Nativo Resources (LSE:NTVO) — Peru Operations Update

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to NTVO RESOURCES PLC crew operations update presentation. Throughout the recorded meeting, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll.

0:26 I'd now like to hand you over to Christian Yates, executive chair. Good morning, sir. Morning. Morning, everyone. Pleased to pleased to be eventually in a position to provide you with a further update. We wanna run through a a brief presentation first, but first, introduce Steven Beryl, our chief executive, who some of you have had interactions with. And also first time for for for everyone to meet George Pinedo, who joined the team in August as our operations director in Peru. George, do you wanna give a couple of seconds or a few seconds introduction on your background and yourself? Yes. Good morning to all of you. Thanks, Christian, for introduction. My name is Jorge Pinedo, but for a long time, people are calling me George. I was born in the northern part of Peru, and I lived in Peru until I was 18 years old, at which time, my parents sent me to study English in London, A levels in London, and then I went to, Periwod University to do a bachelor's degree and a master's in in in engineering.

1:32 I spent thirty years of, my career, thirty years plus, working all over the world with a, operational,

1:43 two operational stints in in Peru, where I was as I was the the field manager for the largest gas field in in Peru, Camiseo Gas Field. My throughout my career, I spent a lot of time on operations, a lot of time on operations improvement, operations readiness, and, you know, also including HSE. Married to a Canadian. Yeah. Here I am. Great. Thanks, George. We're we're very pleased to have him on the team and has made a real difference or an impact since he's been with us in August as we ramp up in Peru, getting back to mining and production later this year. Assuming let's flip over to the first slide, please.

2:32 So just just an overview, a reminder of of of what our strategy is at NATIVO. I mean, early cash flow is fundamental to to what we're trying to do through our primary mine artisanal level mining operations in Peru. And our initial concession is the Tesoro gold concession with two shafts at the moment, Bonanza or two mines, Bonanza and Morocota.

2:56 You'll recall Bonanza is where we commence mining operations at the back end of twenty twenty four. That's our main priority at the moment. Second object or strategy for what we're trying to do is developing our own gold processing plant so we don't have to ship out our own ore to a third party tolling plant where we pay away probably about 30 percent of what we could achieve. This is a very important development for us. And I think Steve and I normally sort of say this is almost a hedge to what we do. We can benefit from processing other miners or, actually, most of most of the throughput when we're up and running will come from third party miners or other mainly artisanal miners in our region. Third leg of our strategy is to secure clean to unknown tailings deposits containing gold and silver. These are largely old polymetallic deposits, and we'll cover that later in the presentation.

3:55 And further out, once we've developed cash flow and misquire other gold mines, I mean, the the the key parameters for us to make investments are low acquisition costs, low levels of investment required to establish production, work with local partners with resources and competence. That's very very important for a for a London headquartered company, and and that has the ability to scale. And we see that both on the Tesoro concession, and we'll talk more about that, some of the trenching and other work we've been undertaking, looking at other opportunities on our concession, but also with our gold ore processing plant at La Platona where we can scale this up to a much larger operation, which is very exciting from where we're at. So our near term objectives, what we're completely focused on at the moment is actually reestablishing mining at Bonanza Mine, and secondly, building out the gold ore processing plant at La Patona.

4:49 So, Steven, next page. I I think it's just worth reminding what Steven and I have achieved since, you know, middle of twenty twenty four. This has been quite a journey. We've been pretty busy. We we've established our operations or joint venture in in Peru in July 24 through a joint venture, rebranded our company away from oil and gas towards NATIVO RESOURCES, reflecting more what our focus is today and strategy. And except in October last year, we secured an option to acquire a part built global global gold ore processing plant, which is Lapatoda, which we're now building out.

5:35 Started mining operations at Bonanza in the end q four twenty four, and acquired our second gold mine, which is neighboring neighboring our existing concession at Morocoto. I think, importantly, we look at our debt position. We had us £1,000,000 spot loan, which we restructured earlier this year. That was due in November this year. It was very important for us to restructure that, and that we did achieved open first we we we optioned our first tailings opportunity, 1,800,000 tonnes at Tomolomano in March this year. Importantly, which is critical, which was a real roadblock for us to actually raise finance and develop the business further, was restructuring the 10,000,000 bond that we Eurobond that we had.

