Kyle, how you going? All right. Okay, well, thanks for that introduction, Kyle. I love the idea of traveling 16,000 kim to be introduced from someone from Perth who lives probably less than 10 km from where I live. Let's do this. Astral Resources' first time presenting here at Denver. As some high-level background, Astral, we are developing the Mandilla Gold Project. It is located 70 km south of Kal in the gold fields of W.A. The project consists of Mandilla, Spargoville, and Feysville, and it hosts 2.1 million ounces at 1 gram per tonne. All of this will feed into a 2.75 million tonne per annum processed plant, which is a conventional 3 million gold plant to be located at Mandilla.
That was all detailed in our pre-feasibility that was published in June of 2025, and it will be superseded in the March quarter of next year when we publish our DFS. We are currently drilling at Mandilla. We have two drill rigs there. One diamond rig, which is testing Theia Deeps, which is our cornerstone 1.4 million ounce deposit, and an RC rig, also at Theia, which is completing a 12 by 12 m infill program to de-risk the first 16 months of mine production. To date, Theia Deeps program has been extremely successful. We have demonstrated the potential to almost double the vertical extent of the gold mineralization there, and the RC program is certainly meeting expectations with the averaged assay grade of all the reported intervals so far, well above the mineral resource grade.
From an investment highlights perspective, I think the equation is actually relatively simple. This is the West Australian gold fields. It is a great jurisdiction. It has a relatively stable political landscape. The community is strongly supportive of mining, and the area is rich in established infrastructure. As I said earlier, we have 2.1 million ounces at 1 g. This will continue to grow with resource updates at Spargoville, which should be out in the next week or so, Kamperman in the December quarter, and then Theia early next year. The pre-feas did point to 12 years at close to 100,000 ounces per annum of gold production. Even at a base case of a US gold price of $2,975, the project had a 12-month payback and a $1 billion net present value in US dollar terms.
At today's gold price, notwithstanding the 3% drop last night, that's close to $2 billion in US net present value. We are well-funded to complete the DFS and move into development. We've got $46 million in the bank and line of sight on another $35 million with the early revenue opportunity at Feysville. That DFS is in progress and will be completed in the March quarter, and certainly, at the moment, we are very cheap compared to our peers. Who's got a smart device on? Who's trying to connect to my screen? Is it just this one then?
Yeah, it's only that one.
Okay. It's all right then. Focusing on Mandilla, you can see the location 70 km south of Kalgoorlie, and it is 600 km east of Perth. In the pre-feas, the mine was operating for 13 years and the plant for close to 20 years. A long-lived, high-margin, open-pit gold mine. The processed plant is a conventional 3 million plant, and it is a conventional large-scale open-pit mine. The deposits all exhibit very high metallurgical recoveries, so 95% recovery, 150-micron grind, so a very coarse grind, which will lend itself to pretty cost-effective processing. At Theia, we have demonstrated the ore body remains open at depth. The Theia Deeps diamond drill program is continuing to return typical Theia-style mineralization well below the current MRE. As I said, double the vertical extent. The Spargoville tenure also represents additional upside, and so does Kamperman.
Both of those areas we will be drilling in the next couple of weeks. Corporately, we are well-funded, AUD 46 million in the bank. With that early mining opportunity coming in from Feysville, we expect to be able to top up our bank balance. Relatively well-supported from an analyst coverage perspective. The share price did cop a smack post the Iran war. It is certainly starting to bounce back. It does present a very unique opportunity to invest in a developer, given we are so cheap compared to our peers. If I look at the developer peer group, I will limit it to Ausgold and Musgrave Minerals at the moment, so 1 gram per tonne open-pit developers. Musgrave Minerals, at the top of that peer group, extremely well-funded now, but bear in mind, they are going to be paying out 6.9% in royalties for the next 6 million ounces.
Ausgold, another peer, being snapped up by the TSX-listed OceanaGold. Both of those being valued in the AUD 300 per ounce EV range, well over double where Astral is currently sitting. We will be significantly de-risking the Mandilla Gold Project over the next couple of months, and as a result, we do present as a very cheap opportunity to gain exposure to open-pit developers in Western Australia. From a board perspective, we do have Mark Connelly as our chair. He has been successful in building mines. Probably more recently, a lot more successful in delivering opportunistic M&A. Justin Osborne was key to the successful drill-out of the Gruyere Gold Mine in Western Australia. David Varcoe, who is also on our board, principal mining engineer of AMC Consultants, effectively does open-pit development studies for a living.
