Hi everyone, it's Sean from SDK Markets here again. We've got Mike Hudson, the international man of exploration, with us today. Mike, we've just pushed your $10 on Southern Cross today. You've had win after win, or accomplishment after accomplishment, this year. May I hand it over to you? Shareholders like me just want to say thanks. It's life-changing for a lot of our investors. A lot of people put a lot of money in and made a lot of money from you. So, wholeheartedly thanks, Mike. The company's just getting bigger, better, and you're doing a terrific job. Thank you.
Well, hopefully a whole lot of money to be made still, Sean, is the key point I think to make here. It's been a wonderful year, without a doubt, and thank you and your supporters for your support. Number one, we're sitting here with a tier one discovery in a tier one jurisdiction with a tier one bull market. Let's not forget that, you know, and it's not necessarily topping as far as I can see in terms of gold. You know, the world is just starting to wake up to the gold trade. And then we've got an amazing group of shareholders. It doesn't get much better, without a doubt, in terms of that mix. I'm very happy, I'm very humble, and very excited for what's going to happen next year, of course, because the project is racing and we've got a lot, lot more to do. We're building a team to build this, and you've seen that now with some of our key appointments.
The drilling is stacking up. We've got one of the largest drill programs, if not the largest, on a pre-development project in the world coming up. We've got 10 rigs today, but we're going to 22 by mid next year. We've got a decline now permitted by the state. The premier of the state announced critical minerals and the approval of that decline as one of her three pillars of her government. And this project just continues to get better and better within that overlay. The antimony piece is very real. It's only 20% of the in-situ recoverable value, so it's an 80% gold project, but we're still one of the top three inventories of antimony in the Western world. And we've got a real opportunity to build that or rebuild the supply chain for the West, which is a very important part. So I'd like to say thank you. Thank you to you. Thank you to your supporters. Thank you to everybody around the company. This has got more than my cuts and cutting the first core, putting the first core trays in the family wagon. Now we've got something like 50-plus people on staff and 25 permanent contractors that will double in the next year. So my team is great, and we'll only get better as we attract more amazing people.
Mike, it's as we've just said, everything is coming together. The team, we've met a lot of them. I know one of our guys who works with us, Boyd, was down on site yesterday. He didn't say much, just came back with a big smile on his face. You said the camaraderie, everyone's working together for it. It's just one of those years that are just transformative for the company. And you think it's gotten good this year, but as you said, next year there's so much more to happen. There's so much more appreciation in the share price with what this thing can make in terms of profit. I've seen you in other videos, I've had conversations with you at lunch. This is just going to be a cash cow when the mine's in production and it's going to produce that.
You can say that. I can't say that in the public domain, Sean, but let's talk to what I can talk to, which is our exploration target is multi-million ounce 10g dirt. And if you think about what that is worth on a per-ton basis, and you look at some of the mine costs in Victoria per ton in our peers that are, you know, sub-$300 a ton to mine it, the margins on these high-grade deposits in Victoria are amazing. And then when you get a scale of deposit that can then allow you to mine more tons per year, the opportunity is phenomenal. And that's why we've attracted some of the best shareholders in the world. You know, we got Pierre Lassonde, who wrote the investment guide literally to the gold market and founded Franco-Nevada, which is now a $70 billion royalty company, amongst many other projects and companies that he's put together. Darren Morham, who's one of the smartest minds in the world, is a very large shareholder and an amazing partner in the business. And then Kier Sacre, who rounds out that 30% holding between the three of them, who is an amazing mind in himself. So we've got an amazing group, and then we've got 25% institutions, and then we've got all this index inclusion that is still ahead of us. You know, we're in the ASX 300 now and a number of other indices. As this company continues to grow and de-risk this project, ideally there'll be more of those coming to the table, and we start getting into some of the larger and better-known indices globally.
I think you're close to the ASX 200, which is one of the biggest in Australia, which is what the benchmarks are all against. I think you're starting to hit the requirements for that. But Mike, you've got the antimony piece, which you always said that would get you permitted. There could be some interesting stuff there happening next year. You're drilling deeper, you're expanding out further from the one and a half k's that's currently the footprint that you're on. You're right, there's so much more upside in this project than the exploration target where you're currently at. Fosterville, let's remember, you've got your numbers with what it cost to mine from that when we first started. That was your comparable, and it still is. That found it deeper, and you've still not gotten into that Swan zone yet, but you found so much gold above it. So, here's hoping this thing gets two or three times bigger from where we're at now, just in the footprint where we're at. You've still got nine and a half, ten k's to go to explore. So, you're right, this isn't the end. This is just the beginning, realistically.
Based on science, which is looking at that depth and how it gets better, we're just starting to approach that sweet spot in four out of five of the different parts of the system that we've been drilling. So, arguably, on a scientific basis, we haven't even seen the best of what this deposit can deliver, despite it delivering some of the best, if not the best, continuous hits in the space globally. So, it is something very special.
