Rio2 is a diversified precious metals and copper producer focused on building and operating mines with a management team that has proven technical skills as well as a successful capital markets track record. The Company is currently producing gold at its Fenix Gold heap leach mine in Chile and copper/gold/silver at its recently acquired Condestable underground mine in Peru. Rio2 and its wholly owned subsidiaries, Fenix Gold Limitada and Compañia Minera Condestable S.A., are companies that operate with the highest environmental standards and responsibility with the firm conviction that it is possible to develop mining projects that respect the three pillars (Social, Environment, Economics) of responsible development. As related companies, we reaffirm our commitment to apply environmental standards beyond those mandated by regulators, seeking to protect and preserve the environment in the territories where we operate
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And from Andrew Cox, president and CEO of Rio 2. Thank you. OK, good, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you to the Mining Forum for giving us this opportunity to present, Rio2 and our projects. just as a brief introduction, Rio 2 is a Canadian list of juniors that's currently in a transition from developer to producer, so that comes via 22 opportunities. One being the conversion of Phoenix Gold from construction into operation that happened in January this year. And in January this year, we also acquired an underground copper mine producing asset in Peru, so. We're now a developer and you probably see that reflected in our share price graph. It's just a photo of Phoenix South we were actually mining today in the Phoenix gold project. Reader advisory that you should probably read. So our our companies, whilst we're listed in Canada, we're probably in a typical company because our head office is based in Lima, Peru. we have a small finance office in Vancouver. people, staff working from home, but our, our technical office, all our technical managers staff are based in Lima, and we're probably very Latin-based. Company in that respect and it's probably a strength for us to be operating in in South America. Myself and Alex Black both live in Lima 20 years now and we've sort of become Latinized to some degree. our operation, you know, our main operation Phoenix Gold in Chile located in the third region Atacama, and then recently the Condesabli M in Peru that's been acquired and is now part of our, our portfolio. next one, just a quick shot of the people in the company that we don't really expect you to want to know who they all are or what they all do, but, it's important just to say that, you know, except with the exception of the people that have come on board from Contestably, 90% of the rest of these people have come from what was the Rio One company, Rio Alto Mining, which operated in Peru from 2009 through 2015 before it was brought out by Taka Resources, so. There's a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge. We we built and operated two heap bleach projects in Peru in that period, and it's the same team, the same people that we've taken to Chile and have executed on the construction of the Phoenix Gold project. So we consider Phoenix Gold to be our, our cornerstone project. It's located in Atacama. City of Kaiapo approximately 160 kilometers by road, 2 hours drive Ashfelder Road, Tasse Road to the project. Our nearest neighbor that people might take as a reference point is Laoipa, Kinross's project. And as you can see in the Marakunga Belt, there's a whole lot of projects, A lot of gold endowment and projects that are Probably being looked at again with the gold price where it is, and these projects generally restricted for water. Water is a big issue in the area and for us that's one of our challenges to be able to expand our project to its full potential is to resolve the water issue. So just some some some facts about the project from the 2023 feasibility study that we did with the 201,650 reserve gold price. The projects had 17 years of mine life. This is the phase one operation with 20,000 tons per day process. We are limited at stage one by trucking water, so the projects was a fast track startup. How do we do that? We truck the water to the site. And we, we generate cash flow while we resolve the problem of how we build a pipeline, how we expand the project to its full potential. Now we have 5 million ounces of resources. And the 20,000 tons a day, obviously that's you know that's way too small a mining rate, but we need to earn cash flow, we need to be able to put a desal pipeline into the project and at 80,000 tons a day that then enables to produce 300,000 ounces a year for more than 10 years. So, so that's the biggest challenge we have right now, the biggest value unlock that we're we're driving for as a company. As I mentioned, we just finished construction, so we're we're producing gold since January. And we have a large land package unexplored which we're not really putting money into exploration outside of the project right now. This year we have earmarked $10 million for near-mine exploration, mostly at depth. The section for the geologically geologically inclined people here. This is a Basically it's an old diagram of a volcano, the sort of vertical structures you can see and the colors are volcanic breacher pipes, and the mineralization is generally associated with the breacher pipes and to a degree in stock work around in the host rock. So it's a big bulk low grade, Oxide gold project and and the thing that you're probably not seeing from here, but the altitude, you know, the highest point in that. cross section or long section rather at Phoenix North is close to 5000 m and Phoenix Central is 4900 and then Phoenix South is closer to 