Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria

in Kiruna. It's here where everything starts. Every day new drill cores come up here. We drill 24-7 and have done so since May 2020 and have today an impressive amount of more than 200,000 meters drilled. A unique number for a company of our site in the international mining industry. This has indeed been a milestone quarter for Viscaria. Of course, the main cornerstone was with all permits gaining full legal force on April 16th. Follow up by that we released our first resource statement and also a resource upgrade on May 8th where we confirmed higher copper grades, increased tonnage and an impressive growth potential. We have now gone from planning to full implementation. The organization continues to grow, and we also have impressive new additions to our board in the form of Lars Hercaro and Mark Johnson. And even if Mark has been introduced to you before, I think it's well noted to remind you that he is the chief operating officer of one of the world's largest copper mines, Grasberg in Indonesia. And with more than 40 years of experience within the copper mining industry, he has, of course, brought a wealth of experience and network and competence to our company, which is hugely beneficial for us. Other milestones during the second quarter is that we have signed a 45 megawatt grid agreement with Vattenfall. Our water treatment plant is close to be completed, and the pumps will start on 1st of October, and we can do the dewatering. We have also started with construction of the new tailings dam and the rail yard, and also with the groundworks for the concentration plant. All this means that there's a huge amount of activities out on site, with more than 150 subcontractors working on site, more than 40 heavy machines and excavators and mobile crushers, and we are crushing approximately 50,000 tons of material every month. We're moving more than 220,000 tons of material every month. That means approximately 230 damper loads of 40 tons every day. So it is indeed an extreme activity out on site. And in parallel with this, as I told you initially, we continue with our thrilling exploration drilling. Four weeks we are drilling now, and Ross will tell you much more about the result later on. And lastly, but not least, if it not was enough with this solid and impressive deposit that we have, it's worth to reiterate the solid investor base that we have and that is so supportive to us. And with the example of John Stolberg and Thomas van Gogh that landed another 400 million krona as a sharehold loan with the intention to convert that into shares in an upcoming share issue. Before we go on, it's worth to be noted that we have since then with our permit to gain legal force been seen much more in the press, which we think is fun. So our brand name gets more and more noted by both the Swedish and the international community. With me today as presenters, I will have, of course, Frida Keskutalo, our CFO, and Ross, our Head of Geology, both of them that you met before. But new today is our moderator, Jay Ashfield, from the International Metals and Mining Investment Bank, Hanneman Partners. It will be a pleasure to have Jay on board later in the presentation. We have talked about the demand and supply gap of copper quite a few quarters during this project. This time I've chosen to choose some new pictures. On this picture, on the green line, you see the average mill head grade from 1950 in all the copper mines in the world, and today we have approximately 707 copper mines in the entire world. So the average grade has gone from 1.5%. It was a bit high in the 60s, close to 1.7%. And the average grade in the copper mines are today 0.55%, going down towards 0.4%. In the lower curve there, you see the average grade of new discoveries, which in 1950 were around 1%. And with the exception of the Kamoa mine in Africa, the average grade now for new discoveries is down to below 0.4%. This means that all easy copper is mined out. New copper is to be found very high up, some new copper resources even at 3,800 meters, or very deep down. We are blessed of having a deposit like ours, with easy accessible copper, and maybe in the world's most renowned mine town, Kiruna. The subcontractors here, tell them, ask them what they don't know about mining. We have them here, they don't need to establish themselves when we ask them. They've been here, they've been mining here for 120 years. and we have a site just adjacent to the iron ore line and to the European way. We are really spoiled with fantastic opportunities to mine in a city like Kiruna. The next picture is as dramatic as the previous one. Here you can see on the lower chart how much money all the copper mines is spending on exploration over a five year period. So from 2004 to 2023. So you can see on average for each five year period, all mines are spending approximately 11 billion US dollar in exploration. And on the top hand, you see the amounts of new copper found. And you can see that these are quite dramatic numbers. we are going into an increasing copper demand supply gap. We really have a thrilling method. I talked about all the activities. We are now also going from planning to actual implementation. On the top hand, you see the water treatment plant that is now almost completed with all the pumps and pipes. And again, first of October, we will start to dewater the mine. And to the right, you see the main parking entrance, entrance parking. It's almost completed. Down to the right, we've started the groundworks for our own rail yard. And to the left of the rail yard, we've still not built the offices for the subcontractors, but that work has started. And to the left of that, the white building is our office that is, of course, installed and up. And then the storage and the lay down areas further under the rail yard is well underway, and a huge part of the lay down area is already built and constructed with the storage tents as well. And the power station will be built by Vattenfall and the ground works are started there as well. And to the left we have the processing plant and the ground works are starting off now this autumn as well. So it's a lot of activities going on. Yeah, some pictures just of everything from the, we're extending the clarification pond, so we have a larger capacity in the clarification pond. We are building the new tailings dam behind the old tailings dam. And as a reminder, we are saving the old tailings dam for future processing or remining. But we will not start with that, but since we have values there, we are saving that for the future. But a huge amount of work. The water treatment plan in itself is an impressive project. This is a project investment cost for more than 500 million Swedish krona. It's a complex project with a lot of subcontractors involved, and we're still executing that on time. This will be a role model for how we will continue to do the construction on this site. And it's a pleasure, it's impressive to see the progress every week in this. And we so much look forward to 1st of October. With that, I know that many of you are waiting for the thrilling continued exploration updates. And of course, you will hear many thrilling things from Ross here. So with that, Ross, please take the table.

