Thank you, Duncan, and thank you, everyone, for the opportunity to present Aeris Resources again. Talked about it earlier, I think it's probably year 10 or 11. I guess this year we'd like to just take a step back. The last three years have been, every time I was here, it's like we're working towards an improvement, working towards an improvement. In 2024, when we put the Jaguar copper/zinc mine in care and maintenance, it was a restart of working ourselves back up. 2025 was a better year than 2024. You'll see through the presentation that 2026 again looked a lot better, but also setting 2027 up as a significantly better year for Aeris. The focus for today will be the strategy for the next 12 months on the assets in Aeris. As you might know, we've got the Tritton copper mine in New South Wales.
This year, Tritton will really step up production by about 38%, and we'll talk a bit more on that. Looking at production of around 24,000 - 29,000 tons of copper metal and about 8,000 ounces of gold on top. We've got the Cracow gold mine. That mine will do about 40,000 ounces. You can see there between the two productions, the guidance sets around 40,000 - 49,000 copper equivalent production, which is roughly around, for the gold miners, around 130,000 ounces of gold on an annualized basis. On the project side, we've got the North Queensland assets. We'll talk in a bit more detail, but we're planning to sell those. The Jaguar copper/zinc mine, which, as I said earlier, was put in care and maintenance around two years ago, we've worked up now a clear plan on what we're doing with JAG.
The Stockman project is a well-advanced project in Victoria, which we'll go through. Clearly, we're an operator, we've got good projects. This year, the real focus is going to be on operational delivery. A lot of work's going into Tritton and Cracow. The step change for Tritton is the execution of the Murrawombie pit. Historically, every time when Tritton does around 30,000 tons of copper, is when we have a good solid base load of about a million tons, feeding a 1.8 million ton capacity process plant. Historically, that was a Tritton underground mine, which would typically do a million tons, and then you add a few other small undergrounds to it and you get your tons. The Murrawombie pit, we've already done stage one. Those tons have just gone through finally in July, and we're busy doing the pre-strip for stage two.
That will take about 5-6 months, and you'll see in the slides coming up what that will do to the production profile. The clear change and strategic delivery of the Constellation deposit is really the game changer for Tritton, where this was discovered about five years ago. We're planning to go from the Murrawombie pit to the Constellation pit and start the production of Constellation basically as we move forward in 2027, 2028. The big focus for this year, we've doubled the exploration budget across the business, is about resource extensions. Historically, we've just drilled enough ahead of ourselves for the next year or two. We've put in a big effort to put a real organic growth opportunity for all the resource extensions, and you'll see when we talk about Tritton what's the plan.
At Cracow, and I was talking to Shelda the other day, who's been in for a while, we were actually supposed to do the rehabilitation of the Cracow mine this year. It would have been done. We bought it four or five years ago from Evolution. We thought there's two years, we know there's two years of reserves, we thought there's four years. Today, we've got exactly the same view and the potential for a real upside, and we'll talk about that. It is about what's the organic opportunities for Cracow. We made the clear decision that we want to focus our operational focus on longer life, strong resource, bigger mines. Our North Queensland assets, we had the Mount Colin copper mine, which was a small 8,000-ton copper mine, toll treated through Ernest Henry. When we bought those assets, capital was spent, so it was all about just making cash.
It is small assets, and we decided to simplify the business and to get a clear path forward. We will sell those North Queensland assets, and we're busy with the final stage of that sale process. On JAG, we've put in care and maintenance with a view to restart. One of the clear things which has come around is we are not going to restart JAG on the same basis of what we had before, a five or six-year life of mine plan. When you do those, people expect it to close again. We are going to drop the care and maintenance costs from about $2 million a quarter to $600,000 a quarter and take that money. There's eight really good exploration targets for base metals. Drill it out and start this mine back up with a 10-plus year mine life.
Now, the drilling of that will be done in this financial year, and we'll see where that takes us. There's also exceptional gold exploration opportunity. Now, that is a base metal mine. The gold you'll see in the slides coming up, that is one of the things we will be looking for. Either you put it in a JV or you drill it yourself, but there's high potential upside on the gold for JAG. At Stockman, it is a 12-year reserve life project of copper equivalent grades of over 3.7% copper. It is just the final stages. We're doing an album process test work. Once that's done in the next three months, we will update this study, but we will then start to look at strategic partners to come in to help develop that project further.
On the growth side, greenfields exploration and organic growth or brownfields exploration or resource extensions at the operations is a clear focus. We always look for opportunities. We always look for opportunities in the Tritton region. It is a large plant. You want to create significant life, so we always look for growth opportunities outside of our current assets, as we've done for the last seven years. On the balance sheet, we've got $40 million of debt currently in place, payable in August. You'll see when I talk you through the guidance, clearly, if we achieve those numbers, we will repay that debt from cash flow and reset the balance sheet as we move forward. On the guidance, compared to FY 2025 production is going up.
