.50. So our base case was at $2.50.

16:38 Now what you can see is that since then, the increase in the NPV is 50% and the increase in the IRR is over 30%. So just having a better price of copper adds a lot of economics on our project. So we have many opportunities to optimize and improve that PEA. First the infill drilling will expand the high-grade zone and will certainly modify the improved grade of the overall deposit. And when we, as I said, we use 0.31% in the PEA. So if that increase, then automatically the project economics will increase. We have refining and we can improve, optimize the process flow sheet. There's ore sorting that can be tested. We have tested some. It's pretty interesting. It gives very good results. But the test was on 20 kilos. So it's a very small test. So that's why we don't mention it in the PE at this point in time. As I said, there's potential resource phase expansion and the solar power generation that can reduce costs.

17:47 That's the center of the deposit, that's the contour of the high-grade area. On the left side, you can see some of these drill holes we had in the past there. 150 meter at 0.68%. It's a pretty long extension with a pretty good grade. And you can see that it goes up to 1.28%. So there's high grade existing in that area. We intend now with the money we have raised to start the drilling in that specific area. It will be up to 110 holes and the goal is to develop a estimate, to estimate a measured resource over that area, have a definitive grade for that area and then at the same time that will have an influence on the overall, on the grade of the overall deposit.

18:37 So that's what's come, what comes next and we're very confident to give some very good result there. You can look at the pit number 1 on the right side. This is the cross section of that pit. And in the year, what you can see quite a lot of factors that are convincing that the grade have been underestimated in the past. You see that there was an added dug into the pit number 1 and on the right side of the adit, you can see that there's quite a lot of drill holes that are on tight spacing. Spaced by 50 meters, you hit a lot of high-grade material. Also, when it's drilled in angle, you can see 123 drill holes around the adit that are vertical, that it's high-grade material. There's also an angle drilled down below that it's a lot of high-grade material.

19:31 I'll come back to explain why it's like this. When you look on the left side of the addit, you can see that the spacing is 150 meter and then suddenly you know we have less and less high-grade material that has been hit So we need to infill in those areas. The other thing is that in the past, the structures that are controlling these high-grade pods were never really identified properly. The reason for that is most of the companies that were working on the project before were chasing tonnage first. So they knew high-grid material was existing, but it was lined up for future development work and they were always pushing the grid and drilling at a space of 150 meters.

20:18 So arriving today, we've decided to identify the structures that control these pods and then to plan a detailed work to drill these pods and improve the grade of the project and of that specific section. Most of the structure that we have identified are shears or faulting systems tend to be sub-vertical or vertical. So what happens when you drill vertical into and you have some section in between the drill spacing by 150 meters that contain the I-grade and at our vertical, you can be sure you missed all of them. So there's a lot of high-grade section that I've been missed in with that drilling, which is correct. Now we're there and we will correct that situation in the sense that we're now doing that fine-tuning drilling to improve all the economics of the project.

21:20 So that's what we're heading for. That's a plan of the overall area, the complete license. In the center, you see the height deposit. That's where we have all the resource estimated so far. And all the other round around there, east, west, southwest and others are satellites that have been recently identified. We've done by geophysical survey, we've done also some geochemical sampling and we have same type of results than what we see in the main body. We've drilled a little bit in the body in 2015 and in 2 of them, I-West and I-East, and we generated the same type of result than what we see in the HIBE in general.

22:07 So we know these areas are mineralized, so it's lined up for future development work, but that gives you an idea. We can open the tonnage, the center, the high deposit is open at the bottom, and also we have these satellites that can add quite a lot of tonnage. So one way or the other, at the end of the day, it remains a very, very large deposit. And it will be, it is a Tier 1 deposit, it's without any question. So where do we go from now on? I'm just going to recap on that we start a drilling program on the high-grade area We have the money now to do up to 6,000 meters. We will start that soon. And we will define the average grade of that area. And we would like to estimate a measured resource over that area and to increase also the grade of the overall deposit.

