Hello, everyone. Welcome to Dreadnought's first webinar of the year. Hopefully one of many, as we look to engage a lot more directly with the shareholders, particularly with this fantastic two-way communication opportunity that we have here. Also thank you to, I believe, the 17 people that submitted almost 20 questions. That's getting more and more every time. That is fantastic. It gives us the opportunity to air out frustrations, talk about plans, and go on deeper to things that people are interested in. Greatly appreciate the people that submitted the questions beforehand, and then at the end, I'll address all those, and then also open it up to live questions on the floor. We'll get stuck in. Finding more gold faster. Thank you guys all for joining.
I assume you all know who Dreadnought is, if you're in the room, on the webinar, on our website. I won't go over that too much. We are in a strong cashed-up position, about to start deploying that cash in earnest. We spend a lot of money in the ground, and that will be the case for this program. Board and Management continue to put lots of money into the ground or into the company as well. That's all I want to say around there. Some of the slides in here is a bit from RIU, there's a bit from the AGM. I'll try and get through that fairly quickly. I believe last time the webinar ran for over an hour.
I wanna get to the Q&A, 'cause that's what people really care about as much as possible. I'll try and give a bit of an overview of what's going on, and then get stuck into the Q&A. Finding more gold faster strategy has not changed. It is developing our high-grade gold deposits at Star of Mangaroon, and rapidly advancing Metzke's Find to bring that on the backside of Star of Mangaroon, so that we can have both of those high-grade deposits into production and generating some cash. Deliver a large-scale gold discovery. This year, we're kicking off in the Illaara Belt Aircore Program, with rigs on site at the moment. Very excited about that program, and as well as our Mangaroon camp-scale prospects, that target generation work now done.
It's target definition and making discoveries with the drill bit. Continuing to progress to Gifford Creek Carbonatite Complex, our critical metal beauty there in the background, kicking off a giant metallurgical program at the moment. Very excited by that. Of course, our joint ventures with Teck and the Money Intrusion in Bresnahan advancing as well. I'll start off with a bit of a year in review. Just to touch on a few of the things that we've delivered in 2025 and across the company history. This is something I presented at the AGM, I figured I'd throw this in here as well for those of you that could not attend, we'll try and make that online next year as well, similar to this webinar sort of setup.
Just sort of financial performance of the company. When it comes to exploration, it's about putting money in the ground, or more appropriately, is the least amount of money as possible into the overheads. We have a track record of doing that here at Dreadnought, and looking forward to continue that as one of our key KPIs as a junior company. Making sure, and Debbie, the Debbie Fullarton is our CFO, is on board and doing a fantastic job making sure that our corporate overhead costs are down low, and that the geologists in the field make sure that money's being spent where it adds the most value. Our KPIs from 2025, quite a few, quite a bit of our money in the ground, targets tested.
We delivered a couple of resources. I think the slide is actually outdated, so I think that's the wrong slide. I apologize. I'll skip over that. What I wanted to talk about with the KPI from 2025, is that our target generation work, you know, for the last couple of years, it has been a tough run. We've been focused on getting the Star of Mangaroon into production and generating cash flow. Our target definition, target generation work, has been a bit lower than we would have done historically, and that's certainly going to change going into 2026, where we're going to see some significant filling of the pipeline for our target generation and definition work, and of course, a significant amount of drilling going to test those targets.
A very, very exciting year on the exploration front for Dreadnought, which is what I wanted to say with this outdated slide. Apologies for that. Our strategy and key achievements in 2025, set a strategy, transforming self-funded explorer. Our Star of Mangaroon study update, we had a 50% reduction in the max cash drawdown and operating cash flow increased significantly. Also helped by, one, finding shallower ounces, but also in, the gold price keeps going up, which is fantastic. Hopefully, that continues. We got the approval submitted. There's a lot of questions on the approvals, which I'll address at the end. Mine, haulage, and processing agreements, that's underway. That's actually completed now with Black Cat. Things are looking really good.
As soon as we have approvals from the government, Black Cat's got 60 days to get into production, and they were on site earlier this week, and they are certainly chomping at the bit as much as we are, and the TOs, and the pastoralists, and everyone else up there are really looking forward to seeing this get going. Adding near-term production ounces, we had that increase and the resource at Star of Mangaroon. Importantly, there's a threefold increase in ounces in the top 30 m, which had a significant impact on that 50% max cash drawdown. We're looking at repeating that process at Metzke's, as part of our extension program, extension drilling program, which is kicking off here shortly. Metzke's mining lease, the application was submitted there.
Popeye, Two Peaks, and Pritchard's, you know, nuggety systems are frustrating. Those prospects are under review, they're part of the sort of wider area of interest that Black Cat has with developing Star of Mangaroon. Finding more gold faster. This is the discovery-based work. This is where we sort of got started at the end of last year and are really going to kick into overdrive this year. The generation of multiple camp-scale prospects, we've added another one to that recently. This week, I believe that announcement went out. We hit gold in some of our first pass drilling at Borda, which is at Steves Reward, and of course, at Cullen's Find and Midnight Star.
Very excited by the early-stage work on that, finding more gold faster, big exploration discovery focus this year, and we're going to certainly be adding to that. Yeah, we did our joint ventures and everything else last year and divested, simplified the portfolio a bit. We'll see some portfolio juggling in 2026 as well, as we continue our focus on the gold and the critical metals. Moving ahead to 2026. Developing the high-grade gold deposits. We have 2 high-grade gold development opportunities. One is the Star of Mangaroon, which everyone's very familiar with. We have the joint venture in place, the agreements and ore processing agreements with Black Cat. There's 27,000 oz of resource there.
There's 24,000 of those oz are in the pit at AUD 6,500 gold price. That should generate over AUD 100 million in free cash flow, that's split 50/50 with Black Cat and ourselves, up to AUD 80 million, then we get 70% of the profits above that AUD 80 million in free cash flow. Black Cat is funding, managing everything, mining, haulage, processing, contractors, all of those sorts of things, and funding, of course, the max cash out, upfront capital to get the mine up and running. We're very excited to have this in progress, the agreements in place and everything. We're just waiting for those approvals, which are currently underway, which I'll talk a bit more about at the end.
One of the big things that we're adding as part of the Finding More Gold, Faster strategy is the Metzke's Find resource. When we got that extra funding, that allowed us to maintain and advance or commit to maintaining and advancing Illaara. We divested the other parts of Central Yilgarn, but Illaara held a bit more of a special place and a bit more value to us than the offers that we were receiving. Metzke's Find, we're going to essentially replicate all of our learnings that we have from Star of Mangaroon to fast-track Metzke's Find into a place of resource updates, extensions, studies, approvals, and have that in a place to be in production next year, like we have Star of Mangaroon coming into production this year.
Okay, in the gold fields, closer to a lot more mills, a few more options out there. You know, Black Cat's got Lakewood down the road, but we have Bottle Creek, private one with RN, Ora Banda, Paddington. You know, there's quite a few options around this area and fantastic infrastructure and everything else. Gold Road Resources really is a great place to be operating, especially if you have 6-7 g dirt. We're rapidly advancing those studies and approvals. We had Enviros just finished up the last environmental survey on site this week because we did a lot of environmental surveys back in 2020, and so we have a lot of those things quite well advanced from the approval standpoint. We have resource extension drilling to commence in March this year.