6:24 And that that has been transformational in terms of giving us a real opportunity to actually build operations and and start generating cash flow and moving into profit. So that that was a really important milestone for us. We we also I would say this summer, we we came out and we bought out our joint venture partner in Peru, which we think is very accretive to our shareholders. We have 100% control now of all our operations in Peru. Following on the back of that, we established a new operational team in August headed by George, and that's been been been a lot of work, but we have an excellent team now in place on the ground in Peru. The intention is to build as much of our operational head office resources in on the ground in Peru, where our operational focus is.

7:15 And then, I think that's just seeing what else. November this year obviously, October, November was the sort of main financing, that we put in place with Yorkville, and we'll come on to that and talk about that on the next slide because I know that that is something that has been commented on of has been a concern for some people. So, Steven, why don't I hand over to you who can just run us through this?

7:44 Thanks, Christian. So what we'll talk about here is is the funding part. So we raised this year over 3,000,000, but the important part of that was done in November where we secured 2,000,000 from Yorkville Advisors. And that, that particular funding was made up of £200,000 of equity, which was priced at market

8:11 and a 1.8 convertible where the conversion price is not available. It's a well, it's a fixed premium of 15% to the share price closing share price prior to completion. We have a two month holiday on the repayment so that, no repayment is due until January. The loan attracts a 5% coupon, and there's a ten month amortization of the loan for repayment from January onwards. Importantly, no repayment will be necessary where conversion takes place. Included within the agreement, there are limitations in volumes of trading to avoid price fluctuations.

8:58 No short positions can be taken during the term of the of the CLN. And one of the conditions for the CLN was that as a backup, we put in an at the market ATM facility,

9:13 and that's there to meet amortization payments, but only where no conversion takes place. So that means if the conversion price is not met and an amortization payment is due, we can use the ATM facility anytime to top up those funds.

9:33 And that that's really what the Yorkville funding is. So there's been a lot of questions as to whether it, and criticism as to it being a a death spiral rule. But if you look at the terms that I've just explained, there is nothing in there makes this, any form of death spiral. There's no variation pricing. There's no VWAP pricing.

9:56 And I I think, Steven, if I just add to this, I think, you know, that that could be a justified criticism if we didn't have a clear path to cash flow generation. I mean, I I I make the point we're not an exploration company. We do envisage, you know, cash generation starting in in the not too distant future. We've been very clear about that, and I think that that that that is an important factor that differentiates us. The other question that's sorry. The other question that's come through on this is that, well, why did we go with? Well, actually, we had we were quite lucky. Steve and I were presented with a number of options during September, October in terms of financing packages.

10:34 And this was was head and shoulders the most attractive option that was presented to us, the equity element as well, but effectively, it's a 5% unsecured loan. And the the terms and the sixty day and all all the things Steven has described, we felt this was a very attractive option for us. Some people have said to us, why didn't you take more equity? We're quite conscious of dilution. We see there's upside for the company, and therefore, you know, having a balance between equity and, debt was was important over over overtaking too much equity at this moment in time. Steven, over to you.

11:13 Well, absolutely. And and importantly, on that funding, this funding is being directed to building, revenue generating capacity in Peru. So we'll move on to the to the rest of the slides. If you want I I think, you know, Peru, it's only natural. George speaks about this, but I think, you know, the reason we're in Peru, it's pretty obvious on this. We we see abundance of op abundance of opportunities in Peru, And and it it it's a great environment for us to work in. George, do you wanna add anything to that?

11:49 I think many people underestimate the mining part of Peru. The the and the southern part of Peru is very strong, in terms of mining, all the way down to to to to, like, border with Chile. And and for the ones that know about South American mining, which is a validation of Peru as well, is the Chilean mining is extremely strong. But it is actually the northern part of Chile, the one connected to Peru. That's actually the where there's a lot of mining activity. So mining is is is very, very, very, very big in Peru.

12:40 And I think the example that we're showing here of the different international companies that have been in Peru for a long, long time. Thank you, Christian. Gold market, think look. We we all know why we're interested in gold. It's a good place to be. I think the next these next two slides are are just reinforcing the message as what's happened, and we we we remain optimistic about the outlook and prospects for gold. Flip on to the next slide. Good. Right. So we'll we'll spend a bit couple of slides here focusing on our Tesoro gold concession. I'll hand over to to Steven at this point for the next couple of slides.

