Peter Taylor
Welcome to the March final EQ Resources quarterly webinar, where we're going to cover market conditions, operations in Spain and Australia, financials and outlook. We have the Managing Director, Mr.
Craig Bradshaw, and Chief Financial Officer, Jono Kort, with us. We'll start by talking a little bit about the tungsten market globally.
Craig, pricing has moved materially recently. Where are we now?
Craig Bradshaw
Look, the first quarter 2026 has been an interesting one. We finished the quarter, December quarter, at an average price in December of around $798 MTU.
We're sitting at the end of March on an APT low of $2,800 per MTU. Significant upward price pressure through the quarter, reflecting just a lack of material availability in the market in the Western world.
Prices are good, we're sitting well, and yeah, outlook looks good on that basis.
Peter Taylor
About the Barruecopardo operations and get stuck into that. Spain has seen weather over the quarter.
What can you tell us about that and how it impacted production? Look,
Craig Bradshaw
funnily enough, normally when you have an asset in the Northern Hemisphere and an asset in the Southern Hemisphere, you have geographical dislocation of rain events, right? With our operations, the wet season occurs at both operations at the same time.
We'll need to get better at how we manage that going forward. We have plans in terms of what we can do.
Our ore doesn't degrade, what we will do in future is to build stockpiles ahead of the processing plant so that we don't have or aren't impacted as much by weather events. Spain recorded in January and February the highest rainfall events that they've had since 1976.
That made it very difficult to operate in the plant, difficult to mine. Production as a result was negatively impacted by about 50% compared to where we were operating in the December quarter.
Come the end of March, we had around 1.9 m of water in the base of the pit. Understanding that the base of the pit is our highest-grade material, we've got 1 million tons at 0.2% or better sitting in the base of the pit.
Where we can mine is in the northern area, where we're still pulling that part of the pit down. That material varies between 0.1% and 0.14%.
We are still running. We're putting material through that process plant, but it's a lower grade.
Now we've got the water in the pit down to around 1.5 m. We're treating the water.
It's a zero discharge site, we can't just discharge the water. We have a variety of evaporation systems in place to enable evaporation of the water.
We are getting approval from the Spanish government to do a discharge up to 12,000 cubic meters. We've got 16,000 cubic meters in the base of the pit at the moment.
In terms of that, we're in the process of getting a number of RO plants so that we can treat that water and then discharge in accordance with Spanish requirements. Look, it's moving.
It's slower than what I would have liked in terms of solutions. I think, yeah, one of the challenges is working with regulators who don't particularly understand the mining business and the challenges within the mining business and aren't as responsive as we would otherwise like in our world, but they are working with us, just slower than we'd like to get to an outcome.
At the end of the day, the ore is there. We just need to move the water, and then we get back into the base of the pit, and then Barruecopardo will be back at the production rates it had across the December quarter.
Peter Taylor
It's a tremendous strategic asset in Barruecopardo, and there's drilling planned, phase six and seven advancement underway. It's quite a resource that you still got to uncover.
Craig Bradshaw
We announced to the market in various presentations I've made through the March quarter a drilling program that we will be undertaking in Spain. It's worth noting that the ore body in Spain, when you're standing in the base of the pit, you can look to the north, and you see the veins continuing in the northern wall, in the south, you can see the veins continuing in the south, and the ore body is obviously open to the north, open to the south, open at depth, and open to the east.
Within that, we've got the eight EPMs around the mining lease for Barruecopardo. The reason that it's not in the geological model is the fact there's just been no drilling.
We'll undertake 37 37 holes for about 12,200 m of drilling as part of a phase one. The reason I call that phase one is depending on what we see in the initial phase one drilling while we've got rigs on site, we'll then follow that up with phase two or phase three drilling in the north and the south.
In the east, it is resource that we're converting into reserve by undertaking infill drilling. Only 45% of the resource has been converted to reserve at Barruecopardo, and the plan for the drilling program is to both extend the resources as well as infill to convert resource to reserve for the areas we're going to be mining as well as undertaking grade control drilling through the operation.
