Good morning, everyone. Obviously, a major milestone today for Chalice Mining with the release of our pre-feasibility study for our world-class Gonneville Project in WA. This is a major step forward for the company and for the asset, and I guess what we've released today confirms what we've known for a while here, which is that we have a standout development project and a standout opportunity in the critical mineral space, and very much a very unique asset in Western Australia. It's a big reset in terms of the development plan as well for this asset, so the study today outlines the largest and lowest cost undeveloped project of the palladium nickel copper variety in the Western world. It's going to generate AUD 4.7 billion in pre-tax free cash flows over 23 years of open pit life.
That's an initial 23 years of open pit life, which I'll talk to later around the upside. It's going to pay back very rapidly with about 2.7 years. It's a very, very high-quality study and a high-quality asset. It has huge exploration upside, not only within the existing resource, but also in the surrounding tenure. We hold 7,000 sq km of underexplored West Yilgarn tenure. Really, what makes the project unique is the leverage it has to palladium. There are just so few development projects globally in palladium. We're looking at about a AUD 250 million increase in the NPV per AUD 100 per ounce increase in the long-term palladium price. That's a fantastic leverage to the upside and what we think is a rapidly increasing price environment. Importantly, Chalice is financially very, very strong. AUD 76 million in cash and listed investments.
We are funded all the way through to FID here on this asset. We do not have any near-term funding requirements. And obviously, we've got a strategic MOU with Mitsubishi Corporation, and we have a lot of strategic interest in the asset. So we are looking to engage with those strategics now, obviously very actively following the release of this PFS. And again, it makes us very comfortable that our balance sheet is well and truly sufficient to get us through to FID. The team, led by myself, highly regarded, obviously very committed and invested. We have the right people leading this project through to development. And the opportunity for investors is very, very clear. It's trading at about $20 per resource ounce. And now we've got a maiden reserve. The project's trading out there. The company's trading at about $50 per reserve ounce.
That's excluding any value from nickel, copper, or cobalt. That is quite a stunning investment proposition. The project's obviously very large scale, long life, globally competitive, production profile, 220,000 oz of precious metals per year, predominantly palladium, 7,000 tonnes a year of nickel, 8,000 tonnes a year of copper, 700 tonnes a year of cobalt for a pretty spectacular 23-year initial open pit life. Only half of the resource is actually exploited in that 23 years, which I'll talk to later. It's going to sit very close to the bottom of the cost curve, firmly second quartile, with $370 an ounce All-In Sustaining Costs, which means it's not only the lowest cost project in the Western world, but it's actually the lowest cost of any undeveloped PGM project globally.
It has 1.4 billion pre-tax NPV at an 8% discount rate, 23% IRR, and a 2.7-year payback at what we think is very conservative base case prices of AUD 1,300 palladium, AUD 8,750 nickel, AUD 10,500 copper. I'll talk to her as well in a minute what those numbers look like at spot prices. But it is a fundable and executable project now. It's a very large, low strip ratio, simple flowsheet project. And we've invested heavily and de-risked it significantly already with an AUD 240 million investment by Chalice to date since the discovery in 2020. The reserve, about half of the resource is converted into reserves, as it says there. We've done a significant amount of de-risking. I guess the key part being we own the private farmland where the project's going to be constructed. And we've got Strategic and Major Project Status from State and Commonwealth governments.
So we have every bit of government support that is possible at this point of a project. So we're very, very confident in the development path and the approvals pathway ahead. We're going to really do something that's quite novel in Australia. We're going to build Australia's first platinum group metals mine and Australia's first palladium mine. And this is just a real standout opportunity. Like I said, there are just very, very few assets like this around in critical minerals and certainly in palladium. And we expect to attract a significant amount of debt funding to help us execute on those plans. Like I said, funded to target FID in the first half of 2028. We're really moving up a gear now into the FS. It'll be about an 18-month feasibility study.