13:26 So I've got a couple of slides on Tesoro. Starting out, it's located in the Nazca Acuna Gold Belt, which is a proven gold belt with production over the past twenty years. These are typically high grade, mesothermal

13:42 vein projects, so the gold is is found in calcite and quartz veins that come up through granodiorates. They're narrow steep quartz calcite veins, as I said. What we're doing is targeting ore shoots, which which nominally have a 12 to 20 grams per tonne grade. Now within Tesoro, the geological and survey work that's been done to date shows that these ore shoots will persist down to 300 to 600 meters

14:18 and can be several kilometers long. We've already successfully mined Bonanza in 2024, and we achieved grades of up to 63 grams a tonne. And on average, we were producing at 15 grams a tonne, which is which is quite high.

14:40 The there's been a lot of questions as to what data do we have and what who's who's been here before. The the greater concession, which is larger than the segment that we have, that we have concessioned, was previously explored and mined by a company called Saint Elias, and that was between two thousand and four and twenty fourteen. Saint Elias was a TSX listed Canadian gold exploration company.

15:13 We inherited full suites of geological mapping, trenching, geophysical surveys, drilling, sampling, and underground work. From that data, we we found that Saint Elias actually extracted through two mines, over a thousand tonnes at an average grade of 32 grams a tonne, and that was from three veins. So that was very rich.

15:41 We are mining at a scale of what would be termed as artisanal to small mining, and we're focusing on these small veins which exist within the Tesoro concession. Our internal estimates done by our QP at the outset of these projects and confirmed through a study we did, earlier this year indicate that there are about 213,000 ounces of gold to be found across Tesoro. And if you focus on Bonanza and morocotta alone, that looks like about 51,000 ounces of gold to be found, to be mined. Back in December, I've already mentioned, we shipped about 60 tons of mineral ore from our two from our Bonanza mine, and that came in at 15 grams a ton on average.

16:39 And the recovery rates, we told that mineral, and we got recovery rates of 90% from that. So the current field work is to is to restart mining at Bonanza in December of this year.

16:55 What I'm showing here is an overlay of our own concession, which you can see in white. That's the white lines. It's about 2,000 hectares.

17:13 And then we've overlaid the results of all of the work done by Saint Elias. And although they undertook geophysics trenching, sampling, drilling and and mining, their mining was focused in this Zona Concetti on two two veins up there, c one and a four.

17:35 And what you can see is that, in within our white concession, we've got high grade values on the northwest, southeast trending zone of sewer and zone of central. We've got Morocota down in the Southwest where to where didn't actually map anything,

18:00 And we've got Zona Estee. Zona Estee is where Bonanza is, and Zona Sur and Zona Central are this very high grade Northwest Southeast vein that we are looking to further develop mine works next year.

18:23 On the next slide, what I'm showing here is we we've undertaken geological surface work and underground work across the concession, and we've highlighted outside of Morocoto, which is number four, and Bonanza, which is in the the North the Northeast, we've got about four to five other areas where we've identified ore shoots within our concession that we could move on to mine.

19:04 Let's, let's look at Bonanza field activities. I think it's only fair to bring George in at this point because George has been directing those. So, George, over to you. Okay. Thank you. So we're currently carrying out activities at Bonanza. The first is basically drilling not drilling. Sorry. Trenching

19:30 across the vein at surface, trying to understand the sampling from there and taking samples and sending them to a lab, which we are hoping to get resolved very soon. We're creating geological sections, longitudinal profiles, and and creating a modeling work so we can use that for what we call our mine plan. Mine access rehabilitation, is advancing. We we need to be obviously be very careful with, with the the depths of of these, mine accesses. So we're establishing them. We're we're facilitating them, but the the safety is is paramount.

20:18 The camp the the operations camp, we are upgrading it to a facility between 20 to 40 personnel so that we do we we they have the the adequate facilities, not just sanitary facilities, but also food. Not different to other places in the world I have worked. Having having good food in remote locations makes a big difference to a very productive workforce, and that's what we intend to do.

