All right, I think I clicked the right button. We've got people flooding in now, so that is fantastic. We'll give it a few minutes for everyone to join us in. We'll get started again. Thank everyone for joining. Let's see, still climbing for those that have just joined. We'll just give another minute or two. There's still people joining into the Hubinar. Thank you for everyone who's just joined. We still have people entering the room, so we'll let it go for another minute or so before we get started. All right, looks like the number has stabilized. Not sure if I'll ever get used to speaking to a room full of people I can't see, but we will get started on this Hubinar, so thank you. Thank you, everyone, for taking time out.
I know with daylight savings in every single state in Australia having a different time, it's certainly thrown a few things off. Thank you, everyone, who's made the opportunity. You'll notice a little bit of a Halloween theme on the front. I know you get mixed reactions and mixed feelings in Australia about Halloween, but I am a Texan, so I had to throw something in there. Hope everyone has a good Halloween for those that like to enjoy it. All right, a bit of a snapshot. I guess here are some of the big changes. One, our top 20 shareholders have been changing in quite a bit of time. We now have a new overlord, Tim Robinson, and Farjoy has now taken over the spot as our number one shareholder, and that's been through both on market and participation in the last two cap raises.
Very excited to have Tim on board and Farjoy. They have a fantastic reputation of supporting good companies, and hopefully we continue to add to their success. We also have quite a bit more cash in the bank than last time we spoke. We have around AUD 24 million, AUD 25 million in cash as of today. The board and management has continued to top up, so we've invested, now committed to invest AUD 7.8 million of our own cash and still control around 10% of the company. It's been a rapid change since the last quarter. We thank Hong Kong Casino and Black Cat Syndicate, Crutchy Park Range, and of course myself for continuing to support the cap raises. Our top 20 continues to rise. Let's click the button here.
All right, so I'll give an update on the Dreadnought strategy and essentially provide an update as we have before on each of these before getting into the webinar Q&A at the end. We'll start off with developing the high grade Star of Mangaroon. We see the updated study out today, which was a very, very fantastic outcome through the work we've done over the past year. We'll talk a bit about the adding near term production ounces, our exploration, which we're very excited about, which is ongoing, and of course our base and critical metal assets and give an update there. As people would have noticed, our rare earths and critical metals become much more of a focus and certainly a lot more interest after two years of being in the basement. Starting off with Star of Mangaroon. A bit of a background. Gold first discovered 1956.
Small underground mining by the pastoralists and prospectors through 1983 and produced a few ounces at pretty high grades. We've now updated that resource. We've got 27,000 ounces, 11 grams per tonne, all within the top 100 meters. It's a high grade open pit opportunity with potential to grow with underground potential at depth and also a little bit along strike. Our updated study we put out this morning, our free cash flow has gone up from around AUD 50 million - AUD 78 million or AUD 90 million at current spot price. Production is still around 10 to 12 months. Quite importantly, we'll talk a little bit about the max cash drawdown has dropped from AUD 10 million - AUD 5.4 million, which will be funded by our development partner, and we will talk a bit about that. All-in sustaining cost has gone up a little bit.
Some of that is on the back of increased ounces. There is a royalty threshold in the state of Western Australia where you don't pay a royalty on the first few thousand ounces, so there's a bit of that. Some of our haulage prices have gone up on the back of more robust understanding of the haulage and what that configuration will look like. Our strategy is still to outsource funding for development, haulage, and processing. Black Cat , who owns the Paulsens Mill up the road, has invested over AUD 2 million now to date to secure that first right to negotiate. With the study now out, we hope to bring those negotiations to a conclusion in the near future. Talking about the resource ounces, I guess I'll start off on one thing.
Some of you may have noticed that my presentation at Kerry's Gold Conference has not made it to the Interweb. The entire session that we were in turns out had an IT glitch and none of the presentations got recorded. I also understand from Charlene and a few others that perhaps Kerry was charging people to access that video, which I was not aware of. I've included some of the slides in this presentation to make up for that. A good thing is we have the webinar following quickly behind. This is one of the slides that we spoke to in Kerry's presentation. What we have over here is a long section of the Star of Mangaroon with the pit in the rough location and the cumulative ounces on the right-hand side, sort of lined up roughly with the equivalent depth.
What we see in blue or black, the darker color, was the cumulative ounces per 10 meter bench on the previous resource. In orange is the cumulative ounces per 10 meter bench in the new updated resource. That is highlighting this up through here, significantly more shallow ounces in that pit. That has had quite a profound impact and has been one of the focuses of our exploration in the follow-up infill drilling and extensional drilling within that pit. That has quite profound impacts. We can see that here. On the left is the previous pit, and essentially we've added ounces in here, around here, and down through there as a main focus. We knew we had historical intercepts out on these sides and set about really getting those into our intercepts so that we could add those into our resource. That was quite successful.
We've also added some ounces in heap leach nearby. There are some stockpiles on the surface that we'll be able to load onto trucks during pre-strip phase and bring that sort of cash flow forward a little bit. That is talking about that impact on cash flow and having shallower ounces. We look at the haulage and processing. When you look at a processing agreement like we'll probably have with Paulsens, it will most likely be sort of an ore purchase and toll treatment, but essentially we would be paid on how much gold is produced through a circuit. It's an ore purchase, they keep the gold, but it still gets run like a toll trading through a particular batch. For up there, we're looking at anywhere between 10,000 tons and 15,000 tons as sort of a batch to put through the gold circuit.
When we look at January 2025, it wasn't until months nine or 10 that we had sort of a 10,000 ton package that would then go through the Paulsens Mill, produce the gold, and get paid and all the rest of it. By adding those shallower ounces, we've now brought forward that first sort of parcel to go through the mill to month six or seven, which has a very big impact on max cash drawdown and, of course, production coming forward. One of the things that we've seen as part of the work that we've done over the past year in this updated study is even though there has been, we're hoping to break ground this year, it still is possible if we get the approval from the mines department. Essentially, we've taken three months off of when that first processing package will be going through the Paulsens Mill.
Even if there is a bit of delay, the cash flow, the impact on cash flow and revenue is not going to be impacted on the other. By bringing that cash flow forward, it also has quite a profound impact on the max cash drawdown. Looking at the comparison between the two, starting from the top, mined ore has gone up, the grade has gone down a bit, and a lot of that's because of some near surface, at surface material, like the heap leach that we drilled with auger earlier in the program. We've got a bit more gold in ore and a bit more gold recovered. All that does very good impacts on the revenue. Gold price has been up, which is that's gone up quite significantly. We've used conservative, maybe AUD 5,500.
We were AUD 6,400 the other day, and we've been climbing up AUD 100 every day and dropped AUD 301. Never quite know where it is. As of a day or two ago, we could have locked in AUD 6,400 as a hedge if we wanted to, and that's the future price. We don't plan to hedge, so don't get too scared there. We'll discuss all those things when the time comes, when they're partners. As a result, we've run this exercise at AUD 5,500. Revenue's gone up significantly. Not much change to the capital cost. Still the same pit, still the same size, mine infrastructure and everything else. The operating cost or haulage and processing, there's been quite a few, quite a big impact on there. A lot of that's come from our preferred haulage contractor has actually gone out and driven all the way from Star of Mangaroon to Paulsens.