Thank you very much, Juergen, and good morning, everybody. For Viscaria's geology team, Q2 2025 was a big one. On May the 8th, we released our new mineral resource estimate, which was a really huge milestone for us, the first resource update since November 2022. And here, the numbers spoke for themselves, where we saw a significant increase in both the tonnage and grade of the deposit, and that followed on from a really successful exploration drilling campaign. But the exploration has not stopped there. We've really continued this going forward in the second quarter and ramped up our Grand Viscaria exploration strategy, which combines both the near mine and district scale exploration, ultimately aiming for the expansion of our inferred resources and also the development of new copper discoveries in the region. Not only that, today we have exciting drill results to share from the D-Zone, continued exploration there. Here we have six new drill results, which in every hole we hit mineralization, proving extension to the D-Zone mineralization. And that's of course super exciting for us. You're gonna hear more about this on the following slides. We'll basically run through these main highlight areas first, starting with a recap on the mineral resource estimate. So where do we stand today? The total mineral resources for the Viscaria deposit stand at 108 million tons with an average copper grade of 0.9%. That means that we now have a contained copper amount of 970,000 tons, which positions us very well, particularly within the European context. this is really positive change across all key metrics in the resource update we're unlocking higher grades if we compare to november 22 our last resource update there we had an average copper grade of 0.88 percent whereas today we've increased this to 0.9 percent and it's not just great we're also increasing the scale of the deposit and of the opportunity here Over the same timeframe, the total mineral resources have increased by 16% and the total contained copper by 18%. And for us, this is a really encouraging and positive signal because, you know, we're not just adding tonnage for the sake of adding tonnage. We're really increasing the size of the resource and the quality of the resource at the same time. It's worth noting as well that Viscaria is a multi-commodity project, so copper and iron. We see here on the right hand side of the slide, a cross section of the Viscaria deposit. And in all of these mineralized zones, the A zone, ABBA zone, the B zone, and the D zone. In all of these, we do find magnetite, but it's only in the D zone that the magnetite occurs with economic concentrations. So it's from here that in addition to the copper concentrate, we plan to recover an iron concentrate as well. So the magnetite content in the D-zone provides added value to the resource, giving Viscaria's mineral resources a copper equivalent value of 0.97%, which can be compared directly with the pure copper grade of 0.9%. And finally, our last key takeaway from the resource update is the hugely successful exploration campaign, which really underpins all of the numbers, all of the growth that we're talking about today. In just one year, and with less than 20,000 meters of drilling, we managed to define an additional 28 million tons of inferred resources. That's over a quarter of a million tons of contained copper into the metal inventory, which really, that's just a huge return for a one-year exploration campaign, and a huge testament to the hard and diligent work of the geology team, something you can see still working behind me today. As mentioned though, we really wanted to keep momentum after this major milestone, so we've really ramped up and scaled up our Grand Viscaria exploration strategy. If you don't know, Grand Viscaria consists of both near-mine and district-scale exploration, a combined approach which in parallel aims to extend the life of mine in Viscaria, but also to increase the feed, the long-term feed to our processing plant through time. In the near mine, we're focused on expanding and increasing the inferred resources, prioritizing high grades because we really want to add tons that we believe have a really good chance of being incorporated into the future mine plan. While on the district scale, this is long-term and generative exploration. So here, we're really looking at finding new copper deposits, developing economic satellite deposits in order to supplement the long-term metal inventory of the company. But of course, it takes a long time to take something from discovery into production, on the order of 10 to 15 years. So for us, it's really imperative that we get started with that work today. It's not something that can wait until tomorrow. But so far in 2025, we drilled a total of 22,000 meters. of which 3,500 can be attributed to deep directional drilling in the D zone. And it's here that we have six new assay results to share with you today. Really exciting and we'll cover that in the slides to come. But we've also been branching out from the Viscaria mining area and doing a lot of work, diamond drilling, geophysical surveys in several of our other exploration permits here And although we're still awaiting the full assay results, these are still pending. But what we can say is that the initial observations from the drill core confirm the presence of copper mineralization across the entire district. And so, of course, this really emphasizes the scale of the mineral system that we're dealing with here. For now, though, let's turn our attention to those new exploration results from the D zone. So, in short, six new drill holes and six new hits. All of the step-out drilling which