At the moment, that work is out for tender. Once we finalize the tender, we'll get that work underway.
I expect to be drilling there probably in about two months' time by the time we complete the tender and the contracted parties mobilize to site and start undertaking the drill program. Exciting times.
Peter Taylor
Importantly, progress at Barruecopardo. Let's shift domestically to Mt Carbine.
What drove activity at Mt Carbine over the quarter, and can you give us a summary of activities there, Craig?
Craig Bradshaw
Look, Barruecopardo was, yeah, positive and negative at the same time. On the one hand, we needed water to fill up the reservoirs that we'd built in the previous year.
We certainly got the rainfall that we needed to do that. We're also then impacted by a number of cyclone events.
We were impacted by the new Queensland Mines Inspectorate regulations around proximity to lightning, previously we would have to shut down operations if lightning was within 17 km. Under the new regs, it's now 30 km.
To alleviate that, we have to take certain steps at site to reduce that back to the 17 km. We will be doing that during the dry season coming up, but we had a fair amount of downtime as a result of that relative to what we would have liked to have operated with.
That said, we still had a record material movement in the quarter. We moved 821,000 821,000 tons of material for the quarter, which is still a record for us.
Our access to the higher grade in the pit was still negatively impacted by the rainfall. Where we've moved some of that material will help us in mining in Q3 and Q4 calendar year 2026, or Q1 and Q2 financial year 2027, it's moving waste ahead of the plan, but it didn't help us get access to that higher-grade ore in the March quarter.
We had some of it come through. It processed well through the process plant, but it hasn't been until the third and fourth week of April that we've actually got solid access to the high grade, and that material is now coming through the plant.
We're seeing the step-up in production rate through the back end of April that ideally we would have liked to have been seeing from the start of March. It's about six weeks behind where we would have liked it, but at the end of the day, it's now coming through, and it's coming through into higher prices.
Just timing-wise, financially, it works really well. Like I said earlier, the price in December, which is an N-1 price was $798, the low in March was $2,350, the low in April is $2,800.
Although our production is about six weeks behind where we would have liked it, it's coming into a price that's significantly higher than what it was a month ago. Bittersweet, but we are accessing that material now.
Peter Taylor
That's high length we're discussing, and can you make up some of that lost production going forward?
Craig Bradshaw
Look, it's not lost, it's just a timing issue, right? It's a case of whereas I would have liked that material coming through in March, we're seeing it now in April.
April's production is likely to be at Carbine higher than what we achieved for the entire quarter in the March quarter. Good signs, material finally coming through, and that will then continue to step up as we have longer runs and more regular access, the high grade coming through the plant.
We're well positioned. It's just a timing issue.
It
Peter Taylor
works in favor, Craig, given that you're supplying into a higher price environment, it's a good timing after all.
Craig Bradshaw
There's the higher price environment and equally, we've got a backlog of customer orders. At the moment, yeah, it's going to take us the better part of eight to nine months to work through all the backlog that we've got in terms of customer orders, there's no shortage of demand opportunity.
From a pricing perspective, it's either N-1 or N, we get that benefit as we go through. It does look good, albeit six weeks behind where I would like to have been.
Peter Taylor
On the exploration pipeline, Craig, can you give us an update on further exploration on Mt Carbine and Wolfram Camp?
Craig Bradshaw
We announced the other day that we'd already started drilling at Mt Carbine, and so we've got two RC rigs, a diamond rig, and we're getting an extra diamond rig to site to try to compress the timeframe that it takes to get the drilling done, and then that leads in to faster results from the lab. Drilling's commenced.
We're targeting a combination of things at Carbine itself, there were a number of inferred resources at Carbine that was at surface around the existing pit. We had actually done some initial recon work using the blast rigs in 2025 when they weren't available for drilling in the pit at the time.
