Good morning, and welcome to the Challenger Gold investor webinar. I am Jane Morgan, Investor and Media Relations Manager, and today I am joined by our Non-Executive Chair, Peter Marrone, our Chief Operating Officer and Interim CEO, Yohann Bouchard, and our Vice President, Projects and Strategy, Luke Buchanan. Today's webinar will be running through the investor presentation, which was lodged with the ASX, followed by a Q&A session. To ask a question throughout today's webinar, please use the Q&A function, which can be found at the bottom of your screen. Peter, I am going to hand to you.
Jane, thank you very much, and thank you to everyone, both this evening and in the case of Australia this morning, for participating in this webinar. Let us begin the presentation by discussing management and what has changed. One of the questions that I am asked is what has changed in the company, and amongst the many things that relate to the asset itself and the improvements and optimizations that are being undertaken, clearly none of that can happen without a quality fit-for-purpose management. One of the questions that I am asked is what is the appeal of this particular investment that I have made? Yes, it is an investment. I am an investor as you are an investor. I prefer to refer to it as an investment plus.
The plus part is I was asked by many of the institutional shareholders and the board of directors of the company, what can I do to improve and optimize the governance of the company? What can we do to improve the management? One of the opportunities here is also that there is a fit-for-purpose local management that we have supplemented, but that already existed in San Juan Province in Argentina. Of course, corporate managements are important, and so with the introduction of Yohann Bouchard as the Chief Operations Officer and Interim Chief Executive Officer, Felipe as our Chief Financial Officer, and Luke Buchanan as Vice President, Projects and Strategy, and Luke and Yohann, as Jane mentioned, are on the call.
We have a fit-for-purpose management that can develop this asset, take it from the pre-feasibility stage when it was handed over to us over to development and then production. It is a management and board of directors that has a proven track record of value creation, clearly with leadership coming from Yamana Gold, Allied Gold, New Gold, and Andean Precious Metals.
There is extensive mine development and operations experience, mostly with large-scale open-pit mines across the Americas, and that aligns with the company's transition from an exploration company, as I mentioned, to a development stage company where project execution will be critical. Then, of course, as a producing company, a producing asset where the operations will be critical. There is great depth of technical expertise to optimize and to de-risk the Hualilán project through completion and detailed engineering. Again, I am often asked, what was it that was appealing about this project?
Here we are with a project that is, while at pre-feasibility study stage, many of the components in that pre-feasibility study are at a depth and breadth that exceeds the nameplate of pre-feasibility. It can be taken to detailed engineering and then ultimately to development. We see that there are some significant optimizations and improvements that can be made. We are in progress on those optimizations and improvements, testing those as we also complete the detailed engineering.
As many of you are aware from our public disclosure, we have also advanced the project such that rather than being in production in early 2029, early 2030, my apologies, we expect to be in production in early 2029. This is a company that is underpinned by two large-scale gold projects, with a near-term production pathway with long-term growth optionality. We have in Ecuador, the El Guayabo project.
It is a copper-gold exploration project, but with significant inventory of ounces, already at more than 9 million ounces of gold and gold equivalent, and of that, almost 7 million ounces that is attributable to Challenger Gold. It combines El Guayabo and the Colorado V deposits. It is open at depth and along strike with district-scale potential. It is a very large footprint with many untested targets.
It is also on the same system as the Cangrejos project, which was sold in 2025 for AUD 650 million. Again, of the questions that we are often asked, we are asked the question, in this case, what do you intend to do with it? What we intend to do is to maximize value. The starting point to maximizing value is better understanding it, likely engaging in an exploration program, and then ultimately determining what we do with it at that point in time.
Will it be for sale? Likely an option that is available to us, but we will look at other options that can maximize value. Clearly the prize here and the asset that we are here to discuss is the Hualilán project in San Juan in Argentina. Already an inventory of 1.8 million ounces that would be produced, a gold equivalent with just over 14 years of mine life, but with the opportunity for that to be increased significantly. We are fully permitted. As I mentioned a few moments ago, the intention is not to start operations in early 2030 as contemplated in the pre-feasibility study, but to bring production forward by a full 12 months to early 2029.
With a CapEx that is comparatively manageable, certainly for a size and scale of company that we are, we think the $267 million is a manageable amount for us to spend to develop this project with a payback, even at a discounted gold price, just over two years. I want to come to this point of the Net Present Value at a 5% discount rate. We use 5% as a discount rate because that is convention, what is used normally in marketplace. So, we are comparing apple to apple, our project, our company, to other projects and companies that are comparable. But $1.1 billion at a discounted gold price. That number climbs quite dramatically to $1.8 billion if we look at a $4,500 gold price. So roughly where gold price is trading.