has been designed to step out from the new mineral resource boundary has all confirmed extensions to the mineralization in the D-zone. This is super thrilling for us because not only does it show that the mineralization extends further to depth and significantly along strike, but these results will also help to constrain this new thick and high-grade ore chute that we've discovered at depth. which, and this will allow us to guide the further drilling and also to make sure that we develop the resource by following the most economic parts. We see on the right hand side of the slide here, a longitudinal section of the D-zone with the mineral resource outlined here. And the resource model has been color contoured according to the copper grade multiplied by the thickness. So in the warm colors, the reds, pinks, and purples, here we see basically the most economic parts of the mineralization, where the grades are highest and where the mineralization is thickest. And you can see that these thick ore shoots, they follow a certain orientation, plunging towards the southwest. You can also see on this section why we're so excited about this new discovery at depth in this area here. which of course you can see from the grade thickness perspective looks extremely attractive. So the full assay results and details on the drill holes, you can find that on our company website, where we published the accompanying table one this morning. But here we have the highlights shown on the slide. For example, drill hole 2-4006D, which was located here. had an intersection of eight meters at 1.8% copper or 2.3% copper equivalent, if you take into account the added value of the magnetite. Similarly, in hole 25002, which intersected the mineralization here, we have an intersection of eight meters at 1.3% copper or 1.6% copper equivalent. So some really encouraging grades on display here. Furthermore, if we move along straight towards the northeast, we have drill holes 129 and 129B, which had respective intersections of four meters at 1.8% copper equivalent and another four meters at 2% copper equivalent. So shorter intervals, but what's really important here is that the high grade persists. And it's also worth noting that these shorter intervals were hosted by a wider intersection of massive magnetite, which is over 50 meters thick in intersection. So to summarize, we're super thrilled with these results. It's an amazing result for the first round of drilling that follows our resource update. Six holes that prove further extensions to the mineralization. And on top of that, we have two ongoing drill holes. located here and here, which will be completed soon. And we, of course, hope that these will both prove further extensions to the mineralization. The D-zone remains open at depth, and we're excited to keep drilling here and showing just how big the resource can grow. And finally, from me, I'll keep the spotlight on the D zone, but with a slight change of topic. What I want to discuss here is the company's plans for the conversion drilling at depth in the D zone. So as part of the last resource update and following on from our previous successful exploration, we managed to add a significant amount of tonnage to the D-Zone resource at depth. And this inferred tonnage was incorporated into the extended mine plan for the feasibility study. And this mine plan you can see on the slide is shown in cross section here, as well as longitudinal section. The inferred tonnage, which constitutes 18% of the mined ore in the FS production plan. Of course, this needs to be infill drilled before we actually go down and do the mining. And we plan to do this from underground starting in 2028, from the development between the A zone and the D zone. Here, this development will be ready in 2028, so we can start the drilling then, several years in advance of the planned production. And to illustrate why we want to do this drilling from underground rather than from the surface, you can see here that if we do the drilling from designated drill bays on this ramp towards the D zone, then the infill drill holes will have an average length of around 600 meters. Whereas in contrast, if we start that drilling today from the surface, the same drill hole would have to be twice as long, 1200 meters. And as summarized in this table here, To do this infill drilling, to do this conversion with indicated level drill hole spacing, from underground this would require 15,000 meters, whereas from the surface this would require 30,000 meters of drilling. And in terms of cost, there's a huge difference as well. To put it simply, it's bloody expensive to drill these deep, long holes. So from underground, it would require just 30 million krona to do this drilling. Whereas from the surface, it would require an investment of 120 million krona to get the same job done. And it's not just cost, but also time. It takes a long, long time to drill long holes when you start to get beyond 800, 900 meters. So in terms of the time, to do the drilling with two rigs, to do this conversion drilling with two rigs from underground, it would require just five months Whereas the same two rigs, if they were drilling from the surface, it would take 30 months. So it's a staggering difference in time, six times longer. So for us, when you compare the two options, it's really a no brainer. Viscaria plans to do this conversion drilling of the deep inferred tonnage in the D-zone starting in 2028 when the development is prepared. And from here, we can do the drilling in a time-efficient, cost-efficient, and practical manner several years in advance of the planned production. And on that note, I will hand the word over to Frida.