They've seen the road, they've seen the conditions, they've made recommendations for the truck and trailer arrangements. We've had more discussions with shires around road maintenance, so there's a much higher confidence. In a previous scoping study, we used sort of regional numbers for what was normal for those areas. We now have very accurate numbers, quotes from our contractors who've been doing that work. There has been an increase there, and then the biggest one, the big ticket items there, that max cash drawdown has dropped almost in half. That's because we're bringing forward production because of those shallower ounces and those at surface ounces. The cash flow previously was around AUD 40 million, and now we're up to just under AUD 80 million, which is, I think, close to AUD 90 million at today's price, which seems to change by the minute.
Looking at that sensitivity, we've got here from AUD 5,000 up to AUD 6,500, and regardless, there's quite a bit of buffer in there. Because of those extra ounces, we do have quite a robust cash flow to come from the Star of Mangaroon. Very good outcome for the work that's been done over the past year. We're very happy with what we've been able to put out today and able to get it out on time. Talking about the pathway to production, resource drilling has been done. The initial resource was put out at the end of last year. All of our environmental and heritage surveys are done, all the agreements in place. Metallurgical test work, the initial study, our association with Black Cat Syndicate showing their intention to negotiate to process the Star through Paulsens. Our infill, extensional, and infill drilling has been quite successful.
Our mine proposal and mine closure plan has been submitted to the Mines Department. We submitted that six weeks ago, four to six weeks ago now, and that's just a matter of how long it takes to get through. Mines Department says anywhere between 30 and 90 days. We'll see how government keeps up with their promises. They have been doing a lot better with POWs on the approval side. Hopefully the mine proposals are the same. Got the updated study out today. With that done, hopefully we can bring to a conclusion our mining, haulage, and processing agreements, which are underway and have been underway for quite some time. Then we wait for the Mines Department to give us our approvals and commencement to mining. Made a lot of progress since announcing our strategy to bring Star of Mangaroon online and feeling pretty happy with where things are.
I look forward to producing from the Star of Mangaroon and generating cash flow throughout all of next year. Keep clicking down onto the near-term production ounces. We have the other granted mining leases here. There is another granted mining lease called McCarthy's, which is a bit further away. We'll look at drilling that early next year. For the mining leases that we have immediately around the Star, we did the initial drill program at the start of this year or mid-year. See assay results out for those in the next week, two weeks. Should be getting quite a few results from that. Lesgo is part of the Pritchards and Star of Mangaroon deep drilling and other pits. It's a new target area, so we put some new holes into that as well. It's quite exciting.
This is our first drill program really to step out and start testing the regional targets, finding something new and exciting and that big discovery that we believe is sitting out here that just needs the work done to get after it. Very excited by this drill program and looking forward to continuing to drill new targets out here as well as hopefully following up these targets once we get the results, if we have encouraging results. Looking in that area a bit closer, Midnight Star is a 3 km by 400 meter gold-in-soil anomaly. We just did two fence lines across that, trying to get a feel for what's going on there. Midday Moon had a few rock chips that came back a bit of gold, so we had confirmed bedrock gold mineralization and again a strong gold-in-soil anomaly with some really strong copper, bismuth.
We saw some copper and bismuth veining in some of our drilling. We're very encouraged visually by what we've seen there, but it is gold so it doesn't mean there's any gold there. When it comes to what we've seen on the rig drilling a new target, we're quite excited by what we've seen. Midday Moon, Cullens, Steves, and whatever else, those are all at the lab and we will see soon enough. Cullens was drilled previously in 1986 by Peter Cullens, who was the grandfather of Drew Money, and Sean d'Arcy was the owner out there at Mangaroon. Hasn't been followed up. Has been no drilling out there since 1986, and we are excited to have put some of the first holes in there out there. Since then those samples are also at the lab, and we look forward to getting those out to market. Steve's rewards again.
We did some early drilling there, hit 4 at 4. Nice strong anomaly to the north. We think Steve's will continue to grow, and we will just continue to evolve our knowledge of that area as results come through. Talking about that, we've started drilling targets that we have defined. That pipeline of target generation and target definition is going to continue to be refreshed and filled. Hopefully, for every target we test, we'll be generating five new ones and being able to feed that knowledge that we've learned from drilling our first targets back into our new targets and prioritization and potential controls on mineralization, as well as following up any success that we have as we test targets. It's going to be very exciting. Mangaroon is going to be a very target-rich environment, and we look forward to being able to continue drilling out there throughout next year.
Some of the work that we've done in parallel with this drill program, as we finally finished off after four years, we finally finished off the stream sediment program across Mangaroon. We have added a lot of ground to Mangaroon through that time period. All these blue dots are the last of the stream seds, and that's our real target generation work, trying to find these big footprints of evidence of fluid flow that could be carrying gold. Gold and pathfinder anomalies, it's already defined sort of Bordah, which has Steve's, Starving is there. Things I like to point out is the golden stream sediment anomalous and around Star of Mangaroon is actually one of the weakest of our new areas. Doesn't mean our new areas are going to be better, but it is very encouraging that we could be onto something quite exciting on the Bordah.
High Range Alma and High Range South in the Minga Bar on the right, we started doing some of our soil sampling. These are our first pass soil lines up at High Range North across the Alma intrusion. Quite a few down here at Minga Bar and some really tight spaced around Steve's. We'll come back once we get these last of the streams done at Bordah, we'll start doing more regional soils around that Bordah camp based on these stream seds out here and up through here. High Range North and High Range South might be extended. We'll wait and see how those assays come through. All those are at the lab. We should have those back before Christmas, and that will guide further soil sampling, which is target definition work and infill drilling. The aim is having more targets for drilling by essentially second quarter, mid-year next year.
Hopefully, we'll be able to do some follow-up drilling. The Steve's, Midday Moon, Midnight Star, Cullens, Lesgo, Star Lake, Guru, and Deep, and hopefully we'll also then have some new targets coming out from High Range North, High Range South, Alma, Minga Bar to continue to be evaluating targets as well as putting holes into new targets and making discoveries. It's going to be a very, very exciting year and position for us up at Mangaroon. That's Mangaroon. Moving now down to Illaara, this is one of the big beneficiaries of our finding even more gold faster. You know, look at, a year ago, the market was a very different situation. Dreadnought Resources was in a very different situation.
We did a deal on the other two Greenstone Belts and the Central Yugan project, and we held on to Illaara because we didn't want to let it go for the prices that people were wanting to take it up for now because we believed in it, Newmont believed in it. It was something that we've really wanted to get stuck into. A big beneficiary of that recent cap raise is the ability to give Illaara the attention that it deserves, the attention that Newmont wanted to give it back in 2016. Quite excited to work through there. Very unexplored history. We love finding these regions of Australia that have underexplored history for various different reasons, not just going under deep cover because they tend to be graveyards for junior explorers.
