Thank you, Francois. Our next speaker is Paul Brennan, Managing Director of Ballard Mining. Paul is a mining engineer and graduate of the WA School of Mines. He has traveled a well-trodden path, including Underground Manager, Mining Manager, General Manager, and COO roles. Paul joined Delta Lithium as part of the strategic process to monetize the Mt Ida Gold Project, which culminated with the demerger of Ballard from Delta and parallel IPO. Ballard subsequently listed on the ASX in July 2025, with Paul transitioning from Delta to Ballard as part of that process.
Thanks, Tolly. This presentation's on the ASX platform. We actually haven't got a booth at Diggers this year. We're just doing meetings, so if anyone out there is keen for a catch-up and doesn't have my personal contact details, we've just set up a generic email address that'll come through to Todd Hibberd, our Chief Geologist.
Todd and I are here until Thursday, so please reach out if you're keen to meet. Just the selling features of Ballard, these are our top three. We are funded to an FID. We have AUD 62 million in the bank at June 30th. Categorically, that'll get us all the way through to a final investment decision. We are fully permitted. That's fully permitted, full stop. We have every approval necessary to start mining and to build a processing plant.
We have a works approval for a 2 million ton per annum processing plant and the necessary water abstraction license. The Board is taking a long-term patient view, and that rolls into the third point, is that we are drilling for genuine standalone scale. We're targeting a minimum eight-year mine life. We're putting 220,000 meters into the ground this year.
That equates to an AUD 50 million exploration budget. We'll continue to drill until such time as the resource base supports that eight-year mine life. As John touched on, Ballard demerged from Delta this time last year. I think Diggers was the first official outing for Ballard last year. Our Chairman, Simon Lill, did the introduction. As Tolly said, as part of that demerger, Delta has retained 34% of the register of Ballard. That demerger was also accompanied with an in specie distribution to Delta shareholders.
A number of Delta's major shareholders have come onto Ballard's register in their own right. That includes MinRes, they're there with 4% of the register. Hancock, just under 6% of the register. Aurenne, I will talk to in a minute, they've got 9.6% of the register. Just jumping across to the management team, Tim Manners and myself, we're the two exec directors for the company.
Tim was CFO for Ramelius for seven years during a very formative period of growth for that company. My background is predominantly operations. I wear a number of scars. We try and apply those learnings to what we're doing at Ballard in terms of de-risking the project, ably led by our Chairman, Simon Lill. Simon was with De Grey for the full 12-year journey up until their takeover by Northern Star.
James Croser is the Managing Director of Delta, James sits on our Board as a Delta rep. Stu Mathews. Stu, until he retired a couple of years ago, was Executive Vice President of Gold Fields. As per the previous presentation, Stu's used to looking at big camp-scale projects, big exploration budgets, and he certainly brings a different lens to a company our size. Todd Hibberd, our chief geologist, rather. Todd's in car with me all this week.
Rounding out the management team is Loren Falconer, our Co-Sec and Financial Controller. Project location. We're 200 km north of Kalgoorlie. We've got a bitumen road to within 20 km of the mine gate, surrounded by a number of well-known ASX producers, as you can see on the screen. Vault and Genesis 100 km to the east of us.
Ora Banda, Davyhurst, who's 100 km to the south of us. Riverina, Ora Banda's underground mine or flagship underground mine, is 80 km to the south. Same geology, same greenstone belt, same predominant underground mining method that we expect for our cornerstone project, Baldock. 6 km to the south of us is Aurenne.
Aurenne is a group that we did a strategic placement to in September of last year. They've come onto the register with 9.6% of the company. That placement was a demonstration of intent from both parties that there's willingness to consider a merger. The only thing that is in paper is a CA. Those discussions are ongoing, and what we continue to articulate is the only thing that we can control is building the project for standalone scale. As I said at the start, we're putting AUD 50 million into the ground this year.
For a company our size, we're punching well above our weight. The only company in that 100-km radius who's spending more on exploration than us is Ora Banda. I think their exploration budget is AUD 75 million. Our exploration budget is bigger than Genesis and larger than Vault. We're confident with that investment that the success will be there, and I'll talk a little bit about that on the coming slides. The map on the right shows the current 1.2 million ounce resource base.
Of that 1.2, we've got 1 million ounces of 3.5 at the cornerstone project called Baldock. Baldock does all the heavy lifting for the project, provides baseload feed. What we're targeting with the regional prospects that you see on the screen, we're deliberately targeting those as satellite open pit material. Baldock will prominently be an underground mine.
Those satellite open pits not only provide additional oxide transitional material to blend with the fresh rock from Baldock, they provide incremental production, what I call the incremental stocking fillers. Our top-down goal is 100,000 ounce per annum production, and we see that being a contribution of circa 80,000 ounces per annum out of Baldock. Another 30,000 ounces contribution from satellite open pits. 110,000 ounces mined, 100,000 ounces recovered.
