Thank you. Thanks, guys, and thanks, MST, for providing some coverage for us as well, which has done great. I will caution people listening in, thanks for sticking with us and through the other great presentations as well. I'll try and be fairly quick. There's fairly a lot to get through. We are in a trading halt at the moment due to a capital raise, so I'll just caution that. We had an offer come, you know, 20% premium to what we've been trading at in the last 30 days. That is going to position us well to progress the two projects that I want to talk about today. I will caution as well, I am traveling and I do have very poor Wi-Fi, so I'll turn my camera off and just speak.
If I do cut out, feel free to go and read up on the materials at a later date. The two projects I want to talk about today are two of our portfolio. We've got three. We've got the Storm Project in Nunavut in Canada, and we have West Desert and Copper Warrior, which are both in Utah, which is currently ranked number one sort of mining jurisdiction on the planet. Three projects, all North American based. I'll only talk about briefly Storm and West Desert today, but I encourage you to do more research on us after this session. I will reflect on this photo just quickly because this will become more apparent later how we manage to be able to process this mineralization, this copper mineralization at a very low cost and highly efficiently. You can see it's very coarse.
It's essentially copper sulfide, mostly chalcocite, which is 80% copper, hosted in dolomite. Two very distinct minerals and mineralogies and also physical properties, which allow us to do what we want to do from the processing point of view.
So what s torm is presenting is a very low capital, very near-term project and development project, which sits in essentially a district-scale copper opportunity. That's very rare in the junior space. These kind of land packages are usually in the hands of majors. We, us and our joint venture partner, own it 100%. I'll talk to the economics and all the other bits and pieces in a second. You can see there, we're located in northern Canada, and a lot of Australian investors roll their eyes, but I can guarantee, and particularly where I am now, it's very easy to work up there. We are in essentially a mining district that, I don't know, it's probably the northern equivalent to sort of the Kalgoorlie, where there's 10 existing or past operating mines in the area, a lot of base metal mines and a lot in pre-development.
There's also a lot of exploration up in this part of the world. We're located sort of on a deep-water bay, right next to the main shipping channel, and very close to Polaris and Nanisivik, which were both Teck, coming and very profitable mines in the days while they operated. We use ship predominantly to get things in and get things out, and that's going to be the way we do it once we enter development. It's a quick snapshot on the economics and what this really has provided us in the PEA. All these numbers, as the way copper's going, are going to be significantly improved. We did the PEA at $4.50, $4.60. Obviously, it's a lot higher than that now, so you can expect things better in the future. We're in the middle of a PFS, which will update these. The key takeaways here are the initial capital.
This mine will be very cheap to get up and running. We've got some sensational partners in here to back us for most of 80% of this cost. It's near-term, it's very low footprint, it's very light on from an ESG perspective, so that's going to work in our favor in terms of permitting, and it's going to be very high margin. Just as the PEA presents it, it's about $300 million it's going to make for us in the first five to six years. That, as a company particularly our size, is something very compelling. I must point out as well that this is stage one for Storm. This is an initial starter mine that will allow us to put this capital and deploy that back into the project and the district scale and to grow this over many, many years. This is what stage one essentially looks like.
All of the resources are very close to surface, if not outcropping. That allows us to mine highly efficiently, all open pit at this point. The initial resource is about 21 million tons over percent copper. The mining inventory at this point is about half of that, 10.3 million tons at a higher grade copper. Certainly, the work we've done this year is going to increase that significantly, which will add to mine life, or it'll add to more copper at times out the door in the first instance on a yearly basis. This is a real key to Storm and why we've... Storm is a sediment hosted copper deposit. That is unique. They generally sit in that 0.5%- 2% range. They generally form in that 250 million ton range in terms of a camp, multiple deposits.
We're sort of sitting in that sort of grain range at the moment, but we're certainly not sitting in the resource range. That's the potential growth here. With that, it's a very, very simple mineralogy. A lot of the VMS deposits are polymetallic. You need to separate those things hydrometallurgically. Given the sulfide is essentially copper with silver credits, it allows us to do this. It's world leading in terms of its footprint and its ESG credentials because there's no tailings, there's no reagents, it's very cheap, and it's highly effective because of the mineralogy. Like I said, it's essentially like we use ore sorting in the first phase, and that 70% of the mineralization and ore goes through the ore sorting circuit. That gives us recoveries in the 70%- 72% range.