We're now following that up with obviously the deeper drilling opportunity with the RCs and diamond. Expectation is that we will convert that resource into proven and probable.
Equally, we'll undertake a number of infill holes in the pit itself. We can see in the north and the south, in the east and the west, off the north wall, we can see tungsten veins expressed at surface that are currently in what's classified as a waste zone.
We have to mine that anyway, but we're now drilling that out to actually bring that into the resource and reserve. Expectation is we'll get additional tonnage from both a resource and an infill reserve perspective.
Ideally, we would like to be reporting a new JORC resource and reserve by the end of 2026 is our target, but it just depends on how long it takes to get the drilling done, assayed, and modeled. That's the intent there, but at this point, the work's going well.
We do have it broken up into a number of phases, and if we see the results that we expect in phase one, then we will also undertake a phase two and phase three drilling program while we've got the rigs on site, and we're generating the cash flow out of the business as we go forward to underpin that drill program. That then puts us in a much better position strategically to, one, increase the mine life at Carbine from the current eight years to a longer mine life by spending the in-ground money to do that, but also it just helps us strategically in terms of our long-term mine plan, what we're producing when, and looking to bring on multiple faces.
One of the challenges at Carbine at the moment is we only have one ore face operating. We will fix that as we pull down the waste at the other end that sits on top of the Iron Duke to get two ore faces running.
That then ends up giving you more continuous feed to the processing plant, but ideally, what I'd like to have is three or four ore faces so that I can actually have the optionality to bring in tons from different locations so that if we do have geotechnical issues or we have weather issues, we're not beholden to it. We've actually derisked our operation to bring on multiple faces.
That's really the focus on Carbine. Once that drill program is finished, we will relocate the rigs.
At this stage, that would be around mid-July down to Wolfram Camp. The intention at Wolfram Camp, there is the old Wolfram Camp and Parrot pits.
We had to put out a clarifying announcement around those in terms of it's a foreign resource. We need to do the work ourselves to convert that into a JORC resource and reserve.
The thing there would be our expectation is going into the old pit, that last pit was in operation 2019, tungsten price was variably between $165 and $250 per MTU when that was in operation. We expect to do the drilling.
We also expect that will be positive, and ideally, we would like to be back in there, subject to Queensland government approval and approval of a new ML over it. We'd like to think we could get back in there within 18 months with a view to be mining, crushing, sorting material for then processing at Carbine and taking advantage of the excess capacity we've got in the gravity circuit.
That also then ties into the expansion that we're planning to undertake at Carbine. We've completed the engineering review on that or the engineering update.
We have made changes to what we were originally planning to build. We've undertaken a lot more automation in that circuit.
That will then further lower our operating costs. The key to it is doubling the crushing capacity to then take advantage of the unutilized capacity in the back-end gravity circuit.
We've taken that to the board. We're finalizing a couple of elements of that, but expect to give an update on that over the next four or so weeks in terms of that expansion.
Peter Taylor
Thanks, Craig. Pretty comprehensive discussion about exploration and activities over the quarter there.
I'm going to move on to financials and the balance sheet and directing this question to Jono. Can you walk us through the key financial takeaways this quarter and how investors should think about EQR's funding position from here?
Jono Kort
Thanks very much, Peter. I think, from a quarter perspective, we did generate some strong revenues despite the lower production, as outlined by Craig.
Generated $32.5 million. We receipted 19 $20 million bucks.
That pretty much covers our costs if you look at it from a revenue perspective, and it's really a timing piece of, I guess, the receivables, because we had $15 million receivables due and payable at the end of March, and we've also significantly reduced our prepayments down by $7 million. During the quarter, we continued to focus on the balance sheet.
We completed the refinancing of the Spanish debt. From December, mid-December, we've dropped it from €20 million down to €15 million with payments out of cash flow.
That's now over a three-year period, which really strengthens our immediate working capital. In March as well, the shareholders approved the final conversion of the Oaktree debt of $7.25 million to equity, further strengthening that balance sheet.