4800, so it is a high altitude mine, and that does have some challenges. You can see in the blue light blue line that's the reserve shell at 1600 from the 23 feasibility study and then the black line under that is the resource shell at 1800 gold. the exploration program that we're doing is orientated to depth in the section under Phoenix North we don't have much drilling information there and when we run the gold at $4000 or $5000 so the pit's not pulling down because we haven't got information down below that. So, so we're targeting deep drilling in this campaign to try and Include that in our resources. Shot of Phoenix South where we're mining today. This is, this is the peak of a hill when we started, so we've, you know, we've had some breaking issues there, getting started, getting flat area opened up. We're now not tripping over ourselves finally. We've, we've opened up space. We've got drilling happening. We can get great control in front of us and Slowly starting to, you know, put some water into the mining and and deliver the the tons like we planned to the leach pad. Some recent photos of the construction of the leech pad to the top left, that's ongoing. to the right is the process plant and then the BLS pond where we're storing water at the moment. Water being delivered by trucks, currently 1400 cubic meters per day. Photo of a gold pore and then in the bottom right hand is the the exploration drilling, the deep drilling that we're doing. contestably, the second project we bought, and a lot of people were saying why copper, why underground, and we're typically known as a, you know, open cast heat bleach run a mine, operator, that's what, that's what our three projects have been. But it was an opportunistic purchase. it was a project that was close to us in Peru, very easy to access from Lima. It generates good cash flow, steady production for the last 10 years, and it's currently producing at 8400 tons per day or roughly 27,000 tons of copper equivalent. And if you want to put that into gold terms, because I, I have to do it in my head, but it's 80,000 ounces, roughly equivalent of gold, so. That's the Contestabri project for us and it's a running mine. It doesn't need Capex pumped into it. It doesn't need much support. It's got a very good management team and we see there's a bolt-on cash flow generator to to Phoenix to help fund the expansion of the Phoenix project. Just some data, 60, 60 years of production, the copper equivalent 27,000 again, currently reserves 11 years. So we bought a project with 11 years of reserves in front of it. there is some big expansion potential near term to move from 8400 tons per day to 10 and then 12 through permitting that's basically largely completed. Very good mining costs $2.25 per pound for a medium-sized mine. I think that's pretty competitive and again a big land package of unexplored hectares that need to be. looked at, but we, we, it's time and budget, we need to do something. Some photos of Condesabli, you know, it's a rare mine in Peru. It's, it's on the coast. It looks out at the coast, low altitude, so very desirable place to work versus 4800 m, for example. coastal views, beach houses at the beach, a nice, nice place to work. Photo of the filtration plant. So we're currently, or Contestably is currently moving from wet wet tailings to dry stack tailings. That is largely advanced to be commissioned in the next month. the electric trucks, there is currently an ongoing trial with 6 electric trucks, BBYD trucks underground. It seems to be going well, reducing costs, reducing emissions, reducing ventilation, etc. etc. And photo of underground mining. So the corporate snake shop, You know, currently at today's price we're roughly worth $1.1 billion US as a company. Share price of $280. The cash balance is $993 million and we have associated with that $87 million of debt which is related to the Condeli purchase. The share price was going very well at the end of last year. It was climbing nicely. The the rerate from constructor to construction to operation. The acquisition of the Condesabli project, which was received very well by the market, pushed us up to $4. Then gold, gold came off. Trump invaded Iran and, and then, you know, the, the lots of turbulence, lots of, you see some of those, the amounts of shares transacted some of those days was massive, 1520 million shares being traded, so it had a big impact when we seemed to be recovering and climbing. It's also a list of some of our shareholders, the biggest shareholders insider holdings in the company are currently around 7%. So what are we doing? What are we looking for going forward with with Rio2, 2 assets, but both of them have organic growth potential, and this is what we're basically aiming for as a company. And we're ramping up Phoenix this year 2026. We expect to produce 60,000 to 70,000 ounces. And from 227 onwards we get to a flat rate of 20,000 tons per day to the leach pad and that allows us to produce 100,000 ounces for the next 4 or 5 years. we are pushing to release a PFS study on the expansion case at the end of this quarter. Currently waiting on two costing studies for a desal pipeline from Koppo to the project. And you know we need the data for Capex, for Opex, for A timeline and then that will allow us to publish a a technical document which will let the market see what the potential expansion of Phoenix looks like in the future. the, the, the drilling that I mentioned, long deep drilling, which will in turn lead to an updated MRE statement at the end of the year. and making a decision on the Pipeline and the water supply we then start engineering feasibility studies, permitting EIA process and we expect that to take us into like the end of 2028. So ideally we would be taking a construction decision on the expansion at the end