Going back a few years, when we last talked about Illaara, which was really 2021, 2022, gold price was $2,200 U.S., and this was an area that already hadn't seen any real gold exploration since the 1990s and 2000s. The iron ore players came in and controlled a lot of that area: Cliffs Natural Resources, MinRes, Macarthur Minerals. That's when Newmont picked it up, when the iron ore players started to pull out. That's after gold had a bit of a run. Newmont had done their deep sensing geochemistry, their fancy geochem. They've identified some big target areas. They had cleared around 36 km or 40 km of tracks to do an aircore program that pegged the holes in, and then they didn't get the program done. Their timing blew out. They got approvals at the Tanami and became all hands on deck on Tanami.
We picked up that Newmont project in 2019 when trending out first started. We are now in the position to go back out to Illaara and finally do this drill program that Newmont wanted to do. We've also consolidated the rest of the belt and we can extend that scope, which we're quite excited about. In the early days, we did the drilling at Metzke’s. Similar to Star of Mangaroon, this is a historical prospecting area found by Metzke. Obviously, it's another high grade near surface mining opportunity. About 14,000 ounces - 15,000 ounces, around 6 grams - 7 grams per ton. The drill rig will be mobilizing down here very shortly, here in the next week or two, we believe. Next couple of weeks, I should say, to not only do some infill drilling around the Star of Mangaroon, we're applying for the mining leases.
We're trying to get Metzke’s up to speed and essentially replicate what we've done to Star down at Metzke’s. We're also going to chase up Metzke’s to the north. Metzke’s was sort of terminated by an east-west dike, he uses a fancy tool that runs through here. There are Proterozoic post-mineralization dikes that cut off the mineralization to the north, and no drilling had ever been done on the Metzke’s lode continuing to the north. The last drill hole ever put into Metzke’s was by us in 2021 or 2022, and that hit 6 meters at 1.5 grams or 1.2 grams about 100 - 150 meters north of the Metzke’s lode, and that has never been followed up. We have quite a few meters. Chappie and I have just nearly finished designing up that program.
We'll be testing about a kilometer, kilometer and a half of that Metzke’s structure to the north with first pass drilling, as well as doing some of the infill drilling, target infill drilling down here at Metzke’s pond. That should be a fantastic way to wrap up drilling at Illaara before the end of this year, which will put us in position to do all the study related drilling. We'll also do metallurgical test work from this round of drilling, be able to get out there early next year with the diamond drilling to do the geotech, do the wide shot characterization, all the stuff that we've just done for Star of Mangaroon. Get that going out here at Metzke’s so we can have this approved and ready to go by the end of next year. That's Metzke’s. That's similar to Mangaroon.
That's our near term production ounces, if you will. We also have the big exploration upside, and we look at the Illaara Greenstone Belt as probably one of the most underexplored Greenstone Belts in the Yilgarn. Over here you have Davyhurst, Ora Banda, Gorilla Gold, Brightstar, RN, and Ballard Mining all in the Greenstone Belts next door. That's 20, 30 km away. You look at Illaara and there's never been an aircore program ever done out here. It's one of the least explored Greenstone Belts. We have these major structures that run down. We've got beautiful bends, beautiful bins again all through here under a little bit of shallow cover, so the soils are quite ineffective through here. Big structure, good cross structures running through here. Never been drilled, never been looked at. This is what Newmont was excited about.
This gives us a nice 40 km long corridor through here of initial focus to really go out there. If there's going to be a Hemi-style or Gruyere-style discovery in this area, this is the sort of program that would deliver that, which has us extremely, extremely excited. Conceptually, we're still refining the aircore program. Aircore program will commence first quarter next year. Just to paint the picture, this is what it looks like now. First pass aircore commencing next year would look something like that, will be finalized. It's for illustrative purposes only. Then a follow-up aircore program, again illustrative purposes, and then a third follow-up. By that stage, we would have zoomed in on any area that has significant mineralization if it exists and be in place to hopefully make the big multimillion ounce discovery that could be sitting within this Greenstone Belt.
You look at the Ora Banda belt, over here you have several million ounces up here, you have several million ounces down here and over here, and over here we have 15,000. There's no reason why there's not multiple million ounces of gold sitting in the Illaara belt. Just hasn't been drilled and hasn't been found. This is what we're very, very excited about. This was the main driver when the opportunity came to top up our coffers so we can make sure that we can deliver this program next year. Finding more gold faster. We got assay results coming out here shortly. Everything's at the lab. Not everything, but Steve's at the lab, and Midday Moon, Midnight Star, and Collins. We then probably see, hopefully see, some follow-up diamond drilling at Mangaroon following the drill results of that.
Whether it's Steve's, Cullens, Midday Moon, Stinger, we are drilling Stinger at the moment as we speak. Anything that we get from that drilling will follow diamond drilling, and we'll commence RC drilling at Metzke’s Find here before the end of the year to make sure we can keep Metzke’s Find on a tight timeline to get that all approved and ready for next year. That's our results throughout December and over Christmas from both Mangaroon and Illaara. We'll commence a lot of aircore drilling and RC and diamond drilling in March quarter next year, with a long string of assay results as the aircore programs run throughout all of next year. The RC and diamond rig will move around, pending results, to the most promising targets to follow up and also drill new targets as they come through. Quite a bit of drilling—RC, aircore, diamond, target generation.
We'll be drilling targets next year that don't even exist yet. It's going to be quite exciting. That takes us to Gifford Creek. That's a lot on the gold or gold focus at this stage. Critical metals have come back to the forefront at the moment. We'll see how long they stay there, hopefully longer than just a flash of a tweet, but you never know in this market. It is one of the largest carbonatite complexes in the world. We're right next door to Wyloo Hastings at Yangibana. We have the other half of the ironstones. We have a proven rare earth resource that is essentially study ready. We delivered the resources, 87% measured and indicated. We demonstrated commercial ability to produce a commercial monazite concentrate and also a mixed rare earth carbonate from that monazite concentrate.
We've also started making discoveries within the very underexplored Gifford Creek carbonatite, which is a central plug that has abundant other critical metals including niobium, titanium, scandium, zirconium, and phosphate. It's a very, very big opportunity. Carbonatites have a 1 in 10 chance of turning into a mine, and there's more than just rare earths here. It could be really a critical metal sort of powerhouse of a region. Looking at the Yen ironstone, as we've talked about before, we did a lot of work on this in 2022 and 2023. 87% measured and indicated. It's essentially sitting there, study ready. At these current rare earth prices, even the majors struggle to turn a profit. No, nothing new is going to come online.
There's no point in putting out a study that's not going to show anything attractive or puts out a fake number like a lot of people do, that's two to three times with the current NdPr prices. We're not in the business of doing that. That's not what we've done. One of the nice aspects of Yin is not only do we have a large sort of 1 gram, or 1, sorry, 1 gram and gold for too long, 1% total rare earth, which is very similar to Hastings next door, which I believe is level 1 to 0.9. We also have, especially around the Yin resource, quite a bit of higher grade. We can reduce that tonnage a little bit to get that grade up to the 2% while also maintaining that nice attractive NdPr TREO ratio.