That's going to be significantly increased with the work we're doing now, which will obviously, again, provide better copper tons out the door. In the second phase, the fines go through a DMS circuit essentially. It's one of the oldest technologies on the planet, almost like gold panning. Given the chalcocite mineralization is twice the density of the host rock, that allows us to do this. As you saw, it's very coarse as well, which means it's very simple to sort of crush, screen, sort into an ore and a waste pile. The other thing, the waste pile will contain some copper because we do get slightly lower recoveries than the hydromet, and we are working on that, like I said. We've shown that this stuff does float very well. Stage two, depending on what that looks like, flotation is absolutely an option for that going forwards as well.
Now, what really does de-risk Storm and American West Metals is our partnerships for the project. Very early on, we've had Taurus invested and purchased essentially another 1.925% royalty for essentially $17.5 million. Most of those, two of those tranches have come in already, and there's a third tranche still remaining to be paid out, which is about $5 million Australian. That has also opened the door for Ocean Partners to come in. Ocean Partners is a global metals trading company. They are the experts in this kind of mineralization. They do DSOs out of Africa on a daily basis and move them worldwide. These guys have come in with an equity stake in the company of 10% or just under 10%. They've come in for funding up to 80% of the Storm roject development capital, that initial capital, which is essentially up to $40 million.
They get the secured 100% of the offtake on what's been defined under the PEA. That really does de-risk us in terms of the ongoing project and actually having to build the thing and find a partner to do this at a later date. We believe there's a very small delta between the capital. We can do that through, you know, with Taurus's help and other means. We're looking at other ways of funding the project through the critical metal funds. There's many in Canada for process innovation, which would qualify critical minerals. Also in the States, a lot of the American ones also classify for Canada as well. We're pursuing those options so that we hope will actually offset a lot of the debt funding. Comparison, we think we're undervalued compared to some of the great companies you've heard this morning as well.
I think there's significant growth in our valuation. I'll leave that for you guys to sort of do some research in the interest of time. This is the opportunity I'm talking about. This is the long-term picture. 2,200 sq km, we own 100% of the copper belt. Again, as our joint venture, that's very, very rare. If you talk about growth potential, we've highlighted a number of regions that we need to put more exploration money into. There's copper exposed at both ends of the belt and essentially along the whole prospective horizon. That gives us the encouragement that this absolutely is going to be one of those sediment hosted copper belts that falls into those hundreds of millions in tons over time. These things do take time to emerge and to develop. That's what, you know, we're hoping that Storm stage one can essentially pay for the exploration there.
Once you have a mine going, the exploration up here is about a quarter of the cost because you're moving on the ground. There's less reliance on helicopters and aviation. You're there essentially all year round. That's the opportunity here. That's what we're aiming for. That's what we see, a very long future for this project. Some of the intersections we're getting, we've got some, you know, the work we've done to that this year has really shown that there's a lot more to be found even in the immediate storm and tornado regions. That's where I guess exploration will move out. There's gossans exposed along kilometers and kilometers of faults. We've got drilling that's shown that there's a depth that we're finding, you know, one of the holes at cyclone deeps hit 10 m at 1.2% copper.
A lot of these holes as well, getting that 2% and 3% copper hits as well, that shows that there is an economic mineralization potential at depth. We just now have to focus and find those best parts of it. This gives an indication of what we see, you know, Cyclone deposit's about 15 million tons on its own. We think we've found the second half of it potentially, and more drilling will be required to really define that and flesh it out. If that's the case, and it sits in that sort of 20 million- 40 million ton range, and that's a Mateo, that's a billion dollar asset in Sandfire's portfolio. You can see that there, you know, quite quickly we can add tons to this by finding more cyclone size and Stall deposits. Essentially, you know, the catalyst for storm coming up, there's a lot.
As the PFS stuff is very advanced, we're moving that quickly. That'll build into, you know, upgraded metallurgical and processing information and use in the short term. We've got an updated resource to come out, which you'll see most of that go into the indicated category and therefore into reserve. We've got the PFS permitting underway. There's two, I guess, phases of that. There's the exploration and there's also the development side of things, which are progressing. Lots of news there. We've got a lot of assays to come, and I apologize, you know, to some investors that may be listening in. They have taken longer. We've had to, because we're doing the PFS and we're doing some SGs and a lot of other bits and pieces, some of the assays have taken longer to come back, but they'll be out very, very shortly.
We're probably expecting, you know, hopefully weekly news flow from now until the, you know, the next couple of months, both around Storm and also West Desert, which I'll talk to now. Again, in the interest of time, I'll go very, very quickly, but West Desert is located in Utah. It's part of the Bingham Canyon Tintic mineral district. We're only about 160 km from Salt Lake City, so it's very accessible. It's in the Sevier Orogeny, which is, again, host to Bingham Canyon, and this is a porphyry-related system. What we've found to date is essentially a zinc, copper, silver, indium, and gold skarn with a lot of other things, which I'll talk to you in a second. That's where the initial exploration's been done, essentially defined an initial resource, but only 10% of the porphyry margin's been explored.