The rig will be the crew heading up to site on the second, and the drill rig should be showing up on the fifth and hopefully drilling by the seventh. That is, if everything stays to plan, which it never does, but regardless, we will be drilling at Metzke's to extend that resource from the start of March. The last drill program we did at the end of last year, we extended the mineralization north of the dike, about 250 m of strike. We see a lot of opportunities to extend that resource, both to the north and to the south at depth, but also near surface, like we did with Star of Mangaroon, targeting that sort of top 10 m, 20 m, 30 m that we sort of avoided in the past because of not knowing where the historical workings were.
We didn't want to, you know, waste drill holes during the exploration phase, potentially hitting old stopes and old workings. Whereas this time around, we'll be poking those holes in there, finding out where they are, and most importantly, where they aren't, so we can add some shallow ounces because we know that has a big impact on ounces and cash flow. Looking at that pathway to production, Star of Mangaroon, you know, we've ticked a lot of those boxes. We're just waiting for the mining proposal and mine closure plan, which has been submitted. We have the RFI in place. We've received the RFI from the government. We're responding to that as we speak, should be submitted today or tomorrow, and we will.
Hopefully, that'll be the only RFI we receive, and then approvals and commencement of mining. As soon as we have that, those approvals in place, yeah, Black Cat, you know, the contract says 60 days of everything in place, but, we're certainly keen to get that into production as quickly as possible. If we get that approval sooner, then the sooner we get into production. Metzke's Find, as I say, we're about to replicate this process. We have the initial resource sitting there already. We proved the mineralization extended to the north end of last year.
At the start of March, we got an RC rig out there, drilling some 50, 60 somewhat holes off the top of my head, 6,000 m of drilling, and that's going to be extending that resource along strike up to surface and a couple sort of going to depth, which is really to look at that underground potential. The environmental and heritage surveys are underway. Like I said, we've already done multiple environmental surveys with onshore and the rest, our fauna and flora surveys are all very well advanced, and the final fauna survey, Stage 2, was completed this past week. All that sort of is in line.
Metallurgical test work, our first phase of that's underway, which will go into the updated resource and also the initial scoping study, which we plan to have out at mid-year. Once we have that, initial scoping study, we'll have the pit walls, we'll have, you know, conceptual pits and all the rest of that. We'll be able to do follow-up work, a bit of diamond drilling, to feed into all the final plans, start discussions with development partners, submit that mining proposal and mine closure plan on the back of the study, and start looking at the mine haulage and processing agreements, of course, approvals and commencement of mining.
If we are able to follow a similar timeline, keep up the pace as we have planned for this year, we should be able to have approval submitted by the end of this year, which means we'd be in the same position with Metzke's, this time next year as we are with Star of Mangaroon, and that is our target. Not only would we have Star of Mangaroon in production, Metzke's Find would be coming on board quickly behind it. It's about extending that cash flow.
On to what is the big reason for the cap raise, the big excitement that we have for the year, and what I believe will be the thing that actually drives our share price explosion and re-rate, and that is making a large-scale gold discovery across Illaara and Mangaroon. The bringing the mines online, that's generating cash flow, that's reducing, that's giving us optionality on things that we can do with that money, reducing needs for further dilution in the future. What's really going to make us a very large company, a very successful company, is of course, gonna be on the back of making a big discovery. That's what we are very excited about embarking upon this week.
Illaara Gold, this is where we're gonna be starting off for the year, 'cause the weather down there is a little bit nicer than up at Mangaroon. The Illaara is a big belt-scale opportunity. We're next door to Ora Banda, RN, Ballard, there's a few other groups in there, like Lefroy to our west, and Catalina to the southwest, Gold and Brightstar to the east. Gorilla Gold, sorry, and Brightstar to the east. We're right next door to a major greenstone belt that's been explored quite thoroughly over the past few decades, 100 years +. There's millions of ounces in current resources, and millions of ounces have been produced from this region.
We have the greenstone belt immediately next door. There's never been a single Aircore program or a concentrated sort of gold exploration program across this belt. That's a very large opportunity. If there's going to be a multi-million-ounce deposit sitting there in this belt, like the original discoveries you see with Gruyere or Hemi or Tropicana, this is the sort of program that will identify and tag that, and that is an extremely exciting place to be in. When you look at, talk about the, you know, the level of drilling across the, you know, the belts next door and why they had so many ounces, 'cause they have a lot of drilling.
You look at the Illaara Belt next door, there's no reason why there's not a multi-million-ounce deposit sitting in that greenstone belt. There's plenty of gold anomalism, never tested before with Aircore. We are very, very excited to get stuck into this. 'Cause it's not just a junior company talking about what is, you know, what we think is pie-in-the-sky greatness. It's 800 sq km of ground, it's 70 strike km of greenstone belt. It was attractive enough to get Newmont to peg this ground back in 2016. They actually wanted to embark on the same Aircore program, or a very similar Aircore program, 'cause we now have more of the belt than they did.
They cleared over 30 strike km, close to 30 strike km of tracks to undertake an Aircore program back in 2018, then for numerous logistical reasons, mainly drill rig availability, that program never eventuated. When we acquired the project from Newmont in 2019, because they got approvals by Central Land Council up at Tanami, and when you're Newmont and have Tanami, and you finally get approvals to go hit that hard, that's where you go look at things. We picked up the project off Newmont when Dreadnought started in 2019. We consolidated the belt, more than doubling the land holding, delivered the Metzke's resource. At the time when we picked up this project, we were an AUD 3 million market cap, we were AUD 0.23 of a cent.
We had AUD 300,000 in the bank, you know, embarking on a big Aircore program wasn't something that we were in a position to undertake. Metzke's Find was low-hanging fruits. We went after that, we had some nice early runs, then the rare earths and everything else exploded. Illaara's been sitting here, a program that we've dreamt about doing for a long time, a program that Newmont wanted to do 10 years ago, is something that we are about to embark upon, that is a very, very exciting opportunity. You know, last time, you know, made this graph, last time I talked about Illaara was back when gold was just AUD 2,200.
It's a bit higher than that now, we're very, very excited to see what this comes up with this year. What's that program look like? The drill rig arrived on site yesterday, it should be drilling hopefully today or tomorrow. We'll get out a commencement of exploration as soon as that rig actually has commenced drilling, as we are known to do. This is what phase one program actually looks like. We've got about 40,000 m-50,000 m of Aircore across around 550 holes-600 holes across sort of the northern bit of what we think we'll call the Black Oak CRA Homestead Corridor, where there's a lot of cover, and we see a lot of potential for a gold discovery.
Right in the center of the belt, you have some beautiful kinks and squiggles, as Dr. Jamie Robinson, our new Chief Geologist, says. It's a very large corridor of opportunity. Speaking of that, he's working on designing up areas of interest, corridors of opportunity, for the Phase 2 Aircore program, which will occur over the southern third or southern quarter of that main central structural corridor of interest. Phase one is 40,000 m-50,000 m of Aircore. This is going to take 3 months, 3 and a bit months to get through, depending on productivity and how deep the holes go.
Again, we're sort of assuming on the meters, 'cause there hasn't been a lot of drilling out here, so we don't actually know how deep some of that sap is. We do know there's areas on the edges where, there's, you know, fresh rock at surface. Back in 2019, we put a single RC, couple RC holes into CRA Homestead, and they went down 160 m before they hit fresh rock. We know this is, it's good for Aircore, and we're very, very excited to see what this program comes back with. I'll run for 3 months.
