Thank you. Welcome, everyone, to this webinar today on the results of the Cabacal Definitive Feasibility Study. It's very much what this is all about is getting prepared to build Brazil's next copper-gold mine. A couple of pages — this presentation, of course, is downloadable from the website. There's two disclaimers I encourage you to read.
Okay. For some time, we've really talked to our investor community about how significant we think the results are and the promise that Cabacal has to deliver. On a base case post-tax in US dollars, we generated an NPV of over 2 billion USD with an IRR of over 108%. If you look at today's spot prices, that gives us an NPV of 2.9 billion with a return of 134% in the IRR. These are great numbers, but these are industrial numbers. This is what a mine should generate. And at all cycles of the commodity cycle, this mine generates exceptional economics.
On the life-of-mine ASIC, it's $1,056 per ounce of gold equivalent. We have both copper and gold and silver. The initial CapEx has grown. There's been some factors in relation to more detailed engineering, of course, that more cost, inflation within Brazil, and of course the strengthening of the US dollar — the Brazilian real to US dollar. In the payback, it's very quick at 0.9 of a year. That's what we expect. The first five years' production, exceptional — 183,526 oz of gold equivalent. One of the most important figures to look at there, though, is that NPV-to-CapEx ratio, 6.5 to 1. In the base case scenario over the life of mine, we'll generate over 2.9 billion US dollars pre-tax, and it's got a mine life of 13.9 years.
We're getting in the DFS is an 18-month build, so straight after 18 months — very short time after — we're going to positive cash flow. You can see as we get in year four, we take the throughput up to 4.5 million tons. You can see the increase in the cash flow there, and as the grades level out, so does the income.
On the CapEx, like I said, this has been fully studied. It's got the inclusion of the tax credit — Brazilian tax credits. Our total operating costs have increased slightly to 22.41 US dollars per ton milled. What I will say, and I've been encouraging us and communicating this to our investment community, in January this year we increased the resource. I said there's going to be a reciprocal growth in the reserve, which is out now up to 56 million tons. The strip ratio has decreased to 1.4. I will note to everyone that this is within the permitted preliminary license open pit that went into the application, so we see tremendous opportunity to actually in the future increase that reserve and potentially cut back the pit, particularly in the northwest.
The metallurgical results that we published throughout the year, particularly with the resource statement, they've also contributed to the increase in the mineral reserve for Cobre Panama. Resource statement — grew from 50 million to 70 million tons, and now the reserve statement has grown from 40 to 56 million tons. We have very much what we want to be focused now on the execution, generate the exploration activities. As we go into production with this mine, we are already into that resource development phase.
On the schedule, you can see that up front, high-grade mill feed that generates the tremendous economics of the project. Then we have fully planned in the DFS for the expansion case, which takes us up to 4.5 million tons per annum. We have got two products — sorry, one single product now coming out of Cobre Panama. Previously, we were going to produce doré and a copper concentrate. We analyzed the gravity gold and that it had a high contaminant of actually copper, which can produce problems later on in the refining stage. Now, what we're going to produce is just a single product, which is the Cobre Panama copper concentrate.
Gold grade will be up to 2 oz per ton, and the silver can be 3, 4, 5 oz per ton. As we've said in the past and we've actually reported, we are going to produce one of the best copper concentrates that produces one of the most pure blister copper and almost anode-grade copper. So we're very happy with what we've got with the commodity. We're very happy with what we've got with the open pit production profile, and this is leading to the tremendous economics.
We've got a very — what we're looking at here is a mine plan to expand. Of course, with the increased reserve statement, we've had to increase the dry stack tailings. That's gone from handling 40 million tons to 56 million tons of ore, and we can see now that we've fully designed this to minimize trucking routes to optimize the site for the long term. So when we go — when I say it's what is it, 5, 10, 15-year production cycle at the moment, the opportunity to cut that. We want to be able to use this site for the decades to come. We have one of the best exploration portfolios that we're co-developing as we develop this significant copper-gold mine.
On the flow sheet, we have decreased the grind size to 150 microns. We are producing a very clean 29% copper-grade copper concentrate. The high metal recoveries are there — 89% for gold, 92.8% for copper. We have no impurities in this copper concentrate. We are producing for the next decade the best blending or sole smelting copper concentrate going to the market. That makes it highly attractive both for the smelters around the world, but also the trading houses. We've designed the process so it's non-acid generating. We're very conscious of the sensitivities of the environment of mining, the impact of mining. But at the end of the day, we will ensure that our environmental impact is minimized.