Look, we're not in the business for exploring for porphyry-style mineralization, but as Bingham Canyon shows, as Tintic shows, these skarns generally occur in clusters around the porphyry. We've only found one to date. There's a lot of good intersections outside of this. The upside that we believe is certainly in the critical metals here. We're getting a lot of interest, and some of this capital that's coming in in the next couple of days is around actually advancing West Desert as well. Some of this, so the initial zinc skarn sort of sits off the porphyry, but closer between the porphyry and the zinc skarn, zinc dominant skarn, we get these zones of, it's essentially a pretty tailor-made mineralization for today's market. It's very high-grade in copper, gold, and silver, but it also has indium and gallium, which we don't understand the extent yet.
This is the world's largest, one of the world's largest undeveloped indium deposits, and it's the only JORC-compliant resource in the U.S. The U.S. is a 100% net importer of indium, and its current suppliers are China, which has now cut supply off, Sweden, Canada, and some of those suppliers are drying up as well. That puts us in a very good position to move this forward again through some of that critical metals funding. You can see some of these grades. We get grades up to 12 g gold. We get copper up to 4% copper, and there's even smaller intersections of 14% copper. It's the indium and the silver here. We get multiple hundreds of grams per ton silver in some of these zones and also in the indium. This is exciting. We've got a few holes into this copper zone.
Because it doesn't show up on the geophysics as well, there's a lot to do here. We've got a drill hole that's one kilometer east of the West Desert deposit, which has hit 3.5% copper, 8% zinc, and very high-grade silver and indium. That's a kilometer away, and it's completely open. It shows you the scale of this project, but also the intense valuation upside we believe in these rare and pretty hot metals right now. We're going to move that forward. Again, that'll take a little bit of, as some investors would know, we generally are seasonal at Storm. We like to do the exploration mostly in the summer and the spring there. This gives us the opportunity to have that sort of year-round news flow and to do some very, you know, we're not going to just go out and drill all of this.
We've got some pretty high-priority targets that will first be off, first cap off the rank. Certainly, these copper, gold, and high critical metal grade zones are certainly going to be the focus for us going forwards. Getting in the interest of time. I must say this is a historical mining district. Most of the West Desert deposit sits on private land, which we own 100%. It is an existing mine. There's a lot of waste dumps in the area, which can be reprocessed. Some of them are very, very high in silver and zinc and lead. There's a potential opportunity there. We know certainly the government's approaching us and being able to recycle some of these old waste dumps. That's an opportunity here that exists as well. I might just leave it at that and open it up to the questions.
You know, plenty of action going on there across multiple projects. I'd like to start with the last of the U.S. projects first, galena, indium, even the copper there as well. The U.S. seems to be in a little bit of a, in this last 12 months, a bit of a frenzy on its critical minerals policies. What sort of funding is available to a company like yourselves that's exploring for some of these, or has some of these minerals in their portfolios?
Yeah, and look, it's not so much the copper, gold, silver. It's more the things that they don't have. Gallium and indium, germanium, you know, and titanium, all of these are 100% imported into the U.S. To be honest, the indium is not the largest economic driver for the current resource. Obviously, most of the value is in the huge amounts of zinc and copper and gold, et cetera. It might be enough to really just unlock the door to some of these funding pathways. We've been approached by the Department of Defense, prior Department of Energy, and local government as well to move this forward because there is a push, there is a shortage, and we're certainly seeing a lot of interest. There are a couple of examples.
I mean, we're the Copper Warrior Project, which is southern Utah, that sits next to Utah's second largest copper mine, Lisbon Valley there. They've been waiting for permits for years to develop the new pit of theirs, and that was part of that Fast 41 fast track, and that's now up and running. When the U.S. decides to go, they move very, very quickly.
We have been joined by Michael Bentley, esteemed research analyst also in the resources space. It looks like he's got some questions to draw out for investors to listen to.
No, thanks for that credit there, Peter, being esteemed. I appreciate that. Hey, Dave, thanks very much for the presentation today. There are probably two key questions I just want to touch on. One of the things you spoke to was about focusing on the development of Storm, which will allow you to generate the cash, get on the ground, and then really hit the rest of the project with you, with a sort of a grand scale exploration program. Am I reading that right? Is that the real focus on Storm at the moment to get that into production as rapidly as possible?