In terms of production that's happening in April, in terms of the cash that we have on hand at 31 March of $15 $16 million, we believe we're in a very, very strong position to continue the ramp-up at both Mt Carbine and recovery at Barruecopardo. With the strong tailwinds of the pricing, we don't anticipate any further needs for funds at this stage or in the near-term future to meet our objectives.
I know there's been a lot of noise around in the markets around potential capital raises, but look, we believe we're in a very strong position and that our cash balance now is continuing to build through April and into May. Just on mute, Peter.
Sorry. Still on mute.
Craig Bradshaw
You're on mute, mate.
Peter Taylor
Sorry about that. Amateur mistake.
Jono, I was talking about governance to myself. Can you provide an update on governance and the broader corporate buildout?
Jono Kort
Obviously, we've come a long way as a business. We're now in a position to start key roles into the organization that we generally haven't had previously.
It's great to have Mark Knossow appointed as our independent chairman. He officially started on 1 April, and we're already starting to see a change in expectations on management and the board, and it's really good to have him supporting us.
In terms of the broader business, we're employing roles that we haven't had previously, like a head of IT, we've got a group reporting manager starting tomorrow. Then we've also focused on building capabilities within the business around enhancing technical services, enhancing our mine managing capacities and capabilities including the processing.
We're doing all the buildouts that people would expect us to be doing to realize our objectives of our aspirational targets. Jono,
Peter Taylor
how much does that play into the interest from offshore larger institutions? Because there'll be different screens they have to tick when they look at companies like EQ Resources, and I know there has been a lot more interest offshore lately.
Jono Kort
I think myself and Craig did the numbers the other day. Between the two of us, we've spent about 80 hours with various investors with significant inbound coming from the US and in Europe.
On average, we're probably doing between the two of us anywhere between four and six meetings with US investors, and we don't see that slowing up, there's significant inbound at the moment.
Peter Taylor
Craig, obviously, the record tungsten price is really the key driver and makes EQ Resources quite unique in its position in the critical minerals market. Once upon a time, US investors had never seen or heard of a mining operation, and now it's part of the daily newsflow in the US.
What else is driving market interest here that you can discuss?
Craig Bradshaw
Look, I think there's a couple of things. Like through 2025, we had solvency risk, we had liquidity risk, we had governance risk.
I think the fact that we resolved those in the largely in the December quarter has enabled investors to look past that and understand the assets, understand the potential in the assets. Then at the same time, we saw across March quarter a significant increase in the price.
I think the price at the end of December 2025 was $1,000 an MTU, it's sitting at $2,800 at the moment, has been flat for the last few weeks. Now people are looking at, well, tungsten is interesting.
Who's producing? In listed vehicles of producing assets, there's pretty much only two in the world.
That brings people to to to, one of two companies, of which EQ Resources is one. The key to us or key for us is ensuring that we continue to deliver on what we say we're going to do and ensure that we build that confidence by the investors, suppliers, customers, and the employees in terms of wanting to be a, a go-to company to work for, such that that'll all enhance our our ability to continue to deliver.
I think the the increased appetite in EQR, we've derisked the organization for for investors and then moving the assets up the production curve into a fantastic demand and and price environment. That's all aligning really well for us.
I think globally, there just continues to be a lot of appetite for critical minerals, tungsten in particular. Obviously, geopolitical tension, China restrictions, those China restrictions have continued.
The the Chinese state-owned enterprise, you look at the top five China producers, they made record profits in 2025. There's no incentive for them to go and do anything different to what they've been doing in the market for the last 12 months.
We expect that the current shortage in the rest of the world is going to continue. The rest of the world is bifurcating.
There is clear desire for governments to ensure that there is supply chain separate and independent and transparent to historic supply chains. That's all about ensuring competitiveness in their downstream industry and ensuring that it doesn't doesn't disappear for a lack of raw material because of predatory practices from the past.