In our view, we're not going to look at this only from the lens of how do we maximize an already robust net present value of $1.1 billion to something significantly higher based on gold price. We're going to look at it from the lens of what can we do, what are we doing to maximize and to optimize this project, and we'll go into some of that detail in a moment. With that, perhaps if I can pass the presentation, Yohann, to you, just to go through some of the information that we just discussed, but in greater detail.
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you, Peter. Next slide, please. On slide six here, we have our different five priorities we're working on at this moment to increase value for shareholders. The first one is really the commercial production, early 2029. We engage BBA consultant to work on two different things. The first thing is to update the PFS study to under 43-101 standard to be able to promote the company, to, I would say Canadian and American-based investors. The second thing is also to do the detail engineering to advance the project to early 2029, which is about a year ahead of time.
Basically, we are in the process to different test work, I mean, to go beyond what has been said in the, I would say, as opportunities in the feasibility study by testing some other, I would say, recovery on gold and leaching and also some other trade-off analysis on the, I would say, on the leaching plant. This is something ongoing. It's advancing really fast. I mean, we already put the package in place for bidding for long lead equipment, and we hope basically to send a tender within the next couple of weeks. The other one is increasing Hualilán NPV ahead of construction. We see a lot of potential with exploration and reserve growth.
As you know, we plan 35,000 meters of drilling to transfer some inferred into reserve, but also to. There's many places that Luke did demonstrate later on that has been not even drilled. The pit design assumed it's waste, but in fact that could be ore. We're going to pay attention to those places and see if we can transfer some of that material or create, I would say, ore out of waste. It would be really beneficial for the project. There's some other point here about security, project financing. Basically what we did is, for sure, I went through site many times. We look at the budget. We came up with a different budget, different approach, which is a little more maybe centered on cost control and cost savings compared to before.
We want to make sure that we spend the money at the right place at the right time and control our cash as much as we can and deliver on the objectives. Refining the debentures, Peter, something that talked about already. I mean, we're going to come back to that. For sure, completing the financing by mid-next year, one way or the other, is going to be important to ensure continuity of the project.
For sure, coming back now to the internal exposure, the developing NI 43-101 report is quite important for us. Many investors here in the, I would say in Canada and U.S., they require such a document to get certainty on the project, and that could be really beneficial to showcase the project to new investors. We're looking at upgrading as well on the OTCQX in the U.S. That's going to be done very shortly, hopefully.
For sure, we're going to look at secondary listing as well. The last one, which is quite interesting is the Ecuador project, which is quite large. It's a large project that we start to look at it barely. I mean, we're quite focusing now on Hualilán, but now we're going to start to look at it, and we believe there's a strong potential to increase value and take a proper decision in time. Peter, would you like to add something to that slide?
Yeah. Just a few comments, Yohann. The first is, one of the questions, and there are some themes to the questions that we've already received, so I'll try to address them even before the formal Q&A. But one of the questions that were asked is about the convertible debentures, and of course, there's also a question on the financing of the project. The convertible debenture that is outstanding is repaid as of tonight. We are refinancing that convertible debenture and increasing the amount that we're raising as we publicly disclosed. We expect that we'll raise at least $30 million. There's strong support for this replacement convertible debenture that will allow us to be able to bring money into the treasury of the company.
If we look at the amount that we have as cash on hand, plus that $30 million that would come into the treasury, we're estimating between $25 million and $35 million. Presently, we stand at about $30 million. We think that that number will increase. Without those funds, we have sufficient funds to carry us at least into the middle of next year to deal with the long lead time items and to give us that runway that we need for the purposes of completing the full project financing. We have to look at this from the lens of history and also practicalities and logic. On the history Yamana Gold, which is a company that I founded in 2003, spent almost $250 million for the development of its first project in South America between 2003 and 2006, 2007.
The market capitalization of the company when we began the financing of that project was roughly a couple of hundred million dollars. We actually start from a very similar position to where we were at that point in time. There's a bit of history that makes it certainly compelling to me to say that we certainly have a track record of being able to finance these projects independently of the market capitalization of the company. Most recently in Allied Gold, we began with a market capitalization of roughly $900 million, $950 million, and we were able to secure financing for a much larger project, a project that will be producing close to 300,000 ounces in Ethiopia with a capital cost that is approximately of about $575 million.
I'm very confident saying to you that we'll be able to secure the financing that we require for the completion of this project with a capital that is estimated to be somewhere between $210 million and $267 million. Why I give that range is because one of the items that Yohann will be looking at and will speak to is reducing the capital because in that $267 million is an amount for our connection to the power line. Rather than us spending the money for that, we can have a utility do that, and then we pay for power. That's certainly a very viable option for us. I don't want to leave you with the impression that the Ecuadorian project is for sale. I've made that very clear from the very beginning.