Thank you for that, Ross. So I will make a brief financial summary for the quarter two 2025. And if you start with capitalized expenses related to exploration and evaluation assets, it's 65 millions on the quarter. It's a bit lower than the same period previous year. And that's mainly due to that we in quarter two 2024 has this large drilling campaign ongoing. And we also had a lot of work related to permitting process at that time. We actually now see that we are shifting from mostly make investments in these exploration assets to now entering this construction phase where our investments are more of tangible assets. If you look at this operating profit minus 17 million and net profit minus 22 million for the quarter, we see that it's a bit higher negative profit than previous period. And that's mainly due to the fact that we have some higher level of operating costs that not related to concession and therefore not being capitalized. But of course, we also included some interest expenses in net profit that's related to the shareholder loan, which we didn't have last year. If you look at the cash flow for the period, minus 42 million. During this quarter, 140 million from the shareholder loan was drawn down. And other essential items impact the cash flow is related to investment activities. If we then look at the balance sheet, we have exploration and evaluation assets of 1.5 billion. We have this in-progress construction, almost 400 million by the end of June. Cash and cash equivalent is 340 million. And equity is 1.6 billion. And here we have two diagrams showing the development for capitalized expenses. related to exploration and evaluation assets in the first one. And in the lower one, you see the in-progress construction on a quarterly basis for the same period. Here you also see this shifting when we actually see that this intangible assets decreasing during this quarter and we are scaling up the investments for construction. And that's a natural phase in our process right now, when we're actually in this construction phase now. If we then look at this exploration and evaluation assets, that mostly consists of drilling, analysis, and some other works related to the geological area. But we also have some other operating expenses related to the preparation of the startup for the mine. If we then look a bit more into this in-progress construction, we of course have this water treatment plant that we are up and building and we're well ahead on schedule to meet the target to be in operations in October this year. This quarter we also started the work with our tailings and also the clarification pond. We have initiated investment for secure power capacity on site and an important milestone there is of course the agreement with Vattenfall during the quarter. We've also started up some other site investments such as new roads on the area, parking spaces, also some security fences and gates and so on. And of course we are also up and running with the detailed engineering and started some groundwork for our upcoming process plant. And that's a short summarize for the quarter, and now I will hand it over to Jörgen again.

