Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria (VISC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. The time is half-past 2:00, and I will wish everybody warmly welcome to this press conference for Copperstone Resources. And the reason for the press conference is, well, very positive news from the water purification project at Viscaria Copper mine in Kiruna, which we, at Copperstone, hope to retrieve an environmental permit and the possibility to restart the mining at Viscaria. I will start off by presenting our panel today and it is from Copperstone, Environment -- Sustainability Manager, Anders Lundkvist; Environmental Manager, Peter Wihlborg; and CEO, Anna Tyni. And we have also a participant from the water expert, Nuutti Lehtikuja, from Teolli Vesi Oy -- was that almost correct, give a thumbs up or if it's okay. Thank you. Thank you. Well, okay. And we will definitely return to -- well, I would say the main speakers today is Anders Lundkvist and Peter Wihlborg. And Anna Tyni, the CEO is participating for, well, questions that may arise. And of course, if you feel like it on a raise your hand and be proactive. Well, okay. And then we will start this now by showing a short new movie in about 2, 3 minutes that we have recorded for this event. And it is at this stage a preview. It -- so unfortunately, at this point, it does not have English subtitles -- it will have on Friday when it is released in broad publication. But now in this preview, unfortunately, it has not English subtitles. But we will play it anyway. It's a couple of minutes of our time. [Presentation]

Okay. Thank you for viewing this short video. And as I mentioned, unfortunately, there is no English subtitles at this point. But anyhow, I think we're going to get some sort of repetition of the content as I leave the word within short to Anders Lundkvist, the Sustainability Manager.

And I would say I would like to introduce you, Anders, by asking you is what does this mean, this installation and the positive test results? What does it mean for Copperstone and for the direct environment? If you unmute and get thought.

Okay. Thank you. I'm so happy that we can show now very good results from our pilot tests. As you know, as I mentioned in the film, this is very important for us when we're working with the permit application and it will be handled by the Environment Court and authorities as well, that we actually can prove that we managed to get down to really low values in the future, discharge water coming out from mine drainage and coming out from mining operations in the concentrating plant and so on. We will actually achieve very future values that are good enough to be sent out into the small rivers that are close to our mine site in the future. We are also very happy to be in cooperation with this Finnish company who helped us a lot. Teollisuuden Vesi Oy from -- close to [indiscernible]. And we have also Nuutti -- Nuutti, I say your surname, with us. And he can also answer more questions about the technology. It means that we can show that we can manage critical values and that we learn to operate the system in a good future before we actually start operation in big scale. This is a smaller scale unit that we will build in the future, of course.

Well, okay. Thank you, Anders. I will definitely leave the room open for a journalist or interested to state questions at any point. Please use either the raise hand function or the chat function is also -- if I didn't mention it before, please feel free to write questions in the chat and I will try to moderate it at the right time and to the right person, if you don't know who is the best one to answer it. But otherwise, I would say, is anyone curious, I heard a voice. Okay. Otherwise, I will continue to move along to Peter Wihlborg, Environmental Manager at Copperstone. For us, seeing those numbers, a purification of around 97% to 99%, what would those numbers mean to us not being expert in water purification?

This is extremely important to lower the concentrations when you're discharging water into an environment and the environment around Kiruna is quite pristine. So we're very happy to reach concentrations that are 99% lower or 99.5% lower for copper, nickel and zinc, which are heavy metals that are in high concentrations, they're quite assiduous for the environment. And on uranium, we're reaching 97% to 98% reduction, which is basically unheard of. And normally, some of these elements are not treated, even their discharges into the environment at other mining sites. So we're very happy to do that. And the reason why we have to do that is because we have a very small recipient. [indiscernible], who is our main recipient, is quite a small and pristine river or a stream actually. And in order to actually discharge anything into that stream, we need to have very low values. So the quality standards for those will actually be held already in the water that we're discharging which is quite unique for copper, nickel and zinc. And according to our calculations, we will also most likely be within the quality standards for uranium in recipient. So that is quite extraordinary.

Thank you, Peter. If I continue a little bit with you, Peter, is there any more to say about the -- Anders mentioned quite shortly about the scale of the project. You say that this is a relevant test to what would come with the future mine processing.

Normally, when we do these things for an environmental impairment, you might have small-scale lab tests on a limited amount of water and limited ways of actually treating it. Here, we are running a -- it's not a full-scale test, but it's a very big test. We can run up to 100 cubic meters an hour, which is roughly 1/6 of what we will have to treat during operation and we can easily scale up to that level. So this is not just a tiny test. This is a real test. We're not showing something theoretically here, we've shown that this is actually possible in real life.