We'll secure regulatory approvals and we'll move to securing offtake and debt financing solution over the course of the coming years as well, all within our current balance sheet. The open pit phase is set to generate a pretty significant production profile, which I've mentioned. The exceptional returns, I think, really speak for themselves. So these metrics here are listed at base case prices there, as well as at today's spot prices and concentrate offtake terms. The first point being we've made a significant reduction in the overall pre-production capital estimate. We require now AUD 820 million to construct Stage 1 of the project. I mentioned the firmly second quartile All-In Sustaining Costs. And really what that investment delivers is pretty exceptional free cash flow on a pre- and post-tax basis.
You can see there's AUD 300-AUD 360 million per year, depending on whether you believe our base case prices or spot prices today. And somewhere between AUD 4.7 billion and AUD 6.2 billion of total free cash flow after CapEx. Exceptional cash flow generation. Pre-tax NPV also increases from that AUD 1.4 billion to AUD 2 billion at spot prices. Post-tax NPV, AUD 1 billion to AUD 1.5 billion at spot prices. Payback period as well gets slightly shorter at spot. And certainly a very solid IRR at 23%-29% for the investment of this size. We think that is exceptional. And a reminder that all of these metrics are really only exploiting half of the resource. So there is a remaining almost eight million ounces of precious metals, almost 500,000 tonnes of contained nickel, 250,000 tonnes of contained copper below the model pit shell here.
There is exceptional upside through life extension, either in a larger open pit or a progression into underground. Where we will sit competitively, we've done a lot of work on this. Obviously, the industry ranks itself by All-In Sustaining Costs per ounce of precious metals, net of byproduct credits. You can see Russia occupies the left-hand side. South Africa and Zimbabwe really occupy the right-hand side. We're going to sit somewhere in the middle. As you can see, firmly second quartile, we are about half of the cost profile of the next best Western producer. And that is Impala Canada, at about $720 an ounce. They are actually shutting down that operation. So that is artificially low. So we are in a fantastic position to generate exceptional returns in a very, very safe part of the cost curve.
As you can see there, the $1,300 an ounce palladium price assumption we've used corresponds to about the 90th, 95th percentile of the cost curve. At the moment, that Sibanye-Stillwater US PGM operation is operating at about $1,320 an ounce All-In Sustaining Costs, which gives us comfort that the market should balance higher than our base case assumption of $1,300 an ounce. Also, the cost profile in South Africa and the level of production curtailments we've seen implies that we have a shrinking and steepening cost curve for the PGM industry as well. So why palladium? I guess in short, this is the price history over the last seven years or so. The prices are now rebounding, as you can see, from a cyclical low. That cyclical low we've taken as our mine design or cutoff for the purposes of the PFS.
All our mine designing and economic cutoffs have been derived at that price floor there in the green line. What we saw is, as you can see, the orange line is our long-term $1,300 an ounce assumption. And you can see there that that price was exceeded for in the order of three and a half years in the last cycle. And currently, we're trading at closer to $1,500 an ounce. So clearly, the market is telling us that the market is short again, and hence prices are rising. And you can just look back to the 2019-2020 period to see how rapidly the market can move into deficit and prices can really accelerate very rapidly. And that is the nature of this being a very, very small market. And importantly, there is just no elasticity in the palladium supply.
So even if we do see high prices, like what we saw between 2020 and 2023 there, there was no additional supply added to the market. So global production declined over that period, even with high prices, which just emphasizes just how unique and what a good position our asset is in to basically be the only supply option near term to come into this market. So the financial metrics, first of all, I mentioned the NPV and IRR. Obviously, these look fantastic at base case. Look even better at spot prices. The cash flows out of Stage 1, you see there three years generating sort of AUD 300 million-AUD 360 million per annum. That generates a 2.4-2.7-year payback. We then go and reinvest into an expansion of the project. We believe that expansion is well and truly incentivised at the long run, 1,300 base case price environment.