When you have optionality that comes from another project that is not core to the company, at least not core to the present development stage of Hualilán, we certainly would look at that as an option for the purposes of bringing further funding into the company. Bottom line is, we have repaid the convertible debenture as of today. We have a replacement convertible debenture that tops up the treasury of the company after that repayment. That gets us to a cash balance that carries us, including expenditure on long lead time items into the middle of next year, and gives us plenty of runway for the required financing for that $210 million to $267 million for the development of Hualilán. Yohann, let me pass it back to you.
Thank you, Peter. Next slide, please. Here I got a single slide on Ecuador. The thing, what I like to see here is that Guayabo is again, has 9.1 million ounces, from which 6.9 attributable to Challenger Gold. This is a Tier 1 district, obviously here. We're in the neighborhood of, I would say, of the 26 million ounces Cangrejos deposit, which is massive. As you can see, that deposit is only 6 km away.
Personally, in previous life, I operate like multi-pit operation that was at that distance. You can see, perhaps, the potential of that really well-located deposit. Again, we're talking about here about bulk tonnage. There's a high-grade core included in those deposits. I think the exploration team previously did a wonderful job by increasing maiden resources in 2023 to 9.1 million ounces within three years, which is quite significant.
For sure, it is open in all direction at depth, in strike and with, we believe, a modest budget. We believe that we can expand much further than that, the current resource. Again, just the title is quite important here. That project is located only 6 km from Cangrejos, that was sold at AUD 650 million a year ago. We do not know really what we have yet. We are going to pay attention to it, and for sure we are going to take action on that in time, but it seems to be a really good project.
Next slide please. Now just going back to Hualilán. Just want to talk a little bit about the location of the project. The project for Argentina, as the landscape has changed significantly over the last few years. It is a very interesting place to do business. We are going to talk a bit about the regime that has been put in place as a program for large business, that gives some benefits and improve NPV basically. In the feasibility study that has been done and published in May, that account for about $180 million, that is already reflected in that PFS.
Just to show how it could be interesting to start a project of that scale. We already start to work on the application, and I am going to come back to the timeline on different slide. San Juan is a mining place, is one of the top mining place in Argentina and I guess in South America. It is not that complicated to find people there. Most of the people that we hire now, we basically were shifting, I would say the mine management team to an exploration project, to more operating project and construction.
The people that we hire, they have that experience and they all base out of San Juan. I am very glad, and Peter talked to me about that, I guess on the first page, talking about the management team that we are putting in place there. It is really top people with high integrity and with a proven record of building mine and operating mine and improving.
I am very happy with that. The site itself, it is located about 100 km north of San Juan. It is easy access. It is a paved road, and the altitude is only 1,700 meters. Still high, but not high as the other mines, so there is no logistic associated to heavy snow and that kind of stuff. It gets cold, but all manageable. Its location is quite ideal for the deposit. For sure, it is fully permitted, which is great.
The only thing we have to do is just making sure that we update our EIA every second year, which is basically a formality. The next update is due for October 20 of this year, and we are pretty much aligned to have everything ready and submitted to the government instances. We have a strong support from the government as well. The new management team succeed to create very good relations so far, so I am really happy with that. For sure, what is important is the project is going to create about 900 jobs in San Juan, and really happy about that, and I think that is going to be a major economic engine for Argentina and San Juan. Next slide, please. Here, just to give you some color, going to go fast on the RIGI application.
RIGI is created to attract large-scale project by offering benefits to improve NPV. As I said, for the project here for Hualilán, we are talking about already $5 million of benefits. That is already reflect in the PE of May. Basically, to be eligible to RIGI, the project has to be above $200 million, and about 40% of that amount has to be spent in the two first year. I will not go through all the benefits, but just to give you a list of all the benefits that we have here.
About, I would say a month ago, we started to set up RIGI, to fill all the paperwork with the objective to submit the application last week of September, first week of October. We believe it is going to take between four to, let us say, six months to get the application. The good thing about it is RIGI is retroactive, so we can really put against RIGI expenses that occur so far since the project start. Basically, there is no doubt that we are going to meet the eligibility that is on that slide. Going to go now to slide 10. Peter, do you have anything on RIGI, or it is pretty straightforward?
It is an impressive system that has been adopted in Argentina. Certainly demonstrates, Yohann, the quality of jurisdiction, that they are supportive of mining and to create that type of value to reduce taxes in the way that it does. Clearly they are trying to encourage large-scale projects. We qualify as a large-scale project.
Thank you. Now on slide 10, that slide here, it is a snapshot of the PFS slide, the major line. We talked about that many time. On top of that, I wanted just to bring attention that what Hualilán has to offer is one of a kind. This is a rare kind of project because it is fully permitted, as we said. We do not find that every day. A Tier 1 mining jurisdiction, so it is access to really good and skilled people.