We'll be sending samples off weekly, so you know, within six weeks, seven weeks, we should start seeing news flow running, coming from this program, and we expect this to essentially provide a nice baseline news flow throughout the entire year. Any one of those batches of samples could be tapping into the next discovery. That's a very, very exciting thing to be having running in the background with us this year. Once that program is done, we plan to roll either immediately or very soon into Phase 2, which will probably be a similar size program, and that will include extending that Phase 1 Aircore to the south, where Jamie's doing some work at the moment, and also follow up on any of that wide-spaced Aircore drilling that we're currently undertaking.
The vast majority of that program is around 800 m by 100 m spacing on the Aircore and vertical holes. That's really designed to get a sniff, and then the follow-up Aircore programs will be the ones that will start to delineate and get a good feel on what's there. Very exciting. That's 3 months, another 3 months-4 months. This is just running in the background all year. With some of the biggest. We're expecting 80,000 m-100,000 m of Aircore drilling this year, which is by far and above the largest drilling programs that Dreadnought's done in our seven-year history. Very excited to see what comes from that. Which takes us to Mangaroon, the project that keeps delivering anything and everything.
Another very unexplored area. You know, looking at the drilling, we've seen this, shown this a few times before. Kalgoorlie, it is an end-member extreme example, but Mangaroon just shows that there's almost no drilling out there, and almost all that drilling on that map was for rare earths and critical metals, which we have over here in Hastings, or now I should say Wyloo, next door, and some more uranium exploration out to the west. Another big clean slate opportunity out here. It is about defining our big camp-scale targets and finding where within this 5,000 sq km package that we need to be focusing to make that gold discovery. We, you know, talk about camp-scale gold targets. These are areas that have very permissive lithostructural settings.
You have nice reactive rocks, you have good, deep mantle tapping structures. That's the arm wavy side of the geology, you know, the mineral system. We also want the evidence that there's mineralization associated with those areas, and that's where our stream sediment sampling program has come in, and that's given us. It's taken us a few years to complete this program. It is a very large area to do 2 Phases of Aircore, and we also kept adding tenements to the project as well, so we've had to cover those areas off, too. We've ended up with 7 camp-scale targets. You know, camp-scale. The idea of camp-scale is that somewhere within that camp scale, within that perspective lithostructural setting, there's going to be the opportunity for 1 or multiple gold deposits.
This is the area where you really want to focus your target generation work as a way of doing area reduction, very effective and efficient exploration as quickly as possible. Star of Mangaroon, this is the area that was sort of known. I like to point this out. You know, we have the historical workings are in here, Star of Mangaroon's in here. This is where a lot of the nuggets have been found in the past, and a lot of work is focused on.
You look at the actual gold and stream set anomalies for the Star of Mangaroon, it's one of the weakest, lowest order anomalies that we have across the belt, which is made even more amazing when you think that a lot of these gold areas were found through alluvial mining. You look at our other 6 camp-scale targets that we've defined out here, these are often larger and much stronger gold and soil anomalism. Pathfinders associated with these gold systems are all textbook, they're all classic, and we see these across three different lithological groups, the Pooranoo, the Lake Springs, the Edmund Group. All these are volcanic sedimentary basins that have, you know, nice reactive rocks.
You have geological contrast, chemical contrast, all the things that you want. We have all the ingredients to form a good gold deposit. We have evidence that gold is shedding, 'cause that gold in stream sands is coming from somewhere. It is about focusing in now and doing the target definition work and putting holes into these targets across these areas, which we've already gotten a start on at Ora Banda and Midnight Star and Cullens. Which we're also had an early start on High Range North. No drilling yet, but we announced this week some of the results from there. Really looking forward to getting High Range Northwest, our newest camp-scale target, and High Range South up to speed and getting the target definition work going there.
We should see a very significant increase in our pipeline of highly attractive targets. I believe we'll be in a position where we'll have be difficulty choosing the best targets to go in and drill. That's a very good position to be in to help ensure we're drilling what we think are the best targets. Minga Bar shear, where we started along this thing, Cullens, Midnight Star. Cullens was found by Peter Cullens, the uncle, grandfather of the pastoralists that are up there at the moment. You know, he drilled, put a hole into this thing back in 1986 by low mining some gold, we assume.
Then was for the first people to come back and follow that drilling up, and then also test further, generate targets further along that structure or that corridor of opportunity, if you will. How we define that shear zone, one of the things that we identify that here in the mag image, you can see these magnetic features that are cutting across, sort of from south west up to northeast. These are Mundine Well dyke swarm. These are 750 million-year-old dyke swarm, and which is postdates a lot of the earlier orogenic events. We can see within these major shear zones that those dykes at 755 have been dislocated quite significantly.
That's the Muggamurra event, a fairly new event that has not been observed or talked about in this area, but it's a 500 Ma orogenic event in this area. It's identified down the Chalba Shear Zone, we think it's playing a significant role in some of the gold mineralization systems up here. We're very excited to explore this area, test a few of these targets. Some of our follow-up work drilling, our first batch drilling here, of course, down to Cullens, we had things like 25 m at 1. Very significant because when you speak to people who are familiar with this region before, they always pointed to the star and went, "Star of Mangaroon, it's a small, high-grade, narrow vein gold system.
You're just gonna find a bunch more of those." That's never been our intent. We've always believed that that was just smoke. This area was explored by prospectors and pastoralists and Native Title people, the TOs out here. You know, this is an area that was found by nuggets, and nuggets come from these sort of small, high-grade systems. We believe that that was smoke, and if we did systematic exploration, we would identify larger scale targets. We believe there's a potential out here for multi-million ounce discovery, and it's getting some of these thicker intercepts, more and more classic goldfields intercepts, if you will. In our, in some of our first pass drilling out here, we're very, very excited about, and it shows that concept has legs.
We're very much looking forward to getting stuck back into this corridor. We'll be drilling here in April, May. Yep. Oh, it's down there already. Yep. About 5,000 m-6,000 m of RC drilling, quarter of opportunity, testing a few more targets within this area and following up and extending on those existing intercepts. We're also looking at doing some potential gradient array IP over this area, which we think would be a very useful tool in this geological and regolith terrain to help us identify and generate some targets and zone in a bit quicker as well. Very excited about what's going to be coming from Mangaroon and the follow-up drilling here at Minga Bar. Takes us to Ora Banda, Steve's Reward.
Steve Elliott was one of my first bosses at Talisman Mining. He worked at Helix Resources, responsible for multiple discoveries, including Glenburgh, which has been mining's just kicking out of the park at the moment. They're absolutely killing it. Great to watch that success over there. They had a Steve Elliott soon after making that Glenburgh discovery, was started doing work up here in what we now call Ora Banda. While he was doing stream sediment work, he identified a quartz vein that came back 116 grams per ton gold, no other work was ever followed up up here. We named the area Steve's Reward after Steve.
We sort of thought because it was a vein system was taken out of the ground. We sort of mapped into a fairly small area, that was sort of the limit of that prospect. Every time we've done work, that prospect has just gotten larger and larger. This evidence in this map here, you can see where we did our first 2 rounds of drilling around Steve's, around the historical vein was in this area. We extended to the north up here. We've hit gold and all those in first pass drilling, so it's a live system. We just need to find out what's controlling this and how do we target where to put the drill holes in the next system.