As you can see there, the payback period there, two to 2.5 years on Stage 2, is certainly telling that point as well that it is well and truly incentivised. We generate between AUD 310 million and AUD 390 million for the following 10 years at the expanded throughput rate and between AUD 4.7 billion and AUD 6.2 billion over the 23-year mine life. So the low costs, really what drives our position on the cost curve is really the open pit mining. We're starting mining at surface, and we've got exceptional high byproduct credits, which most of the PGM industry doesn't have. So this drives that exceptional profitability through the cycle. As you can see here on this page, our all-in sustaining margin is very, very healthy through the 23 years.
You can see the spot basket is trading at close to $1,600 an ounce, including all of our other metals, palladium, platinum, and gold. That really cements our position and makes us very much profitable, as it says there, through the cycle. The pre-production CapEx, like I said, has come down significantly from where we were two years ago. That number was AUD 1.6 billion two years ago. Now it is AUD 820 million for a slightly reduced scale. That significantly enhances the project, obviously makes the funding hurdle considerably easier. As it says there, industry-leading All-In Sustaining Costs. Really, this is where a lot of the fantastic work in optimizations have really resulted in a fantastic cost profile to the asset and given it the exceptional mine life. Even at bottom of the cycle prices, we believe the metrics are solid.
You can see that even if you take $200 an ounce off the long-term palladium price, we still have a plus 18% IRR, 23% IRR at base case prices. Really that leverage to the palladium price, as I mentioned earlier, is the key factor here. 250 million in additional NPV 8 for every $100 per ounce increase in the long-term palladium price. We're sensitive, obviously, to those prices and to operating costs as per usual. We're less sensitive to the cost of capital, the exchange rate, and capital costs. Really, I guess we think this is an absolutely exceptional set of numbers and proves this asset can survive and be incentivized at the bottom of the price cycle. The exposure, obviously, it's very, very diverse, dominated by palladium at 51% of revenues, nickel number two at 22%, copper number three at 17%.
That is a very, very handy byproduct out of nickel and copper. And that split provides us an inherent diversification and robustness to fluctuations in prices. And as you can see on the right-hand side, the annual production, when you think about it in terms of what's contained in resource, we have exceptional longevity to this asset, which really puts it in a class of its own. The funding piece as well, obviously very important that those exceptional margins that I outlined, really that underscores the ability to service significant low-cost debt. And we know there is effectively no shortage and almost unlimited sort of possibilities at the moment for critical minerals projects like Gonneville, obviously palladium, platinum, nickel, copper, cobalt, all either critical or strategic minerals to Western governments. So we expect really very, very strong interest.
And we have had, obviously, very strong interest from all these debt providers. And now that we have a PFS, we will be moving into formal commencement of formal discussions with these debt providers. To talk about the project itself, obviously, it's located on farmland that we own. So the mine infrastructure is going to be wholly located within 2,200 hectares. That's the mine development area. We've also got opportunities here to demonstrate that this area can be improved through restoration and also offsets. We've actually already got 400 hectares of designated biodiversity offset. We've got research partnerships in place. So we've very much looked ahead here to how to make this sustainable. And we certainly believe this is a very viable place to build and operate a major mine.
We will, as it says there, we have committed and we will comply with no net loss of species or habitat as that process. We think that significantly, all those factors significantly de-risk the major environmental approvals. Looking at the open pit, as people who have followed the discovery know, there's some very high-grade near surface. Effectively, the mining starts at surface. We have a significant high-grade core. That high-grade core has very good mining continuity. This is fairly simple open pit mining. As you can see from those sections, very, very nice plus AUD 80 a tonne NSR material that will be the focus of the early years, progressively moving into a life of mine average of around about AUD 55 a tonne Net Smelter Return. These zones have good strike and dip continuity. This is a very minable open pit deposit.