23:01 We will do further metallurgical work, bioassisted e-bleaching and we will do HPGR tests again. We will start the mining engineering design during the course of next year for the feasibility study and of course the environmental impact study. So when you go on our website, you can see that we're a proven management team. We're the right people to develop a project of that size. We have a lot of experience in developing projects over Africa. Our board of director also is very good, strong corporate governance. And you can see that there's a lot of experience on our board too. I point the fact that also we have some Namibian very highly experienced people on our board, so that's pretty important. We're in Namibia.

23:50 And lastly, you can see how we are undervalued. It's the average, the weighted average of our peers at the moment is trading at 60% of 1 cent, 0.006 US dollar and we're at 0.0017. So we're about 5 times below the average now with the price of copper going up, with money raised recently, now with the drilling program starting that will start and we're very confident to generate good results. We're confident that we will add quite a lot of value there, So we are doing the work to make sure that we will be in the middle of the pack pretty soon. So stay tuned with us. There's quite a lot of good news coming and it's going to be an exciting year for us at Deep South. So that's it. Thank you. Thank you for attending.

24:45 And I'm open to answer any questions. Well thank you very much Pierre. We did have a number of questions coming from the audience today, so let's dive right in. Our first question is from Joel. He asks, what are the results expected for the current drill program? I'm laughing because it's a good question, but it's difficult to answer that precisely. But what we expect so far is to be able to develop a better grade for that specific area and hopefully that's a goal. That's not sure that it will happen like this, but our goal would be to be for that specific area to be over 0.40%, even better if we can go to 0.45%.

25:37 So it's really grade oriented in that case, in the case of that specific program. And if everything goes right, potentially add more tonnage also on that high grade area. Great, thank you. Our next question is from Jochem. He says that in 2020, the PEA was published and you announced an update today, some opportunities for optimization and improvements have already been identified. So when is the feasibility study planned in 2021 and where will the main focus of improvements be? Would it be in optimizing the mining design, processing, or focusing on getting more higher grade ore into the resource?

26:27 Okay, now, first of all, it's important to mention that The update we have announced today, it's what we do is that we will, we're not updating anything on the technical side specifically. It's just the financial models that will be updated, that are being updated at the moment, because the price of copper, as you may know, has gone up and we need to show what the project will look like with prices at $3.25, $3.50, $4 even, just for future reference. So that's what we're doing at the moment. It's going to be ready pretty soon. Now the feasibility study is a program for 2 years, so it's a pretty long process, and it's also financing dependent. Now we have enough money to start the first leg, the drilling. We are confident that we will raise enough money to complete the drilling and do more metallurgical work in the first 6 months of 2021.

27:23 If we can raise the money after these 6 months, the design engineering will start in the second half of 2021 and plan to be delivered in the second half of 2022. Sorry. And so that's the plan. It's a plan for 2 years. Now, we can optimize the PEA results with a lot of factors. The first one is, of course, improving the flow sheet of the mining sequence, without any doubt. The solar power will certainly bring something, potentially bring something, where we can improve the economics too. In doing more metallurgical work and refining better the HPGR system, we will certainly be able to improve the recoveries, not necessarily only in numbers, but in time of recovery, and be more efficient.

28:22 So that's another opportunity where we can improve at feasibility. And of course, one of the most important ones is to improve the grade. At the moment our numbers are at 0.31% copper. Just take it like this, if we end up with an average of 0.35, it's a huge improvement that will have a direct effect on the overall economics of the project. So in general, in a nutshell, that's basically what we will do to improve the economics with the feasibility study. Great, thank you Pierre. In a follow-up question, you know, would like to know about the feasibility study as well. Would it be focused mainly on the high-grade main deposit or would you be including all of the satellite deposits as well?

