This area was originally mined many, many years ago in the upper levels. And now we are accessing this area now below at the 16 level. And we hit the same vein that we have some evidence in surface where we have thicker – thickness with a higher copper and gold grade than we had in the past in the upper area. So we have a long set of veins. Several of them are in the range of five grams of gold, 3%, 4% copper. So now it is something new for us. Regarding the historical portion in the last 10 years, we are developing this new area. We have by the development of this area around a small campaign of 2,000 tons of ore that we are passing in the last quarter – in the last month of the year, maybe in December, we will process this after finishing all the pilot tests in the lab.
We will do industrial test with material. [indiscernible] ore with a value in the order of $350 to $400 per ton of value. And we believe – we are confident by the evidence that we are having so far in the exploration and development that this area will become a significant player for Julcani in the coming two-years. We need still to continued exploration and develop this new area between 2024 and 2025 in order to have a substantial production asset value from this area. So we have continuous operation from the silver areas, where we are trying to catch the high-grade – high silver-grade areas and develop in parallel, the area of Rosario. Altogether goes to the same cost basis. That is the reason the cost of Julcani [indiscernible] a little bit higher because we are putting everything that we do as expense development in the Rosario area in the same basket as the [indiscernible] mine.
Carlos De Alba: Okay. So Juan Carlos, so cost will increase, but ultimately, this new area will make the mine profitable?
Juan Carlos Salazar: Yes, that area – the area. This year and the next year, we will invest in developing this area. It will take like at least 12 – 18 months to develop and put this area into full production. To be a substantial part, maybe 25% to 30% of the contribution in production in Julcani will came from this area. Of course, we need to complete all the tests and be sure that everything goes fine in the [indiscernible] site, along with – we are assuming high grade for the [indiscernible] mine – historical mine. So it is – for the next 12, 18-months we will have a kind of higher-than-expected costs, and then we will deliver the additional production on Rosario mine.
Operator: Our next question comes from Cesar Perez-Novoa from BTG Pactual.
Cesar Perez-Novoa: I have two questions. The first would be on Yumpag. Buenaventura kept the fourth quarter 2023 target date for start-up production unchanged. Is there a commercial volume that we should consider from this asset in the final quarter of the year? And if so, at what cost should we assume this for modeling? And my second question relates to the Marcapunta underground mine. You’re increasing production from 10,000 tons per day this year to 12,000 tons per day over the next two-years. Could you fine-tune the date for this capacity increase and perhaps guide on the potential copper volume that we should anticipate from the asset in the future?
Leandro Garcia: Thank you very question. Please, Juan Carlo.
Juan Carlos Salazar: Yes. On the first one, on Yumpag, we are starting a campaign of about 120,000 tons of ore is a part of – the final stage of the exploration permit. We have licensed to process around 120,000 tons of ore into our Uchucchacua processing plant. So we will start right now – actually we start just doing this test. It is a very high-grade ore. It is over 20, 25 ounces of silver. So the idea is to produce – as we put in our guidance, in the order of almost two million ounces of silver in the last quarter that we put in our guidance coming from this area. [indiscernible] for this production in Yumpag in the range of $11, $12 per ounce of silver. So this is regarding Yumpag. And when we have the operational license, we will continue mining the same ore body from 2024 in advance, at a rate of 1,000 tons per day, with an average rate in the order of 20 ounces, 22 ounces of silver per ton.
