Thanks very much for the intro, Kate. Thank you for Read Corporate and Bell Potter for letting us present here. This is my first time presenting, but the Bellevue Gold story is probably one that is quite familiar to a lot of people here. While we are probably a little further along the journey as a rising star, obviously, we have brought our high-grade discovery into production and we are now at steady state. I would still argue that there is a long way for the Bellevue star to rise, and a lot of that is going to happen in this financial year. We are now at the point where we are fully established and delivering, but we are delivering from the higher grade parts of the ore body now that will be our driver for the next five, 10 years. We are de-risking.
One of the key things we are doing, one of the legacies of building a mine, is you need to fund it. We funded it with a hedge book, which was set at a much lower gold price than where we are today. FY 2027 will see us kill that hedge book, and then you will see a whole lot of free cash flow coming out from this high-grade mine. The other thing that started, and will deliver dividends going forward, is exploration has restarted. We have always had a great exploration opportunity at Bellevue, but we have been concentrating on building and ramping up a mine. Now we are in a position to turn some of those drill rigs. We have six drill rigs underground. They have been focused on grade control to ensure that we can deliver what we say we will.
Now we can point two or three of them out and start to unlock the upside there. If you look at this picture here, that is our ore body there. Conveniently, it has been defined by red paint, but it is a pretty visual ore body, and it is a high-grade ore body. Some of the browny, goldy colored stuff, the sulfides, that actually lights up in a geophysical tool called downhole EM, which makes it unusual for a gold ore body. It is something more common in base metals. But it makes it quite a bit easier to discover than most ore bodies. Look forward to some encouraging drilling results there. This was put in by the lawyers. You can read the fine print at your leisure.
This image is really Bellevue on a page. You can see we are in Western Australia. We are in the heart of the gold fields.
We are surrounded by large, long-life operations. We are a long-life operation. We have over 1 million ounces of reserves and three times that much in resources, and these are high-grade resources. Last year saw us build up a strong balance sheet, and just as importantly, kill 83,000 ounces of our hedge book, leaving us in a position to kill the rest of it this year. Small amount of debt that is not payable until 2027. We are now in a position with a ramped up mine to position for growth. Exploration will unlock the opportunity to expand production. On top of all of that, our infrastructure is 90% renewable. We are a net zero gold mine. What does that mean?
Well, it's good, obviously, for greenhouse gases, but it means we've got energy security going forward, at a time when diesel price has obviously been getting a bit more focused than might normally. Our plan for FY27, continue delivering, but as I said, we're now in the core of the ore body, so we can deliver consistently, and we can deliver from the higher grade parts of the ore body. We've already locked down a pretty stable cost base. We will continue to do that and position ourselves for good, high margins. We've de-risked the mine. We'll continue to de-risk it. We're establishing the fifth of our key ore bodies as we go forward, and then it's just business as usual. The balance sheet will take care of itself once we kill the hedge book this year. Growth and returns.
With all that cash flow that's going to come in, and I've got a slide that demonstrates the underlying cash flow we've been demonstrating to date. We can unlock that exploration value. We can fund it, obviously, and then exploration allows us to start to think about further growth. We'll also be in a position, we don't need to keep growing the balance sheet, where we can start thinking about returns to shareholders. I know lots of people in this room have been shareholders for quite some time. A quick look at what we did last year. Last year, we built the foundation for this year and the rest of our life. We delivered to guidance. This year, we're harvesting from the position that we were in previously. This year, with those five established mining areas, we're looking to lift production and maintain good margins.
The growth CapEx, you can see there. Well, that's going to be spent in the first half of the financial year, and principally on just putting in a paste plant so that we're in a position to bring out more of that high-grade ore from the heart of our ore body. One thing that's new for this year is an exploration budget, and that's obviously, we're at a Resources Rising Stars conference. I want to talk about exploration in the coming slides. This is a long section of the mine. There's three key lodes of Bellevue. The top lode is Tribune. We established that mine a year ago, or just over a year ago. The Bellevue lode is the middle lode. You can see the old Bellevue mine. That's been mined for the best part of the last century. We're mining down south at Viago.
The key thing is, in the journey that we've been on to date, we've had to get 450, 500 meters down past the old workings. We've been mining on the peripheries of the ore body. Like most mines, when they ramp up, it's fair to say we hit a few bumps in the road. We're now established on that lower Deacon lode, which is a higher grade lode of the three lodes at Bellevue. We're at Marceline, establishing Deacon North, and have been delivering high grade from Deacon Main. The look forward is one of consistent high-grade production. Look further forward, you can see they're conveniently drawn on open arrows there. All three ore bodies continue down south under a salt lake that cannot be drilled from surface.
We have now got the underground infrastructure there, and we can start testing for significant extensions to that ore body. We have already defined some mineralization at Southern Belle, but we have got a big gap to fill in there. It is all right having a good mine. You need a good processing plant, and this is a brand-new processing plant built for purpose. Somewhat unique and a real benefit for us is we are getting 70% gravity recovery. That is pretty straightforward. We upgraded it just over a year ago.