That good metallurgy, we've proven the MREC and everything else, and it's got fantastic, one of the things we always talk about, you know, the NdPr TREO ratios. The elements that are of interest from the light earth are neodymium, praseodymium. If you take a handful of concentrates or MREC from this region and compare it to a handful of concentrated MREC from anywhere else in the world, this stuff contains more neodymium, presenting a minute. It's going down to that midstream processing. It's quite attractive. That's the ironstone. Up here, that's Yangibana. Yangibana officially is there, but that's Bald Hill and Simmons Find and Fraser. Over here we have Yin, and Sabre sits over here under a call out somewhere. Essentially, all of these form the ring dike complex.
They actually beautifully all kind of dip back towards the center, which is the major crustal scale structure where it sits, the Gifford Creek Carbonatite Complex. This is a very elongate intrusion. Most people might picture carbonatites as bullseye Mount Welds, Ngualla, but look at things like Bianobo. There's a deposit in Namibia that's also quite elongate, and so it's around 16, 17 km long, about a kilometer, kilometer and a half wide. We've only drilled 25% of this in extremely wide first pass drilling. Essentially, every drill hole we put in tends to give us a nice surprise of something even higher grade and mineralization than what we've drilled before. Still a lot of blue sky.
Wyloo has taken control next door and from what we understand they're currently also focused on the carbonatite and they're doing ground gravity surveys over some of the corners and of course some of the extensions up here. Clearly, the carbonatites could be very, very key to providing not only a baseload or more earth mineralization, but also diversification and other critical metals from the same operation. We see, we're excited to have our new partners next door—not new partners, but new neighbors next door—and seeing what they come up with as we continue to advance our side of the Gifford Creek Carbonatite Complex as well. Looking at niobium mineralization, this is what we sort of focused on initially and we still are focused on the niobium as well as the rare earths and others. We'll be including those in. We have a nice thick upgrade in mineralization.
That lower set profile, which is quite classic of carbonatites, you get down to the fresh on some of these and you're getting around 0.1 - 0.4 and that weathers and turns up to a 0.7 - 1.2 or a 1% - 1.4% niobium. That shows that nice 3% - 6% upgrade you tend to see as carbonatites weather. Critical metals are often critical because they're hard to process. That occludes for nature as well. As the carbonatite erodes and weathers away, all the resistant minerals or your critical minerals like monazites and pyrochlore don't break down and they sort of accumulate within that separate profile. That's why you tend to see that upgrade in that shallow mineralization, which is why when we drilled a deep diamond hole into Stinger to see if we can't find a higher grade fresh carbonatite.
Even in the fresh carbonatite, you look at something like niobec, and in Canada it's an underground mine on 0.4%, 0.5% niobium. We're sort of like we really wanted to test that fresh carbonatite—hasn't been many drill holes put into it. We wanted to evaluate that. When we did, we drilled through this 140 meters thick earth enriched, which was, you know, full of what looked like to be like barium strontium. We know it's extremely high barium, extremely high strontium with the calcite, a lot of sulfate in there. Ross Chandler was a carbonatite expert. He did all the logging for Lynas's Mount Weld. He's visited most of the carbonatites in the world and done work on them.
He was in the core shed looking at this and we drilled this for niobium and he starts getting excited and screaming and sees like, you know, this looks just like Mountain Pass. This is quite exciting. I'm sitting there at the time going fuck. We've been trying for two years to transition to gold and niobium but you know, we'll take the rare earth. That's pretty exciting. Going back to what we've talked about, the upgrade in the near surface where that weathered carbonatite gets closer to the surface, we'll hopefully see a nice upgrade in that near surface environment. We're actually in the process of drilling these three holes right now and we will see what comes back from that and we're quite excited to see the results of that.
I dare say, assuming it's going to continue some good mineralization, we will probably put another diamond hole in out here before the end of the year and we're preparing ourselves for that. With all that said, I just wanted to—actually, I'll talk about it at the end, I think, of a timeline. I'll talk a bit about that a bit more. Lots of activity on the critical metals going into the Money Intrusion. We've got Teck is currently drilling some diamond core that finally, finally after a couple of years, the first quantum drill program, which was abandoned halfway through due to other reasons, Teck has now started essentially finishing that drill program, extending the diamond holes, essentially the diamond tails that were going to be done on the RC drill holes. Very excited by the work that they're doing. They're out there.
I think they plan to be drilling here for pretty much up until Christmas, doing downhole and seeing what they come up with. We remain very excited on the Money Intrusion. It's one of the reasons why we got out here in the first place. To have a partner like Teck on board is spectacular. They've been great to work with, impressed by how they operate and look forward to seeing what they come up with. We'll of course keep the market informed in due course too. Going back to our finding more gold faster strategy, or finding even more gold faster strategy, it's develop high grade deposits and generate cash flow. Star of Mangaroon and now we're bringing Metzke’s Find into that fold as well, adding short term production ounces to generate more cash flow.
Star of Mangaroon and Metzke’s Find extensions, which drilling is underway at the Star of Mangaroon and will soon be underway at Metzke’s Find, Pritchard’s Well, and McCarthy’s Find. The large gold discovery, this is what will really make Dreadnought as a company, and that's our Mangaroon and Camp scale prospects. We've done that target generation, target definition work, and our first pass drilling is ongoing. That's the exciting stuff, but it's gold so you never know. We'll see what continues to go with that. Of course, being able to add Illaara and that aircore program that Newmont wanted to do back in 2015, 2016, and that we want to do since we started bringing that on board is going to be very, very exciting for us and hopefully through success be very exciting, of course, for all of our shareholders. Gifford Creek will continue to work.
We'll plan to do a lot more work on that now with a bit more of a mandate to do some work and help de-risk that and prepare that for commercialization, which I think I'll talk about in the next slide. Timeframes there, Star of Mangaroon, we've been talking about adding near-term production ounces. We're finishing up the drilling this quarter. We should be back up at Mangaroon once it cools off in the June quarter, in September. Drilling up there throughout next year, we have the finding more gold faster. We're finishing up the RC drilling. All the samples are at the lab. Should we have any good success on any of those results as they come through, we'll essentially take the diamond rig from Teck that's on site and take that out to these prospects to do some follow-up drilling.
Some early diamond is always extremely valuable to help us understand, make sure we're drilling things the right direction, what's controlling, what's the mineralization look like. If we get some good hits, we'll get out there, put some diamond in. Early diamond always sets us up well to do follow-up drilling for next year, ongoing target definition work as those results work their way through the lab, and then getting up there and getting drilling our existing targets and, of course, our new targets. The Gifford Creek, we're currently doing the RC drilling, will most likely do some more diamond drilling at Stinger before the end of the year. That mineralogy work, you can see behind me, this is all the core from Gifford Creek and Stinger.
We got half of that off to AXT at the moment and Anu, so that mineralogy work will hopefully be, the bulk of the mineralogy work will be done by the end of the year. We'll then be able to essentially commit to quite a large metallurgical test work program next year. When we looked at, you know, we go back to 2021 when we first found Yin. Critical metals are critical because they're difficult to process. Before we committed to drilling Yin, we actually huffed out 40 kilos of outcrop, took it to the lab, gave it the Hastings treatment that had already done 10 years of de-risking of flow sheets, and essentially showed that we could produce a monazite concentrate before we committed to hitting that really, really hard. For the Gifford Creek Carbonatite , we have all these critical metals sitting there.