I think we're in a good space. We've got a good runway of five years ahead of us as a producing asset being able to expand our existing assets into that environment, and then obviously, five years out, there's potentially for a number of projects to come into the market, but but they are they have a lot of other risks ahead of them that we've already solved.
Right.
Peter Taylor
Craig, the 2026 outlook, how would you summarize the company's position entering this next phase?
Craig Bradshaw
Look, we're at a pivotal point in the growth of EQR. Go back 6, 9 months, we were a junior with aspirations.
Now we're heading into being a mid-tier company with further aspirations. We had a strategy session with the board early March.
We went through with the board where we were, what we're doing, and where we're going. Core focus for us, given the market shortage of available concentrates, is to focus on core business.
We've got assets that just have not had the work done on them in terms of both Barruecopardo in Spain and Mt Carbine in Australia. They haven't had the drilling, haven't had the money to expand the plant, haven't had the money to advance the EPMs in Spain or the exploration licenses we've got in Australia.
We're now in a financial position to be doing that. That's actually our cheapest units that we can bring to the market.
Focus in the business is getting more units into the market, but also with a mindset that five years out, we expect there to be more competition. How do we actually embed in our business to ensure that we're cost competitive irrespective of what the future looks like?
That's where things like the expansion that we're working through at the moment, which we intend to undertake at Carbine, subject to final board approval, it will lower our operating costs by about 30% per ton processed relative to where they are today. We handle a rock at Carbine at the moment because it's multiple pieces of plant that are not connected.
We handle every rock 13 times before it gets into a bag. We will drop that with the automation that we're looking to put in and the streamlining the plant with hoppers and conveyors and sequencing.
We'll drop that by eight to 10 times compared to where we are today. That then lowers our operating costs, lowers our diesel consumption, lowers and simplifies the operation.
They're the things that we'll be undertaking, increasing production, but also positioning ourselves to be one of the lowest-cost producers in the Western world for the future. I think that's critical to us going from an aspiration to a solid, delivering asset that can significantly grow from where it has been in the past.
Peter Taylor
That's an excellent position to be in, one of the lowest-cost producers operating mining operations in great jurisdictions. You're not out in the South Sahara or in the middle of the Western Australian desert.
Wolfram Camp coming on will give you three excellent mining operations. What's your aspirational target for when that might come on?
When can we likely to see Wolfram Camp in production?
Craig Bradshaw
In discussion with the Queensland government, they indicated that there's a pathway to get an ML approved within 12 months. I find that difficult to believe.
I think 18 months is more realistic, right? We've got to get the drilling work done there to prove that up and move forward.
To be honest, also, that's where I'd like to see government support. In the current market, I think we can fund what we need to fund in terms of our drill programs, our exploration programs, our planned expansions.
Where I'd like to see government support is in cutting the red tape and enabling fast-track development of assets, in particular when they're existing abandoned mines that were handed back to the government with liabilities attached to them that at the moment, the government's on the hook. I'll fix that for you, but give me a fast-track into development.
I can actually get more tungsten units out into the marketplace than what I can today. In actual fact, if we were mining that today, we'd be producing more tungsten units today than what we are because, at the moment, yes, we're feeding the Iron Duke vein system, but we've still got some lower grade from the 13 million tons of 0.07% low-grade stockpile.
I could fully displace that and get more units out. Government support should be very much focused on fast-tracking developments.
I think in Queensland recently, there's been a lot of momentum behind oil and gas and Toowoomba. That's good to see.
We'd like to see that across Australia in its entirety in terms of government support for mining projects.
Peter Taylor
That was pretty positive so far, we'll wait and see how they go with the ML. Still on the expansion theme, we've had some questions coming in about the Tungsten Metals Group potential acquisition that the company and the board has been looking at.
Can you give the market an update on that?
Craig Bradshaw
Look, we've continued dialogue with them. We've continued to look at the business case.
