Now, this is a company that's offering a platform that they say is set for, and I quote, "Unrivaled sustained growth of, as they advance on multi-hub production growth." There's a lot. I've gone through the presentation. I'm looking forward to it. And you've also got a strategically placed mill, which I'm interested to hear as well, if that's gonna come on board. Would you welcome Alex Rovira before I steal too much more of his presentation? Enjoy this one. Thank you. Brightstar.
Thanks for the introduction, Kristie, and thank you to Vertical Events for the opportunity to present. Brightstar is a West Australian-focused gold producer, developer, and explorer. I actually gave the first presentation for Brightstar three years ago at this exact conference. At that time, we were less than a AUD 10 million market capitalization business, two or three employees, about 400,000 ounces of resources. Fast-forward three years to where we are today, we've got over 4 million ounces of resources. We've got two operating mines. We're about to commence construction of our own processing infrastructure in Laverton. We've about a AUD 500 million market cap and about 140 employees in the business.
So it's been a wild ride in terms of that growth and building this business into where it is, and we're really excited, really, that we believe we're at the start of this growth journey now. So as a business, we are focused in two different project areas, being the Goldfields Hub and the Sandstone Hub. For us, this portfolio's been brought about largely through M&A and a lot of targeted exploration. We've been very focused on genuinely acquiring and working on projects that are gonna become mines. So these project areas are on granted mining leases. All our resources are on granted mining leases. There's great infrastructure. We can drive to site very easily. The projects all have genuine operational synergies within the Goldfields Hub and then within Sandstone, and these projects will all become mines in the near term.
We just released a definitive feasibility study at the end of January on our Goldfields Hub, specifically. So quite a bit of this presentation is on that development because it is quite exciting. Essentially, it means that Brightstar can evolve and mature from being a 30,000- to 35,000-ounce producer right now to something that's close to 80,000 ounces, if not more, and really kind of kickstart the journey for us to become. What we're aspiring to be is a genuine mid-tier scale producer, doing 200,000 to 300,000 ounces per annum. So of the DFS we did put out, it showed initial 6-year mine life producing a little over 75,000 ounces per annum. Fantastic economics.
You can see there's some numbers on the screen, and I'll touch on it in a moment, but essentially, at spot, makes over AUD 1.5 billion of free cash over that six-year period. For us as a business, that cash flow is fantastic, but it's really what we can do with that. So what we can do with it is apply it to our Sandstone project. Sandstone has the potential to be genuinely a Tier 1 scale opportunity in Western Australia. 2.5 million ounces now, largely in the top 150 meters from surface. Similar to James' presentation about the Plutonic Belt, these are just forgotten greenstone belts that just haven't had the exploration history.
So for us, the opportunity is not only to build a near-term business that is gonna produce significant free cash flow, it's then redeploying that across the portfolio and genuinely building a business that can support, you know, quite a substantial production profile. We are looking at, in terms of Sandstone itself, moving that towards development as quick as we can. We currently have four drill rigs up there on site. I've been hassling the geologists. I think we're gonna get a couple more up there pretty soon, but the intent is to move that project towards development as quick as we can. So we've got resource upgrades to come out in the next few months, a pre-feasibility study due mid-year, and ideally getting that project towards FID by the end of next calendar year. As a business, Brightstar currently operates two underground mines.
We are owner-operator with those two mines. What that means is, essentially, these are Brightstar employees, and we cover every facet of mining, whether it's the maintenance function, technical services, you know, geology, engineering, surveyors, the underground operators themselves, you know, the corporate office and the headquarters and, and really, there's been a lot of growing up to do as a business, and it's something that I think is glossed over in the industry when you're trying to migrate from a, an explorer to a developer to a producer. There's a lot of work that goes on in the background, and that's, you know, that's all the pain and anguish that Brightstar's gone through in the last few years. Things like building out the finance function, the health and safety systems.
All your systems and processes to run an effective mining business have to be built from scratch, and Brightstar's done all of that. So I would consider that Brightstar is an existing mining company with some awesome exploration and development opportunities. So that is the opportunity for us, is to just continue to grow this production. There's a number of numbers up here on this slide, so I won't labor the point, but there is a couple key things I'll touch on here. That table you can see on the bottom right-hand side is just some sensitivity analysis on different gold price points. Pick your poison about what you think the medium-term gold price could be. Obviously, it's a bit of a lottery every day at the moment. We've assessed this all the way down to AUD 4,500 or 5,000.
You know, obviously, at current spot, $7,000 per ounce. You know, it's nearly $1 billion of NPV, you know, generating nearly $1.5 billion of free cash flow, and for us, it's that second bottom number that's most important. Annual free cash flow generation, circa $200-$230 million at spot prices. That is a fantastic cash flow-generating asset that we then redeploy back into the field. All these projects have one thing in common: we've essentially acquired them from small ASX junior companies over the last few years that inherently struggle for capital, which means these projects have very limited systematic exploration history, and for us, we don't consider this portfolio 4 million ounces. It could be 5 or 10 in the fullness of time.