There's rare earth, niobium, titanium, scandium, zirconium, phosphate, all in fantastic high grades and good thicknesses. Which of these can we make a product from? Do that metallurgical test work that'll be critical, that will run throughout next year with the material that we have, and any additional material that we need as required. That can help us really sort of change the dynamic of the Gifford Creek area. Look at Yin and Yang. They're sort of two halves of the same coin. As it currently stands, you know, are we, is there going to be two mills built out there to process the same sort of material, two-hub sort of situation? Probably not. Being beholden to your neighbor is never a good thing.
With the Gifford Creek Carbonatite Complex, if we can prove that we can make additional products from those through metallurgy, it opens up a whole new world of possibility and could rewrite the pathway of how this Gascoyne region will be developed as a critical metal powerhouse. You look at things like NioCorp in the United States and their Elk Creek carbonatite complex, which is under 400 meters of cover, but they've developed a fairly simple flow sheet that not only processes the rare earths, but also produces the titanium, niobium, and scandium metals. Instead of going through, say, the proven pathway for Yin, which is your typical flotation, create a monazite concentrate and that off to roasting and everything else. If we actually bring in, they don't do that at Elk Creek. They don't plan to do that at Elk Creek, and they have test work that supports that.
If we can show we can make products with other commodities, it opens up new processing pathways and allows us to look at different commodities. That's our main focus. I've told the team, great mets and everything involved, that by the end of next year, whatever we can make a product of, I want products of. From that we can look at the best pathway to develop this area. That's a way of actually taking back the narrative and control of the destiny of the Gascoyne Region . The Gifford Creek Carbonatite Complex is a gift that keeps on giving and we will be starting that network very shortly. There will be lots of news flow throughout next year. If we have any early wins, that could be done in the first quarter or two. It will be very exciting to see what can be done.
A lot of the feedback we've had, over the last year and a half, two years, we've had countless conversations and continue to have countless conversations with people interested in the critical metals. As we've said and reflecting back on it, once we prove we can make a product, that's when people are willing to essentially give this thing the value that we think it has. At that point we prove the product, prove the value, open up new pathways, potentially take control of the narrative for the region. That's our focus for the year and that'll be happening all year. In the background as we advance the gold, the Illaara Metzke’s Find development mining application is going in. I think it was submitted yesterday or today. Once it's officially pegged out and everything, we'll put out some news flow on that.
Technical studies next year, so from the drilling this year and early drilling next year, we'll start all the wastewater characterization, geomet, geotech and the rest. All the enviro work's already been done. We started that back in 2020, 2021 resource update, scoping study and try and get approvals, mine haulage process agreements done by the end of next year. Add near term production ounces at Illaara. It's going to be that big aircore program as well as Metzke’s Find infill and extension. Sorry. The other bits, I thought I had something down here. It is there. That's the critical metal thing. Quite a lot of news flow going on. Critical metals will be continued to advance in the background. We will have targeted drilling programs as required throughout that. We're following up those high grade, high grade target at Stinger.
We will continue to pursue that until we hit it, and once we do, we'll chase it appropriately. The main thing is going to be proving that we can make product from the critical metals, and that will really transform this region if we are successful. There is lots of getting StarMaker into development, advancing our near term production ounces, and making that big discovery. There is lots to keep everyone excited, happy, and engaged over the next year and into the year after that. That takes us to the end of the presentation. Not going too bad. We thank you to everyone for joining. We've got almost 100 people in the room, which is, I think, a record for us. We want to thank everyone. We had 10 people submit about 17 questions, depending how you break up a question, and I've prepared answers for those.
I'll get through those before opening up to the floor for any questions, I believe. I see there's four new questions already. The elephant in the room. Yes, here we go. Why is it that everyday shareholders aren't getting opportunity to take part in the recent capital raises? Firstly, we've done 2 SPPs in the past 2 years, including our capital raise earlier this year, which was down at AUD 0.012, and an SPP was available to all retail shareholders as a part of that. I'll reword this question a little bit. Why did we do an SPP earlier this year and not this one? A confession to make. Ever since 2019, I've pushed for SPPs in every cap raise because I know shareholders like them. I've never fully understood why, but I'll talk about that in a minute. This was actually, confession, the first time.
I actually did suggest it during the meeting. This is something that I'm quite interested in. I'll reword this and try and work through this. I got a couple slides. I'm really interested to actually learn more about this aspect from some of our shareholders. Earlier this year was a big raise, and it was at one of the lowest prices we had undertaken a raise since COVID. It was pushed to have all investors included and was strongly supported for those reasons. This raise that we just completed was on the back of a rapid, very rapid rise in share price, and it was done at a premium to the 14-day VWAP, which means that for two years, including up to two weeks previously to the cap raise, you could have bought shares at a lower price.
It was unplanned, completely unplanned, and there was a quick rise well above prices in the past two years. It wasn't offering an SPP, I admit was not the first thing that was on my mind to do this, but it is a topic that greatly interests me. Believe it or not, I too am an everyday minor retail shareholder in several companies and have been since I first invested in Talisman Mining and Sandfire back in 2008. I might be the MD of Dreadnought , but I've been a minor retail shareholder, you know, my entire career and ever since becoming a MD , as I said before, I have pushed for SPPs because I know shareholders like it, but I've never really fully understood why.
I've tried to work through a few things and I think I'll work with Robin, maybe do some polls and get some questions and feedback. As I said, this is actually the first time I didn't suggest it in our six-year history and I do apologize for anyone who felt left out by that. We did have a lot of investors contact us during the trading halt and we got all of them included. Yes, just a few things about this. I had a few comments about it. Two things I really kind of wanted to touch on. One is this aversion to capital raises in general and the other one is this aversion to dilution. That's all just these two parts. I guess companies go public and list on capital markets to access capital.
The resources industry and exploration in particular is one of the most capital intensive industries and requires regular access to capital. If you're listed on a public exchange, you're looking to access capital at some stage through capital raises or loans or anything else like that, bond issues, whatever it is that different larger companies do depending on the state of where they're at. Even following exploration success, resource companies undertake capital raises. In fact, the more successful, the more money they tend to raise. Look at DeGray. They raised literally hundreds of millions of dollars for three, four years in a row following the Hemi discovery to fund studies and development. Chalice and WA1 have all done the same. Even once you have exploration success, there's still going to be capital raises. That's just kind of the way it goes.
Even following commercial development, mining companies may undertake capital raises to advance projects, lower debt or hedge requirements. Capricorn recently did a AUD 200 million capital raise just within the last 12 months and Capricorn is one of the most successful mining companies around. They're amazing operators and even them in production making beautiful profits. They did a capital raise recently or in essence capital raises through all scrip acquisitions. Ramelius has done that repeatedly and Greatland Gold recently did that for Telfer. If capital raises are inevitable, then so is dilution. You look at dilution. I can sit here and point to Paul Chapman in the situation where in 2019, Paul Chapman owned 24% of Dreadnought and today through dilution, he only owns 6.7%. In 2019, that 24% was AUD 700,000. His 6.7% today is worth AUD 13 million. The greatest dilution comes from bankruptcy and reverse takeovers.