Absolutely. The PFS, once the hard numbers that come out from that, then that'll, we'll make a decision around those. Obviously, they'll be much more updated and relevant. Once that does, I mean, this presents, there's two things, the capital cost to get this going and considering 80% of that's already funded, but also the timelines. The permitting timelines in Nunavut, we're two years ahead in terms of our long lead time, the baseline studies, the community liaison. We've got a fantastic relationship with the local community, which is 100 kilometers away. Just to reiterate, Storm is completely uninhabited. That gives us leverage. It's not five to seven years like some mines, and it's not that hundreds of millions of dollars to get this going. If that was the case, certainly we'd have to reflect on that. This is an opportunity too good to pass up.
I'd go as far as to say, if investors remember back to the early 2000s, there's Jubilee and Western Areas, two nickel companies, Western Australia. Jubilee had 10,000 tons of nickel at Cosmos. They put a very high grade and essentially dug that out in a small open pit, put that money back into the ground and ended up being bought out for $3.3 billion. If this was a very limited package, tenement package, then we might think again, but we've got a whole belt. If we were to spread ourselves too thinly now, we may miss this kind of opportunity. Some people want to say, the BHPs will probably wait till they get 2 million tons of copper metal before they move the needle. For us, we can be small, we can be nimble, and it's very, very efficient and easy. It does present that opportunity.
Again, we don't build Rome overnight. If we can be a Jubilee or Western Areas in five to ten years' time, then I think investors get a lot out of that. Certainly we will too.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the other thing that the market probably does miss a little bit is the fact that 80% of the project has got committed funding.
Yes, absolutely. We're hoping to offset that. That's the worst case scenario where we borrow 80% of that and pay that back. Like you said, the critical minerals grants are open to $50 million, $100 million, and those kind of checks are being signed. You saw Foran has got the McKelvin Bay that's been pushed through from an environmental sense. Even in Canada, you do see a lot of progress in this regard. Obviously, the preferred option to us is to look at the process innovation and the critical minerals funds because they are handing out money at the moment. I think Storm classifies for a lot of these. The other thing is work, and they are trying to promote northern Canada because mining is the biggest economic driver in Nunavut. You go up there to the mining symposium, it's full of people. Agnico Eagle's up there, Teck, Baffinland, MMG.
There are big companies up there spending a lot of money. They want to see it move forwards.
Yeah, definitely. I think just probably the last one I just want to ask is it goes back to one of your first comments about when, you know, Australian investors look at this and go, "Oh gee, this is remote." There is a really well-structured sort of transportation system up there that can get the product out very easily. You can mine 365 days a year. It's probably, you know, in some cases, less remote than a lot of WAs in a way.
Absolutely. I mean, you look at Central Australia, the Wingalina's, the Nebe Babels, miles and miles from anywhere and need 2,000 kM of roads. Base metals, bulk, you know, you want to be on the coast because shipping is your friend up there. Yes, you can only ship through, you know, two to three months of the year, but that's the way it's done up there. You think about, how do you operate big mines? You've got Red Dog, one of the world's largest zinc mines. You've got the iron ore mine up there. You've got Voisey's Bay. You've got Raglan nickel mines. All of these are big, big mines, and they're moving huge tonnages of mineralization and ore. They do all right. The other thing to point out is, it's uninhabited. There's no trees. It's flat. That means there's no wildlife and things to consider.
There is some, and we're obviously absolutely considering all of these things, but it's not like you're in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, where you've got high relief and difficulty. There's no road. Yes, it has its challenges, but again, a lot of these machines are being designed in that, you know, sand digs. They're drilling rigs, a lot of them out of Sweden and Scandinavia and things like that. Operating in the cold is generally not, I won't say simpler, but it's easy to warm things up rather than cool them down like Central Australia. There is a lot of benefits, I must say. It's just becoming familiar with that and having worked globally within BHP and these other companies in Western mining, you get to see all these things. That's what got us into these areas in the first place is that these are the opportunities.
I found sometimes it's, I guess you need that experience to be able to understand. There is a huge mining industry up there, and we want to tap into it.
Yeah, very much so. That's all I've got, Dave . Good luck with the West Desert as well. That looks very, very interesting as well. Thanks for your time today. Back to you, Pete. Thanks very much Dave .
Thank you.
Thanks, guys. A great presentation. Thanks for joining us while you're traveling around. It came through nice and clearly. We'll have a recording of this for you to be able to send out to your shareholders. Pretty happy to hear your commentary today and for when you come out of trading hop very soon.
Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.