So that's where we see the opportunity for us, is to continue to redeploy that capital into the ground. Quick corporate snapshot here. As I mentioned, three years ago, we were about a AUD 5 million market cap. Oh, how things have changed. We've just completed a capital raising, so these numbers are all on a pro forma basis there, but circa a AUD 500 million market cap, about AUD 200 million cash in the bank. So we are very well funded. We are fully funded from an equity component to build the Goldfields Hub and also fully funded to get Sandstone to FID and all the way through into development. So we think we're in a fantastic position to build this business. We've got some fantastic owners of the company.
We're about 50% institutionally held with some fantastic, you know, domestic and offshore, genuine Tier One institutional investors, and really why that's important is they're the people, they're the owners of the business, to support us on our growth journey. So you genuinely see alignment there between the equity owners of the business and management and employees about what we're trying to build. This is really the 1 slide I want to talk to. This is, I suppose, our business in a nutshell. So it's two projects, one goal or one target, and that is to genuinely be a 200+ thousand ounce per annum producer. We see that coming from our existing assets. So we don't need to do any more M&A, we don't need to do anything that's crazy.
All we need to do is just do our day jobs, drill these projects out, do the technical work well, they're funded, and put these projects into production. So what this chart shows is on that, on those gray, sorry, the gold columns there, that's our Goldfields DFS. So that's what we're gonna be building, very, very shortly. We're targeting making FID on that next month. We announced yesterday we've appointed GR Engineering as preferred EPC contractor to build that infrastructure. They're the best in the space. We're really excited to partner with them to build this project. But what you can see on this graph here is that, you know, the Goldfields is the engine room in the next few years. It produces the free cash flow, establish us to be a, a genuine, you know, 80 circa thousand ounce per annum producer.
But what it does do is it then leverages us to get Sandstone into production, and that's those gray columns there. So you can see that we believe, in the fullness of time, that Sandstone could be 150 to 200 thousand ounces per annum of production opportunity. And, you know, it's a huge asset base. So of that resource, as I mentioned, 2.4 million ounces in Sandstone, 1.6 million ounces in the top 150 meters. Again, we're talking about an entirety of a greenstone belt here that hasn't been meaningfully drilled in a long period of time. So the opportunity for us is to not only grow that substantially in size and quality, but move that project towards production.
Now, you could pick any metric you want to look at, any of the mid-tiers producing 200,000 ounces or less or more, you know, there, there's significant headroom for what Brightstar can achieve here. So at the moment, we are about a AUD 500 million market cap. I'd like to think that that valuation is quite undemanding when you look at where this business genuinely could be in two or three years' time. Just diving into the DFS in a little bit more detail. So this is just zooming in on the goldfields area in particular. So we're really focused around two historic mining centers, being Menzies and Laverton, both fantastic parts of the world. Sealed highway access to Menzies, which has mined 800,000 ounces, nearly 20 grams historically. So you've got a high-grade goldfield, great infrastructure, great access.
Over in Laverton, without being clichéd, you're genuinely in elephant country. Sunrise Dam, Granny Smith, Mount Morgans with Genesis. These are all enormous deposits and enormous mining companies, and we're really kind of in on the fringes of that. So what we're seeking to do is to build our mill, centrally located, where it says BTR Plant, and essentially truck all of our mine sources to that mill. So we've simplified our business model. We're looking to have one or two underground and open pit mines operating contemporaneously to deliver that portfolio. You can see pretty consistent production profile there, 75,000 to 80,000 ounces per annum, finishing in 2033. That's not the end of the mine life, as we see it. We're currently looking at mining 500,000 ounces over this life of mine, out of a resource of about 1.6 million.
So we're looking to mine at the moment, about a third of that resource. James mentioned it before, quite often these projects get into operation, they've got a 5- or 10-year mine life. You fast-forward 50 years, and they're still in operation. It's just a fact of the geology of the Eastern Goldfields, that once you get these projects into operation with dedicated budgets and drill bit and having the team in place, you can grow these resources and grow the mine life. So we don't think this is a 6-year project. We think this is 10 years, if not more, and the opportunity for us is to get it into production and then continue to do the work well to grow that production, not only the production profile annually, but also the mine life.
Just looking at it this here, there's a lot of numbers, so I'll just kind of pick on a couple here. So we're looking to mine just under 10 million tons. The grade profile, you can see there in that, that top left chart, around that 1.6 to 1.7 grams, pretty consistent over the life of mine. That's essentially delivered because the, the operating philosophy of the business is to have one open pit and one underground running at any one time. So ironically, it's actually a simplification of our current business model, whereby we're running two undergrounds. The intent being for our companies, we'd have one underground and one open pit operating, thereby you're having multiple ore sources, you're de-risking that, you've got tonnes coming from the open pit, and you've got grade from the underground.