The board is reasonably well-equipped to steer us as a management team as we develop Mandilla. From a management team perspective, we know how to run a cheap junior explorer. We also know how to build and operate gold projects. The bulk of this team did take EganStreet's Rothsay Gold Project all the way through to fully permitted and were successfully bought out by Silver Lake Resources. Importantly, this operation is still operating today, and it has delivered exactly what was written on the tin, and that technical work was done by this team, which is now developing the Mandilla Gold Project. Moving on to the pre-feas. This is the study that we did publish in June last year. The mine designs were actually based on a USD gold price of $2,100, and the base case revenue assumption was $2,975. It is a simple large-scale open pit.
The strip ratio around 6: 1. It was premised on a three-stage crush and a single-stage grind, 2.75 million tons per annum with exceptional gold recoveries, as I mentioned earlier, 95% at 150-micron grind. To reiterate our location, we are talking about building a gold mine a mile off a major arterial highway, 15 miles from a regional town that has an airport and established mine workers accommodation. As builds go, this should be relatively simple. Importantly, at a gold price of $ 4,300, the payback on this AUD 160 million development is six months. The internal rate of return is 190%. The NPV in US dollar terms is $2 billion, and the free cash flow is $4 billion. This is a solid project with fantastic financial metrics located on Kalgoorlie's doorstep. With the DFS, it is in progress and is well advanced.
We have received the CapEx and OpEx costs from our engineering supplier. We are in the middle of doing that dreaded value engineering phase, looking at the CapEx and OpEx trade-offs. We are focused on costs, but at the same time, I am not going to be so focused on trading a CapEx savings for an OpEx cost that I am going to bear for the rest of my life when I am running this mine. We are working through that now. The ITE, the independent technical expert, that is underway, focused on the mineral resource estimate for Mandilla. Debt financing will be a critical step for us, and getting an early completion on that ITE will allow us to transition from DFS to a final investment decision as quickly as possible. Detailed mine designs and schedules are underway, as is the mine contractor pricing.
We did announce yesterday a transaction that has simplified the ownership of our tenure across Mandilla and Spargoville. That transaction was a long time coming. It was a difficult negotiation, but it does now give us unfettered access to develop our project and support our approvals. Now that the site layouts are effectively finalized, we will be submitting our Works Approval, Native Vegetation Clearing Permit, and the Mine Development and Closure Plan in this December quarter. From a schedule perspective, delivery in the March quarter, the infill drilling that we are doing will give us all of that stage one in a measured category by the time we get to that final investment decision. That is about 16 months worth of mill feed at our 12.5 By 12.5 drill density.
We are certainly well-funded to complete the DFS and move into that final investment decision process. As I mentioned earlier, I will talk about it a bit more, we are focused on this early revenue opportunity with Think Big. Three slides on Theia. I just want to talk to how we have managed to grow this at depth and how we are de-risking it with the infill as well. We set out to do a 3,000 m program earlier this year. Since then, we have extended that now to 11,000 m. This isometric drawing shows where visible gold has been logged with each of these diamond holes that we have drilled. Every hole has demonstrated the potential to significantly increase the scale of Theia, and as I mentioned before, we can already see the ability to double the vertical extent of this deposit.
We are now focused on understanding what is the strike extent of this at depth, which is why we have extended it to 11,000 m. The isometric drawing shows two section locations that I will just quickly talk through. Hole 263, 16 m at 4, 127 m at 1.2, and 81 m at 1.4, a significant extension at depth. The next hole, 259, also returned 45 m at 2.2 just beneath the pit shell, and then several intersections all the way down to 700 m of downhole depth. Theia remains open on this section. The next section is 100 m south, so 378 returned 53 m at 4.7. Hole 377, there is just the visible gold and the quartz logging on the drill trace there.
Those drill results are starting to come through now, and we are very confident that we are going to demonstrate another high-grade result, very similar to that 53 m at 5 in 377. Certainly building the concept to be able to demonstrate how we can move underground, post mining the Theia open pit. Again, it remains open at depth on this section. Now, with the infill, we have been progressing this. It is on track to finish by the end of the year. What you can see there is the light blue drill collars are the RC drilling that is remaining inside stage one. That yellow shape is the stage one open pit. It is 4.2 million tons at 1.1 grams per ton. That is what the pre-feas spoke to in terms of this first 16 months worth of mining. We are over halfway through this drill program.
To date, the first 99 holes, 11,000 m, we averaged 1.9 grams per ton. We subsequent to that report, another 206 RC holes for 14,500 m, and we are averaging 1.4 grams per ton. This is a 1.1 gram per ton resource. So it is certainly delivering in terms of the resource confidence we need, and it is meeting, if not exceeding, the expectations with regards to the grade here. With Mandilla, we have a long life, large scale open pit. We do have two additional projects, one adjacent to Mandilla in Spargoville, and the other 65 km by road, which is Feysville. Feysville is 14 km south of Kalgoorlie. Three deposits, Think Big, Kamperman, and Rogan Josh. We have recently completed a heritage survey there.