20:55 The prospecting mining contractor, I've narrowed down to two contractors, which I'm basically interviewing progressively as we speak. And finally, the field activities are on the ground. We'll advance in parallel to complete the vine the vein study. So we're not waiting for the results,

21:20 and the modeling work work because we we know that this will be an ongoing end process. So we are starting the mining operations as soon as possible. And as the geological model gets developed and updated, we'll basically be mining in in the as per the mine plan. Thank you, Steve. So just just wanna add add a bit more to to that just to just to answer some of the questions that came through. We've we've had since September, we've had about four to 12 people up up at the camp and carrying out this work. We have full time security there armed security, I should say, on-site. The mine camp was actually established at the back end of twenty twenty four. So what we've done is is, rehabilitate that and actually expand that camp, and as George, alluded to, improve the sanitation as well.

22:14 So we expect as soon as we start mining, in the next few weeks,

22:20 we will have between twenty and thirty people on-site full time, but we're building the camp out to accommodate up to 40 people as we expand operations on the concession into net into 2026. The camp will also service, mining activity at the Mora Mine as well, which is a a sort of couple of kilometers away, so not that far in distance.

22:42 So good. So that's a bit of background. I think that that that will probably hopefully reassure many many of you as to what's been going on at Tesoro and what we have. We're very excited about the opportunities there and the potential to really scale up, in in due course. Turning now to the gold ore processing plant, La Petona plant. Steven, do you wanna sort of take us through these couple of slides, please? Yes.

23:07 Thanks, Christian. So as already mentioned, the ability to process our own ore allows us to capture about 30 of the margin, and it also allows us to process a wider range of grades, so between, less than five grams a tonne and upwards.

23:29 Gold ore processing across Peru is a is a very supportive business to Peru's artisanal sector. You've got a lot of players, Dynacor, Moyo Huaca, Vista Gold servicing that sector. So we've secured permits and land for this part built plant at at La Patona. It's about 45 kilometers from Tesoro. Then we're undertaking procurement and supplier selection.

23:58 And the next slides will sort of give you more information as to just what that plant will be capable of.

24:07 The output from the plant is planned to be dore bars. So some plants output concentrate, gold gold filled concentrate, typically activated carbon. We're designing this plant to take in primary ore and to output dore bars. Dore bars are a mixture of about 50 to 85% gold, and the rest is either copper, silver, and and other metals. The phase one of our plant has been designed and is capable of outputting between 1.48 kilograms and 1.67 kilograms of gold in dore bars per day. This is, some pictures from the plant. As I've mentioned, the plant itself is actually part built so we can see the concrete works ready there.

25:02 And we've completed designs with a number of equipment suppliers. We've selected and priced and agreed delivery times with them. So the works that we're undertaking include redrilling of a water borehole and installing a pump, installing electrical works with a 1.8 kilometer 500 kilowatt cable. We're oversizing the input. The the very first circuit is the crushing unit. This is oversized for our operations, and it'll be three fifty tons a day, which means we can scale up. That's followed by a 150 ton per day milling and flotation circuit and a 70 ton a day luxation circuit. And these work in serial, we go from the crushing plant.

25:48 We then split high grade and low grade ore. Low grade ore goes to the flotation circuit. Out of the flotation circuit will come the concentrate. The concentrate and the hydro door are then put into the final luxervation circuit, and then the output from that will be running through the smelting circuit. We'll also have a chemical and metallurgy laboratory on-site. That's important because,

26:19 only a small proportion of our ore will be will be processed at the plant, and we plan to fill the rest of the capacity with third party artisanal ore. And the chemical metallurgy lab are important to to operate that.

26:38 We are preparing technical updates at the moment for the environmental management instrument. That's the. We're operating this plant under the re infosystem, which means its maximum capacity is about three fifty tons a day. We're expecting the plant to become operational, commence, or processing in the second quarter of next year.

27:01 So just could I just stop you there, Steven? I think there's an important point. You mentioned the re info system. There's been some important news come out of the parliament in Peru this week, actually. And, George, do you just wanna mention that about the re info system, which is the the permitting system under which all artisanal miners work in Peru?