29:13 No, it's just on the main deposit because the satellite deposits have no resources estimated at the moment. We don't have enough drilling in these satellites to include any potential resource in the feasibility study. It's lined up, at the moment we know that we have over 1 billion ton of ore, and we know that we can end up at over 2 billion ton of ore easily, so that 5 million billion pound of copper can certainly turn out to be 10 billion pound of copper and more eventually. So what's important here for us is to do the feasibility study and get that project going because it's an old project for Namibia and the government of Namibia is very happy to see now that we're developing it. You know, they don't want to see only exploration all the time. So I would say that after we complete the feasibility study at some point in time, we will resume some work in the satellite to develop more resources.

30:17 Great. Our next question is from Dierma. They ask, how much electricity in terms of megawatts will you need for the plant? Wow, that's a good question. I don't have these numbers in mind at the moment. If you drop me an email at info at deepsoutresources.com, I'll be pleased to give you the numbers. I will have to go back to the PEA and it will take a couple of minutes. So do that and I will give you the answer. Great. So we'll follow up with Dietmar on that. How about water supply? Jochem would like to know, he's saying that the water supply is coming from 15 kilometers away via pipeline from Orange River. So what is the status of the permits there and what will the permits contain and allow you to do? Is there going to be a maximum volume of water per year or per day that the permit will be valid for?

31:13 Yeah, the permit will be valid for the period of the mining. So if the mining license is, let's say, maybe if I remember right, it's 15 years, 21 years, and 26 years. So it depends on the projects. So the water rights will match the mining license, the length of the mining license, and permitting, yes, of course there will be a limit to the water that we can take because the orange river is crossing 4 countries. And the 4 countries have negotiated quotas in between themselves. And maybe I remember right, I have something like 40% of the flow, but I don't remember the exact numbers. Within that 40%, there's still some space to allow more water usage.

32:00 And recently, there's a mine which is about 100 kilometers west of Haib. It's called Scorpions Inc. That has shut down because resources were depleted. And so that's 1 quota that comes back to the government also. So what we know from our questioning, let's say, to the Ministry of Environment, so at the moment there's no question for us, we can do at least a 20 million ton per annum project without any problem. If we have to go over 50 million tons per annum, then we will have to revise that because we could probably go at a throughput of up to 50 million tons per annum throughput at the moment. Great. I got a couple of questions here about bile leaching. First one's from Michael. He asks, how well known is the process of bioactivated acid heat leaching of copper sulfites?

32:51 Are there existing operations that currently use this process? And will trial mining and test processing be part of the feasibility process? Okay. First of all, bioassisted leaching is not a new technology. It's a pretty robust technology that is used mainly in porphyry in Chile. And Certain other places in the world are using it in gold, but I don't want to compare gold to copper in that specific case. And in Chile, most of the majors have or have used bioassisted leaching for different type of application. Some were using it on oxide, some on secondary sulfide, some on stockpiles.

33:37 And there is 1 project, Radomiro Tamich, which is owned by Koudelko, which operates a primary sulfide, exact same mineralogy that we have on HYBE. They operate successfully for many years with their bioassisted leaching technology. They're even now working on their version 2.0 of their technology and they're very happy with it. So that's the most easy to compare with us and because mineralogy is similar, what is different in their case, they have a high content of pyrite and like what we have and What is different though is that the environment, the weather is pretty cold compared to where we are. So in our case, it's an advantage.

34:24 Sorry, what was the, there was 3 questions. So yes, Let me look that up. Will trial mining and test processing be part of the feasibility process? Yeah, okay. Not at the feasibility process, but right after at the PCM level. We have a plan now. It's all in place to do after the feasibility study is completed, to do a pilot plant that would be able to produce 1,000 ton of cathode per year at a cost of 21 million US. We think we generate about 8 to 10 million dollars US for the first year. The idea is not necessarily to make profit out of that, but it's to fine tune the design engineering and also to be a good demonstration plan. But in heap leaching, it's very important to start at small scale like this, because there's examples of companies that have jumped right away to large-scale mining.