We've got some further discussions with the board in terms of where that sits as a priority for us relative to other opportunities that we're working through, and we'll give the market an update in due course, right? It's certainly not something that we're looking to rush into.
It's a matter of making sure that what we focus on, because at the end of the day, you've got to look at time resources, people resources, and financial resources. Historically, EQR's had a lack of financial resources, but equally, as we do the developments in the current assets, we've got to be mindful of what we're doing with our people resources and making sure that we don't stretch ourselves too thin.
We're still finalizing discussions there, and we'll give the market an announcement in due course. Thanks,
Peter Taylor
Craig. We've had a couple of questions coming in around production, cash flow.
Can you talk about your production estimate for Q4 2026 and perhaps the first half in 2027? What's your outlook on that?
Craig Bradshaw
I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say these days, because I think ASX have put restrictions on how much we can say in terms of forward-looking statements because they still consider us as an explorer as opposed to a producer. I don't quite understand why.
We're told that we can't give guidance until such time as we have three quarters of positive cash flow and we have the going concern issue removed from our financial statements. Going concern, I think was still in the December quarter statements.
We expect that to be fully resolved in the June half. Look, I can talk about production.
Assets are coming up the curve. March quarter was disappointing.
I expected to do a lot better in March than what we did. Fundamentally, Spain ran at half what it should have because of the wet weather.
Out of Australia, we did 4,000 MTU for the quarter. That was significantly impacted by the fact that we didn't get continuous feed from the Iron Duke through into February into March.
That has now commenced at the end of April. We're about a month behind where we would like.
In April, I expect to do the equivalent of what we achieved for the quarter at Carbine in a month. That's really ramping up based on the last week of April.
I think I've previously mentioned that we expect this asset in Carbine to be running around that 10,000 to 12,000 MTU a month as we ramp up towards 1,750 tons a year. Then we expect to do that this year calendar-wise, and then ramp that up to 2,500 tons as we get full access to the Iron Duke vein system and continuous feed into the plant, right?
Then ideally, we would like to think that we could have the crushing circuit expanded by February 2027, and that doubles the production capacity by doubling our crushing capacity from 87,000 tons to 170,000, 180,000 tons per month. Then it really comes down to what feed sources we've got available.
As a minimum, we'd be feeding the low-grade stockpile, but ideally, by then, we'll actually have additional faces available, which is why we're undertaking the drilling now at Carbine and the drilling then at Wolfram Camp later in the year. If we can get those additional faces available, then we'll have a much higher average feed grade going into the Carbine crushing circuit and then obviously the Carbine gravity circuit.
That has us producing at a higher rate. I don't have a number on what that rate is at the moment for public audience, because it really depends on the outcomes of the drilling we're undertaking, but it's certainly a lot higher than where we are today.
Peter Taylor
Thanks, Craig. Now we've had a few questions relating to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, restricting oil flow, and also funnily enough, production of sulfuric acid, which is used in a lot of mining operations.
Can you comment on any impacts that you may or may not be seeing from those two inputs? Yeah.
Craig Bradshaw
Sulfuric acid doesn't impact on our operations. In Australia, our operation in Australia is chemical-free.
We don't have any chemicals in the process. It is a pure gravity circuit.
We might contemplate using chemicals there in the future, but that would be to do with removing some impurities, we don't use sulfuric acid. Over in Spain, we do use chemicals in that operation, but largely that's for some impurity removal, and again, we don't use any significant volumes of sulfuric acid in that operation.
We're more or less buffering down to pH 5 for removal of arsenopyrite, but it's not significant volume, we don't expect any issue perspective. I guess the bigger issue would be on fuel.
Our Spanish operations and Spain in particular has had no issues in terms of fuel supply. Government in Spain done good work in terms of ensuring available fuel supply for industry and consumers.
They've got manufacturing capacity, and they've got reserves. From a community perspective, there's been no issues in Spain as we understand it either.
Our Spanish operations all good. Operation in Australia, Carbine, we have not had any fuel issues.