27:20 Yeah. So to understand the rainfall, we need to go back to in a country where a large amount of family run, not sophisticated mining operations were ongoing, the Peruvian government started a process of trying to formalize and basically disallowed for

27:44 amounts of mining or mining operations below the sort of junior mining level to to start and get formalized. Based in a country like Peru, obviously, some people have taken good advantage of of of this process. Others may not. So there's been talk about extending it or canceling very recently, the last twenty four hours, as expected, because of the large amount of, minors under rainfall. The rainfall is to be extended by 2027, which basically, well, give us a robust legal framework

28:39 for our operations in both the mining and the processing plant. If I if I can just add to that. So what what you've got is over 20% of Peru's output is done through artisanal and small mining. It's 20% of their gold, copper, and silver, and that's a huge amount that's going into the world economy. And the Peruvian government, one of our choices for going to Peru was that there is in fact a formalized legal structure, which for small miners and artisanals is this re info system. And Peru has been working hard to to remove illegals from the system and bring people into a formalized legal process.

29:28 And the reinfo itself is governed regionally as opposed to at a federal level, which is where large miners and mature miners are are regulated. So I'll move on with the plant, if I may. And what you've got is a is a is a satellite image of our plant taken relatively least recently. And if you look at it, we've got, entry to the plant. We've some buildings there

29:57 already, with groundworks already undertaken. In the red outline, you can see the crushing circuit. So trucks will come in the plant. They'll be weighed. They'll be taken up to the crusher. The ore will be, input to the crusher. And, this is all done on a gravity basis. So you you can't see it in this particular image, but elevation wise, where the red circle is is higher than the green circle and is higher than the purple circle. And in fact, going from left to right, you'll see in the right we've got a small stream and river running down there, and the elevation goes from high to low going from left to right. The green circle is the milling and flotation circuit where we have concrete poured already,

30:46 and the purple outlines the tailings pond. So that's a dug hole ready to be fitted with a membrane bringing it up to up to environmental standards for modern mining in Peru. What we have here is the La Patona process flow. This is very much a cartoon image to show you, you know, what's what's gonna happen. We've, we're sourcing a 350 ton a day crushing and dry milling circuit. At that point, there will be a sampling and assay done by our chemical and metallurgy lab, and then there'll be custody transfer. That means we take ownership of the ore at that point.

31:34 We then blend the low qual the the low grade ore which will go into the flotation circuit, which is a 150 ton a day. It's got about an 85 to 92% gold recovery performance. And the high grade will then go into a separate blending area, and it will be blended to feed the cyanization cyanidation plant. The output from flotation is a a concentrate which will be of very high grade. The concentrate plus the high grade ore will go into the cyanidation loop loop. Output from cyanidation goes to Rilavi, which is actually the tailings deposit.

32:22 We then have a desorption unit running at one ton a day, and the output from the desorption unit will feed into our smelting unit. The smelting unit has a capacity of eight kilograms per day. That eight kilograms includes gold and associated metals that will come out of the cyanide acid unit. Phase one is going to have a gold production capacity of between one point four eight and one point six seven kilograms per day and on a phase two expansion where we can expand to and expect to expand to once we've established a stabilized cash flow, that can build the plant up to three kilograms of gold per day.

33:12 Moving on to tailings. Do want to take talk about that, Christian? Yeah. I think think just, as as third leg of our strategy, as we've always said, is is to secure tailings deposits, polybotallic tailings deposits that contain gold and silver. As previously announced, we've identified seven tailings dumps across Peru. We're always looking for further opportunities. That's an ongoing process. We have an agent on the ground, geologist in Peru, sending ideas to us all the time. The first significant tailings deposit that we secured, Tomolomano, is 1,800,000 tonnes. That was secured in March this year. So we're looking to develop that and take that further.

33:58 We've gotta do more feasibility, more analysis of the deposits, and that is projected for 2026. There's some work that we will undertake there as well as securing further tailored deposits tailings deposits. I don't wanna spend too much time on that. If we go to the next slide, Steven just sort of probably highlights some of some of the things. When when we secure tailings deposits, we'll also have to establish new tailings processing plant as well depending on what what what what what the deposits are made of. But that is all part of the process, and this is just the final slide again just showing some of the processes to extract gold or I think the important bit about this, schematic is that for tailings, you don't have to undertake primary mining. You have no geological risk, and that's very important for us. This is typically how a large plant will run.

34:58 And, but the key thing here is we're not having to undertake primary mining, and there's no geological risk. And these deposits we have are are are dry deposits, I should add as well. So, Steven, I think you're back. We lost you, but you froze a bit. There we go. Okay. If if at this point, so we've we've gone through the Yeah. Just by way of starting really. Steven? Hi, Christian. I think hi. I think we just lost you momentarily there. Can you hear us okay now?