Mining is important there, so it is a place to be, and I am sure that, as Peter mentioned a few times, I did business there in San Juan and in other provinces in Argentina, and it is great for us. We have an experienced team in place. As I said here, we are really succeeding at recruiting top people to do that. We just recruit a project manager that just finished building a heap leach in Santa Cruz. We are having people return that know how to do it and did it in the past.
I am very confident on that aspect. Capital efficiency development, this is something that is quite interesting from that PFS. Being able to sequence heap leach and flotation with few years of interval, it is something that is quite interesting in a way that you can finance basically a second phase from cash flow for the first phase. It is quite good, and it de-risk a lot the project. The investment with a heap leach is not that big. A lot of benefits can be created in cash flow, again, to finance the phase two. Low operating risk. Again, this is bulk mining. It is a large-scale operation, bulk mining.
It is not like mining narrow vein, high grade, so you cannot miss, but a bulk open pit, low grade, it is nice to mine, actually. It forgives. Basically, to develop, I would say, heap leach operation, need to develop a mine, need to develop a leach pad, the processing circuit, and it is easy forward. It is not that complicated, and that can be done within 15 months, about.
Significant upside with the deposit, with exploration, as Luke is going to show that later on. But we are going to see some good target in pit that has not been touched, has been treated as waste, but could be ore. Basically, there is also potential to extend at Strike, and it is a large land package that deserves to be drilled a little bit more as well. We have a big playground there, obviously.
Again, to go through the number, 1.8 million ounces gold equivalent of production over 14 years, compiling NPV of $1.1 billion and the $1.8 billion at $4,500 gold price, which is pretty close of what we have now. The return is 35% on the investment. Modest initial CapEx of $267 million, that is including $35 million of contingency and the $47 million, about, for the power line that is going to be done by a third party, basically. That decreases, even to the CapEx cost, and we see some other maybe cost saving and be able to offset some costs for future year. We believe that we can build the phase one with much lower CapEx than that, obviously.
The payback is only 2.2 years for the old project. If I would use a $4,500 gold price, it is only 1.25 years. What we did as well is we look at if we just decide to go with the heap leach and postpone by more than two years the flotation, the payback of the leaching, I would say operation, is about a year, which is quite interesting. We are talking about 200,000 ounces that will produce over the two first year, and this is enough to pay back pretty much all of the CapEx, considering the lower operating cost of that operation. Peter, you would like to add to that, perhaps?
Well, let me just touch on a few points. This is a value play. It is a deep value play with the market capitalization of the company and a net present value that is likely going to get well above that $1.1 billion that is shown in the pre-feasibility study. My view is we can see something that is in the range of 40%-50% higher than that, with or without an increase in gold price, as we see here, because of some of these optimizations, capital efficiency, the upsides that Yohann has mentioned, and will touch on in greater detail in a couple of minutes. There is a very compelling deep value play here that I think cannot be overlooked. If we go to the next slide, let's just speak very briefly on the production platform.
This production platform shows an average over the 14.25 years mine life of 135,000 gold equivalent ounces. Most of that is gold. About 85% of that is gold, and the balance is silver. This is showing what happens in the first couple of years with heap leaching and then what happens once the flotation production is in place by 2031. Again, as I mentioned before, and Yohann mentioned, this is a full 12 months ahead of schedule to the pre-feasibility study. We took carriage of this company from a board point of view, management point of view, and made our investments, that AUD 86 million that was raised, including my money that came into that and Yohann's. We came into this as the pre-feasibility study was being completed.
We looked at it and said, "While there are quality elements to the pre-feasibility study, there are further optimizations and improvements." One of those is shown here, because what we intend to do is to improve this production schedule. That is one of the corporate actions that we intend to take to smooth out the production. We will do that as a result of many things, exploration successes, bringing some of the pre-stripping or stripping that would be done in later years and bringing some of that forward. That might increase capital more modestly, but it will also increase production significantly in those years when we see from 2032 to 2036, a production platform that is lower than that 163,000 ounces in 2031 and over 170,000 ounces from 2037 to 2039.
Blend out the production, make it closer, not just as an average, but year over year of that 135,000 ounces, plus exploration successes and plus recoveries that we will speak to. The pre-feasibility study assumes a 69% recovery, but many of the column tests show well in excess of 80% recoveries. We are highly confident, with high conviction, pound the table, that we will be able to get at least in the range of 75% recoveries.
There is significant optimization and improvement. Even with the termination of the toll milling project, we did learn a lot. Yohann, you touched on this. We learned that we have de-risked the project. We have learned that this is a lower grade, large volume operation, more than selective mining. We have a better understanding of the metallurgy, a better understanding of the geology of this deposit.
While we stepped into it on the basis of the quality of work that was done up to the point of the pre-feasibility study, we also saw some significant optimizations and improvements. Part of that optimization improvement will lead to a better production schedule than what you see here, which is already a very high-quality production schedule for an asset of this type and scale. Perhaps if we can go to the next slide, Yohann, if I can pass it back to you.