We just got the clearance, and we expect to be back drilling with a diamond rig at Kamperman as soon as we get the drill pads cleared. That will be following up some high-grade results we got from Kamperman earlier this year, which included 14 m at 7, 13 m at 7, 21 at 3, 15 at 4, and 23 at 3. We are keen to get back into Kamperman. We are also updating that Kamperman MRE for the December quarter. The last time we updated it was at an AUD 2,500 gold price. We will redo the calcs at AUD 4,500. We are going to get a free kick in resource growth just from the gold price alone, let alone those new results from earlier this year and what we are going to achieve with the diamond program that is about to commence.
With the early revenue opportunity, we did announce last year that we were going to progress a funded JV-style agreement to mine Think Big. The satellite mines at Feysville were in the pre-feas, but they are not core to the development of Mandilla. This opportunity just allows us to bring revenue forward by 3- 4 years. Depending on the gold price at the time, Think Big could certainly contribute around $35 million to our bank balance. You add that to the $46 million we have at the moment, and it does provide a developer that is very well-funded as we move into the development of Mandilla. The Native Vegetation Clearing Permit for this has been received. The Mine Development and Closure Plan is submitted and is currently under approval, and we expect to commence mining in the March quarter of next year.
Our JV partner in Mineral Mining Services has recently completed 6,000 m of infill. Results are on screen there, 11 m at 7, 12 at 6, 3 at 10, 2 at 10, 9 at 6, and another couple of intersections at 8 GM. Think Big is certainly continuing to shape up as a very profitable early revenue opportunity for us. Moving on to Spargoville. We got control of this through the takeover of Maximus Resources in May last year. It made a significant difference to the size of our holding there at Mandilla. We have reviewed that area. We have 17 prospective areas that we are keen to start drilling. The first priority is the Wattle Dam complex. There is a series of deposits known as the Spiders. We have just updated that, so that will be coming out in the next week.
We also updated Eagles Nest and 8500N. Again, at the same time as we did the heritage survey at Kamperman, we completed one focused on Wattle Dam. We got that clearance as well last week, and the plan is to move the RC rig into there in the next couple of weeks as well. Something to remember is Spargoville, the deposits at Spargoville will be less than a couple of kilometers away from the Mandilla process plant. We will be mining high-grade ore from Spargoville and using that to supplement the Mandilla base load when we get into production. Coming up, we will be reporting ongoing results from Theia Deeps and the Theia Infill. We will continue to do work on de-risking the development pathway for Mandilla.
We'll put out updates on Spargoville and Kamperman in this December quarter. Our plan is to recommence exploration at both Spargoville and Kamperman in the coming weeks. Think Big will commence mining in the March quarter and expect revenue in the June quarter of 2027. The DFS in the March quarter and also an update to Mandilla in the March quarter as well. To wrap up, Mandilla is already a long-life, high-margin open-pit mine. It will get bigger as we continue to grow at both Spargoville and Kamperman, notwithstanding the depth extensions that we've had at Theia Deeps as well. We are well-funded with $ 46 million in the bank, a line of sight on another $3 5 million. That funding will see us very well capitalized as we move into development. Compared to our peers, we are trading at a significant developer discount at the moment.
Thank you.
Thanks, Marc. Any questions for Marc from the floor? Might just ask a quick one, Marc. You are six months away from a decision to mine. Any thoughts put towards long lead items and such?
It is a long answer, this one. The interesting thing, GR Engineering are very keen on a single-stage crush, SABC circuit. The pre-feas was premised on a three-stage crush, single-stage ball mill. We are still working through that in terms of our flow sheet selection. Once we confirm that, then we can look at the long leads. We just got a whole pricing submission from one of the OEM vendors, and we are talking 32 weeks for the longest lead item. So we have plenty of time still.
Sure.
All right.
Maybe just talk to the teams build-out, what that is looking like as another one of the developers.
Look, our GM is already on board. We are well enough resourced to deliver the DFS. I think once we get past the DFS and we have line of sight on FID, that is when we will start to build the team. We are a few months behind where Grant is. I do not need to be building that team just yet. I would not mind some additional resources around approvals and environmental. Technical guys, we have some consultants that we are relying on for the process infrastructure and non-process infrastructure at the moment.
Fantastic. Any more questions for Marc? Christian? Go for it. Christian, what is the upper limit you have for the?
A number that I can talk to you offline. If you get your plant operational nice and early, I am happy to talk to you. Okay. Loaded question, that one. Thank you.
Very good. Thanks, Marc.
Cheers.