of 2028. Rough numbers currently estimated to be 400 million on the pipeline and 150 capex on the project itself for internal expansion, so. That's ballpark figures, not, not from the studies, but from the preliminary information we're seeing. So from 2028 to the end of 20208, basically a two-year construction time frame for the pipeline and the project in parallel. And from let's say 2031 we would be ramping up again at Phoenix towards 80,000 tons per day and 300,000 ounces per year production profile. The case of Contestably, is currently ticking along at 8400 tons per day. the mineral reserve resource statement due this quarter, which will basically reflect that we've maintained 1011 years of reserve life in front of ourselves, so we've covered depletion in this period. And finally, the approval of the modification to the AAA. For the 8400, 400 tons per day process or project to 10,000 tons per day. So that will be granted in roughly June. We then have an environmental permit to expand the project to 10 and then on top of that 10 additionally we can ask for a 20% additional production capacity on a short form permit, administrative permit. So you know, looking forward we've got the ability now to take this project to 12,000 tons per day throughput. How do we do that? OK, we need, obviously. The plant to be upgraded, so we're currently looking at that. We have an engineering construction team from Phoenix who have finished in Phoenix. They come back to Peru and they're now getting involved with this project. We estimate a capex of around 50 50 million to upgrade the plant to 12,000 tons per day. And in parallel the filter plant that you saw, the dry stack tailings that that deals with the tailings aspect of the expansion we have. Something like 100 million tons of space permitted in the new modification for tailing, so that's resolved and the dry stack also resolved the water issue. So the extra water required to go to 12,000 tons a day comes from the dry stack filtration plant. We are also allocating $5 million to near M exploration. In contestalli and what we're looking for there is at the surface historically there were two open pits above the underground operations and we see. Potential there to prove up a resource at surface, you know, it could be millions of tons at a grade of 0.5. Roughly it's been left behind historically and today that's very interesting to us from an open mine perspective to the plant, you know, the mine is operating at about 0.75 copper currently 0.225 gold and silver, which equates to about 1% copper equivalent. And then with that information on the drilling and it may require more drilling, assess options to develop the open pit project in parallel and that may be part of the 12,000 ton lake expansion plan or it may be a separate. aspect of the project depending on the the resource that we, we, we discover. So that's basically kind of suddenly this is a a video to finish, it's probably a feel-good video, lots of human resource shots and people doing stuff. And a bit of color so you can sort of appreciate that what the projects look like. So, so the Phoenix video unfortunately was very construction-orientated and we need to talk to our communications people and upgrade that to more of a mining-orientated video, but that's what we've been doing for the last 15 months, so it's it's still stuck in, stuck in the videos a little bit. So that that's that's the presentation, that's what we're doing and where we're trying to go. Thank you. Any questions from the floor? Thank you. Congratulations Andrew on getting Phoenix up and running at altitude, that's no mean feat. but my question actually relates to your condable project with fuel security on everybody's mind. I note that you're trialing some electric trucks there. Are you able to share with us what the average run time is that you're getting out of those, or are they sort of proving to be, to be good, or what's the, what's your thoughts on that? Economically, yes, I don't have that technical data, sorry, on what the runtime are, but on an economical per ton basis, it's, it's significant saving. So I, yeah, Mariana, you don't have any. Better information on that? Yeah, it's enough for the shift. Any other question? stunned silence stunned silence. I had one also on Conveta table and that is, will you need to borrow in order to bring on those expansion things no we expect that to be self-funding the The condiab is a cash flow generator and these current copper prices and gold prices we, we don't expect to have any trouble and Phoenix has just gone cash flow positive in March so. That's we're producing in Phoenix and covering our costs now and as we ramp up that will improve so. We don't intend to do any more capital raises or or financing or borrowing money, no. And the production grade for the first few years at Phoenix. OK, so Phoenix is like I mentioned, a big bulk low grade oxide project. we're doing run of mine and we expect to achieve about a 75% recovery from all the test work that appears to be panning out in reality. The head grade of the average project of the start of project or the the phase 1 20,000 ton project is 0.5. We're currently feeding to the pad about 0.6, so we're high grading to a degree to improve the cash flow in the in the first year. So we'll try to maintain that for the first three years at about 0.6, 0.65 if we can, and then it will taper off back to the average grade of 0.5, 0.48 in year 34 onwards. Any other question? thank you very much. You're most welcome.
Recorded at Mining Forum Europe 2026, Park Hyatt Zürich, Zürich. Prepared for information only; it is not investment advice or a recommendation. Statements are those of the presenting company as at the date of the presentation. Market figures in US dollars, not as at the date of the forum.