Yeah, for sure. Maybe to add to this one, when we look at the feasibility study, the ramp-up of production was quite low in the first year. In talking with our contractor that's going to do mining, we all believe that we should be a little bit more aggressive to start, and that's another way to bring ounces forward and to smooth out that production profile. There's many opportunities that we're looking at this moment, not only with operation, but also with, I would say, with the main concept to smooth out that production. Going now to slide 12. Here, that really show, and we show that roadmap in our latest release and this is giving, I would say, a right level information to what has been done and what we're going.
As you know, the PFS has been delivered in May, which I believe is quite strong, and on top of that PFS came with really good opportunities that we are taking seriously and that are under review. So far so good. I would say we took action on all of them about drilling, about trade-off study, about increasing recovery. We touch all of them, and pretty good job has been done so I like those. Bring me to the next phase is engineering, procurement, and construction. This is all ongoing. We engage BBA, as I said. We are doing detailed engineering. We engage with most of the consultant and contractor, I would say, to help with the construction of the main component. It's advancing really well. What we're doing is we're getting all the bidding package ready.
Again, that should be out soon. After that, we're going to get that and be in position to understand the time for long lead equipment and purchase the equipment right in time. I would say not right in time, but with a buffer to have everything ready and functional, for the beginning of 2029, basically. On that aspect, it's advancing well. We are crosschecking the mine plan, looking at other opportunities on that aspect. Everything is well integrated and, I would say Luke is on top of that and really committed to make sure that everything it's advancing well. Exploration here, again, we have a good plan in front of us. 35,000 meters of drilling, targeting those void that Luke going to show in the next pages.
We see a lot of potential there to improve what we have, which is already really strong from my point of view. So refinancing, Peter talked about that. This is something that is ongoing now. For sure the execution is, we are going to get there soon. So, power line, we engage with the third party for the power line construction. Everything is advancing very well. Again, all the permits are in place. So, that facilitate everything and that make everything really, I would say, make 2029 as a really realistic objective. Luke, maybe I forgot something. You want to, something to say on that one?
Just to reinforce, Yohann, that the reason that we were able to bring production forward that one year from 2030 in the PFS to 2029 now is we have gone back and looked at the execution plan that was developed for the PFS, and we have gone through it with BBA, and we have identified what is the critical path to put this mine into production. We have brought a lot of those activities forward to this year. A lot of the stuff that we are doing now in terms of the engineering, the test work, and the earthworks, that wasn't supposed to start till next year, but we have brought the expenditure, and we have brought the activities forward to make sure we are on track for 2029.
Thank you. So, going now to slide 13. Again, talk a bit more about, we touched base about that, but all the opportunities that we see here, just in more detail. We have the exploration. From day one, we said that we are going to do exploration to convert some inferred into reserves. Also to find and to fill those gaps of, I would say, ways that could be ore. So we executing on that.
We have four rigs at this moment at site. We are aiming to fulfilling that objective by, I would say, end of this year, beginning of next year. But we intend to give market, I would say, follow-up on exploration, at the end of Q4. Improving leach recovery is quite interesting here because the PFS is showing 69.7% recovery for the leach pad, but the average was about 74.7% recovery.
This is for, let's say, 120 days of leaching. Basically, knowing that we are going to leach more than 120 days is each lift, and we are going to go in the exceed of maybe 500 days about, let's say, for each lift. So we believe that putting back that 5% into the PFS is reasonable. So the new PFS is going to show 74.7% compared to 69%. That will for sure improve our, I would say, gold production profile. What we are doing as well is when they were doing the test work for the PFS, it seems like the larger column was returning a better recovery. This is normal. If you use a bigger column and the ratio between the biggest particle and the column size is becoming less relevant with a bigger column.
So, and with a bigger column, at the time, they came up with a recovery of 84%, 85%. Now what we did is we partner with the National University of San Juan, and we're doing some column testing at eight and 10 inches. Basically, we just started those tests at the beginning of September. After another 20 days, we should have result, and this is our intention to share those results with the market sometime in Q1 next year.
So, everything is pointing to a really good heap leach recovery, for sure. Mine plan optimization here. That's an improvement that is pretty much under Luke, I would say. What we try to do here is really optimize the mine through process, plan, improve equipment utilization, stockpiling management, and all that kind of, I would say, more production-oriented activities. For sure, we can put much more detail in the plan, and that's going to be done under BBA.
Here, an example, the PFS is not really specific about the stacking sequence, and we're going to make sure that in our next iteration, I would say the stacking sequence is going to be considered, for sure. So those kind of things are really helping to really decrease and really pinpoint where are the savings. For sure reducing upfront CapEx, as Peter mentioned here. We already engaged with a consultant and all the, I would say, big energy company in Argentina in order to give them the mandate to build the power line, and that would be repay over the life of mine per ton process, basically. Which is a really good deal for us, for sure.