By maintaining a strong financial backing and a strategy that creates value, it prevents both those incidents from happening. Instead of complaining outright in general about capital raises and dilution, that is a natural process of being listed on a public company in the market, it is how will we. The question that we get asked when we do cap raises and what we look at is will we create more value in the company with the money raised than the dilution? Secondly, what is the quality of the new investors? Those are the two things that we often look at. If you're in a desperate raise, you might get a bunch of hedge funds in and they sell out. That's not attractive. If you can get quality investors in and bring those in, you tend to see on supports, you know you're bringing, getting, scoring.
Tim Robinson and Farjoy has been absolutely fantastic. Not only is it participating in the last two cap raises, but has also put a couple million dollars through the open market as well. We attract the interest of groups like that. Who are we? Who's the money coming from and what is that money being used for? If that is successful, will the company be worth more? Those are the things that we like to focus on. I just wanted to touch on some of those things and looking at dilution, Capricorn in 2016 had 100 million shares, today they have 500 million. That might not be the real number you see, but that's because they've done a consolidation which hides some of those sometimes. Ramelius in 2005 had 30 million shares that started production very shortly after that. Today they have 1.9 billion.
De Grey, when they made the discovery in 2018, had 300 million shares and stayed at AUD 2.4 billion today once they got taken out. All those share prices and the value of the shareholders, if you held the shareholding, the 30 million that remains in 2005, it's worth a lot more today, even though there are 1.9 billion shares on issue. In a capital intensive industry like mining and exploration in particular, there's always going to be cap raises, there's always going to be dilution. Can we create more value by doing that work? That's what we should be judged on in the part of the money that comes to.
That's sort of a take from the company side and even, you know, I remember being a junior Geo investing in things, when I saw a company was able to raise money I thought it was great because that meant they were funded and they could take advantage of opportunities and see things through. Continuing that about the SPP, this is something again, I'm very interested in this. I'm very interested to learn more because I am a retail investor as well and I don't fully understand but I really want to just show some numbers and talk about some of these things and learn a bit more. Again, I've always pushed for SPPs. I will continue to push for them. I apologize I didn't in this last one but like I said, I didn't think this was the most obvious one to do an SPP for.
I apologize for that. Typical arguments against SPPs, ignoring rights issues. We won't talk about those because no one does those very often. Two arguments against it are it reduces the discount overhang. When we do a cap raise, it's over and done within the trading halt. There's never a trade in the market while that arbitrage is there. When we do an SPP, that discount is in the market for three to four weeks or more. A lot of that is because of a lot of the mail outs and a lot of things like that. That has to stay open for people to get access to things. You'll notice in the last SPP that we did, Debbie's been hounding people to sign up digitally. If you're a new shareholder, you might hear from Debbie trying to get things signed up digital.
Some of that is actually for being able to do more flexible SPPs going forward because we have to wait two weeks for the mail outs to be done, people to receive them and receive them back. If you are digital, you can actually sign up for the SPP there on the spot and we can close things out, reducing that overhang a lot quicker. Simplicity, there's a lot of administration time and costs. As Debbie says, sign up digital, hog trade for Debbie. There's also certainty of funds. Probably a bit of a weaker argument, but it is one that gets brought up a fair bit. You can't bank on funds from SPPs or determine the use of those funds until after the fact.
Often when it comes to cap raises, like when it comes to SPPs, as we've seen, I think we've run four or five in Dreadnought's history. All the money comes in in the last three days, so you never really know what you're going to be getting from somebody. If the share price drops below the price, then you know it's all over red rubber. Some institutions, which we've started to see as we get sort of bigger, some investors, some institutions will actually have equations when they run their fancy spreadsheets or whatever it is that they do, where they only invest X if the total raises Y, and sometimes they just push back from some instos in the back of the SPP for that reason.
Typical arguments for SPPs are equal opportunity, which is why again, and market perception of trust for the shareholders, which is why I've always pushed for it. You get to participate on the same terms as sophisticated institutions and funds. There's no brokerage fees. I actually did a ChatGPT search to find that out. I didn't quite realize that was a positive argument for SPPs, but that makes a lot of sense. I've also received comments from people that they don't cost the company anything, and this is actually false. They can cost more than typical cap raises, and a lot of it is because of the mail outs and fixed costs regardless of participation, and we still have registration fees and everything else. Again, sign up for digital, help us reduce those costs. We look at two of our recent SPPs.
I haven't done the other, the previous two ones, which I'll continue. This is action, this is something I'm interested in. I've got Debbie and Deanne actually working on this and breaking down some of our previous raises, some of our previous SPPs, and test some of these, test some of these arguments. Some of the ones for and against might be right or wrong, and glad you should understand. Look at the last one we did at the start of the year. We had 4% of our shareholders, so 309 participants out of 8,000 shareholders, raised about AUD 1.7 million. That cost the company AUD 50,000, again mainly through mail outs, which meant a cost of 3% of the total raise. A typical cap raise when we raise it to brokers is around 5% - 6%. The October 2023 one, which we did previously, we had a 2% uptake.
We raised AUD 600,000 and that had a percentage cost of the raise cost of AUD 54,000, and that was 9%. I think that was actually 6%, but we actually engaged a group to reach out to shareholders and inform them about what was going on and the cap raise, and that added cost to that as well. We still only got 2% uptake. The percentage cost on these things, they aren't free. They can cost less if they're well received and well uptaken. I just wanted to put some of these numbers out there. Like I said, I'm very interested. I'm going to continue to dive into this.
Debbie and Dan are working on it, and I'll continue to actually include this probably in future newsletters out to our shareholders about how much people flip shares ahead of and after an SPP compared to how much people flip shares after a capital raise. There are things about the quality of the money coming through. By and large, we try to have quality money come through, and I think from this last raise, I think less than 3% of the shares that were issued were actually flipped in that first week. Dan's run those numbers, and then when we flag through this exercise, we'll be able to flag groups that actually flip our shares really quickly and make sure they're not included in the future. Elephant in the room, covered that off.
Obviously received a lot of pushback on that, and I think some of the guilt on my side is because it was actually the first time I didn't suggest it because I thought it was the one time that it wouldn't be a major issue. What is in place to ensure availability and milling capacity for Dreadnought gold when it is mined? Black Cat Syndicate currently has a right of first refusal to develop the Star of Mangaroon. They're also a top five shareholder in Dreadnought. There is bare milling capacity at Paulsens, and we are in the process of finalizing processing as well as the mining haulage agreement with them. With the update of selling out this morning, we hope to bring the agreements negotiations to a conclusion soon. How much company focuses on precious metals? This is a three-part question. This is from one person.
I've broken up into each of the questions. How much company focuses on precious metal discoveries opposed to EV and rare earth supply chain efficiencies? Our recent capital raise had around 10% use of funds towards the critical metals, which means we have around AUD 2 million, AUD 2.4 million to AUD 2.5 million budget. We anticipate metallurgical work to complete soon and our metallurgical work to commence in the background throughout 2026 and any supportive drilling to test any obvious targets as well as produce material for that metallurgical work. Have you got a clear pipeline to high value revenue growth? That was an interesting question there. Under the self-funded explorer strategy, our primary focus is getting into production and extending production, AKA revenue. The Star of Mangaroon is currently estimated to be around 12 months open pit operation and we have a pipeline of opportunities to extend that production.