35:48 Can you hear us, Steven? Yeah. I can hear you. Yeah. We can hear you, Christian. Please go ahead. I think Chris Christian's frozen. I'll take I'll I'll take this. So we've we've gone through the team. We've gone through Critical path. Christian, just for the moment time being, I think your connection has just faded slightly. So, we will just, carry on with Steven, if that's okay. Steven, please go ahead. So we've we've run through the the the business plan. We've run through our our three core core revenue generating businesses, which are to be primary gold mining, gold ore processing, and tailings. In terms of timing, it's it's primary gold mining, and we're looking at bringing bonanza back into production, and that's part of our critical path.

36:39 That will be followed immediately by building with commission La Patona, which is the gold ore processing plant, processing our own and third party gold ore. And then the third part is progressing Tomo Lemano tailings deposit, bringing it towards FID. We'll do that by completing the feasibility study and designing a plant and seek funding for that. Beyond that, we're looking at developing additional mine sites at Tesoro, and the study we undertook last month has shown us those additional opportunities, and we continue to acquire further further tailings deposits as part of our bank of tailings, which we can go through and and process.

37:35 Good. I think I think that's that's it. Can you hear me right now? Yeah? Absolutely, sir. So let's let's move on to, some of the questions that have been submitted here. First one, address one of the questions came who previously started the La Patona Building building out the La Patona plant in process. Steven, do you wanna do you wanna answer that? Because we're actually working with our partner at that plant. A chap called Lennon. Lennon has a company called Saransky, and he had this plant part built.

38:21 Originally, he had purposed it as a copper processing plant. And when we found out about it, we approached him and and we asked him if if he would be willing to work with us, if we could reprocess repurpose it as a gold ore processing plant. And, we came to an agreement whereby we've got an option, and we've executed a joint venture agreement with Saransky, and that is that is where we're building that is where we're building and and further developing that plan. Okay. Question about Saint Elias.

39:08 Yeah. Have they stopped mining? I think the answer is yes. Yeah. So Saint Saint Elias had the had the concession between 2004 and 2014. They were an exploration company, and so they did the exploration work. They took over the concession as gold prices rose, and then gold prices crashed. And if you look at a twenty year curve on gold prices, you'll see exactly their owner when they owned the plant. And, unfortunately, gold prices were were down about, I think, $404,100 dollars an ounce when they needed to raise more money to actually produce from from Tesoro. So so they they went out of business.

40:05 Okay. Thank you. Further questions. How does NATIVO plan to integrate third party ore processing into operations? Steve, we've we've got an agent. Do you wanna talk about that? I securing third party yore. I think that's that's how we will go about that. Well, that's right. So so at at the moment, with gold prices high, artisanal mining is is absolutely booming. And the capacity to process that ore, it's it's not in short supply, but there's so much ore to be processed. And around us, we've got a lot of artisanos.

40:53 So we we do expect that we will be building relationship with all of the artisanos and the communities. And, you know, through that relationship and through our ability to process both low grade and high grade ore, we'll we'll be able to fill that our our own plant capacity. So La Patona is going to be our ore from Bonanza, Morocorta, and other mines on the Tesoro concession, and it'll be a third party artisano ore coming in from the mines that have sprung up and and have existed for some time around the area. Couple more, just a couple more questions. Another question on on La Patona.

41:41 Are all the suppliers confirmed and on schedule for phase one? And that's in terms of securing all the plant that we require. I think the answer for that is yes. George, you wanna talk about that? Yeah. Despite the the high oil sorry. High gold price to which has caused, as Steven said, a lot of service companies to be very busy providing services to the mining companies. Peru, especially in the area where we work, has a large very large group of suppliers.

42:26 So we've been able to secure and preorder already some of the the large equipment, especially the one that have long lead times. And, yes, the the everything is in in in order to to start at the at the q two or no later than q two this I mean, I think the lead times are sort of up to six weeks for most of these items. We've managed to secure them. What we were waiting on was the funding and financing, which we put in place with the Yorkville facility in end of October. That means we're we're sort of full steam ahead now. Our project manager has actually just arrived at this at the plant this morning to to work with Lenin, as Steven described, the the owner of the cons of the plant there to to to do further studies and have discussions, site meetings today, which is good. So we're we're excited about that. We expect to commission the plant in March and start production in April. That's that's sort of q two. That's the sort of timeline we're working on. You've got to understand that's that's the the target we're aiming for, but these things sometimes matters out of our control might slip a bit, but we think that's a realistic timeline for what we're doing at the plant.