Thank you, Frida, and thank you, Ross, as well, for your presentations. So, as you can hear, we are moving from planning to full execution and implementation of this industrial site. And we are continuing our thrilling exploration program. and we have shown a strong support for our main owners. I will not say so many more words now, but I would like to start the Q&A session by first inviting our moderator, Jay Ashfield, from the investment bank firm Hanneman Partners. Jay, please introduce yourself and your firm.

Thank you very much, Jurgen. I'm delighted to be here in Karuna, and it really is, must be one of the best cities to start to mine in. You know, rich history of mining, developing and innovating mining services, technologies. Yeah, really, really fantastic to be here again. Henneman Partners, very quickly, leading independent investment bank based in London, specializing in natural resources. provide financial advisory, M&A, and fundraising across the capital structure, debt, equity, offtake, streaming, royalties, etc. Over the years, the firm have supported and raised tens of billions of dollars for projects around the globe. And we're excited to support Viscaria as financial advisor and raise the necessary funds to bring this really robust corporate project back into production. Thank you for being here. Reminder for the online audience to use the chat function for any questions they may have, but I might as well kick off with my favorite topic, Jorgen, financing. Where are we at?

That is indeed a hot topic for not only Aspart, but for all our investors. Well, everybody knows that the feasibility study and the reserve statement, that is the cornerstone, that is the starting point for discussions and negotiations with the lending banks, but also credit guarantee bodies. So that work really commenced on May 8th and has then been undergone with usage intense despite the summer and holiday periods. and not at least supported by, among others, Hanneman Partners and your skilled expertise. So what we have done during the summer then, we have started so-called market soundings with international banks. And we have received a solid and positive reaction and interest to participate in our financing. And it's worth noting some of the comments then during the summer, why we received such a solid and positive response. The banks are impressed by our project execution capacity. that we already have implemented so much of the infrastructure work and executed that. And they can see the result of all that work. And as I mentioned before in my presentation, there's been a lot of interest around our water treatment project. It's a groundbreaking result of the water cleaning, as you know, and we are first in Sweden of doing that, and indeed it's a huge and complex project, and the way that we have executed that on time has been viewed, as I mentioned before, as a role model for the ongoing discussions. The banks, furthermore, the comments that we have received is that they were impressed by the granularity in our geology model. And it's rare to see, again, a company of our size having been drilled more than 200,000 meters and continue to drill as well. So, but you and your team has participated in many of these discussions as well. So, maybe a short comment from you, Jay.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's quite rare to have, you know, essentially all the right elements coming into project financing, whether it be, you know, advanced copper project in Europe of a, you know, robust size and grade. You know, it's super advanced from, the study work that you've done from you're in construction essentially from the tailings facility to all the civil water treatment plant and copper is super hot right now and the clean concentrates will be you know in big demand particularly in Europe and I guess on that you know copper is a critical mineral in the EU under CRMA Can you expect some government support for some of the financing?

So copper then is indeed defined as a strategic material in the Critical Raw Materials Act. And that in itself of course has gained general support and interest of our project. We do however not expect any specific subsidies from the government or from EU. But the CRMA implementation of that has supported a huge interest both from the European Investment Bank and the Nordic Investment Bank, which we also have conducted discussions with, together with Hanneman Partners. It's also the case that that supports the interest from governmental export credit guarantee bodies, like the Swedish EKN, or Finnish Finvera, or the German oil RMS. who is also participating in all these discussions. So not any direct subsidies but a general support for a project like this being one of the largest copper projects in Europe and also one of the copper projects in Europe which is closest to realization in 2027.

And can you give an update on potential timing of some news on the financing?

I mean, we will continuously inform the market during this autumn about both the equity and debt financing process. So nothing specific today, but in a not-too-long-distant future, we will update the market about that.

That's great. And you previously indicated an expected leverage for the project between 50% and 60%. Is that still the case you're comfortable with?

Yes, so during these market-sounding processes, both within international banks and the credit guarantee bodies, we can confirm today that the leverage ratio is closer to 60% than 50% in the negotiations.

And I've been gone for about five weeks since I was last here, seen some incredible progress at the water treatment plant. It is a major milestone for the company. Can you explain why?