The other thing that we see with every round of soils that we do, it just keeps getting larger and larger, and we keep getting bigger and stronger gold and soil anomalies. We've done two drill programs here. This has been sort of inward outs. We like to go outward in when it comes to exploration, identify the big scale targets and work our way in. Here it's gone the other way, and that's been slightly frustrating. We want to complete the soils program and see the blue dots on there. It's quite extensive. We finished the stream sets in here and saw that extended quite a bit off to the east. We've designed the soils to cover off that area. We'll complete that.
We'll start with drilling the Cullens and Minga Bar in April, May. We plan to add the soil program, kicking off in March, April, in addition to the other camp scale targets, with a plan to come back to Steve's, give Jamie a chance to look at the diamond core we have here, get a chance to look at the rocks on the ground, chase up the rest of the gold and soil anomalies, and see if we can't actually find a good place to put the next drill holes. We'll be planning to drill out here in the second half of 2026. High Range North, this is one of the camp scale targets we managed to get first pass soils on before the end of last year.
8 km long, 1 km long gold and soil anomaly. This is the first ever gold and soil anomaly defined in the High Range. I have a bit of a soft spot for High Range North. I can't really explain why. This is, you know, this is quite an exciting development. I've never understood why this region hasn't been explored by gold before. You know, the gold in this whole region, the was all in the Edmund Group. There's outliers in Klein that's seen a bit more extra deformation than the rest of the Edmund Group.
That was the original gold area, back in the 80s, Newmont and Newcrest were down there exploring for Telfer lookalikes, and they did a little bit of work. The next essentially identical greenstone belt outlier of the Edmund Group to the north, the High Range, has never been looked at. This was a very exciting development to see what is going to come from this. Our first pass soils has given us a very strong anomaly, good pathfinders associated with that, some interesting mag features and cross-cutting structural features we've seen in some of the magnetics as well. We're very excited to see how the infill drilling goes and generates targets or defines targets here for drilling in the second half of this year as well.
Very excited to get that soils program underway and follow up a High Range North as well as Borda to add to that target pipeline. We'll be doing the first pass soils at High Range South and also High Range Northwest as part of that program in March, April as well. Lots of targets coming in there, lots of opportunities to make a discovery. Again, this is the first target generation definition work that's been done in a lot of these areas on an organized manner, we're very excited about what that defines for us. Gifford Creek Carbonatite Complex, rare earth prices are back in fashion, it's nice after a couple of years of being in the sand bin.
You know, since we made the Yin discovery and delivered substantial amount of resources, the monazite concentrate work, the emmerich test work, and all the rest of it, we've also been making the Gifford Creek carbonatite discoveries, including Stinger. In addition to what we have defined with the rare earths at Yin, what's really changed over the last two years is we have this multiple critical metal potential with Stinger, quite large scale opportunity, where we have a amazingly high grades in line with global economics, and niobium, scandium, titanium, zirconium, and phosphate. There's quite a few additional elements inside that central carbonatite. What we see.
What we're, essentially for the last couple of years, we've been talking to lots of different groups, looking for development partners. Rare earths have been sort of in the sin bin, so the idea of diversification has been a very common theme. If we can bring or prove that Stinger can produce an additional product, say rare earths and niobium or niobium, titanium or, you know, scandium, whatever it ends up being, it allows us to diversify the development of this area beyond just rare earths and have another commodity in there, which may not be as politically treated as a football like rare earths can be. So what we see is a success here. We're about to embark on a big metallurgical program, so proof of product.
Like, before we drilled Yin, you know, Chappy and I went out there and huffed out, you know, 80 kg of outcrop and took it down to make sure that we could create a monazite concentrate with it before we ever did any drilling. 'Cause when it comes to critical metals, it's not about grades and tons in the ground, it's about can you make a sellable product? That's what we are gonna be doing at Gifford Creek, and we've embarked on this program. It's gonna run for the next 6 months- 12 months, depending on success. 6 months at a minimum, 12 months beyond that, should phase one be successful. That is really looking at, can we produce from Stinger, a niobium, scandium, titanium, or zirconium product in addition to the rare earths?
What we see is a success. If we wanna, you know, look at where has this been done before, the big analog that we're using for this one is Elk Creek in the U.S., so in Kansas. It's a large carbonatite. It's like 60 million-80 million tons of resource. That's sort of, you know, half a percent, a bit more niobium. It's got 80 ppb, 60 pbb-80 ppb scandium, three and a half titanium. They've developed a flow sheet that treats whole of ore, that produces titanium dioxide, niobium, ferroniobium, scandium, and they're looking at the ability to produce rare earths from that as well. That's in a company called NioCorp. They have a billion-dollar U.S. market cap at the moment at bankable feasibility study level.
Importantly, to point out, Elk Creek is under 400 m-500 m of cover, whereas it is much lower grade than what we have at Stinger. If we could show a similar metallurgical pathway to product development for Stinger, there's a very clear pathway to value creation through the additional drilling, resource work, and study work that could really. Imagine having an Elk Creek that's 2x-3 x the grade at under 20 m, 30 m, 40 m of cover, as opposed to 400 m. Proving that met is potentially a game changer. It also potentially changes the outcome of the region. You know, if we were to develop Yin and Wyloo develop Yangibana next door, it's two sides of the same coin. There's not much reason to develop two plants to do the same thing.
You end up like Cobra and Altura. One of you is gonna be a winner, one of you is gonna be a loser. Whereas the Gifford Creek and Stinger, if we prove that we can produce a new baseline opportunity with niobium and titanium and scandium, then that changes the development opportunities and options for this area. Puts us in the driver's seat, and we're very excited to see what the mets, strategic met Nick finds in his team and the external consultants they bring in to unlock what we can from Stinger. It will be very exciting and potentially game-changing for this region. We see that as a very exciting opportunity.
It's not exciting from a market standpoint because met takes a long time in the background, and there's not a lot of news flow that generates excitement, like starting of drilling and samples submitted. When it comes to value creation, this is the most important thing that we can do. If we prove a viable product from this area, it has potential to really unlock significant, real potential, not just spooky, pumping the market potential. We're looking for real development partners, we're looking for real progress, and this is the key work. Part of that last capital raise has allowed us to embark on this program. You know, I say excited a lot, but we are excited to see the results of that. Strategy hasn't changed. We're just bringing things forward. We're looking at the work plan summary.
Start of Mangaroon, approval, commencement of mining, as soon as we get the approvals. Hopefully, you know, first half of this year, and then production for the next 10 months-12 months past, once mining commences, depending on how fast Black Cat decides they wanna put it through the mill. Mangaroon Discovery up there. Well, sorry, I'll skip down to Metzke's Find. Resource drilling and study work, that's all commencing in the start of March. That Aircore program is commencing here, and the next day, if it hasn't commenced already, the drill rig could be turning right now. Just wait in for that, the photo of the Aircore rig actually doing some work before we announce the commencement of that program. Hopefully this week that's kicking off as well.