Tritton is going from 19,000 tons in FY 2025 to 24,000 - 29,000 tons in FY 2026, and it is on the back of the open pit, but also the really good grades we're getting out of Avoca Tank of over 2% copper. On the gold side, it's going slightly down. It's not material. It's small, going between 44,000 and 56,000, and everything else. You'll see there's more growth capital, lower sustaining capital, more growth. That is all about the pre-strips, about $50 million in the next six months, which will go into the pre-strip of the Murrawombie pit. Starting the month of the year off with a good balance of cash and receivables, but clearly that exploration budget was last year was about $10 million. This year it's over, it's around $20 million, which we'll put into the exploration. I'll just touch on Tritton.
So Tritton, large tenement package, typically we'll mine 2-3 mines, feed the 1.8 million ton process plant. As I said earlier, production guidance is up by about 30% year- on- year, and we clearly see the benefits of the capital investments we made over the last two or three years with Avoca Tank, Budgerigar, and Murrawombie Pit starting to pay off in FY 2026-FY 20 27. There you can see the operational performance, really a nice step up for Tritton, and that whole process and Constellation then flows off from the Murrawombie pit production as we move forward into 2027. This is why we believe 2026 and 2027 will be strong financial years. You can see there, the line is the plant capacity. From January, we will deliver significant tons in the final stage of Murrawombie pit, so 900,000 tons will basically flow over into FY 2027.
In FY 2027, we'll start the capital works and development of the Constellation pit, which will then deliver the next four or five years of open pit mining. For the next, let's call it five years, Tritton will have significant tons from the open pit, and then really it's about the extension of the current undergrounds. You can see there the meters which we've planned to drill at Tritton. I can't remember in the last 10 years that we've drilled 80,000 meters at Tritton to really look at all these potential extensions. Just to put it a bit of context, that's the start of the whole Tritton mine. Currently, that's 1.3 kilometers deep, and we're still mining, and we're getting really good intersections there.
The south wing, Budgerigar is one of the mines we're currently mining, and the Avoca Tank, although it's small, it is delivering 2 - 3% copper and makes a big difference. Clearly, the focus for us is drilling the extensions of those three deposits. We will drill the Avoca Tank . We're actually busy drilling it because in our current plan, the last three months of the year doesn't have any Avoca Tank . We already drilled the whole 400 meters below V Avoca Tank and intersected the mineralization, so we know it's there. You can see all these ore bodies remain open and dead. You need to put the money in, and that's the clear plan and focus for FY 2026 for Tritton. When you look at Cracow, Cracow is a very neat, tidy little operation. Shouldn't call it little. It still produces good copper. A 600,000-ton process facility.
You can see there, since we acquired it from Evolution, we've increased the resource. We spend quite a bit of money in resource extension. It is settled around that 40,000- 50,000 ounces of gold annually. At that sort of level, everyone knows what's the gold price. It does generate good cash, which then enables us to put more exploration dollars into this, but also to execute on the copper strategy at Tritton as we grow Tritton to that 30,000-ton producer. There you can see that settlement. It's settling around that sort of 40,000 - 50,000 ounces. Clearly for us, it's about what's next. Currently, all the production is coming out of that Western Windfield. The two really good opportunities for greenfields exploration are sitting in this Southern Windfield and the Western Frontier. This year, we will test those. It's under about 300 - 400 meters of cover.
When you talk to Brad, our Head of Geology, that is where he believes you can find the next Western Windfield. One of the real exciting opportunities, and actually talking to Simon who worked at Cracow earlier, there was this open pit over the Golden Plateau operation. This is historical mining in the 1930s, mining 10 gram a ton. You can see all the gray areas. That's old stopes. You can see there that the great local drilling is sitting down with those intersections. What we're working on is to put a bigger open cut mine over this and then mine it. There was an open pit mine doing about 2.5 million tons at 2.7 gram a ton. That's the historical results.
This is an exciting opportunity where you can actually get Cracow, where you normally only have two years in reserves and only have a two-year life you can talk about. There's a potential for a really large target of around 200,000 - 400,000 ounces of gold sitting in this potential deposit. The work will be done within the next two to three months. We'll know if this works out, the material life for Cracow will change significantly to a much more defined, longer life as we move forward. I'll just touch on Cracow. You can see those targets. As I said earlier, we're going to drop the cost. We're going to drill it out. Those eight targets will be tested this year to really create that life where you can have a sustainable business, where you can spend money and create the life and returns you're looking for from JAG.
The other opportunity you can see there, it sits Thunderbolts to the north, King of the Hills to the south. These are all gold exploration targets. You can see Great Western, Wonder Underground is literally, I think, 8 - 15 kilometers away from some of these targets. We will start to look at, are we spending money ourselves or are we putting it in a JV? Because we believe, although it's a base metal mine, if you find gold there, obviously the gold miners will be very interested to talk to us about that as an opportunity. At Stockman, as I said earlier, we're doing the Albion process test work, which looks very successful. We've been approached by the Victorian government on the sulfuric acid flow sheet because 50% of that ore body is pyrite. As another product, we're busy doing scoping studies on that and flow sheet designs.
Within the next three months, we'll have those results. We will start to look at a partner to come in to take this project to the next level. Really, at the end of the day, production is stepped up significantly year on year. The business is well set for growth. We're spending a lot more money on exploration and getting that resource base stronger. As I said, we're always looking for opportunities to grow within and outside of the business to really create shareholder value as we move forward. Thank you very much.