I mean, the water treatment plant is actually one of the cornerstones in our project execution plan. It is five times faster to go down in an existing ramp, including rehabilitation and rock enforcement and shock treating and so on, compared to do your own ramp development. Five times faster. And it's going down at the quarter of the cost if you do your own ramp development. So, of course, to get down to do both the 150-meter ramp into the B zone and D zone and the 450-meter deep, ramp to the B and D zone, it's extremely cost efficient and fast. So it means a lot to us. It's worth noting another important subject when you talk about that. Ramp development is the most costly feature when you develop the mine. To do a ramp development of one meter, you're talking about the cost of more than 40,000 Swedish kronor per meter, and that depends on the rock stability. This is a big and important topic that drives the cash cost for a mine company. In Kiruna, we have four companies that do ramp development. Two of them based in Kiruna, two based in the surroundings. It's unique to have that support for that important and critical work at site. So we don't need to fly in people. They don't need to establish their teams. They know the rock since they're working this rock here with our neighbor, and some of them have been working in the old Viskoria. So the water treatment plant is a cornerstone, and it's progressing well.

And so... You're dewatering an old mine. How can you be confident of the underground infrastructure, the rock conditions? Can you elaborate a bit on that?

Of course. No, it's extremely important to have a predictable process and project execution in this. So here we go back to the amount of meters drilled. And you know, that has listened to us before, that the vast majority of the 200 and plus meters now is infill and rock mechanic, water delineament drilling, processing drilling, and not exploration drilling. The exploration drill program commenced actually in a big size first last autumn. So in those drilling, rock mechanics, for example, has been a huge part, and other measurements have been done so that we are as sure as possible to know the rock conditions.

You mentioned quite a big number of meters being drilled. For you as CEO, how can you stay on top of it? How can you manage such a big program over a couple of years? How many rigs have you been running on an annual basis?

As I told you before, today we have four exploration rigs out on site, both in the near mine and in the Grand Viscaria outer areas. But at the most, we had nine rigs in place. And that means that every day, seven days a week, we receive some 600 to 900 meters rigs. of drill core here every morning. So you can just imagine the amount of people, external consultants we need to log. Because if you don't log, you lose some of the value when you're doing your work because you need input for the next shoot as well, so to say. So this core shed has been really an intense workplace during these years.

I bet. Thank you, Juergen. I'd like to stay on that topic of drilling and geology and welcome back, Ross. Ross. Thank you, Rosti. Ross, you know, there's been a lot of meters drilled as just described by Juergen. It's helped build quite a cornerstone asset resource over 100 million tons. Good grade, 0.9% copper if you don't include the magnetite. What's your medium-term target now with such an already sizable asset?

It's a good question. So on May the 8th, when we came out with our resource update and the feasibility study, we also set a mid-term target for the resource of 140 to 160 million tons. And that was based on the geological interpretation, also the supporting geophysics in our ongoing exploration areas. So the Deep D zone, the Deep B zone, and the ABBA zone as well. And already these drill results which we showed today from the D zone are already starting to reinforce that target. Of course, there's more drilling to do to get to that stage and more work to do the modeling down the line. But as we stepped out from the new resource, we're finding continuations to the mineralization. So it's super exciting for us.

And I guess on today's drill results from D zone deep, does that give you confidence, further confidence in the geological continuity of what you're seeing here?

Yeah, exactly that. I mean, from drill hole to drill hole, it's expiration, so there's still some significant spacing between each hole. But even then, from drill hole to drill hole, we're finding pretty good continuity in the geology and in the grades that we're seeing. So further down the line, when we start to do the infield drilling, I don't expect to have any major surprises. And historically speaking, in the D zone, we've done a lot of conversion drilling in the past in the upper part of the deposit. So as Juergen mentioned, 200,000 meters plus drilled since 2020. A lot of that was conversion drilling for the FS in the D zone. and there the the infill drilling to take things from inferred to indicated measured went super well and actually at depth we see that the mineralization is even better preserved uh i could expect the conversion rates to be even better as we go deeper actually yeah so you mentioned you don't expect any surprises however what has surprised you about this deposit so far Well, I mean, there's a huge potential here, of course. I think maybe this speed at which we've managed to increase the resources, we always believed in something big here. But in just one year, to add 28 million tons of inferred resources, within that, a million tons of contained copper. It's really a huge return and as Juergen said, we've had help with logging but also really big push from all the geo team here as well. So it's a really big testament. It's no easy feat to add that much tonnage, that much contained metal within such a short space of time.