The sample selection and testwork prioritization is underway at the metallurgical program. Going into the June quarter, once we deliver that resource program, the Aircore program is gonna be running across the Illaara all year. We have a fantastic team from OMNI GeoX, led by Emily Cole, managing that program for us. It's we got mollys drilling in there, we have the A team in there. That's gonna provide a really nice baseline supply, and it's under good management and, of course, the supervision from the Dreadnought personnel as we pop out there. We're very confident in that program running. That allows our team, like Chappy and Frank and Claude and the rest, who...
Myself, 'cause I get to go to the field more this year, is going to be delivering that resource drilling program at Metzke's Find, and then taking the RC rig up to Mangaroon to chase up Cullens and Midnight Star. That takes us to midyear. At midyear, we will know, are we chasing something up hard on the Aircore? Are we following up RC drilling at Cullens Midnight Star? We will be drilling new targets as well, if we define them. I assume we will, if we have, you know, those good anomalies up front. We have a very clear drill program for the RC program to midyear, to June, July. The program after that will be based on success. Could we bring extra Aircore programs in?
Do we start RC drilling on the Aircore already? Do we have a, just a crap ton of targets up at Mangaroon? You know, we have to wait and see what that is, but we're well-positioned for that, and of course, fully funded for that work. The MET program that first place, first phase, amenability testing, beneficiation, and ore extraction, that should run till into the third quarter. By success of that, we'll go on to refining and product development work. By the end of the year, I would love to be able to hold in our hand a titanium, scandium, or rare earth product in addition to the MREC that we have from Yin.
Hold a similar sized product from Stinger, that would certainly unlock a lot of options for us going forward. 39 minutes in, my short presentation went longer than anticipated. I apologize for that. Into the webinar questions. Thank you to the 17 people who submitted close to 20 questions ahead of time. Gives me a chance to prepare a few answers for those, then, of course, we'll open up to live questions, which I've already seen two come in. Webinar questions. Number 1: Regarding government mining and planning approval, do you understand where they're at any communications from government being asked? Yep. Our mine proposal and mine closure plan, MPMCP, and Native Vegetation Clearing Permit, NVCP, for the people that love acronyms, are currently under assessment by the Mines Department. We sent.
We have received our first request for further information, an RFI, which means that they've finally reviewed the entire 1,000-page document, and they've come back and asked us for things like, "Can you reformat your table?" Of course, other useful things. We've received that, and we're responding today, I believe. I think Stephen Foley's finalized that with all of our consultants, and that will be submitted back to the Mines Department. There were no serious issues raised with that RFI, and we believe that we have addressed all requests very thoroughly and hope not to receive a second one. The department, throughout this whole process, the department has sent us, and I'm sure lots of other people, numerous emails saying that they are overworked and understaffed.
In addition to hounding me, please go hound our politicians. It's just to provide a bit of benchmark for people's, I know there's anxiety around this. It took Lunnon Metals, LM8, recently, good operators. They got Lady Herial coming into production now. It took them, it looks like, based off their quarterlies and everything else, that they submitted their mining approvals back in July, August of last year, and it took them 6 or 7 months to get those approvals in place. We are currently in month 5. In the realms of government and other performance of other companies, we are on track. I know it's frustrating.
We would love to be mining, it seems like it's taking longer to do the approvals and prepare the approvals than it will to dig up the mine. That's the environment that we're in. Question 2: Is the production of Mangaroon mine still on track for the third and fourth quarter? Yes, aiming for the third quarter. We're in month fifth that's we're in February, say March or April, we get the approval. The agreement we have with Black Cat says 60 days, that's April, May, June, July. Yes. That's what we're sort of working towards. If we receive the approvals earlier, we could absolutely commence earlier.
I said the Black Cat guys were on site this week with Frank, and I think they're very keen to get this thing going as well. Next question: When will mining and processing ore commence? As I said, we got a lot of questions around commencement of mining at Star, so understandable. When will gold be delivered to market? Will the business consider selling off rare earth fines for fast capital to find future projects? As per our agreement, which I said, commencement of mining, all contracts, secure all contracts in 60 days, and we're very keen to get that going. We're just waiting on government. Regarding the second stage of that question, all options are on the table for the rare earths and critical metals.
We believe that to be a major opportunity for Dreadnought and our shareholders. Will we sell that for fast cash? No, not a chance. Would we sell for an appropriate valuation? Yes, I'll requote Paul from the last quarterly or last webinar I did. "I'll know compelling when I see it." Paul's seen a lot of compelling things in his time, so imagine it's not a small number. We continue to pursue strategic partners to assist with carrying that project forward, be that within Dreadnought and eventual spin outs and/or a buyout. Like I said, all options are on the table. We are heading to Canada and the U.S. tonight. I get on a plane at 11, soon, as part of an Australian Critical Metals delegation.
We look forward to pursuing opportunities and leads over there as part of that delegation. More news will come out of that later this week. Star of Mangaroon still: What is your expected timeline for mining to commence, and how are you going to prioritize what minerals to mine? Will you be equipped to handle rare earth minerals, or will you sell, outsource that to someone like Lynas? Yep. Star of Mangaroon to commence this year, aiming to get Metzke's in production for next year. We are prioritizing gold. Gold is something that is very easy for a company like Dreadnought to pursue. Critical metals and particular rare earths are very complex. At this stage, we would prefer a strategic partner prior to setting any timelines to develop for critical metals.
You know, I could sit here and promise lots of timelines to people. Back in 2016, Hastings Technology Metals said they'd be mining by 2018, now they've defaulted, and Wyloo controls it. I'm not going to commit to a timeline for the development of the studies on the critical metals. We want a development partner, strategic partner involved with that, 'cause we don't want to lose control or lose value that we think could be there. What does the company plan on doing with surplus gold proceeds above operational cost? Shorten the register, dividends. It's a fun one. Love. Start off with two quotes here.
Thomas Jefferson: "Never spend your money before you have it." Of course, Aesop's Fables, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch." As a major shareholder that can't sell his shares, without looking really bad, I would love to see a combination of shortening the register and dividends, absolutely. We need to first make that money, and then see where we are as a company, and then decide the best use of those funds. Let's be optimistic for a second and say we make a big Hemi-style discovery this year out of the lot. That's what we're here for. and need to raise AUD 30 million like De Grey did in April 2020, soon after they announced the Hemi discovery in February of 2020.
It wouldn't make sense for Dreadnought to return capital to shareholders simply to turn around and request additional funds. We could use those funds to deliver the drill out, as opposed to issuing capital. Which leads us into, don't worry, I have the counter to the optimistic situation on the next slide. The money license, what time frame are we talking at the moment? Also, can we assume that Dreadnought's exploration program, including what it has discovered to date, is going to be a company maker? Are you on the cusp to be a company or on the cusp of a company maker, or does it just mean 1 year-2 years with no cap raises without a company maker? Yep. There's never guarantees in exploration, that's exploration.
We certainly believe that we are onto company making opportunity this year with our drilling at Illaara and Mangaroon. Let's say we don't make a company making discovery this year. We do the aircore program, Phase 1, Phase 2, don't have anything massive there. The stuff at Mangaroon never quite holds together. We still have the Star of Mangaroon producing gold this year, and pushing to bring Metzke's online next year. That would give us tens of millions or more, depending on the gold price, of cash over the next two years. That would put us in a position to return capital to shareholders, continue to fund exploration for X years, whatever is an appropriate amount, to reduce print dilution as we continue to look at new things, or acquire a major new advanced project.