The design is in eight stages, very low strip ratio, 1.2 over the life of mine, starting even lower than that, around about 1.0 over the first three years. And again, the benefit is, as you can see in that bottom left-hand chart, very high-grade material coming in early in the mine plan before it moves into a very healthy margin, plus 45% EBITDA margin, long-life expanded operation. And the pit progressing to a depth of 450m , processing a total in the production target of 280 million tonnes. The production profile, like I mentioned, about 200,000 oz a year of palladium for 23 years. You can see the base metals contribution there as well. Obviously, very, very diverse, like I said, and very significant quantities of metals going out in concentrate over the long term.
The process flowsheet, obviously, has been the subject of a lot of work in the PFS. This is where most of our heavy lifting has been done. We've spent about AUD 15 million on metallurgical test work, process design. We have done this work exceptionally well and exceptionally detailed. And it is now proven over all of our composites that these outcomes will be achieved. And so we have a two-part process flowsheet, oxide material just being leached for its palladium and gold content, sulphide material going through sequential flotation, producing a saleable copper concentrate with a lot of the PGMs in it, and then producing a nickel concentrate with the cobalt and some more PGMs within it before finally getting blended together with that oxide material. And about 25% of the revenue coming from a standard precious metals leach circuit at the back end of the plant.
We've got very, very attractive concentrates, negligible impurities, no penalties associated. We've already had indicative terms from a number of nickel and copper smelters we've been talking to over the last few years, so we have very, very strong interest in this in offtake of these products, and it will go without saying, but there's exceptionally strong interest in the copper concentrate market at the moment, which is driving negative TC/RCs, and obviously, there's potential for improvements and further optimizations of this work in the FS, but also movements in these recoveries if we see sustained long-term price movements. The infrastructure work as well has been the other key focus area for the PFS. We've de-risked the power solution and the water solution now. Power will be a combination of grid and on-site hybrid solar, battery, and peaking on-site.
Like I said, process water will come via a new pipeline from existing treated wastewater. Logistics is about as simple as it gets, being so close to Perth. Workforce, predominantly residential, a very, very attractive point and helps us secure low costs over the life of this operation. No fly-in, fly-out. It means we have significant attractiveness to a very, very established workforce in the Perth metro area. And then, obviously, all the usual non-process infrastructure, which has obviously been designed to a PFS standard. The upside really is pretty clear when you look at this page. This shows the PFS pit shell. That is the 280 million tonnes of ore that is mined in the first 23 years of open pit mining. You can see just how small that is in the context of where we know mineralization extends over this deposit.
Just in resources below the pit shell, there's almost eight million ounces of precious metals. We think there's significant upside, as you can see there, beyond even those inferred resources there in blue. We've intersected mineralization all the way down at 1.1 km. We do think this progressively moves into a large format bulk underground operation over the long term as well. Exceptional upside for a true multi-generational type production profile. And really, we do think upside here is likely, as it says. The road ahead, like I said, fully financed to get this project to FID in first half 2028. The next major milestone for the team is the environmental submissions in the second half of next year.
Obviously, the PFS work is going to inform those environmental submissions and all the dust, noise, impacts modelling going on at the moment, such that we're in a position to reach FID in the first half of 2028 and first production in 2030. So that would be a fantastic outcome given the discovery only in early 2020. We think sort of 10 years between discovery to first production is an exceptional result and certainly beats the sort of global average that other base metals PGM projects are looking at somewhere between 14 and 18 years at the moment. So we're certainly on the pathway now. We've got a very, very firm and robust development plan. So we are taking this asset ahead. So to recap, before we finish for some questions, we've got the leading palladium project in the Western world. There is really no other attractive palladium project anywhere.
It's one of the standout projects in Australia, one of the standout critical minerals projects globally. It's funded through to an FID and it's, like I said, on a development pathway. The PFS outlines that we're going to generate exceptional returns, almost AUD five billion in free cash flow pre-tax. And importantly, it pays back rapidly. So that is really the crux of the robustness here, for an investment of the size of AUD 820 million to get that paid back in less than three years, is an exceptional outcome. The approvals, like I said, on track for second half next year. The real de-risk element there is that we've spent AUD 50 million acquiring that freehold land. So we have substantially sort of taken out the risks there.