We think that delivers a really balanced approach to not only maximizing production, but minimizing risk. So in terms of what we're going to be doing, this is, I suppose our aspirational Gantt chart or timetable for the next few quarters and years. As you can see, we are looking at making an FID in March, which enables us to commence construction essentially from April onwards. It's about a 14-month construction window, which would see us pouring first gold in May, June of next year. So we think that's a really quick turnaround time. These projects are all quite mature. They've all been mined historically. What that means is we've got a great knowledge base. You know, they're understood metallurgically, you know, the mining parameters, you know, geotechnically, et cetera. These are all projects that are understood.
We've done a lot of work and effort on it in the last few years to take these projects towards, you know, being, you know, 75% of the mine plans under ore reserves at the moment, and again, we'll continue to push that out. You can see there that we are looking at having a number of mines starting up over the next few years, and essentially the intent would be is we go from one mine to the other. Very common business model in the Eastern Goldfields. Companies like Ramelius and Genesis, et c., do it very, very successfully, whereby they can utilize existing resources. You can, yeah, I suppose you can manage your workforce appropriately, you can manage your capital needs, risks and capital needs, and you can essentially go from one operation to the other.
This is the processing plant that we're looking to build. As I mentioned, we have signed up GR Engineering to partner with us for this build. This is absolutely as off-the-shelf as you can get. It's conventional, 1.5 million ton per annum mill, single stage crush with a SAG mill. This is GR Engineering's bread and butter, but this is also the bread and butter for the Eastern Goldfields. So everything that we're aspiring to do with our goldfields build, and actually the entirety of the project, is as conventional as it gets. Conventional open pit mining, conventional long hole open stope retreat underground mining, and conventional milling. So this is all pretty basic stuff in terms of what's being done day in, day out, all across the goldfields.
The unique thing with our philosophy here is that we're not just building a 1.5 million tons. per annum mill, we've actually got embedded engineering design here to go to 2.5 million tons. during operation. So we've included quite a bit of capital up front here that enables us to ensure we've got upside optionality in terms of our expansion cases, so that if we have further exploration success, we start extending the mine lives here, and we want to expand the mill, increase that production profile. This mill is already essentially designed to be a 2.5 million tons. per annum mill. So in year two or year three, we can drop in a ball mill, a couple extra tanks in the leach circuit, and you're at 2.5 million tons.
So for us, that just embeds upside optionality with what we want to try and do. There's many cases of examples in the Goldfields where as soon as a mill gets built, the company's planning about doing upgrades and expansion cases, and, you know, Mungari, and there's plenty of examples, Thunderbox out there, that over the period of time, I'm sure those owners upfront wished they had, I suppose, the ability to upsize it as appropriately. The next few slides are on Sandstone. So just for some, I suppose awareness of where we are geographically, we are in the Murchison District. It's a great part of the world. To the west of us, we've got the Murchison, with Ramelius and Westgold obviously dominating that part of the Greenstone Belt through there.
And then to the east, we've got Agnew and Bellevue. Sandstone itself is a fantastic part of the world. Sealed highway access, there's gas pipeline that runs right through the middle of that tenure. This project has not been meaningfully explored really for a long period of time. It was last mined in 2010. The gold price was less than $1,000 per ounce, so it's up, you know, 7x in that time. And at that time, the previous mill owner, Troy Resources, was really just looking at shallow oxide mineralization, so very limited exploration and depth, which is why we've got, you know, 1.6 million ounces of our resource in the top 150 meters. We've drilled about 120,000 meters so far. We've got a lot more drilling to do.
As I said, we've got four rigs on site. The intent for our business is we'll come out with a resource upgrade in about April, May of this year, which should see that resource go up in size and up significantly in quality. And what I mean by that is dragging a lot of that inferred resource at the moment into measured and indicated to enable us to declare quite a robust mine life plan and/or reserve as part of our pre-feasibility study, which is currently targeted to come out in the September quarter. This is what we think Sandstone can do. So this is for illustrative purposes, it's not a forecast, but that table on the top left-hand side is essentially a matrix of mill throughput versus head grade.
We feel that if we build a 5 million tons. per annum mill out here, and you're looking at a head grade of what it could be, this could quite comfortably be a 180,000+ ounce per annum system for 10 to 15 years. And that's, that's the scale of this opportunity, and there's not many of those you can find in Western Australia that is not in the hands of a mid-tier or a major. So we feel that Sandstone is extremely unique. For us, the opportunity is to take this project towards development as quick as possible. So we are targeting PFS and DFS for the next 2 years, having essentially FID-ready approvals in place by the end of next year.
Again, when we get to 2028 and we want to start building this, we'll have the Goldfields asset producing nearly AUD 250 million a year in free cash flow. So how do we fund building Sandstone? The assets we're about to go build. I'm out of time, so I'll leave it there. Please, we've got lots of people from the business in the booth. If you've got any questions, please come around, we'd love to take them. Thank you. Thank you.