Our supplier has significant storage volume in North Queensland. We've doubled our storage capacity on site in terms of ensuring that, even if there's short-term blips in availability, we're covered from that perspective, and we're in the process of finalizing contracts to enable a further doubling of our storage capacity nearby from our mine site perspective.
From that point of view, we haven't had any fuel availability issues, and we don't expect to have them going forward. Equally, from an expansion perspective, as part of the expansion, we're going to be taking the opportunity to increase our grid supply, and so within that context, our future reliance on oil supply will be reduced as well.
Peter Taylor
Thanks, Craig. I think finally, a number of questions that I've been receiving regard the potential for a US listing.
Do you see that as a potential for the company in the near term, and/or does it restrict any of the investment you're seeing coming in from American or European institutions?
Jono Kort
I can take that one if you want, Craig. I think ultimately, we are looking at where to next as the business grows.
We have started looking at the US listing. A Nasdaq listing will take time, but I guess we're not saying no, we're just not saying right now as we look to where we go to as a business as we grow and start accessing the broader markets.
We haven't heard of any constraints from the US investors. We've had many institutions mention that they can actually buy us on the ASX anyway, they don't see it as a hard stop for us.
There is obviously a value proposition there that we continue to review and work through as the business grows. One constraint that has appeared is that in some countries in Europe, you need to have what's an LEI to help facilitate various people, such as in Germany, to be able to be acquiring ASX-listed stocks.
We now have that, so that opens up that avenue for them.
Peter Taylor
It's an open opportunity. Pretty much concludes most of the questions here.
Craig, any further comments for shareholders, investors leading to the next few months?
Craig Bradshaw
Question for Jono, what's our bank balance today look like? I think that was one of the questions I saw pop up from someone.
Jono Kort
I think it's probably about $22 million, and then on top of that, I don't have the exact accounts receivable off the top of my tongue, but it continues to grow, given the volumes shipped in April. Continues to grow and flow through.
Craig Bradshaw
Yeah. The other question I did see that came through was around how do we ensure that we don't have weather impact in the future?
Look, it requires an investment. Essentially, the ore, both at Barruecopardo and at Carbine, does not degrade.
We can mine it, we can stockpile it ahead of the processing plant, and then if there are weather issues, we can process through that. We're doing the numbers at the moment, but we expect, ideally, we'd like to be in a position to have a stockpile of two months of supply sitting on both ROM pads in Spain and in Australia, such that we can then draw from that continuous through the wet season, and so that way we can disconnect mine activity from processing plant.
Obviously, that's an investment in additional equipment. We need then the faces available at both operations to then pre-mine material ahead of when we otherwise would have.
There is an investment in it. It would probably cost us somewhere around $2 to $4 million per site to do that, but we're finalizing that.
We see that as the most simplest and easiest risk management perspective from a wet season as opposed to increasing fleet in the short term or trying to deal with significant weather events. At the end of the day, you can't control them.
What you can do is prepare for them and have risk mitigations. I think it's something that EQR had been aware of in the past, but just didn't have the financial wherewithal with which to implement it.
Now that we're in, our production is moving up, prices are fantastic, we've got excellent demand for all our products, we're in a unique position to make those style of investments to derisk our business going forward and just have continuous production and cash flow across the seasons.
Peter Taylor
Gentlemen, thanks very much for that report. It concludes a solid and very impressive quarter.
With the pricing environment we have, the cash flow, the balance sheet that Jono's just let you know how much you've got money to spend, the company looks like it's well positioned for shareholders and any new investors that are looking to gain exposure to this very, very interesting metal. Thank you for your report today, Jono and Craig.
For everybody watching, this will be available as a recorded video once we have it uploaded. If you do have any further questions for Jono or Craig, please send them in to [email protected], and I'll make sure they get through.
Thanks for attending today.
Craig Bradshaw
Thank you, all. Stay safe.
Cheers.
Jono Kort
Thanks very much. See ya.
Bye.
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