To put that into context, that is 650 m in front of our current resource, which stands at 59 million tonnes at 2% equivalent. Six hundred fifty metres in front of that, we're still getting 49 m at 6.1% copper equivalent. That will be part of our resource update that we're putting out before the end of this year. A little bit on the location: Newfoundland, it is a great part of Canada, and it is probably the best area that you could be operating in to start a mine. We have abundant power, hydropower; it's cheap. We have huge community support, like the most I've ever seen for a mining operation. The government support is incredible. To put that into context, we received environmental approvals to build the first phase of this project in just 45 days.
There is no other jurisdiction in the world that could boast a record like that. I have just come back from Newfoundland. I have met the minister, met the local members, and the mayor of the town that we are building this mine near. The support is unanimous. We could not be in a better place in the world to build a mine. It is regularly serviced by flights. We have a port within 6 km. There is no better place to be operating in the world. That is evidenced by the Fraser Institute rankings, where it is top six globally, not just in Canada, but top six globally for government policy. Great place to operate. Now, this is what the ore body looks like in long section. The upper part is the gold high-grade massive VMS, and beneath that, in the red, is the broad string of mineralisation.
Our strategy to unlock the value of this deposit has been pretty clear. The first part of our strategy was to really demonstrate the world-class scale and continuity of this deposit. The first thing we did when we got the keys to this two years ago was start underground development. You can see it there in the blue. We have done over 2 km of development. The aim of that was to put the drill rigs in a position to be able to prove that the ore body continues significantly down plunge. We have done that successfully. You can see where the resource has come from and to. What is really exciting is that is where that 49 m at 6.1% copper sits well out of our current resource of 59 million tonnes at 2% copper equivalent. That hit is not isolated.
We're seeing other hits outside of the resource. We're really excited about our resource update that'll be coming out before the end of the year. I'll point out that we have six rigs drilling underground, so it's not a small investment that we've made into the drill bit. Four of those rigs have been operating on infill drilling, and two have been extensional drilling. What you're going to see in this resource, and we've been very clear on that, is you're going to see continued growth in the overall size of the resource. You're going to see a huge upgrade and conversion of what was inferred resource into measured and indicated. That'll form the basis of our studies that we're looking at putting out in the first half of 2026. At the moment, we've only got 34% of the resource into the M&I category.
We're aiming for something closer to 70% for our studies moving forward. Not only will you see growth in this resource, but you'll see a real strong conversion and investment in making sure that we've got high-quality resource update out there when it comes out before the end of this year. This is just a diagrammatic view of that high-grade core zone that I mentioned before, where we're getting those two styles of mineralisation converging. It really does tell the story of the economic potential of this particular zone. Those grades and those thicknesses, I've never seen a deposit like that. When it comes to mineral economics, early payback, cash flow, they're all the things we're investigating in the mining studies that we're doing.
You do not have to be Einstein to figure out, looking at those drill results and those grades and those thicknesses, that this is going to be a pretty special mine, and it will be a very special deposit. We are really looking forward to showing people what this looks like in those studies next year. We are really looking forward to the first step, which is getting that resource out before the end of the year. It is open down plunge. We have got a geophysical anomaly that goes well in front of that 49 m at 6.1% copper. We know the ore body continues. It has never been drilled. There is still a lot of opportunity for parallel loads to be discovered here. What we are finding also is more gold-rich zones as well. That can form a very important economic part of any future mining operations.
Not only is copper above $11,000 a tonne at the moment, we have gold well and truly at record highs above $4,300 an ounce. We are finding more of both of those commodities. You can see pretty clear that this is already a mine, right? This had previously been in production. The reason that it was sold to us at such a bargain price is because the operation was set up for a small-scale ore body when what I have shown you on the screen is clearly a large-scale ore body. It is huge. To put that into perspective, our current resource rate, 59 million tonnes, that is even before the growth that we are expecting out of this resource update. Fifty-nine million tonnes, the mill that is there is 500,000 tonnes per annum.
I'm not an accountant, but 120 years to process an ore body through a small mill like that, you're not getting much value in year 119 in your MPV. What our plan is, is to really build a new mill on site at a scale that's appropriate for this ore body. We are going to be changing the mining methods to something that's appropriate to this ore body, a more bulk style of mining method. When we put these studies out in the first half of next year, all of that will be laid out, all of the different options, all the different scenarios that we've been looking at. We've already got decline development down to 900 m below surface. You can see where we've been drilling. The ground conditions here are exceptional, even at those depths.
Don't be scared off that the fact that our deepest hit is like 1,900 m below surface. You can mine pretty deep in Canada. When you look at operations like Kidd Creek, which go down over 3 km, you look at La Ronde that goes down 3 km, you look at Red Lake, which goes down at the moment 2.6 km. Being above 2,000 m is not that deep in Canada, and especially when we can already access those areas. You can see those ground conditions in these photos. It is brilliant from that perspective. The cost advantages, the way I look at this is this is all capital that can be recycled. We don't have to do this. We can get back into production very quickly, and it can be cheap, and we have a port that's only 5 km away.
We've got some of the best people in the business working on this study. We've already started to put out some results from the study work. We put out some metallurgical test work results that were world-class. We've got the copper recovery up to 98%. Importantly, we've improved the gold recovery from what was historically 60% up to 85% through building a dedicated plant for this ore body. That has a huge impact on the economics of the project as well. It will enhance it. It will mean that we'll be in the lower quartile, in my view, potentially, of copper production. Everything is lining up in our favor. We've got a huge market available for this concentrate, and we're getting inundated with offtake groups, corporate partners, foreign central credit export agencies from Europe looking to provide debt to us to get access to this concentrate.
There are a lot of non-dilutive ways to finance this. We can finance this, and we are rapidly moving this towards production. The third way that we're really looking to generate value, the first one was obviously expanding the known ore body, which we call the Ming Mine. The second is to demonstrate the economics of the upscaled restart. The third game changer for us is the regional exploration. These VMS deposits rarely occur as orphans. They do not occur by themselves. We already know that in this district because there are eight historic mines on our leases, and Ming is just one of those. This ground has never been consolidated under one owner. We have increased it from 50 sq km when we took over to nearly 350 sq km now. We have invested in geophysics, modern geophysics that had never been done on this ground.
Electrical methods work really well because it is a copper ore body and it conducts electricity. The first test of that is, does it pick up known mineralisation? You can see quite clearly there, it does see the known mineralisation. When we run this airborne geophysics over it, we're seeing multiple lookalikes in the same orientation as the known mineralisation, undercover, untested. We've got two rigs out there at the moment testing those areas for another deposit. I think the probability of discovery is quite high. Even within the Ming Mine, there's two deposits within 2 km, one of which we've just started drilling down plunge of, and we've got two economic intersections of copper and gold. The exploration potential is fine.
Look, just to wrap it up, the key catalyst for us that we've got coming out, you'll see a lot of drill results come out. You've seen three releases in the last month. We've still got the six rigs drilling underground, so there'll be more rigs coming with that. The resource update will be out before the end of this year, our mining studies in the first half of next year. Along the way, you'll also see some results from that regional exploration. Thank you very much for the time. That was a very quick introduction to the company. We'll be around this conference. If there's any questions, please let me know. Thank you.
Thank you.