And we believe that it's going to take about two years to build it. So we believe it's going to be ready pretty much the same time than we're going to start our, I would say, heap leach operation. But worst case worst, if it's delayed by a few months, the plan also, I would say, we also have few generator in the budget to make sure that we're going to have the power that is required to run the leaching plant. So those are mainly the thing that we saw from the first PFS, and again, we're executing on each of them. So, Peter, anything to say on this one? You're.
No, I think you've covered it all, Yohann.
Okay.
Let's move forward.
Very good. Thank you. Again, here, the detail engineering here, and this is something that I'm going to just maybe bring you guys on that one and turn it to Luke. But basically, the phase one is really underway with BBA, with meeting every week, discussing the details, and putting together the plan for the long lead item, which is quite important. Now we did the verification on the block model.
Now we are at the stage where we're doing reserve mine planning, phasing, and selection of mining equipment. That's just pretty much what we're going to do over the next couple of weeks. We drill 5,500 meters of geotechnical hole to make sure that we have the stability of our wall right, and also to make sure that we have all the condemnation program in place for the infrastructure.
We also want to use that information for ground control. Sorry, for groundwater management. Metallurgical testing, I talked about that already. It's quite interesting. The other thing that I didn't talk about is all the crushing size testing that we're going to do, making sure that we have crushing right to optimize recovery. There's a ratio between if we need to add cement and crushing.
So we need to run some tests, making sure that we have this correct. But that's going to be done within the timeline that we specify here. For sure, I would say the hard work that's need to be done, bringing the equipment in time, the construction of the ramp access that has started already. From the two milling, the work that we did before, a lot of money that's been spent is going to be used for the larger scale operation.
Which is good. Again, one other thing that we did with so far, we built a stockpile as of the end of June of about 80,000 tons, grading about 0.72 grams per ton. The idea is also to be proactive and build a stockpile to make sure that we're going to have a smooth start when we're going to start the operation in 2029. Luke, you would like to add to that?
Maybe I will just add one thing, with metallurgical test work. Apart from the increased recoveries that Yohann has already talked about, there is also the opportunity to optimize the crush sizes and also the reagent usage as well. There is an opportunity to reduce the operating cost for the heap leach as well, as a result of this test work. We are also going to use this additional metallurgical information to build a geometallurgical model so we can really target the best recovery zones early in the mine life to help to bring some of that production forward, like Peter mentioned.
Next slide.
Next slide. Just on the explorations, as we reported in July, we have started our first real exploration program at Hualilán for three years. Really in the last three years, the company has been focused on converting the resources to reserves and doing the studies to complete the PFS, and that has been successful. We have almost 2 million ounces of gold equivalent in the mine plan at the moment.
Now that that is done, we are going back and restarting the exploration. We currently have four rigs on site. What we are really looking to do is try to focus on the areas that have the biggest impact on the mine plan and can add value quickly. We are really looking within the pit and also adjacent to the pit without necessarily going deeper and without exploring some of these other targets just yet on the land package.
The deposit is drilled really well. It is drilled to a space of about 40 meters in the area of the resource and the reserve. You will notice that outside of that area, there is very little drilling, even right next to the pit. What we are doing is going back, identifying some of these gaps, and they are shown in red circles on these cross-sections on the right-hand side of the slide.
We think there are some good opportunities here to either expand the pit with some additional mineralization or even to convert some of the waste within the pit to ore. It is probably most clear to see that on the bottom cross-section where some of these drill holes were stopped short. We think there is a good opportunity for the mineralization within the pit to continue up there.
That is going to reduce the strip ratio and improve the economics of the project. We are really focusing on the dacite, the pink material in these cross-sections. That has really good continuity and scale, and it is also really good for heap leach process, too. We are going to be focusing on some of those areas. In terms of the timeline, as I said, we have started drilling. We have got four rigs on site. We are aiming to give an exploration update before the end of this year, and then to incorporate these drilling results into a new reserve and resource estimate. We say half two, the second half of next year, but it is probably going to be around the middle of next year. Next slide.
This is just showing the same thing, but in plan view. I think this really clearly demonstrates the point that I was making, that we have a lot of drilling within the pit, but very little outside of that. You can see both to the north on the left and to the south on the right-hand side of the slide, we have opportunities to extend the pit along strike. Even next, parallel to the existing pit, we have some opportunities there to do additional pushbacks as well. Plenty of opportunities, and really that is what this first 35,000 meters is going to be focusing on, and we expect to see a bit of an increase in reserves by next year. Next slide.