No, absolutely. And I guess looking at our setting, geological setting, we have LKAB, enormous mining operation next door. This was a historical producing asset. What does that tell you and help guide you in terms of near mine exploration and your regional exploration thesis?

Yeah, that's a very good question. The interpretation on the sort of genesis of the Viscaria deposit has changed through time. Previously, it was thought that the copper deposit Viscaria formed sometime before the iron oxide mineralization like Cura Navarra. however through all the drill core that we've seen all the meters that we've been logging we see evidence for the opposite actually that the copper came later in the paragenetic sequence came after the iron which is very interesting so it potentially shows some genetic link between our IOCG type deposit and the current of our IOA deposits This is something that we're working on proving at the moment. It's our working hypothesis. We have some ongoing academic research with LTU where we're doing dating on the sulfide mineralization. So we're expecting to get results on that soon. If we can prove that the copper mineralization is temporally linked with the iron oxide mineralization, then of course this is hugely exciting. If there is a genetic link between our deposits, then you can really start to get excited about the scale. I think we started to touch upon the scale as well on this deep drilling in the last year. As we're going deeper, we're seeing thicker mineralization, we're seeing better grades. And not only that, we're finding new mineralized horizons. The Abizon, which we didn't see near the surface, but it's developing really well at depth. Excellent. Hopefully more of those kind of surprises.

I can't wait. Just seeing if we have any questions from the chat. Yep, there's a couple. So is the company surprised by recent findings which suggest higher quantities of copper on site? And are there any other mineral findings that are mine worthy? Maybe Jorgen? Sure. Thank you.

So we are focusing on the copper and our by-product magnetite. As you can see historically in some of the drill results, we indeed see both gold and silver as well. But it is important for our credibility to state and calculate with what we are 100% sure of. To have minerals in the ground and to mine them economically is two different things. And this is also a discussion with our future smelters. So even if we find other minerals, for example, gold and silver, we stay today with the calculation base with our copper and iron.

Excellent. Well, gold and silver, exciting minerals to have in the portfolio in addition to copper. Another question from the audience is, when will you make the first blast, Juergen?

Our commencing blast is planned to be around September, October next year. And I think we mentioned that in the timeline before. So when we dewater enough and when done all the rehabilitation and investigations, so there will be a big feast up here in Kiruna around September, October. And, of course, as time passes, we will be much reported closer about that date. But that will be a thrilling thing, of course, to do the commencing last.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we have time for one or two more. Here's one. What is Viscaria's key selling point to investors and what has thus far been the most critical question you've received by investors? I mean, Jorgen, you can maybe start off and I can elaborate more. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, so I think I can just reiterate discussion from this market soundness with the lending banks, which are commencing with main commerce from investors. I mean, the project execution capacity that we have shown already has been an important element, both to attract interest and as a proof of concept that we know what we're doing and we can do that. Furthermore, there have been focus on the quality of our copper. We have a clean copper. And in these discussions that we have commenced this summer, of course that has also included discussions with future potential customers. And we have also sent samples to some of those future potential customers, and we've received a huge interest there. So it's quite self-explanatory and clear that we will not have any problem whatsoever to find customers for our copper.

Yeah, excellent. Well, I guess I can shed some light more from a natural resources perspective. And I think the key question to any company is execution capabilities. And I think given the setting where we are in Kurena with the people, the history, and all the work that the company has done, it really kind of ticks the boxes of executable project here. and just how advanced you are and this copper will be delivered to the market in a pretty short while. One final question I think we have is how would you describe the investment climate in northern parts of Sweden after Northvolt went belly up? Has this affected your possibilities to raise money?

It has indeed affected the climate as such, because in Sweden we can see that in all article zones. Luckily, we don't have much of those discussions when we're talking to international banks, since they are a bit poor. So to summarize there, we don't see that this has any direct impact on our financing possibilities. It's a continued huge interest and very positive and solid reaction from the lending banks and also international equity investors that Hanneman Partners are introducing to us. So we are progressing on plan with all those discussions.

Fantastic.

Okay, so if no more questions, thanks a lot for joining us today here, Jay, and we look forward to have you again as moderator. And with that, from the whole entire... Vizcaya team, a big thank you for listening in and we look forward to see you again early November for the report of our third quarter. Thank you very much.