35:28 If you have a... Just to try to make a portrait of that. I think I have a slide on this, let me check. Yeah, this one. If you look at the yellow part, it's a pile of rock. The rock is piled there in stacks and sometimes you can have that 20, 25 meter high, it's 100 meter long, 50 meter large, it's very huge and it's quite heavy. So what happened there is that if you have a blockage in the middle of that, then you're done. It's a problem you cannot resolve. It's very difficult. So the way it works is that you pile the rock there and you drip the acid with the bacteria on top and it will drip through the stockpile, the stacks, and then at the bottom it will go to a leaching pad and then will go to the solvent extraction where you will extract most of the copper and do the cathodes and the electrowinning. So it's a pretty simple operation, but it's very, very important to start at very small scale, mainly for the stack, because you don't want to have a blockage in there. If you have that, you're done. It's very difficult to resolve.

36:40 So how much adaptation time do you think you'll need to optimize the process? 1 year. Great. Another follow-up question from Michael. So where is the sulfuric acid coming from for this process? In our case, there's a good chance We will take it in South Africa, about 300 kilometers from where we are. There's 2 mines operated by Vedanta called Black Mountain and Hamsburg. They have an excess capacity of, they're producing excess capacity of sulfuric acid and we have been told by them that at the right time they will be happy to discuss with us and bring or sell us the sulfuric acid we need. Now, very important 2 things. It's possible in the future we will have acid producing plant on site. We're not sure yet. It depends on the results we will have at the feasibility study and after that with the pilot plant.

37:45 Because with the content of pyrite we have, it's possible we will not need to add a lot of acid time to time on the project. So when we will have done that, when we will have done all the calculations and the tests at the feasibility study stage, we will have a better idea of what will be the future in acid consumption and what we will need to buy from external sources. But for the start, it most probably will come from Vedanta. Great. Here's a question from Harry. Could a higher copper price lead to being able to evaluate a different process other than bioleaching? Yes, of course. If you want to do a classical way, a treatment way like grinding, milling, roast leaching, flotation, all that large kit, you would need probably a price of copper around $3.50 on the long term to use that.

38:46 The advantage of a project like this is that you would be able to do a larger operation most probably and but on the other side is the OPEX and the CAPEX would be way higher. So it's yes it would be possible but the optimal at the moment is bio-assisted leaching or, and I say or because it could be, we talk to a lot of people that have other technologies also that are using leaching, but which is being told, where we are being told that it's probably as or more efficient than bioleaching. So in the case of a project like HIEBE, it's most probably better to focus only on leaching technologies, Whether it's bioassisted or iodine or other type of stuff, it's the technologies that will keep the OPEX low and will offer a way better margin.

39:43 Great, thanks Pierre. I believe in the corporate presentation you mentioned molybdenum. Are there any significant values of gold and silver that can be used in a streaming deal to help pay some of the pre-production capex? Not really. The only byproduct we have is really molybdenum and a bit of cobalt. That could be economic. There's a little bit of gold and silver, but it's a trace. It's very minimal and at the moment we don't figure out that it could be economic. However, we want to at the drilling, we will test different categories of minerals to see where we can go with that. But in the past, the goal has been proven to be very limited.

40:33 Gotcha. So how long will your current cash last you? With the program we do now, we're good up to July. But we intend to be on the road again to start raising money early 2021 at some point, even during the exploration program. Great. Our next question is from Joel. On the marketing front, have you ever considered adding copper to the name of the company? And is there a marketing strategy plan in 2021 that will lead into the drill results? That's a nice question.

41:22 We have some discussion about the name of the company and we will have to take some decisions soon on that. We'll see if we have to add copper or not. But if something has to be done, it will come soon. I would say in the next 1 or 2 months maximum. The other thing is for the marketing strategy. As you can see that we have a pretty good volume on the market now. We have good liquidity. We have a lot better than it was up to last May. If you look at charts, looking at how we were trading before, and that's the result of marketing efforts. There's quite a lot of things that are being implemented that are being done now and that will continue in 2021. We have that agreement with 6, where we do quite a lot of webinars. We have Red Cloud Securities on board with us. We do quite a lot of marketing with them.