Again, if we have success, and we're gonna be in a position to have to raise money, there's no point in distributing that straight away just to then ask for it back. If we don't have that success and we're sitting on a substantial amount of cash, then absolutely, we're very motivated to return capital and to tighten up the share register. Again, we'll make the money first, we'll see where we are, and we'll make the best decision for the shareholders.
Assuming Mangaroon scales through continued drilling and cash flow via the Black Cat arrangement, would the board consider structural options such as consolidation with Black Cat, royalty retention, and partial monetization? I assume this is talking about some sort of potential deal with Black Cat, a merger, selling of an asset or something along those lines. As a publicly traded junior resource explorer, our mission is to deliver shareholder value through exploration and discovery. If we make a significant discovery that pushes Black Cat or any entity to propose an acquisition, merger, or takeover, then that proposal delivers value for our shareholders, then absolutely, we will consider it. Let's make the gold discovery first and then see what offers come in. Keep our eye on the prize, make that discovery.
Is Black Cat gonna take us over for Star of Mangaroon? I wouldn't say so. They haven't yet, I wouldn't say so. You know, let's make the discovery first and let's make ourselves compelling to have everyone fighting over us. That's certainly the spot we want to be in, and that's the position that Paul definitely wants to be in. "Why is it that DRE is not going up in value? Why are we still in the AUD 2.2-AUD 2.6 price range? We are producing, so why are we stagnating?" Another question from the same person: "When, such at what stage, should we expect essential uprise in value? The gold has risen substantially, but not DRE.
What's going on?" Firstly, no need to yell, I certainly appreciate the frustration with the share price. Secondly, we are not producing, we should be producing later this year. Thirdly, our share price, you know, is the highest it's been since the start of 2024, and more than double where we were just eight months ago. Down a lot from where we were in 2015. Sorry, that was so long ago now, I can't remember, the good old days. In the short term, share prices are influenced by many factors beyond our control, such as market sentiment, liquidity, broader economic conditions. Our focus is executing our finding more gold faster strategy, delivering strong technical results, meeting milestones, delivering long-term value, and reducing risk across our projects.
If we continue to execute our strategy, we believe the share price will reflect that over time. You know, I look at Sunshine for a year or two, SHN, I've been loving what Sunshine has and going, "Jesus Christ, these guys, the projects look great, the team is great, everything looks great." Been topping up and contributing to that, then finally the market takes interest and off they go. You know, it's, you know, it's frustrating, but, you know, we're doing what we can control, and we're focused on what we can, and we believe that should we deliver the things that we think that we can, then our share price will reflect that. Will it reflect that on a day-to-day basis? You know, the share price jumps.
As a junior explorer, we have liquidity issues, and interest rates go up and everything else, and mom and pop lose extra money to put into investing. There's all sorts of reasons why the price can stagnate. If you speak to your financial advisor, speak to your broker, and if you think we're undervalued, then well, that generally means that maybe you should top up. That's not financial advice, but, you know, instead of complaining about the price, you know, instead, look at it as an opportunity. Another fun one: "The board and management be aware and appreciate the real and valid concern, frustration shareholders like me hold concerning the momentum of progress with this company.
While holding a viable land position and opportunity, all that we get to see are some random announcements without meaningful progress to see this company become significant among peers and reflect on share price. Please hold your breath in stating you don't control market price," too late, "and focus on progressing the company's prospects beyond periodic ASX announcements and issuing management performance options. I hope you respond to this at the webinar." Here we are. "I look forward to continue being a shareholder and believer based on that." We also look forward to you staying a shareholder and believer as well. You know, I post in response to all valid questions from our shareholders, but I will reiterate what I said on the previous slide. There's not a lot that a junior resources and public company can control when it comes to their share price.
We are products of the market, we are products of people's situations, and we're also a product of prices set by external forces. There is a lot of things that we cannot control, and that's the reality of the situation. You can ask ChatGPT. While we as major shareholders, who are all below our average buy-in price, share in your frustration with the share price over the years, I strongly disagree with your statement about random announcements and no meaningful progress. I see that you've been a shareholder since October 2023, let's have a look. Now, since October 2023, we have acquired, assessed, and divested the Bresnahan Project for heavy rares as part of our rare strategy, resulting in a small joint venture of Teck that was advancing part of that Bresnahan Project .
We've assessed the lithium potential in the back of rising lithium interest a few years ago, across Mangaroon and Illaara, which almost resulted in a major joint venture with a global major lithium producer, the day before the price crash. This is why there's a bit of water under the bridge now. I still won't name the company, but we had an announcement approved by both companies that was going to go out the next day pre-market, and overnight, the lithium price crashed, and they pulled out of the deal. Anyway, that was a very frustrating 11-month process for all parties involved. Anyway, that's one of the things that we've done.
We delivered a 30 million ton resource, rare earth resource at Yin, 87% measured and indicated. We've produced a high-quality MREC from the Yin monazite concentrate as part of our rare earth strategy. We discovered the Stinger mineralization at Gifford Creek. We delivered a niobium exploration target for Stinger. We've commenced significant metallurgical programs, again, as part of that strategy on the critical metals. We discovered nickel, copper, massive sulfides at the Money Intrusion. We delivered a major AUD 15 million joint venture with Teck. It replaced the First Quantum joint venture to continue that exploration. Since October 2023, we made a massive sulfide discovery, First Quantum pulled out, and we got Teck back in.
We've identified, assessed, and tested massive sulfide targets at Tiger and The Inevitable at Mangaroon as part of our target definition, soils work, and EM. We identified multiple camp-scale targets at Central Yilgarn, delivering thick, high-grade gold. We divested part of that project to Catalina for cash, equity, and a royalty. We've extended copper-gold mineralization at Tarraji-Yampi through diamond drilling and delivered the Orion resource most recently. More to the progress side, there's a lot of things. You know, being a junior explorer is a bit like a tech company. There's a lot of pivoting. We, you know, explore, you technically don't have anything until you discovered something and delivered a resource. You're always pivoting and looking for those opportunities. Since October 2023, we announced the self-funded explorer strategy. Shortly after that, the find a more gold faster strategy.
We've undertaken multiple drill programs across the Star of Mangaroon, including the first one, which we commenced in October 2023. Since then, we've delivered two resources, delivered two studies, delivered joint venture and work purchase agreements with Black Cat Syndicate for development of Star of Mangaroon, and we have development pending final approvals currently underway. I would say that's pretty substantial progress on one of our main core items. We further consolidated Mangaroon through five to six deals as part of our Mangaroon gold focus. We identified seven camp-scale prospects at Mangaroon. We've intersected gold mineralization, the first-ever drilling at Steve's Reward and Cullen's and Midnight Star, confirming the potential for a major discovery to be followed up later this year. We continue to fill the pipeline of large-scale gold anomalies and discovery drilling at Mangaroon.
We completed drilling at Metzke's, extending mineralization beyond the existing resource by 250 meters. We've applied for the mining lease. We'll be commencing the resource extension drilling here in the next week or two. Again, that's part of the expanded finding more gold strategy, which included Illaara. It will allow us to get more gold into production, and we'll be making very rapid progress on that and kicking off the largest gold exploration aircore program we've undertaken at Illaara.