This is a long section of Baldock. We came out of the IPO starting blocks last year. The first thing we did was an 86,000-meter infill drilling program at Baldock. We did that drilling down to 350 meters vertical. That infill drilling program yielded a 670,000 ounce at 3.7 gram per tonne indicated portion. That will convert to a reserve circa 400,000 ounces-500,000 ounces.
We, until recently, had three diamond drill rigs sitting on top of Baldock, and we are drilling what we call Panel 2, which is the area from 350 meters down to 750 meters depth. We put out an exploration target in October of last year, where we expect that that next panel, 350 meters -7 50 meters depth, will yield anywhere from 400,000 to 800,000 ounces.
The dotted line is the existing resource outline. You can see the deeper sections there. That was informed by some of the lithium drilling that Delta did. If you squint and close one eye, you can see some of the results that we released recently to the market, that we expect that resource base to continue to grow significantly with the drilling we've been doing over the last seven, eight months. This is just an isometric view of Baldock looking to the south.
You can see Ora Banda's operations. They're 6 km away from us in the top left of the figure. I'm not sure if you can see that, but that's Lake Ballard, where the company takes its name from. We're confident that the drilling will deliver success, not just because of the orogenic nature of these deposits, but we've got two very good analogues to the north and the south of us.
Ora Banda, who I mentioned. Riverina, 80 km to the south of us, and then Agnew, 150 km to the north of us. Same geology, same greenstone belt, same big granite intrusion that we have at Mt Ida. Geology 101. We have 26 km of continuous greenstone belt. That greenstone belt was subsequently intruded by a large granite, what we call the Copperfield Granite.
As that granite cooled, that's when the pegmatites, which host the lithium, came out and cut through the greenstone, through the gold. That's why there's both gold and lithium occurring. In terms of the drilling investment, we've got what we call the Baldock Thrust on the western side of the granite, and then the Ballard Fault on the eastern side of the granite.
As you can see with the metrics on the screen, the Baldock Shear has received a lion's share of the investment. Of our current 1.2 million ounce resource base, over 1 million ounces of that is located on the Baldock Shear, and then the remaining 120,000 ounces on the Ballard Fault.
It's the same rocks, it's the same geology, and we're confident with the drilling that we're doing on the Ballard Fault, that that potentially will evolve into its own camp-scale area. Just last week, we put out our best ever drill result at Mt Ida. 9 meters at 27 grams per tonne.
That was located at a prospect called West Knell. West Knell is located, as you can see on the screen, at the northern end of the Baldock Fault. That just gives us ongoing confidence that the drilling on that eastern side of the granite is going to deliver those results. We don't pretend that we're Robinson Crusoe. We just think this is another example of a camp-scale project that's never been owned by a major. Just a long section of the Baldock Fault, and again, just highlighting that recent drill result.
In terms of timeline, we have guided that we'll put out a 1.5 million ounce resource in September. The other way to think about that is we will not put out that resource until it is 1.5 million ounces. The 1.5 million ounces is important to us because that will support an eight-year mine life.
The Ballard Board has mandated that the minimum mine life for us to roll that through to a feasibility and subsequent FID is eight years. Once we've achieved that 1.5, we will then pivot to a combination of infill drilling and continuing to grow. We're not looking at dropping any drill rigs or winding back our ongoing efforts. Our thinking being, the 1.5 million ounces, that will take us through feasibility study FID.
It's 1.5 million ounces to bank it, then ideally by the time we've gone through the FID construction window and built it, we have a 2 million ounce MRE. For us, that equates to a 10-year mine life based on some reasonably conservative conversion rates. That's a 10-year mine life. 1.5 million ounces to bank it, 2 million ounces by the time it is built.
Every single Ballard employee is incentivized with those two MRE milestones. We recognized very early on that in terms of that life of mine metrics, and we remunerated our workforce accordingly. Permitting. One of the scars that I wear is water. As I said at the start, we've got every single permit required to mine and build a processing plant. 3.7 gig water abstraction license.
Part of the early works program we're doing is installing the production bores to facilitate that water abstraction. Not only do we have the license, we have the physical bores in the ground to allow us to take that water. We are going to kick off a public diversion road later this year, just to avoid any interaction between construction activities and public traffic next year.
As well as the ongoing drilling effort, we're just trying to do the sensible de-risking activities in the background. That's our research coverage base. I asked each of those analysts if they minded putting their name up on the screen. They were happy with that. As I said at the start, we're available for meetings. Please contact us or alternatively reach out to one of the analysts, and I'm sure they're more than happy to talk you through the Ballard story. That's the slide deck. Thanks very much for your time, and good afternoon.