Thank you, Luke. I will take over on that one. I just want to say on this here, before joining the management team, I spent six-eight weeks looking at a project, and I was quite impressed. Basically, based on that, for sure, I became an investor, which is quite good. I am also part of the management team, and basically what I saw, pretty much written in that slide, we saw an opportunities to bring forward the production in 2029 by having, I would say, the simplicity of the project, which is quite impressive here. It is fully permitted, but capital-efficient gold development project. The way that is sequenced by having phase I and phase II, one after each other, quite impressive as well, I would say.
This is not many deposit that can offer that kind of sequencing and, I would say, capital discipline to manage risk. The strong PFS economic of $1.1 billion, 35% IRR, it is again, for that kind of project here, it is really good. We believe, and on top of that, it came with opportunities to even do better than that. Gold price at this moment is quite good. By bringing it forward by 1 year, we believe that we are going to be able to surf on that gold price. That is quite good. The management team that we put in place is quite good as well. The roadmap that we developed is quite doable. Again, there are two item that need to be built for leaching. We believe that we can do it really well, actually.
So for sure, the exploration upside at Ecuador is something that we are going to pay attention, and we believe that can bring tremendous value, I would say, to the company and going to fit very well in our future plan. I will not go through all of those catalysts here, but this is pretty much what we have in our press release. It is quite aligned. But as you can see, there is a lot of stuff that is going on. And our objective is deliver on each of those milestone and communicate to the market the progress as it goes. So, Peter, I am going to turn it to you.
We have a track record for delivering projects into development on time and on budget. This will be exemplary in that we will have done it again. What do we have in addition to that deep value play that I described before? An improving mine plan, reducing waste to ore, improving pit design, improving recoveries, reducing capital, optimizing Ecuador, and of course, an exploration program that we expect to discover more ounces. All of these things will further increase value. The milestones here, the timeframe and the sequencing will be coincident with the timing for the financing of the development of this project. We expect to be in production in early 2029, as Luke and Yohann mentioned. Jane, with that, let me pass it back to you.
Wonderful. Thank you for that, gentlemen. And once again, if you do have questions for the team, please use the Q&A function, which can be found at the bottom of your screen. Bear with me, there has been quite a few that have come through as we have been going through the presentation, and a lot of it has been covered, but I will jump into it. Peter, this one is for you, and you did cover it in the presentation, but what convinced you to invest in Challenger and take on that chairman role?
Yes. I first became aware of this project, and I know some of the principles behind it, some of the institutional investors and the individual investors. Indeed, one of the individual investors is one of the more successful businesspeople in Argentina last year. But early this year, as the pre-feasibility study, the components of it were coming together, it allowed me an opportunity to take a further look. What became interesting to me, to come back to point, Jane, is the deep value play. I do not see this as $1.1 billion. I think that is a stepping stone. I see that the value of this project, we are not at a $3,500 gold price. We are not at a $3,000 gold price. We are at a $4,500 gold price.
And if you can couple that then with the optimizations and improvements that we've discussed this morning, it just seems to me that there is this deep value play well in excess of that AUD 1.1 billion. My view is we can see a 40%-50% increase above that. And it is a project that is worthy of development with a very modest capital. If I looked at it from the lens, also of the, Yohann touched on returns, but if I looked at it from the lens of the capital efficiency and the capital depth, the let's say capital per ton of ore, capital per number of ounces of development, and then production. It just seems to me that we are into a world of impressive value and impressive returns for investors. That's what turned me into being an investor.
But I also looked at it and said, for that investment to be realized, my experience is that you have to have a competent and capable board of directors to provide oversight and a competent and capable management to manage. There was already a local management team, needed some supplement. It needed a corporate team. We've put all of that in place. That's the history as to how I became involved in this project.
Jane, you're on mute, I think.
Sorry. That was my fault. A lot's coming through again. Peter, I'm going to stick with you for this one. What went wrong with the previous toll treatment strategy, and what have you learnt from it?
Well, I do not know that I like the use of terms, what went wrong. We terminated toll milling for several reasons. One is fundamentally, philosophically, I do not believe that toll milling delivers the value to a company that has a high-quality project, a long life project such as this one. That's the philosophy. In addition to that, there's also the issue of are you fully understanding the ore body?
A company that goes from an infancy stage to a maturity, that goes from an exploration stage through development and then ultimately to mining. There's a sequence and a process, but to go from exploration stage to mining has attendant risks and consequences. We realized as we were stepping into the seats here that those risks and consequences were materializing. This is a lower grade, large volume deposit, full stop. It works.
We will get that 135,000 ounces, likely more than that as an average throughout that just over 14 years of mine life. We'll do that to generate some very significant cash flow. But to go through selective mining of higher grade, the conclusion was it is not there in the way that was anticipated. One can look at that and say, "That's a mistake," but I prefer to look at it and say, "But there's also an opportunity here." Because the money that was sunk into doing that can also be repurposed as initial capital for the development of this project.