I wouldn't say if you think our ASX announcements are random, that we haven't made progress. I would encourage you to reach out to me more often and ask for clarification or to read a lot of our announcements a bit more thoroughly and stay in line with our strategy and how each of the announcements we put out fall in line with that strategy, which we have reiterated multiple times over the last 2 years. Webinar question, next one. Last year it was reported that majors were interested in the rare earths. What is the current situation? We've had numerous conversations with companies from across the globe over the last couple of years. Many of those conversations have been for a wider range of critical metals than just the rare earths, in particular, for the last year and a half, 2 years.
For most of the past year, the rare earth prices and market interest has been low, but that's been changing very rapidly. I think we're back up to 120 NdPr, though I'm not sure who's actually paying that since China's the only place that processes a lot of that, and no one's allowed to sell to China anymore. Anyway, a reoccurring theme across all of our discussions with potential shared partners is the need to prove that a product or products can be produced from Stinger. That is the reason that we are undertaking the significant metallurgical program this year, and once the met is proved, we can look toward partnerships and/or resource drilling programs similar to what we've done with Yin.
We are heading to Canada and the U.S. tonight as part of an Australian Critical Metals delegation, which I'm very excited about. It will be a very full-on trip across Toronto, New York, and D.C., and we look forward to pursuing opportunities and leads there, and more news will come on that later this week. There's still a lot going on in the critical metals space. Given rising NdPr prices and continued positive results at Stinger, how do you see the Gifford Creek rare earth corridor evolving over the next 6 months- 12 months in terms of resource growth, metallurgy progress, and key milestones that could drive a re-rate? The technical stream here, we have proved the metallurgy for Stinger. That's currently underway, 6 months- 12 months, deliver a resource. On the commercial stream, continue discussions around strategic partners.
Not a lot in there, but those are all very critical and very large, very large items. Great presentation, how are you? Thank you. Could you update holders on the Kimberley? Seems to have lost traction, but it's great work. Thank you. The Kimberley is a lower priority project for us at the moment, with our focus on getting Star of Mangaroon and Metzke's into production, delivering a large-scale gold discovery at Illaara and Mangaroon, and progressing the critical opportunity at Gifford Creek. That's already a lot on our plate, and it's very consuming. We are waiting on the Commonwealth renewal date of access to get boots back on ground up there.
In the meantime, we're not in a rush, we are undertaking a major geophysical review with Southern Geoscience, and our new chief geologist, Dr Jamie Robinson, will be undertaking a major geological review over 2026 with a view to justify further exploration by Dreadnought once we are producing our own cash flow or package that project up and assist the pursuit of commercialization or partnership outcome. Project review, most people view that as a, you know, what it ends up being, for us, you know, once we make cash flow, we have not raised money to do work up in the Kimberley. Once we produce our own cash, would we consider doing that? Absolutely.
We need to be able to justify that against our other targets at the time. If that's not the best use of our capital, then we will look at pursuing partnerships or divestments of them. It's up in the air. I can't commit to that. We're undertaking those reviews and staying focused on the gold and the critical metals at this point. "In your recent RIU presentation, you talked about the AUD 18 million placement. This was at AUD 0.035. How are investors feeling about this at the moment? Has anything changed since then?" I won't speak on behalf of our shareholders. 70% of the investors, representing 85% of the issued capital in that placement, are still there, with several of the larger ones having acquired additional shares since.
We raised that money to deliver the major programs that we are about to commence. I would hope that they are all, my favorite word, as excited as I am. "Give us a roadmap to gold and critical metal production." I may have done this earlier in the presentation. In the back of all of our announcements, we also have our work plan summary, which I try to break out each of these. Not sure exactly what you want to detail on things, but hopefully what I've covered is appropriate enough. As I mentioned before, regarding the critical metals, prove the met, secure a partner that we can look at before mapping out that journey.
There's no point in us creating a roadmap to critical metal production when we're not going to be committing the AUD 5 million liver scoping study, AUD 20 million liver feasibility study, not to mention the AUD 2 million-3 million of the resource and the rest of that. We want a strategic partner design the best pathway forward with them before we commit to any plans or anything like that. Again, not wanting to turn into Hastings. "As a long-term investor, I notice a pattern in the trading of the stock. Are you aware of any entity controlling the price, or would you presume that this is people selling at news and hoping to buy back cheaper before any major announcements?" Everyone loves that game.
Short answer, no, I'm not aware of any entity controlling the price. If there was, and we could prove it, I'm sure we'd go after them, as evidenced by what Black Cat is currently doing, with Barclays in Hong Kong. No, and if we did, I'm sure Paul would be over them like a pit bull in a pool. "You've got gold getting closer to production at Star of Mangaroon, critical metals at Stinger, that could be nation building." I like that. "Huge potential at Illaara. If you could only fast-forward one project to the finish line overnight, which one would it be, and why?" That's mean. That's like asking to choose your favorite kid. That's a hard question.
It reminds me of a saying that everyone brings joy to this house, some when they enter, and some when they leave. As an explorationist, personally, I love exploration and making the discoveries. I would love to see a commercial outcome for the major critical metal discoveries that we have made at Yin and Gifford Creek. To put a bow on that and see it crystallize value or on its way to crystallizing value for our shareholders, that has certainly been an emotional rollercoaster and financial rollercoaster over the last couple of years. What really gets my heart pumping, gives me goosebumps, and keeps me up dreaming at night, is that first drill hole into a major discovery at Illaara and Mangaroon.
I believe that Illaara has a greater geological probability of success, being in the Yilgarn classic greenstone belt, but Mangaroon would have greater geological implications. Parts of mobile belts are much more underexplored and have massive potential that we've seen in more recent times. If I had to pick between them, this is a very cruel thing. You know, Illaara, we've I guess it's this textbook. It's exciting. We've wanted that ground. I've been working in that Central Yilgarn area since 2015, 2016, so there is a long history I have with that.
It's never good to get emotionally attached to a project, but when you're in a position to finally drill a program that you've always wanted to, that technically, the region always deserved, and you might wanted to do as a little tick of approval, that's a, that's a very exciting thing to embark upon. Again, that's a very cruel question, and yeah, not nice. Anyway, that answered, honestly. "In terms of news flow, what can we expect in the next 6 months-12 months, and what are the challenges that we face?" Great question. Develop our high-grade deposits and generate news flow. I've broken this question up, news flow over our strategy. News flow, regarding developing the high-grade gold deposits, Star of Mangaroon, mining proposal approvals, NVCP approvals, commencement of mining, first gold pour.
Hopefully all that happens over the next 6 months-12 months. On Metzke's, we have drill results, commencement of drilling and drill results, resource updates, met recoveries, studies, mining lease grant and submission of approvals, all in the next 6 months-12 months as well. Delivering a large-scale gold discovery, commencement of the Phase 1 Aircore at Illaara, regular assay results as that program commences throughout the year. Commencement of Phase 2, which will be infilling areas of Phase 1 success and also targeting that southern part of the belt where Jamie is doing some work at the moment. For Mangaroon, RC drilling at Cullen's Midnight Star, that's kicking off immediately after the Metzke's drilling. We're looking at April, May.
Results on the back of that, possible gradient array IP across that area to help us define some targets in that Minga Bar shear zone. Results from that, two phases of target definition soils across the camp-scale targets, High Range, you know, following up there, High Range North, High Range Northwest, Borda, Steves, all those extensions, filling that pipeline of targets. Commencement of RC drilling to test the best of those targets. That's gonna be a smorgasbord of potential discoveries. I'm very excited to see what comes from that Mangaroon target definition work. Classic textbook exploration, defining targets, and going out and putting the truth machine into them. That's what we're here for.