That's not necessarily production growth. Star of Mangaroon Underground would extend, other mining leases would extend, and Metzke’s Find would extend. Potentially, if we have success at Star of Mangaroon Underground or the other mining leases and bring Metzke’s online, then we could be producing from two spots at once and that would be revenue growth. Our main value driver, again that's a self-funded explorer strategy. Our main value driver remains discovery and above production helps fund that endeavor. What is planned moving forward? I think I went through the timeline already, but to summarize, that critical metal mineralogy, provable products supported by targeted diamond drilling, get Star of Mangaroon into production and drill to add ounces and continue to generate, define, and drill targets like the company, like in this area, keep putting down.
Considering the importance of rare earth elements at the moment, considering that China has stopped rares to the U.S., what stage or how much emphasis being put into further research and the progress into our heavy rares? Firstly, we don't have heavy rares. Heavy rares are typically referred to as of interest or dysprosium and terbium. We have neodymium and praseodymium, which are the lighter rare earths but also essential for magnets. All four of those elements are used for rare earth magnets, which is one of the main focuses. Our Yin Rare Earth Ironstone project is at study stage and is immediately next door, arguably the other half of Wyloo Hastings' shovel-ready Yangibana project. Carbonatite, which contains significant rare earths neodymium, praseodymium as well as other critical metals, is at exploration and evaluation stage.
If we can prove that any of these critical metals are amenable to processing via test work, then this could be a game changer for the region both in scale and the basket of critical metal products. We will be focusing and putting emphasis on the metallurgical test work for Gifford Creek and regarding the geopolitics and market economics. I highly recommend people subscribe to Thomas Crumer at the Rare Earth Observer for a very realistic and less media clickbait-embellished perspective. Not many people know as much about rare earths as Thomas. He's probably forgotten more about rare earths than most of us will ever learn. He's involved in a few podcasts, he's been interviewed, he gets asked to keynote speakers, he has a Substack and a website.
I encourage people to go and read that, and not the Financial Review or BBC or anything else like that when it comes to this sort of stuff. That's just a plug for Thomas. His advice has been absolutely critical for us as we adventure down the rare earth rabbit hole. Is there any interest for other rare earth minerals apart from the Indian praseodymium? Yes. See image at right. Nice timely Visual Capitalist image on the rare earths that are used for all the defense things. At the end of the day, America's interest isn't for EVs and windmills, it's for defense. You can see the list of all the elements we use there. What other rare earth metals that you have found would be of interest to us? Samarium.
So Yin and Yangibana have the concentrates around 1% - 1.5% samarium, which is quite attractive for particular magnets that are used for certain applications. Will the U.S. and Australia plan to give you financial support to speed up exploration and process agreements? I certainly can't speak for the U.S. and Australian governments, but we will see how the corporate welfare situation plays out and how the creation of the next channel supply chain plays out. That's even a good outcome. There will be no short-term solutions as the various supply chain is very complex. It is very encouraging to see emphasis being put on developing that ex-China supply chain processing chain. You know we are just at the very pointy end of this whole thing. Resource in the ground turns into a concentrate, turns into a mixed rare earth concentrate mixed with carbonate.
From there it goes into oxides, metals, alloys, and then from there into the compounds that get used for the different applications. It's a very complex thing. There's a lot of moving parts and we'll see which ones get developed and which ones are successful. Certainly there's a good emphasis on there. The more advanced project at this stage for where we're at is the Wyloo Hastings. If there's going to be government intervention for support, I imagine it would be there first. If we can prove up something at Gifford Creek, I think that might sort of attract more interest as well. Are the rare earth minerals that are part of the company's medium-term objective the type that will be of interest to the U.S. and Europe instead of sourcing them from China? Short answer, yes to the previous question and answer.
Also, regarding geopolitics, please another plug for Thomas. Certainly there's a lot of fake news out there, including from fake news kings and queens that are out there. Thomas is a fantastic counter and sort of view of truth within some of this stuff. With the recent good news about the U.S. invested in rare earth mining and processing, how will public investors realize the value of Dreadnought when we are not listed on various indexes as being a rare earth company? For example, myindex.comedu. Interesting question. Not sure how to answer this one, so I'll break it up into a few parts. Firstly, Market Index is a private company that's trying to get people to sign up to it. It's not an official index, if you will.
I had a quick look on the back of receiving this question and if you can make any sense of their lists, I'd be impressed. Chalice isn't listed under a palladium company and Mika Metals is still listed as a rare earth company. Lots of other odd examples. Perhaps this is actually a question for myindex.com why their lists are incomplete, outdated, or outright wrong. I know that Dreadnought is listed under the copper and nickel lists on there, so it's not an official index or anything like that. It's a private company. Take it up with them. Thousands of shareholders have found us, so I think we have been found.
We have thousands of shareholders in the back of the rare earths and on the back of the Stinger thing we jumped up, I think, 600 to 800 shareholders on the back of those announcements, so they continue to find us quite well. I'm also not sure how the value of Dreadnought or rare earth assets are realized through additional shareholders searching for us via market index. Value for our shareholders will be realized by development, partnerships, and further exploration of metallurgy, so we'll be focused on delivering those things. It would be appreciated if you could give details on the plans to commercialize the rare deposits. These seem to be particularly relevant to share price increases for many commodity companies in recent months. Dreadnought seems to have good rare deposits. It doesn't seem to have been able to capture public interest yet.
It's possible to investigate partnership with MTM to fast track its commercialization. Yes, commercialization is one of four ways. There's outright sale and, as our fearless Chairman Paul Chapman says, I'll know compelling when I see it, and I guess you can assume by reading through that that he has not yet seen compelling. Develop it ourselves. Yin is currently tied to Yang ibana's fortunes for better or worse until we make a game changer out of Gifford Creek like Stinger through proof of viable product and certainly focused on doing that because that also feeds into the other two, developing the partnerships. Potential partners want to see proof of viable product, and spin outs require the right markets, the right team, and the project at the right stage to pull this trigger.
Prove a viable product from Gifford Creek will allow us for all the above to do that in the right markets should the other two not venture out themselves. In regards to some of the other parts of the question, nearly all Australian players and peers, Hastings, Northern, Arafura, ASM, RareX, and the rest have gone up two to four times and back down by half over the last month or two, including us. I'd say we have actually had some similar interest from the public. Like I said, we've added around 600 - 800 shareholders in the back of the Stinger news, and I know Michael at MTM very well. Fantastic guy. I love what they're doing. We have spoken before.
I'm not sure our partnership with an unproven technique would allow us to fast track commercialization, but given our focus on metallurgy I'll certainly be reaching out to them and seeing if we can use that fast tool jewel zapper the process to see if we can't work on some of that. Certainly something that's going to be on our radar and look forward to catching up with Michael in due course. Do you see DRE's splitting into two different companies, one for rares, one for gold? Like the previous question, short answer, yes, it is a possibility. We've talked about it for two or three years I think. Yeah, for a long time and again we can commercialize.