It has taught us a lot. It has taught us the metallurgy here because we did process some of this gold through an existing plant. It has taught us about the geology. We have learned what the nature of the deposit is. The result of all of that is that we're actually springboarding. We have leapfrogged, in some respects, what would normally be the process going from a pre-feasibility study, then feasibility study, and then beyond that. That's part of the reason why we can accelerate the startup of production by that full 12 months.
Sorry, Yohann, did you have something to add there?
Nothing to say, no.
Okay.
Sorry.
That's okay. Just further to that then. What do you anticipate, if anything, to be the biggest challenge with the new approach that's been outlined in the presentation?
Let me address that, Yohann and Luke. It's a comparatively easy project. This is a very conventional process, conventional flotation circuit, conventional heap leaching, comparatively easy ore body to understand. For the reasons we've just discussed on the lessons learned from toll milling, from the mining that brought the toll milling arrangement, we're in a far better position to say, "This is how to mine this deposit. This is what to expect when we're mining it. This is what the block model should look like." For those of you who are not familiar, the block model is really critical here, because what we want as a mining company is that we're mining a block. We don't want to know that the number of ounces holistically are in a deposit. That's universally true.
What we want is, we want to be able to say that when we're mining it, at the time that we're mining it, we're getting the tonnage and the grade that we expect to get. These are some of the things that go into the comparative simplicity of this project that allows us to be able to say that there really isn't a risk that I can point to and say it presents a problem for us. The risk or the challenges, are we in production in the first few weeks of 2029, or in the last few weeks of the first quarter of 2029? That's the risk.
Wonderful. I am mindful of time here, so just combining a few of them together. There is quite a few that are coming through just on market valuing the company so far. Obviously, the PFS shows that $1.1 billion NPV. Why do you think that the market is valuing Challenger so far below that?
Well, I think some of it is, as a company is transitioning from one stage to another, a management transitions from one management to another. As you go through the lessons learned and then making sure that you have checked all the boxes, dotted the I's, crossed the T's on the components, there is a shortage of information in market, and I think that that is part of it. Amongst the questions, or at least the themes of the questions, goes to how do you finance it?
I hope we have given some comfort that we do not see that as a real challenge. High-quality projects get financed. So it is not just our history, my history personally, it is that high-quality projects get financed, and this is a high-quality project, so we will get financed. So I can understand that some of those questions lead to uncertainties in marketplace. The reason why we are here, the reason why we published our press release late last week is so that we can reinvigorate with market. We will be in Australia within a few weeks, roughly the middle of October, so that we can begin a marketing campaign there.
We want to present more institutional presence in the stock, and we expect to achieve some of those as we deliver on our plans. Part of the reason for engaging in an update to the pre-feasibility study on 43-101 standards is so that we can introduce this project more fulsomely to many of those institutional investors and retail investors that are in North America and in Europe that have, in some respects, more familiarity with the Canadian standard of 43-101. Not abandoning what we have done, but just increasing the shareholder profile.
Wonderful, thank you. I am burning through these just for time. So what are we hoping to achieve from the 35,000-meter drill program, and do you think it can materially change the current mine plan?
Peter, you want me to take that one? It is good?
Please go ahead.
Yeah, so what we are trying to do here is, as Luke mentioned, is really target those places where we can transfer the inferred into reserve, so we see a big potential there. I am not sure yet about how material it could be, but it can decrease the strip ratio. It can increase production as well. So once we are going to have a good view on that, we can resize the whole, I would say, operation and mining sequence and come with a different outcome. But I would say I am not expecting to see anything negative in a way that is really tightly drilled, and I just can see, I would say, benefits out of it, basically. Materially, maybe yes, maybe no. But I believe that we are going to for sure see some positive momentum out of that 35 meters of drilling.
Thank you, Yohann. Again, mindful of the time, we are running out. Peter, perhaps just to you for some final thoughts and perhaps what shareholders should be looking forward to over the next three to six months.
We've highlighted some of the catalysts, the milestones on which we will be publishing. Stay tuned for some of those. We will be more actively engaging with the institutional and retail investors that are in the stock presently, and then those that are not that we believe, I believe, should be in the stock. As we deliver on this plan of demonstrating what this asset is all about, based on the PFS and its updates, and then the optimizations that Yohann, Luke, and I have discussed, I think we should see a very significant improvement in the share price.
We look forward to continuing this engagement. We look forward to meeting with you in person. Shareholders should be looking out for some of these updates that are mentioned in this presentation, that will, in my view, significantly increase the share price.
Wonderful. Well, thank you, gentlemen. That is all we have time for today, and I do note there were quite a few questions that came through, and we will get back to you separately with those answers. If we've missed any further questions, please feel free to reach out via the contact details, which can be found at the bottom of our ASX releases. Thank you again for your time.