And the exploration upside, like I said, not only the resource but broader in the West Yilgarn is something that certainly keeps us focused in Chalice as well. So I will pause there for some questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Hayden Bairstow with Argonaut. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Alex. Plenty of detail on the study, mate. So thanks for all of that. Just a couple of things from me first. Just on mining, the mining costs seem quite elevated over the life of the project.
Just some thoughts about why you're ramping it from five up towards seven over time and the strip ratio is reasonably flat. And then just secondly, just on that, I mean, there's obviously it's only a one-to-one or just over. But just your plans for grade control drilling? Because I presume managing all dilutions is going to be pretty critical to this thing once it gets going.
Yeah, absolutely. Look, mining costs reflect reality at the moment in the market. We've had three competitive bids from mining contractors. We are on the outskirts of Perth, so it's residential. So that helps offset some of those costs, but we have put realistic mining costs in. We are operating with a five by five by five SMU, so there's a level of selectivity, certainly initially, to achieve the grade profile to the plant.
Grade control, I would say we've already done a 10 by 10 sort of pseudo grade control program to give us measured resources in the starter pit area, in the phase one pit. So that gives us confidence that our 40 by 40 indicated drilling is very robust in terms of the estimate accuracy. But certainly, there will be some additional grade control in the plan, and that's been costed in the bottom-up mining OpEx build. So yeah, we certainly do want to keep an eye on dilution. That is going to be one of our key sensitivities. But we have, as I showed in the cross-sections, they're very minable, sort of coherent, consistent minable zones. So really, the dilution really comes around from dolerites, and they are post-mineral, so they are true waste. So yeah, so look, I think the study ultimately reflects realism.
Look, there's opportunities, no doubt, in the FS to try and sharpen the pencil on that, but I think we've modeled it. Obviously, it is a deep open pit as well, getting to 450m , which impacts progressively higher load and haul costs over the life of mine.
Just on the nickel stream, I mean, the recoveries are obviously low versus a lot of the other metals. I mean, what do you see as opportunities? I know you looked at the MHP as one way of monetizing the rest of the nickel, but where do you see sort of potential wins there as you go through the full phase?
Yeah, look, certainly it's an opportunity. Sort of 38% overall nickel recovery is not a fantastic outcome, but it is low grade. Look, we know most of that nickel is in sulphide form, somewhere around 80%.
So out of the sulphide recoverable portion of the nickel, we're getting a reasonable amount of it reporting to that nickel con. But obviously, we've had to get to an 8% saleable nickel grade, con grade. So that impacts that recovery number. I think the opportunity would be, is there sort of a drop in that sort of saleable threshold for nickel con over time, potentially, just given that there is so few nickel sulphide mining operations left. The smelters, we think, are getting hungrier and hungrier. So that sort of potentially drives us to drop the con grade over the longer term. Also, I guess these newer sort of downstream plants being constructed in Indonesia, we've already had some engagement with pCAM players in the industry around sulphide concentrate.
So we think pCAM, it's an even better fit relative to smelters, but we've taken a more conservative sort of smelter assumption for the purposes here for the PFS.
Oh, brilliant. Thanks, mate.
Your next question comes from David Coates with Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Yeah, great presentation. Plenty there for us to go through. Bit of a sort of high-level question to start with. Just, there's always been a lot of value levers to pull on this project. Can you just sort of run us through, I guess, maybe what sort of key factors have been in coming to the throughput rates that you've liked in the PFS and the staging sequence?
Yeah, thanks, David.