Progress at Gifford Creek Carbonatite, measurable test work results for niobium, rare earth scandium, titanium, and the rest of them throughout the year. Again, hopefully in 6 months for the first pass work from a strategic met, but you never know how long that stuff goes for. We do expect to see some news flow coming back on that this year, regardless. Challenges, always market conditions by fluctuations in geopolitics, government approvals and regulatory timelines. You know, there's a lot of frustration with people going, "Where's your approvals?" When you go to mine, well, we've our 1,000-page mining documents in there. We're just waiting for that approval. People are understaffed, overworked, and all the rest of it's always a challenge.
Approvals is always one of the greatest challenges in the industry. We have technical stuff underway. We have great community relations, thanks to Frank and Will, the weapon and all the rest. It's really just government approvals. POWs have become a lot easier. The mining ones are a new one for us. Those are probably the biggest challenges, and clearly by the number of questions I've had, I think that's the most frustrating thing that our shareholders are feeling. Great, that's the end of it. That's the end of the pre-submitted questions. Thank you to all the people who are still in here. The room's filled up a lot since I started. I'm not sure how this actually works. Starting off with Stephen. Mr. Locksley, how are you, sir?
Has the board considered spinning out the rare earth and critical assets to better realize their value when commodity prices are rising?" Yes, we have. You know, we have actually pursued that path in the past, the rare earth prices crashed, and, you know, giving birth to something that was gonna go into a horrible environment would have been very destructive for everyone. We wanna find the strategic partner. We have a lot more optionality when it's within DRE. We can, within DRE, we can have a partner come in at a project equity scale. They can come into Dreadnought on an equity scale.
They could earn in, farm in, they could, you know, we could do some work together and then spin it out, or they could come in, do some work, and then buy it out. There's a lot more flexibility and protection of the value depending on the market with it, with us at the moment. Have we considered it? Absolutely, we've considered it. Considered lots of things over time. Yes, we look forward to realizing value for the critical metals. Absolutely. Do Manohar. Oh, that's the question you posted before. "We've seen significant recent milestones, specifically 18 million cap rates. Black Cat seemed to get joint venture Star of Mangaroon and high-grade results of Stinger, yet our share price remains somewhat below its 52-week high of AUD 4.7." Yep.
Do you believe the company's stock is currently fairly valued?" No. "If not, what parts of our business do you believe the market is ignoring or undervaluing?" You know, ignoring, undervaluing, one of the interesting things we've had, in particular over the last couple of years, speaking to different brokers, different investors, different funds, is because we ran so hard on the rare earths, there's still a lot of value in the company on the rare earths, and while that was sort of struggling there for several years, we developed a self-funding model. We had these high-grade gold deposits.
We developed the gold strategy, and some people would look at us and go, "We love the work that you're doing, love the team, we love the projects, we like the gold, but your market cap is still valued on the rare earths." We've had this struggle for a couple of years to bring the gold, the value of the gold in our portfolio up to the past part of the rare earths, because not many people actually value both. That was a very different case with Farjoy, who actually loved both, and that's why he's come in so bloody hard.
He actually loves that we have that critical metal sitting there in a tier one jurisdiction, west aligned, he loves that we're actually pursuing the gold and gonna have income coming from that and looking to make a big gold discovery. The rare earths, like we saw with lithium before over the last 10, 15 years, you know, the rare earths are gonna be doing this a fair bit, the gold provides a really strong baseline. Do I think people are ignoring, undervaluing? Some people like gold and they don't like rare earths, and some people like rare earths and don't like gold, and there's people that like them both. The ones that do really see the value that we have.
What are the primary bottlenecks the board identifies as preventing these results from translating the share price momentum?" You know, we make a big gold discovery, put a drill hole into that, and all of a sudden, you know, all that noise disappears. Make a big gold discovery, that is what is going to change and cause a massive rerate for us. Wow, that must have been frustrating, getting, pulling out morning of. Any hints, any potential going rares. Sorry, Nico. Well, that must have been frustrating, getting them pulling out morning of? Oh, yeah, the lithium thing. Yes. Any hints, potential regarding rare earth interest in our tournaments here? Yes, you know, an interesting one on the rare earths, which probably people can go look at.
There's a private company that's just pegged all the ground next to us at Gifford Creek. That company, if you go and look at who's the ownership of that, it's Aureka. Quite interesting seeing them pursuing that and also pegging all the ground around us. Interesting to see what interest there is there and what continues to come, in particular from our trip to the U.S. "Hi, Dean. Thanks for the presentation." Thank you. This is from Michael. It is coming. Thank you. "Regarding the rare earths and the narrow style l odes, do we realistically have a short shot of turning these into viable mines strip ratios?" Yes, we do. Absolutely. You know, we've seen the PFSs and all the work next door.
One of the reasons why we pursued the rare earths next at Yin is because we had Hastings and Gabanintha work done next door. They'd cracked a lot of the met programs. They had done a lot of the studies. We've done internal studies ourselves, and absolutely that works. The strip ratios do get high, we also have quite a few good rare earth values close to the surface, especially with like Y2, and things like that, was quite a flat line, high-grade load near to the surface. It's been forever since we've actually looked at Yin in great detail and talked about Y2 and the rest of it, very high grade, very close to surface and very flat.
That would be, you know, if you want to have a starter pit, you know, Y2, Yin North, you'd be competing between those. There is. We've done the numbers. Hastings has their numbers. It is viable at the right price, and we're certainly in that right price range. Must comment, much appreciate the high level of detail presented in this particular day webinar, and great teamwork. Thank you, Manohar. We're certainly here to deliver and hope that you're happy as a shareholder and stay with us. Marcel, "Thanks, Dean, for everyone. I look forward to further updates in 2026. Keep on drilling. Drill, baby, drill!" Absolutely, it's going to be a great year, hopefully. Kevin Bedford: "Do we still have CTN investment?" Yes, we do.
How do we feel about CTN? I love the ground that they have because we've been there too. They're doing some good deals to clean up the portfolio. They have some very keen people running CTN. They're very connected. They just appointed a new exploration manager, I believe our Chief Geo, Nishka, who actually, you know, she did her PhD, one of our projects, back when we had Melinda, which is now in Delta. She's a fantastic chief geologist to have on board. They're technically very strong. I think I like what they're doing. We certainly still have our investment there and look forward to what they do. "Will this webinar be made available on the company's website for future reference?" Tom, yes, it will.
I'm not sure off the top of my head if it's available to only InvestorHub members or to everyone, but it will be made available. Yes. Excellent. Thank you, all. That ran for an hour and 10 minutes, so slightly better than last time. I apologize it went so long. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen and submit questions. Please get on the InvestorHub, ask questions anytime. I am the one that gets in there. Tom loved the ChatGPT slam. Yeah, love. ChatGPT is can be very useful, and it can also be it's pretty entertaining. Especially for technical stuff. Thank you all. I look forward to the year ahead. Look forward. Please send us questions.
We're very excited, we'll keep everyone up to date on what we have going on, the drill rigs will be turning very soon, it's going to be a very, very big year for Dreadnought. Getting to production, delivering, hopefully, a big discovery, cracking that code at Gifford Creek. Thank you very much.