I think I finished answering that question but yes it is, it is a possibility but as I said before needs to be at the right stage, need to be able to find the right team and all the rest of that and network focus that we have and some of the additional drilling we think will certainly go a long way to doing that should the market continue to be supportive of critical metals. DRE has found various metals since 2021 and why none of them are started for production or distribution. A couple of points here. 1 the average time to go from discovery to production in Australia has blown out to 12 to 20 years depending on which publication you look at and increases every year thanks to bureaucracy.
I actually have the mining proposal submitted by Eric Kempton for Two Peaks and it's nine pages handwritten and I just submitted 190 pages for the Star of Mangaroon. Not saying that's the reason but Star of Mangaroon is well on its way to production so there's that and other prospects will give a quick update and sort of talk through that. So Metzke’s gold in 2020 that's entering steady phase. It's been held back by lower gold price due to before. Last time I worked out there gold was $2,200 US we're now progressing mining leases and getting that interstellar phase and extending that mineralization. So Metzke’s Find is fine but we're sort of on the back burner because of lower gold price environment and that whole aspect. Certainly being able to do the joint venture contract mining has certainly come about more in the last couple years.
Longmores fantastic story followed. Drilling failed to hold together Orion Copper gold so the resource is pending out there. I'll talk about that. They have a question on Kimberley I'll talk about in a second. It is a remote area with limited access. It makes steady progress difficult. We'll talk more about that on Wednesday. These follow-up questions. Mining intrusion 2021 still in discovery phase in partnership with Teck , drilling away. Yen ironstones 2021 study phase, waiting for improved earth prices or floor prices, partnerships, whatever else C3 requires, which we'll be considering as part of the upcoming work. Star of Mangaroon was acquired in 2023 during the whole rare earth craze. We're waiting for mining approvals, and that should be in production and producing throughout next year. Stinger discovered 2024, that's at a resource evaluation stage. So that's been discovered. We have some really attractive mineralogy.
Before we go out there and hit it and deliver a big resource, we want to prove that metallurgy and do some targeted work on that. Tiger followed drilling, failed to produce economic intercepts. That was a beautiful early target. That was all exciting, but sometimes that is not quite juicy enough. Popeye 2024, failed to hold together. That's under evaluation. If Pritchard's Well comes off, the new nuggety assets, we might look at that. We'll see. Pritchard's Well, Two Peaks lead mine prospects are very nuggety again. We've got that new assay technique being tested now as we drill Pritchard's Well. Steve's Gold 2025 exploration phase, economic intercepts with the initial program undergoing additional exploration. See some updates on those in the near future. Cullens, Midday Movement, Midnight Star, Lesgo. Initial exploration underway.
We'll continue to add to this list and hopefully bring some more of these into production and commercialization. Keep hitting the down button, can you? There it is. Can you tell us more about your plans for the Kimberley? It looks a super interesting area but not getting much love. Following the updated national defense strategy in 2024, the northern bases, of which the YST one are seeing a lot more activity. Exploration in the Kimberley already had a pretty limited window due to weather, and now we're seeing more activity from defense, which can include sensitive and sometimes dangerous exercises. Our current work plans on the Kimberley: renewing our deed of access, which we do every two years; finalizing the internal review for Tarraji-Yampi and we're in the process of preparing the initial resource and exploration target for Orion and Grants.
We should have that out by the end of the year. Our focus remains at Mangaroon and Illaara at this stage. That is the end. I now have quite a few questions. Thanks heap from Charlene. No worries Charlene. Thank you for joining us and long-term support. Ben. Good day. Dean. With gold prices so high, imagine the Mines Department are doing many approvals. I can imagine as well. I imagine they are resource constrained. Are they obliged to make a decision on application within a certain timeframe or is there risk there? There's always risk with government approvals. There has been a fantastic push under Roger Cook and the new Mines Minister to really see things through. It's certainly come through on our minor approvals. The eligible mining activity EMAs are absolute game changers and there has been this big push to commit to their timeframes.
For some reason, they had on there 30 days. It's generally 90 days for mining approvals. Hopefully they stick to that. Is there always risk of blowouts? Yes. Do we think there's a risk from our mine proposal? There's nothing significant out there from an environmental perspective. There is previous mining and disturbance in the area. They want us to rehab the area and a big pit would be a fantastic way to rehab it. We don't see any major obvious risks. We are waiting for the government to do what government does. They have been good at improving the turnaround times. There is a strong commitment from the Mines Department to see these things through and they've done a lot of really good things to streamline their processes. Hopefully we are a benefit of that. Okay, thanks. Question answered the question anyway. All right, what about Yen?
I think I hopefully talked about that. From Greg Blairbear. Hi Dean. You said companies like DRE are capital intensive and you always need to raise. Yet post the last two raises you publicly said you were fully funded to your cash flow strategy which would avoid further dilution. Why would you have said that and now acknowledge exploration companies need ongoing capital? Yeah, I'll talk about that. Additionally, can we now believe you will be fully funded or should your share price climb? Would you just raise again? How can we get confidence there? Yep. Like I said, firstly this raise was not planned and we could have slowed down exploration and extended the cash that we raised at the start of the year to see Star of Mangaroon into production and continue to exist. That was the strategy from the back of the last capital raise.
We were fully funded to deliver that next phase to get Star of Mangaroon into production. When we were presented with this opportunity, it was to not slow down exploration and to expand exploration, and we figured that was a good source and would generate more value than the dilution would destroy. We thought that was a good outcome, a good decision, and that's why we made it. It was not planned. We would have extended the cash to Star of Mangaroon to production, but in a hot environment with the share price triples, it's a good time to top up and have a position of strength and keep things going. Can we now believe you'll be fully funded should your share price climb in this rise again? Again, don't think that would be the case, but as I alluded to before with De Grey and the other things.
Do you know what it costs to build a mine? To build a mine, De Grey, it was only cost AUD 1 billion, AUD 500 million to build a mine. Do you think the cash flow from Star of Mangaroon is going to fund that? The purpose of the cash flow is to fund exploration, make those life changing discoveries, and see that share price value go up in the company and the value of the company increase. If we make a major discovery that takes us to a AUD 5 billion market cap and we're going to need AUD 1 billion to develop it, are we going to raise money? Absolutely. That's the market and that's what everyone's done. Will we need, when Star of Mangaroon is in production, will we need to raise funds to see our exploration through?
No, that's what we want, to be in that position where we have the funds to make that life changing discovery that makes us that billion dollar company, and then when we get to that point, might get taken out, might not need to. If we're going to build it ourselves again, those decisions come up when you have that big prize in hand. We want to have self-funded explorer. That doesn't mean that we're never going to raise capital again. You never know what you're going to hit, never know what you want to discover. With the cash that we have, with the money that we'll be producing from Star and hopefully from Metzke’s Find and any extensions that we have, hopefully we won't need to raise more money to fund exploration. Hopefully that helps explain that question. Yeah, Chris, well done. Thanks for the presentation.
Looking forward to good progress in the coming years. All right, thank you, Chris. I think that answers everything there. I hope that everyone enjoyed that. Went over time, hour 15, but there was quite a bit to cover. I hope everyone enjoyed. Thank you for joining. Any other questions, please reach out anytime and look forward to hearing from you all and hopefully announcing some exploration success because that's what we're here for. All right, thank you. Cheers. Right, all.