We benefit, of course, in being in a fantastic country, being Brazil. We have a bipartisan approach to mining across the political spectrum. We are in Mato Grosso. It's a fantastic state with a lot of hydroelectricity. We are adjacent to some 307 megawatt, 375 megawatt-hours of electricity within a 100 km radius. We've recently been granted the installation license to actually construct the power line to site. We'll invest over 20 million US dollars in offsite infrastructure and long-lead items this year.
So where are we at today? Well, we've completed the DFS. Shortly we'll be filing the 43-101. We'll be going straight into the detailed engineering. We are very well advanced with the project finance discussions. We have submitted the installation license. We're giving guidance that that would be granted in Q1 of 2027. The long-lead items have already been ordered — the main ones, the SAG mill, the transformers. We've selected the IsaMill for the regrind. There's electrical board to be ordered. But all this is being done now. The offsite infrastructure, we have signed contracts for the road and bridges. They're being surveyed now.
So that when we're going to Q2 next year, we have already got that access infrastructure completed and we can go straight into the construction. We're giving an 18-month construction period. At the end of the 18 months, we'll be applying for the operational license so we can go straight into production. Most importantly, when we've got what we consider to be the preeminent exploration portfolio in South America for volcanogenic massive sulfide copper-gold exploration, we're going to continue the exploration, and then I think pretty much see that there'll be an expansion of exploration in the years going forward. That's very important because as soon as you dig that one bucket of ore out of an open pit, you have to be in that resource replacement mindset. But we're starting that now.
As I said, with that exploration portfolio, be it Cabacal as a stand-alone asset that is where all other deposits come into, or Santa Elena, which we're actually permitting for as a second hub, we have the exploration portfolio that most junior companies would desire to have. Such a large greenfields exploration portfolio that is associated with potential near-term cash flow means that in the future, all the exploration success that we hope to achieve goes straight up into our equities. This is important for our shareholders.
Today we've got — quick corporate information — we've got 487 million shares outstanding, some options, some of those go out to the Brazilian team. We're trading a little bit above $2 today, so we're over a pound in London. We're listed on the two main public markets — listed in Toronto, we are also listed in London. We've got a minor listing on the OTCQX and also in Germany. We have a fantastic institutional and retail share base that are contributing equity and supportive equity. We have a suite of large specialist mining banks across Canada and internationally, and in particular in the United Kingdom, supporting and writing up the mine coverage to reach out to those groups and read their analyst reports.
At the board of directors, we're led by Bruce McLeod, who's a well-known mine-building Canadian executive. Myself, Suzy, retired banker, Doug Ford, senior independent director, Neil Gregson, well-known man from the City in London, and we've got two fantastic additions to the board, Felipe Alvarez and Carlos Vinicius. These are very well-known mining guys out of Brazil, and they're great contributors to the board. In the management team, Adrian MacArthur is the president, David Haukebo is our CFO, and James McMurtrie is SVP of corporate development. Martin McFarlane, head of strategy and projects, and Catherine Upfold is our company secretary. In Brazil, Joel is our country manager, and Victor is our chief development officer.
The way we look at these things is Brazil is like a separate business unit. We've got fantastic specialist mine builders now within our company, and we are going to make sure that they deliver and excel to what their capacity is. And it's very important that when in Brazil, just build in Brazilians. It's a fantastic place to build a mine. It's a place where you can actually deploy your capital, build a mine efficiently, get it into production.
So we have a dual-track strategy here: near-term construction, going to production, and then long-term cash flow, and using that cash flow to return to shareholders their wealth, but also to fund the expansion of exploration. Project execution — we are building a build team now in Brazil, and it's very key that with all those guys we're bringing in are incentivized to execute. We're very advanced in our permitting. The preliminary license was granted in Q2 this year. It's in the process in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso. We've got tremendous support by both the federal and state governments in Brazil. Our balance sheet is very strong. We've got over 90 million US dollars in the bank account. This takes away the stress. And this is again what support we receive from both our retail and institutional shareholders.
I'm probably one of the few mining executives that's actually traveled all over the world and looked at many, many jurisdictions. And I can tell you now that where we are in Brazil is an absolute tier-one mining jurisdiction. It's not cowboy country. They have rules. You follow the rules, but you can execute once you follow those rules. At the end of the day, we have got one of the best, as I said, just for Cabacal. And look at Jaru and Arubatanga, the two parallel greenstone belts. Just with the Cabacal belt, we've got over 50 km of belt-scale exploration. We've got multiple targets to follow up on, and that's something we'll be pursuing in the future as we are pursuing today.
I'll now hand it back. If there's any questions, please let me know.