I would also like from a technical point of view, just to give you the chance, Nuutti, being an expert on water treatment, would you like to fill in something about the technology and the facts that Peter is giving us?

Good afternoon on my behalf as well. Well, to put it in a nutshell, what we are doing here, this is a precision application for this particular type of water. So the traditional solutions used widely within the mining industry are more above sort of a blunt tool type of an approach. And this is a specific process for this specific kind of water and the results are, as said, quite promising. So we are doing exactly what needs to be done for this water for the contaminants that are in there. So in that sense, this is quite new and groundbreaking and we feel as well that the results are quite promising. And this only proves what we have already seen in the lab. So it's really exciting to see how it works in this scale.

Thank you, Nuutti. I have also picked up a couple of questions now in the chat, and I will start with the first one in chronological order. It's is this pilot test crucial for the environmental permit application process? Would perhaps Anders be the right person to answer this?

I didn't get the question. Can you repeat it, please?

Yes. The question was, is the pilot test crucial for the environmental permit application process?

Yes, it is because there is -- of course, there will be demands on the water from the authorities and from the Environment Court. And when we can show now that we are actually can do it in real life, it's, of course -- I think it will help us, of course. And it's, of course, in our strategy as well to really show that we can already from start, when we get the permit can reach low -- very low values. And that's, I think, could improve the time for the permit as well.

Thank you, Anders. We have another question here from -- I believe it is of some sort of technical character. Will you recycle any other products in this water cleaning process? And I take it as if there is any chance to well, retrieve metals or other valuables from that processing.

I might be able to answer that. Obviously, as soon as you treat something, you take away elements and metals from the water and they end up in a sludge that we will deposit within the mine in -- under secured conditions. We're still looking into exactly how to do that, but that is the plan. I don't think there would be enough to recycle for mining purposes, not at this stage, but we will deposit this within the mining -- down -- sort of down underground, most likely or under the sand savings deposit that we will have.

Okay. I hope that answers to satisfaction of the questionee. We have another one here. Have you gotten feedback -- have you gotten any feedback on the results from the authorities?

Shall I answer it? We -- so far, we haven't communicated anything to the authorities. We have -- when we send in our completion of our application, we told the authorities that we will use this technology and so far, we haven't seen the reaction on that because when we are getting answers now from the Environment Court, there will be a process where authorities will react on our application and we can also answer in a very good way then in to the authorities in this process going on when the real permitting processes start.

We might also add that this is best available technology on the edge really. This is as far as you can go technology-wise today. There's no other technique that could sort of do better.

Okay. I have -- I know someone expressed curiosity about because you are absolutely an investment project, from an investment point of view, how -- first of all, how big, how large is this investment? And why do you prioritize it at this point? I would be happy to let Anna in if you feel like you would be the correct person to answer.

At this moment, we have invested SEK 25 million in this test pilot and we will scale it up. And of course, it will be more costly when it's in full scale and also have some OpEx costs within, but we feel that it is very important because we have -- we are aiming to have the best available technology in everything. And this is most crucial in the permit process, the water treatment and how we are going to discharge the water to the recipient. So this is very important for us. And the result is so thrilling that, yes, we are jumping at the office when we saw the first result and the second result was also as good as that. So we are very, very glad to have this press conference and to tell the news. Yes.

Is there any one more? I have, at this point, no written questions in the chat. Feel free to write or raise your hand to state more questions to our panel. Would be of any thought about financials or about water treatment technology, we have all the experts you need. And at the same time, I can -- obviously, I can encourage the panel as well, if you feel like adding something that came to mind during the question -- the Q&A or during the presentation.

I have one question. I mean, all of you guys from Copperstone have your background from the mining industry. At what level of purification of the water are you usually satisfied with?

I believe Peter or Anders.

I could probably since I've actually worked with the authorities a long time ago, with questions like this. You can't just say a specific ratio because it's all dependent on what the recipient can handle. But normally, if you would reach 90% to 95% treatment ratio, that would be considered very good. With traditional metals, you would probably get somewhere between 75% to 90%, maybe 95% for some elements. So this is quite good. I'm underestimating a little bit there.

Anyone else, feel free to jump in. I think we are a reasonable amount of people here. So feel free to jump in just a [indiscernible] if you have. Otherwise, I suggest we finalize or end this press conference if there are no more questions. We are very happy that you participated, everybody, and we hope to see you the next time Copperstone has some important news to share. Thank you for today and goodbye.

Goodbye.

Thank you.

Goodbye.