We have now got excess capacity, so if we can get more from the underground, we can fill the processing plant. Importantly, that graph you can see there of the recoveries, we made some changes and we are now probably one of the highest recovery mines in Western Australia. So high grade, high recovery is high revenue per ton. Nice place to be.
This chart shows three things. Hopefully, it is not too complicated, but essentially, in the gold bars, that is how much our hedge book contributed at the end of each quarter. You see we have knocked 83,000 ounces off there. We have still got 68,000 ounces. That will go this year. At the same time, we have been able to grow cash. The important thing here in the creamy beige color is the underlying free cash flow. We do not have any mandatory hedging. If we chose to, in the last couple of quarters when we were delivering at steady state, delivering to the spot gold price, AUD 158 million of free cash flow we would have delivered, or AUD 110 million last quarter. So when that hedge book is gone, free cash flow is coming and in a big way. Now to exploration. I am pretty excited.
I am a geologist, so pretty excited to talk about growth. This map on the right-hand side shows the surface projection of the three lodes: Tribune, Bellevue, and Deakin. We will look at each one of those in the next few slides. Off to the east is the Westralia area. We have put in a surface drill rig there, and the fifth hole that we drilled hit this end section you can see here. 3.5 meters at 19 grams. Not a bad start. That is Bellevue style mineralization. That is the gold-colored material, the sulfides that we have with our ore body. We have got a down-hole EM program up and running now. Great exploration tool because it lights up the sulfides, and sulfides have a one-to-one relationship with the gold. Looking at the Bellevue lode, you can see the historic area that is mined out.
We are now mining to the south at Viago. The key things I want you to take from this image is, firstly, the plunge of the ore body, the position of Lake Miranda. We cannot drill from surface, but now we have got the underground infrastructure in place, we can drill, and we are looking to extend this Southern Belle Decline, and the Viago drill drive-out, and drill test this untested area. Those blue plates are down-hole EM plates. It is unlikely geologically that the down-hole EM plates are lighting up an anomaly that is not high-grade sulfide, which in this area, down plunge from a mine where gold is associated with high-grade gold has to be a good thing. Looking at the next one, this is our high-grade Deakin lode, and we are down there at Deakin now.
You can also see the down-hole EM plates associated with what we believe is an extension to this high-grade ore body. That is something we can't wait to test as well and could make a real difference. Tribune, which is our shallowest mine, we've already started the exploration drilling there. We drilled and defined an area called Tribune South. Tribune South, we've only done a couple of holes into it, but 3.5 at nearly 50 grams is not a bad start. For exploration, the opportunity, as I've already said, it's not really about extending mine life. It's about the opportunity to get more tons, more grade, and ultimately more ounces out of the mine. We've obviously got a processing plant that we need to fill, but we've already got opportunities to expand that if we want to. Exploration is the key.
We've got five key mining areas at the moment with five jumbos. Tribune South or Deakin South, they could be the next mining areas. That allows us to get much more out of the underground, grow our production whilst maintaining stable costs. The last slide for me. All good. We've been generating cash flow. We've got a great business, but needs to be sustainable. We are a net-zero mine, but that has other benefits apart from just greenhouse gas emissions. Bill talked earlier about how tight the labor force is in Western Australia. It certainly is. Some of the younger generation actually choose Bellevue because we are net zero. We do get a slight premium for our gold. I think the key thing that came to light earlier this year was when people were worried about diesel costs and diesel supply.
The sun shines and the wind blows. Our risk and our exposure to diesel cost is probably lower than anyone else in Western Australia. It's good business. Look, thanks very much for listening to me chat today. Hopefully, you'll take away from Bellevue that we are now fully ramped up. There were some bumps in the road, but now we're delivering. We're going to be delivering from the core of the ore body consistent high-grade mineralization. We're de-risked, and we're continuing to de-risk. We'll be pumping out free cash flow next year. The exploration rig's turning. You should see some great growth through exploration, and we can fund that from free cash flow. Thanks very much.
Thanks very much, Darren. Our next presenter, Greenvale Energy, has dramatically expanded its uranium ambitions, adding the exceptionally high-grade Thunderball deposit to a district scale position in the Pine Creek uranium field in the Northern Territory while continuing to advance its Oasis uranium project in Queensland. Please welcome Managing Director, Alex Cheeseman.
Thanks, Kate. Before I get started, I will probably just run through a couple of housekeeping points. I had a conversation with a shareholder yesterday and he said to me, "When you get on stage and talk and when you release presentations, why aren't you covering off on all of your projects? You only sort of focus on one thing." To that, while I could talk about the strategically important Alpha project, I could talk about the high-grade Oasis project. I could also talk about our geothermal project that is being backed by a billion-dollar company. But I have only got 15 minutes, and I always run over time