42:15 We have a company specialized on the social media also that do quite a lot of work on social media, mainly Twitter in their case. We also have some newsletter writers that have been approached. One has started to talk about us a little bit. We intend to be extremely active, still continue to be extremely active with our partners and consultants that work with us. You should see quite a lot of action around this. Great, looking forward to it. Our next question is from, you know, can you provide a rough roadmap to the feasibility study and buyout? And then a similar question from Roman, Do you plan to sell at some point to a major?

43:08 The roadmap is, as I said, it's for the next 2 years. So for the next 6 months, there is a drilling program ongoing, starting and hopefully ongoing with the financing in place. And during that period, we will start to do some methodological work again with bioassisted leaching and some HPG work that will last for a year. Coming from, let's say they will start about February, March, and will last for a year. And in June, we will start the design engineering that will take a year or 2, and at the same time, the environmental impact study, the solar power system assessments, and all of that will be in between June 2021 and June 2022.

43:58 And then after that, it's production of reports and delivery of these reports. Now, we would be very happy to sell the company at a high premium because we have done our job right. We would be very happy to sell the deposit at a high premium if we have done our job right, as long as it's good for our shareholder. That's what we're looking to. But at the moment, what we have to do is to do our job properly to bring the development of that project to its optimal phase and to be in place to be able to complete that feasibility study and complete that pilot plan testing. If we do that, then we have a very compelling project that will be financeable to large-scale mining and that will attract the financing that goes with it, that will attract the right people to build that project.

44:57 So we're the right people to bring it to the end of the feasibility study and even carry on with the pilot plan. During the course, we will add more expertise to go to the next steps and the idea is to build that project. But however, one thing which is very important is that anything that will be good for our shareholders will be considered at any time. I'm a large shareholder and my partners are large shareholders also, so I can tell you that if we have a good offer, we will certainly listen to it and we will be happy to make sure that everybody benefits from it. Thanks Pierre. I believe this is our last question.

45:45 Michael's asking, what do you see as the biggest challenge then to getting the project into production? Yeah, that's a good question. I would say that The most important challenge in what we have to do here, it's really oriented around the extraction technology. We have to fine tune that to make sure that this, that the extraction will be optimal, because that's really where we will be, where we have our margin is probably a little bit tighter. When I say tighter, it's that you cannot make too many mistakes at the metallurgical side.

46:32 It's where you have to be extremely precise. The mining in our case is an open pit mining, we just blast and drill and get the material, so it's an earth-moving operation. So yes, you have to be precise there, but it's not the same, there's not a need for very fine-tuning into that, which is the case for the extraction side of it. So that's probably the biggest challenge is there and that's why we will need, we have some very good specialists at the moment for that and we will add expertise going forward in that area. There's another challenge I can add. If the markets are good, financing is always a challenge, but when the markets are not good, it's even more difficult.

47:22 Now the markets are good, so let's hope that the price of copper remains good and then financing will be a lesser challenge. Of course. Well, thank you very much, Pierre. I do believe those are all the questions that we have today. Thank you again for taking us through the presentation and answering all of our questions in such detail. I also want to thank our audience. If you didn't get a chance to get your question answered, or if you just thought of 1 now or even afterwards, please stick around. We do have a short survey where you can have the opportunity to leave your details so that the Deep South resources team can follow up with you directly. You can also visit their website at www.deepsouthresources.com or reach out to Pierre directly at info at deepsouthresources.com.

48:12 Now, Pierre, I'm going to hand it back to you for the final word. Thank you very much for attending and stay tuned. We have a lot of very interesting and exciting news coming and we're confident we will we will have a very good year in 2021. Thanks, have a nice day. Thanks, until next time everyone. Bye bye. Bye-bye.