I think the 5 million tonnes per annum initial stage throughput was a pretty natural solution, just given that we do have a bit of fixed infrastructure that needs to be built, too, and we obviously need a return on that. So we were sort of targeting a plus 20% IRR on that sort of size, and that's where we landed. We do think, obviously, the Stage 2 is really option value. There is a lot of flexibility either to bring that expansion forward or potentially defer that, depending on the macro environment. So at the 1,300 palladium base case price assumption, we think that Stage 2 is right-sized. But obviously, there's opportunities, like I said, to either make it bigger or make it happen quicker. That will be possible within the scope of our approvals as well.
We are going for the full 14 million tonne per annum throughput rate under the regulatory approval, so we will have a degree of flexibility there. So I think it's a balance of value and risk. I think putting it in two stages as well allows the process plant to be de-risked, and understanding of the ore body to be gained in those initial years helps, obviously, inform and make sure the Stage 2 capital investment is appropriate in terms of plant configuration. So I think we've used sort of a trade-off of value and risk to land at that type of staging. But obviously, it's a very, very large resource, right? 280 million tonnes of inventory. So clearly, higher prices are going to deliver a progressively more leveraged upside to the financials if we increase the mine design price deck.
So to reiterate there, the mine designs were done at $1,050 an ounce palladium. So there is a degree of conservatism there. If we see sustained higher prices, we certainly see that pit shell getting larger and the life going up, and certainly room for further expansions or upsized expansions.
Cool. Nice one. Thanks, Alex. Second one, just sort of looking longer out to funding. It's a long-life operation, 23-year initial mine life, and obviously carries the attraction of the critical mineral slate. There's plenty of debt funding on offer. How do you kind of see the, obviously, somewhere out, but the debt or the funding mix for this and the sources panning out?
Yeah, look, I think this is a point the market really just hasn't come to grips with. People seem to read the headlines but don't seem to understand the implications.
There is a significant pool of debt funding out there for critical minerals projects, particularly ones of scale, and I think that's what differentiates this and puts it in such a different category to most other projects is just that mine life and those margins over that mine life. We have had very, very good engagement with the export credit agencies and the other sovereign sort of debt providers already. It goes without saying they've already sort of become very excited and very attracted to our project, just given scale and metals mix, so really, we think there's a very, very low-cost debt financing option here, and like I said, ability to lever up the cash flows and lever up those returns considerably.
We obviously can't guide to exactly what that split will be, but yeah, you can sort of deduce that by looking at the margins that we have as to sort of what sort of debt we could service. We are sort of hearing sort of 10-15-year term on that sort of debt and obviously very, very attractive interest rate being touted out there. So look, we're very relaxed about pulling that funding solution together. It's really about now, actually, now that we have a detailed plan to share with them, really sort of engaging more formally.
Cool. One final one. You mentioned one of the step changes for the project's been the process route and the metallurgy. You commented that you spent AUD 15 million on met testing.
Can you just give us maybe a bit of extra color or context around just the amount of work that's been done and the level of confidence that you guys have in that all that work is built for you guys in choosing and designing the process route you've arrived at?
Yeah, I think it's a good point, Dave. I think a lot of juniors would have left all of that test work and that sort of investment for a feasibility study as opposed to a PFS. We made a deliberate decision to front-end all that metallurgical test work and really de-risk the project from the fundamentals, geology, mineralogy, geometallurgy, and obviously metallurgical outcomes. So yeah, the AUD 15 million investment sort of plus 1,000 flotation tests, hundreds of leach tests, these are very, very well-proven outcomes now we've based the plant design and costs and recoveries on.
Look, we're very, very confident that the plant will operate as it's been laid out here. Obviously, feasibility, we'll look at more refinements around geometallurgy, particularly the gangue mineralogy, and obviously optimizations, how we can extract a little bit more metal, we hope, out of the various circuits and how they interact with one another. Credit to the metallurgical team we've got and the labs we've used, two years' worth of work. Obviously, it's been proven on composites that have taken material from across the ore body as well. We haven't been selective about where to get sample from. We've sort of got it proven over the entire ore body, and we've done a significant amount of variability test work as well to prove even at extremes of the ore body that we'll get the performance that we're predicting. All of that's been done properly.