43:47 Question about the assay results from the trenches. The trenches are being dug. When do we expect those? I think, George, we're looking at about ten days from that. Correct? Yes. Yep. Good. Thank you. Just looking at some of the other questions here. Talking there's some question about confidence about Steve Steven's wife and my wife buying shares in the market. We we we've all we've all invested in in Steve and I both invested, as some of you remember, that I I made my first investments back in August 24 and September 24. So I made investments. You know? Obviously, I have confidence that in due course, I will recover and make some money of those. And I was happy both Steve and we were happy to make further investments in October, and and and so were our wives. I think in due course, you can expect Steve and I to make further acquisitions of stock at the moment in due course.

44:49 Yeah. What should be noted there is that, oftentimes, as directors and PDMRs, we are in a closed period. During that time, we we can't make any sales or perch sales, or purchases of shares. And through the majority of the past twelve months, Christian and I have been in a closed period because we've been building the business and in in receipt of information, which hadn't been made public. So We're we're we we have high conviction. We we not only do we commit most of our time to this, all of our time to this, but we also put our money to this. But so we we we are happy to be invested. Some questions about cash flow.

45:36 Steven, do we wanna talk about that? Just briefly when we expect We've we've not really made any of that of gold, actually. Or or Yeah. We've we've we've not really made any of that public, but what I can see at the moment is that, you know, we expect, we're expecting production for Bonanza in first quarter of next year. We've been a bit more explicit about that. Revenue then at the same time, we expect Patona come onstream second quarter of next year. And the company, based on current projections, company should be cash positive third quarter of next year. Some questions around output from Bonanza.

46:22 I think we sort of covered that under the sort of artisanal mine mining production statement earlier, but worth reiterating. Well, I can I can give some more detail on that, really, from an artisanal perspective? Artisanal mining is is typically done manually. Some of it is mildly automated. And, generally, what you're gonna find is an artisanal operation will will be capable of producing between three and five tons of mineral per day. And those are the kind of numbers that we're targeting. Questions about the margin at the processing third party gold ore. I think we can point to industry figures here, Steven.

47:09 Yeah. Industry figures typically show that you can make a margin of about 15% on third party processing. So third party that 15% is based on you buying in your mineral. That buying is typically done at a 30% discount to spot, and then it's your own cost at the at the processing plant. And this is based on on figures publicly released by Dynacor. It's about 15%, giving them a 15% profit margin. So we're we're targeting an industry standard profit margin for that plant. And that sort of flows into the next questions come in cost per tonne of mining, the sort of range we're looking to operate in?

47:58 We cost per ton for mining, we are looking to hit the global average, which is about 11 to $1,500 per per ounce of gold. So your AISC, that's all in all in sustainable cost, which is really based on OpEx, you know, about 11 to $1,400 per ounce. There've been some questions based on the global stuff. Yeah. Thank you. There've been quite a few questions about the weather and the road access to the mine. George, do you wanna give an update on that and and talk about our obviously, we we can't control the weather and wish we could. Many things under control, but that's not one thing. But do you wanna talk about what what was experienced earlier this year and, you know, give more background on the on the climate at this time of year going into January, February?

48:59 Yeah. The January, February months in Peru, especially in the coastal areas of Peru where our mine is regardless of the, location, it's not unknown. It's unfortunately very common. What's happening in summer the summer months, January, February in Peru, is there's a lot of more precipitation, and, obviously, some of the, which we have, some of the snowy peaks start to melt a little bit. So you have this flow of water that comes and causes, together with the rain, a habilitation of some areas.

49:50 This is something specifically to where we are. It's something that is very well known, and, there is a community, or the the community itself that most of them or some of them are miners themselves, you know, have a lot of equipment and machinery ready to go, to reopen some of those areas, if it gets blocked. So judging from what happened this year, every year, the Peru is ever more and more redier ready to tackle this. So so yes. So Our road our road to to to the Tesoro concession is actually Community Row Road, so it serves a number of artisanal miners in our immediate area.

50:46 It's it's not for the faint heartache, should I say. The road's steep. No. And and George would be up and down it several times. But but it but it's good access, and that's where they you know, the trucks to collect the ore, the 25 to 35 ton trucks come up and down that road. You don't wanna be meeting one, if possible, if you're coming up or going to that's the that's the reality, but there are passing points. But so all all local artisanal miners all contribute to the maintenance of that road, and there's regular maintenance on it to cope with the traffic. Steve, do you want me? I think it's important to see that there is a there is an alternative route. So the the the skiery route we just talked about, which does have 30 ton tonne trucks coming up and down it, it's about an hour and a half away from Akari and about an hour and fifteen minutes away from our plant.

51:43 That's the short route. Should and when that route becomes impassable, and that's, you know, subject to the actual state of the road and the level of the river, the the river typically floods way before the road becomes impassable. But last, this year, earlier this year, we had both things with the flooded river and an impassable road. The alternative route, which goes west and south out of the plateau, it takes about four hours. So it's it's not that we don't have a route out. Now both those roads were severely impacted earlier this year, but that was unusual. Thank you. Just one other question. I think we're sort of probably probably the last question. We're drawing to a close. I think we've we've covered most of the, of the questions. The one just come in.

52:38 Has the road been open again? Yes. Yes. It's open. Steve and I were up and down in September when we were last in Peru, and, George has been last week or the week before. Ten days ago, he was up and down there, so it's it's fully operational. Just just one question about financing and funding for the tailings project. So I think it's important to mention how we go about securing those projects. We're not buying them up front. Steven, do just wanna sort of give a little color about our strategy or how we Yeah. So tailings themselves are classified as, as environmental hazards across across Peru. So we're not interested in buying environmental hazards.

53:23 We we are interested in optioning these deposits from the current owners. And by optioning it, we can have the right to recover the gold and silver. We'll pay for the investment. We have the right to recover the gold and the silver, and then we redeposit from our processing plant. We redeposit new tailings which are in full compliance with with modern, tailings and environmental legislation across Peru. But the real important part of this is we're still in the definition stage. We're acquiring a book of tailings deposits through these option agreements. And as we acquire them, we then define them. We define the size. We define the metallurgical content. We we define the recovery that we can expect to get and what processes we need to use, and we also define the the cost and the scale at which we have to to build a processing plant.

54:23 So if the quest at this point, we're in definition stage. So I I think the important thing is that every owner of returnings deposits, they all want cash today. That's not our business. No. We we don't buy them. No. We don't we don't pay upfront. I think I think we've we've probably pretty much done now. We've we've covered, I think, the the questions that were put in. I think I hope you found the presentation useful to give further background and a further understanding of what we've been up to. We we just remains to be same say we are we're really positive about this company. We're we're excited about the opportunities we've created here, and look forward to developing it further and in due course, building a substantial mining business across Peru, adding further concessions as and when. But the priority today is reestablishing mining at Tesoro, Bonanza Mine initially, then following on with Mount Morocoto quickly behind that, And other opportunities that we've identified, we numbered one to five or six, I think it was on the on the plan that Steven showed in the presentation in the deck, and at the same time, in parallel, build out the processing plant to start production or processing or third party ore in second quarter twenty twenty six.

55:38 So on that note, I think we're we're pretty much done for now. We always remain some of you, I know, reached out to me. You know, I'm very happy to speak with shareholders directly and investors, so that that offer always remains. We we are an open book, but please also understand we are restricted about how much information we can we can give at any one time. So we we do our best to be open and and share. Steven, anything else you wanna say, George? No. That well, no. That's it. I think we've covered our strategy. We've covered our critical path. We've overcome as we highlighted at the very beginning of this presentation, we highlighted the milestones that we've achieved this year.

56:27 Every one of them came with a huge amount of effort, input from myself, Christian, and George, and and most of them took longer than we expected. And that that's just that's just typical when when the rubber hits the road. You know, you can have a business plan, but execution is is is vital, and we are executing. Unfortunately, sometimes it just takes a bit longer than we'd hoped. Good. On on that note, we we Steven and I will be back in in in Peru with George in early January, back up at the mine, but also at the plant as well and dealing with other issues in Lima. But we have pretty intense visits when we're there.

57:13 Thank you. Fantastic. Christian, Sue and George, thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session? It should be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, and all the team can better understand your views and expectations. It's going take a few moments to complete, and it's greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the team of NATIVO RESOURCES PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session, and good afternoon to you all.