All of the recoveries are programmed in on a block-by-block basis to derive a Net Smelter Return for each block. So we're very, very confident here that this is a very robust set of parameters, and it's giving us a very good handle on value.
Nice one. Thanks so much, Alex. I'll pass it on.
Your next question comes from Richard Knights with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Alex. Thanks for the call. Just a quick one on the Environmental Review Document. I mean, it feels like that's the critical path item now. Perhaps if you could just give us a bit more of a flavor of what's left to be done there before you submit it in six months' time. And then you've given, I think, an 18-month timeframe from submission to approval.
Obviously, it's out of your hands, but where, if at all, you see risks to that timeframe?
Yeah, thanks, Richard. I mean, I guess the process started with our referral of the project all the way back in early 2024. So the fact that we referred at that time up to 15 million tonne per annum process throughput rate, sort of up to 25 years of life, that has allowed the regulators to do a lot of the sort of early assessment and early sort of engagement with us as to how to design and make sure we satisfy all the requirements in those Environmental Review Documents. So the next steps really are all the modeling is happening now with now that the scope of the PFS is locked down.
That modelling, like I said, dust, noise, emissions, the usual things will go into those ERD submissions in second half next year. GHD are doing the work. So worth noting that they are the most experienced sort of engineering and sort of approvals organization in the southwest of WA. They understand the environment and the sensitivities exceptionally well. We are very relaxed. We've had a number of site visits with regulators as well where they've come and actually had a look at the plan at the site. They've been very comfortable with what they've seen. We're very much seeing, given that we own the freehold land, we're very comfortable, and what we're hearing is comfort around de-risking of those approvals. Obviously, there's secondary approvals which will happen in parallel as well. We do have a State and Commonwealth process for the major environmental approvals.
Secondary approvals will obviously happen in parallel. I guess government support is first and foremost. We have every level of endorsement and support and validation through Major and Strategic Project Status. So I think from an approvals perspective, we've done everything right, and we've got ourselves in the right position. And we're not in Jarrah Forest, and we're not impacting Jarrah Forest. So that substantially reduces the time period for assessment in our view and substantially de-risked the assessment period from our view. So we actually think probably the social factors will probably govern the overall timeline. And again, we've done a huge amount of investment there. We've got a local presence in the community. We understand the community very, very well. So we've done everything in our power to sort of de-risk that process.
But as you quite rightly said, it is in the hands of government once those submissions have been made. And certainly, given the size and the life of this project, we think it's a pretty clear-cut decision for the governments, both State and federal, to find a pathway to get approvals.
Brilliant. Thanks. Yep, that's a thorough answer. Cheers.
Your next question comes from Simone Grogan with The West Australian. Please go ahead.
Just on that note of approvals, you don't need to see any benefit from the overhaul otherwise, just from the changes to the environment, the federal changes. Is that going to be of any use for you guys?
Yeah. Hi, Simone. No, look, it shouldn't impact us at all because we've referred under the previous act. So we're not subject to any of the changes that are being proposed under the EPBC Act reform.
So yeah, we have a pretty certain pathway from a State and Commonwealth perspective. But like I said, those will be run in parallel. And we understand those processes very, very well and the requirements.
Easy. Cheers.
There are no further questions from the teleconference currently. I'll now hand back to Mr. Dorsch for any closing remarks.
Thanks, Ashley. Thanks, everyone, for joining. I guess to reiterate, we're very, very happy with the outcomes we've released today with the PFS. It's a major milestone. Now we have a very, very clear development path ahead. So it moves into execution. We know that that involves a step up in pace and activity levels. We're prepared for that and certainly looking forward to keeping the market updated as we progress the asset. And certainly, lots of upside to chase as well as we progress the feasibility study.
So thanks, everyone, for joining in.